This Would be so Much Better on the Phone.

And ideally should be done in person. However it's clear that the Kate Moss hint fell on stony ground so splashed up on the Internet it must go.

In the weeks following the para-Olympic closing ceremony Rihanna and I had something of a shared consciousness thing going on. If you've ever picked up the phone to call someone only for it to suddenly ring and it's that person calling you you'll know exactly what this is. It's actually quite common amongst people in close relationships such as sharing a home and people who have just gone through an intense emotional experience together. That's because if you have people thinking about the same problems at the same time it's quite likely their thoughts will occasionally coincide. During the Cold War both the USA and the USSR spent small fortunes researching shared consciousness as a way to run spies in order to reduce of them being uncovered by removing the need for them to physically meet up with their handler. Although this research did establish that the phenomenon exists it was always found to be a bit more miss then hit.

Although amongst nations that haven't spent millions researching shared consciousness this obviously perpetuates the myth that Rihanna somehow controls the weather through some sort of psychic power it was actually a bit of a laugh. Then Chris Brown turned up. A significant way in which Brown has engineered his reunion with Rihanna has been to get her to play about with this shared consciousness thing as a way to try and control me. For the most part this involved things like trying to wake me up in the middle of the night but also included the just and righteous war against the current UK season of X-Factor. This is actually a well established mentalist trick which is frequently used by con artists. By placing the victim in the role of the puppet master they gain a sense of power and control which boosts their confidence and distracts them from the fact they're actually the one being manipulated. UK viewers of the recent "Derren Brown: Apocalypse" special would have seen something very similar where the victim of the stunt was given a young black girl to take care of in order to prevent him questioning the rather ridiculous proposition that he was one of only a handful of survivors after the earth had be struck by meteorites.

Matters really came to a head though this past weekend when Brown joined Rihanna on a short holiday to Barbados. Apart from having one last crack at the US election Brown's handlers arranged this through the recording of Rihanna's album in the hope that the scandal would attract professional attention to Rihanna's forthcoming, and by my reckoning ill-conceived, 777 tour and Brown's much longer upcoming tour. On the African leg especially Brown's safety and security is already becoming an inter-governmental issue although I'm not sure why because the last time I checked he doesn't have formal diplomatic status. For his part Brown was desperate to make the trip in order that he would be glued to Rihanna's side while my relationship with her and my opinion of their relationship was called into sharp focus by provoking me into a slanging match. His hope was that this would allow Brown to gain much more information about how Rihanna thinks and the allegations against him. This would allow him to be better able to control Rihanna for example by making sure his carefully rehearsed "Oh baby I've changed!" lines more likely to press exactly the right buttons.

As I like to think the best of people up until this point I had actually been giving Brown the benefit of the doubt over the 2009 beating. However this pattern of behaviour along with the New York nightclub incident which could be tried as a rape offence in the UK has left me convinced that Brown is an extremely predatory and dangerous individual. As this comes after some three years of rehabilitation it seems very likely that this behaviour is pathological rather then being the result of immaturity. This means that even with hospitalisation and years of intensive cognitive therapy it is extremely unlikely that he will change. The fact that he isn't actually particularly good at this manipulative behaviour massively increases the risk he will become frustrated putting Rihanna at a high risk of further physical violence. Even without physical attacks the relationship with Brown is already clearly having a negative effect on Rihanna. Over this last month I have watched opportunity after opportunity go up in smoke and although it's small and almost imperceptible at this point you can already see Rihanna's world starting to shrink. That's because I'm clearly not the only one beginning to ask themselves whether they can be bothered to put up with the person Rihanna becomes when she is with Brown.

So I think the only question left is why Brown's probation officer has not yet intervened and at the very least re-instated the restraining order although 1 year in prison has also been suggested. That is because it seems to me that everybody in the business knows exactly what's going on except for the one person whose opinion actually matters and you can already hear her defensive walls going up.

16:40 on 8/11/12.

It's True: Obama's Won.

Due to the issuing of an unusually high number of provisional ballots (around 350,000 each) caused by controversial new voter ID laws Ohio (18) and Florida (29) are not expected to finish their counts and award their electoral college votes until November 17th. However with Obama currently leading Romney by 303 electoral college votes to 206 this difference of 47 votes is not enough to alter the result so Obama wins. The Democrats retain the senate and the Republicans retain the House of Representatives meaning that there is likely to be further deadlock in Washington over the budget which will possibly push the US over the so-called 'fiscal cliff.' This is why the New York Stock Exchange has plunged some 300 points on the news of the election result.

So yeah the American voters - nowhere near as stupid as the George W Bush years would have had you believe.

16:30 on 7/11/12.

For the First Time in History.

The time difference is actually going to go my way. So now I'm going to go to bed only to awake bright eyed and refreshed in time for a sleep deprived and bedraggled TV new person to hand the the certified, verified and confirmed result of the 2012 US Presidential Election. No, who am I kidding the results are going to be stretched out all the way until the Chinese declare their result. Of course the fact the Chinese know more about the US system then the US know about the Chinese system means that in my mind that's a suicide mission. However the sad fact is there's a large element within the US Establishment who dream about the day they live in China. Fortunately though unlike the SQIA they fly the right flag!

Seriously I've been up for so long even the TV strippers have started putting their clothes back on.

06:20 on 7/11/12.

The Polls Are Still Open.

I'm back from the pub and not obviously burgled however the polls in the US Election are still very much open. If you are in the US I strongly suggest that you use this opportunity to go and vote. That's because the latest polls I've seen for swing state Florida show Obama on 49.74% and Romney on 49.73% so seriously every vote will matter.

20:00 on 6/11/12.

Please Vote.

The polls have opened in the final day of voting in the 2012 US Presidential Election. Therefore there is nothing left for me to do expect urge everybody to vote even if they don't agree with my choice. I don't mean this in the sense that in a healthy democracy everybody needs to participate. I mean it in the sense that the scenario all the pollsters are talking about will see both candidates receiving 269 electoral college votes making it a dead heat. If that happens the House of Representatives will choose the President and the Senate will choose the Vice President meaning that will be very little difference between the way the US chooses it's leaders and the way China chooses it's leaders.

So whether or not you personally choose to vote could well be what decides the outcome of the election.

12:00 on 6/11/12.

Quick bit of House Keeping.

I am now following the Governors of New York and New Jersey along with the Mayor of New York on Twitter. They shouldn't take this too personally because I'm only really using them as a bridgehead in order to expand out and find out exactly what's going on with the Sandy recovery. Unfortunately that's something I'm going to have to play with over the next couple of days so won't be yielding results until about Wednesday (7/11/12). I have to say though the two main priorities remain getting the power back on and getting the people who've been made homeless by the storm out of the weather. New York state is talking about 30-40,000 households being destroyed so unless they can get those people into trailers or hotels it might be time to start thinking about shipping them out of state because that will be a long term problem throughout the winter.

In other news I've been on to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and cancelled my appointment for Wednesday morning and they were actually quite reasonable about it. So it looks like my election night drinking binge is back on! Now all we need to do is find away for the Department of Justice to keep the Tea Party's thugs, er sorry 'election observers' on the leash and there might be a danger of democracy breaking out tomorrow because seriously predominately white mobs starting fights to keep predominately black voters out of polling stations I thought that went out with the Jim Crowe laws.

16:45 on 5/11/12.

The US Presidential Election: Time to Decide.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year you will be painfully aware that on Tuesday (6/11/12) voters in the United States of America will chose their President for the next four years. Unlike in 2008 which saw two untested candidates vying for the top job the 2012  race is between the Republican challenger Mitt Romney and the Democrat incumbent Barack Obama who has been doing the job for the past four years. Therefore I consider the most important factor in deciding which candidate to back is Obama's record as President. Obviously I have neither the time nor the space to review every decision he's made and every policy Obama's implemented over the past four years so instead I will concentrate on what I consider to be his greatest success and his greatest failure.

Obama's greatest success has undoubtedly been the economy. I know that with unemployment up close to 8% this might seem like a controversial thing to say but the important thing to remember is that in the months leading up to Obama taking up office the US and world economies experienced one of the worst collapses in history which left the US in deep recession with GDP shrinking by an average of 3.2% a quarter and close to 1 million jobs being lost a month. Following that Britain went into a double-dip recession from which it is only just beginning to emerge, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland both required IMF bailouts and Greece went into a such a deep depression that in several parts of the country people have actually given up on capitalism and started to use a barter system instead. During this time the only two western nations that have consistently recorded growth month on month are the US and Germany. The Germans are actually cheating slightly because along with the rest of the former Soviet bloc East Germany is still woefully underdeveloped meaning that getting economic growth there is a bit like playing tennis with the net down. So although his main objective has been to limit the damage Obama has excelled on the economy and probably would have been able to do more if it hadn't been for an obstructive Republican dominated Congress that seemed to be trying to make the US economy worse in order to use it as an election issue to help their candidate take back the White House.

Obama's greatest failure has undoubtedly been in foreign policy specifically in dealing with Iran and the so-called Arab Spring. The first mistake was the failure to recognise the fact that no-one in Israel is actually that bothered about Iran's nuclear program. However Zionist hawks within Israel have always been very keen to use the issue as an excuse to mount an unsuccessful attack on Israel in the hope of provoking a counter attack on Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah would then be very quickly defeated allowing Israel to seize great swathes of territory in southern Lebanon possibly going as far as the Litani river. Although Israel would eventually give most of the territory back this would significantly alter peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine over the two state solution. By attempting to avoid war and contain the situation by placing truly crippling sanctions in Iran all Obama has done is spoil the very delicate diplomatic dance that all sides in the region have happily been doing for years. By taking Iranian oil off the world market Obama also succeed in weakening the US' global strategic position by making the nation more dependent on Saudi Arabia - a bunch of people so unpleasant US support for the Saudi Monarchy was one of the major reasons Al Qadea attacked the US on 9/11. This strategic problem was compounded by the decision to intervene in Libya which also took Libyan oil off the global market. Although the US President's first responsibility is to the US people that intervention had a very negative effect for people living across the middle-east and north Africa. For example more then a year after the fall of Muammer Qaddafi Libya is still sadly looking closer to a failed state then a prosperous democracy. The massive influx of weapons into the region allowed Al Qaeda backed fighters to seize control of a very large area in the north of Mali. The chaos caused also served to destabilise Egypt and derail the promise of their revolution leaving them still without a constitution, a mildy Islamist President who rules by diktat and power saving measures being introduced to deal with daily blackouts. From the US perspective though the biggest failure of the Libya intervention is that it has left the country so hugely dependent on Saudi Arabia and it's oil that it had no choice other then to go along with the bloodbath that is currently taking place in Syria that will kill more people then the civil war in Iraq, could well re-ignite the civil war in Iraq and will certainly dump a large number of heavily armed and battle hardened Jihadists right on Israel's border. Therefore I seriously think that Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice should now both be in prison for their support for the Libya intervention. However I seem to remember that the Republicans only contribution to the debate was to call for more and faster military intervention in Iran, Libya and Syria.

As for Mitt Romney while he is clearly more intelligent, compassionate and capable then the last Republican President I am struggling to find something positive to say about him. For example his economic plan to increase the US national debt through $5 trillion of tax cuts and $2 trillion of spending increases is nothing short of idiotic. Although it clearly has a lot of support across the Republican base the only way Romney supporters have found to justify the plan to people who work in economics and finance (such as the Economist magazine) is to claim that Romney is simply lying in order to get elected and has no intention of actually implementing such a stupid plan.

Even Romney's most frequently claimed qualification for the job of President - his time spent in business - actually counts as a disadvantage in my eyes. That's because the world of business and the world of politics are very different places. In the world of business two people will agree on a plan because it will make them both money. Therefore they will shake hands on a deal before going off and trying their hardest to make that plan a success. The world of politics, especially international diplomacy is much more about power, domination, manipulation, exploitation and point scoring. Therefore two people will often shake hands on a deal before going off and trying their hardest to stab each other in the back.I think Romney will find it very difficult to adapt to this world which brings me on to Romney's greatest weakness - his lack of charisma and his rather robotic way of talking to people. Although it is stupid and irrational the ability to read and talk to people is very important to a world leader. Having watched him throughout the campaign and especially during the debates Romney is clearly nowhere near as good as Obama at this and is prone to making school boy errors. This is a major disadvantage in a President because if you have a President that is weak on an area of policy they can always bring in an expert in the field to act as an adviser and help them out. However when it comes to sitting down with another world leader at something like a G20 Summit and talking them into seeing things America's way that is something the President can only do for himself. Obama's strength in this area has clearly helped the US significantly over the past four years because while Obama has made some mistakes the fact he's been able to get the international community to go along with those mistakes owes a lot to the fact that most other world leaders actually like Obama on a personal level and enjoy spending time with him. Therefore they don't want to upset him by saying no to him.

So in summary if I was able to vote in the US Presidential Election I would vote for Barack Obama because I happen to think the Republican's 2008 slogan was correct. The White House is no place for on the job training and the US really can't afford to start having to train another one so soon.

18:25 on 4/11/12