Barack Obama wants a $300 billion tax cut which, if approved by Congress, would be the largest such alleviation in the history of the United States.

Regular readers will know that, in the run-up to the presidential election, this blog was something of a war zone. Most of the people who posted comments were of the view that Obama was a dangerous socialist with (as they never tired of pointing out) the most Left-wing voting record in the senate.

I took a different view. Obama might be more decorative than functional. He might be stronger on rhetoric than on ideology. He might be vapid, in a feel-good sort of way. But he was certain, I felt, to try to be a unifying president: that, after all, had been his shtick right from the start.

Well, my friends, if a $300 billion tax cut is evidence

It's dark in Reykjavík at this time of year, and the temper matches the season. So gloomy are Icelanders, so shocked at their sudden fall, that they are considering membership of the EU. The ruling Independence Party - which, in the way of these things, is being blamed for the collapse, but not thanked for the extraordinary growth of the previous 20 years - is debating whether to drop its foundational doctrine and renounce national independence.

The EU knows an opportunity when it sees one. Its leaders understand that, for an essentially prosperous and well-governed country such as Iceland, membership can only be the result of despair. Icelanders, like all Northern peoples, are prone to moodiness. When they shake off their current depression, they will see that the EU is no solution:

I blogged last week about the outrage of quangos spending taxpayers' money to lobby for more taxpayers' money. It seems I understated the scandal. Quangos are not simply lobbying for a greater role for themselves: they are actively attacking proposals for democratic reform, even when those proposals are backed by all three parties.

It turns out (hat-tip, Douglas Carswell) that the Association of Police Authorities, which has campaigned relentlessly against placing constabularies under local democratic control, is retaining the services of a lobbyist, Connect Public Affairs, to represent it during the passage of the Policing and Criminal Justice Bill.

It is not my intention to make the case for elected sheriffs again: I have done so often enough before. But, whether you agree with me or

My fellow Telegraph bloggers are frightfully excited about David Cameron's savings tax cut, and small wonder. This newspaper has traditionally spoken to and for the responsible classes: people who like to save and hate to borrow, who live within their means, who feel uneasy about what they still think of as "hire purchase". Alright, Janet, it may not be the abolition of all taxes on savings, investment and inheritance that you and I would like, but it's a decent pace in the right direction.

David Cameron is making a tacit, and hugely welcome, admission that, if governments cannot legislate against recessions, they can ameliorate their consequences. I am a bitter foe of savings taxes: they are morally indefensible (the money has already been taxed) and economically harmful (they skew

Of course a second bail-out would be calamitous. Both opposition front-benches now say so and, while it would have been nice if they had applied that logic to the original bail-out, at least they have learned from their mistakes. Joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.

It is hard to see, though, how Gordon Brown can back out without admitting that everything he has done since the crisis began has been a failure, and that we do-nothings were right all along. And so, like Nick Leeson, the PM will carry on throwing someone else's money at the problem rather than face up to his initial mistake.

The failure of the bail-out and the nationalisations must now surely be obvious even to the Broon. But this isn't

Sterling's slide against the euro has had no effect whatever on public opinion. Not for the first time, people have shown themselves far cleverer than their leaders. They understand that, if anything, the pounding of the pound makes the case against membership even stronger.

The sturdy good sense of the British electorate, as against those who presume to interpret its wishes, is one of the most reassuring things about this country. How aptly Burke's words apply to our Euro-fanatical élite:

"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;

There's a scene in, if I remember correctly, a David Lodge novel where a group of academics play a game called Humiliation, the idea of which is that you name a book that you ought to have read but haven't. I was playing a similar game with myself, trying to come up with the things that it is most inexcusable for me not to have done. Here were my top three.

I have never played a game of tennis.

I have never watched a ballet.

I have never been to Wales.

Number one I may have to write off. Number two will look after itself in time: I have two little girls. But number three I have finally achieved.

I am blogging from An Area The Size Of Wales, where we saw in the New Year with our dear friends Mark and Phoebe. We are in an unbelievably pretty village called Aberdovey, where the hills

Quangos aren't quasi-autonomous any more. They've broken free of ministerial control and become Taxpayer-funded Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations: Tangos.

I was chatting to an old friend over the weekend, and happened to mention the shortcomings of one of the most inept of all our executive bodies. My friend is not normally a man to voice strong political opinions, but he sprang immediately to the defence of this hapless agency, insisting that the situation before its creation had been far worse. Suddenly the penny dropped: my friend is a lobbyist, and the agency is paying him to conduct its PR.

Pause, for a moment, to consider how outrageous this is. Bodies set up by the government, but operationally independent, are using taxpayers' money to lobby for more taxpayers' money.

"I'll bet these Hamas guys regret ending their ceasefire," says an Israeli friend. If so, they have a funny way of showing it. Conflict - even a conflict in which they are getting thumped - suits the militants, vindicating their narrative and strengthening their hold over their compatriots. All day, the airwaves have been thick with exultant Hamas leaders promising to fight to the last bullet, the last Palestinian.

The real losers are not the gunmen, but the moderates - on both sides. There are Gazans who are trying to bring up their families peaceably, and who despair at the horror which the jihadis have brought on them. There are Israelis who realise that, sooner or later, an independent Palestine will be their neighbour, and that assaults of this kind are unlikely to make

Here is a seasonal message from the Conservative MEPs' assistants. They may not have much work to do, but they're an enthusiastic, amiable and patriotic lot.

If only the MEPs could work together as harmoniously as their staff.

Labour's policy of cutting interest rates and spending more has been about as successful as it was in, er, Japan. We're in for the worst recession of our lives. How predictable. How predicted.

Still, I don't want to be too hard on the Broon. One of his policies - the reduction of VAT - has met with almost universal derision, not least from those who are normally the first to applaud tax cuts. The general view is that if a 25 per cent price cut won't get people shopping, a 2.5 per cent tax cut won't either.

Maybe. But for a small business operating within tight profit margins, that 2.5 per cent might be the difference between profitability and receivership. For its employees, it might be the difference between gainful work and the dole. For its suppliers, it might be the difference between

It is time to let readers of this blog into a secret that I have carried with me for more than 20 years: the secret of Smurf.

The horror began, as in a Stephen King novel, with a group of teenagers. I and three other school friends were spending a long weekend at the Frinton holiday cottage of a fifth, Tom. At some stage on the Saturday, one of us, Al, his mind disordered by alcohol, visited a charity shop and came back with the vilest artefact ever to have taken form under human hands: a two-foot straw-stuffed smurf, dirty and mangy, with a malevolent gaze and a terrifying aura.

Unless you've seen the filthy thing, you can have no idea of how baleful it is. Perhaps you will get some sense, though, when I tell you that, more than a decade later, Smurf flew from Reykjavik to London as

I have blogged before about the newspaper perennials: headlines that have been appearing regularly since the 1970s, such as "WI aims to ditch jam and Jerusalem image" and "Chancellor blames international recession". How could I have missed the hardiest perennial of all: "China embraces panda diplomacy"?

I am surrounded by infirm women. The three-year-old, the six-year-old and the wife are coughing and sweating and shivering and moaning. It seems to be part of a national trend: the Royal College of General Practitioners says there is a confluence of several cold and 'flu-type viruses, a 75 per cent increase in infections since last week. If reports from GPs' surgeries are to be believed, there are half as many sufferers again as there should be at this time of year.

Eh? Reports from GPs' surgeries? You mean people go to the doctor with these ailments? What the devil for? Is there a better treatment than staying in bed? I ask the question quite seriously, as a speedy recovery by my dependent females will make our Christmas considerably more pleasant. I'm off to make another honey and

Iain Dale is running one of his annual surveys: best peer, best Welsh MP, best Left-of-Centre blogger and so forth. One of his nominees is my friend and co-author Douglas Carswell - or, as it appears in the survey, "Douglas Caswell".

Do vote for him: it'll cheer him up no end, as well as signalling your support for localism and direct democracy.

The banner of antidisestablishmentarianism is being flourished with élan. My recent post, The conservative case for a disestablished Church, has drawn sharp, albeit courteous, responses from Damian Thompson and Archbishop Cranmer.

These two are not natural allies: their fizzling, fitful feud is one of the more entertaining of internet vendettas. Still, theirs are undoubtedly the two best God-bothering blogs in Britain: always original, acerbic and entertaining. Those of you who feel that my libertarianism has gone too far will find many allies on their comment threads.

To all intents and purposes, we are at parity. In the rough reckoning of tourist maths, and in the currency exchange booths, a pound is worth a euro. Inevitably, a cretinous chorus is canting for membership.

Let's keep this simple. The decline in the value of sterling shows that the system is working. Britain is in a mess because of Gordon Brown's profligacy. We are worse off than most of the euro zone countries: it's what economists call an asymmetric shock. That shock has been cushioned by a falling currency value and a falling interest rate. Had we not been able to absorb the devaluation in our currency, we would have suffered an equivalent devaluation in output and wages.

To put it another way, had we taken the euro-enthusiasts' advice a year ago, or five years ago, or ten years ago,

I passed a police car last night, blue lights flashing, uniformed figures picked out in silhouette, and suddenly felt a little colder. "I never thought I'd say this in this country," I muttered to my wife, "but I'm starting to be nervous of the police".

I mean, who knows which Conservative politician they might pick on next? If you think that sounds paranoid, listen to the anti-terrorism chief's denunciation of the "Tory machinery and their press friends".

I ran into the amiable Damian Green a few days ago. Now that the beastly business was all over, I asked, was he starting to enjoy the attention? Not really, he said. When he had returned to his Kent home, he found that his bed had been made differently from the way he had left it: the anti-terrorist officers had been rifling through

Labour MPs are piling in to demand the disestablishment of the Church of England. No surprise there, then: hostility to organised religion in general, and to the primacy of the Church of England in particular, is in the DNA of the British Left. Now that the senior Anglican prelate has himself raised the idea - albeit in a typically abstract and dreamy way - Lefties naturally feel uninhibited.

Fair enough: you'd be disappointed in them if they behaved any differently. The more interesting question is why so many Rightists cling to antidisestablishmentarianism. As a rule, conservatives are against nationalisation, on grounds that it brings complacency and inefficiency, that the state is a rotten manager, that government control stifles initiative. If this is true of airlines or car manufacturers

I was surprised to learn that the Belgian Government is collapsing. Surprised because I hadn't properly clocked that there was a Belgian Government. For the better part of two years, the Belgian state has got by with no one in charge. There was a brief moment when an administration was cobbled together to ratify the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty. Job done, it dissolved again after two weeks.

This time, the trouble was Fortis, and the administration's cack-handed attempts to prop it up. (Regular readers will remember that I forecast that Fortis would bring trouble some time ago.) The Cabinet has voted to support the Prime Minister's resignation, which is yet again before the King.

The longer this lasts, the more one feels that, if Belgium can go for the better part of two years

A dangerous and disagreeable proposal stands before Parliament. As part of a wider electoral reform bill, it is proposed to do away with by-elections when Northern Irish MEPs stand down.

Come back! This is important! I realise that a sentence combining "Northern Ireland", "MEPs" and "electoral reform" isn't exactly sexy. But what is being proposed should anger us, for three reasons. First, it is a further example of how we have given up on meaningful democracy in a chunk of the United Kingdom. Second, it is a small but irksome instance of how, as we Europeanise our constitution, we make it less accountable. Third, and most important, it is part of a trend towards the concentration of power in the hands of party elites.

What is being suggested? That, when a Northern

If you still need a reason to vote out this hopeless and hapless government, read this. Labour has U-turned on the idea of giving the public a direct say over how the police is run. Once again, elected ministers have come into conflict with the standing apparat. And, once again, the apparatchiks have won. The chief purpose of the British state remains the employment of its employees.

So, if you disagree with how the police are prioritising their tasks - if you'd rather they spent more time being unpleasant to scoundrels and less installing speed cameras, or more money on foot patrols and less on diversity advisers, or harassed drug dealers rather than middle-aged Opposition MPs - then, as we Old Brussels Hands say, tant pis. You'll take what you're given and be grateful.

The most outrageous

Let's keep this simple. Either the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty will be modified or it won't. Either there will be new provisions on the number of MEPs, the right of each country to a Commissioner, defence, abortion and taxation; or it will be the same treaty.

If it's the same treaty, Ireland is being made to vote twice on an identical text which, quite apart from being humiliating, is hard to reconcile with the Republic's constitution. If, on the other hand, it's a different treaty, then ratification will have to begin all over again in the other 26 member nations, including Britain.

So, which is it?

MEPs erupted in applause when the figures came up on the screen. No more opt-outs! No more Dickensian working conditions! Anyone who tries to stay at his post for longer than 48 hours, or who allows his employees to do so, will feel the full force of the law!

To Euro-MPs, that's the end of the matter. They can go home for Christmas feeling warm and smug: they have demonstrated, at least to their own satisfaction, that they are humane and decent people.

But what is the effect of this posturing in the real world likely to be? I'll tell you what, my friends: at a time when Europe is sliding into the vortex of recession, at a time when unemployment in Britain is over a million, at a time when employers are desperately looking to make savings, this ludicrous ruling will force a series of new

We are massively increasing our presence in southern Afghanistan. When I say "we", I suppose I really mean "the West": Britain is scraping together an extra 300 soldiers, but the Americans are planning to flush the place with another 20,000.


In Helmand with the Royal Marines

The signs of expansion were everywhere when I visited Helmand a couple of weeks ago. There is a visible shift from contingency to permanence. Tents are giving way to concrete barracks; a new runway is planned in Camp Bastion; the air base at Kandahar is almost doubling in size. Meanwhile, efforts are being put into building long term relations with the locals, and soldiers are being sent on 11-month Pashto language courses. What began in 2001 as a task force looks very like a garrison that could be there in ten or 20

I thought that, after ten years in the European Parliament, nothing could shock me any more. I was wrong.

I blogged last week about the abominable way in which the leaders of the various EP political groups traduced and insulted the President of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus. Brian Crowley, the Fianna Fáil leader, ticked him off for talking to the leader of the "No" campaign, Declan Ganley. The Irish, he said, were in favour of the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty. How could he say this? Because his father had spent all his life fighting the British (quite an achievement when the old man was born 13 years after independence).

This was as nothing, though, compared to Danny Cohn-Bendit, the egregious soixante-huitard, who plonked a European flag in front of the President, declared

Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, wrote a gracious and elegant piece today thanking the British for their presence in his country. It was a markedly more positive attitude than that which he has expressed privately: he complained, not long ago, that the British were responsible for the Taliban resurgence.

I am becoming increasingly worried about the growth of our garrison in Afghanistan: our objectives have become blurred, inertia is kicking in and there is a growing sense that, in the soldier's eternal plaint, "we're here because we're here because we're here because we're here". I intend to come back to this theme at greater length later this week.

Still, Karzai's piece is touching, and reminds us that the Taliban embody "an extremism which profanes the religion that I share

Why would anyone invest with someone called Madoff? Wouldn't a red light start flashing in your head when you pronounced his name aloud? "I've put all our money in the hands of some fellah named Made Off".

Bankers, after all, are human beings, prone to subliminal and irrational promptings. In the aftermath of the collapse of Barings, my then flatmate told me about an unfortunate trader in his bank called Mick Leeson. With his near-namesake Nick's failures plastered all over the financial pages, Mick's clients suddenly became remote and awkward in their dealings with him. Nor can it have helped that my flatmate, then the bank's UK economist (now a Tory candidate), was called Mark Reckless.

I write in The Sunday Telegraph about why the EU is forcing Ireland to vote again. The insistence on new referendum isn't primarily about voting weights or numbers of Commissioners or the status of the EU foreign minister or the Charter of Fundamental Rights. As regular readers of this blog will know, Brussels has already implemented large chunks of the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty. No, this is about keeping the project moving: the chief purpose of the EU is the employment of its employees. Their remits must be constantly expanded to justify their status.

If people got into the habit of denying Brussels additional powers, they might start to question why we need more and more Eurocrats. And that would never do.

Can someone explain to me why Gordon Brown wants Ireland to vote twice on the Lisbon Treaty while simultaneously insisting that Britain shouldn't vote at all?