Brown sends emissaries to Washington to talk up his idea of a Tobin tax. Sends emissaries to European capitals to drum up troops for Afghanistan - a plan for which he says he has 'taken responsibility' and is 'close to President Obama's intentions for Afghanistan and follows 'his discussions with President Obama'. He claims a great victory at the Glasgow North East by-election which was resoundingly won by the None of the Above Party. And that's just in the last couple of days.
All this frenzied displacement activity is additional to a determined presentation of poll data, economic data and statistical returns on unemployment and continued economic recession (bottom of the heap in his G-somethings, and in the EU) as 'putting Labour in with a chance' in any election that might be held (including a general election in the UK) but, most particularly, that most restricted election to high office in the European Union.
No one wants to deal with Labour in Europe; social democrats across the Union are finding themselves in ever sharper decline at every vote that is taken and Labour is up for the same kind of beating as the German social democrats got last September (not to mention the Italians and the French earlier). Why ever give a job to deadbeats from a deadbeat Party?
Now a serious proposal for a serious right of centre UK politician might get some consideration - but proposals come from Brown, the man who sends out representatives to flog dead horses.
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Where Angels Fear to Tread: Choosing a President
The suggestion that Massimo d'Alema could be the social democratic choice for High Representative for Foreign Affairs in the European Union has been pushed more and more forcefully in the last few weeks. At first just a piece of chitchat in political and technical circles it is now being discussed in mainstream press articles with details of which social democrats are supporting the candidacy and why it is appropriate - because the European centre left have been accorded choice of High Representative while the centre right choose the President of the Council etc., the withdrawal of a UK candidate because Miliband as High Representative would put a stone finally on any remaining possibility of a Blair candidacy for President, because of d'Alema's abilities and experience both as Italian foreign secretary and prime minister...
D'Alema has been a communist for most of his political life - a leader of the Italian Communist party for some of it, with all that implies for immersion in the not just murky but filthy waters of Italian politics of the left in the second half of the 20th century; a left marked, too, by the politics of failure. And a man who's manoeuvres for personal advancement have brought down very competent governments under Romano Prodi, on the last occasion permitting the return to power of Silvio Berlusconi (cf the Economist on Berlusconi if you think Berlusconi was ever a good thing for any government of a member state of the European Union).
Prodi was brought down as well because he is not a centre left politician. He is a Christian Democrat of the moderate centre right; a one nation Conservative in English political terminology, who put together and then led coalitions, for whose building he was largely responsible, which produced clean(ish) effective democratic governments that took Italy into the Euro, out of Iraq, underpinned the institutions of a state shaken by corruption of the left and the right (Craxi's Socialist party anyone? Andreotti's Christian Democrats?), stabilised and encouraged economic growth and generally provided what one nation conservatism has to offer.
When Roman Prodi was President of the European Commission (1999-2004) he enjoyed the support of both centre right and centre left, of both the European People's Party and the social democratic Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament. Prodi's presidency saw in the euro, the Amsterdam and Nice Treaties, the enlargement to the East, and the creation and signing, though not the ratification, of the first European Treaty that later was reborn as Lisbon. Prodi is such a glaringly obvious candidate for the presidential role. Is d'Alema's candidacy being run as a spoiler, just as Miliband's was against Blair?
A highly competent, technically skilled politician, with intimate knowledge of every important act in the European Union's past, and a past master at coalition construction and reconciliation politics, from a middle-sized member state, must have ruled himself out to be out of the running. Which would be a pity because, not least, he could exclude d'Alema from any further political role in all our lives. The obvious country from which to draw the High Representative for Foreign Relations is Poland:they'd get foreign affairs right, they've so much to lose if they didn't.
D'Alema has been a communist for most of his political life - a leader of the Italian Communist party for some of it, with all that implies for immersion in the not just murky but filthy waters of Italian politics of the left in the second half of the 20th century; a left marked, too, by the politics of failure. And a man who's manoeuvres for personal advancement have brought down very competent governments under Romano Prodi, on the last occasion permitting the return to power of Silvio Berlusconi (cf the Economist on Berlusconi if you think Berlusconi was ever a good thing for any government of a member state of the European Union).
Prodi was brought down as well because he is not a centre left politician. He is a Christian Democrat of the moderate centre right; a one nation Conservative in English political terminology, who put together and then led coalitions, for whose building he was largely responsible, which produced clean(ish) effective democratic governments that took Italy into the Euro, out of Iraq, underpinned the institutions of a state shaken by corruption of the left and the right (Craxi's Socialist party anyone? Andreotti's Christian Democrats?), stabilised and encouraged economic growth and generally provided what one nation conservatism has to offer.
When Roman Prodi was President of the European Commission (1999-2004) he enjoyed the support of both centre right and centre left, of both the European People's Party and the social democratic Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament. Prodi's presidency saw in the euro, the Amsterdam and Nice Treaties, the enlargement to the East, and the creation and signing, though not the ratification, of the first European Treaty that later was reborn as Lisbon. Prodi is such a glaringly obvious candidate for the presidential role. Is d'Alema's candidacy being run as a spoiler, just as Miliband's was against Blair?
A highly competent, technically skilled politician, with intimate knowledge of every important act in the European Union's past, and a past master at coalition construction and reconciliation politics, from a middle-sized member state, must have ruled himself out to be out of the running. Which would be a pity because, not least, he could exclude d'Alema from any further political role in all our lives. The obvious country from which to draw the High Representative for Foreign Relations is Poland:they'd get foreign affairs right, they've so much to lose if they didn't.
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Labour's Dilemma
With the United Kingdom's AAA credit rating again called so severely into question the Gordon Brown dilemma presents in ever more acute form. If there is the slightest suggestion that Brown could possibly continue in power except in the very short term there will be a complete collapse of sterling; the only thing holding the UK economy together is the confidence that responsible government will be resumed as soon as possible.
Worse, for Labour, if they go to the country with the Cabinet and NEC having forced Brown to come to terms with reality and the likelihood of leading the Labour to annihilation if he is not replaced, any suggestion that this might produce a new government too weak to act on the desolation that Brown has brought about, or even a hung parliament, will lead to the same collapse and all its consequences.
If Brown persists in going on and leads Labour into an election, Labour is finished. If he tries to avoid an election and the consequent destruction of Labour by the electorate, then the economy of the country itself will be taken down in the rush for the exit.
Worse, for Labour, if they go to the country with the Cabinet and NEC having forced Brown to come to terms with reality and the likelihood of leading the Labour to annihilation if he is not replaced, any suggestion that this might produce a new government too weak to act on the desolation that Brown has brought about, or even a hung parliament, will lead to the same collapse and all its consequences.
If Brown persists in going on and leads Labour into an election, Labour is finished. If he tries to avoid an election and the consequent destruction of Labour by the electorate, then the economy of the country itself will be taken down in the rush for the exit.
Friday, 6 November 2009
Ending European Involvement in Afghanistan
Nord Stream has been signed off by Sweden, Finland and Denmark. So energy supplies to Germany and northern Europe generally should be assured by 2011. Bypassing Ukraine was important as it has been manipulated to pressure the EU and Russia. Poland may feel concerned but its manufacturing capacity importance to central European and Russian manufacturing and market plans outweighs any notion of it being isolated from the west of Europe in energy supplies.
Together with South Stream, on which Serbia and then Italy signed off during the summer, energy supplies from the Russian Federation to Europe seem to be secured within the time it takes to build the pipelines.
An agreement last month between the Russian Federation and China for energy supplies, and for payment to be acceptable in roubles, provides diverse markets for Russian energy .
The 'war against terrorism' in Afghanistan (which is really an attempt to impose a pipeline route through Afghanistan for US energy supplies from the Caucasus) costing such a grievous price in lives and ruined families becomes less and less relevant to any European interest.
Together with South Stream, on which Serbia and then Italy signed off during the summer, energy supplies from the Russian Federation to Europe seem to be secured within the time it takes to build the pipelines.
An agreement last month between the Russian Federation and China for energy supplies, and for payment to be acceptable in roubles, provides diverse markets for Russian energy .
The 'war against terrorism' in Afghanistan (which is really an attempt to impose a pipeline route through Afghanistan for US energy supplies from the Caucasus) costing such a grievous price in lives and ruined families becomes less and less relevant to any European interest.
English Universities Top the List
The Best Universities in the World list was always going to get a quick look to see where we were. Pride. Even more Pride, four of the first six (as fifth place was a draw) are English universities; Cambridge, University College London, Imperial College London, and Oxford. The other two are Harvard and Yale.
An international standing like that means international levels of competition to enter any of them. So why has New Labour banned state schools in England from offering international GCSE (IGCSE) courses and examinations? The IGCSE, offered by the Cambridge examinations board, would seem an ideal qualification to obtain for entry into the best universities in the world and put English students on the same footing as applicants from all over. University entrance qualification is made up of GCSEs as well as A-Levels; it might be thought that the possession of international standard GCSEs would balance the common criticism of A-Levels, that they are too narrowly focused in comparison with other countries' advanced school leaving examinations.
Nope, the Balls department is sticking with the less attractive GCSEs, because they cover the curriculum and the international examinations go beyond it. They would, they'd have to when GCSEs stop covering, for instance, photosynthesis. Oh, and we can't go back to an examination system that doesn't serve everybody. At the same time the Mandelson empire is coming out with demands that examination grades should not be the only determinant of university entry. Perhaps not, but curriculum content and satisfactory evidence that a candidate has mastered it should be, which is why so many fee paying schools now use the IGCSE examinations. And is very possibly a contributing factor in the success of their candidates entering internationally competitive universities.
Minds are going to be have to be made up: we cannot have both international status, competitive entry universities and our state school system committed to 'inclusive' curriculums and examinations.
An international standing like that means international levels of competition to enter any of them. So why has New Labour banned state schools in England from offering international GCSE (IGCSE) courses and examinations? The IGCSE, offered by the Cambridge examinations board, would seem an ideal qualification to obtain for entry into the best universities in the world and put English students on the same footing as applicants from all over. University entrance qualification is made up of GCSEs as well as A-Levels; it might be thought that the possession of international standard GCSEs would balance the common criticism of A-Levels, that they are too narrowly focused in comparison with other countries' advanced school leaving examinations.
Nope, the Balls department is sticking with the less attractive GCSEs, because they cover the curriculum and the international examinations go beyond it. They would, they'd have to when GCSEs stop covering, for instance, photosynthesis. Oh, and we can't go back to an examination system that doesn't serve everybody. At the same time the Mandelson empire is coming out with demands that examination grades should not be the only determinant of university entry. Perhaps not, but curriculum content and satisfactory evidence that a candidate has mastered it should be, which is why so many fee paying schools now use the IGCSE examinations. And is very possibly a contributing factor in the success of their candidates entering internationally competitive universities.
Minds are going to be have to be made up: we cannot have both international status, competitive entry universities and our state school system committed to 'inclusive' curriculums and examinations.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Opel Moves to Responding to Industrial Not Political Imperatives
'A wholly rational choice. They have acted correctly and this [decision] is a good thing for Europe because they are doing what must be done: infrastructures in Europe, which are too big and extensive, must be rationalised. This is a complicated business: rational industrial choices should be made with great care.' Sergio Marchionne welcoming GM's decision to retain Opel.
[''Una scelta totalmente razionale. Hanno fatto bene ed e' una cosa buona per l'Europa , perche' fanno le cose che dovranno fare: dovranno razionalizzare le infrastrutture in Europa che sono troppo grosse e complesse. Questo e' un business complicato: le scelte razionali e industriali vanno fatte in una maniera molto precisa'].
The FIAT director took over Chrysler in the summer and has been restructuring ever since, according to his industrial blueprint. (FIAT's shares rise steadily). He abandoned discussions to acquire Opel remarking that when the politics had been washed out of the negotiations and industrial efficiency and profit were the objectives Opel would be worth looking at. But the German elections stood in the way of a European-wide rationalisation of car production.
Dr Marchionne doesn't do politics - not politics politics - he does industrial planning and efficiency and profits. Vauxhall may be cheering at events today but a lot of politics politics will be over by next Spring, both in the UK and in the local German elections. The plants in Poland and Russia can then take on their industrial importance, while older plant in Germany, and peripheral plant in other countries, particularly the UK, wish the English Secretary for Industry had kept himself to himself.
[''Una scelta totalmente razionale. Hanno fatto bene ed e' una cosa buona per l'Europa , perche' fanno le cose che dovranno fare: dovranno razionalizzare le infrastrutture in Europa che sono troppo grosse e complesse. Questo e' un business complicato: le scelte razionali e industriali vanno fatte in una maniera molto precisa'].
The FIAT director took over Chrysler in the summer and has been restructuring ever since, according to his industrial blueprint. (FIAT's shares rise steadily). He abandoned discussions to acquire Opel remarking that when the politics had been washed out of the negotiations and industrial efficiency and profit were the objectives Opel would be worth looking at. But the German elections stood in the way of a European-wide rationalisation of car production.
Dr Marchionne doesn't do politics - not politics politics - he does industrial planning and efficiency and profits. Vauxhall may be cheering at events today but a lot of politics politics will be over by next Spring, both in the UK and in the local German elections. The plants in Poland and Russia can then take on their industrial importance, while older plant in Germany, and peripheral plant in other countries, particularly the UK, wish the English Secretary for Industry had kept himself to himself.
Unitd Kingdom Democratic Deficit to Be Remedied
Gosh, a United Kingdom Constitutional court; my Goodness, a Sovereignty Act; heavens! what is available to Germany, to Ireland to the Czech Republic (and to every other of the member states of Europe) will be installed in the United Kingdom.
Who could have thought it?
Who could have thought it?
God, People Like This Are Insufferable
The Finnish woman who has pursued the removal ad oltranza of crucifixes from classroom walls in Italian primary schools has been a culturally blind class warrior from another planet. That she has been accorded membership of Italian society on her marriage to an Italian has not conferred on her any cultural sensitivity whatever, and seems to have raised no thought of extending, to those who have received her, any cultural courtesy at all.
Italy is a Christian country. Who could have the remotest connection to Italy and not understand that? There is no need to labour the point with examples and historical reference. It is also an advanced capitalist democracy with guaranteed freedoms of speech, belief, worship, and peoples of many cultures living (reasonably) peacefully side by side. Lots of us, native and immigrant, are not Christian but most of us are grown up, and polite.
The Finnish woman is just plain rude.
Italy is a Christian country. Who could have the remotest connection to Italy and not understand that? There is no need to labour the point with examples and historical reference. It is also an advanced capitalist democracy with guaranteed freedoms of speech, belief, worship, and peoples of many cultures living (reasonably) peacefully side by side. Lots of us, native and immigrant, are not Christian but most of us are grown up, and polite.
The Finnish woman is just plain rude.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
The Czech Constitution Guarantees Czech Sovereignty Over Lisbon. Does Ours?
The ruling that the Czech constitution is robust enough to defend Czech sovereignty in its interaction with the Lisbon treaty is good news for Czechs but reflects badly on our own. The United Kingdom is the only member state of the European Union sent naked into the conference chamber (to borrow a phrase from a Labour pantheon member).
David Cameron has still not set out a manifesto for the construction and reconstruction of a British Constitution at least as robust as that of the other 26 member states of the federated European Union. Not talk of the repatriation of powers, not talk of constitutionally insignificant and irrelevant referendums, not mention of negotiation either friendly and constructive or obstructive and bolshie; what is needed are clearly set out proposals for providing the United Kingdom with rules for its conduct that match those of our fellow Europeans.
While he is at it he might pay attention to the internal federation of the United Kingdom itself. There is a gross lack of internal democracy within the UK that is due largely to the former dominance of England within the federation of the British Isles. Once the English ran the whole show. Now they do not but the paradigm has been particularly malignant in informing attitudes to the European Union. There was an expectation that the UK, and for the UK read England, would run Europe much as England ran the UK - after all, we won the war innit, well with some assistance from America but we've got a special relationship, right? Remember at the heart of Europe?
Only we aren't, are we? Outside the euro, outside Schengen, outside the European social model - outsiders - facing a lot of unfinished post War business and a very different view of England's behaviour in Europe than the propaganda history we still promulgate in our schools and trash media. Europeans have a lot of stuff to sort out, and it won't be solved with the impositions of 60 years ago. Out of money and credibility too. And with our candidate for European high office a warmonger and war criminal of the centre left in a Europe where the centre right predominates. There is a famous photograph of a Berlin banana seller offering a banana to a small child; he would doubtless be more competent at foreign relations than the self-hating everything banana- offerer that is being put forward as a serious contender to conduct European Union foreign relations (to which England's constitutionally unprotected statehood will be subject).
Right now, the only thing that is holding together the United Kingdom economy, its currency, and any hope of avoiding a devastating depression - not recession but full blown depression - is the expectation of a reassertion of democracy and the election of a sane government in the United Kingdom. That is a respectable government, elected, in correct relations with the permanent state and its other aspects of law and legislature. A sane government that recognises the straits we are in, not blinded by an obsessive, childlike denial of wrongdoing, and will cope with our dreadful debt and frightening isolation from our neighbours and former friends. A clean government that is untainted by the corruption of a bribed legislature, a subverted civil service, a shadow administration of appointed cronies, a civilian surveillance without redress from maladministration and bullying by apparatchik appointees.
England is more than a peripheral power in Europe. We were once well-regarded and rightly seen as a model of informal, as well as constitutionally enforceable, decencies. Mr Cameron and his party need to set out some very clear plans to reinstate our country's decencies and ensure that in our relations with other federations, both local and European, we can be ourselves and pay our debts.
On reflection
It is just as important that the centre left in England should set out its proposals for protecting the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, and for resolving the problems of its internal federation. But to do so would require the removal of a Labour Executive premised on and wholly committed to the installation of what has been called authoritarian capitalism (there are older fashioned names but let's move on). The social democratic movement in the UK has been unable to dislodge the authoritarian Executive by any means open to them within Labour party structures. All attempts at dissuading the Labour authoritarian Executive from illegal wars, the introduction of unbearable levels of social, and private familial surveillance, the removal of constitutionally safeguarded civil liberties, the disempowering of the judiciary and the legislature, the construction of a client state coupled with crippling levels of direct and indirect taxation (and tax payer looting by Executive friendly operators but that's another matter), the identification of the Executive with the permanent state, have failed.
Obviously just as many social democrats in the UK have been abused and defrauded as people on the centre right. The problem is they cannot protect both the centre left and dethrone their 'leaders' to reinstate a decent party and movement. Only the whole electorate can do that.
David Cameron has still not set out a manifesto for the construction and reconstruction of a British Constitution at least as robust as that of the other 26 member states of the federated European Union. Not talk of the repatriation of powers, not talk of constitutionally insignificant and irrelevant referendums, not mention of negotiation either friendly and constructive or obstructive and bolshie; what is needed are clearly set out proposals for providing the United Kingdom with rules for its conduct that match those of our fellow Europeans.
While he is at it he might pay attention to the internal federation of the United Kingdom itself. There is a gross lack of internal democracy within the UK that is due largely to the former dominance of England within the federation of the British Isles. Once the English ran the whole show. Now they do not but the paradigm has been particularly malignant in informing attitudes to the European Union. There was an expectation that the UK, and for the UK read England, would run Europe much as England ran the UK - after all, we won the war innit, well with some assistance from America but we've got a special relationship, right? Remember at the heart of Europe?
Only we aren't, are we? Outside the euro, outside Schengen, outside the European social model - outsiders - facing a lot of unfinished post War business and a very different view of England's behaviour in Europe than the propaganda history we still promulgate in our schools and trash media. Europeans have a lot of stuff to sort out, and it won't be solved with the impositions of 60 years ago. Out of money and credibility too. And with our candidate for European high office a warmonger and war criminal of the centre left in a Europe where the centre right predominates. There is a famous photograph of a Berlin banana seller offering a banana to a small child; he would doubtless be more competent at foreign relations than the self-hating everything banana- offerer that is being put forward as a serious contender to conduct European Union foreign relations (to which England's constitutionally unprotected statehood will be subject).
Right now, the only thing that is holding together the United Kingdom economy, its currency, and any hope of avoiding a devastating depression - not recession but full blown depression - is the expectation of a reassertion of democracy and the election of a sane government in the United Kingdom. That is a respectable government, elected, in correct relations with the permanent state and its other aspects of law and legislature. A sane government that recognises the straits we are in, not blinded by an obsessive, childlike denial of wrongdoing, and will cope with our dreadful debt and frightening isolation from our neighbours and former friends. A clean government that is untainted by the corruption of a bribed legislature, a subverted civil service, a shadow administration of appointed cronies, a civilian surveillance without redress from maladministration and bullying by apparatchik appointees.
England is more than a peripheral power in Europe. We were once well-regarded and rightly seen as a model of informal, as well as constitutionally enforceable, decencies. Mr Cameron and his party need to set out some very clear plans to reinstate our country's decencies and ensure that in our relations with other federations, both local and European, we can be ourselves and pay our debts.
On reflection
It is just as important that the centre left in England should set out its proposals for protecting the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, and for resolving the problems of its internal federation. But to do so would require the removal of a Labour Executive premised on and wholly committed to the installation of what has been called authoritarian capitalism (there are older fashioned names but let's move on). The social democratic movement in the UK has been unable to dislodge the authoritarian Executive by any means open to them within Labour party structures. All attempts at dissuading the Labour authoritarian Executive from illegal wars, the introduction of unbearable levels of social, and private familial surveillance, the removal of constitutionally safeguarded civil liberties, the disempowering of the judiciary and the legislature, the construction of a client state coupled with crippling levels of direct and indirect taxation (and tax payer looting by Executive friendly operators but that's another matter), the identification of the Executive with the permanent state, have failed.
Obviously just as many social democrats in the UK have been abused and defrauded as people on the centre right. The problem is they cannot protect both the centre left and dethrone their 'leaders' to reinstate a decent party and movement. Only the whole electorate can do that.
Saturday, 31 October 2009
New Labour Threatens European Social Democracy
All the headlines are about the 'presidency' of the European Union, (although in truth the post is head of the about-to-be-formalised administration of the Council of Ministers, which up to Lisbon has been an ad hoc grouping borrowing administrative support from the Union's bureaucracy).
It is the plight of social democracy and the social democratic parties that should be under discussion.
Social democracy covers a multitude of political stances, and a multitude of political sins. Its protagonists and supporters are drawn from a tradition of moderation that argues for the provision of a welfare state, some redistribution of wealth, and the settlement of disputes by negotiation; social democrats see themselves as the moderate, commonsense fairness, decent people. The proof of this is in their commitment to a decent living standard and education, to freedom from gross want and access to steady employment for members of society.
Unfortunately some of those goals are concomitant with much uglier political ideologies - communism and socialism that carry as a political imperative, ideals of the installation of a permanent authoritarian state; and they are concomitant, too, with much more liberal thinking - market regulated capitalism, unfettered individual freedoms, and the small state meeting minimal social peace, plus conservation of the State, goals.
Social democratic parties have been damaged dreadfully by both becoming masking movements for socialist and communist movements fiercely rejected by every society where the chance to get rid of them has been created and seized; while, at the same time, democratic societies have observed that centre right parties offer many of the social policies and ameliorations of unbridled capitalist practice, originally associated with social democracy but long harnessed under one nation conservatism, without the risk of the wolves in sheep's clothing that entered and are still sidling into social democratic parties.
The British Labour party has been the cause of some of the greatest damage to the social democratic movement in advanced capitalist democracies. New Labour has been one of the greatest recruiting sergeants for centre right one nation conservatism. Elected to both increase and to speed up delivery of social wellbeing post the deindustrialisation crisis in the United Kingdom, it used its social democratic mandate to instal a familiar 'democratic centralism' within the Party, and to deny the constitutional usages that informally but historically provided the checks and balances on Executive use of power in our country. As the New Labour government steadily and increasingly identified itself with the permanent State, surveillance of our unfortunate population was installed at Korean levels to proscribe individual and long-entrenched liberties of self assertion, protest, inconformity and self-determination. Ironic comparisons with the realised socialism of the German Democratic Republic, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia and the Baltic states turned to horrified understanding. New Labour is not social democratic but sociofascist. Its aims are post democratic permanent administrative governance.
The bombastic, punch above our weight, vulgarity of New Labour's authoritarian sociofascism has been prevented in other countries by constitutional embedded rules and practices both within social democratic parties and in national constitutions. But the propaganda effect of our disgrace of a government, this travesty of social democracy seeking to infect the European Union with its horrifyingly recognisable reincarnation of so many countries' recent and more recent political history, has led to a massive draining of support for any social democratic party, and its supporting movement, across the Continent.
If social democracy is to survive and prosper again in Europe the European social democratic movement and its leadership needs to cut off New Labour at the knees.
It is the plight of social democracy and the social democratic parties that should be under discussion.
Social democracy covers a multitude of political stances, and a multitude of political sins. Its protagonists and supporters are drawn from a tradition of moderation that argues for the provision of a welfare state, some redistribution of wealth, and the settlement of disputes by negotiation; social democrats see themselves as the moderate, commonsense fairness, decent people. The proof of this is in their commitment to a decent living standard and education, to freedom from gross want and access to steady employment for members of society.
Unfortunately some of those goals are concomitant with much uglier political ideologies - communism and socialism that carry as a political imperative, ideals of the installation of a permanent authoritarian state; and they are concomitant, too, with much more liberal thinking - market regulated capitalism, unfettered individual freedoms, and the small state meeting minimal social peace, plus conservation of the State, goals.
Social democratic parties have been damaged dreadfully by both becoming masking movements for socialist and communist movements fiercely rejected by every society where the chance to get rid of them has been created and seized; while, at the same time, democratic societies have observed that centre right parties offer many of the social policies and ameliorations of unbridled capitalist practice, originally associated with social democracy but long harnessed under one nation conservatism, without the risk of the wolves in sheep's clothing that entered and are still sidling into social democratic parties.
The British Labour party has been the cause of some of the greatest damage to the social democratic movement in advanced capitalist democracies. New Labour has been one of the greatest recruiting sergeants for centre right one nation conservatism. Elected to both increase and to speed up delivery of social wellbeing post the deindustrialisation crisis in the United Kingdom, it used its social democratic mandate to instal a familiar 'democratic centralism' within the Party, and to deny the constitutional usages that informally but historically provided the checks and balances on Executive use of power in our country. As the New Labour government steadily and increasingly identified itself with the permanent State, surveillance of our unfortunate population was installed at Korean levels to proscribe individual and long-entrenched liberties of self assertion, protest, inconformity and self-determination. Ironic comparisons with the realised socialism of the German Democratic Republic, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia and the Baltic states turned to horrified understanding. New Labour is not social democratic but sociofascist. Its aims are post democratic permanent administrative governance.
The bombastic, punch above our weight, vulgarity of New Labour's authoritarian sociofascism has been prevented in other countries by constitutional embedded rules and practices both within social democratic parties and in national constitutions. But the propaganda effect of our disgrace of a government, this travesty of social democracy seeking to infect the European Union with its horrifyingly recognisable reincarnation of so many countries' recent and more recent political history, has led to a massive draining of support for any social democratic party, and its supporting movement, across the Continent.
If social democracy is to survive and prosper again in Europe the European social democratic movement and its leadership needs to cut off New Labour at the knees.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Speaking Only For Themselves
Gordon Brown told a press conference in Brussels yesterday:
'We, the British Government, believe that Tony Blair would be an excellent candidate and an excellent person to hold the job of president of the council.'
While Brown's infelicitous grasp of English is an everyday aspect of his pronouncements - a major aspect of his overall weirdness - this remark starts all sorts of hares running.
First it suggests strongly the presence of other British voices being heard in Europe that are not those of this collapsed, failing British government at the end of its ill-gotten career. Secondly it underlines the undemocratic nature of the support for an appointed European president - not 'We, the British people ...' for, not least, none of us were asked, and further, the shamelessness of the UK Executive in their usurpation of power is fully displayed. Thirdly it speaks of the wholly non-communautaire approach to Europe by the current British Executive with no notion that to speak as 'British' in discussions of the choice of candidate for a pan European office is to show naked national interest-seeking that is inimical to the European ideals that Lisbon is supposed to embody. You're not supposed to be quite so transparently a Brit hooligan Gordon.
Most of all it shows weakness. European Social Democratic disappointment in the Labour party and its New Labour leadership is very noticeable and widespread; Blair and Brown's behaviour are considered to have contributed to weakening the social democratic movement across the continent. Blair and Brown are considered to have contributed to the resurgence of the centre right through both foreign policy - most particularly the illegal war waged on Iraq, and through the destruction of controls over financial behaviour, the famous 'light touch' that precipitated the recession. Europe does not accept that it started only in America. So when European social democrats are told by Brown that he speaks for the British government and to get real he merely reinforces the narrowness of his viewpoint and the breadth of dissent from it, and from him and his predecessor. And the isolation and irrelevance in which this Labour regime now exists both in Europe and in its own country.
'We, the British Government, believe that Tony Blair would be an excellent candidate and an excellent person to hold the job of president of the council.'
While Brown's infelicitous grasp of English is an everyday aspect of his pronouncements - a major aspect of his overall weirdness - this remark starts all sorts of hares running.
First it suggests strongly the presence of other British voices being heard in Europe that are not those of this collapsed, failing British government at the end of its ill-gotten career. Secondly it underlines the undemocratic nature of the support for an appointed European president - not 'We, the British people ...' for, not least, none of us were asked, and further, the shamelessness of the UK Executive in their usurpation of power is fully displayed. Thirdly it speaks of the wholly non-communautaire approach to Europe by the current British Executive with no notion that to speak as 'British' in discussions of the choice of candidate for a pan European office is to show naked national interest-seeking that is inimical to the European ideals that Lisbon is supposed to embody. You're not supposed to be quite so transparently a Brit hooligan Gordon.
Most of all it shows weakness. European Social Democratic disappointment in the Labour party and its New Labour leadership is very noticeable and widespread; Blair and Brown's behaviour are considered to have contributed to weakening the social democratic movement across the continent. Blair and Brown are considered to have contributed to the resurgence of the centre right through both foreign policy - most particularly the illegal war waged on Iraq, and through the destruction of controls over financial behaviour, the famous 'light touch' that precipitated the recession. Europe does not accept that it started only in America. So when European social democrats are told by Brown that he speaks for the British government and to get real he merely reinforces the narrowness of his viewpoint and the breadth of dissent from it, and from him and his predecessor. And the isolation and irrelevance in which this Labour regime now exists both in Europe and in its own country.
Thursday, 29 October 2009
A German Manifesto
Vaclav Klaus is absolutely right to be requiring guarantees on the effects of the Lisbon treaty on post War settlements. In the long document produced by the new German government on its intentions, it is clearly stated that it:
'plans to create the "Flight, Expulsion and Conciliation" [commission] dedicated to German expellees -- a move likely to ruffle feathers in neighboring Poland, where politicians have fought vociferously against its establishment because they fear ethnic Germans forced out of Eastern Europe will depict themselves as the victims of World War II. In addition, the government wants to support the creation of a museum dedicated to the Sudeten Germans. More than 3 million Sudeten Germans were forcefully expelled from Czechoslovakia after the war.' (Der Spiegel)
It might be thought that a commission and a museum in commemoration of acts widely viewed as wrongful by their victims (obviously) and by others as having been unwise, is a considerable concession to, and first step in, changing the status quo. Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks are engaged in an ongoing dispute about wealth and power redistributions since 1945. It is only 20 years since Germany was reunited - the most unacceptable of the 1945 dispositions that forced half the country to live under realised socialism with a Wall to keep them from escaping their privations and brutalisation in every aspect of their lives; but for the millions involved in smaller disputes their fate is just as destructive, just as arbitrarily imposed.
When Poland argued that it was missing a large part of its population and should have its vote re-weighted to take this into account there was concerted poo-pooing of the quite reasonable view that to be deprived of people is as bad as to be deprived of land. Now the Czechs are being sneered at and told to hurry through their pointless objections to the opening of threats to fundamental democratic features like secure property rights. Yet the people on the other side of the Czech viewpoint, the Sudeten Germans - seem to be enjoying a considerable and formalised upsurge in government-backed support for their aims. Hungary and Slovakia are caught up in a different dispute but a dispute of a similar kind springing from the same source - the improper resolution of the consequences of the War.
If Lisbon does go through it will reopen, in one fell swoop, injustices that until now had no redress. President Klaus is trying to protect more than just his own country's interests but the Union itself in a form more appropriate to nation states so recently at determined odds with one another. No, not the War, but the consequences and longterm settlements of the War . There is more to fear from Lisbon than an extension of executive administrative power into our democracies.
The peoples forced to live under socialist regimes which deprived generations of decent lives having freed themselves, disgraceful walls or no disgraceful walls, those who suffered specific victimisation at the hands of the regimes in their countries will be a powerful force of disruption in a Lisbon-shaped Europe. Perhaps we should think less about representing Europe to the world with a president and a foreign minister and more about institutions and means for setting right the evils inflicted inside Europe on so many millions of its people since 1945. Lisbon is facing the wrong way, oriented to the wrong goals, and its provisions for internal settlement of relations within the Union are ill-conceived and will bring into being the very opposite of the ever closer union it pretends to champion.
'plans to create the "Flight, Expulsion and Conciliation" [commission] dedicated to German expellees -- a move likely to ruffle feathers in neighboring Poland, where politicians have fought vociferously against its establishment because they fear ethnic Germans forced out of Eastern Europe will depict themselves as the victims of World War II. In addition, the government wants to support the creation of a museum dedicated to the Sudeten Germans. More than 3 million Sudeten Germans were forcefully expelled from Czechoslovakia after the war.' (Der Spiegel)
It might be thought that a commission and a museum in commemoration of acts widely viewed as wrongful by their victims (obviously) and by others as having been unwise, is a considerable concession to, and first step in, changing the status quo. Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks are engaged in an ongoing dispute about wealth and power redistributions since 1945. It is only 20 years since Germany was reunited - the most unacceptable of the 1945 dispositions that forced half the country to live under realised socialism with a Wall to keep them from escaping their privations and brutalisation in every aspect of their lives; but for the millions involved in smaller disputes their fate is just as destructive, just as arbitrarily imposed.
When Poland argued that it was missing a large part of its population and should have its vote re-weighted to take this into account there was concerted poo-pooing of the quite reasonable view that to be deprived of people is as bad as to be deprived of land. Now the Czechs are being sneered at and told to hurry through their pointless objections to the opening of threats to fundamental democratic features like secure property rights. Yet the people on the other side of the Czech viewpoint, the Sudeten Germans - seem to be enjoying a considerable and formalised upsurge in government-backed support for their aims. Hungary and Slovakia are caught up in a different dispute but a dispute of a similar kind springing from the same source - the improper resolution of the consequences of the War.
If Lisbon does go through it will reopen, in one fell swoop, injustices that until now had no redress. President Klaus is trying to protect more than just his own country's interests but the Union itself in a form more appropriate to nation states so recently at determined odds with one another. No, not the War, but the consequences and longterm settlements of the War . There is more to fear from Lisbon than an extension of executive administrative power into our democracies.
The peoples forced to live under socialist regimes which deprived generations of decent lives having freed themselves, disgraceful walls or no disgraceful walls, those who suffered specific victimisation at the hands of the regimes in their countries will be a powerful force of disruption in a Lisbon-shaped Europe. Perhaps we should think less about representing Europe to the world with a president and a foreign minister and more about institutions and means for setting right the evils inflicted inside Europe on so many millions of its people since 1945. Lisbon is facing the wrong way, oriented to the wrong goals, and its provisions for internal settlement of relations within the Union are ill-conceived and will bring into being the very opposite of the ever closer union it pretends to champion.
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
The Embarrassing Irrelevance of Brown and New Labour
Brown's grandiloquence and silly claims on the recession are much more damaging for our country when looked at from Berlin. Repeatedly questions were asked on whether he had really said he had saved the world, had really claimed to have unique technical and intellectual economic insight that had enabled him to show the international economic community what was to be done, was really to go to the EU meetings at the end of this week to make proposals as to how Germany should conduct its economic and financial policies. For members of the German politico/academic/technical advisor class to be even posing such queries is astonishing. Courtesy, to office and extended to the individual occupying the office, is the watchword of German officialdom; they do not do needle, sneer, insinuation, put down. So asking was with serious intent, not smear by association.
Answering demanded the same standards and considerable care.
'Brown's barking,' would not have done. Even to have produced chapter and verse on barking manifestations would have produced intense embarrassment that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom should indulge in such inappropriate behaviour; embarrassment for the man, and concern that notions of the office might need extensive revision.
The best way to communicate the truth convincingly and acceptably seemed to be to start from familiar ground - the German (and the European) economy and what it faced in building an economic model for cohesive growth, post crisis. They could tell Angels comfortably about that - that's what they were there to discuss after all; and the 'what is good for Germany, is good ' is an intuitive stance for Germans. Then, as each aspect of this central theme was considered, the response that Brown and his henchmen were proposing could be set next to it.
It was a revelatory if horrid journey, particularly for the social democrats who viewed the Labour party as their natural associate, in how to act in response to the crisis and who to blame for what had happened.
The Europeans put emphasis on European rather than global institutions; the statistics coming from the EBRD as opposed to the IMF offer 'small but non negligible differences in the two sets of forecasts ', with sometimes lower falls in growth rates but slower recovery, and sometimes even worse falls and slower recovery offered by the IMF forecasters than by the EBRD.
The 'need to change its [european] growth model - away from reliance on easy finance and commodities, and towards the development of domestic financial markets, strong institutions and a diversified production base' (EBRD president Thomas Mirow, quoted from the FT September 2009) fits the German model, but not Brown's global rhetoric. The Europeans regretted the slowing down of convergence that had accompanied the Union enlargement, creating out of the crisis a reinforced heterogeneity of national performances within the EU.
An international stability pact, fiscal and monetary co-ordination, sustainability of the path chosen, exit strategies, ECB or IMF as lender of last resort - (problems for either but the ECB at least leaves national Central Banks to act to provide liquidity for their own national banks - hard to identify sometimes, but by and large, within central banks' powers - and capable of providing discretionary and informal interventions); at every turn the Brown regime's policy was at odds with a europeanist solution and designed for a meglomaniac vision of world governance.
Whatever might be the case about Brown's mental status, his inapproriate ideas (and policies) on economics and finance were fully pointed up in their rejection of a European and, more narrowly but most importantly, German stance.
Last weekend, too, the hotel was almost taken over by CDU delegates from all over Germany come to Berlin for the announcements on the newly-elected German government and the policies to be pursued. Getting to the lifts or even breakfast without being on the telly became an enterprise as television cameras portrayed talking heads from the coalition discussing tens of billions of Euros of tax cuts, new partnerships with Russia, the maintenance of a decent social welfare and health system even if there was to be a separate budget for extraordinary calls on welfare services. Nothing could have been more remote, more at odds, with everything Brown and his banana-waving Foreign Secretary stand for.
The English media may be bigging-up Brown and Blair's role and importance in Europe, but the impression gained on the spot was of irrelevance, dismissal, total isolation and, from social democrats, distress at the loss of a once important ally just as their star wanes across Europe.
Answering demanded the same standards and considerable care.
'Brown's barking,' would not have done. Even to have produced chapter and verse on barking manifestations would have produced intense embarrassment that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom should indulge in such inappropriate behaviour; embarrassment for the man, and concern that notions of the office might need extensive revision.
The best way to communicate the truth convincingly and acceptably seemed to be to start from familiar ground - the German (and the European) economy and what it faced in building an economic model for cohesive growth, post crisis. They could tell Angels comfortably about that - that's what they were there to discuss after all; and the 'what is good for Germany, is good ' is an intuitive stance for Germans. Then, as each aspect of this central theme was considered, the response that Brown and his henchmen were proposing could be set next to it.
It was a revelatory if horrid journey, particularly for the social democrats who viewed the Labour party as their natural associate, in how to act in response to the crisis and who to blame for what had happened.
The Europeans put emphasis on European rather than global institutions; the statistics coming from the EBRD as opposed to the IMF offer 'small but non negligible differences in the two sets of forecasts ', with sometimes lower falls in growth rates but slower recovery, and sometimes even worse falls and slower recovery offered by the IMF forecasters than by the EBRD.
The 'need to change its [european] growth model - away from reliance on easy finance and commodities, and towards the development of domestic financial markets, strong institutions and a diversified production base' (EBRD president Thomas Mirow, quoted from the FT September 2009) fits the German model, but not Brown's global rhetoric. The Europeans regretted the slowing down of convergence that had accompanied the Union enlargement, creating out of the crisis a reinforced heterogeneity of national performances within the EU.
An international stability pact, fiscal and monetary co-ordination, sustainability of the path chosen, exit strategies, ECB or IMF as lender of last resort - (problems for either but the ECB at least leaves national Central Banks to act to provide liquidity for their own national banks - hard to identify sometimes, but by and large, within central banks' powers - and capable of providing discretionary and informal interventions); at every turn the Brown regime's policy was at odds with a europeanist solution and designed for a meglomaniac vision of world governance.
Whatever might be the case about Brown's mental status, his inapproriate ideas (and policies) on economics and finance were fully pointed up in their rejection of a European and, more narrowly but most importantly, German stance.
Last weekend, too, the hotel was almost taken over by CDU delegates from all over Germany come to Berlin for the announcements on the newly-elected German government and the policies to be pursued. Getting to the lifts or even breakfast without being on the telly became an enterprise as television cameras portrayed talking heads from the coalition discussing tens of billions of Euros of tax cuts, new partnerships with Russia, the maintenance of a decent social welfare and health system even if there was to be a separate budget for extraordinary calls on welfare services. Nothing could have been more remote, more at odds, with everything Brown and his banana-waving Foreign Secretary stand for.
The English media may be bigging-up Brown and Blair's role and importance in Europe, but the impression gained on the spot was of irrelevance, dismissal, total isolation and, from social democrats, distress at the loss of a once important ally just as their star wanes across Europe.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
Celebrating the End of Realised Socialism
Angels are Lufthansa'd to Berlin tomorrow lunchtime so the only sound here will be of air streaming under and over wings. There is to be lots of talking about the fall of the Wall: more what it means now than what it meant then. It's all very interesting, and every morning there is proper breakfast and newspapers on sticks.
Hopes to frequent the Bauhaus archive, and drink lovely beers depend on just how interesting everyone is. There will be reports on all and everything worth mentioning.
Hopes to frequent the Bauhaus archive, and drink lovely beers depend on just how interesting everyone is. There will be reports on all and everything worth mentioning.
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Sketch of the Return of Democracy
Angels are constitutionalist in the sense of believing that any attempt at righting things by violent action will fail in the short term, any long term action would be long term destructive and, most importantly of all, the idea of violent action is a dampener on real and immediate action now - it is the 'I will do such things' syndrome.
We are wading thigh deep through the shards of our constitution, partly reduced to fragments by deliberate action - the implementation of the Regime's 'terrorism' agenda, partly collapsed by unseen consequences of clumsy and historically and politically ignorant 'reform' - the 'regionalisation' of the UK agenda resulting in the ruling Party actually undermining a large part of its own power base, as well as risking losing control over a healthy proportion of UK resources.
Unfortunately people really, really don't want to acknowledge this: being interested in the organisation of the state, its relations to the government and the governed, and how power is accessed and allocated is hardly a mainstream divertimento; what the pragmatics and cognition people call a'folk' understanding of these things prevails - ie:
democratically formed and run parties put up a manifesto and candidates, every few years we vote for the candidates who will put the manifesto into effect, often choosing the worst of two evils with a lot of grumbling, and then we leave them to it till next time and reward or punish them accordingly. Most of our lives are our private business anyway for us to get on with as we choose.
Except the government has identified itself with the state and, in Elby's memorable phrase, is all over us like a rash.
What is to be done? Make propaganda. Argue every toss, every lie and misrepresentation - for example consider the grotesque misrepresentation of what is going to happen to the English Opel/Vauxhall workers. Vote whenever an opportunity to vote cannot be suppressed. Engage in movements that want change in key points of the state system some of which can get quite charged; particularly over schooling; or some care quite a lot that there should be an end to the monarchy and the pretence that it has a purely ceremonial role as head of state. After all, who wants a purely ceremonial head of state? And who wants the head of government enveloping the non-ceremonial roles of head of state? At the same time be local, not local government so much as clubs, teams, churches, societies - be cultural, not overtly political; anything overtly political has long been subverted and you won't be getting the emails to the 'focus' groups and caucusing that precede any 'public' consultation. Argue all the time about poor service provision - not to the provider, pointless and now even illegal, but go to their professional body, to a solicitor, to the local paper, to the blogs, and with names and place of work and keep a note of everything said and done. Poke your nose into anything that is taking tax payer funding, which now includes many charitable front organisations. Don't confront, but seek redress for non performance. And try for targets you think you can hit, not a scattergun approach. After all, it's our money.
A horrid waste of life and time? Certainly. But that is how authoritarian realised socialism was brought down from within. From without of course the enormous pressures of economic failure, mass poverty next to obvious well being, and the support from outside of advanced capitalist democratic countries did as much. I wonder if the Regime's desperate pressure to deliver England into the EU might backfire quite badly; for the EU is not the left leaning authoritarian system they have produced so faithfully in England in readiness for joined up post democracy and permanent elites, but a centre right Union with much more powerful member states reinforced by their Lisbon-response updated constitutions. The EU relies on its member states to provide democracy within the loose federation of Europe, which is indeed an administrative organisation.
That England is suffering from such a devastating democratic deficit damages this over all structure of democratic member states operating a federalised administration, as well as weakening any influence England might have in federal forums. Either we will provide ourselves again with a proper balance of powers, a rule of law, protected civil liberties, and all the other normal institutions of a capitalist democratic state, or the EU's institutions, reflecting the kinds of democracy embodied in its member states, will fill the vacuum and provide them for us, red lines or no. And we will have a one size fits all kind of democracy instead of the elegance of our bespoke and subtly nuanced democratic dress so wantonly torn to pieces.
We are wading thigh deep through the shards of our constitution, partly reduced to fragments by deliberate action - the implementation of the Regime's 'terrorism' agenda, partly collapsed by unseen consequences of clumsy and historically and politically ignorant 'reform' - the 'regionalisation' of the UK agenda resulting in the ruling Party actually undermining a large part of its own power base, as well as risking losing control over a healthy proportion of UK resources.
Unfortunately people really, really don't want to acknowledge this: being interested in the organisation of the state, its relations to the government and the governed, and how power is accessed and allocated is hardly a mainstream divertimento; what the pragmatics and cognition people call a'folk' understanding of these things prevails - ie:
democratically formed and run parties put up a manifesto and candidates, every few years we vote for the candidates who will put the manifesto into effect, often choosing the worst of two evils with a lot of grumbling, and then we leave them to it till next time and reward or punish them accordingly. Most of our lives are our private business anyway for us to get on with as we choose.
Except the government has identified itself with the state and, in Elby's memorable phrase, is all over us like a rash.
What is to be done? Make propaganda. Argue every toss, every lie and misrepresentation - for example consider the grotesque misrepresentation of what is going to happen to the English Opel/Vauxhall workers. Vote whenever an opportunity to vote cannot be suppressed. Engage in movements that want change in key points of the state system some of which can get quite charged; particularly over schooling; or some care quite a lot that there should be an end to the monarchy and the pretence that it has a purely ceremonial role as head of state. After all, who wants a purely ceremonial head of state? And who wants the head of government enveloping the non-ceremonial roles of head of state? At the same time be local, not local government so much as clubs, teams, churches, societies - be cultural, not overtly political; anything overtly political has long been subverted and you won't be getting the emails to the 'focus' groups and caucusing that precede any 'public' consultation. Argue all the time about poor service provision - not to the provider, pointless and now even illegal, but go to their professional body, to a solicitor, to the local paper, to the blogs, and with names and place of work and keep a note of everything said and done. Poke your nose into anything that is taking tax payer funding, which now includes many charitable front organisations. Don't confront, but seek redress for non performance. And try for targets you think you can hit, not a scattergun approach. After all, it's our money.
A horrid waste of life and time? Certainly. But that is how authoritarian realised socialism was brought down from within. From without of course the enormous pressures of economic failure, mass poverty next to obvious well being, and the support from outside of advanced capitalist democratic countries did as much. I wonder if the Regime's desperate pressure to deliver England into the EU might backfire quite badly; for the EU is not the left leaning authoritarian system they have produced so faithfully in England in readiness for joined up post democracy and permanent elites, but a centre right Union with much more powerful member states reinforced by their Lisbon-response updated constitutions. The EU relies on its member states to provide democracy within the loose federation of Europe, which is indeed an administrative organisation.
That England is suffering from such a devastating democratic deficit damages this over all structure of democratic member states operating a federalised administration, as well as weakening any influence England might have in federal forums. Either we will provide ourselves again with a proper balance of powers, a rule of law, protected civil liberties, and all the other normal institutions of a capitalist democratic state, or the EU's institutions, reflecting the kinds of democracy embodied in its member states, will fill the vacuum and provide them for us, red lines or no. And we will have a one size fits all kind of democracy instead of the elegance of our bespoke and subtly nuanced democratic dress so wantonly torn to pieces.
Monday, 19 October 2009
A Referendum is not the Best Way for the United Kingdom to Control Lisbon
It is reasonable to assume that when the Czech Constitutional Court responds to the various objections to the Lisbon treaty it is considering currently (the Court convenes on 27 October but not necessarily to give all of its rulings) it will follow the example of the German Constitutional Court and require the strengthening of the Czech Constitution against invasion of Czech self determination by European Union powers while acknowledging broadly that the Lisbon Treaty is not inimical to the Czech Constitution.
This will reassure Czechs concerned about Lisbon's democratic deficit, restrict Lisbon-generated policies to review by Czech state institutions, and satisfy both the European Union federalists by permitting their beloved Treaty to go through, and President Klaus's popularly supported resistance to any real loss of Czech sovereignty.
When Germany was required to pass new laws restricting EU interference in the government of Germany, it was obvious that other member states would withold or reconsider their accession if there was constitutional weakness of their own state to be remedied. Ireland, in Angels' view unwisely, accepted assurances and promises of protocols attached to future treaties rather than adopting the German option of passing fresh constitution-reinforcing laws of their own. Slovakia has now announced that despite having signed Lisbon any concessions given to the Czech Republic, particularly on land and immediate post War resettlement, must be provided for Slovakia too. What Poland has wrung for its signature has not yet come out, but Lisbon was not signed for nothing.
For Prime Minister in waiting David Cameron there are now clear and valid pathways to altering the Lisbon settlement, both within the provision of a beefed-up United Kingdom Constitution, and by post accession adjustment to the Treaty.
This will reassure Czechs concerned about Lisbon's democratic deficit, restrict Lisbon-generated policies to review by Czech state institutions, and satisfy both the European Union federalists by permitting their beloved Treaty to go through, and President Klaus's popularly supported resistance to any real loss of Czech sovereignty.
When Germany was required to pass new laws restricting EU interference in the government of Germany, it was obvious that other member states would withold or reconsider their accession if there was constitutional weakness of their own state to be remedied. Ireland, in Angels' view unwisely, accepted assurances and promises of protocols attached to future treaties rather than adopting the German option of passing fresh constitution-reinforcing laws of their own. Slovakia has now announced that despite having signed Lisbon any concessions given to the Czech Republic, particularly on land and immediate post War resettlement, must be provided for Slovakia too. What Poland has wrung for its signature has not yet come out, but Lisbon was not signed for nothing.
For Prime Minister in waiting David Cameron there are now clear and valid pathways to altering the Lisbon settlement, both within the provision of a beefed-up United Kingdom Constitution, and by post accession adjustment to the Treaty.
Sunday, 18 October 2009
A Middle Class Life-Style is No Longer Available by Democratic Vote
A middle class life-style is no longer available to those on incomes of less than quarter of a million a year. Or to those who have not had the sense to go out and inherit something (as an irritated departing fiancee once put it to a puzzled friend wondering why he was getting dumped). Which is why Members of Parliament are getting so shirty about their 'expenses'.
Expenses are used to provide what is supposed to be the reasonable life style of an MP (again, taken as the reasonable lifestyle of a middle class professional). A house in the constituency, a pied a terre in very central London, staff for house cleaning, laundry, and maintenance including gardening, and enough in the way of wages to pay for school fees and health care, plus the pension supplements. This is the absolute minimum. A middle class life style until quite recently provided also regular journeys in considerable comfort, even by wagon lit, to continental Europe and good hotels or respectable villas in the south of France. (Well, S of F might stretch to including Florence, or even Rome provided nothing between Florence and Rome was counted). Boats and islands were upper class. Freebies, accompanied by wife (insistent, believe me) and/or current squeeze, de rigeur.
This vision (it was your Labour Leader who perpetrated a new meaning to the word 'vision' so no complaints from the back row)) has been promulgated by every propaganda tool - novels, biographies, poems, accounts.... throughout the 20th Century, even post 1945 - and 1945 should have put the kibosh on this nonsense if anything could.
What our 'representatives' in Parliament have been brought face to face with is inflation, (measuring the true rate of inflation has always been problematic: the choice of a basket of goods representative of purchasing power consumption; the weighting of prices insofar as we may choose the weight of the base year or of the current year; international comparisons - either exchange rates can be used for comparison or actual purchasing power exchange rates, again in terms of an arbitrary set of consumption goods, yadda yadda), meritocratic and global competition, and local taxation - just like all the rest of us. And, unlike some of us, they didn't have the sense to go out and inherit something, so busy were they in subscribing to the personally advantageous ideologies that offered egalitarianism, redistribution, the destruction of privilege (and votes) - and not to the values that yielded family, hard work applied to whatever natural endowments and aforesaid inheritance sense available, and individual self fulfilment.
Their response has been gaderene: the construction of an apparatchik caste created and supported by state authoritarian, not democratic, power.
Expenses are used to provide what is supposed to be the reasonable life style of an MP (again, taken as the reasonable lifestyle of a middle class professional). A house in the constituency, a pied a terre in very central London, staff for house cleaning, laundry, and maintenance including gardening, and enough in the way of wages to pay for school fees and health care, plus the pension supplements. This is the absolute minimum. A middle class life style until quite recently provided also regular journeys in considerable comfort, even by wagon lit, to continental Europe and good hotels or respectable villas in the south of France. (Well, S of F might stretch to including Florence, or even Rome provided nothing between Florence and Rome was counted). Boats and islands were upper class. Freebies, accompanied by wife (insistent, believe me) and/or current squeeze, de rigeur.
This vision (it was your Labour Leader who perpetrated a new meaning to the word 'vision' so no complaints from the back row)) has been promulgated by every propaganda tool - novels, biographies, poems, accounts.... throughout the 20th Century, even post 1945 - and 1945 should have put the kibosh on this nonsense if anything could.
What our 'representatives' in Parliament have been brought face to face with is inflation, (measuring the true rate of inflation has always been problematic: the choice of a basket of goods representative of purchasing power consumption; the weighting of prices insofar as we may choose the weight of the base year or of the current year; international comparisons - either exchange rates can be used for comparison or actual purchasing power exchange rates, again in terms of an arbitrary set of consumption goods, yadda yadda), meritocratic and global competition, and local taxation - just like all the rest of us. And, unlike some of us, they didn't have the sense to go out and inherit something, so busy were they in subscribing to the personally advantageous ideologies that offered egalitarianism, redistribution, the destruction of privilege (and votes) - and not to the values that yielded family, hard work applied to whatever natural endowments and aforesaid inheritance sense available, and individual self fulfilment.
Their response has been gaderene: the construction of an apparatchik caste created and supported by state authoritarian, not democratic, power.
A Musical Interlude
Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkanende, a possible European President, has denied that he is a contender, dismissing the claim as claptrap.
As any musician will tell you, 'clap trap' is a musical term. A common rhetorical device in baroque music (try Arcangelo Corelli, he uses it a lot) the soloist will play an elaborate and difficult passage followed by a concerted wind down from all the players and a marked pausa, at which point the audience bursts into applause offering encouragement for the soloist to do her party piece all over again.
None of us, the peoples of Europe, have been allowed into the concert of Europe after our behaviour in 2005 when the French insisted on singing the Marseillaise and the English were all lined up, large intake of breath taken, for a rousing chorus of God Save the Queen but hustled out of the concert hall before they got the chance.
We are in the pausa now. The English media is clapping wildly and, again as any musician will tell you, anything can happen in the second time around.
As any musician will tell you, 'clap trap' is a musical term. A common rhetorical device in baroque music (try Arcangelo Corelli, he uses it a lot) the soloist will play an elaborate and difficult passage followed by a concerted wind down from all the players and a marked pausa, at which point the audience bursts into applause offering encouragement for the soloist to do her party piece all over again.
None of us, the peoples of Europe, have been allowed into the concert of Europe after our behaviour in 2005 when the French insisted on singing the Marseillaise and the English were all lined up, large intake of breath taken, for a rousing chorus of God Save the Queen but hustled out of the concert hall before they got the chance.
We are in the pausa now. The English media is clapping wildly and, again as any musician will tell you, anything can happen in the second time around.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Presidents Klaus and Medvedev Shoulder to Shoulder in Moscow
President Vaclav Klaus's meetings with Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow today were said to be “timely and successful” by the Russian President.
At a press conference after the negotiations the Russian president thanked the Czech leader for the country’s EU successful presidency in the first half of the year, and credited the Czech Republic with the success of the Russia-European Union May summit in Khabarovsk. The Russian president was today discussing “economic projects and the ways out of the global economic crisis” with the President of the Czech Republic.
“We have a very good trade turnover, and despite the crisis we have a chance to increase it, though even now it amounts to billions of euros... Today we concluded a considerable number of contracts worth hundreds of million dollars...". Medvedev went on to emphasize that "Despite the crisis our relations are developing”.
"... economic cooperation with Russia is very important” for the Czech Republic replied President Klaus, adding “We will continue dialogue at the top political level”. (Tass)
Billions of euros of trade, new contracts for hundreds of millions, dialogue at the highest political level.... And they cut short journalists' questions as they were off to meet with Secretary of State Clinton, who is in Russia for bi-lateral talks. The United States has form on holding bi-lateral talks with EU member states and indeed with NATO member states when it has a different agenda from the EU or even NATO. Missile defence shields, and refurbishing the Polish army for instance, were both deals set up and cancelled (cancelled on unknown terms) without reference to NATO or the EU.
President Klaus may not be quite as 'very well, alone' as our media are hoping at the top of their old Europe, Lisbon Treaty voices, nor as vulnerable to disgraceful bullying and worthless promises as was poor Ireland.
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Members of Parliament Answer to Us, the Electorate
There should have been a general election called when the scale on which parliamentarary expenses were being abused became clear. Members of Parliament answer first to their electorate, not to their Party, not to themselves and, when they themselves are discovered to be greedy, venal, grasping to the point of fraudulence, not to some hastily constructed set of rules considered to be reasonable - or unreasonable for that matter..
In continuing to obstruct an election Brown obstructs justice as well as democracy.
In continuing to obstruct an election Brown obstructs justice as well as democracy.
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