Folie de Grandeur

A NATO Summit of Heads of State and Government will be held on 3–4 April 2009 in Baden-Baden and Kehl, Germany, and in Strasbourg, France. The meetings will be chaired by the NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. The President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Angela Merkel, will host the meetings.

'NATO summits are not regular meetings like the more frequent NATO ministerial meetings, but are important junctures in the alliance’s decision-making process a the highest level. Summits are often used to introduce new policy, invite new members into the alliance, launch major new initiatives, and build partnerships with non-NATO countries.' (Wikipedia).

At the last NATO Summit, Croatia and Albania were invited to join the alliance. A decision to review Georgia's and Ukraine's request to join the NATO Membership Action Plan in December 2008 was taken, and no doubt their membership will be up for consideration again at the Summit at the beginning of April, particularly in view of Georgia's offer of 400 'peace-keeping' troops to assist 'our NATO allies' in Afghanistan (reported by Tass today).

Why, then, is Gordon Brown calling a meeting of the G20, which is not held at head of state level but at Finance Minister and National Bank chairman level, on 2 April? After all, anything that could be discussed has been discussed in Rome this week at the G7. Everyone's attention will be concentrated on a crucial NATO Summit meeting, given the importance of relations with Russia for the new United States President and for the European Union, the discussions of secure energy supplies, and the relations between what used to be Soviet Asia and areas of tension and war abutting them.

Discussing global financial regulation (again) pales into insignificance beside the importance of settling secure energy supplies, and relations at every level between NATO, and NATO aspirant countries and their now powerful and volatile neighbours.

And why is Downing Street putting out press releases suggesting that the G20 meeting on 2 April is the first day of an ongoing meeting? It will start and finish on 2 April, no matter who turns up, which is still moot.

At a Downing Street press conference Brown 'released a blueprint that he hopes will ensure the meeting in London, which begins on 2 April, will be a success. "The Road to Recovery" details the measures needed to drag the world out of recession. He conceded that the London economic summit meeting in April needs to be the start of the global economic recovery. The G20 world leaders, including Barack Obama, were coming to Britain to work towards a "global deal and grand bargain," Mr Brown said... the world could then "move towards recovery in the next few months" if agreement was reached..... (Telegraph):
"If we can get that action in place and rebuild trust and confidence in the world economy then recovery will be quicker. That is why we are putting a lot of emphasis on the meeting on 2 April. If we can get agreement then that is a major step forwards...You can see this is a global problem and it cannot be solved without global action, international co-ordination. That is why I have been pressing so hard that some of the measures we have adopted in Britain we can persuade other countries to adopt... That is what is at the crux and how we can move towards recovery in the next few months."

That's quite an agenda for an afternoon meeting.

What with one half of the Executive leadership of New Labour effing and blinding his way round New York receptions because one of his hosts points out our economy is collapsing, and the other making these kind of grandiose claims for what he intends to do after reducing it to the unemployment-ridden, bankrupt, credit-starved rubble we live in, surely the time has come for the country to be consulted on who governs or even just who represents us to others.

The Puncturing of New Labour's Ugly Balloon

What's the matter with deflation? It's nice to go to the shops and find prices have fallen. With no debt and a fixed income you are a net gainer and laughing all the way from the bank. Many people are on both earned and fixed income, as well, so things compensate.

Of course those in debt find themselves with a higher debt burden in real terms unless their interest rate falls faster than the price level. But debt can be paid off faster, as a priority. If none of your income is fixed then lower prices will mean lower income and lower asset values - falling prices are usually the result of low demand relative to capacity, a lower level of activity, and lower levels of employment. But if your only income is earned then debt needs to be very carefully considered, and represent only a small proportion of outgoings before being undertaken.

Never-ending economic growth as another pillar of economic policy hasn't done the Earth much good either.

All in all New Labour's economic and political goals and means are destructive of lives and destructive of the planet.

How Rude. How Typical of Brown

Pope Benedict XVI is to give an audience to Gordon Brown in Rome on Thursday.

Mr Brown's spokesman told reporters that the 'British' prime minister was travelling to Rome primarily to meet Mr Berlusconi, currently chairman of the G7 group of industrialised nations. He has made it clear (to use New Labour-speak) that the Vicar of Christ will be fitted in before the Italian prime minister.

One-eyed, Scottish, Protestant idiot.

Jowell's 'Husband' Found Guilty of Corruption

Antonio Di Pietro, leader of Italia dei Valori, says it straight:

"Se Mills è stato condannato in quanto 'corrotto' significa che abbiamo un corrotto, ma anche un corruttore." If Mills is guilty of corruption then it means we have someone corrupt. But also that we have a corrupter.

We have also a need to know where that $600,000 - the sum Mills was paid to corrupt his evidence to an Italian court - was taken to, what means were used to get it there, and who was involved in facilitating the transfer of the proceeds of corruption.

Update

Mills still says he didn't do it, despite his conviction. He says it was a big boy who ran away. Well, he might be right in there being a bigger boy who ran away involved.

Setting Scotland and England Free of Labour Rule

Putting up with subsidising Scotland is becoming far too expensive. Most Scottish people would like Scottish independence. Most English people would like Scottish votes, over matters wholly within Scottish control in Scotland, withdrawn. None of us are happy with the Union. We want it recast as a much looser federal and geopolitical liaison.

The only beneficiary of the Scottish/English union in its current form is the Labour party. That alone is enough for most of us to see red. Scotland can take back its MPs, its demands on the English tax-payer, and its core Labour client voters. It can take its oil fields too. England can be rid of the ridiculous Labour inheritance and get on with being a modern state. As for the oil fields, no doubt something can be worked out without having to share a bed with the corpse of socialism.

And as far as the Trident nuclear deterrent is concerned, seeing as it seems to be impossible to share the Atlantic with the French navy perhaps it would be best to close down the programme as it draws to the end of its useful life, and hold England's nuclear strength in some other way. After all, other forms of nuclear investment are to be centred on England.

Enough is enough with Scotland. They want out and so do we. Who cares that it will result in the dismemberment of an authoritarian, unelected, bankrupt regime.

Boys' Toys and Boys' Games

How could two submarines each 'nearly the length of two football pitches and the height of a three-storey building' (Independent) not manage to co-exist in the planet's second largest ocean? Both are equipped with the most advanced detection equipment that is capable, we are told, of distinguishing other objects down to a small fish. So it should have been able to manage to distinguish such a nuclear-armed submarine.

The Independent also notes that nuclear-armed submarines have favourite 'nesting places' where they can rest silently in the ocean while still within range of their putative targets.

Was this a parking dispute? It's certainly not Acacia Avenue and a couple of tired neighbours. Vanguard and Triomphant each carry 16 intercontinental missiles, armed with between six and eight warheads. Triomphant was at the end of a tour of duty when the collision removed its sonar dome. Both navies practise continuous patrols - at least one nuclear-armed submarine is on patrol 365 days a year. It's beginning to look as if the English submarine found someone in its usual place and tried to hurry things along.

Ending Universal Suffrage

Conservative positions in the political opinion polls are consistent. Considered within the context of a general election held at some point between now and June 2010, analysts agree that Brown will lead the Labour party into the next election, and lead it to a much worse defeat than any other Leader. It is argued, too, that internal Labour substitution of yet another prime minister on the strength of Blair's majority would be unacceptable; not least because circumstances are now so remote from those of 2005 that only a general election can offer choice between manifestos.

Yet Blair's assertion that New Labour is nothing less than the political arm of the British people should not be forgotten or dismissed. A central tenet of the New Labour project is that power should remain permanently within the coalition that makes up the Party; that challenges to the policies of the Leader and Executive should be expressed within the Party when policies fail or become too unpopular in the country. It is this position that validated the parachuting of Brown and his faction into the government of the United Kingdom without any consultation by ballot of either Party or country.

It is a mark of the regime holding power in our country that it is impervious to all and any revelation or event confirming the seamless incompetence veined with corruption that is its principle characteristic. Mass unemployment, the collapse of sterling, bank nationalisation preceded by insolvencies, grotesque levels of public and private debt, and individual corrupt practices by members of the legislature and government appointees; the stripping of power from the Parliament and the destruction of the rule of law together with citizens' liberties; illegal wars and torture; the destruction of the education system and of individual self -respect through the imposition of means-tested mass welfare with its accompanying moral hazard and social corrosiveness. Any of this should have brought a government to its knees, and to the polls.

Yet it has not. A major reason it has not is the settled, primary acceptance that there should be no polls in the form that once was used under a Constitution that has been altered whenever New Labour chose, and as grossly as was required for their purposes. The Parliament Acts are quite as vulnerable as habeas corpus (to mention just one of the pieces of constitutional vandalism we have suffered).

The experience of an election can be produced by the choosing of a replacement for Brown, if he can be ousted by other Labour factions. The ousting will, of itself, provide some feeling that necessary change has been effected. The choosing will not be extended to those who do not belong to or support the Party of course. The Labour party rules state that in the event of a Leader becoming permanently unavailable (which offers particularly face-saving ill health) while the Party is in power, then the cabinet will choose a new prime minister to serve until party elections can take place. The Labour party's electoral practice is grossly undemocratic, with its electoral colleges wielding differently weighted votes, quite apart from having a tiny electorate in comparison with the electorate in the country at large. Furthermore constitutional changes within the Party under New Labour have insulated the ruling elite from any pressures coming from the 'mass' Party. Just as we watch the state claw powers from independent institutions to itself, so we are watching the insulated New Labour Executive identify itself with the state and its powers.

The New Labour regime has fifteen months before its last perfidy, the destruction of universal suffrage, must be put into effect, and face the anger this will cause when it is fully understood. It is well prepared. It has instituted all the civil control mechanisms that will be needed and will have the advantage of causing all opposition to be, by definition, illegal. The petty discourtesies persisted in by their current Leader towards the extra-Party opposition, through to the abuses of constitutional practice already taking place in denying information and consultation to Opposition parties, are nasty confirmation that we live in a post-democratic state.

Publish Gordon Brown's Annual Health Check and Medication

'It is U.S. tradition for sitting presidents to make public the results of their annual health exams.' (Wikinews)

Every year the annual health check on the United States president is published. Even minor recommendations are set out. In 2005, for instance, it was suggested that President George W. Bush would benefit from using sunscreen but was otherwise in excellent health, as was attested in great detail.

It is time that Gordon Brown, as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had his most recent health exam published, and all recommended medication set out clearly for the electorate to see, as well as an account of his condition. We know the precise health condition of the President of the United States but for our own prime minister, of whose health and medication there has been considerable and longstanding concern, we are kept in ignorance.

The Transition in Reverse

The economic theory of markets in which markets are competitive, the hayekian notion that markets are based on the division of knowledge, on a need-to-know status, so that there is nobody who has to know everything and plan, holds; markets that are self-regulated in the interests of all contractors who will avoid excesses by disciplining themselves, markets complete in the sense that they span dated commodities over any period, so that if current goods are not bought future goods will be demanded activating their production today, and complete in the sense that future commodities can be traded always, as well as contingent commodities, at different prices according to the state of the world, is a model. All models are invalidated by reality. Though a world of tranquility will avoid the inefficiencies of imperfect competition, the disruptions of uncertainty and risk, expectations that can be wrong or self-fulfilling, the instability of fluctuations and panic, it must be acknowledged that reality rarely conforms to models, or prescriptions based on them.

Current reality in England is unprecedented and cannot be analysed by any standard economic model. Despite comparisons with the great depression of the early 20th century the truth is that no society has been in the condition of bankruptcy of all major financial institutions and near complete unavailability of credit. The current social calm hides the capacity for a great outburst of violence when the numbers of unemployed rise high enough - new unemployed, that is, not those lost client souls who eke out their lives on a modest state income and think it clever.

Hayek's belief that the division of knowledge is as crucial as the division of labour for causing an economy to work without a central role for the state and to underpin democracy is a political and moral assertion, as well as part of the modelling of the economic theory of markets. And the crisis we are living through is a political and moral crisis. Economic and financial breakdown is merely the manifestation of antidemocratic and politically immoral stances effected and driven by the New Labour regime.

Far worse than attempting to shore up debt with more debt in response to the economic and financial manifestations of our collapse, is the pushing of state interference further and further into the arena of market decision-taking and the assertion of the role of the omniscient planner.

We are on a terrible journey back to the past. Not the past of the great Depression of 1929 but the past of centrally planned economies and 'realised socialism' - and not the realised ideals of socialism but the really existing grey horrors of eastern Europe from 1945 to 1989.

Plus One

Attention should be turned on the (usually) women who are beneficiaries of the freebies culture. There is a shamelessness in accepting hospitality, tickets, hotel stays, travel, food and drink and even specially laid on entertainment for accompanying 'wives'.

Often distinction tends to come with age and a travelling companion becomes a necessity. Those expenses must be met. But for all the rest of them, the freeloaders, if they want to go to a conference, dinner, employees' outing of any kind - earn the invitation, give a paper, hold a job that justifies inclusion at the gathering, or pay.

Lying in Whitehall

Riding along in the 24 we could hear a pin-striped loud-mouth to his mobile,

'sorry, sorry - be there soon, I'm in a cab...'

the whole deck turned to remark as one,

'No he's not, he's on the bus!'

The London G 20 Meeting is a Waste of Time

Horribly apparent is the utter inapproprietness of holding the G20 meeting in London on 2 April. What might have been said on the need for a global response to the 2009 Depression was said in Washington last year. There is only one purpose to the London meeting - getting a boost for the Saviour of the World.

Were President Sarkozy an Angel, he would summon the leaders of important economies and financial institutions and host them in Paris (so much lovelier a city in early Spring than London, indeed the City of Light is infinitely more attractive than London always). This would have the enormous advantage of inviting those who matter rather than those who want to, and would be convenient for the next day meetings of NATO without experiencing the infinite pain of getting on and off the United Kingdom mainland. After all, now Banana Boy has started refusing admittance to EU member-state members of parliament (and to Angel's domestic help, grrrr there's enough to do without doing it all myself) who knows who else might be turned back at Heathrow?

It is encouraging that the President of the United States may well not attend. Come on the rest of you, drop Gordon.

London Transports

Contrary to economic theory umbrellas do not cost any more when it rains than when it is sunny: 5 euros/pounds is clearly the umbrella natural price, although umbrellas are the typical contingent good, whose utility varies with the state of the world.

I confess I bought a pretty pink umbrella lined with pale yellow silk and embroidered with tiny golden stars in the shop opposite the British Museum, which didn't cost that, but after the brownian weather of the last month I would buy a sedan chair if the place offered them. What's with the rickshaws? Sedans are what is needed for London.

A Ragpickers' Economy

This toxic hulk is what is to provide work for the once-proud shipbuilders of the North East. Two hundred of them can risk their health, their lives, and that of their families and neighbours dismantling and disposing of a French decommissioned aircraft carrier.

Not build a new aircraft carrier for the French or, for that matter, the English navy. The French aircraft carrier order has gone to French shipyards, the English aircraft carrier order has been cancelled by New Labour's puppet regime. England could have le dernier cri in aircraft carriers supplied by United States' builders for around 15 billion pounds. But there are banks to be 'bailed out', bonuses to be paid, interests to be satisfied.

It could be seen as a judgement on Hartlepool. After all, their voters actually returned a toxic Mandelson to the House of Commons. Now even a twice-disgraced, ermine-clad sneak has no further use for their industrial skills or even their votes. They are abandoned to pick over Europe's industrial and democratic detritus.

Carthage

The scorched earth policy being put into effect by New Labour and their glorious New Leader was recognised from the moment of the defenestration of Blair. It had been going on for years previously with Brown installed permanently at the Treasury, but was masked by Blair's electoral appeal as 'a pretty straight kind of guy' - so very different from the kind of guy next door.

Now Brown has ploughed over the ruins of the City and is sowing the fields with salt.

New Openings for 'British' Workers

The Leader of New Labour and Saviour of the World has a real time opportunity to provide employment for hard-working families during the global downturn that started in America.

In a neat solution to tackling the effects of global warming and at the same time resolving the opposition to rendition and anonymous detention without charge for months or even years on end, salt mines throughout the United Kingdom are to be reopened. Importing salt from mines in the former Soviet Union will be avoided. Those hardworking families who fail to express a high enough level of admiration and support for the Leader and his regime cronies, or engage in actual criticism, can be re-educated and gainfully employed in a tried and tested indigenous environment for the recovery of a correct attitude to the state and its goodness.

Does New Labour Intend to Have German Troops Stationed In England?

The Merkel-Sarkozy joint statement ahead of the Munich Security Conference this weekend raises the United Kingdom regime attitude and intentions towards the establishment of a European security force.

'Security policy must be interpreted in a new and broader way," Merkel and Sarkozy said. They went on to associate the centre piece of Brown's claim to world economic leadership during the depression - a joint approach to installing global financial architecture- to joint security policy. And associated jointly securing energy supplies and a joint approach to population migration with cooperation on military security.

The need for Europe and the US to deepen their cooperation given the new risks they face in the 21st century means:

" joint analysis, decision-taking and implementation. Unilateral steps would contradict the spirit of this partnership. But it also means that we Europeans must speak even more with one voice, which requires a strong measure of discipline from the member states," (quoted in Der Spiegel).

"We must further bundle and increase our capabilities, both civilian and military. The synergy between both is the trademark of European security policy."

German troops are to be stationed on French soil for the first time since the Second war. Could it be that Brown's pursuit of his global vision will see German troops stationed in England too, only he hasn't seen fit to mention that that is part of the price of conceding him the role he yearns for?

The Dishonesty of the BBC, and la Cattedra

The resentful lament that he had to accept contract employment, from a Scottish teacher of English as a foreign language in Milan has received minutes of air time. Presented as a counter- weight to the unpleasant anti Italian feeling being given voice, this whining was wholly unfounded. First, if that man is teaching English it must be said that his accent left a lot to be desired.

More importantly the outrageous pretension to a permanent teaching post in the Italian university to be secured on the basis of his 'qualifications' had to be heard to be believed. Everyone has qualifications - the highest possible qualifications; effectively so many have the highest qualifications it would be best to think of the situation as being that nobody has qualifications. And a post as a university teaching officer is hardly comparable to that of an oil rig worker either.

La cattedra is the object of lifetimes of study, manoeuvres, working for free, cultivation of political and social contacts, and is wholly in the patronage of the baroni - the senior professors who move throughout Italy, and in and out of other major establishments of the Italian state, appointing permanent senior staff.

It is simply dishonest of the BBC to air this man's silly claims on the grounds of whatever diploma he holds as evidence that the Italians discriminate against 'British' workers. Italian universities discriminate against all and anybody who has not fulfilled the real requirements. And Scotsmen who don't understand the world do not fulfil the requirements here any more than they do in London.

Chains

What could it cost to have a set of chains for every bus? Easy to store, eternal, non-polluting (unlike salt and grit), absolute guarantee of viability in any weather conditions London might face. Florence buses have chains. They all run when it snows, which is about as often as it snows in London.

Honestly. We must pull ourselves together.

Wild Life in WC1

There were foxes playing in the snow here, in St George's Gardens, late last evening - so pretty, but perhaps we should form the Handel Street Hounds.

Team Work

The trouble over foreign skilled labour has deeper import than just concern about damage to English workers from European regulation or the use of imported labour to undercut wages and conditions.

Skill is about more than an apprenticeship served and work experience gained. There are skills held within the team of workers that belong only to the team, not to the individual worker. The culture of this higher order of skill is very strong in Italy, and is strongly encouraged from earliest school on through post-school professional and technical training, to specific preparation for a range of skilled work undertakings. The team is not concerned with where it works, it will have little interaction with the place where an installation, building, plant, process is being put in place. All of that aspect is dealt with by management - housing, catering, health care, entertainment will be provided at an agreed standard, as will equipment including clothing and all tools, as well as intensive prior training on any special requirements of a particular job. Social interactions, the world of family, friendships, private life arrangements remain at home, as do all the politics and negotiating of terms of work.

Labour is homogenised, packaged, honed and delivered. It cannot be surprising that there are economies both external and of scale that undercut any heterogeneous, undirected, disorganised labour offer, no matter how individually skilled, without any undercutting of local wages and conditions rates.

Labour delivered 'all'Italiana' undermines so many values and practices embodied in labour relations and their interweaving with local life and locally based industry. It also lays bare the irrelevance of much New Labour policy - educational, work and training, and as for social policies - where do you start?

Fragile and Failing Strategic States

Whatever is going on in Ukraine, it is not good to cut off the electricity to major military bases. It is not good to cut off the electricity to minor military institutions and deposits either, but that is less worrying than strategic-base cut offs. The sums owed seem trifling, all well under 5000 US dollars, so the assumption must be that the administration of a large country on the borders of the European Union and Russia is descending into a chaos from which even its defence systems are not spared.

There is a lot of war material lying about in Ukraine, despite the excellent job done by Russia after the Soviet Union break up. Should there be some consideration of the management of Ukraine's state fragility as there is of Pakistan's?

Update

'President Yushchenko has just received reports from the Prosecutor General and the Defence Minister on the situation of electricity supplies to military facilities, according to the President`s press-office.'

The officials informed the President that at 17.30 the supply of electricity to all strategic units of the Ukrainian military has been restored.

Earlier the Defence Minister had explained 'The bills have not been paid because we don't have any money.' The weapons these people are running around with really need to be under better control than this.

The Leadership We Need

A lot more fun than Davos. And they are all into gold, just look at them. Let's hope they will be at the Munich Security Conference next week.

Selling the Powers and Influence of Our State

The laughing and rounds of applause over dinner as Peter Truscott's curriculum was read out from The Usual Source should chill the heart of any real Labour supporter.

"Upon completion of his doctorate, Truscott became a political organiser for the Labour Party'.

And he's off! we shriek. Next we reckon he should become a Councillor (as it turns out for Colchester). The Essex location is a bonus, but anywhere in England will do.

We thought to parachute him into the House after that, but although he contested Torbay in the 1992 general election ('we're alright, yer alright,' we howl) sadly he confirms his worth, and betrays our enthusiasm, by coming in a miserable third with only 9.59% of the votes cast.

What can we do for Peter? we cry in our right-on New Labour personas, seeking to fulfil the 'all shall have prizes' agenda. Of course - he can go on to the European Parliament, how about Hertfordshire? (none of these northern exiles for our boy) and, oh joy, he did, from 1994 to 1999. There he spoke for us all on foreign affairs and defence until 1999 when, once again the real cruel world slashed his worth. Peter failed to win re-election to the European Parliament.

Some diners are begining to look askance at Peter; how many times, they are asking. "Come On!' the rest of us cry. 'He couldn't grovel harder if he dug a trench'. 'Give a groveller a bone'.

So he was ennobled and need never face the hurly burly of democratic choosing and judgement again.

As Baron Truscott of St James's he can play with his apostrophes and sell his powers as a member of England's legislature to keep himself so richly undeservedly. Until we rip up this pretence of a constitution under which we suffer, and put on trial those who practice the sale of the powers with which we have entrusted them.

Cast Out

The small brother and sister to be sent for adoption outside their family when their grandparents wish to bring them up are an indictment of the false values embodied in our social services.

Grandparents, even when the grandmother is only 46, are not like parents, they are an alternate generation and act very differently from parents. However, the least we might expect a 'social' service to do is provide support to a family disrupted by the long term unavailability of the mother. Infants so disadvantaged are cared for in most societies by grandparents or parents' siblings - indeed by all of them. They are never put out of the family.

We know this, we all know this because this is really our culture too. Which raises the question of what kind of people would seek to persist in adopting these children in the face of their own family's efforts to bring them up, and determined opposition to their being removed to the care of strangers?

A better explanation than not commenting on specific instances, which could be cast in the most general terms, had better be offered soon or a great deal of damage will be done to potential adopters of all kinds and, worse, irreversible damage could be done to these two small children.

Pretty in Pink

Haute couture causes raised hackles. To confess to having even looked is to be found guilty of heartlessness, callous disregard for the straits many are in, encouragement of economic vampirism, lack of empathy, an inappropriate attitude, and greed, and worse. Which isn't fair.

Few of us will have the opportunity to wear haute couture, and even fewer of us would have the occasion or the panache, yet it reaches into all our lives at a very personal level. Like all art, it speaks of, embodies, beauty - and we all know what beauty is. Which is why it arouses such fierce responses. One of which can be 'That is ridiculous - no real person could wear that!'
Of course not. Haute couture does not necessarily present a holistic image. It may be exploring and representing any aspect of line, colour, surface, light, depth, texture, and their concerns with movement, and interaction with us.

The work is one of many hands, many craftspeople and minor artists, under the command of the maestro, the designer. Perhaps it is this that arouses the set of resentful passions, that there is a necessary hierarchy. There is no egalitarianism in art but infinite and fine ranking - which ranking we can all discern, and which confers authority and esteem in different measure. There is better and best.

The opera that is this lovely dress and wearer is as beyond the reach of Angels as playing the Goldberg Variations. But I can look, and feel, and understand the mastery of some of it.

And just as I might be able to pick out the Theme to the Air, perhaps a little rouching on a summer skirt, a halter top with tight, flowered bodice, could be found.

Would Brown Resign the Leadership After Defeat in a General Election?

Conservatives being 15 points ahead of Labour has set off another flurry of discussion on Brown's continued leadership of the Labour party. Most commenters think it is unlikely a Labour leader who is prime minister will be unseated by his party - an eminently reasonable point of view considering the only way to do it would be by persuading him to voluntarily resign. Brown? Resign off his own bat?

So the interesting questions are two:

will he attempt to avoid calling a general election in which he will be defeated? Will he resign the leadership of the Labour party after defeat?

Most commenters again believe it most unlikely that Brown will subvert what remains of the British constitution and simply go on and on. Yet precedents for going on and on do exist, particularly in times of national crisis and great external threat. The last was the Second war. Then there was a National government or, to be more specific, a Conservative government with some Labour party ministers serving under a Conservative prime minister and at his invitation.

The emphasis put upon the foreign nature of the crisis by Brown, that all the damage is arriving from outside, may not be just self-serving excuses-seeking. It establishes the scenario of 'Britain' under severe external threat. The invitations ( some of which were, to their shame, accepted by members of other parties) to serve in a Brown government caused surprise at the time but perhaps should be seen in the context of an embryo national government, a small try-out for later expansion. As should the use of appointing technical advisers to the Lords (and twice-sacked, unelectable politicians) and then to government roles that until the very recent past would have been required to be held by people elected to and answerable in the Commons. It should be remembered, too, that there is a great deal of legislation passed by New Labour to control civic protest and very little redress available within our constitution when it is not honoured in its spirit.

Assuming, though, that Brown does go to the country, and loses, there is no reason to believe that he will resign the leadership. There is every reason to think he will not. The crumbs of shadow office are better than nothing at all, for him and for his henchmen, and they will not want to let go their tight grip on the Labour party - their only vehicle for a return to power in four or five years. Yes, Brown has had word put out that he would serve only one full parliament, but Brown is a proven liar. And what is true of him does not bind the rest of them; they will be even more determined, if that were possible, to keep what they can hold.

Of course, electoral failure will remove many from the House of Commons, particularly Scottish Westminster MPs, but the savage rending and fighting that will break out when Brown closes his fist round the leadership of the Labour Party will put him in his element. He has proven that he cannot run a financial and economic system for toffee, but equally he has proven that the bottom-feeders' wasteland of Labour party politics is his element.

If many in the Labour party want him out, they should go for him now, by all and any means, and ensure that their defeat is limited in scope under a more acceptable leader and that they are a more electable and united Opposition with a decent chance in 2015.

The Deindustrialisation of the United Kingdom

Kenneth Clarke is being laid back about the New Labour government having to go to the IMF for funding in the face of massive deficits and few takers for UK debt. The manner possibly covering a higher level of concern than he chooses to make public. But there is a far worse aspect to the incredible economic shambles Brown personally, and New Labour collectively, have led us into.

Steelmaking, car production, ship building, machine tools, aircraft production - week after week the numbers going onto short time working or into redundancy mount. These industries were already gravely weakened by an economic regime that had neither concern nor interest for their well being. Once closed they will not be re-established in our country again. Why bother when there will be excess capacity far into the future across the world.

There are many reasons why the UK is least ready to face recession but the under -defended industrial and manufacturing sectors loss will probably do the most permanent damage to our living standards, for good.

Parents and Pupils Like Grammar Schools

Taking the English education system lying down is one of the constants of life in the UK - among others are outrageously high taxes and self-serving public health provision. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator has ruled that three grammars in Rugby cannot take pupils from nearby Northamptonshire because doing so undermines comprehensives there. Apart from wondering why the comprehensives of Northamptonshire are more deserving of protection than those of Warwickshire, there is no reason for assuming that grammar schools damage comprehensive schools that is remotely acceptable.

Grammar schools offer a curriculum and classroom environment, as well as a school ethos of commitment to academic work that is prized by parents and beneficial to pupils. Why else are pupils travelling to such schools from as much as 20 miles away daily to benefit from their competence as schools? Why don't the comprehensive schools offer the same? It is not true that only middle class children attend grammar schools, or that only the cleverest are there, or that poor people are excluded. It is outrageous that these kinds of criticisms are levelled constantly at some of the most conscientious and caring schools in the country.

Nor should one group of pupils ever be used to pull other groups along, for that is what the adjudicator's ruling that the Warwickshire schools' decision to recruit across the county boundary turned some Northamptonshire schools into "de facto secondary moderns", means. Influence can go in both directions, and denying formal schooling in the interest of social caring in a school is dereliction of the duty of a school to teach, and damages children's learning. The argument that travelling to school involves social discrimination is false too. Many children live on excellent travel routes that cross county boundaries and can access a grammar school as easily as an in-county child.

The entrance tests for grammar schools are nothing more than an attempt to ensure that children entering the school have been properly taught in their primary schools; no school, comprehensive or grammar, enjoys the two year waste of time employed in remedial teaching between the ages of eleven and thirteen, so that GCSE teaching can then begin. Again the attitude that school is a substitute for family life corrupts the purpose of school and discrimates against those children happy to learn.

If the ruling is applied nationwide ' it would have a colossal impact as a lot of youngsters go to grammar schools outside their local education authority area.' the National Grammar Schools Association said. So when are the unwanted comprehensive schools going to be required to provide the education so many parents do want and stop wasting tax payers' money, while denigrating schools that are functioning as schools rather than as childcare facilities?

New Labour Must Now Ask Us What We Want To Do In the Face of Brown's Failures

No-one wants to touch 'Brown's Britain' with a barge pole.

'Outstanding loans to UK banks by overseas institutions fell some 20 per cent in the four months to November alone, according to data from the Bank of England. Market loans and holdings of certificates of deposit have roughly halved in that time, as have deposits at UK building societies, while European bank holdings of UK bank commercial paper are off by a third. (Financial Times). It is very disturbing that 'the data show that the drop in lending has been particularly sharp from banks based in other EU member states.'

The pretence that it is within the New Labour government’s competence to increase the flow of funds to companies is shown up. The chancellor has admitted that the denial of foreign lending greatly restricts the possibility of the extension of credit to British businesses by United Kingdom banks. Worse, this confirmation of the Brown-led New Labour government's pariah status not just internationally but within the European Union, with whom we are supposed to have the closest of ties and common interest, raises the question of to whom we will be forced to turn, and the severity of the measures we will be forced to implement, eventually.

The unconscionable impropriety of refusing to go to the country and seek a mandate from the electorate, so that foreign lenders might be reassured that the UK government has the enthusiastic support of the people of this country, destroys the last claim that there is any similarity whatever between the policies of the United States and those of Brown's desperate regime. There is no resemblance to either American political conditions, or to American financial and economic circumstances; the claim that Brown's policies are leading the world, including the United States, are even more ill-founded than the widespread ridicule for them measures.

The Damage New Labour is Inflicting is Increased By its Refusal to Go to the Country

Curiously the only thing that is saving the country from immediate financial and economic collapse is the belief of foreign creditors that there will be a replacement of the New Labour government at the very latest in something over a year. Or more probably much sooner than that. Sooner, because in any democratic state with a less informal constitution, a government would have fallen when Blair was overthrown and replaced with a faction promising a total break with past policies that the electorate had voted for. Even countries with fixed- term parliaments would have had to go to the polls when a replacement coalition displayed these levels of incompetent change, and the coalition broke apart; not least because most legislatures are not in such a broken-down and cowed state as ours.

Should fears that New Labour will attempt to hold on to power, by the use of notional national governments, or the misapplication of the Civil Contingencies Act, gain any ground then the exit from the United Kingdom of all foreign capital, which is already under way, will reach warp speed.

Brown and New Labour's improper insistence on remaining in office, though without the least capacity to undo the damage they have done, is already attracting discussion in the foreign press. The precise length of time that must elapse before some semblance of competent government can be put in place by the electorate of the United Kingdom is playing its part now in the sliding confidence of the rest of the world.

New Labour at Bay

The government of the United Kingdom has now lost contact with democracy completely. An unelected prime minister, backed by a party funded by public sector trade unions, and surrounded by a cabal of advisers and appointees is indebting us all for almost a trillion pounds with no intention whatever of consulting the electorate on his repeated failures to run a sound economic policy.

The aggression displayed towards Iceland in listing it among terrorist organisations and sequestering its banks trading in the United Kingdom makes plain that the powers to act with authoritarian arbitrariness are there to be used in circumstances very different from their ostensible purpose when they were driven through our Parliament. Any attempt to protest this regime is going to be met with the same levels of aggression and vindictiveness.

Foreign policy is floating in a miasma of delusion and indecision. The main goal has been to reach the inauguration of the new American president in the unfounded belief that the United States will follow policies that will vindicate the failing policies that are destroying our country's future. When this vision of the future is dispelled as completely as every other part of Brown's vision, we will have to recognise that we live in a deindustrialised, poverty-stricken, under-developed country, whose post-democratic administration will be as an uninfluential, peripheral region of Europe. In the mean time we must go through years of depression while New Labour's madness unravels.

Leader's Lobes Revealed

Widespread discussion of the Leader's state of mind has persisted over the years, even before last year's Assumption into his Rightful Position.

Angels shows here what we are dealing with.

The two sides of the nine inch brain - one and a half times normal life size - are joined together by a zip with the cerebellum knitted in blue and spinal cord trailing off in white strands of wool

(Photo: Barcroft Media, in the Telegraph)

Sailing, We Are Sailing

New Labour will send warships to the eastern Mediterranean say headlines in the Telegraph.

It's getting pretty crowded there. Unfortunately the English navy (whatever fleet) didn't post pictures of the warships setting sail.

Pictures of the relevant Russian fleet have been posted earlier. (see: Penniless and Defenceless Under New Labour 5 January 2009).



This is a picture of the Italian aircraft carrier that dominates the Mediterranean.

Global Warming

The canals have frozen hard in Holland. As one the Dutch have slid out on to the ice, indulging their national passion for slipping through the landscape, contemplative and alone, or visiting with friends by the shortest route. Evidently it is more than a decade since the canals resumed their historic winter role.
A glance at Dutch painting shows that the way to a Dutchman's heart is via a frozen canal.

Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?

New Labour is not governing the United Kingdom any more.

Tens of thousand are put out of work each week, hundreds of thousands put onto short time or told to stay at home indefinitely. Plant lies idle. Docks and disused airfields are packed with unsold and unsaleable products intended for markets that have disappeared at home and abroad. The pound has lost a quarter of its value in the last month. There is no access to working capital loans or other credit. All United Kingdom banks are technically insolvent. The remnants of the UK force that invaded Iraq is still parked outside Basra airport where it has been since it made an agreement with Iraqi militias to withdraw there in every sense of the word; in Afghanistan troops are improperly equipped and without helicopters. Inequalities in wealth, opportunity and educational access grow. As do repossessions of houses.

Still the obscene sums in bail-outs and kick-starts roll off their propaganda networks, while bank notes roll off their printing presses, and prices of what the people must buy rise and rise despite the manipulated figures that pretend this is not happening. Our savings are rendered literally worth less, and retirements and life plans blighted.

To add insult to injury we are denied any chance to hold these self important incompetents to account. And make a start on clearing up the damage they are wreaking in our country and its industries and institutions.

At the moment the country is running by inertia, on the remnants of a once sound system, both social and economic, that is more robust than the sociopathic, obsessive fiddling to which it has been subjected for the last twelve years. But even that will give way soon.

Then what?

Looking Lively With Russia's Black Sea Fleet

The Russian General Naval Staff has just told Tass that in the next few years there will be Russian naval bases for its warships at Socotra Island (Yemen), in Tartus (Syria) and Tripoli (Libya).

“The political decision on this issue has already been taken. It is difficult to say now how much time will be needed to create bases for our Navy in these countries, but undoubtedly it will be done in the next few years. Otherwise it will be impossible to fulfil the task of maintaining a regular naval presence in remote sea areas that protect Russia’s national interests, from both economic and military-technical viewpoints,” an official of the General Naval Staff explained.

“For an efficient response to existing and potential threats to Russia’s security it is necessary to station the Russian Navy on distant approaches and in remote areas. The base on Socotra Island is needed, in particular, for warships to ensure security of navigation for Russian civilian ships in the Arabian Sea and in the Gulf of Aden; analogous facilities [are needed] in Tartus and Tripoli for controlling and promptly reacting to the situation in explosive regions of the Middle East,” the official added.

Apart from this, a couple of ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet [how many fleets has Russia got? It's like them sending the 58th army into Georgia. ed.] are on their way to the Gulf of Aden. This is one of them.

'A meeting devoted to the planned voyage of the two landing ships with marines aboard was held in Sevastopol on Thursday.' U.N. Security Council Resolution 1851 to fight piracy allows the carrying out of air strikes against pirate bases in Somalia's territory with the consent of the country's government [has Somalia actually got a government? ed.], and the conduct of operations in its territory.

The Russian navy? There's a lot of it about.

Controlling Our Own Nuclear Weapons and Their Use

Disagreeing with Field Marshal Lord Bramall, General Lord Ramsbotham, and General Sir Hugh Beach is unwise but essential. Their letter to the Times, stating:

Should this country ever become subject to some sort of nuclear blackmail — from a terrorist group for example — it must be asked in what way, and against whom, our nuclear weapons could be used, or even threatened, to deter or punish. Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently, or are likely to, face — particularly international terrorism; and the more you analyse them the more unusable they appear.
The much cited “seat at the top table” no longer has the resonance it once did. Political clout derives much more from economic strength. Even major-player status in the international military scene is more likely to find expression through effective, strategically mobile conventional forces, capable of taking out pinpoint targets, than through the possession of unusable nuclear weapons. Our independent deterrent has become virtually irrelevant except in the context of domestic politics. Rather than perpetuating Trident, the case is much stronger for funding our Armed Forces with what they need to meet the commitments actually laid upon them. In the present economic climate it may well prove impossible to afford both.

sounds reasonable only under assumptions it is unwise to adopt.

A State armed with nuclear weapons and delivery systems is invariably to be treated differently from one that is not. Look at North Korea and the circumspection with which its real weapons of mass destruction led it to be treated and compare what happened to Iraq with no weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear weapons prevent regime change imposition from outside. That is what they are for. And as we have seen, they work.

If the argument is that the United Kingdom does not have nuclear weapons but is merely a nuclear weapons base which is wholly under United States control then the discussion should not be carried on in terms of the ineffectiveness of nuclear deterrence. We should consider if we wish to obtain control over the weapons sited in the UK, if we wish to pay for weapons sited here that we do not control, and if the money we pay for other states' weapons-siting might be better spent equipping our own forces for the kinds of conflicts they face or are likely to face.

It is not inconceivable that other states or even non-state entities might wish to achieve regime-change in our country. There is nothing like a nuclear armed submarine or ICBM to put them off. So let's be sure we can use them when we want to, without reference to any other state. And let's choose other conflicts in which we become involved to fit our budget and our own interests a great deal more closely than has been done under New Labour.

Schools: a Waste of Their Time and Our Money

The biting comments of St Paul's boys school head teacher on the quality of GCSE examinations are deserved. Old, and sample question papers can be looked at on line. The requirements are easily met and, as importantly, outstandingly dull. Looking at papers in English and mathematics was to look at questions reflecting years of wasted school time.

'A student in your class has been suspended. Write a letter protesting or agreeing with this decision'. What kind of teaching of English gives time to such a subject? The maths papers were even worse. Reading a rail timetable correctly should not form part of a school leaving examination in mathematics. The instructions at the head of the papers not to use a calculator were even odder: first because all calculation could readily be carried out at sight, secondly, because why ever should calculators be denied to those who prefer to use them?

As Dr Stephen noted:

'Our experience of the new GCSE in science is that it is not an academic qualification - it is a social qualification. It is not preparing pupils for further study. ... it is to a terrifying extent not academic... The new science specifications are much more easily taught without a degree in science...There is a deep fear among some people that the exam content is being pitched at the level of available teaching rather than an internationally recognised standard.' He goes on to comment on what was very noticeable in the English papers I looked at - that the content is so dull.

School is the place where people have the time and facilities to learn much that in later life they will draw upon but may not have time to concentrate upon. The children who have received an entire schooling under New Labour have not been offered food for the mind, nor have they even been competently drilled in reading timetables and writing letters of complaint. More than half of them fail to obtain even a Grade C in mathematics and English after eleven years of full time education.

Give Over

What is wrong with having a look round inside United States military computers? If they can't keep casual visitors out they should be ashamed of themselves, not trying to drag an innocent Scotsman off to the US for lese majeste.

We're not supposed to think what is not permitted, we're not supposed to look at what is just lying there, we're not supposed to criticise, we're not supposed to make regimes look silly.

They need to pull their heads in.

The Limits of State Action

Wilhelm von Humboldt, born Potsdam 1767, died Tegel 1835.

Humboldt's work on the self-development of man and the role of the state argues that a state seeking to provide for more then the physical safety of its citizens will inevitably destroy the freedom and the creativity of individuals. The only source of progress in a liberal society is the free interaction of free people. In Humboldt's view human beings strive for self-cultivation within society and require a free society for their full development.

Go on. Read it. You know you should. You might even want to.

Screw the Pile Lighthouse and Dwarf Eel-Grass. Maplin Sands for London's Airport

Angels fly a lot. There is one airport above all others in the whole world, without exception, to be avoided. Heathrow.

Stansted used to be efficient and pleasant, though no longer; Gatwick has been ugly from birth but at least is easily reachable now that there are direct rail links to St Pancras; as a Midlands airport Birmingham remains forever imprinted in the mind by David Lodge's imagery (the terrified American academic puzzled both by the propellers on his plane and even more by their apparently secondary use, in a couple of runs up and down the runway, to beat away the fog).

We really do need a seriously good-looking, technically advanced, interpersonally efficient, well-connected international airport.

In opting for a third runway at Heathrow, the Secretary of State for Transport demonstrates that he is a complete hoon.

Not All Labour is Productive

Any government expenditure in wages and salaries, and pensions in the public sector, is automatically recorded as part of national income. This is an accounting convention partly justified by the need for consistency between various methods of reckoning national income as: the sum of value-added in all sectors, the value of production for final uses of consumption investment and net exports, the sum of factor incomes, ie., wages and profits.

But when employment and wages in the private sector are collapsing, the stability of public sector wages and employment gives an illusory picture of the health of the economy. Of course the classical economics of Smith, Ricardo, and Marx regarded all services as unproductive labour, not least those provided by government. The distinction between productive and unproductive labour has become increasingly relevant now that a bloated public sector including bloated public sector pensions feeds on a shrinking private sector.

There is no point in monitoring the current economic situation under the pretence, by definition, that public employees have a value equal to their salaries. A glance at the 'jobs' pages of the Guardian makes it blatantly obvious that they don't. Soldiers, judges, opera dancers, even priests are worth having - I leave the reader to fill in their own bete-noir of waste and jobsworth client state creation that is not.

Purging headline GDP figures of this ludicrous padding could and should be done in addition to the traditional presentation of measurements of economic performance.

UPDATE (See this morning's Herald)

Half of the civil servants in Whitehall could be sacked and government would still be able to operate efficiently, according to a former business leader who served as a minister for New Labour

Lord Digby Jones of Birmingham said that during his 16-month spell as trade minister he was "amazed" at the number of civil servants who deserved the sack but kept their jobs or were moved sideways. Taxpayers would get better value for money if many of them lost their jobs, he told the House of Commons Public Administration Committee yesterday.


Although Lord Jones said the civil service was "honest and stuffed full with decent people who work hard" he felt that the civil service could be more productive, more efficient and deliver a lot more value for money. "Frankly, the job could be done with half as many," said Lord Jones.

His comments were branded "narrow-minded and naive" by the PCS public sector union, which said they betrayed a "complete lack of understanding of what the civil service does".

Which is pad out GDP.

A General Election Immediately is the Only Democratic Stance

Unemployment is mounting by thousands, even tens of thousands, a day in the United Kingdom. Work is the basis of a decent life. As the first article of the Italian Constitution declares:

Italy is a democratic republic, founded on work.

The United Kingdom, in the absence of a Constitution, must make do with its permanent-power seeking government's substitute, whose first declaration is:

We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.

New Labour is also intent on distracting our attention from the abject failures of their economic and financial policies. While hundreds of billions of pounds have been proffered to banks to repair their balance sheets and save them from bankruptcy in the hope of preserving a payments system (surely that could have been ensured more cheaply) relatively tiny sums are promised to assuage the giant of idleness. £500 million for job creation and 'apprenticeships' and £30 billion for the lending function to firms that the richly re-sourced banks refuse to take up.

And we are all supposed to be looking at plans for future rectification of social inequalities worsened under twelve years of New Labour. We are not supposed to be looking at the effects of horrifying levels of unemployment on all and any kind of equality.

Pretending to some kind of 'constitutional' requirement that only a sitting prime minister can call a general election in a country where any constitutional vestiges have been swept away by a torrent of authoritarian legislation is a measure of the abuse of democracy under which we now suffer. The conditions under which Tony Blair was elected in 2005 are remote and irrelevant. The present regime has no democratic mandate, no economic competence claim, no political, legal or moral stance than can justify further refusal of an election.

The people want a return to full employment. The rest is secondary. They must choose the means and express their confidence in their government to achieve full employment through the vote.

Protecting Globalisation

The world economy, we are told incessantly, is becoming increasingly integrated into a fully globalised, single system. When this process is completed, sooner or later, prices of all goods and services and factors will necessarily converge towards uniform levels ( give or take small margins to account for transport costs and other minor factors).

International trade theory states forcefully the tendency towards the equalisation of factor prices – a uniform wage rate, a uniform rate of profit (the so-called Ohlin-Eckscher theorem) via three simultaneous processes:

the export of labour intensive products by labour-rich countries like China to the West, driving Chinese wages up and Western wages down

the de-localisation of production to lower wage countries through foreign direct investment

the migration of workers from lower to higher wage countries

with these movements acting in parallel on the equalisation of the rate of profit.

From this viewpoint, at present we are in a world of temporary mis-allocation of resources which will have to be changed, at considerable cost, when factor prices eventually and necessarily converge.

So why not speed up this search for a new equilibrium, and allocate, today, resources on the basis of the uniform factor prices that must prevail globally tomorrow? Levy, for instance, a countervailing tariff on imports from China equivalent to the difference between wage costs in China and wage costs in the importing country? This would simply speed up the reaching of the new global equilibrium, eliminating the costs of structural adjustment otherwise necessary to bring about full-fledged globalisation.

This would not be protectionism, as supporters of globalisation (the usual suspects) would have it, but simply a pre-emptive move towards a necessary market adjustment that otherwise would take too long to establish itself at the jurassic speed of market processes

Let's give global markets a helping hand.

Suffer the Children

Attacks on young people who have found work and are establishiong themselves in life, by the New Labour government and its ministers, are reprehensible. Dressing up nearly twelve years of failure to offer decent education and employment opportunities to ordinary people as a conspiracy by the bourgeoisie to favour its own is letting their failed social policies escape censure.

Forty percent of children leaving primary school last summer could not read and write, or undertake simple mathematics. Other lacks in their level of instruction and achievement reflect this. These children, who have entered secondary school unable to profit from the teaching offered there, were born in the year New Labour came to power. New Labour had a full parliament before they arrived in their first year of primary school. They were let down utterly. Let down by much more than just the schools they have attended. And others are following them, year after New Labour year, suffering as badly.

New Labour social policies in housing, health, child care, economic policies in industry and employment, as well as the sociocultural attitudes championed and increasingly enforced, destroyed stability in the home lives of the children born at such an unfortunate time. Let me be very clear, stability can be found in all sorts of family structures; and it is stability, not the form of the family, that enables children to grow in confidence and advance in knowledge without having to put their energies into surviving upheavals beyond their control or understanding.

Stability gives social and intellectual poise. Not wealth. And gaining such poise is helped by using social funding to provide social resources, rather than means - tested welfare for individuals contorted by the need to attract benefits. Significantly it is the children of stable families, in work, without need of welfare, who are the objects of the vicious criticisms published recently on improper influence and network advantage being the source of their well being. Such well-being so improperly attributed to wealth and nothing else.

New Labour has gone too far in much, but it is beyond the pale in blaming its failures on children.

Known Unknowns

Angels trusts you are all keeping up with Professor Buiter on Maverecon (see Links and Latest Rockets). A striking point from this morning's lesson: there is deliberate obfuscation of what is going on with qualitative easing -

"Today, central banks and Treasuries appear to be conspiring to hide from the public the magnitude of the credit risk exposure they are taking on. In the UK, for instance, the SLS (the special liquidity scheme that swaps private securities like mortgage- backed securities for Treasury bills of less than one year maturity) is, as far as I can tell, neither on the balance sheet of the Bank of England nor on that of the Treasury..".

But put aside your Sunday papers and read the whole. This will improve the grasp on known knowns, widen awareness of known unknowns, and sets the mind thinking about what unknown unknowns are out there, not least the uncovered risk taken on by the European Central Bank in its qualitative easing.

Sterling at 1.13 to the Euro

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"

Shades of the Prison House

The school leaving age could be raised for all pupils immediately. The plan was to impose obligatory schooling until 18 on those who will be aged 11 this year. So enormous are the rises in unemployment that it is to be made impossible to register as unemployed for anyone under 18.

In a further measure to hide the scale of worklessness, graduates from this year onwards are to be interned in Third Sector and other quango tax-funded make-work organisations for up to three months on less than minimum wage subsidies.

John Denham, former postman and currently Innovation, Universities and Skills minister said: “At the end, they will be more employable, and some of them will get jobs. These are the children of the baby-boomers. They will be a very big group. What do we do with them? We can’t just leave people to fend for themselves.”

Why not take them straight from the prison house at whatever age their term ends, and free up the universities and their funds for learning and research? At least we could stop calling people judged unable to fend for themselves graduates of an English University.

Worst Falls in Three Decades on Regents Park House Prices

Poor, old, Peter Mandelson, now known as 'Lord' doesn't seem to get the housing market right ever. After paying far more millions than might be expected by someone on his wages for a house in Primrose Hill, it may be discouraging for him to see that once again he's in the wrong place and the wrong price bracket at the wrong time.

Property values on houses worth up to £2.5 million fell 22 percent last year. The fall in values, which began in April 2008, will probably reduce prices by 30 percent by the second half of this year. Should he wish to disembarrass himself of it that would be hard too. The number of houses and apartments Knight Frank, the London property agents for the twee-er bits of London, including Regents Park, sold for at least 1 million pounds last year fell 49 percent from 2007's record to 2,746, a level likely to be repeated again this year, the company estimates. (Bloomberg).

It's is a considerable achievement for anyone in that generation to fail to make a lot of money on housing, an activity resembling falling off a log. Confidence in the ability to undertake the more complex activity of investing tax payers' money in failing UK industry is not encouraged.

Unfortunate Interruption of Russian Gas Flow Transiting Georgia

The transit of Russian gas across Georgia to Armenia was disrupted in Gardaban, Georgia, today.
"... fire broke out at the site of a pipeline rupture,...measures are [being] taken to put it out and restore the operation of the pipeline.”

Officials of the Georgian Energy Ministry and the Oil and Gas Corporation said “urgent measures will be taken to restore the transit of Russian gas to Armenia, but this can take several days. The failure will not create problems for Armenia’s gas supply as this country has its own gas storage facility that can provide gas for almost two months,” ... “the supply of gas to Georgia is almost completely ensured by means of exports from Azerbaijan.” (Tass).

Oh again.

Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields

According to www.globalresearch.ca

'British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.

The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).

The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).

The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities... It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.

The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine's gas reserves could be much larger. '

Oh.

We Are All Dead

1.5% is a joke. Tell me it's a joke. To have driven the entire United Kingdom economy into liquidity preference behaviour is keynesian all right. What a pity Keynes thought such a world a disaster. Once here monetary policy slips from our cold, dead hands.

Fiscal requires lower taxes and higher government expenditure. Unfortunately (the very word is like a bell when considering New Labour) fiscal needs ready projects. The only projects New Labour has ready are a state data base with electronic pass cards to access it that must be carried by subjects at all times on minimum pain of a month's detention without redress plus fines, and Titan gaols to keep all the people in.

Fiscal is good too when there is a low deficit and a sustainable level of public debt. It's good as well when there are potential creditors about, but at approaching zero interest rates, not to mention a depreciating currency, step forward who? exactly. We aren't going to refinance our existing debt, the auction will be deserted.

Keynes has never been here. Speaking in the keynesian spirit, the only hope is exports. Of what? Planes? Boats? Trains? Cars? Wedgwood? Viyella? Financial services?

If we want to get to Keynes, we shouldn't be starting from here. A dozen years of New Labour and the long run has arrived.

President-Elect Stays in a Hotel for a Change

Presidents-elect,since at least three presidencies ago, have stayed in beautiful and luxurious Blair House, close to the White House, in the days before the inauguration. President Bush and family, President and Mrs Clinton, and President George W. Bush and family all stayed there.

So why is the current President-elect and his family in a hotel, while Blair house is given over to a former Australian prime minister, defeated in the last Australian elections, in Washington to receive an honour for his part in sending Australian troops to the invasion of Iraq?

President of the Czech Republic and of the European Union Tells It Like it Is

"... We... must say No to people who – by describing the current moment as... historically unique...– want only to manipulate us.

There are ...over-publicised problems. The world is in the midst of a deep financial and economic crisis. The EU has growing troubles with its increasingly visible democratic deficit and is gravely divided as regards its own institutional arrangements. The global climate is ... not changing, but global warming alarmists have succeeded in persuading politicians (and some ordinary people as well) that a doomsday is coming and on this false assumption they have tried to restrain our freedom and curtail our prosperity. The long-existing nucleus of armed conflicts accompanied by immense suffering of millions of people – in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel-Palestine and some African regions – does not promise any quick solution.

The economic crisis should be regarded as an unavoidable consequence and hence a “just” price we have to pay for immodest and over-confident politicians playing with the market. Their attempts to blame the market, instead of blaming themselves, are unacceptable and should be resolutely rejected. The Czech government will... not push the world and Europe into more regulation, nationalisation, de-liberalisation and protectionism. Our historical experience gives us a very strong warning in this respect.
... we should ... strictly differentiate between fighting the fire and drafting fire protection legislation. We have to concentrate on the first task now; the second... can be done... without haste and panic. A big increase in financial regulation, as is being proposed so often these days, will only prolong the recession. Growth in the global economy is falling rapidly, the banks have ceased to grant credit and confidence is ebbing. Radically changing regulation governing financial institutions in the midst of recession is counterproductive.

Aggregate demand needs strengthening. [While] one traditional way to do this is to increase government expenditures, probably in public infrastructure projects, on condition these are available...it would be much more helpful ...to have a great reduction in all kinds of restrictions on private initiatives introduced in the last half a century during the era of the brave new world of the “social and ecological market economy”. The best thing to do now would be temporarily to weaken, if not repeal, various labour, environmental, social, health and other “standards”, because they block rational human activity more than anything else.

[On]the EU’s “constitutional” stalemate, the Czech government will...not lead Europe to an ever-closer union, to a Europe of regions (instead of states), to a centralised, supranational Europe or to an increasingly controlled and regulated Europe masterminded from above. It will keep stressing its EU presidency slogan “Europe without barriers”, which means the advocacy of further liberalisation, removing trade barriers and getting rid of protectionism.

Our historical experience gives us a clear instruction: we always need more of markets and less of government intervention. We also know that government failure is more costly than market failure.

We can also count on the fact that the Czech government will...not be the champion of global warming alarmism. The Czechs feel that freedom and prosperity are much more endangered than the climate. The uniqueness of current levels of global warming is not a proven phenomenon. The explanation of factors that are contributing to global warming is not very clear and persuasive. Moves to mitigate climate change by fighting carbon dioxide emissions are useless and, what is most important, human beings have proved themselves to be sufficiently adaptable to an incrementally changing climate. We should turn our attention to other, really daunting issues.

The world in the year 2009 will not be spared armed conflicts, international terrorism, and territorial and religious disputes which – no matter how geographically distant they may be – will have consequences for all of us. We know that peace cannot be declared unilaterally and that long-lasting solutions are usually not the ones that are imposed from abroad. The Czech government will not support external interventions into the domestic affairs of sovereign countries. We should resist being seduced by philosopher-king ambitions.

The pragmatic Czechs – with all their criticism of European decision-making mechanisms – will not attempt to initiate a pan-European “velvet revolution”...We will treat others as we expect to be treated: with respect for different views. We will be happy if a common denominator in – at least – some cases can be found. Reliance on negotiations and on the positive effect of the diversity of views is what makes Europe Europe.

The EU presidency might give us a chance to make use of some of our views to the benefit of the citizens of all EU member states. Their welfare and happiness will be maximised in a free, democratic, decentralised, open and liberalised Europe.


The full text may be found in yesterday's Financial Times. Cry your eyes out Sarkozy. This is the voice of a statesman.

Fulfilling the Plan

The sales started yesterday. That statement gives away that this is not 'somewhere in England'. Nevertheless, in the interests of the globalised economy Angels went forth to consume. And did consume.

Consumed a cashmere (80% ,the rest is magic ingredient to make the cloth hang right, not attract dirt, keep its shape when wet etc, that the textile industry can do so well now with all the investment in manufacturing industry and research) winter coat. It is cut precisely as is a man's coat for wearing in town. Not fitted exactly but skimming the shape of the ideal human form. The sleeves flare imperceptibly to reach past the wrists but stop before the knuckles. It reaches just below the knee. The androgenous overcoat to die for. Yet it buttons the right way.

"We have only this one, " the assistant warned a hopeful Angel, "This was the model". Now, having saved all that money, there is lots over for gloves and a suitably severe scarf.

See, a a helpful attitude, onside, one of us. All that's needed to save England is fill the shops with things any sane person will want to buy. Which is only a decade or so of investment in research, manufacturing, design, and supporting systems, away.

Destroying the Real World Under New Labour

Wedgwood, Viyella, ... if it goes on like this we'll have nothing to eat from, no glasses to drink from, and nothing to wear to keep out the winter cold.

Liquidity Preference With Attitude

New Labour New Poverty thinks it can borrow £146 billion this year.

'Investors shunned one of the most liquid and safest assets in the world on Wednesday as a German bond auction failed ', reports the FT. Germany is not a government pursuing crass keynesian policies, nor is it a government deeply distrusted as to its economic and financial competence, let alone probity, nor is it seeking to raise record amounts of debt.

Thus the first eurozone bond auction of the year gives an ominous signal. It is estimated that $3,000bn is expected to be issued in sovereign debt in 2009. There have been failing bond auctions in 2008 with less than a third of that being hawked. If Germany cannot do it, no-one can.

In the meantime resentment is beginning to colour at least my decision-taking. Why lend for a negative return? Why spend if consumption helps the regimes responsible for this mess to stay in power? No longer will people seek a return indifferently. We are beginning to look for investment in revenge.

Turn On the Gas and Get Rid of the President

The collapsing Ukranian economy cannot afford to pay for its gas supplies from the Russian company Gazprom. Possessed of extremely weak democratic and commercial institutions it has begun to display rogue state characteristics in failing to honour contracts, and trying to extract loans from Gazprom's clients, to whom it is contracted to deliver the gas supplied by Gazprom. Ukraine has been taking gas intended for delivery elsewhere from gas supplies it is contracted to allow to cross its territory, too.

Demand for steel, Ukraine's principal product, has collapsed. Its currency has been the object of speculation by Ukranian insiders and is already supported by loans from the European Union that were proffered to avoid misbehaviour over gas transits. The bunkered president of Ukraine and his henchmen are in the last phase of their stand off with the prime minister and government of Ukraine, who prefer an alliance with Russia rather than a disruptive and destructive realtionship with their neighbours at the behest of the Bush-Cheney administration in its last gasp. The Georgian operation failed. Now they are pushing on the Ukraine. The remarks by the United States that the European Union, Ukraine, and Russia should settle their 'differences' are impertinent at best. Imperial decline is better accepted with better grace.

In the meantime the Ukranian people might prefer to be represented by their prime minister and government in conducting relations with powerful neighbours on both sides of them, in conducting their good name in commercial and contractual relations, and in conducting other people's gas to its destination. Then we might all feel more like offering them a helping hand in their current difficult circumstances.

Penniless and Defenceless Under New Labour

This is the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, on its way, 'with a squadron of warships of the Northern Fleet of Russia', to joint exercises with the Turkish navy. There are to be 'cultural and sport programs' as well, and the crews of the Admiral Kuznetsov and the Admiral Levchenko will see the sights of the city of Marmaris, before continuing 'to fulfill their tasks in the the Mediterranean.'

Gulp.

Our aircraft carriers are cancelled.

Travelling to the Lost World

Angels fly lightly. All of us have seen the tourists coming off the ryanairs from outside schengen clutching their electronic chip tracers and dragging wheeled pantechnicons as if they are arriving in the Lost World. This time, though, perhaps it won't be but a step from one life into the other, carrying handbag and 5 euro cardboard identity.

Poverty strikes everyone, not just those without money, when an entire economy starts to collapse. Quality, choice, and accessibility fail with depleted stocks, closed stores, declining communication systems. Even WC1 needs decent bus services now there can be no private cars (to all intents and purposes, for everyday running about). Waiting for a 7 or even something passing the British Library has been reintroduced as a pastime, or waste of time, with the changing of the guard at City Hall.

Tights are not a big purchase like a house, tractor, ute (with or without dog), or even a winter overcoat. But get them wrong - not precisely what is wanted - and life is a misery. So stocking up in the via della Spada is worth the carry cost. No-liquids no-fly, has been met with indifference until now; but the awful smell that greets customers on the ground floor of any department store as scent-spraying, idle shop assistants are dodged on the way to buy unguents is not going to be faced at all this time. The parfumiers of borgo degli Albizi will advise, and even make up a little something for the London winter.

Flying in wellies (as essential for big city winter slush avoidance as for country mud) leads to delays at the security checks, being hard to get off while standing on one foot trying to avoid the dirty floor - and chairs not provided. But needs must and mutterings from the back of the queue will be ignored. Then a pair of indoors and a pair of heels might just be squeezed into the bag. Shoes, unlike nightgowns, do not keep from season to season so there is no hope of finding something already there in the cupboard.

Poverty starts as a disruptive irritant, the cause of extra effort to live a normal life, and ends in facing the five giants of idleness, ignorance, disease, squalor, and want that New Labour, to its utter shame, has once more opened the door.

Trade Off!

State aid to the financial sector in one country automatically puts foreign competitors at a disadvantage. By being forced to nationalise the United Kingdom banks (and then hide the horrid failure of their previous decade of economic governance under a pretence of leading the way in saving the world), and in its support of national financial institutions, New Labour cuts the United Kingdom off from both the benefits and the costs of globalisation.

Protectionism of manufacturing activities in the form of state aid to domestic producers is an even more blatant rejection of any globalist analysis or policy choices; at least the financial sector can be regarded as the social infrastructure of the economy. And if there is a net benefit in protectionism why is New Labour promoting globalisation?

Economics 101 teaches that lack of foreign competition raises the price of the products of protected activities. What we are witnessing is the defence of employment (and thus the defence of New Labour's hold on power), at the cost of inflation. A trade off which the government denies in its 'global' rhetoric.

New Labour talk global - oh boy do they spout-off about global - but in truth they are small minded, old-fashioned, nationalist and socialist economic statists.

Riskiness

Banks have a number of functions. They take deposits , they lend, they finance consumption, they finance working capital, they finance long term investment which includes mortgages, and all of this is offered to both firms and households. They multiply credit. They finance foreign trade. They provide a more complicated variety of financial services involving the transformation of term structure and riskiness.

They provide a payments system.

Which of these are still going on? All of them. But most of them on a scale so small, as they try to recapitalise their balance sheets at tax-payers' expense, and reduce their exposure to potential defaulters, that the nearest image of their activity is that of the human body retracting blood supply to the heart and brain and leaving everything else to take its chances with atrophy.

In their craving for liquidity it is the payments system that finds itself in the front line. Any entity facing a credit shortage delays payments. In Russia in the early 1990s payment arrears - of government wages and pensions, of government purchases that caused suppliers in turn to fail to pay their own wages and suppliers, reached forty percent of industrial output. Barter was rampant. Companies in England, in domestic and in foreign trade can engage in barter too. Quite possibly they are.

We, householders, cannot engage in barter with suppliers of gas, electricity, communication services, water; with local authorities, tax collectors, health suppliers, etc. Banks can delay payments with impunity, including wage and pension payments. For the denied potential consumer, though, there are penalties from fines, to withdrawal of service, to loss of reputation, to imprisonment.

Of all the failures of bank activities, it is the failure of a completely reliable payments system that will cause gross, immediate, disruption of every aspect of life in a country. We have never experienced what happened in Russia in the early 1990s. Last week a lot of pay rolls were not met due to a 'technical glitch'. There are reports that next week there is to be a further 'recapitalisation' of the banks in England. Perhaps we should think about this, rather than a minor stand off about gas deliveries that reflects the unpleasant internal politics of a former Russian satellite state.

Releasing the Power of the University's True Purpose

The real economy includes the university sector and associated research institutions and science parks. Yet the university sector is entangled with some of the most inane, expensive, ill thought out, long-established social engineering culture ever.

Universities are places of learning and research. They are not providers of qualifications for jobs as council workers, office staff, personal assistants, civil servants, or any other ostensibly meritocratic state or quasi state employment. Nor are they a tax-funded extended gap period between school and work. It is so silly to have the steady, information-based teaching needed for a first degree being provided by university teaching officers with imaginations, brains, technical skills, and outstanding and expensive qualification. It is even sillier that the resources that should be devoted to learning and research are being applied to what could be integrated with school and home-based learning.

Undergraduates should start their university studies in school, with the relatively limited library and laboratory resources they need there, at any age after 16 and their GCSEs, when they demonstrate themselves capable of following a tertiary level course. They could then qualify for consideration for all sorts of jobs, or they could display the capacities that might interest a university department and its teachers in offering a post-graduate place. Then, and only then, it could well be necessary to frequent, away from home, a particular scholar, department, laboratory, or School. And those wishing to, and capable of continuing their work, could be properly supported.

We must stop draining off the funds, taken from us all, into attempts at pretending that undergraduates who have no mastery of the language of university-level discourse should waste the enormous social investment that our great universities embody. Doing so is blunting any kind of cutting edge in every discipline and creating a steady loss of our knowledge-based economic human resources to places where conditions for research and living standards reflect their rarity.

University level work is not a proper object of egalitarian social policies. It requires qualities of determination, clear-sightedness, imagination, capacities, skills, and commitment that are not involved in qualifying for a good job. The sooner we clear our ideas about the difference between qualification and open-minded research, the sooner our economy might begin to recover.