China's children crisis was so inevitable

When a government dictates how many children you can have that is surely an example of the worst kind of dictatorship, whether it be a communist or fascist regime involved. China for years had a one-child policy and now decades later Beijing must be ruing the day they came to that decision. Five years ago, worried at the latest figures of a dramatically falling birthrate, they changed the one-child-only edict to a two-child policy. But for a host of reasons, not least the fact that the longstanding policy of only allowing one child had created a small-family syndrome across the nation, plus the rising cost of living and perhaps also a reluctance among young couples to do what the Central Committee of the Communist Party decided was right for them. So there was no great rush for supplementing the only child with a sister or brother. Now Beijing has even more alarming demographic statistics and can see an economic nightmare appearing in the future because there simply won't be enough Chinese around to fill all the jobs and help China stride towards becoming an economic and military superpower to rival and eventually overtake the US. So now the latest brilliant idea from the committee and President Xi Zinping is to allow everyone to have THREE children. But if the two-child strategy didn't work, it's hardly likely that the three-child pronouncement is going to have much chance of success. It makes you wonder whether before long there will be an edict from the forever-leader Xi Zinping that all families MUST by law have three children. This will be the ultimate test of a communist dictatorship because if all Chinese couples are obliged by law to have three children, then Bejing security police will have to start knocking on doors late at night to make sure couples are engaging in the necessary activities that lead to conception. I can see it happening.

Perfect timing for Boris's wedding

There is a timing for everything in politics. Boris's "surprise" earlier-than-expected wedding to Carrie Symonds at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday was perfectly timed as the row raged over the prime minister's handling or mishandling of the fight against coronavirus, thanks to his former ally Dominic Cummings. Wedding bells always help to focus the mind of voters elsewhere. I'm not saying that the date of the wedding was brought forward by a year just to shut Cummings up. But only a few days ago it was being put about that Boris and Carrie would marry in the summer of 2022. At the time I thought it was a bit strange. Why on earth wait for another year. Get on wth it Boris I thought. But now we know, it was all a clever plot to make the wedding on Saturday a total surprise and bring smiles to a population fed up to the molars with lockdown and quarantine and masks and social distancing. So, congratulations Boris and Carrie, now official First Lady as opposed to First Fiancee. I wish them well. And if it helps us all forget Dominic Cummings then we will all be better off for it. Despite the Indian variant and the very very very bad decision not to stop all flights from India immediately that variant had been declared, let us hope that the promised return to normality can go ahead as planned on June 21.

William Shakespeare is dead

It was certainly very upsetting news that the Great Bard has finally after all these centuries passed away. No more comedies, no more tragedies, no more sonnets. Like Queen Anne, William Shakespeare is dead. What was surprising was that when Argentinian TV news reader Noelia Novilla scooped the world by revealing the legendary playwright's death, she gave no quotes from his works. Nor, and I found this extraordinary, did she get any reaction from such important contemporaries as Christopher Marlowe, John Webster or Ben Jonson. Not a word from them. When you get a scoop like that a reporter should get all the famous people who knew him well to provide their personal eulogies. So the Great Bard died without due honour and respect. But we can now all expect a worldwide retrospective of Shakespeare's works. The Argentinian news reader did not explain why it was that Shakespeare appears to have written nothing since 1616. I guess we shall hear more in some future broadcast from this fine reporter. Meanwhile rest in peace William "Bill" Shakespeare, the world's first male receiver of the Pfizer coronavirus jab who died at the age of 81 of an illness unrelated to Covid.

Bashar al-Assad the Big Winner

There have been great survivors in the political world but perhaps none more so than Bashar al-Assad, just voted in by his "adoring" electorate as president of Syria for a fourth term in office, giving him another seven years in power. He was said to have won 95.1 per cent of the vote with a 75 per cent turn-out. That was almost as high a vote as Saddam Hussein used to win when he stood for reelection as president of Iraq. In Iraq under his regime no one dared to vote for anyone else. In Syria a tiny number voted for two political "opponents" but I suspect they were told this was all right to make the democratic vote look truly, wonderfully democratic. So while the election was clearly arranged to produce the result it did, Assad is still a great survivor because for at least five years the whole of the Western world, led by the United States, was all for persuading him to step down and allow a real election to be held in the hope and expectation that someone more acceptable - acceptable to the West - would be voted in and bring peace to Syria. It never happened because Assad had the mighty backing of Russia and Vladimir Putin. His Russian bosom pal sent thousands of Spetsnaz special forces and private contractors from the Wagner Group, the Kremlin's favourite mercenary organisation, to help keep Assad in power and drive off any threats to his regime. It was a cunning move by Putin to back Assad this way, along with fighter bombers based in western Syria to join the anti-Isis campaign to lend legitimacy to the Russian military presence. Assad was safe. There was never ever going to be a change in regime. Putin won, Assad won and the US and the West lost. The American, British, French and others' involvement in fighting Isis, supporting the brilliant, largely Kurdish militias, was without question a success story. Isis collapsed and the caliphate was destroyed. But in the wider political game, the plan to oust Assad without actually firing a single shot against him, was a failure. Putin saw to that. Now Assad has another seven years to be Russia's puppet leader and Moscow will no doubt make maximum use of their man's election victory. Moscow has already sent three nuclear-capable long-range bombers to the airbase at Khmeimim in western Syria giving them easy access to the Mediterranean to carry out surveillance missions of Nato warships operating in the area. I always remember Barack Obama saying many times that Assad would have to go for the sake of Syria's future. But I'm afraid to say, Syria's future is Assad.

Biden asks the CIA to investigate the Covid laboratory theory

I kind of feel sorry for the CIA. The US intelligence agency has vast resources but until now has come up with no definitive proof that Covid-19 escaped from or was leaked from China's institute of virology in Wuhan. Yet Joe Biden has now asked them to have another go because of the revelation which incidentally the intelligence boys knew about, that three employees at the institute had fallen very sick in November 2019 and had been hospitalised. You wonder what more the CIA can do to get further proof. Unless they manage somehow to interview the three institute employees, assuming they didn't die from their sickness. But the Chinese security authorities are going to be on high alert for any sign of a CIA type skulking around the institute or asking questions in Wuhan. So unless they get a lucky break and some signals intelligence satellite picks up a couple of Chinese virology chaps chatting in a bar about their poor colleagues who started the whole pandemic off, it's hard to imagine how Biden is going to get any fresh intel that could enable him to join Donald Trump in accusing Beijing of being responsible for the worldwide health crisis. And even if they do find something new, Beijing will just deny its veracity and will accuse Biden of stoking up old and false news. But perhaps I'm underplaying the CIA's capabilities. Maybe somewhere in Wuhan there is a "source" who will tell all. But I sincerely doubt it. Who in Wuhan of all places is going to reveal anything which might be traced back to them. When the virus started racing around Wuhan, Chinese security honchos went around knocking on people's doors to make sure they had daren't to venture out. Lockdown in China meant total lockdown or else. So, good luck CIA. I'll wait with bated breath. As will Biden no doubt.

Boris is roasted by his one-time best buddy

Boris will survive the roasting he got from Dominic Cummings speaking to the parliamentary committee today. But it's worth considerng the fact that here we have an unelected official or I should say unelected former official in 10 Downing Street who is lauding it over everyone and giving his view that Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, should have been fired a long time ago and that Boris should never have been prime minister. That sort of damning chatter is fine in the local pub, although a bit tedious, but appearing before an august televised parliamentary committee, suddenly his views and judgments are given god-like respect as if he is the only person in the land who is blessed with omniscience and foresight and brilliance. He was all mucked in with the Downing Street lot, so if he was so all-knowing, how come he is blurting it all out now. I am quite sure that with hindsight there were a huge number of mistakes made. We know most of them, like the millions wasted on dodgy protective gear, the failing track and trace system, the appalling decision to allow untested Covid patients transfer from hospitals to care homes and the delays in taking action in stopping people coming to the UK from high-risk countries. But Cummings in his endless answers today seemed to be trying to give the impression that he and only he knew how to handle the pandemic and that everyone else was getting in the way and making the wrong decisions, especially Matt Hancock. The truth is that no one in any country in the world was fully cognisant of what to do when Covid-19 first arrived. It took the World Health Organisation ages to even describe it as a pandemic. Trump dismissed it. Boris certainly took his time to take it seriously. But there were so many conflicting views around the world that it's hardly surprising the UK government waited until it was absolutely necessary to order a lockdown. The UK was not alone. Locking the whole country down was such a huge decision. There are still people who think it was the wrong thing to do. Sweden didn't lock down and for a few weeks we all envied them their freedom. But the Swedes were wrong. The infections rose and rose. The most scandalous errors and bad decision-making have been in India by Prime Minister Modi. More than 300,000 dead - and climbing - because of the total failures of leadership and strategy. So, yes, Boris made mistakes but whatever Cummings says, I don't believe that he took any decision that deliberately put peoples' lives at risk. If and when the UK opens its doors to normality again on June 21, Cummings will be forgotten.

Dominic Cummings to reveal all. Who cares?

People with grudges and grievances are rarely worth listening to. Take Dominic Cummings, one-time right-hand man to Boris Johnson and the Svengali of 10 Downing Street until he was forced out. He is apparently intent on revenge and will give a full account of the way he thinks the Boris government has mishandled the Covid pandemic when he apears before a Commons committee tomorrow. I have no doubt he knows a lot and has emails and texts to prove it. But does anyone care anymore what Cummings thinks? Will it make any difference to the Boris government? I suspect he will sound like a grumpy old man and while he will make headlines for 24 hours, Boris and co will put their own spin on it and it will die a death. The fact is that Cummings may have been pretty clever in masterminding the Brexit campaign for Boris and appeared to be very much in charge of 10 Downing Street when he was the master adviser, but he's no superstar. He looks and dresses more barrow boy than glamour boy, and I doubt he is popular with the vast majority of people in this country whatever political persuasion they might be. Ministers, cabinet and junior ones, behaved as if they were scared of him and that's no way to run a government. There will be curiosity but little sympathy for him when he makes his appearance before the Commons committee tomorrow. One thing no one will ever forget is his breach of lockdown rules in the early days of the pandemic when he drove off to his parents in Durham and then made a special trip to the local Barnard Castle "to test his eyesight" before returning to London because he was worried about his vision. For most of us, he lost it from that moment and whatever he says tomorrow he's not going to upset, let alone, unseat Boris who, provided the vaccination programme continues apace and freedom for all returns on June 21, will run and run and run. But Cummings is determined to have his moment and will come up with all kind of incompetences by Boris which I think we knew already. Cummings is yesterday's man. And should remain so.