Wednesday 26 October 2016

The Donald, Women and Me!

I've kept quiet about this for some time. But yes, Donald asked me for a date. I met him when he came over to London with his then fiancé Marla Maples for whom he was divorcing first wife, Ivana. The Mail on Sunday asked me to interview Marla for a photo shoot for their YOU magazine. Donald was there, for once trying to keep in the background. However he had already vetoed 'You' magazine's plans for a picnic lunch in the gardens of the boutique hotel near Sloane Square where the Mail on Sunday had lodged Marla, Marla's mother and Donald.
It was a hot July Saturday afternoon and I arrived by cab from my Montagu Square flat to be told that Donald wanted fish and chips so the champagne and seafood picnic were being spurned in favour of a fried lunch at the famous Sea Shell Fish and Chip restaurant in Lisson Grove, W2.
The Sea Shell had no other customers on this hot afternoon, so we were easily seated at a table for four. Donald spoke little while we ate, chomping his battered cod and chips: ignoring snide comments from Marla regarding his weight. Later we had time to chat while Marla was changing various outfits for her photo shoot.
I gave Donald a signed copy of my just published biography of John Major and he expressed interest in the idea that I might write a new Trump biography. He was impressed to the point where Marla began to show jealousy. She objected to me joining them at Tramp for dinner than evening and next day when my taxi was caught in a Victoria Street traffic jam, the ferry taking the party to Greenwich left without me. I was told Donald kept asking, "Where's Nesta? Where's Nesta?
At a lunch organised by 'You' the following Monday, he kept glancing unhappily at Marla. As we quietly chatted at the table he revealed his uncertainty's re her being the right girl for him. Her looks made her hard to beat, "but...." he sighed, and my mind went back to the mean way she had taunted him at the Sea Shell. This aspiring actress, who had been quoted as saying "Best sex ever" about Donald, whom she had met on the street while walking home, might have been less in love than ambitious to marry a mogul.
I filed my piece, but before it could appear in print, the couple had had a fight and split up.
The Mail asked me to ring Donald and interview him.
During our phone call he asked if I would be available for a date in London the following week as he planned to come over on business. (He had already asked me if I practised safe sex). "Go back to Marla, Donald," I told him. "She's the right girl for you." But I was wrong: they married but it did not last.
I included Donald in my hugely successful "Britain's Top 100 Eligible Bachelors," a collection of mini biographies of rich, famous and powerful men. While researching him for what was billed as 'a gold diggers guide'. It played to a widespread fascination for sex power and money. The impression I formed of him was that he is incurably insecure with women, one of those men who is never sure that he is loved, who is always looking for approval and never gives up trying to find it with one woman after another. It's also the motive behind the vulgar flashing of his wealth. He clearly has to keep boasting--about his wealth and his conquests; the top gorilla who can have every female in the tribe.
Photos show he was extremely handsome in his youth, and oddly, beauty is often correlated with insecurity. Handsome men and, beautiful women too, are often trying hard to prove they really are desired. And Donald is a classic case: women, he believes, either love him for his looks or his money, never for himself. As time has passed the looks have faded, the money is still there but he now wants to add political power to his armoury. He first considered running for the White House job in 1987 and I had been asked to interview him, while on a trip to the US, by the Telegraph Magazine. But he changed his mind about running only to pop up again twice. Now, third time may not be so lucky after all. But consider the consequences for women of Trump in office.
A Donald who can't keep his hands to himself might be no worse in the White House than Jack Kennedy who was a notorious womaniser. So much for the curse of looks and money.

Alas, poor Donald.

Sunday 19 June 2016

George Osborne: a brief profile

Naked ambition. He will lay down his country for his life. Someone who works obsessively on his own future but who gambles with other people's money and rights. A dangerously dedicated and selfish worker for his own gain. A ruthless liar.

What an epitaph for a Chancellor of the Exchequer!
He is due for a shock. Perhaps many shocks as his plans come to naught.
It is for reason of his obsessive ambition that Osborne has made the most disgracefully untrue claims of the outcome of the Referendum for Brexit.
He has staked his own future on the outcome of the vote: if we stay IN, he gets Cameron's job. If we Leave, he gets nothing except a well deserved kick in the pants. As a Telegraph headline on Thursday (June 16th) declared, "Chancellor finished if Britain quits Europe, say scores of Tories."
The claims that he would bring in an Emergency Budget after a vote for Brexit was the last straw. That claim alone could damage Britain's ratings, our future borrowing and trade deals. He has launched the most extraordinary claims of disaster for the British economy following a vote for Brexit. Instead of focusing on the best possible outcome, he is fictionalising on the worst case scenario and he has persuaded his friends on the IMF and other international bodies to do the same. Why? Because Brexit for George is Curtains. He is staking his entire career in a gamble that he can kill the Brexit surge with his dire predictions of disaster, job losses, tax hikes and austerity.  So that he can replace Cameron as Prime Minister.
But he is a fool without political judgment. Few in the Conservative Parliamentary Party will forgive him or vote for him as a result. Few if any Conservative MP's would support him in a leadership election. Following his announcement that he would, after a vote for Brexit deliver an Emergency Budget involving tax hikes and austerity cuts, he was lambasted. Sixty-six Conservative MP's said they would vote down such a Budget. Labour would not support it either, and in the Daily Telegraph Business section, the respected columnist, Ambrose Evans Pritchard wrote that Osborne should "no longer be trusted with the keys to 11 Downing Street."
I agree. He has already messed up the housing rental sector and has caused three revolts in Parliament over his ill judged Budget austerity cuts on the poorer people in our society.
Worse, Osborne still believes he can become the next British Prime Minister. But he can only do so if British voters choose to Remain in the EU.
Otherwise he is very definitely OUT of the running. Therefore he is lying and twisting the truth to serve his own ambition: even if his claims damage his country.
His fraudulent claims that the rich will be the ones to benefit from Brexit, delivered last week in Porthmadoc, North Wales are the exact opposite of the truth. The rich, whether citizens of the UK or international power brokers and financiers, businessmen and elites of all kinds are clearly the ones to benefit from a vote to Remain in the EU. The Brexit vote belongs to the poor, the hard working middle classes and those who believe in Britain as their nation and who have had enough of handing control of their destiny to unelected committees of other countries and the unelected EU government in Brussels.
During and after Cameron's failed negotiations with the EU, Osborne was buzzing from capital to capital trying to fix his future by ratting on Britain's interests.  He is visibly prepared to sacrifice his country to his own goal of becoming Prime Minister.
He will never make it. Nor is he capable. In the Cameron/Osborne deal forged on the anvil of the Blair/Brown deal, he will fail. Why?
Because he does not have what it takes to govern 'one nation' or to be that special unifier of a government called "First Among Equals."
Osborne must go. And the faster, the better, for the good of this country.


Sunday 12 June 2016

Dithering, Procrastination and Prevarication

I first planned this blog in February 2016 as Cameron announced completion of his failed EU negotiations. It was to be headlined, "The Destiny of David Cameron: Part 2. On Yer Bike Dave!"
It was evident from those failed negotiations that Cameron was doomed and my verdict was and is that he should resign. MP's of his own party are now calling for his departure: he has lost all credibility. After his ludicrous 'predictions' of what will happen after a Brexit, his word is worthless. Whether Britain Leaves or Remains in the EU, one thing is clear, that after June 23rd 2016, Cameron must go: he cannot be trusted to lead the government or the country.
Cameron or 'Conman' as I am now calling him, has kept Britain in a constant state of indecision and confusion since he came into office in 2010. After the Coalition, a brilliant achievement of consensus but one which brought daily dithering over government decisions, came the Scottish Referendum, then, unavoidably, the 2015 General Election. Now we have the EU referendum--a result of Cameron's promise to voters that helped him get elected. The fault is not all Cameron's. The state of confusion and indecision are actually part of the nation's make up at this time. We are a divided nation. The division between the haves and have-nots is dramatically exemplified by property owners on the one hand, and on the other, those who know they have no hope of attaining that basic capitalist goal. Never before have the problems--in housing and social services, now exacerbated by unrestrained immigration and unrestrained 'foreign investment' in our property market been so overwhelming. But the divisions between the 'People' and increasing coercion by the Brussels bureaucracy are now reflected all over Europe in new political alignments and anti EU protest movements. Still the fat parasites in Brussels stick to their arrogant ways. But, the potential for revolution against 'Power at the Centre' from the EU that is causing ever intensifying revolt, is greater than ever before.

Can a British referendum about EU membership deflect the rising tide of discontent? A vote for Brexit may start a contagious revolt across Europe.  The referendum campaign is a cynical move by Cameron/Conman to pave the way for Britain to succumb to further pressures from Brussels and that looniest EU obsession referred to by Donald Tusk of a "Utopian union of European nations in one Europe,' that of Freedom of Movement which brings the whole of Africa and the Middle East through our ports.

Promising a referendum after a renegotiation of our terms of membership was a device Conman used to unify his deeply divided party for the 2015 General Election and to win it. Not that he knew he would win it: Cameron is clearly not clairvoyant and had been quite prepared to deliver his resignation speech on May 8th. No one was more shocked than he that he actually was voted into office. This is a man of limited political judgment.  How come then that he is so convinced of disaster if Britain leaves the EU? How can he predict the future? 1. "House prices will fall" (oh but isn't that what we want in order to make affordable housing more available? And to release to the enterprise sector, capital, currently locked up in bricks and mortar). 2. "Sterling will fall" (isn't that what exporters need to open new markets outside the EU? So what if Spanish holidays cost more?--the Spaniards are now protesting disruption from excess  tourists), and if the prices of beers or wines rise as a result of a devalued pound--so what? We can import them from elsewhere or continue to make our own.

Cameron has arm twisted support from 'names'--appointed toadies from the Governor of the Bank of England to 'actors and producers' who benefit from EU cash handouts, to the big international banks and companies who's executives and owners don't even live here; those on Conman's Honours List (past and future) all parroting the same dire prognostications for our future. They have no business interfering in our electoral process. The Referendum is for the British people. Not for the Obamas, Bransons, IMF, American Banks, G20 members and Bank of England Governors who benefit from globalisation and its offshore profits. Why are they all so terrified that the UK will 'Leave' this incompetent EU? They clearly expect much profit from sacrificing the independence of the British people. Yes. Because our decision to 'Leave' will give such a shock to those Brussels bureaucrats and such a lead to the citizens of other nations who are now desperately unhappy with the EU's creeping totalitarianism that it will bust the whole crumbling edifice.

My bet is the solid electorate of this nation will rebel against this elitist support for the EU. And that after Brexit, small and medium sized businesses will grasp the new opportunities and, once released from stifling regulations (our own as well as the EU's) will surge forward in a burst of enterprise and global trade not seen since the 19th Century.

Conman has kept the nation on the edge of its seat since he came to office in 2010. This is massively distracting to business and is holding up decisions. It also creates a smokescreen for the fact that the government is doing little to solve mega problems in housing, infrastructure and energy production. Clearly, this style of 'government by suspense' must cease. It is dishonest and disastrous. And it is thanks to this dishonesty that Cameron must resign. Not only the several blatant lies he has told during this campaign but also the misuse of facts in the 'predictions' he puts forward mean that I could never vote for a party led by David Cameron. In or Out, he must step down on June 24th to make way for a PM whose words can be trusted. And woe betide that PM if he offers Conman a job on the negotiating team for our exit. When Cameron steps down we should be able to exhale in relief at release from the dithering, procrastination and prevarication that have been the brand image of his reign.