Simon ‘Fatty’ Heffer has just posted this piece at the Torygraph.

Very few Slog readers, I’d imagine, would understand why it made me so irate. It is a question of the fundamental nastiness, vulgarity and mean-minded chest-poking of most Thatcherites I’ve met over the years.

Anyway, this was my response to it in the Discus comment columns – which remain the most technologically illogical threads on the Web:

 

Considering Mr Heffer’s usually high standards, this is a tragically unthinking piece.

Harold Macmillan fought with exemplary bravery during the First World War, during which period he gained a respect for the working man with aspirations to do better. In the Second War, he helped Butler frame an Education Act that produced more social mobility for such ordinary folk (like me) in these islands than anything attempted in the previous 1000 years. The idea that he was a Socialist is laughable: he was the only true One Nation Tory PM we have ever had.

Socialists later betrayed the Butler Act with their forced-equality ideas on education, as a result of which we have the dumbed and conformist Thatcher’s children of 2010. Educationally, they are indeed Thatcher’s Stepford children, because MetalWoman did nothing to restore standards in our schools – indeed, she diluted them further by granting Uni status to the CATS.

Mrs Thatcher performed several great services for this country, but her crimes were threefold and empirically undeniable. (1) She did nothing to reduce the power and numbers of Sir Humphreys. (Too busy watching Yes Minister, perhaps). (2) She eroded the concept of community. (3) She handed the economy to bankers, and left her schorched-earth revenge on working people as a problem for future generations to handle.

To call Macmillan a charlatan suggests that Simon Heffer’s view of him is based largely on Private Eye. Most of us would give a limb to have the growth, infrastructural investment, safe society and stability over which he presided. Maybe he did preside over decline, but it was not of his making.

I met Mrs T recently, and she is – I am genuinely sad to say – not entirely of this planet. I met SuperMac when he was 85, and he remained a lucid, ironic and engaging man. ‘Sad’ he was not.

Margaret Thatcher isn’t even in his league: his legacy is infinitely more benign than hers.

Shame on you, Simon Heffer.

WESTERN SHAMBLES + ASIAN SLOWDOWN = RISING INTEREST RATES HERE.

Western High risk and low rates are creating a tidal wave of Eastbound investment

Hopping around the Eastern media today, it’s been fascinating to watch various governments prepare for what’s been on the cards for some time now: a huge outflow of investment monies from the Atlantic West to the Pacific East.

Although effectively a flight to safe havens – the Swiss Franc hit record values against the Euro and US Dollar yesterday – it is also a reflection of long-term zero-interest rates (ZIRP) in the West coupled with China’s determination to cap off its volcanic progress towards potential hyper-inflation.

Indonesia passed twenty new technical legal instruments to curb any inflationary pressures from the inflow. Taiwan has introduced a maximum level of allowed currency derivatives, and South Korea is expected to follow suit next week. Thailand too has levied a 15% withholding tax on bond sales.

Almost certainly, these measures will be followed by rate rises in the Pacific theatre, as China’s Asian neighbours seek to remain investment-competitive. Beijing has put through two rises in quick succession – a sign that the overheating predicted here last May is now beginning to worry the Politburo.

 

For the West, this is an unfortunate but inevitable double-whammy: to fears about low growth and banking collapse are added better rates in safer places. So as China clamps down on growth, to currency wars are added interest rate wars.

This is bad news for Australia, 80% of whose raw material exports head up towards China. One suspects that it too will ratchet up rates another notch. But the key knock-on effect will be in the mainstream Western economies.

For the EU, it is a very long nail in an already tight coffin. For while it makes exports potentially cheaper in the very short term, it also makes borrowing more expensive for the debtor members. They must raise bond yields….and thus, in turn, enhance the value of the Euro….making exports more expensive again.

In the US, it will be disastrous for a banking sector sitting on rubbishy derivatives, and waiting for their value to recover: they’ll become worth less – and eventually worthless – while the uniquely enormous American debt will start to spiral out of control, as it too has to raise rates and push up yields.

The UK, it’s probably fair to say, lies somewhere between the two….although its own very unwise commitment to eurozone trade means further economic shrinkage, reduced tax income, rising welfare costs….and falling further and further behind on the Never-Never payments.

 

As 2010 limps to the finishing line, it is the intinsically flawed nature of globalist bourse-and-bond debt capitalism that comes under the unforgiving spotlight. While China should come out of the mess more or less even – and the south American damage ought to be minimal – everyone else is going to be squeezed until the pips squeak. This is no longer a matter for conjecture: the rock and hard-place analogy has been done to death, but it’s gone beyond that now. The vice is a much closer parallel….and there is no escape.

Who knows how it will all pan out?  Our banks are unsafe, our recoveries stuttering, our Treasuries nearly empty, our markets stalling, and our citizenry angry. A very tough year lies ahead. One senses it may well be crucial in the passage from the old to the new.

Related articles: The discreet complacency of the British Ruling Class.

 

The FT can tie itself in knots talking up the outlook, but real people know what’s coming.

The Financial Times is risking its credibility with the current level of contradictory reporting

US data point to surge in recovery

US data emphasise risk to recovery

Hopes high for 2011

US  stocks fall despite positive jobless data

Basle reveals liquidity gap for biggest banks

US data point to economic pick-up

Let’s deconstruct this ‘reportage’ line by line.

The first and last optimistic lines are accurate, if you call a higher volume of trading at a loss a recovery. I call  it accelerating into the outside lane towards bankruptcy.

Hopes may be high for the 0.01% of US earners who’ve seen their salaries grow by 700%, or the top one fifth who’ve seen them grow by 60%. For those either out of a job or earning 10% less, they’re not very high at all.

All of the above can be put down to me being a preachy killjoy. However, the data showing the risk to recovery point out that, without Americans getting their plastic out again and giving it a good bashing in the Malls of their country, their ain’t gonna be no recovery. And for the last fourteen months in a row,  they’ve done the exact opposite. Being in negative equity an’ all, it seems reasonable to suggest they’ll carry on doing it.

The fall in US stocks despite data showing a jobless fall merely repeats a double-trend we’ve seen for some time now: that is, (a) stock markets behaving in a speculative, money-at-the-edges way, rather than rationally; and (b) a large core of savvy investors who privately know that short-term data are irrelevant: the US  is in deep trouble.

And last but not least, recoveries and growth can’t happen happen without freed-up bank lending. Not only are the new Basle liquidity rules confirming bank conservatism on loans, there is also a vast arc of banks right across Europe with shredded balance sheets. The biggest lie of 2010 was the continuing insistence by governments that banks are gradually recovering. They are not – and most of the European toxicity has yet to be discovered.

There comes a point where ‘atlking things up’ creates not confidence but false hopes….and eventually, sceptical cynicism. The FT has now reached that point.

New Eurozone blow as Slovakia mulls exit.

Slovakia’s Richard Sulik

The Czechs and Poles are delighted to be in the EU and outside the Eurozone.  Now Slovakia’s elite is wondering if it shouldn’t rejoin them.

In 2008, Slovaks celebrated  the nation’s entry to the continent’s common currency.

Two years later, one thing is obvious: pride has been tempered by the responsibilities that come with sharing a common European currency heading down the toilet. As EU nations are asked to help bail out  Ireland and Greece, many now see the euro as a burden, not a blessing. And some in the Slovak leadership are looking for the exit.

In a recent newspaper article, Parliament speaker and eminent economist Richard Sulik sent shock-waves across the already edgy eurozone by arguing that Slovakia should be ready to abandon the euro and switch to its former national currency. The Finance Ministry was quick to dismiss his remarks, and  pro-Brussels economist Nicolas Veron says that leaving the eurozone “would be economically disruptive”.

But anti-euro sentiment remains strong in a country that defied its partners earlier this year by refusing to provide its euro800 million ($1.05 billion) share of the euro110 billion ($145 billion) EU bailout loan for Greece.

“Everyone with common sense can see that the system is ill,” said Matus Posvanc, an analyst from the F. A. Hayek Foundation, a conservative think tank in Bratislava. He called attempts to bail out Athens futile “because Greece’s bankruptcy is inevitable.”

In refusing to pay its share of the Greek bailout package, “our main objection was … that it was only the taxpayers who have to pay,” Slovak Finance Minister Ivan Miklos told AP. “But the banks, which contributed to the problem and made profit by providing loans to problematic countries in the past, didn’t have to pay a single cent.”

Hard to disagree with that.

“The profits are privatized but the losses are socialized,” Miklos said. “When it works, a few make money, but when it collapses because they take too big a risk, we all have to pay. That’s a huge problem.”

Nigel Rendell, an economist at RBC Capital Markets in London, said Slovak concerns were understandable.

“Slovakia worked incredibly hard to gain membership of the euro,” he said. “Now they find themselves having to dip into their own pockets to finance foreign governments that spent too much and should have known better.”

Although Slovene Prime Minister Borut Pahor has defended his country’s loan guarantees for Ireland, a recent survey by  Mediana indicated 67 percent of citizens were opposed.

Meanwhile,  Poland’s budget deficit – like those of some other former Soviet bloc nations – remains notably above the 3 percent benchmark needed for eurozone entry. Polish scepticism about the euro has been growing since the country did relatively well during the global economic downturn while still using its currency, the zloty. In 2009, Poland’s economy grew 1.7 percent, making it the only EU country to avoid recession.

Euro outsiders can now devalue their currencies against their eurozone partners and – like the Polish zloty – the weaker Czech koruna has helped Prague’s export sector during the financial crisis gripping the eurozone.

The Czech Republic is yet to set a target date to join the euro, which President Vaclav Klaus has repeatedly described as a failure.

Is there really anything that special about the Tea Party?

(l to r) Deal, Scott & Paladino….anti-Government crooks

Christine McConnell faces new charge of  expenses corruption….but that’s nothing new in the Tea Party ranks.

While the difference between aspiration and achievement is often the basis of great comedy, in politics it can also harden one’s cynical resolve not to believe in anyone holding public office….or trying to.

Our best home-grown example of this is Nick Clegg, the man who went from Unknown Politician to favourite for Prime Minister in last April’s Election opinion polls. Having since gone back on almost everything he espoused and believed in, Slick Nick rationalises each gently broken vow (and omitted Manifesto promise) with “This is a marathon not a sprint” and “It will take some time for people to get used to Coalition Government”. Especially Vince Cable.

But now it seems, America’s anti-Establishment backlash is slowly emerging as maybe not such a backlash after all. More of a back-scratch, in fact.

Accepting the genera rule that most Democrat-leaning US media will gild any accusatory lily to nail the Tea Partiers as uniformly dumb, the increasingly infamous Christine O’Donnell seems to be as corrupt as she is anti-onanist. The U.S. Attorney’s office has confirmed that it is reviewing a complaint about Miss O’Donnell’s campaign spending. The complaint, filed by a watchdog group, isn’t the first one to be investigated: CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) had a go at her last year on the same basis, and several former campaign workers have alleged that she often dipped into political contributions to pay personal expenses in her three consecutive (failed) attempts to get into the US Senate.

Her campaign manager Matthew Moran has said Ms O’Donnell is the victim of “false-attack rumours”, an interesting phrase perhaps trying to suggest that Christine’s enemies make up stories about her being attacked. It’s also possible, of course, that they simply report wrongdoing, and then spot how suspiciously large numbers of other folks are doing the same thing. Anyway, this is now something about which the Attorney General’s men and women must take a decision.

Meanwhile, arch anti-Washington and All American Cloud carrier Sarah Palin saw a personal popularity rating in her home State fall to 33%.  During the midterm elections campaign, Mrs Palin enthusiastically backed Joe Miller, the Tea Party candidate in the Alaskan Senate contest. But he lost to a Republican write-in candidate. Given Palin herself is technically a Republican, some GOPers seem to have taken that to heart: Mike Huckerbee is now the preferred Republican Presidential candidate for 2012 by some distance.

And we shouldn’t forget that, as Governor of Alaska, an independent investigator for the state Personnel Board found that there might be evidence suggesting a trust fund, created to pay Palin’s legal expenses, was in violation of state ethics law. With suspicious haste, she resigned the Office eighteen months before the completion of her term.

Last March, a Nevadan asphalt contractor faced a legal challenge to his Tea Party candidacy for the U.S. Senate after theft and bouncy-cheque charges were brought against him in a Las Vegas Court – enough to put him behind bars for 14 years if convicted. TP heads quickly distanced themselves from Scott Ashjian, by issuing a press statement asking him to ‘Get lost’. In the eventual election, he picked up 2% of the vote.

Specifically, three raging anti-Federal-cost Partiers set new standards in hypocrisy as the mid-terms progressed.

In New York, businessman Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino railed against government costs, but turned out to be the state government’s largest landlord in Western New York.  In Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary, Tea Party-backed candidate Rick Scott became the subject of an FBI probe that ultimately uncovered the largest Medicaid fraud in the nation’s history, totaling $1.7 billion in civil and criminal penalties. In Georgia, pro-TP candidate Nathan Deal made $1.4 million a year on a government contract….that never went out for bids….of which Deal was also pocketing an undisclosed $75,000 salary.

Google this stuff, and you’d be blogging until Domesday. The Tea Party remains what is seemed to me to represent from Day One: a motley crew of redneck opportunists and hucksters with barmy beliefs…and the standard depth of brass neck required to be….er, politicians.

Still, James Delingpole believes in them – and as JD observes, he’s right about everything.

 

Eurobanks: The FT hoovers up more ECB drivel

Banks take the safe options, but for some reason the media see this as good news.

Just as Robert Peston effectively broadcast Lord Manglesum’s every utterance as Gospel during 2009,  the FT too has become so europhile of late, every spark in the EU igloo is greeted as a sure sign of economic warming.

‘Banks in the eurozone increased their lending to companies in November, reversing a drop the previous month and spurring hopes that the ongoing economic recovery will be buttressed by an extension of credit’, the Pink’un suggested this morning.

Large EU-based companies are doing exactly what their owners and counterparts in the UK are doing: grabbing the cheap money to invest it in short-term easy-profit stuff paying higher rates. Also the phrase ‘ongoing economic recovery’ is an assertion in search of substantiation.

“There is a string of companies that do not get banks loans at all – or only with unacceptable conditions,” said Josef Trischler, managing director of VDMA, the German engineering association. Too right: neurotic banks lend to safe bets – and to hell with the rest.

Tucked away at the bottom of the piece, the FT grudgingly admits that ‘one of the reasons for the slow extension of credit is that the private sector is awash with cash’.

Which does beg the question, why is the fact of nervous Normans lending to greedy Gerhardts a good sign?

The picture is similar in the States: plenty of money for the Biggies, none at all for the upcoming insurgents. Bloomberg notes that ‘More than $369 billion of loans were raised as of Dec. 28, led by financing for the purchase of Burger King Holdings’. That’ll be that little tiddler Burger King, then.

If all banks do is bankroll safe bets, there is no chance at all for genuine capitalism to develop…and to be honest, there’s no point in having merchant banks.

Blueprint for a better Britain.

No Unearned Privilege, Individual Liberty, Personal Responsibility, Earned Citizenship, One Culture, Control of National Destiny:

A BLUEPRINT FOR A BETTER BRITAIN

Further to yesterday’s depressing post about the complexity of solving Britain’s cultural mess, there follows a collection of ideas about how to make Britain a fairer, nicer and altogether more fulfilling place to live.

Brevity is a necessity in this medium. There isn’t room to explain the minutiae, and I’d rather be upbeat about what is possible than drone on for pages about it.

In order not to clog up my email system and this comment thread, could you address more detailed observations please to ward.ink@gmail.com (not live)

The order of play reflects my belief in the relative importance of the topics.

Education

A selective system aiming to fulfil these primary functions: 1. A body of graduate scientists and skilled management adept at original and organised thinking; 2. A technical and services class providing a healthy self-employed sector and meeting domestic demand; 3. A body of hitherto rejected kids who would be streamed for focus on finding their metier,and raising self esteem; 4. The teaching of key social realities and skills, ranging from the needs of others to parenting; 5. The teaching of medical awareness about lifestyle, ranging from contraception to alcohol and drugs. 6. More citizen self-confidence, and easier social mobility.

Return to a logical ability measurement system, and the scrapping of targets. A universal exam marking system removed entirely from considerations of  ‘places available’.

Reduce graduate intake from 44% to a maximum of 15%.

Persistent truancy to be made a criminal offence faced by parents.

Medicine

Gradual abolition of the National Health Service in favour of a universal Insurance Card/online ID.

The aim would be to make the system cashless and EFTPOS in time.

Shift in emphasis away from Primary Care ‘business’ model to GPs as an active paid-for social service. Concurrent shift of funds away from Primary Care to hospital resources, equipment, and research.

Every citizen is in a ‘band’ – like Council Tax – reassessed every two years. This determines how much they have to pay. Free care for all children under 16.

Radical shift in funding model away from taxed private individual, and towards larger commercial/retail concerns.

Tax

Abolition of income tax and corporation tax. To be replaced by the Social Actions Tax (SAT).

Effectively, every organisation and citizen would act on the basis of their own ‘satnav’. This removes power from both government and the HMRC, and shifts responsibility back to the individual person and organisation.

Obviously immensely complex and difficult to run, but then if it was easy it would’ve been done long ago. The aim, however is simple: to make everyone responsible for his or her own tax, and reduce the cost of anti-social actions.

Trade

To aim for a lower volume of trade on a much more profitable basis.

To reduce the EU to 2nd-tier trading partner over the next ten years.

Economics

Basic principles: Rejection of the globalist model in favour of self-sufficiency and profitable trade; creation of a ‘mixed objectives’ economy…but with no State ownership.

Overseas Aid to be for disaster relief only.

All essential services – health, transport, energy and water – would have a break-even objective after investment. They would be removed from plc status. Everything will wash its face…..without dumping on society and the citizen.

To shift the dependence on financial services from 60% to 20%

To treble the size of our manufacturing base

To aim for 85% self-sufficiency in agriculture

To reduce our imports by 70%

Finance & Fiscal

To make a strong Sterling currency the chief aim of fiscal and economic policy.

To reduce the deficit more quickly – before the vicious debt-servicing vortex swallows us up.

Make deficit government unconstitutional after 2014.

Make government employment of more than 15% of the population unconstitutional.

Any bank based in Britain (regardless of ownership) will by law have to fund its own risk-taking losses. The UK taxpayer will never again be the borrower of last resort.

Each national or multinational bank will also have to lend at least 30% of its funds to the SME sector, raise and lower interest rates for borrowers and savers concurrently, and restrict its interbank business to 15%.

Creation of mixed objective (see above) regional and local banks without remote shareholders, but with the primary aim of encouraging soundly-based entrepreneurship.

Gradual shift away from the Bourse-finance/remote shareholder model of raising money, and towards involved shareholders funded by the new regional, mutual banks.

Radical reform of Bankruptcy law, with a shift in emphasis towards the needs of creditors – and much stricter supervision of bankrupts restarting again.

Abolition of local business rates, partial replacement by SAT.

Culture

The remodelling of the UK as a monocultural, multi-ethnic, devolved-power, balanced-work culture.

Curtailing of laws encouraging pc, neurotic safety fears, and a sense of entitlement.

Real citizenship expectations rather than window dressing. Persistent unwillingness to accept loyalty to Britain to become a deportation issue.

An immediate ban on further immigration, and the retraining of workless people already here to fill the skill-shortages – which have anyway been exaggerated.

The teaching of two foreign languages to a level of fluency to be obligatory.

Return to the idea of family and community as the provider, and the gradual dismantling of all but the most obvious cases of welfare need. (Somewhere between 5-8 million people would fit this latter category, either through general disability or other incompetence).

Society, Police and Justice.

Abolition of ASBOs. (See above under SAT tax).

Massive downsizing of the prison population in favour of skills/self-esteem placements. Prison doesn’t work, giving criminals self-respect does.

Abolition of Social Services as an arm of local government. Formal attachment instead to Educational system, working in harmony with teaching staff.

Secret Family Courts to be abolished. All child Court Order legislation to be scrapped and subjected to Royal Commission.

Abandonment of the plan for elected police chiefs. Devolution of power within the police force to local level, and closer informal attachment to the education system. Abandonment of the focus on high profile and cultural diversity concerns. There will no longer be any special groups – rich or poor. The soul criterion of police performance will be the the detection and prosecution of crime.

Reversal of the CPS budget cuts, and increase in its budget to restore respect for the Long Arm of the Law.

Abolition of invasive surveillance law outside the terrorism/security sector. Complete abolition of local authority ‘spying’ warrants.

Creation of a properly-funded anti ID, online and City ‘techno’ crime unit, making free use of experts – and the advice of former miscreants if necessary. End the farce of pretending that physical crime is still the big problem.

Constitution

Secession from the EU with immediate effect.

A written Constitution in which our fundamental liberties are enshrined, future privacy is guaranteed, and the power of Parliament to borrow money is drastically curtailed.

Enshrine collective Cabinet decision-making in the Constitution – and ditto for the Executive/Commons balance.

A declaration of opposition to all forms of privilege, be they on the basis of money, membership, profession, ethnicity, religion, class, gender or nationality.

Affirmative action to be unconstitutional.

A declaration that the judiciary, social services, and the police are de-politicised.

Voting an earned citizen right, not an automatic one. Behaviour and ability rather than age (once over 18) to be the criteria.

Politics

Abolition of  Party Whips.

Institution of full proportional representation for all elections, with the abolition of Commons constituencies.

Parties to then be constructed using the ‘list’ system.

Reduce MP numbers to 350.

Active rejection of all the voting-slip options to be recorded – and act as a measure of representativeness.

Retain the two-Chamber system, but abolish the House of Lords. Replace the Lords with a new Chamber, two-thirds elected at a local constituency level based on local issues. They in turn will nominate members to fill quota’d vacancies for another third – ie unelected – of people with a proven track record of success in their chosen field – success to be judged on innovation, employment creation and social actions….not wealth.

Fixed four year terms for Commons + the second Chamber, to run staggered.

—————————————————————–

29.12.2010

Is Britain so broke, it can’t afford radical change?

A new future for the UK is unlikely – thanks to a dissolute past.

Before the New Year ends – and in response to the many requests for me to stop moaning or provide a positive alternative to our current way of life – today and tomorrow I’ll have a two-stage final shot* at summarising what I think would be a far better approach to government, politics, economics and social problems in Britain.

In this first part (if only for the sympathy vote) I will try to show that the fiscal, economic and financial superstructure weighing down on those who even try to construct such a thing is horrendous.

Let me demonstrate this via a personal experience of recent history.

Around the middle of 2004, under the blog banner Not Born Yesterday, I began to bash on (about how the overheated property market, the ridiculous value of the bank-to-bank selling sector, the dependence of individuals on credit, and the lending policies of UK banks) were as mad as any soci0-economic situation could get.

This led me to researching what proportion of the UK economy consisted of developing or selling and distributing financial services. The amount of obfuscation and obviously nonsensical data I was offered firmed up my feeling that Gordon Brown’s ‘end of bust’ policies were based on a chimera. The final statistic given to me by the Department of Business was 7.3%, an estimate out by a factor of at least 8.

I then began trying to calculate the size of Britain’s manufacturing sector. The least exaggerated figure given me by ‘government’ was three times the size of the reality. In turn, this led to an attempt at calculating what banks actually lent money on, and who to. And during that exhausting period, I stumbled over the derivatives sector.

When a very senior banking chum had finished explaining this activity to me, I toddled off (dazed and alarmed) to find out what percentage of their time banks spent swapping these worthless bits of paper. Not only did it seem to be the main thing they did, the sector was worth – allegedly – fifteen times the entire GDP of the global economy.

So in short, I went in a complete circle from bank-to-bank business at one end, and derivatives at the other – which are, on the whole, largely interchangeable terms.

On the way, I had discovered the crazy imbalance of the British economy, the entirely complicit role of the political Establishment in that….plus the obvious strangulation of the small business sector in favour of tasty globalist megamergers.

Thirty years ago when Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 General Election, Britain had almost run out of socio-economic options – thanks to socialist spending and trade union activist greed. Thatcher then destroyed the idea of communal values, but put Britain’s finances back on a reasonably sound footing. Last May, when David Cameron’s incompetence forced him into Coalition government, Britain had almost run out of socio-economic options – thanks to socialist spending and banking sector ativistic greed.

Seven months later, our options have narrowed still further, because the costs of our EU membership and debt servicing have easily outstripped all the cuts made, the banks are behaving as badly as ever….and the ability of our weakened private sector to help us out of the spiral is something of a fantasy.

So we are in a bit of a hole, and thus root-and-branch change (while necessary) is rendered a hundred times more difficult.

But there’s more: thanks to the EU – and the  globalisation of business and banking – we have nowhere near enough control over our destiny.

Britain’s problems are multi-layered, and almost none of them are mutually exclusive. In business terms, there is a global economy affecting an EU performance, exacerbated by a long-term decline in UK manufacturing skills. Similar considerations apply politically. Socially, there is a familial breakdown alongside community apathy compounded by a Labour Opposition either in denial about it – or secretly in favour of it.

Second, not only has power shifted away from the individual and the police towards the State, crime and banking systems, our culture now perceives many unethical acts as perfectly allowable in the pursuance of profit. This in turn is made more vivid by the Bourse system, its short-termist, greedy shareholders….and the increasing blackmailing of governments by banks.

Third, we have the disappearance of religion’s moral force, while the increasing dominance of the media is helping to dictate what we should say and think. More and more, this is being codified into the legal system – hardly surprising given the ridiculous preponderance of lawyers in senior political and governmental forms. Media content is dictated by Free market capitalism, a process about to swamp even the BBC. Put all those factors together, and any wannabe revolutionary is going to have to blow up a lot of buildings.

Fourth, the education system is being tailored towards an unthinking acceptance of what is – rather than contrarian or creative thought about what could be. In this sense (and via overt pc) it is becoming increasingly politicised. And worst of all, its standards are being diluted by brainless equality-think.

So the ‘what is to be done?’ question is not conducive to answers like ‘instead of heading north, we should be heading south’. It requires the initial acceptance of one of two options: manage it to minimise inconvenience, or perform the most radical Year Zero operation since the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

The first option clearly isn’t working, but ‘forced’ Year Zero always ends in disaster. However, since 2006 I have been very consistently saying that  econo-fiscal disaster and change (China’s rise and debt’s growth, to be specific) could provide the catalyst for a socio-political metamorphosis.

I was wrong about 2008, and I accept that: I didn’t believe that even the asylum’s inmates would simply roll up the problem for another day. But they did. Not only that, they increased the insolvency of Europe and the US to such a degree, only turning the mileometer back to nought is ever going to solve the problem.

From 2011 onwards, the West has another two choices: allow China to take over our finances (a process already under way) or blag China into writing off the debt. The first would represent an obvious geopolitical surrender, and is therefore not recommended. And there are two chances of the second option coming to pass.

So in other words, we are going to get a lot poorer, and a lot more impatient with a bunch of soundbiters who have nothing to offer beyond balm, spin, tears and debt.

Before technology and desperation force the Elite to shut it, therefore, this is the last window of change we are going to get. I will be writing about what needs to be done tomorrow.

* I have actually been through this exercise many times before, as the search engine will testify.

There’s more to citizenship than charitable donation.

A shocking legal case points up why, sooner or later, any Establishment Coalition is going to fail

A poll reported by the FT on Christmas Eve unsurprisingly showed that the British are more likely to give charitable donations than other nations – but much less likely to get involved in community activities. This sort of confirmed an earlier Slog post about the natural British instinct being “I will do my bit if you leave me alone”

The finding is another nail in the coffin of David Cameron’s Big Society. I felt from the outset that it was a muddled concept – oxymoronic and yet somehow, on top of that, a dense thought: a big society must surely be impersonal by definition – or broken into lots of small units, in which case it isn’t a big society any more

With the onset of snow last week, most of our small community in Devon came into its own. Everyone helped others in difficulty – or offered to. Whether the would-be social engineers like it or not, normal people facing adversity in small packs behave better than the rich in huge cities glorying in their success.

A natural British tendency to pull up the drawbridge has been refined by the rich in our cities into a gated, electronic-entry driveway and locked door approach to society. This may be related to their certainty that there is no such thing, guided as they are by every extreme belief of their heroine Baroness Thatcher. Either way, they play no part in their communities, but are the first to moan about police incompetence when the reality of what society has become penetrates their bubble.

So ironically (actually, it is tragic) the enormous army of Normal Normans like us – who want to be left alone – find (a) as Government is so useless these days, we have to get involved in organising stuff  – like grit – and (b) the social mess bequeathed to us by Thatcherism and Blairism means that society’s feral elements simply won’t leave us alone – but the police aren’t interested in keeping them off our backs.

Let me offer you a microcosm of the problem.

Over Christmas, we stayed with a couple of chums, one of whom saw jury service recently. The case was so mired in dysfunctional complexity, I’m afraid it’s going to take me a while to explain it.

It’s 9 pm, and a busy town main street is suddenly shocked by a young man, in a stolen car and very drunk, careering up and down the highway with the windows open, hurling obscenities at everyone. Bored with driving in the right direction, he does a U-turn and drives into the traffic, until a woman in a Golf courageously swerves to block him in.

Incensed, the drunk exits his vehicle and launches himself at the woman’s car, smashing her windscreen and rendering himself temporarily unconscious.

Brace yourselves, because this chap is the defendant.

Equally drunk and accompanied by two young ladies they have met that evening, two young men see the commotion, and quickly decide (in the words of one of the ladies at the trial) that the windscreen assailant “is a bit of a c**t”. So their two beaux leap upon his moaning form and begin giving him a fist-and-foot massage. Uninterested in the terrified woman now frantically phoning the police, they seize this obvious opportunity and steal his car.

While all this has been going on, the local populace has done nothing. (I can’t say I blame them).

The carjackers proceed on a joy-ride rampage. After taking quite some time to arrive at the scene and then work out what the hell’s going on, the police apprehend the foursome in their ‘getaway car’ several hours later in a nearby town.

Come the trial, Golf lady (who knows the car-thieves of old as two Krays in the making) refuses to testify. The jury is thus left to decide (1) did they commit gbh? (2) did they intend to steal the car or merely escape the mayhem, and (3) were the women accomplices?

The prosecution and the police are now faced with the unedifying task of trying to make ‘the defendant’ not look like a complete arsehole. When asked how much he had drunk by the defence, he says “Half a pint of lager”. There are sniggers in the courtroom.

The gbh charge is dropped, largely because the medical evidence shows only common assault. (After the  verdict, the Judge wonders aloud why the CPS went for gbh, when assault would have been an open and shut guilty case.)

If the two blokes didn’t steal the car, then they went to great and action-packed lengths to escape. Despite a spirited defence, the jury finds them guilty. The girls get off, although my chum still doesn’t understand how or why.

Predictably, once the verdict has been delivered, the Bench reads out the past offences of the four accused. It takes nearly ten minutes to do so.

After encountering cases like this one, it becomes ever more clear that David Cameron doesn’t get out enough. And don’t believe the police/CPS/Home Office bollocks about it being atypical: I’ve had seven separate police informants over six years tell me that the arrest and justice service is in meltdown. I’ve also had enough adverse experience of the joke that is ‘law and order’ to believe them.

We don’t have a Big Society, we have a Gigantic Disaster. To stop the process from turning into an unmanageable anarchy, we need to desist from jerking around with empty soundbites, face the following realities, and institute policies – however unthinkably incorrect or supposedly liberal – based on them:

1. Feral, anti-social and anti-British reproduction in our country is out of control.

2. Police careerism based on slavish attention to cultural diversity, potty social theories and high-profile ‘hate crime’ is cynical, and exacerbating the societal problems we have.

3. A sense of social service is foreign to the overwhelming majority of our youth now – and something at which the newly-rich financial classes sneer.

4. Prison as a form of effective penitence and redemption is a complete waste of time, and in certain age-groups actually breeds crime. Whereas properly overseen work designed to build self-esteem can decimate re-offending rates: I’m talking 3.5% as opposed to 65%.

5. Social services and the judiciary have been found guilty (via the Secret Family Courts) of unwarranted, incompetent – and in some cases perverted  – intervention in the lives of people who truly are victims: not just of a low IQ, but also the familial abuse and ‘example’ to which they’ve been subjected since birth. Frankly, putting such citizens into family servitude would be preferable to the cod-scientific drivel and high-handed kidnapping with which they are currently assailed…..and such servitude would certainly be a lot more effective.

People who want to pull up the drawbridge in the light of all the above are ignoring their responsibilities as citizens. But neither David Cameron in particular nor the Coalition in general are going to enact any of these policies, because they would alienate the only people they are truly worried about: the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Right Wing.

These are yet more reasons why we need a new movement – the Citizens’ Movement – within a new system. And find a way to persuade those who wish to be left alone that, for that to happen, they have to behave like private citizens, not like hermits.

Saying no to the folks in the Ivory Watchtower

The Slog proposes a campaign to install rejection as a citizen’s right on all voting slips

I was presented with an opportunity earlier this week that one could only call unique. It’s an overused word, unique. The whole point about it is that unique = one only. And yes, I know that ‘we are all unique’ these days, but beyond the physical genetics involved, the vast majority of humans are about as unique as a Bogan in Queensland.

But this really was a unique chance. As in, going to the home of a Tupperware agent and selling them Avon cosmetics they don’t want.

We were departing the monster Tesco in Dorchester on our way to Sussex, and there it was: a sign.  In large letters on the side of a building opposite the hypermarket, it announced that this was The Jehovah’s Witness Hall. It might just as well have said Pester Power HQ.

I have long harboured a fantasy about attending a double-glazing industry seminar, and spending three days ringing every delegate’s room (after 10 pm) with the news that they have been specially selected for free installation of a wind-turbine on the roof. Or working the room at coffee breaks with the promise of free credit until 2082 if they sign up for ten solar panels on the car bonnet now.

But I never expected the prospect of similar revenge to drop unprompted into my lap. Here was the chance to have a long and circular discussion about something utterly stupid, and waste at least one hour of a Jehovver Boy’s time. Or maybe post forty copies of Atheism Now through their letter box.

Mrs Slog couldn’t quite understand why I was pointing like a five year-old and shouting “Stop! Turn right! Turn right!” because she is nice to everyone, and thus can’t see what all the fuss is about when it comes to The Witnesses. Also we were already late for lunch. But most importantly, I realised I didn’t have it in me to talk about the meaning of minus one times nought for an hour.

And I suppose that’s what you have to be made of. If, that is, you fancy a career in double glazing or witnessing. Or politics.

The reasons why we didn’t ditch our main polticial Parties years ago are myriad – gerrymandering, media moguls, busy-bodies with blue-rinse hair, futile optimism and so forth – but I suspect the main one is that most of us have a life. We don’t have either the time or inclination to bore the backside off other folks.

Most ordinary citizens are the same people collared by solar panel salespeople and religious nutters. And thanks to dementia, inebriation, apathy or all these qualities, they see little difference between the determined face staring through the window, and the equally persistent face on the TV screen. Because in essence they are exactly the same: repetitive, incredible, invasive, irrelevent and misinformed.

There are 128,000 active Jehovah’s witnesses in the UK, and roughly 18 million households. So with 365 days in the year, your average home is going to get three visits per annum from the men and women of the Watchtower. They should give up on their quest right now, and here’s why: David Cameron appears on our tellies at least twice a day, and still nobody believes in him.

But people who believe – and want us to believe too – will never give up, and never stop talking. They will never stop doing interviews, sending leaflets, knocking on doors, writing blogs (touche), giving speeches and sounding plausible, because wittering on about how the Bible is a sort of religious BBC, everyone is highly intelligent really – and bankers have nothing to apologise about – is infinitely preferable to conducting an empirical test to show how irreversibly, unquestionably and unequivocally wrong they are.

The Bible is a series of morality fables and exaggerations produced by the fact that there was no CNN or Sky News back then. And the Tory, Labour and LibDem Parties offer a series of polemics – Free market globalism, political correctness and EU enthusiasm – whose tenets are, quite obviously, bunk.

But here’s the important parallel: the way to be left alone by salespeople is to put them in spam, have a filter fitted to your phone, and put a sign on your door saying ‘no thankyou’. In short, don’t engage.

I think we should apply this principle to our Estalishment Parties, but not in a way suggesting apathy: we need the sign saying ‘no thankyou’.

I’ve slogged endlessly on the need for a proper, coordinated Resistance both on the ground and on the internet – and I’m very grateful to the people who sent me in a series of excellent principles and ideas about what they see as a better alternative to the system we have now. It all needs unifying somehow, but not in the standard ‘Party discipline’ way that devolves all power upwards to the Executive.

Above all at the moment, it needs an action focus. And as a precursor to the positive presentation of an alternative to be tested, it needs a strong message to the deaf occupants of the ivory silo that they aren’t wanted on voyage.

So here’s my suggestion: let’s all get behind one key objective of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS). This is its desire to have, on every voting slip, ‘None of the Above’.

I suggest this for four reasons:

1. It will produce a statistic which can then never be denied or explained away. (They will try, but it’s not possible).

2. It sends an unequivocal message: we don’t want ANY of you.

3. It is a principle upon which, by definition, all true reformers with a genuine desire for a better future can agree.

4. The demonstration of this power will act as a positive encouragement to those who doubt that an alliance of people – those who reject globalist, bourse and bank capitalism with just as much vehemence as they deplore the idea of centralist State socialism and Thought Control – can be a game-changing political force in the UK.

In a way, this alliance might bear some resemblance to the Tea Party. But my own objection to the TP is that (based on what I’ve seen of the candidates and read in their literature) it is a fundamentally backwards-looking, reactionary and pretty madcap bunch of not very bright people. This really isn’t what Britain needs: we already have those in the BNP and UKIP. (Cue shoal of emails and threads telling me how wrong I am).

Anyway, before we get bogged down in nuance, what I’m after is the level of interest in going for (and then coordinating a campaign to get) the constitutional right to reject all the candidates on a voting slip.

Who’s up for it, and how do we start? Now there’s something other than cancellations, cake and chaos to think about over Christmas.

Have a good one.

Why feedback is quintessential bollocks.

Impenetrable grovelling is with us once again

When I was sixteen and trying to form a band (weren’t we all?) there was a thing you’d get from old-fashioned amplifiers. It was called feedback, and it was the most ear-gouging sound you can imagine. Today we have politico-business feedback which is of a similar order.

Oddly, in its most irritating form it is inaudible. So it was for my daughter earlier this week, stuck for 36 hours in Bangkok. British Airways’ feedback consisted of ‘We will be boarding our delayed flight BA 0010 at 22.45 this evening’. That was 12 hours into the future, and after 24 hours of waiting around.

The same was true for the poor devils queuing outside St Pancras station over the last two days, trying to get everywhere from Edinburgh to Paris. When similar stuff happens on South West Rail, there’s a scuggy old blackboard with the words ‘No trians tooday‘ on it. They put it next to the threat of prosecution if you board without a ticket. This in turn is close by the sign saying ‘Ticket Office Closed’.

The man running Heathsnow told the media his people would be ‘crawling all over the problem’ today, but not why they’d been useless for the last three. Obviously, his people hadn’t been listening to the Met Office’s feedback, which had been warning everyone of deep snow and sub-zero temperatures for some five days beforehand.

Last night, Skype went down (at what must be one of the busiest times of the year for them) and tweeted what the problem was. Course, if you’re not sad enough to follow @Skype on Twitter, you heard about it on BBCNews around 10 pm. Skype’s feedback was that they’d suffered ‘a surfeit of outage’. I was pretty outraged myself, not least because I haven’t a clue what outage is.

Most software feedback assumes that everyone is a geek blessed with the ability to read runes. ‘An unexpected error has occurred’ is my favourite, but some of it positively increases one’s anxiety: ‘This file has been copied and may be used by another programme or be incompatible with Unzip. Confirm?’ Durrr…

After Vince Cable’s confirmation that Rupert Murdoch is a failed arse transplant last Tuesday, David Cameron said at his joint press conference with Clegg that he had formed ‘a Ministerial Resilience Committee’ to deal with such occasions in the future. Did anyone in that gathering know what he meant?

It would be nice – just for Christmas – to call a truce on the Campaign to Hide From & Bamboozle the Public, would it not? So in that spirit, The Slog offers this drivel-free feedback at the end of its first year:

THANKYOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS

There may be other Slogposts, and there may not.

This is because I need some feedback from the garage as to whether they can tow us to the main road or not. And from AA Roadwatch about whether the route we’re taking is now under five feet of permafrost or not.

I tried to get feedback from the Council about whether (a) the Recycling Men would be back in 2010 and (b) when our road would be gritted, if ever. But that was always going to be a wasted exercise.

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

The Editor

Global financial clout isn’t only going from West to East

1930s US bank robber ‘Slick’ Willy Sutton observed famously that he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is”

Just 24 hours after the Bankapologaeia tendency had been once more begging us to ‘stop bashing and start supporting’ the banking system, the London Financial Times reported that Deutsche Bank had plea-bargained its way out of a serious US rap. The bargain cost them over half a billion dollars, so you can imagine just how damning the Prosecution evidence was.

A couple of months back, RBS and Barclays were forced to do the same in the US regarding Iranian terrorist money-laundering. Every week, in fact, at least one major bank around the world faces criminal and/or procedural disobedience charges of one form or another. Goldman Sachs currently has thirteen class action suits pending against it.

But these high-profile cases are (if I can mix metaphors a little here) the tip of an iceberg big enough to sink every unsinkable government on the planet. What the objective observer needs to examine closely is not the near-universal mendacity of these folk, but The Money Thing: that is, where the real global financial muscle lies as we kiss 2010 a less than fond goodbye.

The total held in cash by US multinationals now stands at over $2 trillion, of which – it is estimated -  a good one third is held in overseas markets and primary tax havens….contributing zilch to the US Treasury. 40% of the total sits in just 20 companies. However, you have to multiply this by 3 to arrive at the total monies available to these lucky people: a huge amount of their cash is paid to wealthy shareholders and non-Government institutions as dividends. US website stocksthatpay.com writes that

‘The balance sheets of U.S. non-financial companies are in good shape, in contrast to government and household balance sheets….but companies are looking for greater certainty about the economy, and signs of a permanent increase in sales, before they let go of their cash hoards…’

If we (ie the taxpayer and the Fed)  thought like this, nothing would ever happen. And obviously, one could suggest to these Scrooges that the main beneficiaries are going to be…um, them actually. But corporates in Western banking and multinational business don’t do sound sense, social awareness or patriotism: they amassed this mountain-range of cash in the first place by stopping all r&d – and reducing headcount. They don’t do that in China.

Big, rich Western businesses do indeed tend to create all the productive jobs. But today, they’re created in India and China. With EU and American government money. Of course, if the banks actually bothered to lend the small business sector a decent amount of money, they too would create jobs. I’m a capitalist and proud of it; but you have to recognise, once you get into the numbers, that bankers and other senior corporate suits don’t care a fig about ‘the economy’ or ‘the country’. They’re alright Jack, so we can all whistle Dixie.

Banks and multinationals do not recognise national borders; so by definition, they are disloyal to governments. The only nationally specific realities they recognise are taxpayer bailouts. In 2009, the UK taxpayer helped massively to bail out GM – a US company. Throughout 2008, Americans helped bail out foreign banks with no loyalty to them – as well as their own banks….who in turn used the money to fund Canadian mergers and Korean factories. Barclays alone took the US taxpayer for $240bn….and picked up Lehmans for tuppence ha’penny while it was at it.

The deals using equity for mega-mergers done by banks across borders would make a many a Ministerial mouth water. They topped $835.6 billion globally in 2010 alone. Morgan Stanley won the league with $80bn, followed by Goldman Sachs at $66bn….and over 60% were in the Asian theatre. You will notice – if you trawl through the accounts – that Fred Spleen & Sons, your local butcher, does not appear in any of the columns. (Last year in the UK, 558 planning permissions were granted to multiple supermarket outlets; so as you might imagine, Fred Spleen has two chances of getting anywhere).

As a result of this, both the average citizen and the Government are getting poorer, and small businesses are going to the wall – the very sector Britain especially needs to climb out of its morass of debt and loss-making banks.  The median household income in the US reached its all-time peak in 1999 at $52,388, in 2010 money. Ten years later the median household income is $49,777.

 

The British Government, by contrast, is some £850 billion worse off after bailing out its banks. The total liabilities of UK plc are over£2.3 trillion. The USA Inc figure is too big to fit in this column.

Bizarrely, all those corporate wiseassed dummies sitting on a Mount Everest of cash also owe a lot of money; some even borrowed more to increase the stash – a direct result of that fine (but to most people insane) policy, zero interest rates. They’d be far better off using the money to export their way out of trouble, and thus increase earnings to repay debt. But globalist bean counters don’t think in terms of risk any more: they are monopolist business conservatives pretending to be capitalists. Each morning they wake up muttering “Headcount, shareholder ROI, analysts, quarterly growth, my bonus….”

But even taking corporate debt into account, on Planet Earth there is no getting away from it: the net assets, cash and goodwill of globalist business and banking far exceed those of any government outside China.

The Friedmanite headcases would regard this as a good thing – and in principle, so would I. But the sale of socio-governmental assets – plus the cost of bailing out, stimulating and creating capitalist endeavour – has turned out to be the equivalent of selling iron ore to Germany and Japan in the 1930s. Give people the raw materials, and they will make weapons which might one day destroy you.

The sums we’re dealing with here apply across the globe, developed or otherwise. The Rothschild banking family alone is estimated to have a net worth somewhere between $100-300 trillion. That is but a small fraction of the total wealth of the banking sector. During 2009, for example, JP Morgan fired 2000 people and increased its revenue by 30%…to $100 trillion.

Is all this clout being put to good use? In July this year, Goldman Sachs refused (nice, huh?) the Financial Crisis Commission’s request to release figures of its proportion of business involved in derivatives….this despite Goldman having benefitted from a half-billion dollar Federal loan during 2008. Determined leaking showed the derivative proportion to be 35%. You would have to work very, very hard to explain to anyone what the hell good derivatives trading ever did the economies of the West – apart from helping to bankrupt them. But the astonishing reality is that the more they do it (and then need taxpayer loans) the more government coffers empty……and the more bank treasure chests fill to overflowing.

This is a shift in wealth as big as that from West to East – and perhaps even more important. Just as geopolitical ramifications follow debt and currency devaluation, so too does the beneficent and yet beholden State find itself increasingly at the mercy of corporate aims. Were these the relatively philanthropic Victorian times so beloved of Ian Hislop, we’d probably have a lot less to worry about. As things stand today, we should be afraid. Very afraid.