This time of year is always rather stressful for those of us who are self-employed, as Mr Brown wants our money. I recognise that a taxation system is a requirement of a civilised society, however, in an effort to make self-assessment form filling this weekend a more pleasant experience, I have compiled an accompanying song list:

Brass in Pocket The Pretenders

Taxman The Beatles

Money The Flying Lizards

Hand in My Pocket Alanis Morissette

Money PInk Floyd

Money, Money, Money ABBA

Money’s Too Tight (To Mention) Simply Red

Money For Nothing Dire Straits

Brown Sugar The Rolling Stones

Golden Brown The Stranglers

I am not bitter……honest. And, yes, it has already being pointed out to me many times, particularly by friends and family who work in the private sector, that the tax I pay this week will pay me this year to be an NHS doctor. I just wish there was a blue hand controlling the money, not a red one.

In recent weeks Bangladesh has been the stage for widespread political violence. So bad has it been that the country’s president agreed to postpone this month’s general election last week and declare a State of Emergency. He then resigned his position. International diplomatic pressure and internal opposition from the Awami League and other parties, who felt there was a danger of a “rigged” election, left the President with little choice but to step aside to be replaced by a neutral, former Supreme Court judge. The UN and EU both withdrew their support for the election. Ban Ki-moon, the new UN secretary-general, was reported as saying that the political in-fighting had “severely jeopardised the legitimacy of the electoral process”.

More than forty people have lost their lives in the intensifying clashes between supporters of rival political parties. Over 60,000 troops have been deployed within the country and curfews have been announced, all in an effort to quell the street violence. Since the State of Emergency was declared on January 12th, over 2000 “agitators” have been arrested.

International commentators are far from positive about the future of Bangladeshi democracy. A recent Economist article was of the opinion that the caretaker government system employed to oversee general elections was now defunct. Indeed, they feared that role for the military was increasingly looking likely in any future political process.

Clearly, the present political situation in Bangladesh is looking gloomy. What must be remembered, however, is that Bangladeshi democracy is still evolving. It has been doing so since its independence from Pakistan in 1971. The last three General Elections in 1991, 1996 and 2001 have seen record turn-outs, suggesting that confidence in the political process had been growing. Concerns about military involvement, a perennial fear amongst Bangladeshis, appear to have been assuaged by the former President’s spokesman, who indicated last week that the army would have no role in the government. In a country with a history of 19 assorted coups and 2 presidential assassinations (both of which affect the relations between the present leaders of the two major parties), this statement was very important.

For Bangladesh to continue enjoying the economic growth it has seen over the last 15 years, it desperately needs the relative political stability it has recently experienced to continue. The Conservative Friends of Bangladesh (CFOB), of which I am a committee member, continues to support secular democracy in Bangladesh. Like all interested international parties, it is eager to see fair and free elections taking place in Bangladesh. The active support of the CFOB for Bangladeshi democracy was shown by a recent group trip to Bangladesh headed by our Chairman, Anne Main MP.

A General Election recognised by the international community will be one that allows Bangladesh to continue on its difficult path to respectable governance and economic success. I hope that, despite recent setbacks, Bangladesh maintains the undoubted progress it has made along this path over the last two decades.

I do not watch Big Brother. In fact, I have only ever watched the first series with ‘Nasty Nick’. In my defence, I put that down to natural human inquisitiveness about something new. The present on-going furore over the behaviour of three ‘contestants’, in particular Jade Goody, has drawn attention to the true realities of reality TV programming. It is has become a combination of a trip to the circus and the school playground. The irony is that the ‘celebrity’ primarily involved in the ugly scenes being broadcast around the world was created by the very same reality programme.

What Big Brother footage I have seen on national news has been of so-called adults bickering and bullying. The victim of this has been the Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. The problem for the programme makers, who this afternoon lost their main sponsor over the affair, is that some of the bullying has had racist undertones. Some might argue more over than under. The story is now being reported in the media on the Indian Sub-Continent with likely damaging consequences for Britain. A proper response to the spectacle of three women bullying another woman on live television would be to condemn it. Channel 4 has, so far, failed to do this. Hopefully, the sponsor’s actions may elicit a firmer response in time. The damage, however, has already been done. Damage primarily to British international reputation. The sad reality is that, thanks to the interconnected media of the 21st century, for a brief moment in time, Jade Goody and her fellow bullies have become the ‘face of Britain’. On so many levels, it is not a pretty one.

Twenty eight years ago today the then Shah fled Iran. His flight ultimately led to the theocracy that still controls Iran today. His rule had led to the alienation of religious leaders, widespread use of a repressive secret police force and close relations with the United States. This approach had provoked a wave of public support for the Islamic fundamentalist movement of the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was he who replaced the Shah as the Supreme Leader of what became an Islamic State of Iran.

After the Second World War, the Iranian people had made increasing calls for democratic representation and a fairer share of the country’s oil wealth. The then elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, had widespread support and democratic legitimacy. He incurred the wrath of the West, in particular Britain, when he announced the nationalisation of the oil industry. Anglo-Iranian Oil was a British company. Today it is known as BP. As a consequence of this nationalisation, the CIA and British intelligence orchestrated a coup d’etat in 1953 to topple the democratically-elected government of Iran. It was replaced by the autocratic regime of the Shah.

The brief history lesson above illustrates how my generation is now paying the cost of ill-advised and morally corrupt decisions of our fore-fathers. Our recent intervention in Afghanistan to support the democratically-elected government is a much more admirable policy decision than was made by the then Conservative government led by Churchill. I am firmly of the opinion that the intervention to replace Mossadegh with the Shah in 1953 directly caused the perilous situation we now find ourselves in with Iran today. I am not one for criticising Churchill for obvious reasons, however, with respect to Iran, he got it terribly wrong.

The WHO Roll Back Malaria partnership was founded in 1998. Its programme is planned to last the first decade of this century. Today’s announcement by George Osborne to allocate £500 million annually to fight malaria in Africa indicates the Conservative Party’s genuine commitment to both support this programme and international development in general. An economically successful Africa is a goal worth striving for. It would benefit not only Africans, but also the wider world.

The annual economic cost of malaria in Africa has been estimated to be more than US$ 12 billion in lost GDP. The frustration is that the disease could be controlled for much less than that. If the world community is serious about fighting world poverty, in particular within Africa, it must be serious about fighting malaria. It is a disease that causes, and is of, poverty. Annual economic growth in countries with high malaria transmission has been historically lower than in countries without the disease. Economists believe that in some sub-Saharan countries malaria leads to a growth penalty of over 1% per year¹.

Malaria is a preventable and curable disease. Despite this knowledge it kills more than one million people each year. The great majority of those deaths are to vulnerable African children. Wealthy Western governments share a moral responsibility to deal with this infectious disease promptly. Not only because it is needlessly killing Africans, but with on-going climate change, it may very well become our health problem soon.