Political thoughts

Sean Penn stands up to be counted on Las Malvinas - Sean Penn y Las Malvinas

2012-02-16T19:00:00.002-08:00

It was interesting to see Sean Penn becoming involved in Las Malvinas dispute. The Argentine case is clear. Argentina had a representative on Las Malvinas 180 years ago and still claims sovereignty.

Sean Penn se pone de pie para ser contado en Las Malvinas. Fue interesante ver a Sean Penn involucrarse en disputa por Las Malvinas. El caso argentino es claro. Argentina tenía un representante en Las Malvinas, hace 180 años y todavía reclama la soberanía.

Sean Penn realised that the settlement of Las Malvinas was colonialism. The islands were empty when the British and French colonised them in the eighteenth century. The islands were nearly empty after the USS Lexington had deported most of the 40 or so people from the islands in 1831 and still nearly empty when the Argentines and British arrived in late 1832 to colonise them again. Penn was disgusted with people colonising empty islands.

Sean Penn se dio cuenta de que el asentamiento de Las Malvinas fue el colonialismo. Las islas estaban vacíos cuando los británicos y franceses que colonizaron en el siglo XVIII. Las islas estaban casi vacíos después de que el USS Lexington había deportado a la mayoría de los 40 o menos personas de las islas en 1831 y todavía casi vacío cuando los argentinos y británicos llegaron en 1832, para colonizar de nuevo. Penn estaba disgustado con la gente que colonizan islas vacías.

Sean Penn was very happy with the history of Argentina. The Spanish colonised the area around the River Plate and removed the natives, often eradicating them. The British defeated the Spanish and French in Europe and allowed the colonists to revolt against Spain. The colonists founded a country that became the Argentine Confederation. The Argentine Confederation was 1000 kilometres from Las Malvinas in 1832.

Sean Penn estaba muy contento con la Argentina. Los españoles colonizaron el área alrededor del Río de la Plata y mataron a los nativos. Los británicos derrotaron a los españoles y franceses en Europa y permitió a los colonos a la rebelión contra España. Los colonos fundaron un país que se convirtió en la Confederación Argentina. La Confederación Argentina fue de 1.000 kilómetros de las Malvinas en 1832.

Sean Penn fully supports the objective of the genocide of the Patagonians. This genocide allowed the Argentines to expand southwards after 1881 (50 years after the British occupied the Falklands permanently). He praises the colonisation of Patagonia. It was Argentine colonisation. Patagonia is opposite the Falklands.

Sean Penn, apoya el genocidio de los patagones. Este genocidio permitió a los argentinos para ampliar hacia el sur, después de 1881 (50 años después de los británicos ocuparon las Islas Malvinas de forma permanente). Penn elogia la colonización de la Patagonia. La colonización por la Argentina. La Patagonia es mucho más cerca de las Malvinas.

Argentina in early 19th century. It had to colonise Patagonia in 1881 to be next to Las Malvinas

Sean Penn believes that when a country expands it should threaten the next country in its path. He agrees that Argentina must threaten Chile and Las Malvinas. It is its destiny.

Sean Penn cree que cuando un país se expande se debe amenazar el próximo país en su camino. Está de acuerdo en que la Argentina debe amenazar Chile y Las Malvinas. Es su destino.

Sean Penn supported the fascist Junta that invaded the Falklands. He condemns the British for bringing democracy to Argentina by defeating the fascists.

Sean Penn, apoyó a la junta fascista que invadió las Malvinas. El condena a los británicos para derrotar a los fascistas y llevar la democracia a la Argentina.

Sean Penn condemns the British government for inviting Argentina to the International Court of Justice on three occasions in the hope of a legal settlement. Had he known he would praise the British Government for demanding that the people on Las Malvinas accept Argentine sovereignty in 1968 and 1980. He totally condemns the British Parliament for stopping the British Government. A Parliament that supports the people of Las Malvinas. Penn openly condemns a people who are terrified of invasion and so refuse independence.

Sean Penn condena del gobierno británico para invitar a la Argentina ante la Corte Internacional de Justicia en tres ocasiones. Penn alabar al Gobierno británico por exigir que la gente de Las Malvinas aceptar la soberanía por argentina en 1968 y 1980 (de haber sabido). Él condena totalmente el Parlamento británico para detener el Gobierno británico. Un Parlamento que apoya al pueblo de Las Malvinas. A las personas que sienten terror de la invasión y por lo tanto rechazan la independencia.

Two South American countries have a possible claim to Las Malvinas. A claim that is 180 years old. These countries are Uruguay and Chile. Uruguay because the Spanish Malvinas was controlled from Montevideo. Chile because it was nearest. Argentina does not have a claim at all. The British have always had sovereignty over West Falkland. The South American claims over the Falklands are too old to be credible. But for Sean Penn they are an opportunity to attack the "old enemy", Britain, and tempt the Argentines into murder.

Dos países de América del Sur tiene una reclamación a Las Malvinas. Una reclamación de que es de 180 años de edad. Estos países son Uruguay y Chile. Uruguay debido a las Malvinas fue controlado de Montevideo, cuando los españoles gobernaban. Chile porque estaba más cerca. Argentina no tiene una reclamación en absoluto. Los británicos siempre han tenido soberanía sobre West Falkland. Las reclamaciones de América del Sur son demasiado viejos.

Sean Penn is either a genocidal fascist or an ignorant fool.

Sean Penn es ya sea un fascista genocida o un tonto ignorante.

Our self-respect as a virile people obliges us to put down as soon as possible, by reason or by force, this handful of savages who destroy our wealth and prevent us from definitely occupying, in the name of law, progress and our own security, the richest and most fertile lands of the Republic.
—Julio Argentino Roca, ^[6]

You can help the people of the Falkland Islands. Put a link to this article in your tweets, blogs and comments:
http://pol-check.blogspot.com/2012/02/sean-penn-stands-up-to-be-counted-on.html

See:

Para el español, haga clic aquí: Las Malvinas - un análisis de la soberanía y el futuro y Las Malvinas son Argentinas

Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Las Malvinas

The Falklands have always been Argentine - Las Malvinas son Argentinas

Economic policies for recovery

2012-02-16T01:54:00.001-08:00

Businesses start small, some become large and large businesses will eventually fail. This life cycle of business means that a successful economy requires as many small businesses as possible to maximise the chances of creating larger businesses. A successful economy must also be a nursery for baby businesses.

This obvious truth is the opposite of the planned economy. In a planned economy people are employed in producing the services and products that civil servants believe to be needed. Innovation, growth and dynamism are absent so the economy becomes a dreary place where people lead half of a life. It is important to reject the idea of a planned economy, even gaiety requires the highs and lows of making wealth and losing it.

Returning to the simple truth, that "a successful economy requires as many small businesses as possible", how can we achieve this? We can do it by stimulating the creation and growth of business in the early days and by removing any stifling competition. Small businesses do not just create large businesses:

"Small Businesses act as pathways to employment for the unemployed and inactive; the smaller the firm the higher the proportion of employees who have previously experienced inactivity or unemployment." and "...it is useful to remind ourselves of the direct economic contribution of a sector that employs 59 per cent of all private sector workers and accounts for 52 per cent of GDP (FSB, 2007)." (See Small businesses in the UK: New perspectives on evidence and policy)

The simplest stimulus for small businesses is to give them tax breaks. As an example small companies that are not retailers might be exempt from VAT for turnover up to £1m. Another possibility is to exempt new companies from corporation tax in the first two years and to have exemption from corporation tax for companies that have under £500,000 turnover. Any money taken out of the company to be spent by directors etc. would be taxed as normal PAYE. IR35, the taxation of contractors as employees, should be suspended for the first year of a business except where the contract replaces a full time member of staff. (Notice that the government has been ignoring IR35 for its own operations to make its cronies richer).

Companies with a turnover of under £1m should also have a special company tax return that is similar to the self employed pages of an ordinary return and be assessed for PAYE on staff by the government. The business should not need to do the paperwork, there should just be a website where the company informs the government of staff details and current pay. Employer's NIC should be ended, it is a stealth tax and has no function except to hide the current level of employee taxation from the voting public. Capital allowance taxation should also be ended, companies should be able to claim any expense against the current year's profits and capital allowances should be a concession to allow write downs over years if needed.

Removing stifling competition is more problematical. Simple measures such as asking the Civil Service branches, Councils and NHS districts to purchase locally and to consider tenders from small businesses would be a huge stimulant and cost very little, if anything.

Small businesses cannot benefit from economies of scale like their corporate competitors. There could be measures to protect small businesses from economies of scale in their competitors. An example is a "distance tax", introduced as a Green measure to reduce long journeys between supplier and consumer. Another example would be to tax corporations at a rate that is proportional to their turnover.

Unfair competition also exists in price structures for advertising, the price of advertising rises in proportion to the ability of the corporates to pay. This suggests that there is a lack of competition in the advertising media. Fair and cheap access to advertising to all markets would help small businesses immensely.

Small businesses also require a qualified input of trained people from schools. Any businessman will tell you that what you want from your staff is a "can do" attitude. Great staff pay attention, they get involved, they are interested in their work, they want to help. Businessmen also want people who are technically competent and like the technical as well as getting on with people. Schools must teach children to be calm, to listen, to solve the problem for the boss and also to be self assured and outgoing, if possible. Schools need to train people to be both creative and steady. Creativity and steadiness are not mutually exclusive. If noise levels and levels of respect for teachers and other children were improved in schools they would be turning out the sort of people who can make a responsible living. Schools must teach their teachers that the skills of staying calm, being involved and respecting others are the minimum requirement for a successful secondary education.

Another source of unfair competition is economic warfare. China is the most obvious example of a country that is waging economic war rather than trading. They are not open to fair trade because they control the value of their currency artificially, have no protection for design and patents and have a virtually slave labour force. China is not alone and it is our own governments who permit countries that are waging economic warfare to destroy domestic industry.

There are numerous other suppressing factors. Business rates are the same whether a company is just starting and locally based as for a giant multi-national setting up a local branch. Business rates are also too high for new small businesses. Councils tax car parking in towns and refuse to allow businesses to operate from home. Councils receive no direct benefit from stimulating business because business rates are paid to central government.

Banks actively discriminate against small business, considering them to be the riskiest type of loan. Independent County Banks with advantageous trading terms should be licensed specifically for local loans and investments. Small businesses need to talk to people who know the local opportunities when seeking loans. This model of local banking has been hugely successful in Germany.

Perhaps the worst problem for small business is that large companies and unions get the lion share of lobbying and rights to consultation and they finance political parties. Commercial lobbying is an affront to democracy and should be stopped and unions should only be allowed to finance political parties if they agree to relinquish the right to strike (you cannot both govern and hold the country to ransome). Worse still, civil servants and academic economists advise the government on the economy and these people could not run a business if their life depended on it.

The media commentators are little better. Many are Socialists, if they were intelligent and caring they would be Liberals but they are selfish Socialists who believe that if the economy were like the private school, university or corporation where they themselves are successful then everything would be paradise.

There is a huge amount that needs to be done to make Britain into a cradle for enterprise because so much has been undone by the governments of the past.

Having ensured a high rate of small business creation the government can then adjust the conditions of trade so that foreign companies and individuals do not have an advantage. The government should monitor the balance of payments and introduce policies to bolster any area of business that is suffering unfair competition from abroad. As an example, Germany has an excessively low exchange rate because it is part of the Eurozone so the government must compensate for this bias so that British manufacturers are not destroyed. Any government economics adviser who talks in terms of "foreign investment" as a solution to our economic woes should be sacked. The objective is to create British companies that are the best in the world, that is how you create employment and lay up wealth from overseas.

See

The rebirth of British manufacturing - how to do it

A New Taxation System

EU membership and laying up treasure from overseas

Getting richer every day in every way: income and wealth

What is Socialism?

Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?

What do the Argentines want?

2012-02-12T11:58:00.000-08:00

The Argentine rhetoric is that Las Malvinas are a colonial venture in the heart of Argentina, this works on the ignorant but those with a knowledge of history know that Argentina was nowhere near the Falklands when the British took full control in late 1832. The Argentines finally conquered Patagonia in 1881, fifty years after Britain had established a permanent administration on the Islands. (See The Falklands have always been Argentine - Las Malvinas son Argentinas ).

More serious than absurd claims about the Falklands being in the heart of Argentina, the Argentines have managed to convince, or incentivise, their South American cronies on the UN Decolonisation Committee that the population of the Falklands is of no account. This has allowed them to reduce the discussions to a battle over a lump of rock. A claim about property.

There can be no doubt that the Argentine claim to sovereignty in the Falklands Islands is deeply flawed and would be rejected by any International Court. The claim is too old, the law cannot easily permit 180 year old claims about property. It does not even permit such claims where more than property is at stake. Patagonia was only conquered 130 years ago so if 180 year old claims are regarded as "current" then the return of Patagonia to its original inhabitants should be heard first. Perhaps followed by the return of the whole of Argentina to its natives. The Argentines know that 180 years is too long which is why they have refused to allow the claim to be considered in court despite multiple invitations to do so.

So what are the Argentines up to? It is simple, they are an aggressive, expansionist power and they believe that one day they will have the military might to seize the Falklands. It is that simple. The South Americans are corruptible and will, for enough incentive, support them in this venture. The US is Machiavellian and will support whichever side yields the most profit, or in other words they are also corrupt. We are dealing with unreconstructed military hegemonists, like the European powers before the Second World War. Argentina might even persuade Brazil into a joint military adventure to grab resources from anywhere that they believe to be weak.

Basically, either the British must tool up and take their military power seriously in this wild world or negotiate some sort of balance of power between South American States, perhaps involving the USA, and splitting the Falklands between Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and an independent state, to get rid of the Falklands Problem. Be warned, these Argentines are actually proud of maintaining a boundary dispute for 180 years, yes, a 180 years, harassing the people of the Falklands and even causing war and death. Ordinary Argentines have been raised to be proud of this malevolence. These are truly the neighbours from hell.

The British really should remain well enough armed anyway, the Falklands is a "wake up call" about the world in general, the world is not civilised. Our pathetic governments of the past 40 years have gambled everything on the EU but that was foolish. The price of EU backing is to become part of a single European State and that price is too high. It is only through having our own military power that we can guarantee some level of civilisation for ourselves - although I had hoped that in the twenty first century law would prevail it is still the case that respect is purchased out of the barrel of a gun.

See also:

Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Las Malvinas

The Falklands have always been Argentine - Las Malvinas son Argentinas

Las Malvinas son Argentinas

2012-02-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

"La Argentina siempre ha poseído las Malvinas", se le enseña a cada niño en Argentina como una cuestión de fe. ¿Cuál era la Argentina durante la época en la que ella "siempre" poseído Las Malvinas?

Argentina tiene sus orígenes en la América española. Argentina fue parte del Virreinato del Río de la Plata. Las Malvinas fueron más cercana al Virreinato del Perú, controlada por el Capitán General de Chile.

Mucho de lo que los argentinos llaman
Argentina estaba bajo el
Capitanía General de Chile
por lo que parte de Chile

La soberanía chilena sobre las islas Malvinas en 1810.

O un poco más tarde, en 1794 - haga clic en el mapa para agrandarlo.
Observe el texto en el mapa.

Las Provincias Unidas de América del Sur fue el primer país formó después de la revolución contra el dominio español en la mitad inferior de América del Sur. Las Provincias Unidas eran más Uruguay y Bolivia que Argentina. Las Provincias Unidas en 1813 se muestra a continuación:

United Provinces and Falkland Islands

Las Provincias Unidas también era conocido como la Confederación del Río de la Plata, se muestra a continuación en el año 1816. La Confederación acababa de independizarse de España. Observe cómo el mapa se ha elaborado de modo que ahora parece como si la Patagonia es sin gobierno - a pesar de que fue reclamado por Chile. Dicho sea de paso, los rebeldes los primeros contra los españoles fueron alabados como "Hombres de Plata", Argentinos, en su Himno Nacional de la cual los argentinos derivó el nombre de su estado en 1826. (Argentina en el himno probablemente proviene de una interacción artística de los hombres de el plata y una alusión a la República de Platón, donde los hombres de plata o, los hombres de espíritu se convierten en guerreros y protectores de la sociedad).

Mapas argentinos, incluso hasta el día de hoy, retratan a la Patagonia sin gobierno y sin dueño en el siglo XIX.

Las Provincias Unidas se derrumbó a finales de 1820 y se convirtió en gran parte de la Confederación de la Argentina (llamada República Federal de Argentina después de 1853) se muestra la extensión de la República a continuación.:

Buenos Aires era la capital de un estado independiente llamado el "Estado de Buenos Aires", este tenía una política exterior independiente en 1827-1832 y llegó a declarar sus propias guerras. Se formó el Pacto Federal con otros Estados y derrotó a la Liga del Interior para crear el estado moderno de la Argentina en 1832. Este inconveniente es tarde para reclamos argentinos en muchos frentes, por lo que mantienen firmemente que la Argentina siempre ha existido (los conflictos eran estrictamente "fratricida").

The state of "Argentina" during the period when sovereignty is claimed.

Observe cómo el territorio chileno es demostrado que están libres de gobierno (pueblos originarios) en los mapas argentinos.

El Estado de Buenos Aires fue en gran medida independiente entre 1827 y 1832 y totalmente independiente desde 1853 hasta 1862. Fue este estado el que envió a Luis Vernet a las Malvinas como gobernador de las Malvinas, no la Argentina. La República independiente de Buenos Aires de la década de 1850 fue atacado por la Confederación Argentina en 1859 y que se adjuntan en el próximo par de años. La Confederación Argentina / República Argentina nunca tuvo la soberanía de facto sobre las Islas Malvinas. Técnicamente, sería "botín de guerra" si la República de Buenos Aires tenía un reclamo legítimo de la soberanía en el primer lugar.

En la 1850 Convention of Settlement "Argentina" y Gran Bretaña acordaron que había terminado todas las disputas anteriores. Los hechos anteriores a 1850 están de acuerdo en que no tiene importancia en las relaciones entre los países.

El español mantuvo que tenían la plena soberanía sobre las Islas Malvinas hasta la década de 1860 (excepto para el reconocimiento de los derechos británicos en el oeste de Malvinas en 1775). Los chilenos fueron los herederos naturales de los derechos soberanos españoles en alta mar a las islas al sur del Río de la Plata. Uruguay, siendo el componente principal de los primeros países independientes también tiene más derechos que la Argentina. En particular, Uruguay hereda la reclamación española de soberanía sobre las Islas Malvinas sobre la base de la convención de América del Sur del "uti possidetis juris", porque las Malvinas fueron administrados desde Montevideo y Chile hereda el reclamo en este principio de acuerdo a la proximidad. Sin embargo, España no renunciará a su propia pretensión de soberanía hasta por 30 años después de la dominación británica.

Argentina ni siquiera existía hasta 1831, año en el que los estadounidenses expulsaron a los representantes de la Buenos Aires de las Islas y 12 meses antes de que los británicos obligaron a su soberanía en las Malvinas y la sostuvo por los próximos 180 años. En 1831, Argentina apenas tuvo acceso al mar, y mucho menos el derecho de hacer reclamaciones sobre los territorios insulares de mil kilómetros de distancia por razones de proximidad. No puede haber ninguna duda de que el único país independiente de América del Sur con una demanda legal a las Malvinas en 1831 fue Chile, no Argentina. Chile dio la Patagonia a la Argentina en el Tratado de Límites de 1881. Observe cómo los argentinos esperan que Chile sea feliz con la pérdida del 50% de la superficie y esperar que se olviden de los acontecimientos de hace 100 años. Sin embargo, los propios argentinos están felices de matar por los eventos de fantasía hace 200 años. La Convención de 1850 es simplemente ignorado por la Argentina - esto debería ser una advertencia para los chilenos que aún tienen conflictos con la Argentina.

¿Por qué han hecho los argentinos la soberanía sobre las Islas Malvinas su único objetivo de política exterior? Después de que el Convenio de Liquidación los argentinos hicieron no reclamos por décadas. Fue Perón quien vuelto a despertar el fantasma del enemigo británico . Pobre Argentina, que debe luchar contra los británicos monstruos para vengarse, - tristemente la venganza por un "crimen" que nunca se haya cometido contra las presuntas víctimas que no eran argentinos.

El Este de las Islas Malvinas fueron francés, español, británico de entonces. Generosamente East Falkland puede haber sido francés, español, chileno o uruguayo, a continuación, británico. West Falkland ha sido siempre británica.

Por cierto, las Malvinas no tenía habitantes antes de la llegada de los europeos. Tenga en cuenta que en los años posteriores a 1832, cuando los británicos impusieron su soberanía sobre las Islas Malvinas conjunto, los argentinos colonizaron la Patagonia, tomando tierras de los pueblos indígenas y de Chile. Este fue el verdadero crimen en la región. Si la ONU cada vez otorga las Malvinas a la Argentina debería devolver la Patagonia a los nativos o por lo menos a los chilenos. Si Gran Bretaña o los habitantes de las islas decide renunciar a la soberanía que debe dárselo a los chilenos que tienen derecho más legal y moral de las islas que los argentinos.

The Falklands have always been Argentine - Las Malvinas son Argentinas

2012-02-04T03:48:00.000-08:00

"The Falklands have always been Argentine" is taught to every Argentine child as a matter of faith. What was Argentina during the time when it "always" possessed Las Malvinas?

Argentina traces its origins to Spanish South America. Argentina was part of the Viceroyalty of the Rio Plata. The Falklands lay off the Viceroyalty of Peru, controlled by the Captain General of Chile.

Much of what the Argentines call
Argentina was under the
Capitanía General de Chile
and so part of Chile

Chilean sovereignty over the Falklands in 1810.

Or a bit later, in 1794 - click on the map to enlarge it. Notice the text on this map.

The United Provinces of South America was the first country formed after the Revolution against Spanish rule in the bottom half of South America. The United Provinces were more Uruguay or Bolivia than Argentina. The United Provinces in 1813 is shown below:

United Provinces and Falkland Islands

The United Provinces was also known as the Confederation of the River Plate, shown below in 1816. The Confederation was newly independent from Spain. Notice how the map has been drawn so that it now appears as if Patagonia is without government - although it was claimed by Chile and held to be self governing by the natives. Incidently, the early rebels against the Spanish were praised as "Men of Silver", Argentinos, in their National Anthem from which the Argentines derived the name for their state in 1826. (Argentine in the anthem probably comes from an artistic interplay of men of the "Silver River" and an allusion to Plato's Republic where the men of silver or, men of spirit become the warriors and protectors of the society).

Argentine maps, even to this day, portray Patagonia as ungoverned and unclaimed in the nineteenth century rather than claimed by Chile or self governing..

The United Provinces fell apart in the late 1820s and became largely the Confederation of Argentina (called the Federal Republic of Argentina after 1853) the extent of the Republic is shown below.:

Buenos Aires was the capital of a separate state called the "State of Buenos Aires", this had an independent foreign policy in 1827-1832 and even declared its own wars. It formed the Federal Pact with other States and defeated the League of the Interior to create the modern state of Argentina in 1832. This is inconveniently late for Argentine claims on many fronts so they steadfastly maintain that Argentina has always existed (the conflicts were strictly "internecine").

The state of "Argentina" during the period when sovereignty is claimed.

Notice how Chilean claimed territory is still shown to be free of government (pueblos originarios) in the Argentine inspired maps above.

The State of Buenos Aires was largely independent between 1827 and 1832 and wholly independent from 1853 to 1862. The Argentines claim that Buenos Aires represented the Argentine Confederation in this period but it must have been acting alone - there was a full scale war in progress between the two states in 1831-2. It was Buenos Aires that sent Luis Vernet to the Falklands as governor, not Argentina. Buenos Aires declared independence in the early 1850s but was attacked by the Argentine Confederation in 1859 and annexed over the next couple of years. The Argentines describe these events as friendly tiffs between brothers to maintain the fiction that Argentina inherits the Falklands. The Argentine Confederation/Argentine Republic never had de facto sovereignty over the Falklands. Technically they would be "spoils of war" had the Republic of Buenos Aires had a legitimate claim to sovereignty in the first place.

According to the 1850 Convention of Settlement "Argentina" agreed that it had settled all previous disputes with Great Britain. So events prior to 1850 are agreed to be of no importance in the relations between the countries.

The Spanish maintained that they had full sovereignty over the Falkland Islands until the 1860s (except for recognising British rights in West Falkland in 1775). The Chileans were the natural inheritors of any Spanish sovereign rights to offshore islands south of the river Plate. Uruguay, being the principle component of the early independent countries also has more rights than Argentina. In particular, Uruguay inherits the Spanish claim to sovereignty over the Falklands on the basis of the South American convention of "uti possidetis juris" because the Falklands were administered from Montevideo and Chile inherits the claim on this principle according to proximity. However, Spain did not relinquish its own claim to sovereignty until over 30 years after full British rule.

Argentina did not even exist until 1831, the year in which the Americans ejected the representatives of the Buenos Aires from the Islands and 12 months before the British enforced their sovereignty in the Falklands and held it for the next 180 years. In 1831 Argentina scarcely had access to the sea, let alone the right to make claims over Island territories a thousand kilometres away on the grounds of proximity. There can be no doubt that the only Independent South American country with a legal claim to the Falklands in 1831 was Chile, not Argentina. The Chileans only relinquished Patagonia to the aggressively expansionist Argentines in the Boundary Treaty of 1881. Notice how the Argentines expect the Chileans to live happily with the loss of 50% of their surface area and expect them to forget about events of 100 years ago. But the Argentines themselves are happy to kill for dubious claims originating almost 200 years ago. The 1850 Convention of Settlement is simply ignored by Argentina - this should be a warning to the Chileans who still have disputes with Argentina.

So why have the Argentines made sovereignty over the Falkland Islands their only foreign policy objective? After the Convention of Settlement the Argentines made no claims for decades. In the early twentieth century the bulk of the Argentine population was ill educated so a dreadful enemy that had wronged the state could be conjured up by the various despots who have ruled Argentina. It was Peron who fully re-awakened the spectre of the British enemy for his own purposes. Poor little Argentina who must fight the British monsters to be avenged - sadly the vengeance is for a "crime" that was never committed against alleged victims who were not Argentine.

The East Falkland Islands were French, Spanish, then British. Generously East Falkland may have been French, Spanish, Chilean or Uruguayan then British. West Falkland has always been British.

By the way, the Falklands had no inhabitants before the Europeans arrived. Notice that in the years following 1832, when the British enforced their sovereignty over the whole Falklands, the Argentines truly colonised their way right through Patagonia, taking land from the indigenous people and from Chile as they went! This was the true crime in the region. If the UN ever awards the Falklands to Argentina it should return Patagonia to the natives or at least to the Chileans. If Britain or the Falkland Islanders decide to relinquish sovereignty they should pass it to the Chileans or Uruguayans, either of whom who have more legal and moral right to the Islands than the Argentines.

See

Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Las Malvinas

Further reading: Argentina-Chile Relations - you have to sympathise with the Chileans who have an endlessly bellicose neighbour.

Las Malvinas - un análisis de la soberanía y el futuro

2012-01-31T02:51:00.001-08:00

For the original article in English click here: Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and La Malvinas. y The Falklands have always been Argentine - Las Malvinas son Argentinas

Las Malvinas es el nombre español de las Falkland Islands. Estos son un grupo de islas, al Oriente de los cuales fueron colonizadas por los franceses en 1764 (East Falkland Island) y al oeste de los cuales fueron colonizadas por los británicos en 1765 (West Falkland Island). Gran Bretaña reclama la soberanía sobre la totalidad de las Islas Malvinas. El francés vendió la East Falkland Island a la española en 1766. En 1770 los españoles atacaron a West Falkland, tomando el control de todo el grupo, pero en 1777 se retiraron bajo la amenaza de los británicos. Las islas son 460 kilometros de distancia de la parte continental de América del Sur, mucho más allá de los límites normales territorial de cualquier país.

En 1823 las Provincias Unidas de América del Sur, que reclamó la propiedad de los territorios españoles dentro de su alcance, concedió la tierra en la Isla Soledad con un hombre llamado Luis Vernet. Las Provincias Unidas de América del Sur era un estado transitorio que consiste en Uruguay, gran parte de Bolivia y un pedazo de el norte de Argentina. Fue proclamado gobernador de las islas por el Estado de Buenos Aires (no las Provincias Unidas o la Confederación Argentina) en 1829.

United Provinces y Las Malvinas

"En 1831, Luis Vernet comenzó a apoderarse de los buques pesqueros de América la caza de focas en las aguas de las Malvinas, con la confiscación de sus carga y detención de sus tripulaciones. El 28 de diciembre de 1831, la American corbeta USS Lexington destruyeron el asentamiento de Puerto Luis, en respuesta. El capitán declaró las islas de estar libres de Gobierno. Vernet volvió a la península, para ser procesado por violar las restricciones sobre la caza de focas." (Wikipedia)

Report of the Lexington saying that the islands had been rendered free of any administration and of nearly all the people. Click on image to see full size.

En 1832 la República de Buenos Aires envió un gobernador militar de las islas a fundar una colonia penal, pero se amotinaron las tropas bajo su mando. El ejército británico llegó el 20 de diciembre de 1832 y restableció el orden del gobierno británico. La República de Buenos Aires estaba en el control de las islas desde 1829 hasta 1832. Argentina conquistó la República de Buenos Aires en la década de 1850. Argentina reclama las Malvinas como una recompensa por esta conquista.

Por lo tanto, Argentina tenia, posiblemente, la soberanía legal sobre East Falkland por unas semanas, pero los sucesivos gobiernos argentinos han reclamado soberanía sobre la Islas Malvinas desde hace casi por 200 años. Las Islas Oeste Falkland siempre ha sido británico.

El caso argentino por la soberanía sobre las Islas Malvinas es extraordinariamente delgada. Lo que equivale a una declaración de que las Malvinas siempre ha sido parte de la Argentina. Los argentinos argumentan que la Malvinas es como los asentamientos israelíes en Palestina o, como Gibraltar, el enclave extranjero en el corazón de la nación puesto allí por una potencia extranjera que deben ser descolonizados. En realidad, las Malvinas es única descolonización de una isla, casi 500 km de distancia, y Argentina sostiene que los nativos de esta isla se le debe negar el derecho a la la libre determinación y simplemente absorbido: "Los argentinos declaran que están parte de nuestro territorio y lo tomamos ". Es para vergüenza eterna de la ONU que le aceptar a tales argumentos indignantes.

Que había defacto el poder sobre las Islas Malvinas y cuando - tenga en cuenta que "Argentina" se usaProvincias Unidas o Chile cuando se entiende y que el Reino Unido la posesión legal deWest Falkland todo.

Como puede verse en el gráfico anterior, la Malvinas Oriental ha estado fuera de control de los argentinos durante casi tanto tiempo como Argentina ha sido una nación. Por cierto, debido a la Isla Soledad fue administrado por los españoles de Montevideo y cercano a Chile, es Uruguay o Chile que hereda ningún reclamo de soberanía. Argentina no tiene ningún derecho en absoluto.

Durante el siglo XX la independencia el británica concedió a casi a todos los países que alguna vez formaron el Imperio Británico y esto incluía numerosas islas pequeñas. Donde la gente quería ser independiente los británicos aceptaron e incluso animó a los menos dispuestos. Los americanos del Sur que acusan a Gran Bretaña de mantener el último vestigio del Imperio debido a la avaricia están equivocados, porque casi todos los territorios que se les concedió la independencia había importantes recursos naturales. Bretaña nunca se recuperará el costo de la defensa de las islas. Las Islas Malvinas no han llamado la independencia, no han pedido ya que están bajo la amenaza perpetua de la Argentina. Gran Bretaña trató de persuadir a los islas a aceptar la soberanía argentina en 1968 y 1980, pero los islas se negaron debido a la beligerancia argentina - este signo de tolerancia por los británicos fue visto como una debilidad por los argentinos que rápidamente invadió en 1982, lo que demuestra que los isleños estaban en lo cierto.

El bloque comunista en la Guerra Fría se dio cuenta de que las Malvinas son de importancia estratégica y que su traslado a la Argentina sería un duro golpe contra la OTAN. En 1965, bajo la presión de Argentina y el bloque comunista, la ONU aprobó una resolución declarando que el Reino Unido y la Argentina deben tener conversaciones sobre las Islas Malvinas ( Resolución 2065 ). Esta resolución no dice mucho, excepto que las conversaciones debería ocurrir. Algunas conversaciones se produjeron, pero Argentina se sumió en una dictadura fascista que finalmente invadió las Islas Malvinas en 1982. Ellos fueron expulsados por los británicos.

Curiosamente, y más allá de toda razón, el acoso de las Malvinas continúa. El bloque comercial Mercosur(BBC News) acaba de aprobar una resolución que prohíbe Malvinas Islas de envío de sus puertos con el pretexto de que los británicos no han cumplido con la resolución 2065.

Como puede ver, la resolución no es una demanda que las Malvinas se dan a la Argentina, pero una solicitud para la discusión. Tenga en cuenta que la resolución se refiere a la resolución 1514 en las que Argentina sería una potencia colonial, no Gran Bretaña (ver nota abajo). Gran Bretaña pueden cumplir con la resolución, por hablando con los argentinos y dando a la independencia a Las Malvinas.

La acción por el Mercosur es peculiar porque es "justificado" por el argumento de que Gran Bretaña no está cumpliendo con la Resolución 2605, pero todos sabemos que las conversaciones van a ninguna parte, mientras que Argentina exige la soberanía. De hecho, el ".. objetivo preciado de poner fin a todo el mundo el colonialismo .." en 2605 es incompatible con la demanda que argentina debe ser el poder colonial. Bretaña puede romper el ciclo preguntando al embajador argentino en Londres para reunirse. Gran Bretaña entonces podemos afirmar que han cumplido con 2605; y pida a Mercosur para poner fin a su acción luego anunciar que las Malvinas deben determinar su propio futuro de acuerdo con la Resolución 1514. De hecho, la única solución posible al problema de las Islas Malvinas es independencia y protección británica. Argentina y Gran Bretaña son dos competidores de potencias coloniales y no puede cumplir con los términos de la Resolución 1514. Una vez independiente, el gobierno de las Malvinas sería capaz de pedir a los EE.UU. y Chilenos por protección y para poner fin un delicado posición que nadie quiere en Gran Bretaña.

Los argentinos no entienden que el electorado británico, verdadera y profundamente no quieren estar involucrados en el sur de las guerras americanas, pero están condenados si se van a tolerar la agresión desnuda contra amigos. El pueblo británico sería feliz de ver a un independiente Islas Malvinas que se garantiza la libertad de la colonización por la Argentina, la garantía proporcionada por los EE.UU. o por otros estados.

El desafío para Brasil, Uruguay y Argentina es que se comporten como los estados modernos y foment la seguridad y la prosperidad en las Islas Malvinas, para que puedan formar lazos más estrechos con sus vecinos. La resolución del problema de las Malvinas es una prueba de la madurez de estos estados y ellos no están cumpliendo esta prueba. El reto es también para las Naciones Unidas a negarse a ceder a la presión de América del Sur y garantizar una solución pacífica solución en lugar de ceder a los neo-colonial de la Argentina impulsos.

Los sudamericanos podrían reflexionar sobre el hecho de que las Malvinas era una estación naval esencial que ayudó a proteger el mundo contra la dominación de los fascistas y anti-demócratas de los últimos dos siglos. Los argentinos aún sería gobernado por una Junta y Brasil seguiría siendo un estado esclavista, si estas fuerzas había triunfado.

Si los argentinos hacen una declaración pública que nunca van a atacar las Islas Malvinas y luego abrazado las Islas económica y culturalmente, la federación se convierte en obvia para los isleños. Por amor de Dios, si los isleños se les permitió el libre acceso a la Argentina y sentí seguro de que nunca sería atacado, si una Milonga se abrieron en Stanley, y los argentinos ayudaron a desarrollar el país, ¿cuánto tiempo las Islas Malvinas quieren quedarse aislados? El único obstáculo es que los argentinos están utilizando las Malvinas para desviar la atención de sus propios problemas y parece ser neo-colonialistas que quieren oprimir a otros. La triste verdad parece ser que apenas hay un alma en la Argentina, que ha considerado racionalmente el problema y consideraciones legales y morales han sido derrotados por el nacionalismo.

Los USA pueden haber agravado este problema poniendo sus intereses comerciales con América del Sur por delante de los argumentos morales y legales, pero el verdadero problema es la actitud beligerante de la Argentina.

Nota: La Resolución 2065 utiliza la resolución de 1514 como su justificación. Sin embargo, la resolución de la ONU 1514 no se aplica realmente a las Malvinas, que fue despoblada en el descubrimiento, está habitada mayoritariamente por habitantes de origen británico y, de ser más de 450 km del continente, no puede considerarse como una parte natural de la Argentina. La declaración en la resolución 1514 establece lo siguiente:
"Y a este efecto Declara que:.
1 La sujeción de pueblos a una subyugación, dominación y explotación extranjeras constituye una denegación de los derechos fundamentales los derechos humanos, es contraryto la Carta de las Naciones Unidas y es un impedimento para la paz mundial y la promociónde la cooperación
2 Todos los pueblos tienen el derecho a la libre determinación,.. en virtud de ese derecho determinan libremente su condición política y persiguen libremente el desarrollo theireconomic, sociales y culturales.
3. Insuficiencia de educationalpreparedness política, económica, social o no deberá servir nunca de pretexto para retrasar la independencia.
4. toda acción armada o toda medida represiva de todo tipo directedagainst pueblos dependientes cesará con el fin de que puedan exercisepeacefully y libremente su derecho a la independencia completa, y theintegrity de su territorio nacional debe ser respetada.
5. medidas deberán tomarse inmediatamente, en fideicomiso y no autónomos los territorios o todos los demás territorios que no han logrado aún su independencia, para transferir todos los poderes a los pueblos de esos territorios, sin anyconditions ni reservas, en conformidad con sus deseos libremente expresados Willand, sin distinción alguna de raza, credo o color, en orderto permitirles gozar de total independencia y libertad.
6. Cualquier intento encaminado a quebrantar total o parcialmente de la nationalunity y la integridad territorial de un país es incompatible con thepurposes y principios de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas.
7. Todos los Estados deberán observar fiel y estrictamente las disposiciones de la Carta deEl las Naciones Unidas, la Declaración Universal de Rightsand Humanos de la presente Declaración sobre la base de la igualdad, la no injerencia de asuntos internos enla de todos los Estados y el respeto de los derechos soberanos de los pueblos ofall y su integridad territorial. "

De hecho, si la Argentina fueron a invadir las Malvinas, de nuevo, Argentina sería una potencia colonial en la resolución 1514, ocupando una tierra que está más allá de los límites territoriales legal que se rellena por personas que no tienen ninguna afinidad natural, culturales o lingüístico, a la Argentina.

Los argentinos son colonos recalcitrantes, que en el pasado removieron a los indígenas para obtener recursos. Ellos uso la misma lógica para el pueblo en las Islas Malvinas.

En el último momento, me di cuenta de que numerosos blogs en español minimizar la eficacia militar británico. Esto es peligroso hablar, Gran Bretaña es una potencia militar y tiene fuerzas aguerrido, sólo los EE.UU. y Rusia podrían considerar la posibilidad de una guerra con Gran Bretaña como el "fácilmente" opción. Recuerdo que en 1982 conversación con los brasileños comunes, los estadounidenses, argentinos, etc acerca de una victoria fácil a los argentinos sobre los británicos y fueron engañados a los argentinos en la locura. La guerra no debe ser considerado como un escape de este problema.

(La culpa es de traductor Google!)

See

Las Malvinas son Argentinas

Threats and friends of the English

The re-birth of British manufacturing industry - how to do it.

2012-01-26T02:23:00.000-08:00

How can a post-industrial country such as the UK recreate its manufacturing industry?

In the past 30 years it is the media and services that have been the centre of the British industrial zeitgeist. This has been successful but has imbalanced the economy so that Disc Jockeys and Salesmen are valued more highly than scientists and engineers. The creation of this media zeitgeist has been especially problematical because it is self promoting and DJs will call engineers "nerds" and "geeks" to emphasise their superiority. It is interesting that in the 1950s, when the zeitgeist blew towards technology, DJs would have been regarded as ill educated windbags and real men of substance would have been scientists and engineers.

What sort of zeitgeist and social environment is needed for manufacturing? The life histories of great manufacturing entrepreneurs might provide a clue (all taken from Wikipedia):

William Morris, the founder of Morris Cars, was born in 1877. He left school at 15, and worked in Oxford, first as a repairer and maker of bicycles, then of motor cycles and finally of cars.

Soichiro Honda obtained an apprenticeship at a garage in 1922, and after some hesitation over his employment, he stayed for six years, working as a car mechanic before returning home to start his own auto repair business in 1928 at the age of 22.

George Stephenson realised the value of education and paid to study at night school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic—he was illiterate till the age of 18. In 1801 he began work at Black Callerton colliery as a 'brakesman', controlling the winding gear of the pit. In 1815, aware of the explosions often caused in mines by naked flames, Stephenson began to experiment with a safety lamp that would burn without causing an explosion. Stephenson designed his first locomotive in 1814, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway, and named Blücher after the Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. It was constructed in the colliery workshop behind Stephenson's home, Dial Cottage, on Great Lime Road

Masaru Ibuka co-founded what is now Sony. He graduated in 1933 from Waseda University. After graduating, he went to work at Photo-Chemical Laboratory, a company which processed movie film. In 1945, he left the company and founded a radio repair shop in Tokyo.

The key feature in all of these life stories is that the entrepreneurs were able to start manufacturing or engineering in a small way. Manufacturing entrepreneurs are independent people who do it themselves. Little wonder that manufacturing is not favoured by modern governments who are full of apparatchiks.

There are other essential components for the successful rebirth of manufacturing. I have visited the emerging manufacturing giants such as India and China. In these countries the grubby backstreets on the edge of town have metal stock holders, electronics component sellers, tool and machine tool sellers etc. British towns used to have these crucial manufacturing materials suppliers forty years ago but they have now largely disappeared. Government intervention is essential to provide these resources in the early days of the rebirth of manufacturing. The government's first intervention to stimulate manufacturing should be to create subsidised technology centres in secondary schools. These would work like evening classes but provide materials and tools for adults to experiment with manufactures in the evening; obtaining manufacturing supplies would be a crucial role of these centres.

Universities and colleges should ask their engineering and design students to spend an hour a week at local technology centres as part of their course and base lower technology practical work there. This will stimulate the centres and create a habit of practical involvement amongst potential entrepreneurs.

The key to the microeconomic management of the rebirth of manufacturing is to provide respect for technologists and scientists in the media, to set up technology centres that not only teach children but are open in the evening and to introduce taxes and incentives that make large scale manufacturing less competitive and small scale manufacturing more competitive.

It is the zeitgeist that is most important. The government might commission exciting films on the drama of George Stephenson's life or the sheer drive of the Wright Brothers or Frank Whittle. Headmasters might be asked to tell short stories about the manufacturing "greats" at school assemblies. The engineers and scientists are not nerds and geeks, they are educated and able people who can change the real world.

See also

Economic policies for recovery

A New Taxation System

EU membership and laying up treasure from overseas

Getting richer every day in every way: income and wealth

What is Socialism?

Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?

What happens when India and China are as developed as the West?

2012-01-25T02:57:00.000-08:00

Last night the BBC had a "Newsnight" programme in which the presenter, Jeremy Paxman, was discussing what was going to happen in the coming few decades as China advances to have a similar level of per capita wealth to western countries.

So what happens when India and China are as developed as the West? If the per capita production of India and China were the same as the UK then global industrial production would be about 5 times higher than today. Economists, journalists and politicians who seriously discuss this possibility as a realistic outcome should be sacked immediately. At 5 times the current industrial output even world resources with a 200 year lifetime at present would last about 40 years. Pollution would be 5 to 10 times higher. We would all die within 40 years.

Global mineral reserves - are we running out?

The limits to growth - the end of the world as we know it?

Getting richer every day in every way: income and wealth

2012-01-24T04:41:00.000-08:00

The government tells us that we are all getting richer all the time but when I look at young families today they do not look much richer than young families 20 years ago. Why does my experience disagree with the government? The government use figures such as the Retail Price Index and Consumer Price Index to "adjust" past incomes in such a way that people in the past always look poorer. Go back more than 20 years and these figures become surreal, for example the figures say that the average household now earns about twice as much in "real terms" as the average household in 1970.

Is it really credible that the young couple of 1970 were half as rich as the young couple of today? Try imagining an average, modern young couple with two kids. Like most couples in this position they are budgeting and have very little surplus money. Now take away half their income so that they are as rich as we are told people were in 1970 - no, it cannot be easily done, they would lose their house and car and be on the streets. They would be as poor as the poorest in society nowadays but they live in the same house as a similar couple who lived there in the 1970s and use the same garage. The couple who lived in their house in the 1970's had almost everything that the modern couple has, barring electronic toys. In 1970 some couples would have supported the house, the car and the family with only the husband going to work. How could the 1970s couple be only half as well off as the modern couple when they had almost the same amenities? Something is wrong with the figures.

What is wrong with the figures? No government can allow income statistics to show that people got no richer whilst they were in power so they make the government statistical agencies add a percent here and there. There are also aspects to life that cannot be represented easily by RPI figures, for instance in the 1970s people had local sets of friends, free higher education, plentiful council housing, controlled private rents, needed fewer changes of clothing (washed less) and there was full employment so avoiding periods of unemployment etc. etc..

So how can we measure how much better things have really got? The government statistics are very keen to hide the truth about this behind a screen of RPI and CPI figures. Recently they may have tripped themselves up by introducing the "Net Wealth" statistic. Net wealth is the total value of all the assets that people acquire less their liabilities such as loans. If you are getting ever richer then your Net Wealth will increase, however, houses are included in the Net Wealth figure.

The Net Wealth figures suggest that in 2009 we were 208% wealthier than in 1987. This is a great message for any government. Wow! Twice as rich! But is it true?

The figures are 80% sensitive to house price changes (ie: if house prices change by 300% the net wealth figures would increase by about 240%). It turns out that house prices did indeed change by 300% between 1987 and 2009 so net wealth figures should have changed by 240%, in fact they only changed by 208% so our net wealth actually declined by about 32% apart from the wealth in our houses. (If the Net Wealth figures were fair they would retrospectively adjust the value of houses, after all, it is the same house now as it was then.)

So what about the wealth that we have in our houses? The trouble with wealth in houses is that you cannot easily cash it in - you always need somewhere to live. In fact many people have taken out loans on their houses which is why, when you remove the contribution of the value of houses from Net Wealth we are poorer by 32% than in 1987 - a lot of people have got massive loans. These people will get into financial trouble over the next few years as house prices fall by 10-20%. (See Immigration, House Prices and Boom Economics).

We are 32% less wealthy than we were in 1987 and this lack of wealth hits us where it counts, in our outgoings on debt and the failure of wages to keep up with these.

The truth is that before 1970, with the post war recovery etc. people were poorer than in 2009 but since 1970 there has been little change. In some decades someone on a median income might have had the equivalent of £400 a year surplus to spend on holidays etc. and in others £600 a year. Thats what an average person has today and it has been the same in real terms for the past 40 years.

If you and your wife are taking home about £25000 a year after tax, pension and National Insurance and you have kids you are not going to have more than a £1000 spare (4%). It was the same in 1970, if you were taking home £1600 a year you only had £70 spare but it was worth nearly £1000 (you could buy an 8 year old car in 1972 for £70).

Very little has changed, they pay you enough to get to work, feed, clothe and house yourselves and just about enough to reproduce if you budget tightly. If you are out of work it takes a month or two for all your savings to evaporate, just as it did in 1970.

Our GDP relative to commodity prices has climbed since 1970 so we should really be a lot wealthier than we are. It would be interesting to look at corporate wealth, government spending, pension fund wealth and the inequalities of wealth to see where the money goes.

Governments are obviously lying but they lie in exceptionally cunning ways.

The Office of National Statistics has an excellent article describing the RPI and CPI indexes: Consumer Price Indices, History of and differences between the Consumer Prices Index and Retail Prices Index. Here are two key points:

"...neither the CPI nor the RPI is a cost of living index." (page 6)

"The CPI has a much shorter history than the RPI. It was first introduced in 1996 as the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). HICPs were developed across the European Union for the purpose of assessing whether prospective members of European Monetary Union would pass the inflation convergence criteria and of acting as a measure of inflation used by the European Central Bank to assess price stability in the Euro area. "(page 4).

Ah, so the reason we are not really twice as rich as people in 1970 is that these indexes are not accurate cost of living indexes and the CPI was never intended to measure relative prosperity in the first place.

Principle source: Social Trends: Income and wealth (ST41) - data tables

Nuclear Bomb Explosions

2012-01-22T06:02:00.000-08:00

An animation of the locations of nuclear bomb explosions since 1945. Press the arrow button on the map to see a fireworks display:

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_W_lLhBt8Vg

See

Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan

We need to talk about Europe and Iran and...

New Year predictions for 2012

The Arab Israeli conflict

Immigrants on benefits - are they really scroungers?

2012-01-21T04:09:00.000-08:00

A study commissioned by Chris Grayling, Minister of State for the Department of Work and Pensions, has just shown that 371,000 people on benefits come from abroad and about 180,000 of these are not British Citizens. See BBC Report: Migrants on work-related benefits study published.

This data is not at all surprising because nearly half of all National Insurance registrations are to foreigners. Yes, half of the UK labour force of the future is foreign born. It is hardly surprising that a small fraction of these end up on job-seekers allowance.

From Parliamentary Questions 9th May 2008

Some newspapers are covering the 371,000 claimants figure as shocking (see Daily Telegraph: 370,000 migrants on dole. It makes you weep to see the stupid journalists missing the real story which is that the population of the UK is being increased at a truly astounding rate and will be largely replaced over the coming century. There are few, if any, examples in world history of a country voluntarily replacing its own population and culture in such a short space of time. If you were unaware of this seismic shift in population you should read: The predicted population of Britain.

As you can see from the chart above there are millions of foreigners in England. By 2035 about 4 out of every 10 people in England will be foreign born or the children of the foreign born. The native population is decreasing in number due to low fertility rates and emigration and so is steadily being replaced. Replacement is not so bad but the massive expansion is reckless.

The current immigration policy is a racist attack on the ethnic minorities in Britain: see Is the pro-immigration lobby racist...

See

The predicted population of Britain

The origins of the English

The benefits of immigration to the UK economy

Immigration, House Prices and Boom Economics

What is Socialism?

2012-01-19T02:52:00.000-08:00

We often hear broadcasters and journalists say that they are "socialists", what do they mean? One definition, given by Michael Freeden (1996), is that socialism posits that society is more than a mere collection of individuals; that it considers human welfare a desirable objective; that it considers humans by nature to be active and productive; it holds the belief of human equality; and lastly, that history is progressive and will create positive change on the condition that humans work to achieve such change. As a definition this is largely absurd because any modern politician will say that they are working for a better world and quote a similar list, whether they are left, right or centre. Probed more deeply the list becomes even more absurd, are absolutely all humans active and productive and are all humans so equal that they can jump the same height? Without further definitions and caveats the list is nonsense and it is these further definitions that distinguish a socialist from a conservative.

The idea that socialism is the only mode of political thought that believes in the good of humanity flies in the face of reality, for instance the people who set up the US Constitution were not socialists and most of the radical changes in British political history were Liberal/Whig ideas and/or action, from the Abolition of Slavery to National Insurance and Social Security benefits to the NHS (Lloyd George and Beveridge were Liberals). In Britain you can be a caring Conservative or Liberal.

We can know socialists from their actions. In Britain the Labour Party are the socialists. What did they do? In the 1960s and 1970s they used taxpayers money to buy vast swathes of British industry, also borrowing a fortune, and by 1979 the country was nearly financially ruined. In the Noughties they spent vast amounts of borrowed and taxpayers money on the Public Sector (about a third of UK debt was accumulated before the credit crunch), raising wages and pensions to extraordinary levels compared with the Private Sector and by 2010 the country was nearly ruined.

Socialism appears to be the spending of vast sums of money to create industries and services that are run by civil servants. Much to the surprise of socialists the civil servants are never competent, the industries and services collapse or become hopelessly inefficient, the employees strike and demand money then the whole enterprise falls apart. Socialists create fake employment and massive debts. That is what they do. Little wonder that Socialists must claim that they invented all political good when their record is one of such malevolence, if we include the communist countries in the analysis Socialism becomes a positive evil.

Socialism is a teenage sort of politics. Making false claims such as Socialism invented all political good is a way of saying "I am a good person", "I believe in doing good" but giving away the family's resources to prove this is juvenile and just leaves the whole family destitute. Socialism relies on a socialist government spending vast sums of money on credit and then handing the country back to other people who act like parents, taking on the thankless task of paying the bills. Socialism relies on the young and inexperienced, especially the young because after ten years of another party paying off the bills from the last socialist binge the under 30s confuse the responsible party with austerity and the profligate socialists with "caring".

The journalists and broadcasters are largely responsible for the addiction cycle of socialism in which the socialists binge, their successors pay and then the young vote for another binge to get over the recent tough times. Journalists like to pose as "good people" who would happily give away the family's money so support the next Socialist binge.

To recap, socialists have understood that if they pay for fake jobs and give away large sums of money they will be liked, any government that follows the socialists will appear nasty because they must reverse all these unaffordable gifts, the socialists can then promise gifts once again, seem "sweet and caring" to new voters and the ignorant and then get elected into power again to repeat the cycle. Their main support in all of this are the self-promoting, post-modern journalists and media pundits who have renounced even the idea of truth. (See The London Riots and the Mediocracy).

If you vote Labour every time the economy recovers you will prevent the responsible parties from ever putting in place sustainable changes for the good of society. Personally I would recommend the Liberals (not Lib-Dems) or the English Democrats (not the English Democratic Party), which is a non-racist, nationalist party as a caring alternative.

See

Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?

The roots of New Labour

The Labour Shadow Cabinet - Milliband's Mockneys

Immigration, House Prices and Boom Economics

The aims of localism

Economic policies for recovery

Getting richer every day in every way: income and wealth

Freeden, M, (1996). Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford, 1996)

Global mineral reserves

2012-01-16T01:56:00.000-08:00

We can never extract all of a mineral from the earth but we can extract all of the ore that is easy to extract and end up with progressively less yield. Minerals "run out" when they become so rare and expensive that they can no longer be used in their previous roles.

The amount of a mineral remaining in the ground and the ease of extraction will affect its price and as the price rises other materials will be substituted. These substituted materials will then also be in danger of running out. Whether the consequences of resource depletion are dire or not depends upon ingenuity of substitution and whether there are serious dislocations as substitution occurs.

The chart below shows the adequacy of current reserves of most commercial minerals. The adequacy is how long the known reserves will last at current rates of production.

The red line marks 2012

The chart has a logarithmic adequacy scale. According to this chart Indium should now be in the region where its price will escalate rapidly. Has this happened?

it probably has happened, indium is now six times the price in 1994 and the price is very volatile. Indium production, although initially responding to this price rise has stuck at about 600 tonnes per annum. (US Geological Survey). The comment in the US Geological Survey: Mineral Commodity Summaries 2011 is that "Indium’s recent price volatility and various supply concerns associated with the metal have accelerated the development of ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) substitutes. Antimony tin oxide coatings, which are deposited by an ink-jetting process, have been developed as an alternative to ITO ...".

Antimony has a 10-15 year adequacy at current consumption rates - using it as a substitute for indium will reduce this period. So once one rare metal fails there is likely to be increased pressure on substitutes.

In general the price of almost all metals has increased by about 400% since 1994 which suggests that demand is outstripping supply. The demand is largely in China which takes over half of the world's supply of many metals. Were the metal ores freely available it would be expected that the global prices would rapidly adjust downwards.

Until 2001 the price of metals fell year on year suggesting increasing availability:

Unfortunately it is in the nature of growth curves that everything can be growing apace in one decade then the curve can collapse in the next so the crucial data lies between 2000 and the present day. The curves look rather different for recent years:

If the recent price changes are due to shortages rather than a simple excess of demand then there should have been a less than expected increase in the supply of lead as the price increased. The production of lead did not increase much at all in response to the elevated prices in 2005-2007, US production was particularly refactory:

Something might be going wrong with the ease of production of lead. We are coming to the end of easily extractable lead but iron ore is abundant. Iron ore production responded to prices in the expected fashion:

If ore extraction becomes more difficult then more energy is needed in the extraction process. There is a feedback between oil prices and ore extraction costs. A computer model such as that used in Limits to Growth would be needed to model the complex interactions of energy and metal prices.

The production of zinc, another metal, like lead, that is near to its limits, is also strangely detached from the current price:

World gold production is also independent of price at about 2500 tonnes a year. However, before accepting that the decoupling of production from price indicates that a mineral is "running out", it should be borne in mind that the production of vanadium was fairly steady at about 50,000 tonnes from 2000-2009 despite large price fluctuations from around $5000 a tonne in 2002 to $38500 a tonne in 2008. Yet there are massive reserves of vanadium. However, vanadium demand has leapt and most pundits blame the price rises on shortages, there being a severe lack of current extraction capacity (reserves) even though there are adequate long term base reserves. So the failure of vanadium production to respond to demand is an exception that proves the rule that refactory production is indicative of shortage. In the case of lead and zinc it makes sense for the mining companies to do a complex balancing act, leaving as much as possible in the ground where it can only increase in value whilst producing sufficient to provide healthy profits.

The analysis shows that the adequacy data in the first chart in this article is credible and that lead, tin, zinc, mercury etc. are indeed effectively running out in the coming decade or so.

See also:

The Limits to Growth

Further reading:

Historical statistics for mineral and material commodities in the United States

Scarcity of minerals, metals a concern for manufacturer's suppliers

Mineral reserves are divided into "reserve base", which is all of the mineral currently known to be in the ground and "reserves" which is the part of the base that can be "economically extracted". There is also the "Inferred reserve base" which is a guess at the amount in the ground on the basis of current knowledge.

Egyptian Election Results, Tunisian Election Results

2012-01-13T05:01:00.000-08:00

427 out of 498 seats in the lower house of parliament have been decided. Enough seats are now in to know the result. If you thought you would get a cosy, "West-friendly" result you were entirely mistaken: about 70% of the seats will be in the hands of extreme Islamists. The following table covers the top six parties and is adapted from Jadaliyya:

Estimated Seat Breakdown (as of 9 January 2012)

Party/Coalition	Total Seats	%Seats
Freedom and Justice^	193	45.20
Al-Nour^^	108	25.29
Al-Wafd	38	8.90
Egyptian Bloc^^^	30	7.03
RDP	11	2.58
Revolution Continues	10	2.34

The Freedom and Justice party: is a front for the extreme Islamist "Muslim Brotherhood".

Al Nour: established in the wake of the 25 January uprising, Al-Nour (“The Light”) Party is the largest of Egypt’s three licensed Salafist parties (the other two being Al-Asala and Al-Fadila Parties). It was established by Al-Da‘wa Al-Salafiyya (“The Salafist Call”), Egypt’s largest Salafist group, commonly known as Al-Daawa Movement. Al-Daawa started in Alexandria where it now enjoys a considerable following. Salafism, also known as Wahhabism, is the extreme Islamist sect that underpins the most extreme forms of Islamism. Osama Bin Laden was a Wahhabi.

Tunisian Election Results (from Tunisia-Live.net)

Total 217 seats, major parties shown below.

Party/Coalition	Total Seats
Ennahda	91
CPR	30
Aridha Chaabia	19
Ettakatol	21
PDP	17

Ennahda: an Islamist party. Prime minister Hamadi Jebeli, then secretary-general of Ennahda, at a rally in the city of Sousse: "referred to the present time as “a divine moment in a new state, and in hopefully a 6th Caliphate,” and that “the liberation of Tunisia will, God willing, bring about the liberation of Jerusalem.” " Tunisia Live.net
Salafist (Wahhabi) parties were banned from the elections and Wahhabis infiltrated the remaining Islamic parties.

CPR: Secularist party.

See:

The roots of Islamic terrorism: the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia.

New Year predictions for 2012

The future of globalization

2012-01-12T03:22:00.000-08:00

Globalization is the intensification of trade and cultural interchange to such an extent that national economies and national boundaries have little, or greatly reduced, significance. It is the trend towards the whole world acting as a single economy and with a single culture. So what are the main features of globalization?

Globalization is the replacement of numerous independent national economies that interact with each other with a single world economy. This is unstable and will result in intermittent global collapses (see Globalization and Great Depressions).

Globalization allows regions of the planet to consume far more than they could normally consume. This is just another way of defining globalization, after all, why would you be trading internationally if you could get everything at home? Obtaining more than you can produce at home is summarised in the concept of "ecological footprint", each person requires about 2.1 hectares of land to survive comfortably but globalization has allowed the principle trading nations to use far more than this:

These nations are understandably very keen to continue this trend. Although Canada and Australia look bad on this graph they are not really bad because these countries are thinly populated and consume less than they could produce at home. Some of the worst countries are Belgium, UK, Holland and Japan which, being overpopulated, are using massive amounts of other countries' land to sustain themselves. The worst country of all is probably the USA which has vast amounts of local land but still manages to consume vast amounts from elsewhere. If we look at the number of hectares of other people's land that are exploited by each country the results are rather different from the ecological footprint chart above:

Belgium, Singapore and the Netherlands are the worst of the larger countries in the world for using other people's resources (only countries with a population over 4m were included). Cuba ceases to be a paragon under this analysis, using 1.11 hectares in excess of local resources.

Most of the prosperous countries in the world use over twice the land that they have available to them as a fair share of global resources. It is little wonder that these countries are frantic for the continuation of the Globalization agenda. Globalization is a substitute for colonialism, it allows other countries to be exploited without planting colonies.

The world as a whole uses about 2.7 hectares per person whilst the sustainable usage is about 2.1 hectares per person. The 2.1 hectares is only sustainable if great care is taken to manage the land and resources effectively. If the population fell so that there was 4 hectares per person available and only 2 hectares being used then the population would be truly sustainable. The way that globalization has produced an overshoot in the population is very dangerous (see The Limits to Growth) and invites a catastrophic adjustment. (See Is climate change a threat because of overpopulation?). However, those entrusted with correcting this danger often propose yet more globalization as the solution! The solution is, in the long run, to wind back globalization and encourage national economies to be sustainable entities that trade with each other in a moderate fashion. The solution is a stable diversity of economies, not to further remove all barriers to trade. Globalilizers want to implement widespread global regulation and controls. If they do this the uniform, clumsy entity that is created will implode and become a global tyranny; this must not be allowed to happen.

Globalization has a huge cultural impact, it is responsible for a widespread loss of local languages and customs as well as a devastating loss of wildlife that is comparable with the major extinction events of the past such as asteroid impacts.

Globalization is also responsible for the current bout of global terrorism. The Islamic extremists are most concerned about Western culture spreading to their countries (see Are women the cause of conflict with Islam?). It is closely linked through oil to the problems with Iraq and Iran.

Globalization extols the free movement of labour. This means that any country that has extensive social provision is under endless pressure. Large numbers of people will move into these countries to receive free healthcare, education and welfare benefits. This has two effects, the first is to overpopulate those countries and the second is to destroy the social provision by putting it under endless stress. You can neither be liberal nor Green and be in favour of globalization. The free movement of labour also puts stress on tax regimes because those countries that desire social harmony and equality will lose people overseas as tax exiles. (See Child poverty in the UK, Illiteracy in England, Is the pro-immigration lobby racist?, The Management of the NHS).

Globalization is undoubtedly the worst evil to befall the world since the demise of communism. It is supported by fanatics, it is taught in schools and is malign to its core. The principle fanatics are post-Marxists and corporatists who combine into a nasty nexus in the global media where they can spread their villainy (see The London riots and the mediocracy). It is amusing but depressing to see our robotic youth camping out in city centres as part of the "occupy movement", listing the ills of globalization as intolerable and then gushing forth in support of the philosophy of globalization as their political doctrine (see The Occupy London Movement).

Stable systems either have many independent parts that can individually adapt or are held constant by continuous control and suppression. The free peoples of the West are an example of the former and the crushed multitudes of the East are examples of the latter. A system that has many independent parts not only permits freedom but also holds out the hope of change for the better. Each part has a chance of discovering a better way of life. In contrast, a global society that is controlled so that it is held in stasis will crush all hope for a millennium.

Eventually Globalization will either stabilise as an international tyranny or people will wake up and work to de-globalize the world, respecting each other through International Law and developing their own nations in a sustainable way, trading moderately and, through diversity, finding new ways to run societies and economies for the good of the people. We will either find ourselves as near slaves in a bleak, overcast, dreary, geo-engineered world or, after a painful period of adjustment, throw off the threat of globalization and have a sunlit, varied world where the free can thrive.

See also:

Globalisation and Great Depressions

Nations are the unit of diversity

Globalization and global warming

The aims of localism

The Limits to Growth

2012-01-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

"If the projections are correct they will show one thing for certain: politicians, economists and scientists cannot assess risks correctly."

New Scientist this week had a short article on the "Limits to Growth", revisiting the 1972 book by Meadows et al. The book gave an account of a computer model of how the world's population, resources and economy would function over the coming 130 years. It predicted a disaster in the twenty first century if nothing were changed. At first the book created a stir and world leaders all agreed that action was needed. It then attracted ferocious attacks on ideological grounds, the media carried uniform condemnation and declared the predictions to be incorrect. Within 5 years the book and its predictions had been forgotten by the bulk of the population. This media furore was a forerunner of the recent reactions to predictions of "global warming". The New Scientist article pointed out that the predictions in Limits to Growth now seem to have been accurate.

A graph showing the predictions of an updated version of the model is shown below:

From the German Wikipedia - the red line is resource availability.

The most worrying trend is that industrial production is about to reach an all-time peak. As industrial production falls the food supply falls (each calorie of food needs 10 calories of industrial input in the form of fuel etc.). The population of the world collapses from 2030 onwards.

In 2008 the predictions of the original model were re-visited (Turner (2008)) and the chilling result was that the changes over the past 30 years fitted the model. A graph showing Turner's fit of observed industrial output to the standard run of the model is shown below:

Most of the other variables have a similarly good fit. Click here and take a look at the graphics at the end of Turner's article to see how well the model predicted a wide range of variables. It is faintly surprising that this test of the model has not gained much attention, had it not been for the New Scientist article I would have missed it. On page 23 of Growing within Limits there is also a set of charts summarizing Turner's data confirming that the predictions were accurate:

I read the original "Limits to Growth" in 1972 and had forgotten about it. The media campaign convinced me that there must be something wrong with the assumptions and the model would not apply. If it does apply then the current high price of oil, the running out of rare earth metals, the population hitting 7 billion might mean that our current economic crisis is not a sub-prime then national debt crisis, it may well be the "peak oil", peak resources, overpopulation disaster as predicted. The high/variable price of oil and the shift in production to the East as the massive Eastern populations became productive being natural factors that precipitated the shift from production to borrowing in the West... (see Hirsch Report on the Peaking of World Oil Production for an in depth review - the authors point out that action must be taken 20 years before peak to avoid serious dislocations.)

Peak oil: Image courtesy Wikimedia

So everybody, if the models are right then this is as good as it gets....enjoy.

By the way, does anyone remember "A Blueprint for Survival" which was another document in 1972 that predicted the collapse of civilisation in the twenty first century? (The Limits to Growth was a key reference in the "Blueprint"). Again this was dismissed as the gibbering of hippies and environmentalists by the media.

What is intriguing, from the "World3" computer model is that we do not really get any warning of the collapse: within just over ten years all the growth curves, except pollution, turn around into catastrophic collapse curves. It is this diabolical timing of events that you cannot predict from simply arguing that resources will become depleted or too many people will have trouble feeding themselves. The original computer model demonstrates the sudden turn around only too well, sadly, computer says that almost any intervention after 2000 AD is unable to stop the turnround - we should have acted in the 1970s like the ecologists and others said...

Meadows et al (2004) produced an update to the computer model which was a bit more optimistic. They still found that business as usual, the "Standard Run" led to rapid collapse on the same time scale as the original model:

"Under the "business as usual scenario," world society proceeds in a traditional manner without major deviation from the policies pursued during most of the 20th century. In this scenario, society proceeds as long as possible without major policy change. Population rises to more than seven billion by 2030. But a few decades into the 21st century, growth of the economy stops and reverses abruptly."

If the projections are correct the very last date for "saving the world as it is" was 2002 and would have required a global 2 child per family policy.

If the projections are correct they will show one thing for certain: politicians, economists and scientists cannot assess risks correctly. If the worst happens those who believe that global governance is the answer will demonstrate that they are blind to this essential lesson from the models. If there are massive changes afoot we must adapt to the coming changes and not allow politicians, economists or scientists to fool us into thinking that if they formed a global government and implemented geo-engineering and enforced social programs it will solve our problems. The problem of exponential growth was largely created by globalization and can be ameliorated by de-globalizing, although at considerable short-term cost.

The lesson from Limits to Growth is that globalization - the use of resources from beyond your locality - is dangerous. Each economy should be sustainable and should not become entirely dependent on external inputs from other economies.

A Note on Exponential Growth

In nature a special sort of growth often occurs in which the rate at which a thing grows depends upon how much of the thing is already present. A good example of this sort of growth is a population of animals: 2 animals might have 4 offspring and each pair of offspring might continue to have 4 more, the population then grows as 2,4,8,16,32 etc.. . This doubling with every generation is an example of what is known as "exponential growth".

Exponential growth cannot continue for ever because the number of offspring will rapidly fill the whole globe, at some stage a shortage of food or other resources will inhibit growth. In other words there are limits to growth.

If resources are effectively infinite but become progressively harder to exploit the growth curve will gently slope towards the horizontal.

In nature and in economics a slightly different growth curve is very often found in which the population overshoots the resources. The simplest case of this type of overshoot would be a cage full of rabbits with a large amount of food in the cage and a small trickle of food supplied all the time. The population of rabbits will increase freely until all the food is used up and then fall back to the level that can be sustained by the trickle of food.

Consider any growth curve you have seen, for instance the growth of stock prices, the growth of the railways, the growth of empires etc., etc. almost all real growth overshoots. Boom and bust is a rule, not an exception.

If you see a model of growth in a complex system that has no overshoots then it is 99% likely to be a lie! In the late twentieth century there were several government inspired models of the global system that had no overshoots, these must be propaganda to allay fears of sudden changes to the world ecosystem. Economists were particularly fond of non-overshooting projections, shame on them! The whole of real economics is the story of boom-bust cycles so the models produced by some of these economists must have been "paid for". There is a strong possibility that some "models" were produced for comparison with World3 with the intention of obfuscation rather than enlightenment.

Global Systems overshoot and Global Warming

The more acute reader may have spotted that the global collapse predicted in global systems models means that there is no need to do anything about global warming. Carbon dioxide levels will fall after the global industrial collapse. If we try to prolong the period before collapse the pollution and warming will just be worse in the long run. My advice to world leaders and ecologists is to do nothing at a global level. Wait and see, if industrial output over the next five years follows the curve in Limits to Growth nothing can be done. The British government should follow the plan in Global warming - what do we do now?.

In Growing within Limits, a major report to the Club of Rome, the author on page 10 gives a whole series of "trend" graphs showing how awful the future will be with unchecked growth but on page 18 shows the results of a global system model in which pollution falls to almost zero after an inevitable global collapse before 2100. Despite this evidence that the world can take care of itself and that any intervention is too late the author still insists upon intervention.

See:

Global mineral reserves - are we running out?

Global warming - what do we do now?

The future of globalization

Global warming - man or nature?

Is climate change a threat because of overpopulation?

Globalization and global warming

The aims of localism

Other models:

GUMBO Includes finite size of globe - similar predictions to World3

International futures an economics based modelling system that allows infinite growth. Click here for the online IFS model
There are other models such as DICE that focus on global warming. TARGETS is another modelling program that emphasises socioeconomics.

References

Hirsch, R.L., Bezdek, R., Wendling, R, (2005) PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION: IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT SAIC http://www.netl.doe.gov/energy-analyses/pubs/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdfdocument.

Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens III, W.W. (1972) The
Limits to Growth: a Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament
of Mankind. New York: Universe Books.

Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows*. (2004) A Synopsis: Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update. http://www.mnforsustain.org/meadows_limits_to_growth_30_year_update_2004.htm

New Scientist: Boom and doom: Revisiting prophecies of collapse. 04 January 2012 by Debora MacKenzie Magazine issue 2846.

Turner, G. (2008). "A comparison of the Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality". Global Environmental Change 18 (3): 397–411. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2008.05.001 Click here for a free link.

D.P. van Vuuren (2009) Growing Within Limits, Netherlands Environmental Agency http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/500201001.pdf

The Stephen Lawrence case

2012-01-04T02:35:00.000-08:00

'Diane Abbott, an extreme left-wing, Labour Party MP, used the Lawrence case as an opportunity to increase polarization in Britain'

Anyone who has lived in South London for a long time will probably have heard of the surnames of those convicted of the murder of Stephen Lawrence before the murder occurred. These were seriously criminal families (See Guardian Article). The issue in this particular case is not racist violence - after all, statistically there is more violence in London involving blacks attacking whites than vice versa* - it is the apparent ineptness of the police.

The press has more than hinted at this problem:

'"Police officers told us that they believed that the influence or fear of Clifford Norris infected the investigation of the murder, in that potential young witnesses or young people in possession of information held back because they knew of Clifford Norris' existence and close interest in his son's welfare," states the report from the inquiry, which was presided over by retired judge Sir William Macpherson.

A BBC documentary broadcast in July 2006, called The Boys Who Killed Stephen Lawrence, contained the allegation that Clifford Norris bribed a detective involved in the investigation into Stephen's murder, although a subsequent investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission concluded that the claims were unfounded.' (BBC report: Stephen Lawrence's killers Gary Dobson and David Norris)

On the subject of Clifford Norris, the father of one of those convicted:

"There was a time when people did whatever he asked. Towards the end of the Eighties, Norris presided over a nexus of south-east London criminals, a number of whom were connected to the 1983 Brinks Mat gold bullion robbery. Some, like Kenneth Noye, now in prison for a road-rage murder, were regarded as having links with corrupt police officers, allegations that would prompt the current head of Scotland Yard, Sir Ian Blair, to launch one of the force's largest corruption inquiries shortly after Stephen's death." (Guardian: Drug baron's fall to a lonely bedsit).

This group of people look up to the Krays as role models. The police are afraid of them because they are extremely violent and ruthless. They are the sort of people who shoot without a second thought, people who the movies make out to be "characters" but who are really just absolute scum. The police deserve a small amount of sympathy - Norris' weapon was a sub machine gun, Noye killed policemen without hesitation.

Perhaps one of the most positive aspects of this case is that the perpetual attention focussed on these criminals has greatly diminished their effectiveness as crime families.

As a postscript, it is interesting that Diane Abbott, an extreme left-wing, Labour Party MP, used the Lawrence case as an opportunity to increase polarization in Britain. Bim Adewunmi, a freelance journalist, wrote on Twitter that she found many black “leaders” shown in the media to be out of touch with the people they purported to represent and Abbott responded saying the comments were “playing into a 'divide and rule’ agenda” that is as “old as colonialism”. She said black people should not “wash dirty linen in public”. She later tweated that: “White people love playing 'divide & rule’. We should not play their game,” appending the reference tag: “tacticasoldascolonialism”.

The truth is simpler, a nasty white gang, in this case a criminal gang with an absurd leverage on the police, killed a black boy. Black gangs also beat up and kill people in South London. It is the gangs and the feeble police that are the problem; the racism of Abbott is just the old left wing, revolutionary desire to create anarchy and revolution - the production of this racist divide was Labour's intention when they favoured large-scale immigration (See The Roots of New Labour) - it has nothing to do with colonialism, it is naked post-Marxism.

See also:

The London riots and the mediocracy

The rise in crime since 1955

*Statistics: in London a large amount of violent crime is committed by blacks but if we focus on just those crimes that are recorded as hate crimes then according to Metropolitan Police figures: of 2597 "hate" crimes involving blacks and whites, 616 or 23.7% were black (IC3) on white and 76.3% were white on black. Adjusting for the fact that 10.9% of London's population is "black" (IC3) then the black minority is committing 217.4%, over twice as many hate crimes per head as the whites. There is no need to revisit the high general crime rate by blacks on whites. Very little black on white crime is flagged as "hate crime" so the apparent finding that blacks are twice as likely to perpetrate and 7 times as likely to experience hate crime as whites (per head) should be taken with a "pinch of salt" - blacks are relatively more likely to perpetrate hate crimes and relatively less likely to experience them than the figures suggest. (IC3 - Identity code 3 is Afro-Caribbean). As usual our lazy journalists have tended to cover the Stephen Lawrence case as a sign of growing white on black violence.

* The statistics are clear but South Londoners also have direct experience. In parts of South London there was a period when young white men could not travel alone at night without being beaten and mugged by black gangs. These attacks are still a huge risk in some areas. It rankles when your son comes home covered in blood and injured after an attack by 8 black youths. Thank God my sons were not killed like poor Stephen Lawrence. The National Press never cover these incidents truthfully for fear of stirring up racial tensions...the nearest to the truth would be articles such as "Eight convicted of mobile phone mugging", the racist insults by the black attackers are never recorded. If 8 white youths attack a black youth the headline would be: "Eight white youths caught using stolen mobile after racist attack." I am utterly opposed to racism but we should never lose sight of the reality that witless youths form nasty gangs whether they are black or white. It is the crispness of the geographical divide between black and white areas of the country that makes it possible for our despicable media to give the impression that blacks are the sole victims of racist crime and whites the sole perpetrators. If you live in Salisbury you have no idea what it is like to be a youth in South London - nothing is as it appears on the telly.

New Year Predictions for 2012

2011-12-31T03:43:00.000-08:00

90% chance of inflation over 5%
70% chance of Greece being expelled from the Eurozone
70% chance of threat to oil supplies from the Persian Gulf
30% chance of nuclear war in the Middle East
90% chance of Extremist Islamic Government in Egypt

Happy New Year everyone! We would all like to know what will happen in the coming year, especially in these turbulent times.

Accurate predictions depend upon a knowledge of the world and relatively simple rules of cause and effect. Unfortunately our world is organic, it contains billions of semi-independent entities that consume, grow, compete, divide and even disappear. Organisms are also susceptible to catastrophes and unexpected changes such as epidemics or the invention of broadband. The best I can do is to point out the main branches in world events and speculate where they might lead. In particular I will seek out those branches that reinforce each other.

The most important occurrence in the world economy is the shift of production to Asia. It is this shift that has created the deficits that are fueling the current international financial crisis. (See The World Financial Crisis).

The shift of production to Asia has been deliberate European and American policy over the past 20 years. There has been a lot of media propaganda declaring that this shift is inevitable and makes us more competitive but in truth it is just the old story of the rich merchants, traders and bankers finding that it makes them richer. This branch of events has an end-point at which Western wages fall towards those of the Chinese or Indians. At some time during this fall in wages and living standards the people in the West will demand change. But not this year, this year the people will still believe the corporate mantra that Globalization is inevitable and internationalism the best hope for mankind. However, this main branch of events, the trade deficit, will expose us to the full force of global instabilities.

One of these instabilities is the National Debt crises, the borrowing that Western Governments use to finance their deficits. The Western economies borrowed vast amounts of money all through the noughties as part of the transfer of funds to Asia, this borrowing was exposed by the subprime crisis in 2008 which showed that the Western treasure chest was empty and had a continuous leak in the form of a massive trade deficit with the East.

Notice how these two events, the Asian trade deficit and the National Debt crisis reinforce each other. The Germans already know about these issues and have been running their economy, to some degree, for the benefit of their people, preserving manufacturing and local industry. The Germans are also very attached to the idea of a greater Europe as a single nation. The challenge for the Germans is how to get the other members of the Eurozone to stop buying Asian goods with borrowed money. They are faced with several difficulties, the first is to persuade their own people that funds should be spent on other Eurozone members such as the Italians, the second is to persuade the people in countries that borrow that they cannot continue to borrow and the third is to prevent civil disorder in the South.

My prediction, with a 70% likelihood, is that the Germans will expel Greece from the Eurozone in 2012. They will do this in an orderly fashion, compensating any eurozone banks outside of Greece for the cost, so avoiding a banking crisis. The dislocation in Greece will create mayhem for the Greeks and provide an example to Italy, Spain etc. of what might happen to them. The chastened populations of the South of Europe will then tow the line. If any British and American banks are still exposed to Greek government bonds we deserve what will happen to us.

As can be seen from the chart, the French and Germans can easily afford to write off the Greek debt across the Eurozone (about 90 billion dollars).

The other possibilities, a Eurozone recovery and a generalized Eurozone breakup are at 10% and 20% likelihood.

My prediction for Britain is that we will experience inflation. This is an alternative to borrowing, it makes us all poorer but reduces the real price of housing and increases our competitiveness. We could borrow money on the international bond markets but this would simply increase our indebtedness - the Germans know this is a mistake, the Tories know this is a mistake - it is only Labour, who created our crisis by excess borrowing and deregulation who refuse to admit that borrowing would be a mistake. Labour want our children to bail us out by repaying our debts in 20 years time. My guess is 5%-7% inflation for the year. I would guess a 90% likelihood of inflation at over 5%.

On the subject of International Relations, the worst problem is Iran. The Iranians must be at the stage where they have one to five atomic bombs. They are probably negotiating with the North Koreans at this very moment to buy more - they bought their missile technology so why not buy bombs as well? The North Koreans desperately need cash and the Iranians want bombs. The Israelis suspect this is the case but they may be afraid to act because even two atom bombs could destroy Israel and the Iranians already have the missiles to deliver these bombs. If the Iranians were not developing nuclear weapons they would not be threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz to stop sanctions, they would simply invite weapons inspectors to tour their country. This coming year is the highest risk for the Iranian problem because the Israelis might believe that there is no alternative to a pre-emptive strike against Iran to prevent further bomb development. Next year the Iranians will probably announce that they have ten bombs so it will be too late. My prediction is that there is a 30% chance of nuclear war in the Middle East and a 70% chance of increased tensions threatening global oil supplies.

Iraq will continue an inexorable fragmentation into Kurdistan, a Sunni central state and a Shia southern state. The West should be financing the Kurds and the Shia but the Kurds are unpopular with Turkey, an important Western ally, and the Shia are natural allies of the Iranians.

Afghanistan will continue with the status quo. The West should concentrate massive support for infrastructure and industry in the North to ensure the survival of the Northern Alliance but will fail to do this. Pakistan will totter on the edge of a military coup (30% chance this year).

Syria will descend into civil war, largely financed by other Middle Eastern states. Egypt and Libya will follow in Tunisia's footsteps and acquire democratic, extremist Islamic governments (90% chance), making Israel feel even more insecure. One thing all of these countries share is a bitter and implacable hatred of Israel. I do not predict Western intervention in Syria (10% chance). In the absence of a nuclear war, at the end of 2012 the world will be facing a Salafist/Wahhabi block stretching from Tunisia to the Persian gulf and into Pakistan (90% chance). Think this is the "Arab Spring"? Think again, Osama Bin Laden was a Wahhabi.

Japan will recover from the earthquake and start growing on the back of Chinese internal growth.

In domestic UK politics I predict that the unions will behave as they did in the 1970s and create nasty conditions for everyone from mothers needing to stay home to care for their children whilst well paid teachers protect their pensions to commuters struggling into work against endless transport strikes led by the communist Bob Crow and his cronies whose aim is anarchy. The Lib-dems will either become increasingly feisty to demonstrate their separateness from the Tories or senior Lib-dems will have secretly decided to stand as Tories at the next election (50/50).

The biggest risk in 2012 is instability in the Persian Gulf exacerbating the economic crisis. If there is no nuclear war in 2012 the Islamic states will present a united power block that Israel will be unable to ignore. This can go two ways, either the Israelis withdraw from Palestinian territory and accept the Oslo borders or there is a nuclear war later.

In the absence of Middle Eastern problems such as the closure of the Straits of Hormuz or nuclear war I would predict a continued year of stagnant growth in the UK, with everyone being 5-7% poorer as a result of inflation. This might convince the government to concentrate on policies that replace foreign imports from the EU and Asia with home produced products, so reversing the catastrophic policy of buying manufactures from overseas that has undermined us for the past 20 years.

Most importantly, I predict that for 2012 the occupy movement and other nascent political movements will still consist of schizophrenic people wandering about thinking "globalisation good, globalisation inevitable" whilst crying out against the banking crises, unemployment, global warming and middle east wars which are all symptoms of globalization. Events will need to be a bit worse before the zombies awake.

What to do? Safe investments are highly problematical. Gold is already dangerously high, if events turn out to be less menacing than they appear you could lose a fortune. Property will devalue by about 2% in the UK plus 6-7% inflation so will lose c.8%. Stocks will plunge if there is trouble in the Middle East. UK Government bonds and Chinese or Japanese stocks look interesting but inflation will chop away the benefit of UK gilts and if the Chinese/Japanese Stocks/Japanese bonds are bought through a third party they will steal all the profit.

Risky investments are available. If you want a "big dipper ride" then French government/ECB bonds, bought just after the exit of Greece might be a good gamble - if Greece is safely ejected from the Eurozone the Eurozone crisis will be over although there will be a couple of months of media panic. The lability of the stock markets will be good news for gamblers. Military equipment suppliers may also be a good gamble.

The only safe domestic investment is probably property, the Tories are still allowing hundreds of thousands of immigrants per year so there will be demand for housing for a few more years and hence no sudden collapse in the market (See Immigration, house prices and boom economics).

Of course, if there is a local nuclear war there will be pandemonium and all bets are off. It would be wise to keep some portable wealth against catastrophe.

See:

The world financial crisis

The advantages of Globalization

EU Membership and laying up treasure from overseas

The roots of islamic terrorism: the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia

The European Civil War

Communism and the education system

The future of Afghanistan

Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan

On being a football fan

2011-12-22T04:52:00.000-08:00

Football is great isn't it? Kids at primary school imagine they will be Internationals. Their dads and mums take them to the park to hone their skills. The most enthusiastic go on to play for their local team. When they and their dads go to see the local Premier League team, Chelsea, Manchester United etc. they see the finest football.

In England the towns of Manchester or Chelsea lend their names to the finest football but the players are not English. Look around, most of the fans are not from Manchester or Chelsea. How did this happen? How did the town of Manchester lose the right for its own people to use the name and its own people to provide support?

Suppose Manchester City was called Etihad. It IS Etihad because it is entirely financed and owned by a foreign Sultan. Would the fans be happy with this? The answer is "No!". The reason they do not want to support Etihad is that the name exposes the fans for what they are: corporate football fanatics with no responsibility for anything else.

Imagine the streets of England being roamed by supporters of Etihad or Gazprom. Would the local communities be happy to permit any bad behaviour at all? Would anyone be indulgent towards these groupies? No, of course not, a bunch of grown men would not be allowed to act like selfish children on the streets if they were just following corporate entertainment although they would be free in the ground.

Suppose Manchester reclaimed its name and players had to have lived for five years in Manchester to play for United or City. The Premier League would be full of teams called Gazprom and Etihad etc. but the supporters of Manchester City would be supporting their own children, there would be more of these supporters than Etihad supporters and there would be a focus for local sport. England would have a first class national team. Towns and Cities should be handed back their names and there should be an "Appellation Controllee" for sporting names whereby only the town can use the name of the town for a sports team.

Premier League football fans neglect their communities and country and are proud of it.

Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Las Malvinas - the Falkland Island problem

2011-12-21T01:59:00.000-08:00

Para el español, haga clic aquí: Las Malvinas - un análisis de la soberanía y el futuro y Las Malvinas son Argentinas

The Malvinas is the Spanish name for the Falkland Islands. These are a group of islands, the East of which were settled by the French in 1764 (East Falkland Island) and the west settled by the British in 1765 (West Falkland Island). The British claimed sovereignty over the entire island group. The Spanish purchased East Falkland Island from the French in 1766. In 1770 the Spanish attacked West Falkland, taking control of the entire group but in 1771 they withdrew under threat from the British, recognising the right of the British to remain in West Falkland in 1775. The Islands are 460km away from the South American mainland, well beyond any normal territorial limits of any country.

In 1823 The United Provinces of South America, which claimed ownership of any Spanish territories within reach, granted land on East Falkland to a man named Luis Vernet. The United Provinces of South America was a transient State consisting of Uruguay, much of Bolivia and a piece of northern Argentina. He was proclaimed governor of the islands by The State of Buenos Aires (not the United Provinces or Argentine Confederation) in 1829.

United Provinces and Falkland Islands

"In 1831, Luis Vernet seized three American vessels (Breakwater, Superior and Harriet) hunting seals in Falklands waters, confiscating their catch and arresting their crews. Vernet returned to the mainland, bringing senior officers of the American vessels to stand trial for violating restrictions on seal hunting. The American consul protested violently against the seizure of American ships and the USS Lexington sailed to the Falklands. The log of the Lexington reports only the destruction of arms and a powder store, though in his claim against the US Government for compensation (rejected by the US Government of President Cleveland in 1885) Vernet stated that the settlement was destroyed.[4] The Islands were declared free from all government, the seven senior members of the settlement were arrested for piracy[5] and taken to Montevideo,[3] where they were released without charge on the orders of Commodore Rogers.[6]. The Lexington also removed the entire administration and most of the population of the Falklands [7].(Wikipedia)"

Report of the Lexington saying that the islands had been rendered free of any administration and of nearly all the people. Click on image to see full size.

In 1832 the State of Buenos Aires sent a military governor to the Islands to found a penal colony but the troops under his command mutinied. The British military arrived on 20 December 1832 and re-established British rule and imposed order. Vernet was invited to return to the Falklands but as the United Provinces disintegrated in 1831 was unable to do so. Argentina claims the Falkland Islands because the State of Buenos Aires was in control of the Islands from 1829 to 1832 and the Argentines conquered the later Republic of Buenos Aires, who could resume the claim, in the late 1850s. The Argentine claim is a claim to "spoils of war".

So, except for a few weeks of dubiously legal rule the East Falklands has not been Argentine but successive "Argentine" governments have claimed sovereignty over the whole Falkland Islands for almost two hundred years. The West Falkland Islands have always been British.

.

The Argentine case for sovereignty over the Falklands is extraordinarily thin. It amounts to a declaration that the Falklands has always been a part of Argentina. The Argentines then argue that the Falklands is like Israeli settlements in Palestine or like Gibraltar, a foreign enclave in the heart of the nation put there by a foreign power that must be de-colonised. In reality the Falklands is the only de-colonisation case where a neighbour, almost 500 km away maintains that the natives of an island should be denied the right to self determination and simply absorbed: "We Argentines declare you are part of our territory so we will occupy you whatever you think". It is to the eternal shame of the UN that they are giving in to such outrageous arguments.

Who had de facto power over the Falklands and when - note that "Argentina" is used when United Provinces, State of Buenos Aires, Uruguay or Chile is meant and that the UK had legal possession of West Falkland throughout.

As can be seen from the above graphic, the East Falklands has been outside of what the Argentines claim was Argentine control for almost as long as Argentina has been a nation. Incidentally, it was the Republic of Buenos Aires, not the Argentine Confederation, that had de facto power in the 1830s and because East Falkland was administered by the Spanish from Montevideo and, in the 19th century, was nearest to Chile it is Uruguay or Chile that inherit any legal sovereignty claim. Argentina has no legal claim at all.

During the twentieth century the British granted independence to almost all of the countries that once formed the British Empire and this included numerous small islands. Where people wanted to be independent the British agreed and even encouraged the less willing. The South Americans who accuse Britain of keeping the last remnant of Empire because of greed are mistaken because nearly all of the territories that were granted independence had substantial natural resources (see Note 2). Britain will never recover the cost of defending the Islands. The Falkland Islands have not asked for independence because they are under perpetual threat from Argentina. Britain tried to persuade the Islanders to accept Argentine sovereignty in 1968 and again in 1980 but they refused because of Argentine belligerency - this sign of accommodation by the British was seen as weakness by the Argentines who promptly invaded in 1982, proving that the Islanders were right.

The communist bloc in the Cold War realised that the Falklands were of strategic significance and that transferring them to Argentina would be a blow against NATO. In 1965, under pressure from Argentina and the communist bloc, the UN passed a resolution declaring that Britain and Argentina should hold talks over the Falkland Islands (Resolution 2065). This resolution says little except that talks should be held. Some talks were held but Argentina descended into a fascist dictatorship that eventually invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982. They were ejected by the British.

Bizarrely, and beyond all reason, the harassment of the Falklands is continuing. The trading bloc, Mercosur (BBC News) has just passed a resolution banning Falkland Islands shipping from their ports on the pretext that the British have not complied with resolution 2065.

As you can see, the resolution is not a demand that the Falklands are given to Argentina, it is no more than a request for discussion. Notice that the resolution refers to resolution 1514 under which Argentina would be an offending colonial power, not Britain (see note below). The British can comply with the resolution by either talking to the Argentines or making the Falklands independent.

The action by Mercosur is peculiar because it is "justified" on the grounds that Britain is not complying with Resolution 2605 but we all know that any talks would go nowhere whilst Argentina demands sovereignty. Indeed, the "..cherished aim of bringing to an end everywhere colonialism.." in 2605 is incompatible with the Argentine demand that they should be the colonial power. Britain can break the cycle by asking the Argentine Ambassador in London for talks. Britain can then declare that they have complied with 2605, ask Mercosur to end their action then announce that the Falklands must determine their own future as per Resolution 1514. Indeed, the only possible solution to the Falkland Islands problem is to make the Falklands Independent with a guarantee of British protection. Argentina and Britain are two competing colonial powers, neither can fulfill the terms of Resolution 1514. Once independent the Falklands' government would be able to ask the USA and Chileans for further protection and get the UK out of a delicate position that no-one in Britain desires.

The Argentines do not understand that the British electorate truly and deeply do not want to be involved in South American wars but are damned if they will tolerate naked aggression against their kinsmen. The British people would be happy to see an independent Falkland Islands that is guaranteed freedom from colonisation by Argentina, the guarantee being provided by the USA or other states.

The challenge for Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina is to behave like modern states and encourage security and prosperity in the Falkland Islands so that they can form closer ties with their neighbours. The resolution of the Falklands problem is a test of the maturity of these states and they are failing this test. The challenge is also for the United Nations to refuse to bow to South American pressure and guarantee a peaceful, long term resolution to this problem rather than giving in to Argentina's neo-colonial impulses.

The South Americans might reflect upon the fact that the Falklands was an essential naval station that helped to protect the world against domination by the fascists and anti-democrats of the past two centuries. The Argentines would still be ruled by a Junta and Brazil would still be a slaver state if these forces had triumphed.

If the Argentines would make a public declaration that they will never attack the Falklands and then embrace the Islands economically and culturally then federation becomes the obvious way forwards for the islanders. For goodness sake, if the Falkland Islanders were allowed free access to Argentina and felt secure that they would never be attacked, if a Milonga were opened in Stanley and the Argentines helped develop the country how long would the Falkland Islands want to stay isolated? The only obstacle is that the Argentines are using the Falklands to divert attention from their own problems and seem to be neo-colonialists who want to oppress others. The sad truth seems to be that there is scarcely a soul in Argentina who has rationally considered the problem of "Las Malvinas" and national advantage trumps any legal or moral considerations.

The USA may have exacerbated this problem by putting their trading interests with South America ahead of the moral and legal case but the real problem is the belligerent attitude of Argentina.

In August 1968 the British Government agreed the following memorandum of understanding with Argentina:

" The Government of the United Kingdom, as part of such a final settlement, will recognise Argentina's sovereignty over the Islands from a date to be agreed. This date will be agreed as soon as possible after -

(i) the two governments have resolved the present divergence between them as to the criteria according to which the United Kingdom Government shall consider whether the interests of the Islanders would be secured by the safeguards and guarantees to be offered by the Argentine Government, and
(ii) the Government of the United Kingdom are then satisfied that those interests are so secured.”

The memorandum failed because the Falkland Islanders made strenuous representations to the UK Parliament. The British cannot act without the agreement of the Islanders. Cannot do so under the terms of the UN Charter and through considerations of natural justice. It is on these points that the British are hung out to dry, being unable to avoid their obligations yet reviled by the South Americans for acting with honour. The British are not acting as the greedy imperialists portrayed by the South American press.

As a member of the United Nations Argentina and the UK have agreed that:

Article 73:
'Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to
the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the wellbeing of the inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end:
1. to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational advancement, their just treatment, and their protection against abuses;
2. to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement;
3. to further international peace and security;
4. to promote constructive measures of development, to encourage research, and to co-operate with one another and, when and where appropriate, with specialized international bodies with a view to the practical achievement of the social, economic, and scientific purposes set forth in this Article; and
5. to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply.'

Article 103
“In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.”

Resolution 2065 uses resolution 1514 as its justification. However, UN resolution 1514 does not really apply to the Falklands which was unpopulated upon discovery, is largely populated by inhabitants of British descent and, being over 450 km from the mainland cannot be regarded as a natural part of Argentina. The declaration in resolution 1514 states:

"And to this end Declares that:
1. The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contraryto the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotionof world peace and co-operation.
2. All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue theireconomic, social and cultural development.
3. Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educationalpreparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence.
4. All armed action or repressive measures of all kinds directedagainst dependent peoples shall cease in order to enable them to exercisepeacefully and freely their right to complete independence, and theintegrity of their national territory shall be respected.
5. Immediate steps shall be taken, in Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories or all other territories which have not yet attained independence,to transfer all powers to the peoples of those territories, without anyconditions or reservations, in accordance with their freely expressed willand desire, without any distinction as to race, creed or colour, in orderto enable them to enjoy complete independence and freedom.
6. Any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the nationalunity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with thepurposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
7. All States shall observe faithfully and strictly the provisions ofthe Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rightsand the present Declaration on the basis of equality, non-interference inthe internal affairs of all States, and respect for the sovereign rights ofall peoples and their territorial integrity."

In fact, if Argentina were to invade the Falklands again it would be a colonial power under resolution 1514, occupying a land that is well beyond any normal or legal territorial limits that is populated by people who have no natural cultural or linguistic affinity to Argentina.
The Argentines are unreconstructed colonialists, in the past they wiped out the indians to get resources. They tell themselves that there were not that many indians so it did not matter and use the same logic with the settlers in the Falklands.

The UN and the Argentines need to consider the fate of some of the small, distant islands that Britain inherited from the Empire. Take Tristan da Cunha for instance, it has 264 inhabitants, too few people to support even a hospital but Britain provides a reliable emergency lifeline. The entire population had to be evacuated when the volcano on the island became active, to be returned a year or so later. What of Montserrat, another island near South America, strangely no South American country is keen to claim it even though it lies off the coast of South America - why? - because it has a huge pyroclastic volcano and the greedy British provide emergency evacuation and relief facilities. What of Pitcairn? When the small population became warped, institutionalising paedophilia, Britain and its ally New Zealand were able to sort it out. Take the Falklands, a brutish neighbour actually invaded it! But Britain was there again as a mature ally and friend. When the islanders look around the world they are glad that they have a steady, reliable larger country to provide a lifeline. The big exception is the Chagos Archipelago where, at the height of the Cold War the British gave the Island to the American military for 50 years as a key base for intervening in the Middle East. The secrecy of the Chagos operations meant that the entire population was re-settled in Mauritius. World War III did not happen so we should now help any Chagosians who so wish to return. Perhaps the British should demand that the USA leave Chagos altogether if they will not step up on the Falklands, Britain did a terrible thing to help the US so perhaps the US can do the right thing in return.

As an afterthought, I noticed that numerous blogs in Spanish were talking down British military effectiveness. This is dangerous talk, Britain is the leading second rank military power and has battle hardened forces, only the USA or Russia could consider a war with Britain as an 'easily' winnable option. I remember in 1982 the loose talk by ordinary Brazilians, Americans, Argentines etc. about what an easy victory the Argentines would achieve against the UK and this misled the Argentines into folly. No-one should even be considering war as a way out of this problem.

See also:

Threats and friends of the English

Further reading: Roger Lorton. The Falkland Islands History.

The Management of the NHS

2011-12-17T02:50:00.000-08:00

The announcement of a record payout and damages to Dr Eva Michalak will surprise no-one who is close to the management of NHS hospitals. The NHS (National Health Service) management is guilty of poor practices that are almost breathtaking in the twenty first century.

Perhaps the worst managerial practices are those that impinge directly on patients. The worst of all is the way that junior doctors are universally forced to sign a "voluntary" opt out from the European Working Time Directive. I am generally against European regulations but in this case patients must have some form of legal protection against being treated by junior doctors who have already been working 70 hours in a week. The junior doctors are also used as a buffer between the patient and the consultant so that if the consultant makes a mistake the junior doctor will be blamed and disposed of. If there is a mistake all the registrars and consultants team up to find a junior scapegoat, there is no concept of good management where staff are developed and protected in the early years.

Another practice that endangers patients is the empowerment of nurses. Nurses should be the human face of the medical machine but the management, in their wisdom, have created a weird medical role for nurses. Lets be clear about this role, if nurses were good enough to be doctors then they would have gone to medical school. What is happening is that the nurses are being used as cheap labour in roles where they are unsuitable and are failing to fulfill their true purpose which is nursing. The real nursing is being done by nursing auxillaries who can often barely speak english and the nurses are used as unqualified doctors. It might be imagined that when a nurse countermands the treatment specified by a junior doctor the nurse would be investigated but if you imagined that you would be mistaken, in many hospitals the junior doctors are "rated" by the nursing staff and can be disciplined if the nurses dislike the doctor for interfering. Patients may not realise it but this Soviet style of management means that they are often being treated by people with a couple of dubious A Levels who have done a couple of years of human physiology.

The wholesale employment of cheap and underqualified foreigners also endangers patients. There truly are doctors from overseas who do not know enough medicine or english to be working with patients. Ask any hospital doctor. The government should not be employing foreigners anyway - the NHS is a direct method by which the government can alleviate domestic unemployment. It is crazy to be giving government money as unemployment benefits to people who could be working for government money.

Another problem with the NHS is that the management are cheats. A medical worker's contract might say that they have parking or accommodation for night shifts but the management will not actually provide these facilities. When the government inspectors arrive they can show them the contracts with the wonderful facilities they offer the staff and when a junior doctor complains about sleeping on the floor and asks for the facilities in their contract the management inform her that she cannot expect to work in the NHS if she is a troublemaker. The management also cheat the patients, queues are managed by cancelling or "losing" records of appointments at the last minute or using a junior to fill in so that a further appointment is required.

The management's trump card is a vast number of foreign staff who only care about keeping their jobs: patients and working conditions do not matter to these foreigners. If the staff complain or show concern for the patients there is always an Indian or Filipino who doesn't care and will take their place. The management also divide and rule with a policy of continually moving young doctors from shift to shift and place to place so that by the time they have developed any solidarity they are broken up.

The para-medical staff are also heavily unionised and play the game to their own advantage so that if you sneak in to a "busy" ultrasound suite you will find the radiographer doing her knitting. The consultants are largely self interested money grubbing types who have been brutalised by years in the system. Their greatest pleasure is to make their juniors suffer as they suffered and to afford another villa on the Mediterranean. They are so self-centered that they do not realise that the modern junior doctor is treated far worse than they could ever imagine. They used to have accommodation for being on call at night, a doctors club, perhaps even sports facilities and parking - these have all gone and being "on call" is now simply working non-stop.

Of course, the problem with the NHS is that it is a mega-corporation and near monopoly. If a junior doctor refuses to sign their voluntary exception from working hours regulations they will be unable to get a job anywhere in the UK. The nursing unions have tremendous power that management dare not cross. Patients must tolerate foreign doctors and nurses because there is no alternative. Anyone who can tell you about the appalling management of the NHS is gagged by contract and would never get a job in the NHS again (I transferred to private industry years ago). The mega-corporation must be broken up and the patients allowed to go to private providers who are paid by the GPs. The NHS should be free to use but the services offered must be diverse and competitive.

The government can break up the NHS using the existing rules (patient's Choose and Book etc). Just get on with it, kick these evil apparatchiks who dominate the NHS up the backside!

See

Indian Doctors and Immigration Exemptions

The Labour Shadow Cabinet - Milliband's Mockneys

2011-12-16T02:43:00.000-08:00

Ed Milliband, the Labour leader, has assembled a group of middle class individuals, many of whom are privately educated and/or ex Oxbridge, as his Shadow Cabinet. They all seem to be given elocution lessons in cockney so that they can fool the poor and stupid into believing that they share the same background - Milliband's Mockneys. This group of lawyers, barristers and economists have little need to hide their left wing credentials because the Labour Party was moved to the far left by its previous senior officials ( See The Roots of New Labour).

Apart from fluent mockney few of them have any experience of anything but politics.

Harriet Harman: Deputy Leader and Shadow Secretary of State for International Development

St Paul's private school. Having obtained a degree in Politics from York University, Harriet qualified as a Solicitor. Guardian Profile.

Yet few figures in modern politics have enjoyed greater privilege than Harman. Her father was a Harley Street surgeon, her uncle the Earl of Longford. She was educated at the exclusive St Paul's Girls' School, before going on to York University and legal training.

And like so many of the New Labour elite, she has never had a real job in the commercial world. Before she entered Parliament, she worked as the legal officer for the radical pressure group, the National Council for Civil Liberties. See Why does Harriet Harman hate marriage?

Ed Balls: Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

Born 1967 in Norwich. The son of a zoology professor, Ed Balls was educated at a private all-boys school, Nottingham High, and Oxford University, where he gained a first class honours degree, before attending Harvard, in the US, as a Kennedy scholar. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12251435

(He dated the journalist Stephanie Flanders who was also a Kennedy Scholar )

Despite educating Ed at a private school "Ed’s father became a Labour activist and secretary of the campaign in Norfolk to abolish the 11-plus exam. "

Jim Murphy: Shadow defence secretary

Born in 1967, his family emigrated to South Africa in 1979. He went to secondary school at Milnerton High, a whites only school at the time, until 18 (1985). He was president of the Scottish NUS and has not had a proper job in his life, moving from an honorary directorship of the student's insurance company Endsleigh from 1994-6 to a succession of Labour Party posts.

Rachel Reeves MP Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Reeves is one of the worst mockney speakers in the Shadow Cabinet. She is hilarious, switching from a Dick Van Dyke mockney to her South East London/Oxbridge posh accent all the time. (She went to a girls school in Beckenham then to New College Oxford). If she was not such an "accent prat" her work record would be one of the most impressive in the Shadow cabinet:

"Reeves worked as an economist at the Bank of England and British Embassy in Washington, D.C. between 2000 and 2006.[10] Between 2006 and July 2009, she worked as a business planner and analyst for Halifax Bank of Scotland (now part of Lloyds Banking Group).[11] She was once interviewed for a job at Goldman Sachs but turned it down. She said the job could have made her "a lot richer"." (Wikipedia article on Reeves)

Mind you, 6 or 7 years of high flying work is not really the insight into the condition of ordinary folk that Labour needs - if she had run a small business for 15 years she would know about life but..

Maria Eagle Shadow Secretary of State for Transport

Went to Pembroke College Oxford and did have some proper jobs as a solicitor.

Andy Burnham MP Shadow Secretary of State for Health

Fitzwilliam College Cambridge. Never had a proper job since leaving university.

Ed Milliband Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party

Corpus Christi College Oxford. Never had a proper job.

Stephen Twigg Secretary of State for Education
Studied philosophy, politics and economics. Balliol College Oxford. Apart from a brief spell with Amnesty International has not had a proper job.

He became the youngest and first openly gay president of the National Union of Students in 1990[4] representing the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS). He was re-elected in 1991.On leaving the NUS he became a councillor in the London Borough of Islington, and was also Chief Whip, and briefly Deputy Leader. He worked for the UK section of Amnesty International and then for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.(Wikipedia)

Chuka Umunna MP Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills

Umunna was educated at the private school, St. Dunstan's College in Catford in south-east London. He obtained a 2:1 degree in English and French Law from the University of Manchester and then studied at the University of Burgundy in Dijon in France, and Nottingham Law School in Nottingham. In 2002-2008 he worked as a solicitor.

Hilary Benn MP Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

He attended Norland Place School, Westminster Under School (a private school), Holland Park School and University of Sussex where he graduated in Russian and East European Studies. Benn has an older brother, Stephen, a younger sister Melissa and a younger brother, Joshua. After leaving university he worked for the trades union, ASTMS, and has never had a proper job.

Really, anyone who would trust a bunch of Oxbridge graduates who speak mockney but who are really largely lawyers or professional politicians must be mad. No doubt they can fool the more stupid half of the population but its a con job, they don't know enough about the lives of ordinary people to do anything to help them, they will just make everything worse. Their instinctive support for the Public Sector rather than industry and commerce proves the point, they are still school kids who understand institutions but have no idea about reality.

See:

Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?

The roots of New Labour

What is Socialism?

The BBC Guide to Post-Modern Journalism

2011-12-14T04:09:00.000-08:00

This guide is intended to present the key skills to those who want a career in the BBC as a journalist, news reader or current affairs host.

As a post-modern journalist remember that the story is king. Draw out the differences and conflicts between people because these are the substance of story telling. Do not get immersed in "the facts". Remember, the audience does not know these "facts" and will be bored to death by them anyway. Remember that there is always a "moral high ground", think carefully about which viewpoint is most easy to portray as "saintly" and then either take that position yourself or, in a current affairs program, draw one side towards the saintly and suggest the other side is evil.

Here are some hints for story telling and creating drama in a current affairs program:

The EU and alliances in general

Current affairs at the BBC deals with alliances on a daily basis. There is always a larger group and a smaller, dissenting group so the story is always "David and Goliath" or "foolish, isolated outsider". Which of these you choose depends upon either the moral high ground or which will create the most drama in your current affairs show. A good example is the recent Cameron veto - no-one at the BBC really knows why he vetoed the treaty but you do not need to know. The obvious choice here is "foolish isolated outsider" because everyone can understand this as a drama. Imagine Tory, Labour and Lib-Dem spokesmen around the table and you lead with "Hasn't Cameron burnt his boats and moved to the outside of the European Club where no-one will listen?" - immediate pandemonium ensues without anyone being any the wiser about the treaties or vetoes. You do not even need to know what the EU or a veto is! There is no need to even mention the birth of a huge new nation in Europe. The story is king, it is better to be warm and cuddled up with Mussolini, Franco, Stalin and Hitler than isolated in the cold. When it was obvious that Chamberlain was a fool no-one blamed the journalists for being beneath the plot of "caring Chamberlain versus belligerent Churchill". The "facts" of what the various parties are doing do not matter to us, the journalists, we are below such things.

Globalization and the free movement of labour

Under this heading come international trade, foreign ownership, immigration, ports and airports etc. The moral high ground is always about openness, accepting others, freedom so the story is "Miser hermit against the modernising, forward looking, saviour". See how this works, suppose a Japanese company wants to site a parts manufacturing works in the Midlands next to already established British competition. Around the current affairs table are a union boss, a Tory free-trader and woman from the CBI. You ask "how can we protect jobs if we are not prepared to compete with the best in the world?". The union man splutters and you are off and running without any need to discuss Japanese and British government subsidies to the Japanese company. Anyone can do this, you do not need to know anything about economics.

Here is another example, suppose there is a Tory who wants to cap immigration across the table from a Labour MP. Globalization is almost always a moral high grounder so rather than discussing the free movement of labour the story is "Xenophobe versus saint". Your question is: "isn't diversity the strength of this country?". Instant drama ensues, there is no need for stupid "facts" such as UK immigration in the last decade being one of the most epic mass movements of people in world history or the enlarged population of the UK being utterly unsustainable in the long term. Even if these "facts" turned out to be "true" no-one would blame you.

Green issues

Whatever Green issues are about everyone agrees that any danger is decades away. This gives you total freedom to portray green issues as the story of "warring parties". Invite scientists, let them confront each other with their "facts" and then say "can you be absolutely certain that there is no room for error in these findings?" or "how can we believe what you are saying when it has been shown that some of your supporters have been economical with the truth?". The debate can then get away from the "facts" and concentrate on the personal conflict and you do not need to know anything yourself.

Summary

So, in summary, you too can be a lazy, ignorant entertainer and have a clear conscience about destroying democracy by hiding the truth. You supply the information to the people and, now we have taught them to believe that the "moral high ground" and who is strongest in a conflict is all that matters, there is no need to give them any information at all. No-one will blame you, after all, you just wrote the hilarious story, you were not its theme!

Childhood poverty in the UK

2011-12-13T02:03:00.000-08:00

Official government statistics show that one child in five (2.6 million children) lives in poverty (See BBC Article: Children's commissioners warn on child poverty).

Where do these children come from? The answer is shockingly simple. According to the House of Commons. Work and Pensions Committee: Child Poverty in the UK 25% of children in the UK lived in homes with a single parent in 2003 and according to the Office of National Statistics 25.1% of children in the UK were born to immigrants (See Births in England and Wales by parents’ country of birth, 2010).

I do not have the figures for the UK but according to the House of Commons article quoted above, in Denmark immigrant's children have six times the poverty rate of non-immigrant's children. This means that if only 10% of the indigenous population are subject to child poverty at least half of the child poverty in the UK would be due to immigration if we followed the Danish proportions. Most of the remaining 10% would be due to family breakdown. This child poverty is costing everyone a fortune.

What is fascinating about the discussion of Child Poverty (see the BBC article) is that it is couched entirely in terms of how much extra the tax payer should donate and how the Government is failing the poor and needy. There is no mention of immigration and family breakdown.

We are not being governed badly, it is worse than that. We can never get our heads above water if our social services and best efforts are being drowned by the free movement of labour. We can never have happy children if there are no efforts to ensure happy marriages. Worst of all we cannot have a working democracy when journalists are so ignorant and Machiavellian and hide the truth from the people.

Incidentally, if you are anti-immigration you have a democratic tool, just never vote Labour again, Labour set up the current mass migration in 1997 - just look at the migration graphs.

The graph above shows the scale of UK immigration. (See Office of National Statistics Figures. Notice how Labour doubled the migration rate as their first policy initiative in 1997 and also the epic scale of UK immigration which accounts for 30% of all EU population growth - equal to the population of Birmingham every 4 years and comparable to the peak immigration rates in the history of the USA).

See

Illiteracy in England

Immigration, house prices and boom economics

The London riots and the mediocracy

Is the pro-immigration lobby racist..?

The predicted population of the UK

Further reading:

Regional characteristics of foreign-born people living in the United Kingdom http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/regional-trends/regional-trends/no--43--2011-edition/regional-characteristics-of-foreign-born-people-living-in-the-united-kingdom.pdf

On being "outside" in Europe. Isolated or free?

2011-12-11T15:14:00.001-08:00

What is the UK on the outside of? A fiscal union that will rapidly become a political union. Surely we want and need to be on the outside of such a development. Why is no-one in the media being honest? What is going on? Who is really running Britain? Why are Labour and the Lib Dems happy to take us headlong into a political union run by Germany? Why do journalists allow Labour and Lib-Dems to say that our economy will suffer if we are not in the centre of Europe when we have a £46 billion trade deficit with Europe that is bankrupting us?

See:

The Eurozone, EU, Cameron and Crisis

France, the third Axis power - now the cold war is over the Franco-German alliance can be discussed openly.

Nations are the unit of diversity

The Eurozone, EU, Cameron and Crisis

2011-12-09T01:29:00.001-08:00

"The 'marginalization' argument is peculiar because had the UK been in the Eurozone in 2008 the scale of our losses would have brought the Euro crashing down and started a global depression."

Today we heard that Cameron had vetoed the use of the European Union's Treaties to resolve the economic problems of 17 of its members who have formed a "Eurozone". The BBC and some of the press have reacted to this by saying that Britain will be marginalized, outside the club, on the periphery of Europe or in the slow lane of a two speed Europe.

The 'marginalization' argument is peculiar because had the UK been in the Eurozone in 2008 the scale of our losses would have brought the Euro crashing down and started a global depression. The UK had far larger and worse problems than Greece and was host to the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) which had become, briefly, the largest and one of the most insolvent banks in the world. Even the most ardent European Unionist must admit that without the UK's ability to devalue and set its own financial policy Europe, and the world, would have been locked into a total catastrophe. That Britain was outside "the club" was the luckiest of escapes for everyone. Yet the kamikaze journalists want us to be in "the club".

The Eurozone has been very bad for the UK, it has permitted Germany, France and the Benelux countries to use a currency that is hugely undervalued so that they can export to other countries by undercutting local prices. The UK had a trade deficit of about £46 billion pounds with the Eurozone last year as a result of the undervalued Euro. Had the Euro been a true national currency the Northern countries of the Eurozone would have had to pay huge amounts of extra tax to the South for the social consequences of the monetary union. This extra tax would have made the Northern economies less competitive and saved the UK from the large trading deficit with the rest of the EU. The Northern countries of the Eurozone, especially Germany, want it all. They want to avoid paying for the effects of monetary union in the South and yet want to allow the Euro to be devalued by the weakness of the South so that they can export, preying on the other countries of Europe and the world.

Make no mistake, the Northern European Eurozone countries are acting in their own interests. In the negotiations yesterday the Eurozone was trying to involve the entire European Union in paying to temporarily cure their own economic problems. The main component of this temporary cure was a financial transactions tax that would involve the UK in donating about £20-40 billion pounds annually to the Empire. The UK would get nothing in return except for a temporary easing of the euro crisis and would be financially ruined. The UK cannot sustain the £70 billion annual trade deficit that would result from the effects of this tax on the City of London.

There are two paths opening out before us. In the first the Eurozone undergoes a sudden collapse and there is a global depression due to the banking crisis resulting from defaults on Eurozone government bonds and in the second the Eurozone becomes a fiscal union and eventually a political union. Will the fiscal and political union create a new nation? Yes and no, it will create a nation but not a new nation. It will resurrect an old nation, the Holy Roman Empire, that was dismembered in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and consisted of northern France, Germany, Austria, Western Poland and Northern Italy (ever wondered why the Northern French and Italians were a a "bit Germanic"? The Europeans think they have been in a civil war since the break up - see Europaische burgerkrieg anyone? Or how the Germans lost the European Civil War in 1945.). The consequences of a re-formed Holy Roman Empire are not all bad. The Northern region of Germany, France and Benelux will need to subsidise the South and this will ease our trade balance with Europe.

I believe that these old national boundaries, such as Wales, Scotland, Basque Territory, Bosnia etc. have an irresistible attraction for their populations. The Holy Roman Empire will be re-formed despite the efforts of the English and Russians to prevent this for the past 400 years. When it is reborn the UK should seriously consider leaving the EU because we will cease to have any influence and European policy will be set to benefit the bulk of the population in the Empire. As an independent, offshore haven we will benefit enormously from leaving. Certainly we will be able to stop Europeans moving into the UK to fill many of the new jobs that are created - in the year to September 2011 the number of non UK nationals in employment rose by 147,000 and the number of UK nationals in employment fell by 280,000 (ONS Labour Market Statistics: November 2011). This makes it impossible to deliver economic recovery to British workers.

If you doubt that the Euro was about political union consider this paper published by the European Central Bank in 1999:

"So what does the future hold? Anyone who believes in the role of a single currency as a pace-setter in achieving political unity (Europe will be created by means of a single currency or not at all (Jacques Rueff 1950)) will regard the decisive step as has having already been taken. This does not provide an answer as to how the "rest" of the journey should be approached. " Europe: common money - political union? September 1999

Some might say that we should join the Holy Roman Empire. This is a pipe dream. The reborn Empire would not have us - they are not stupid and realise that we would destabilise the whole project. The Empire might try to extract as much cash out of us as possible before we leave of our own accord. Certainly the Marxists of the Labour Party are daft enough to confuse a nationalist project such as the rebirth of the Empire with their internationalist, dystopian dream of a globalized world and so we may be ruined. It is in no-one's interest for the UK to be part of the Empire. If the Holy Roman Empire is reborn then it will expel Greece, Portugal, Ireland and other peripheral states over the next 20 years. These countries will become basket cases in the new state and will just be an endless drain on the taxpayers of the Empire.

The stability of the global economy depends upon its operation as a fairly large number of loosely coupled economies. It is the same with national economies, they work because they are formed of a large number of loosely coupled corporations and businesses. If this is ignored neither the national nor global economies will work and we will end up with grinding poverty and a global tyranny. This was the lesson of the failure of communism - turn a nation into a single economic entity and it declines and does not deliver prosperity. OK, the Holy Roman Empire is a cultural and economic unit so can be a viable nation but we should not all try to join it and bring ourselves and them to ruin.

The English should notice that France and Germany will try to portray the Euro crisis as a result of Britain blocking the necessary changes. As an example, there was an article on the news this morning of Britain being blamed for higher Italian and Spanish bond rates, higher rates that occurred earlier yesterday, before the meeting of EU ministers. The simple fact is that the Empire can be reborn without any reference to Britain, it, and the euro, is entirely their own affair.

See also:

Nations are the unit of diversity

France, the third axis power how the French have always seen themselves as part of the Empire.

The EU and laying up treasure from overseas

The advantages of globalization

Are the public sector holy?

2011-11-29T00:47:00.001-08:00

Imagine that motor industries had been in the public sector for years and the health service, schools, fire brigade etc. had been privatised. The government is about to cut the pensions of the garage workers.

The union of garage workers would hold a ballot, 25% would vote, most in favour of striking and a strike would be held. Would the garage workers see anything wrong in their actions as the country ground to a halt? No, they would say that it is obvious that they are THE essential service, without them there would be no fuel for ambulances, doctors would be unable to get to work. Without their terrible sacrifice, working with the evil, health threatening diesel and petrol in the noise and dirt, the whole country would grind to a halt.

Over the years the garage workers would have insisted that only those with a doctorate could actually touch a spanner. To increase efficiency there would be a pre-repair stage where cars with problems would go and lesser technicians would examine their fitness. Those vehicles with real problems would be told to report to the large, efficient, regional garages where the most qualified and effective specialists would hold all the right parts and know how to deal with any problem, unlike the local garages which would never have the parts and close from 9am to 6pm and at weekends. The government would have ensured that the regional centres were run by nurses and childcare assistants to decrease the power of the motor industry professionals and give the whole organisation an air of private sector efficiency.

The union of public sector driving instructors would also strike. Their union would point out that their central role in the economy and society at large is seldom appreciated by other people but if they did not train drivers there would be no society. There would be no fire engines to save your burning house because the engines would be stuck in the depot, no specialists to treat your ailing car because these people could not even have got to school, let alone to specialist university had their mothers - all trained drivers - not driven them there.

If the private sector were to complain that 60% of the economy of the North East now consists of parts depots and motor regulations enforcement offices the unions would say that they had encouraged their Labour Party to do this so that the poor people of the North East could have stable employment.

If the private sector workers, such as teachers, were to complain then the unions would point out that the motor industry is prior to education, without vehicles teachers could not even get to school to teach and the teaching would be pointless anyway because there would be no industrial society for the children to join upon graduation. It is just typical of the private sector, such as teachers and doctors, to insist that grubbing about indoctrinating children and screwing on metal hips for money was more important than ensuring the smooth operation of communications services: services that are needed by the old and young, the fit and sick alike.

What value can you truly put on a garage mechanic's or filling station manager's wage? The police would be running after criminals on foot down our motorways, firemen would be using watering cans to douse fires and ambulancemen would be jogging miles with patients on stretchers without the sacrifice of our heroic public sector workers. Which of us would be prepared to do the ten years of training, endure the endless ripping of skin against hard metal, the slipped disks and near permanent immersion in oil to ensure the smooth running of everything for everyone? Let alone the risks of rescuing breakdowns, the roadside being more dangerous than the fires faced by firemen or the criminals faced by the police. Do you really begrudge the motor workers their four months paid annual holiday and paid retirement in Majorca after such a life of service?

The Public Sector Strikes

2011-11-26T08:23:00.001-08:00

The general strike by the British Public Sector unions is a protest against pension reform. Are the Public Sector workers really suffering terrible hardship compared with the rest of the population?

The median pension paid to members of public service pension schemes is about £5,600 a year (2009/10). About 90% of pensioners receive less than £17,000 a year, and about 10% are on £1,000 a year or less.
By comparison, the median private pension income across both the public and private sectors (sum of occupational and personal pension income), for a single pensioner, is about £3,900 a year (2009/10).

The public sector employees pay varying amounts towards their pensions:

When it started, members of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme put in the same as the taxpayer – 5% each. Today, current members pay 6.4%, with employers contributing more than double - 14.1%.
NHS employee contributions vary from 5.5 to 8.5%, whereas the employer contributes 14%.
Civil Service employees contribute between 1.5 and 3.5%, whereas the employer contributes 19%.

In contrast those few private sector employees who are fortunate enough to have a defined benefit pension pay 5.2% and the employer pays 16.5%.

The public sector contributions are about 21% of salary and the private sector are about 22% of salary. In return for this the public sector pensions are 40% higher than those in the defined benefit part of the private sector (a small part of the private sector).

"Private sector employees would have to save 37% of their earnings, to achieve the same levels of pension income as a public sector employee in a final salary pension scheme" according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Of course, relatively few private sector employees receive defined benefit pensions nowadays. Most just take their chances with privately arranged provision, sometimes losing everything if the pension provider fails or losing substantial amounts if the provider has bad results (though strangely seldom gaining from good results).

If the relative values of pensions of all types over the whole private and public sector are compared the public sector is blessed in the extreme, public employees getting almost 400% as much pension as the private sector:

(Institute for fiscal studies)

It used to be the case that public sector employees received lower incomes to account for the fact that their pensions were so much higher than the private sector but median public sector salaries are now 16% higher than those in the private sector.(See UK Median Income public sector workers would need a 25% pay cut to bring their salaries into line with the private sector, allowing for pensions).

The public sector has better wages and much better pensions than the private sector. The public sector is supported by the private sector so their demands will further impoverish the people who provide their wages and benefits. Every penny given to the public sector is a penny taken from other workers. Private sector workers should send a clear message to government, unions and public sector workers alike: stop bullying us and stop stealing from us.

So why have we got a general Public Sector strike? The real reason for the strike is that the Public Sector Unions are very powerful and Public Sector employees have an overweening sense of their own importance. Labour spent its time in power bloating the public sector (see Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?) in the same way as they spent the sixties and seventies bloating the state owned industrial sector. The result of this state ownership is that the nation is held to ransom by the unions who own the Labour Party. Labour do not play fair, they are a gang of middle and upper class mockney speakers who hope to bribe the public into voting for them by spending billions that the country does not possess on public sector employment so leaving any government that follows them with a broken economy. When they are out of power they make the country suffer by getting their union bully boys to cause endless trouble. The mockney would be hilarious if it were not for the fact that half the country is so rabidly immersed in class hatred that it works. British politics sometimes makes me sick, it goes in repeating cycles of Labour overspend and Tory austerity and the parties themselves are ridiculous. Labour is like a bunch of posturing middle class teenagers wanting to "do good" when they are too nasty, stupid and immature to know the meaning of "good" and the Tories are like middle class mothers, devoid of any wider vision so relegated to getting their mummy's boys to tidy up the mess.

Private sector employees should be outraged by these strikes. The solution to the state owned industries holding the country to ransom in the 1970s was to privatize them.

Institute for Fiscal Studies: Occupational pension value in public and private sectors.

Treasury press release

Pension Trends, Chapter 8: Pension contributions (2011 edition)

UK Median Income

Communism and the education system

EU membership and laying up treasure from overseas

2011-11-22T10:56:00.001-08:00

A country with an unsustainable population such as the UK survives by obtaining goods from overseas. It is a fundamental responsibility of government to ensure that the UK balance of payments balances or is in surplus.

The most useful document on the UK balance of trade is the Office of National Statistics Balance of Payments Report.

"In 2010, the current account was in deficit by £36.2 billion (-2.5 per
cent of GDP), compared with a deficit of £23.9 billion in 2009 (-1.7 per
cent of GDP)."

The principle source of Britain's deficit was the £46 billion deficit with the European Union:

"A deficit of £46.6 billion was recorded with the EU in 2010,
compared with a deficit of £14.3 billion in 2009. There was a
surplus of £10.3 billion with non-EU countries in the latest year,
following a deficit of £9.6 billion in the previous year."

This deficit is unsustainable and a responsible government would be thinking in terms of an emergency withdrawal from the EU.

The main problem is that Britain needs to restore a manufacturing industry.
The deficit for trade in finished manufactured goods with the rest of the world was £58.6 billion over the year and the deficit of £15.8 billion in the last quarter of 2010 was the highest on record. Much of this deficit is with the EU, Germany in particular has used the low value of the Euro to plunder our markets, had the Deutsch Mark been in existence German manufactures would be too expensive to buy. German products would also be too expensive if the Germans were the heart of a true Eurozone nation because they would need to fully subsidise the southern europeans. The Germans are getting away with economic warfare and, as is their destiny, they are making the whole world suffer.

Britain is purchasing vast amounts of German and French goods yet makes a net government payment of £9.2 billion to the EU budget. The total imbalance with the EU is about £55 billion. An amount that is literally bankrupting the country.

The finance and service sector in general were £49 billion in surplus with the rest of the world (of which about two thirds was finance). The suggested "Tobin" transaction tax is a direct attack on this sector by Germany. If we are unhappy with the finance industry we should regulate it and place limits on bonuses and salaries, we should not allow the Eurozone to subsidise itself with a tax that would mainly hit the UK - the Tobin Tax would raise 57 billion euros (p.22 of link), of which about 29-40 billion (p.26+London has 66% of European derivatives) would come from the UK, neatly removing the entire contribution of the finance sector to the UK's balance of payments.

If Britain had an £80 billion balance of payments deficit we would soon become one of those "basket case" economies that other countries deign to supply with aid handouts. Tobin taxes would only work if they were implemented globally and rigorously, if the EU goes it alone the US and Hong Kong will simply take over the finance industry and the UK will go broke. Unilateral Tobin Taxers are not sweet and well intentioned, they are thick as two short planks. The Germans are not serious about this, they know that Britain cannot implement the Tobin tax, literally cannot do it, but they also know that post-modern, Machiavellian journalists love a good story - evil British capitalists on one side, poor people on the other.

Now for non-EU outflows of treasure. Outside of the balance of payments losses to the EU there are substantial transfers. The Department for International Development spends £9 billion per annum on aid. The largest recipient of this aid was India, a country that owns Jaguar cars and shipped off the last specialist steel plant in Middlesborough to be used on the sub-continent. Somalia and Pakistan, well known friends of the West are also major recipients.

Remittances abroad by foreign workers in the UK were about £1 billion. A tolerable sum for an economy the size of the UK.

One of the prime sources of the imbalance of payments is government expenditure. All of our wind turbines are purchased abroad, the Ministry of Defence spends at least £3.5 billion overseas and probably far more but is coy about contracts for equipment with foreign countries - added to the EU and development budgets over £20 billion is being spent directly overseas by the UK government for little or no return, this amounts to over half of the annual balance of payments deficit.

See also:

The Eurozone, EU, Cameron and Crisis

Thomas Mun: England's Treasure By Forraign Trade (1664)

Economic policies for recovery

The rebirth of British manufacturing - how to do it

A New Taxation System

Getting richer every day in every way: income and wealth

What is Socialism?

Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?

France, the third Axis power - now the cold war is over the Franco-German alliance can be discussed openly.

Wind farms, recycled paper and other problems

2011-11-18T01:49:00.001-08:00

Wind Farms

Are wind farms green? In a world with constant wind and infinite lifetime for turbines there would be no need to ask this question. In the real world the wind dies and turbines must be replaced.

According to UK Energy Research Centre the cost of wind power is a bit higher than gas:

Wind being about 45 euros a megawatt hour and gas about 35 euros. These costs include the allowance for CO2 shown in the study below (ie:they are not the basic cost but the CO2 adjusted cost).

According to The economics of Wind Power The current basic cost of wind power is about twice that of fossil fuels and considerably higher even when CO2 tariffs are included:

This study uses actual prices for the basic costs. The basic cost for coal is 35 euros a megawatt hour and 70 euros for wind power. The taxpayer foots the bill for the difference. The CO2 adjusted costs are closer to each other.

There can be no doubt that wind turbines, taken by themselves are "green", they have little or no CO2 burden compared with fossil fuels. Unfortunately, because the wind drops, wind turbines cannot be taken by themselves.

There are 8,760 hours in a year and even offshore wind turbines are only rated to produce power for about 3,500 hours a year ("An on-land installation normally has around 2000-2300 full load hours per year"). In the absence of adequate energy storage wind power must be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power stations. This means that sufficient energy production for the peak load of the country must be held in reserve in the form of standby gas, coal or nuclear power. Unfortunately the coldest periods of the year are often accompanied by large high pressure regions which are associated with light winds. These high pressure regions are often continental in extent so wind power will always need to be fully backed up by other forms of power generation. This means that the capital cost of wind power generation should always be doubled to get a real estimate which increases the cost per megawatt dramatically.

Given that wind turbines are only active for 30-40% of the year they carry with them the CO2 burden of the back up generator. At present this is fossil fuel based so wind farms are only about 40% greener than fossil fuel. If the backup were green then wind power would be fully green but then we would use the backup instead of the wind farms.

Overall it seems that wind farms are an expensive, transitional technology to allow governments to meet their treaty obligations. They would do better to spend the money on fusion research (see Nuclear Fusion).

It is intriguing that whilst well-run countries have built up their own wind-power industries, for instance Germany has generated about 38,000 manufacturing jobs, the British Labour Government, one of the biggest investors in wind power anywhere, have bought in the technology from overseas and scarcely employed anyone in the UK at all. The huge government subsidies mean that this industry is a government financed industry and the UK could have insisted its suppliers were UK based. Poor old Brits, governed by morons. It is so easy for the Germans, their politicians think "I am elected to serve the people who voted for me, it is my duty to provide work for them therefore I will" whereas a British politician thinks "I don't give a damn for the idiots who voted for me, I hate the English tattooed thugs anyway, I might get a job as an EU commissioner if I get in well with the Germans".

References

A REVIEW OF ELECTRICITY UNIT COST ESTIMATES Working Paper, December 2006 - Updated May 2007

The economics of Wind Power, Part III was compiled by Poul Erik Morthorst of Risø DTU National Laboratory, Technical University of Denmark; Hans Auer of the Energy Economics Group, University of Vienna; Andrew Garrad of Garrad Hassan and Partners; Isabel Blanco of UAH, Spain.

Recycling of paper

Paper recycling seems to be an obviously "green" activity. However, when all of the environmental costs and benefits in the UK are taken into account it is a surprisingly "close run" debate. Everyone is agreed that disposing of waste paper in landfill is highly damaging, producing methane as the paper rots and providing no recovery of production costs. On the other hand, when recycling is compared to virgin production and incineration for energy production there is little advantage in recycling.

"Much of the research concerning the preferred end use of paper takes the form of life cycle studies which compare the environmental impacts of various wastepaper disposal/use scenarios. A number of life cycle analyses (LCAs) have been published comparing the environmental impact of waste paper recycling and incineration. Of these, some conclude that under certain conditions paper recycling has less environmental impact than incineration [29;30]. Others conclude the opposite[31;32]." (Paper recycling: exposing the myths).

However, the use of cheap and nasty incinerators that emit ash and volatile components has undermined the case for incineration. In the absence of incinerators producing electricity from paper the other alternative for processing paper is recycling.

If well designed incinerators were used that had regulated emission standards the incinerator option would provide the elusive green reservoir power that is needed in any renewable power generation system. The recycling industry argues that incineration would create a demand for paper products but it would no more do this than the recycling industry itself.

The reason the government favours recycling is that the UK is a large importer of paper and pulp. Recycling could save about £2 billion from our import bill - this saving might also be obtained if incineration were used because this would save imported oil at up to $100 a barrel.

Should you be fined by your council if you fail to sort your rubbish? I run a business and pay a small premium for the waste disposal company to sort our rubbish. It is the same operator as the council uses. If I do not want to sort my rubbish I should have the option to pay a slightly higher charge to get it sorted. There is absolutely no reason for fines.

The real answer to paper pollution is to use much less paper.

Towards a sustainable paper cycle, International institute for Environment and Development

Friends of the Earth Briefing: Paper recycling: exposing the myths

Is the pro-immigration lobby racist as well as corporatist?

2011-11-17T01:19:00.001-08:00

"The free movement of labour means we are supplying jobs to foreigners at the expense of our children. ... In good times about 20-30% of jobs taken by immigrants are taken from residents, in a serious recession, when no new jobs are being created the figure must be between 30% and a 100%."

The unemployment rate amongst Black and Asian Britons is now over 13% (almost twice the figure for whites) and amongst 18-24 year old Blacks and Asians it is over 30% compared with about 17% for whites.

"Black workers are bearing the brunt of Britain’s jobs crisis. It’s a truly desperate situation, with the unemployment rate for workers from ethnic minority backgrounds almost twice the level for white workers.” TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber 2011, TUC Black Workers Conference: A bleak future for black and ethinc minority workers.

Britain has a highly diverse population, in 2004 over 8% of the workforce were from an ethnic minority (over 10% in England). Ethnic minorities accounted for 27.2 % of employment in London in 2004.

It is obvious that where immigration is a small percentage of the population (10% or less) and the population has not reached any crisis point such as exceeding the available resources then, in the long run, immigration will have little effect on employment or wages (see Note 2). It is economically pointless to have further immigration - it just overcrowds us and brings no net benefit - but it would not, in a stable, growing economy, be responsible for unemployment in the long run. But what about massive immigration? What of the short run with massive immigration and a major recession? What happens if we reach our resource limits?

Immigration has exceeded 500,000 a year in recent years of whom over 80,000 go into employment immediately (see Note 1). This rate of influx has continued up to 2010.

See note 1 for source.

Who are these newcomers going to displace from the workforce? Between 1971 and 1991, a period of overall economic growth, it was found that every 100,000 immigrant workers produced about 20,000 unemployed amongst the population already in the country (see Note 3). In London the effect was greater although the authors of government reports are very coy about stating the scale of the effect. Looking at the data from the Home Office report referred to in Notes 2&3 it can be guessed that in London nearly 30% of the jobs taken by immigrants in times that are not recessions are taken from the previously resident population. (20% displacement of jobs was called "very mild" by the report's authors).

In good times about 20-30% of jobs taken by immigrants are taken from residents, in a serious recession, when no new jobs are being created the figure must be between 30% and a 100%. At the present time this will amount to about 30-100,000 jobs per annum. This might account for about 20-30% of the increase in unemployment over the past 5 years (see BBC: UK unemployment increases to 2.62 million). Whose jobs are being taken by the new immigrants? The new immigrants largely take jobs that are already held by ethnic minorities because those ethnic minorities had previously moved into those low skilled, cleaning, transport and other jobs when they were recent immigrants.

It is difficult to get a figure for just how much unemployment is being generated amongst British ethnic minorities by migration but it must be high. Just looking around London it is obvious that care, transport, cleaning and other jobs of this type are being taken by immigrants, nowadays often white immigrants, and these are displacing the largely ethnic minority staff who used to have these jobs. The figures show that in the year to September 2011 the number of non UK nationals in employment rose by 147,000 and the number of UK nationals in employment fell by 280,000 (ONS Labour Market Statistics: November 2011).

I would like to have investigated how immigration is directed towards areas that already have large, poor, immigrant populations and how this decreases the life chances of British Black and Asian children but there is too little time.

The free movement of labour means we are supplying jobs to foreigners at the expense of our children. All of our best efforts to create employment are undermined. We must stand up for our fellow countrymen. Not only must the media stop being racist by favouring immigration but upper middle class British Asians must make a stand for their own children in preference to foreigners (See Indian doctors and Asian doctors strike again, work in the NHS being a major destination for immigrants).

Incidentally, the real figures for working immigrants may be much higher than 80000:

From Parliamentary Questions 9th May 2008

About 1.5 million National Insurance Numbers are issued annually and almost half of these are issued to foreigners (about 700,0000) which is ten times the rate of work permit issue. OK, suppose foreigners bring a wife and two children with them, we are still looking at about 175,000 jobs per annum rather than 80,000, immigrants would need to bring almost 9 dependents with them to be consistent with the work permit data. The National Insurance Numbers also show how huge numbers of immigrants are now arriving from the EU, displacing the ethnic minorities in the UK from work.

See also:

Illiteracy in England

Childhood poverty in the UK

The benefits of immigration to the UK economy

Against racism

The UK Housing Crisis

Should universities and colleges act as immigration agencies?

Note 1: Changing Patterns of Employment by Ethnic Group and for Migrant Workers. National Report. A. Green, D. Owen and R. Wilson. November 2005

Note 2: "More specifically, if the economy is characterised by a large and heterogenous tradedgoods sector, employment and wages may be insensitive to immigration, at least in the longrun. In such a case, the long run effect of immigration is absorbed by changes in the outputmix. If, on the other hand, there is little flexibility in the output mix of traded goods, thenit may in fact seem more reasonable to expect long run effects of immigration on both wagesand employment." The local labour market effects of immigration in the UK. Christian Dustmann, Francesca Fabbri,Ian Preston, Jonathan Wadsworth. Home Office online report.

Note 3: "The estimated coefficients suggest avery mild effect of immigration on unemployment. According to these estimates, an increasein the immigrant population by one percent of the existing population is associated with anincrease in the percentage of the population unemployed of about 0.17 (for the within groupsestimator) or 0.22 (for the difference estimator)." ibid.

Europaische burgerkrieg anyone?

2011-11-13T04:25:00.001-08:00

Things are very different in Europe. Few people in the UK realise that the Germans and Italians have entirely revised European history to make it seem as if the totalitarianism of the 1930s was just a natural hiccough on the path to a European mega state.

The new European interpretation is called "Europaische burgerkrieg" - stick these words in Google then look at the translated texts. Europaische burgerkrieg means "The European Civil War".

Here are some links for your delectation:

The European Civil War

Wikipedia: the European Civil War

European Civil War as a Fundamental Crisis

Inkultura Online - review of Nolte

Needless to say these revisionist texts do not mention the heroic efforts by the British to preserve democracy when the whole world turned against it. The British are rather seen as a fading power that acted to prevent the inevitable for a few years.

It might appear that this revisionism is just a peripheral issue but consider the article in The Independent by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto: There's magic in a crisis – and good reasons for hope amid the gloom:

"All emerged from internecine wars – in Spain's and Britain's cases from dynastic conflicts, and in that of the US from the "Revolutionary War", the power struggle among colonial elites. The European Union, similarly, emerged from a period of furious internal conflict that German historians call the Europäische Bürgerkrieg – literally, the European civil war, which ended in 1945 and directly inspired our drive for unification."(Independent 12/11/11)

Our newspapers and media are either parochial or looking out beyond Europe, perhaps it is time that they examined what is happening on our own doorstep.

I can't imagine what historical entity the stable parts of the Eurozone might represent, that these European Civil War revisionists think is being reborn. Can you? The Welsh want back a country from 700 years ago and the Scots want one back from 1700 AD but surely 1600 AD is too long ago...

We need to talk about Europe - and Iran and..

2011-11-11T04:47:00.001-08:00

Normally I treat world events as a bit of an academic exercise but there are three events that are beginning to give me a deeply uneasy feeling.

The first, and most troubling, is the Iranian nuclear bomb. It is a piece of cake to make nuclear weapons nowadays, especially enriched uranium bombs, and it is a testament to the peacefulness of most Iranians that most of those who knew how to do it must have quietly slid away when they asked for volunteers. Unfortunately any competent technician can now make a nuclear bomb so it was just a matter of time. We can be pretty sure that when the Iranians do test one of their bombs they will also have five or ten stashed away because they know that the first test will mark the start of a nuclear war in the Middle East.

The second and also very troubling event is the replacement of the governments of Greece and Italy by Eurozone appointees. These appointees are unelected. The new Prime Minister of Greece, Lucas Papademos, is a banker, yes, a bankster, straight from the European Central Bank. The new Prime Minister of Italy is likely to be Mario Monti, an economist, EU Commissioner and member of the Bilderberg Group of Globalizers. At least the Germans did not insist that the new regional, Imperial Controllers of their European Empire were German. Greece will go broke and then how will the Comptroller maintain ze order? Tanks and guns. What if Italy goes broke? How could it have come to this? I fear that the two centuries of Anglo-American inspired consensus towards freedom and democracy is about to collapse.

The third event is the global population exceeding 7 billion. It is now clear that carbon dioxide emissions will be at the worst possible level considered in the IPCC scenarios but everyone seems to have forgotten about global warming... Although I will not be around past mid-century I do feel upset for my children and their children (if they have them). Our present unrestrained population growth and economic development means we will probably kill at least a billion of our grandchildren - has there ever been a generation that cared less about their offspring than ours?

The global warming scenario is pretty certain and the two other scenarios are fifty-fifty each so there is a good chance of one or the other happening. This is troubling. Keep calm and carry on.

A New Taxation System

2011-11-10T06:30:00.000-08:00

The current tax system in the UK has separate rates for taxing earned income, dividends, interest and capital gains. It has a personal tax allowance that is less than the amount required for a person to house, clothe and feed themselves. It has tax bands that increase tax in steps from 10% to 50%, the steps being uneven in size and income coverage. It has a "National Insurance" taxation system that is utterly unfair and contains hidden taxes on employment such as "Employer's National Insurance".

A fair tax system would tax all sources of income as income. National Insurance would be abolished and combined with income tax. There would be no tax until income reached a living wage. There would be a smooth transition from no tax to the highest rate, this transition being a relief to account for the fact that one person's living wage may not be the same as another's. There would be a maximum wage because huge incomes are unlikely to be moral (they represent theft from shareholders, employees or taxpayers). The way the new system would operate is shown below:

Capital gains are a special case because people may make an isolated gain such as selling their business to retire or publishing one successful book or some artistic or inventive endeavour. Capital gains from individual transactions that exceed 10% of the median wage should be taxed as if they have been earnt over 10 years. (ie: in the year of the gain the tax is first calculated as if the gain were 10% of its value and this is then multiplied by ten to calculate the total tax due, each succeeding year for 9 years 10% of the gain is included as income but a tax credit given to account for the fact that tax has already been paid).

The maximum income would be thirty times the national median income (about £900,000 at present incomes). Income in excess of the maximum would be taxed at 100% - this only affects about 12000 taxpayers in 2010. People with such huge incomes would need to leave the excess money in their companies as shares, allowing entrepreneurs to control large companies. These shares would not be taxed as income until sold. Claiming foreign domicile and foreign residence, including changing nationality to avoid tax would be stopped.

Corporation Tax should be abolished. However, companies' products, whether manufactures or finance products, would be taxed according to a "distance tax" and a "turnover tax".

The government would raise supplementary revenue from a "distance tax" on goods and services, property, duties and VAT. The distance tax would be a sales tax calculated according to a formula such that products originating from or distributed from more than 1000 miles away are taxed at 50%, continuously reducing to 0% for goods from 40 miles away or less. This might be supplemented with a turnover tax on UK sales, and only UK sales, so that large companies such as Microsoft are taxed at 50% but companies with a turnover of under £250m are taxed at 0%, companies with intermediate turnover having intermediate rates. This tax regime would be within WTO and EU guidelines but would favour localities.

See also

Economic policies for recovery

The rebirth of British manufacturing - how to do it

EU membership and laying up treasure from overseas

Getting richer every day in every way: income and wealth

What is Socialism?

Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?

UK Government Consultations

2011-11-08T04:15:00.000-08:00

Those who are interested in contributing to UK government consultations online might look at these websites:

List of Government consultation websites

Red Tape Challenge

The Advantages of Globalization

2011-11-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

Much has been said over the past couple of decades about Globalization being a good thing that is inevitable. Why is it a "good thing"? Is it inevitable?

Globalisation is not about international trade, we can trade with only a mild level of globalisation. Globalisation describes how, as a result of communication and trade, the world is adopting a single culture and economy. The Globalizing Tendency hold that this is good thing because once the world has a single culture then everyone will understand everyone else and, according to the theory, we will all become richer and less subject to war and conflict. Perhaps, before accepting these claims we should ask who it is who benefits directly from Globalization and then turn to whether or not the predicted utopia will occur.

Globalization begins with trade and large scale trading sets fashion and hence culture. In the early twentieth century the Anglo-American market place stretched across the whole British Empire and provided an easy conduit for Globalized culture. Cables had been laid under the world's oceans from the 1860s onwards so there were easy communications to all parts of the world. The Americans, who wanted to use the resources of the British Empire (a quarter of the world's population), were particularly upset about trade tariffs that disadvantaged them in this market as were British companies who had problems selling to the Americans so the corporations agitated for free trade. After World War I the Anglo-American axis was globally dominant and could sell to the whole world. In the 1920s the easing of regulations led to a massive boom in the movement of goods, money and labour. The gold standard allowed easy financial transactions (like a single currency), the global banking system became interconnected and large corporations bestrode the world. This was the first Globalized economy. The stock in corporations became ever more valuable and the volume of trade rocketed. Large corporations ruled the world.

The system was so interconnected that once one part of this system got into trouble all the rest collapsed. See Globalization and Great Depressionsfor a detailed description of how this happened.

The collapse of the First World Order, the globalized economy of the 1920s was followed by the introduction of tariffs, the limitation of labour movements and tight bank regulations. Globalization was wound back. The new Communist Empires in Russia and China and the end of the European trading empires also reduced the scope for global culture and trading.

Western corporations and economists had not forgotten the heady days of the early twentieth century. The economics of the Second World War meant that American corporations now became dominant in Europe and they pressed for a New World Order, a second chance at Globalizing the world's economy. It was not until the communist empires had fallen that a truly global repeat of the early twentieth century was possible because Soviet influence and money kept producing relatively protectionist governments and political views all around the world. After the fall of communism in 1989 the world's corporations seized the opportunity. Giant globalized media corporations led the way, sending a continuous barrage of propaganda across the globe to reassure everyone that Globalization was not only a "good thing" but inevitable. This was the second Globalized economy. The stock in corporations became ever more valuable and the volume of trade rocketed. Large corporations ruled the world.

The system was so interconnected that once one part of this system got into trouble all the rest collapsed. See Globalization and Great Depressionsfor a detailed description of how this happened.

Anyone who has read an economics textbook or even "The Economist" magazine can see immediately the nature of the problem that leads to collapse. Economists and corporate bosses think solely in terms of economics and short term gain. Corporations are not concerned about using up the world's resources or creating climate change or destroying cultures or, by the free movement of labour undermining social provision. Trading volumes and share prices are the beginning and the end of their concern. Worse still, they act in the short term. No-one can predict more than a couple of years into the future so corporate bosses go for the immediate pay out, the giant bonus now, the short term lift in share prices etc. They work together to create a giant, global system to provide these short term rewards without any thought about the stability of such a device.

It is obvious that a fully interconnected global economy is a disaster waiting to happen and strong national economies with a sensible amount of international interconnectedness are the proper way to run a world economy, not Globalization. This is probably obvious to senior corporate employees but company law destroys their concern for wider issues. As for economists, the people only hear from those who interpret the world according to the desires of media bosses so they are largely organs of propaganda. And what of politicians? They should represent the people against the corporations but, sadly, they seem to be corrupted by promises of jobs as directors and even direct payments.

Globalization benefits senior corporate staff such as directors of large companies and the workers in these companies during the boom period. When the boom is over there is poverty, unrest and a serious risk of international conflict.

The "utopia" of a uniform world full of coffee-coloured people living lives in peace is a nightmare, another dystopia like Marxism. It is racist because black people and white people can also be beautiful, it is shockingly ignorant because the beauty of culture is diversity not corporate uniformity and it is a lie because corporate booms and busts cause war.

See also:

Globalisation and Great Depressions

The future of globalization

Nations are the unit of diversity

Globalization and global warming

The aims of localism

Nations are the unit of diversity

2011-11-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

The historical and archaeological records are quite clear that tribes became nations and nations became subsumed into larger nations and empires.

A mature nation consists of tribes that have, over time, largely merged their cultures so that there is a single national culture. Nations where the tribes are still culturally separate tend to fly apart into entities based on the tribe.

An empire is a combination of nations that may or may not be forced to share a single culture. The early Islamic Empires and Christian Empires often enforced a common religion and hence culture (sometimes at the point of a sword and sometimes through excess taxation and exclusion). In contrast the trading empires run by the eighteenth and nineteenth century French and British tended to allow nations within the empires to keep their cultures. The dystopian Communist empires of the twentieth century forced the subject nations to share a common culture. The passing or weakening of an empire results in the re-appearance of those separate nations within it that have managed to preserve their cultures.

The reason that nations are the natural unit of diversity is that culture governs the behaviour of the people. When people share a culture they share behaviour and will accept a common set of governing principles.

The way to destroy a nation is to impose multiculturalism, either by importing tribes from elsewhere or by forcibly or otherwise changing the religion of a segment of the population. The British Empire did this in various places such as Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland, the Chinese are doing it in Tibet and the Russians are also at it. The Nation is then returned to a set of tribes and loses any sense of national purpose or suffers civil war.

Globalization is an imperial fad that will pass and nations absorbed by it will largely re-emerge when it has gone. Those nations that have been tribalised by the globalizers will need to go through a new period of maturation that could last centuries.

The only stable world is a world where nations interact according to an international law yet preserve their cultural identities and sovereignty. This preserves the essential diversity that is required to deal with unexpected events, whether these are environmental, political, biological or economic. Economists and post-modernists do not understand this need for many nations and are storing up problems for the future.

The maverick nation in this discussion is the USA. It has imported large numbers of people who are committed to its national culture so that, despite being composed of people from all over the world, it is a true nation rather than an empire. The only danger for the USA as a nation is that the people who share a common origin within it will coalesce into tribes. The USA has always tackled this possibility by carefully indoctrinating the population with national values, if, in this post-modern world, it neglects to do this then it will lose cohesion.

The EU was a stable coalition of nations until it introduced a single currency. The Eurozone is now in the process of becoming an empire.

See also:

Multiculturalism

The Occupy London Movement

2011-11-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

The reason that you feel disenfranchised is that all 3 political parties in the UK are the same....see Anticorporate Manifesto for an article that describes the way forward.

What is the "Occupy London" movement about? It is about obscene wages, lack
of jobs, lack of society, no vision of the future, money above love. It is about the pain caused because society is being run for something other than localities and people. It is about society being used to service global capitalism rather than capitalism being used for the service of society.

Global capitalism is another name for globalisation. Globalisation IS the overpaid bankers and directors floating to the top of international society, the replacement of local cultures with the plastic sights and sounds of world commerce, the massive exploitation of resources, low wages for the many and huge payouts for the few. Globalisation is waht we are against. Corporatism is the source of the impulse towards globalisation.

Why doesn't the Occupy Movement have any policies? It is because we have been told that ideas such as Globalization and the consequent free movement of capital and labour are inevitable, good ideas. This conflict between what we have been told to believe and what is truly happening has made us paralysed.

We are paralysed because if you believe in Globalization you cannot fully regulate the banks or limit top salaries. you cannot have a vibrant national culture and you cannot truly be Green. The current economic slump is due to globalisation but no one bothers to look at the data because they are believers. Our paralysis is due to our beliefs being out of step with our own reality. We have second hand beliefs fed to us by the governing classes. We have been convinced by the media that Globalisation is almost "holy" when it is itself the problems we are confronting.

Globalisation is not inevitable. It was tried in the 1920s and abandoned because it caused the 1930s Depression/Great Depression. (See Globalisation and Great Depressions). Globalisation is where rich corporations and on-the-make apparatchiks get together to carve up the world between themselves.Globalisation does not just destroy society, it destroys the world itself.(See Globalisation and global warming).

The only way to construct a secure and Green World is for each nation to be charged with taking care of its own economy, environment and people. If a nation is short on resources it should strive to substitute local renewables, if it is short of labour it should automate and organise, if it has social unrest it should struggle for a united society. There should be international law to regulate the relations between states and this is the role of the UN. Nations are the unit of diversity and this must be respected. (See International Law versus Globalisation).

The mantra that our problems can only be solved at an international level is an outright lie spread by the Globalising Tendency in the media. The truth is that with the present global regulation of trade and investment our problems cannot be solved. The solutions lie at the national level with each state tackling its own problems in its own way.

You will find that the paralysis amongst those in the Occupy Movement occurs because people who believe in globalisation, free labour movement and multiculturalism cannot accept that these ideas create greed and social conflict. The corporates and media have brainwashed us so well that there is a widespread belief that evil is good. You cannot stop greed unless you confine the greedy to your nation's economic system, you cannot stop social conflict if you nurture widely opposing ideas of how life should be lived in a single nation, nations are the Western unit of diversity, not tribes.

It was the fear of further war that led to the current round of Globalisation. In their fear the people let this monster roam free again. Wars can be stopped by nations agreeing to international laws that govern their relations, we must not create a world of tribes within mega states because this is the real cause of wars.

If you want change, get rid of your support for Globalization, take action to create a world of nations, each with their respected, diverse cultures living in peace under International Law. International trade is OK but globalisation is a dystopian catastrophe.

The reason that you feel disenfranchised is that all 3 political parties in the UK are the same, they are all part of the Globalising Tendency. Worse still, you are probably a supporter yourself even though it is obvious that a world run from New York or Brussels cannot possibly take into account the democratic desires of people living in such disparate places as Greece, India and England, cannot possibly look after nature in you back yard and will create a single world economy that will collapse all too easily.

See:

See this link for an article that describes what needs to be done.

Could the credit crunch have been foreseen?

The London Riots and the Mediocracy

Nations are the unit of diversity

Globalisation and Great Depressions

2011-11-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

The Great Depression/1930s Depression had multiple causes and similar mistakes can be seen today. The biggest mistake was globalisation which removed the essential diversity of economies. A degree of separateness of economies means that one economy can fail without the rest collapsing. Diversity also means that nations do not mindlessly copy each others mistakes or, worse still, enter into international agreements to ensure that the mistakes are copied.

Globalisation

The economies of the late 1920s were highly globalised, perhaps more so than today. After the Great War the banks were deregulated and this triggered the 1920s boom, as a result the money supply was taken out of the hands of the banks and controlled by a return to the gold standard. The gold standard was largely managed by Great Britain and the USA and conversion rates between currencies and gold were regulated. Large companies controlled shipping, mining and steel production on a global basis. Banks lent to each other across frontiers, secure in the gold standard. International trade was lubricated by export guarantees. The English language, Western dress, American films and western manufacturing and financial methods were spreading across the world. The European Empires ensured that this influence spread even to the furthest reaches of Africa, India and SE Asia. Vast steam ships ferried people and products to every corner of the globe. It was truly a new world order that was making everyone more prosperous. Money was flowing freely around the globe. The crazy Economists and newspaper pundits were extolling the virtues and inevitability of globalisation. Once everything had been become sufficiently interconnected and interdependent it was ready for collapse. (See Lessons from the Great Depression. Economist Sept 2001, although it is extraordinary that the author of this work considers that the ills caused by globalisation that caused its own demise were somehow an attack on globalisation.)

Did we learn from this? After the collapse of communism there was no longer any opposition to globalization. Global media corporations extiolled the virtues of corporate products to every corner of the world. The crazy Economists and newspaper pundits were extolling the virtues and inevitability of globalisation and every country possible was roped into trading agreements. Once everything had been become sufficiently interconnected and interdependent it was ready for collapse.

The modern Sub Prime Crisis and Stock Market Collapse of 1929

In the late 1920s banks loaned huge amounts of money for investments in the stock markets that fuelled the stock market booms. Eventually it was obvious that stocks were overvalued and the banks could no longer support their loans and called them in. Investors sold their shares to pay off their loans and stock markets across the world collapsed so the banks could not get their money back and some banks collapsed. Public confidence in banks fell and depositors withdrew their savings to invest in gold. This, coupled with a decline in interbank lending, put the banks under pressure and yet more banks collapsed. Did we learn from this? In modern times the banks lent huge sums of money on property investments, the properties became overvalued and some banks collapsed, interbank lending created a domino effect placing banks everywhere under stress. In both cases rash bank lending caused bank failure. There was also a considerable amount of white collar crime in both periods.

The Euro Zone and Gold Standard

In the late 1920's most currencies in the world were backed by gold, each unit of currency being backed by a fixed amount of gold held as bullion. Some countries horded gold, especially France, and traded their goods at a discount. This led to an inflow of gold into France. Other countries experienced a gold shortage as a result and introduced austerity measures and raised interest rates to maintain the value of their currencies. Did we learn from this? This has echoes in the euro zone of today where the northern countries are producing large amounts of goods more cheaply than those in the south. Austerity measures and higher bond interest rates are required for these southern countries to obtain euros in the same way as they were needed for countries to obtain gold. Countries left the gold standard and eventually it was abandoned, this has not yet happened with the euro.

Recapitalisation of Banks

The poor state of the banks in the early 1930s meant that they needed to be recapitalised. By the mid thirties banks had large reserves and were not lending, this restricted the supply of business and personal loans so led to decreased economic activity. Did we learn from this? In the early days of the modern sub-prime crisis banks were at first re-capitalised by governments but now they are being re-capitalised by ultra cautious lending as in the 1930s so hindering recovery.

Competitive devaluations and Tariffs

The fall in global trade in the 1930s depression was partly due to tariffs and competitive devaluations. Contrary to the views of the Globalizing Tendency import tariffs can help national economies. It is when these get out of hand that world trade freezes up. In the modern crisis we are seeing competitive devaluations and may well see tariff barriers, hidden or otherwise.

Aftermath

The economic aftermath of the 1930s Depression was bank regulation to stop the crazy backing of gambling by banks, the end of a single currency (the Gold Standard), and a return to tariffs and import controls to disconnect countries from international calamities. The social consequence of the 1930s Depression was private poverty and probably war. Did we learn from this? Over the past thirty years crazy economists and media pundits have extolled the virtues and inevitability of globalisation until everyone began to believe. Many of the errors of the 1920s have been repeated.

Globalisation is an obvious mistake, we can only have stability if there are many economies, each with some degree of independence, trading moderately with each other.

See also:

The advantages of globalization

Nations are the unit of diversity

The future of globalization

The aims of Localism

How far do countries allow foreign ownership of their companies?

2011-11-01T03:46:00.000-07:00

How far do countries allow foreign ownership of their companies?

There is an interesting document that sets down the international rules for foreign ownership along with the exceptions: OECD National treatment for foreign controlled enterprises. The official position is that the UK allows almost any foreign ownership and most countries limit foreign media ownership. The USA has a whole raft of State based legislation that may well act to protect US businesses against foreign ownership. Germany assists German companies at the State level (most business finance in Germany being administered by the States). Japan protects land ownership and some agricultural activities and telecoms.

Another excellent source of data for the way foreign companies are managed is the World Bank publication, Investing Across Borders, 2010 Indicators of foreign direct investment regulation in 87 economies. There seems to be little difference between the developed countries, according to this report, in the way that they handle foreign investment. The report did not consider the way that local authority and State subsidies and regulations might affect foreign companies.

The UK appears highly welcoming to foreign business. Despite the report noting the welcoming nature of the UK it stated that "the Industry Act (1975) enables the U.K. government to prohibit transfer to foreign owners of 30% or more of important U.K. manufacturing businesses, if such a transfer would be contrary to the interests of the country. While these provisions have never been used in practice, they are still accounted for in the Investing Across Sectors indicators, as these strictly measure ownership restrictions defined in the laws." So, even with legislation on the statute books that could be used to prevent the loss of strategic industries (such as the Sheffield steel industry) the UK still scores highly on the indicators for welcoming foreign investment. So the UK already has legislation to limit foreign ownership. The UK could have used this legislation in recent cases where entire factories were uprooted and transferred overseas and major companies, such as Cadburys sold off.

The answer to the question that heads this post is that most advanced economies allow fairly free foreign investment. Many countries control investment in the media.

I would propose that countries should not allow more than 75% of the market in any sector of the economy to be foreign controlled. This will provide them with a strategic base in case anything goes horribly wrong - for instance the impending bankruptcy of Greece would be ameliorated if there are domestic companies that can take over when the Greeks can no longer afford foreign produce and operating in Greece appears unprofitable to foreign companies.

The OECD and other International Organisations who lobby for total foreign ownership should be balanced to some degree by the National interest.

The truth

2011-10-28T02:44:00.000-07:00

If you do not know the truth, if you do not know the difference between right and wrong, you should not and must not be involved in politics or public service.

You can tell if you do not know the truth because you will be prone to saying things like "everyone has their own truth" as if 1+1 equals 7 for some people and 1+1 equals 3 for others and these various answers are all the same. Yes, they are all the same: wrong. Not true. There is a post modern myth that comforting lies are "truths" and that people who reject these "truths" are bigots. They would indeed be bigots if the lies were indeed true. But even comforting lies are lies and we are bigots if we support lies. Post modernists and post Marxists are bigots.

Suppose that you have no idea of the truth, like the cultural relativists who think everyone has their own truth. Your actions are then based on subconscious grudges and desires and, worse still, on the ideas of the gangs that you want to join; the groups that it is fashionable to support. If you are a politician and you get into power you will enact your grudges and laws that are fashionable and you will have no true vision for the future. A country that is run by politicians like that will slowly spiral downwards into oblivion. The politicians might be able to convince their fellow lost souls that everything is getting better in every way, every day but none of you would really know whether that was true or not.

The truth cannot be found in words, words are just labels. The truth about objects can be found in the arrangements of objects in the world but this is not a truth about people. There are many people who, when they look at the world, believe that what they are seeing is objects, most people are naive realists. These people have no idea that what they are really seeing is a copy of the objects in the world in their minds. If you do not believe this then look in a mirror and check to see whether your eyes move when you look around your face. What you are seeing is an arrangement of objects in your mind which are copied from the world. The truth about people and the greater truth about the world is to be found in the arrangement of the mind. But what is your mind? What is this place that has dreams, perceptions and imaginings within it? What makes it good? These questions are the stuff of religion.

An Egyptian, considering the causes of the London riots, said of England that: " Religion is no longer even to be talked about." He had spotted that the truth is no longer an issue. Britain is operating on falsehoods and self deceptions and has lost the desire for truth.

You often hear people say that religions caused all the wars in history. Certainly they caused wars that killed millions but they did not cause the wars of the twentieth century that killed scores of millions. Wars are a tragic hazard of being human and are not due to any single factor.

The people who avoid higher truths, the truths about people, know no truth. They might think they gained truth in school but they have missed the essential point that the knowledge taught in school is for children - see: Science and religion

Perhaps the British are especially prone to cultural relativism and moral relativism. The British Empire in the nineteenth century used to run its possessions in the manner of cultural relativists but the home Government was clear about the way forward at home and eventually disbanded the Empire. Curiously it is as if the home Government got lost after the end of Empire and Britain has been left in the hands of the Imperial Government. The trouble is that the Imperial Government has no idea where it is going without a home Government to tell it the truth. Without the truth a culturally relativistic government will just balance and nurture opposing factions until it ceases to govern and the country explodes - as India exploded or Yugoslavia exploded.

see:

Science and religion

Against racism

2011-10-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

It is plainly absurd to discriminate between people on the basis of sun tan or the origin of a person's parents.

It is absurd that TV programs insist that the white male lead has a white female love interest and the black supporting actor has a black female. And in the theatre Shakespeare should be performed by actors of any colour, black actors should not be relegated to playing Othello. Historical dramas should have modern English people of all our shades of skin playing the parts. Shakespeare and drama are about the soul not the skin.

It is also plainly absurd to prohibit people from criticising the cultures and religions of other people. The concept of caste, female circumcision, the oppression of women, child sacrifice etc. are abominations that must be confronted in the UK. Attempts to confuse culture with "race" are never without a *subversive intention such as to increase revolutionary tension or to prepare a nation for absorption into an empire such as the EU or Russia. To label opposition to such subversion as "racist" delivers these people their prize. (See Multiculturalism)

It is also absurd to be pro-immigration because you are anti-racist. Immigration is about economics, social provision and sustainability. Those who are pro-immigration to "rub the nose of the right in diversity" are rotten at heart (see The Roots of New Labour). Such people have not noticed that England is already very diverse and now they are playing with people's lives and possibly the very survival of the population of this country in the future to further their own dystopian, left-wing or post-modern, vision. (See Predicted population of Gt Britain). Incidentally, if you are anti-immigration you have a democratic tool, just never vote Labour again, Labour set up the current mass migration in 1997 - just look at the migration graphs.

*Subversion: where a group within a larger group supports the larger group but has undeclared motives and intentions that are against the interests or constitution of the larger group. All human groups contain subversives and these sub-groups are often benign, but anti-democratic groups such as communists and post-Marxists are clearly dangerously subversive if they are hiding within a political party that has public policies that are not anti-democratic.

ONS Predicted Population of Britain

2011-10-26T08:24:00.000-07:00

"Perhaps few people realise that the current levels of immigration into the UK, introduced by Labour in 1997, are truly epic and comparable with any of the mass migrations and population replacements anywhere and at any time in world history"

The Office of National Statistics has just released its latest projections for the UK population:

The population growth is 400,000 per year of which half in any given year is due to net migration of 200,000 and much of the remaining 200,000 will be children of the newcomers (because they are in that age group). The net effect will be that about 70% of the population increase will be due to migration - as is evident from Table 3 in the report:

Table 3: Projected population growth by component, United Kingdom, 2010 to 2035 (adapted)

Total population increase between 2010 and 2035: 10.9 million

Resulting from:
Assumed net migration: 5.1 million
Additional natural change from assumed level of net migration 2.3 million
Total population increase due to migration: 7.4 million

Natural change assuming zero net migration: 3.5

Almost all of this population growth will occur in England. England is only half the area of the UK but, unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, has no National Assembly to protect its land. The population of England is predicted to grow by an unprecedented amount of 20% in a generation! This is really serious but the people of England are apathetic and don't care.

Table 1: Estimated and projected population of the United Kingdom and constituent countries, 2010 to 2035 millions

                             2010     2015   2020   2025   2030   2035
United Kingdom    62.3      64.8    67.2    69.4    71.4    73.2
England                 52.2      54.5    56.6    58.6    60.4    62.1
Wales                       3.0        3.1      3.2      3.2      3.3     3.4
Scotland                  5.2        5.4       5.5      5.6      5.7     5.8
Northern Ireland     1.8        1.9       1.9      2.0      2.0     2.0
Note: Figures may not sum due to rounding

The area of England is 50.000 square miles, if we include all rivers, roads and mountains this gives us half an acre each in 2035. Thank you HM Government.

Idiot journalists are, as usual, misreporting, saying that the component due to immigration is only 50% when the ONS says it is 7.4 million of a 10.9 million increase, ie: 68%. I do not know who the journalists think they are protecting, the massive population growth will afflict the recent immigrant as much as the people who are already here. This is real, not about attitudes.

The new population projections talk in terms of Net Migration and do not consider Immigration as anything but the input side of the equation. Every year 550,000 foreign people arrive in Britain and 350,000 largely indigenous people leave. This would result in about a further 10-15 million people being new or first generation British, which, including recent immigration, would make a total of over 20 million, about 30% of the population being either immigrant or children of immigrants by 2035. These will constitute nearly half of the population under 40 years of age. (See Office of National Statistics Figures, Review of these figures.

Apparently the UK, and especially England, is going to cope with the social and political consequences of this wholesale replacement of the native population by 2035. We know why Labour began this huge dislocation of the people in 1997 (see Roots of New Labour) the only mystery was why it was supported by the English. Perhaps few people realise that the current levels of immigration, introduced by Labour in 1997, are truly epic and comparable with any of the mass migrations and population replacements anywhere and at any time in world history. Compare the immigration with the movement into the USA during the nineteenth century: for the period from 1847 through 1930, the average yearly volume was 434,000, for the UK it is now over 500,000. The USA is virtually a continent, the UK is a small island yet Britain has 2.5 times the rate of immigration per person that the USA currently sustains.

The change in population in England will be especially challenging, as can be seen from the chart above, the current native population being replaced progressively over the 21st century. (The chart above is extrapolated from ONS data, fertility, migration and death rates and not provided by the ONS).

My own suspicion is that class hatred means that the English hate each other more than anyone or anything else and this needs to be played out until there are no indigenous English left, the land is overrun with development and the people are starving towards the end of the century. We really should not be inviting people from overseas to share such a nightmare (See Global warming: what do we do now?.).

Incidentally, if you are anti-immigration you have a democratic tool, just never vote Labour again, Labour set up the current mass migration in 1997 - just look at the migration graphs.

Can this migration be stopped?

Curiously very little immigration is due to Asylum Seekers - Asylum Seekers were singled out by Labour to tug at the heart strings of the electorate. Most immigration is invited and official. All that needs to be done is to stop inviting people.

(Graph from: The migration Observatory), notice how, in the upper chart, it is clear that Labour began the mass migration in 1997.

We could stop this now by putting the brakes on immigration. If you are young and want any space, whether you are black, white or brown, lobby your MP to stop immigration now. Not only will it be impossible to own a house, with climate change and rising world food prices you may well find yourself dying in 2035 if we are misgoverned into such high population increases - oh well, its nature's way of correcting for insane government.

But really, the people governing us must be rotten to the core.

Most people don't even realise that this population increase was deliberate Labour policy and continue voting Labour! Its hilarious! You can also just laugh at the Greens - they want us to use bikes and then acquiesce in the concreting over of the country, you can just split your sides at the Socialists, they talk of public services and work for all and would happily pour millions of the poor and dislocated into the country so destroying any possibility of improvement for generations.

The electorate must simply stop voting for parties that have supported immigration. This means don't vote Labour or Lib Dem. Remember that Labour lie about immigration, they say they will stop it in their manifesto then continue with business as usual. Never vote Labour again. The predicted increase in population is a far greater threat than any economic crisis, it could result in the deaths of your children or grandchildren if climate change is as serious as predicted or the global system goes into meltdown, as is also predicted. Supporting further immigration is not just rash, it is insane.

See

The limits to growth

Other sources:
Tony Blair defends open door policy on immigration.
Labour wanted mass migration

See Also:
The origins of the English
The UK Housing Crisis

The benefits of immigration to the UK economy
Immigration, house prices and boom economics

Incidentally, the figures for immigration are inconsistent, consider this chart of the numbers of National Insurance Numbers issued:

Occupy Manifesto

2011-10-22T07:29:00.000-07:00

Please discuss these points below and contribute your own ideas.

At a time of anti-corporate protests there is a need for a solution to the excesses of our corporations. I also want to stop rampant capitalism and rampant corporatism. But I always remind myself of the score from the 20th century:

Nazis: 8 million people murdered
Communists: 60 million people murdered

These two tyrannies were unspeakably evil and cannot form a basis for politics (See The roots of New Labour).

So how do we tame capitalism without descending into tyranny? What is needed is an "Occupy" manifesto. The problem lies with greedy employees, not the capitalist shareholders. It is the directors and bank staff who steal from shareholders and the greedy apparatchiks who steal from the public sector. To tame capitalism we must tame corporatism. The policies required to accomplish this are listed below and each point is then considered in more depth.

Stopping the apparatchiks and corporate managers:
Limit the power of senior corporate employees, including directors by amending the "Companies Act".
All incomes plus benefits, expenses, gains and bonuses should be limited to 30 times the national median income per individual (This would not stop entrepreneurs - see A New Taxation System).
Public sector wages must be limited to 10 times the median income.
Tax dividends and personal capital gains at the same rate as income tax.
Corruption should be punished by a fine of at least 100 times the corrupt payment plus prison, MPs should be subject to the same anti-corruption legislation as civil servants. Every police force should have an anti-corruption squad.

Ensuring employment:
Regulate the banks and insurance companies and separate high street from casino operations
Ensure favourable trading conditions for UK manufacturers.
Abolish corporation tax for UK companies
The NHS and public sector must train and employ British staff and favour British suppliers..
Renegotiate the terms of EU membership to allow these policies and to allow our national government to opt out of regulations at any time.
Impose limits on the foreign ownership of companies operating in Britain See How far do countries permit foreign ownership
Stop immigration. See The benefits of immigration to the UK economy.
Reduce the dependence of Higher Education on Foreign students and hence boost UK youth employment by discontinuing automatic rights to stay in the UK. See Should universities and colleges be immigration agencies?
Simplify employment rules for small businesses.
Ensure that the public sector is no more than 30% of employment in any region.See Is Labour any more than the public sector party?.

Introduce Localism.

Protecting democracy:
Restructure higher education so that education is free. See Its education stupid!.
Lobbying of MPs and Government should occur in proper forums - consultations on changes of law currently consult Trade Unions and Special Interest Groups and few other people, this should be broadened.
Half day holidays for political meetings perhaps twice a year.
Legislate that all schools should issue a warning about the media at least once a week to the whole school. See The London riots and the mediocracy
Change the electoral system to PR so that the government represents the people and politicians do not gang up against us
Stop immigration. There is no possibility that England will have a healthy democracy if in 25 years about half of the people under 40 come from abroad. (see ONS Predicted population of Britain).
Schools should announce one good thing about Britain at every assembly, teach British history and encourage community activity. See The teaching of history
Localism.

Senior employees such as directors are the evil face of capitalism although they are not themselves the capitalists. How can we control these "servants" who are feathering their own nests at everyone's expense?

The investors, who are the true capitalists can help, they should be able to sign on the internet to follow and vote at Company Annual General Meetings, they should have one vote each when remuneration and golden handshakes are considered (with a limit of £300 shareholding to get a vote - otherwise companies will be held to ransom by pressure groups). Perhaps there should even be perks for small shareholders who actually participate in Corporate governance, such as higher dividends. The senior staff in banks set the multi-million bonuses and scream that they have such expertise that they deserve the money. This claim is false, they are just gamblers. A bank might have 100 people gambling for it, they pay the 50 winners ridiculous salaries and demote or dismiss the 50 losers - the 50 who got the money were not clever, just lucky. It really will make no difference if salaries and commissions are limited. The government should try out limiting bonuses to say, £100,000 and see if this works.

Favourable conditions for UK manufacturers could be most easily imposed by a green, "distance tax". The distance tax would be, say, 30% on products produced outside the UK and reduced on a sliding scale to 0% for products produced within 20 miles. All products would be coded with exact latitude and longitude of origin. It would be levied by local authorities.

The NHS is a massive employer that offers jobs of all grades but it is importing vast numbers of employees from overseas rather than training people. These imports are due to two factors, the first is that British staff need absurd levels of qualification, such as degrees to be nurses, whereas foreign staff have a vocational qualification as nurses in their own countries. The second is that the management are unable to keep wage rates at a practical level. About 8% of the increase in joblessness in the past year was due to foreign workers in the NHS displacing British workers. If the figures are limited to female workers then about 15% of female jobs were displaced. The effect of the NHS foreign preference on employment of the British underclass who could be cleaners, porters and nursing assistants is enormous. Who do our politicians represent, their constituents or foreigners? Asking this question is not being a "little Englander" or "racist" it is simply sympathising with poor English people. The NHS and public sector should only employ foreign staff where their contribution is exceptional, for instance top oncologists or nobel prize winning economists.

The public sector are in a position of trust. They have abused this trust in recent years by linking their wages to those of bankers and other crooks. This must be stopped because every penny on a public servant's wage is a penny of tax. It impoverishes everyone. Public sector wages must be limited to 10 times the median income.

Provided that companies are allowed to keep their wealth there is no reason why the employees of these companies should be paid astronomical sums. Huge wages cheat the shareholders. A limit of 30 times the median wage should be imposed, any excess being taxed at 100%. This would lose £12 billion in tax revenue if implemented suddenly, a slow implementation over 5 years would allow lower paid staff to have higher wages and so make up for the tax shortfall. The top rate of tax should be no more than 50% to provide an incentive for hard work. The fear that this will lead to a "brain drain" is rubbish. Top professors and musicians usually work for far less than 30 times the median income. Gamblers in the banks and pension fund managers have been shown time and again to be little more effective in their investment strategies than children or throwing dice, what happens is that the half of these people who are lucky over a two or three year period are feted as geniuses.

Another reason for limiting top incomes is that excessive differentials in income lead to a progressive transfer of property into the hands of the wealthy. The wealthy use property and land as their principle asset investment. This drives up the price of property which in turn makes poorer property owners susceptible to increasing their indebtedness by taking out loans on their property for current spending. The poorer property owners then get into trouble paying interest and eventually lose their property to the wealthier investors. As well as a limit on top incomes there should be a limit of 4.5 times income for property loans and tighter rent controls. Immigration must be halted to stop population pressure on house prices.

We should abolish corporation tax because the money held by limited companies and PLCs is only useable for business. It is re-invested to make more money and this benefits everyone. (Investment by corporations in domestic property and land should be subject to special controls and dividends would be taxed normally). "Capital Allowances" should be voluntary and fully tax deductible.

The lower rates of tax on dividends compared with income is a scandal - all forms of income should have the same rate of tax and National Insurance (inc. employer's nic) should be abolished to create a single tax regime.

Foreign ownership of companies allows British capitalists to live abroad and avoid taxes and responsibilities. It also deprives companies of the higher functions such as R&D and senior management. A limit of 75% foreign ownership should be set for any market sector, less for strategic industries. British citizens living abroad should be subject to British taxation on dividends, income and gains from UK companies even if they change their nationality.

The banks must be regulated so that they cannot lend more than 4 times their assets, the limit to be introduced over a decade, starting at 15 times assets. Banks are licensed by government to have the special boon of lending money that they do not possess. This license must limit their lending ratio. It should be illegal for high street banks to deal in fantasy operations such as derivatives - if they wish to do this they should set up separate companies that are not banks to do it and these should be regulated as a form of gambling.

Higher education should be restructured so that universities offer academic degrees and polytechnics offer vocational degrees in collaboration with industry. Many of the current universities should be converted back to polytechnics so that only 10% of the population passes through the universities and 30% passes through polytechnics. It is crazy to have 40% of the population with academic degrees that have no value in the labour market. All higher education should be free and employers should be encouraged to pay for polytechnic training "on the job" with incentives such as enforceable 6 yr contracts for trainees.

The regulation of lobbying is required. MPs should hold public consultation meetings and canvass for written opinion on major issues. Any MP or government official who accepts lobbying outside of these constraints should be fined and dismissed. Any company or individual who maintains that they can gain preferential access to MPs or government should be charged with fraud and jailed because such an eventuality should not be possible.

Democracy is the most important protection for the citizen. There should be two half day holidays each year for attendance at political meetings. Employers should be recompensed for half a day's pay on the presentation of an attendance ticket with their corporate tax returns. Parties are currently registered as political parties if they accept subscriptions so any registered party that truly holds a meeting should be able to issue the free tickets. The apathetic will go on holiday but those with even a marginal interest in politics will begin to join parties and re-vitalise civil society. This change will also help to finance political parties and avoid state funding.

The media have become the most powerful organ of modern society. Modern society has become a Mediocracy. The media have opted for the philosophy of "post modernism" because it increases their viewing/reading/listening figures. Unfortunately post-modernism replaces truth with "personal truth" - the lies we tell ourselves for comfort, statistics with entertaining anecdotes, "strong opinions" with avoiding the issue, ethics with the requirements of sponsors, expertise with entertaining eccentricity, structure with the tale of the hero who overcomes structure. The media are solely for entertainment, they are about stories that sell, they no longer produce valid social, political, scientific or economic analysis. We must train all children, from 5 years onwards that the media must not be believed. In fact "post-modernism" is no more than the way you would run a paper or TV station to get readers or viewers, the media and post-modernism are the same. Modern directors and senior executives have adopted post-modern values, they believe they have their own truth, that personal fame and success transcends social or professional duty and that their own free movement is all that matters.

Incidentally, if you do not agree that the media shapes a society can you explain how propaganda changed Germany and Russia into willing tyrannies? If a controlled media can do such damage you can understand the damage that an anarchic media might do.

Put all these policies into effect and capitalism will be tamed, there will be full employment and people will feel that they belong.

Further reading:

The advantages of globalization

Could the credit crunch have been foreseen ?

The UK National Debt and the credit crunch

The worst governments since the first world war

Executive pay

Communism did not deliver what it promised

Marxism and the credit crunch

The London Riots and the mediocracy

Murdoch, Blair, Cameron and the police

Communism and the education system

The Future of Afghanistan

2011-10-08T06:16:00.000-07:00

I visited Afghanistan when I took the hippy trail in 1971. It was what we used to call "mind blowing". When the bus rolled into Herat the town looked like it was preserved from 1400 AD.

Contrary to modern belief the hippy trail was a dribble of western students who could scarcely fill Ciggy's Cafe in the centre of Kabul. Incidently, Ciggy's was a wooden construction around a lawn with a kitchen off to one side where Scotts porridge oats was brewed in a huge cauldron over an open fire by three men in rags. They served the porridge with hubble bubbles and Pink Floyd music.

Quite a number of those on the trail died. They got dysentery, got addicted, got botulism etc. and died. One of the lads I was travelling with died and the Marine from the US Embassy who came to take away the body said it was the fifth Junky he had sent home that week^*. The lad was not a junky but there was no point in remonstrating.

Shortly before I arrived in Kabul the local tribesmen had swept through town on horses and shot any woman who was exposing skin. A day or two before I arrived one of the buses that had a few Westerners on board had been robbed, burnt and all the passengers shot. There was no internet and even telephones were hard to find and prohibitively expensive. Posh hippys took the plane from Teheran to New Delhi.

I didnt care about much of this, the hashish was very cheap and legal and an afternoon on a hooker blunts the mind. It was only after my travelling companion got ill that I stopped the smoking and swore I would cut my hair when I got back to the UK. Incidently, the American students in our group all fled to Lahore the moment they saw their pal had got ill, leaving me and a couple of Canadians to get medical treatment and deal with the death.

So what do I think about Afghanistan? Once the aching heart goes away I remember that it was "mind blowing". So I say leave the place alone, different cultures have a strange beauty. I see the current globalizing interventionism as exactly the same as Victorian Imperialism. The gawky Victorian civil servant who set out from London to teach the savages civilisation is no different from the modern youngsters who all want to teach the world to sing the same tune for Coca Cola or Microsoft. The creepy western youngsters who want to globalize the world are no different from the gawky lads who were the vanguard of British Imperialism. They talk of "diversity" and "anti-racism" but mean having 'pet' cultures: they cannot take actually living in a world with entirely different and even threatening cultures.

Afghanistan was a preserved Islamic Warrior culture and no one would leave them alone. Strangely I will feel slightly elated and proud of them if they beat Nato although what they believe is an absolute anathema to me.

Fence em off and leave them alone. Get them to sign non-aggression/anti-terrorism pacts in return for our leaving. Bomb them if they violate these pacts by attacking us or sponsoring attacks on us. Don't have hundreds of thousands of them over here, it will obviously cause trouble.

* Five a week must have been an exaggeration. Or maybe I didn't hear him right. God knows after all this time.

Are the anarchist left laying claim to anti-racism?

2011-10-04T03:15:00.000-07:00

I have noticed over the past few years that many TV programmes about immigration or multiculturalism begin with clips showing rabid racists from the 1950s, 60s or 70s before continuing with how wonderful English society has become today from a post modern perspective. The post-modern style of taking an isolated clip from an interview forty years ago as if it were typical of an entire culture is expected but still shocking.

I also find these clips insulting. The abolition of slavery and English enlightened attitudes to humanity pre-date post-Marxism by centuries. William Wilberforce was neither Marxist, post-modern nor post Marxist. It is also the case that in the 1960s English people were possibly less racist than they are today. I, and many of my friends and relatives were alive forty years ago and we were certainly not a bunch of racists.

So why are post-Marxists claiming anti-racism as their peculiar victory? It is because they are anarchists who have only one claim to the "moral high ground" and this claim is the chant of "Racist!" at anyone who holds opposing views.

What they want is internationalism, an unstable world that will collapse financially and politically because it will lack the diversity of nations that is needed for stability and will then be ripe for the imposition of some nasty dystopia. Post modernism is another name for anarchism and anarchism is the mother of totalitarianism.

It seems a giant step from TV programmes that rewrite history to totalitarianism but when I talk to twenty year olds they do actually believe that we have gone from some sort of rabid right wing society before they were born to the sunlit uplands of modern multiculturalism. The post-modern technique of using selective clips of the past to damn a whole history is very successful. It is a small step from a belief in multiculturalism that rejects a national identity to the acceptance of internationalism.

E cigarettes - are the anti smoking lobby totally off their heads?

2011-09-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

A recent review of e-cigarettes investigated the composition and use of these products and concluded that they must be orders of magnitude safer than cigarettes. The article concluded that:

"Tobacco cigarettes are the leading cause of disease in the United States, which is why the ‘primary goal of tobacco control is to reduce mortality and morbidity associated with tobacco use’ (p. 326).23 Electronic cigarettes are designed to mitigate tobacco-related disease by reducing cigarette consumption and smoking rates. The evidence reviewed in this article suggests that electronic cigarettes are a much safer alternative to tobacco cigarettes. They are likely to improve upon the efficacy of traditional pharmacotherapy for smoking cessation. In light of this evidence, it is unfortunate that in the United States, the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Action on Smoking and Health, American Legacy Foundation, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence have all issued statements supporting FDA efforts to take them off the US market. In the United States, the courts will ultimately determine whether the FDA has the legal authority to do this, but we question the ethical and health policy merits of this approach."

The anti-smoking lobby look a lot like fanatics. God save us from their "good intentions". Maybe their intentions are not good, perhaps the anti-smokers are so nasty that they will not be happy until every last smoker who cannot quit dies of lung cancer.

I have always been puzzled by why a relatively safe cigarette was not introduced decades ago. The truth was that the tobacco companies were against it. These companies, which can throw millions at a problem like e-cigarettes are probably at this very moment funding the US Anti-Smoking spokespeople who oppose e-cigarettes. There are probably all sorts of "front" organisations who will give any opponent of e-cigarettes anything they want to stop them being used. Given that they used these exact tactics to suppress the link between smoking and lung cancer it is a certainty that the tobacco companies are behind the move to ban e-cigarettes.

We live in a crazy world where e-cigarettes may be banned but cigarettes are legal. It can only be bribery and corruption that could cause such a discrepancy.

Zachary Cahn, Michael Siegel. Electronic cigarettes as a harm reduction strategy for tobacco control: A step forward or a repeat of past mistakes? Journal of Public Health Policy, 2010; DOI: 10.1057/jphp.2010.41 http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/centers-institutes/population-development/files/article.jphp.pdf

The Worst Governments Since the First World War

2011-09-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

Good management means that over your period of management you do not spend more than you earn. Except in national emergencies good governments should not borrow money that must be repaid by future generations. Which governments left future generations to pay the bills?

The data for government borrowing and government expenditure are available (see for instance UK Government Spending). These are shown on the chart below:

The chart shows the increase and decrease of public spending and borrowing by each government in the UK since 1923, changes in debt are measured in 2005 pounds (ie: inflation adjusted).

The actual value of the changes in National Debt is shown because the total National Debt represents an amount that we are spending now that we are asking our children to repay later. Increasing National Debt is acceptable in times of true National emergency but amounts to no more than buying votes in ordinary circumstances. The ideal level of National Debt is zero over a whole cycle: a government should borrow to restore high levels of employment during a dip in the cycle and should repay the loan in the good times that should follow.

The figures for the Coalition that ruled from 1935 through the war and of the Labour government after the Second War have been omitted because of the special circumstances that prevailed. It could also be argued that the credit crunch has given an erroneous portrayal of the last Labour Government even though this Labour Government was probably largely responsible for the global credit crunch. The graph below uses debt levels up to 2008 so shows the data with the debts due to the credit crunch omitted:

This chart is not really valid because Brown probably caused the global credit crunch.

The governments of the sixties and seventies were busy paying off debt (largely accumulated in the war). One of the most prudent governments in British history is the Tory government of the 1950s-60s: they paid off debt and kept public spending under control. It is ironic that Heath's Tory government was the biggest public sector spender during the 60s and 70s but he was paying off debts as well. Callaghan's Labour government was one of the most prudent but for being prudent it was assassinated by the unions. Blair and Brown hold the all-time public spending record and have left our children to pay for it.

It is clear from the graphs that John Major's Tory government and Blair and Brown's Labour governments are easily the worst in the past century. Major's government was particularly affected by the fiasco of attempting to enter the euro-zone but at least they tried to keep spending under control. Almost all of the public sector savings in the Tory period from 1979-1997 were made during the 1980s when Thatcher was PM and frittered away by Major afterwards. Brown's government was just profligate, increasing spending beyond the limits of the funds available and living beyond our means without any attempt at controlling public spending. They increased the National Debt even when the economic cycle was in an upturn. It should be noted that the public sector pension crisis is not included in the figures and is as serious as the credit crunch. The pension crisis occurred almost entirely during the 1997-2010 Labour administration. It should also be noted that about 30% of the current excess debt that is crippling the UK had nothing to do with the credit crunch and was part of a rise in indebtedness dating from 2003.

Brown's mantra was "prudence" and making the books balance over the economic cycle. He did neither of these things and has left the nation's finances in a parlous state. This failure has not, as usual, been spotted by journalists.

Blair and Brown, especially Brown, ran the worst government of the past century. We are paying for it now, they could have saved in the boom like the Germans but no, they spent everything until there was nothing left. Worst of all they increased public spending and ignored the pension crisis as well as getting into debt so that any government that follows them must decrease the public sector and meet a deluge of strikes and protest.

Brown's cunning ploy was to artificially boost property values by allowing vast levels of immigration, this then created an artificial boost in GDP which he used to hide his excessive borrowing by quoting it as a % of GDP (See Immigration, house prices and boom economics). The guy seems to have been a crook.

See also:

Is Labour any more than the Public Sector party?

The World Financial Crisis

2011-09-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

"If the Eurozone breaks up the Western banks will collapse and we will be broke. People will die. This is very serious indeed. If the Eurozone becomes a fiscal union this will not happen."

One of the most respected economists writing on the world situation today, Cynicuseconomicus, says:

"Sitting underneath all of the troubles in the Euro area is the illusion of GDP growth. As long as a country appeared to be experiencing economic growth, it seemed safe to lend to the country. The trouble is that the growth was determined by the debt, not by any real increase in genuine wealth. As borrowed money was circulating around an economy, with the multiplier effect magnifying the impact of the borrowed money, it gave an illusion of real economic growth."

The western countries have been run by truly Machiavellian governments who figured that all they needed to do to stay in power was to pawn every asset in their countries. They reasoned that if there was ever a day of reckoning then it would be the governments who inherited the mess who would receive the ire of the electorate, not them.

The main tools used to put countries into debt were bank deregulation and, in Britain's case, migration. Britain's Gordon Brown led the way with his deregulation in 1997, this gave British banks access to larger funds than their competitors so was rapidly followed by deregulation across the globe, most notably with the 1999 abolition of much of the Glass Steagall Act by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in the USA. In the UK the deregulation of the movement of people was next on the list and the consequent overpopulation drove up the price of housing to unprecedented levels allowing yet more private borrowing. When challenged about these iniquitous changes Gordon Brown countered by accusing those who wanted less debt of being against growth and those who wanted to stop overpopulation of being racist. The science of economics descended to the level of the school playground with the villains who were wrecking the world jumping up and down accusing their opponents of being heartless, racist opponents of public spending on the poor and needy. Every brainless comedian and commentator was recruited to maintain this barrage of insults against those who could see the dangers ahead.

The "illusion of GDP growth" was supplemented by the export of most manufacturing industry to India and China. Environmental and Labour legislation made Western manufacturing hopelessly non-competitive with Asian manufacturing. The totalitarian Chinese could simply order their people to work for nothing and die young and the Indians are castist and dont care. Western governments declared that they were now tackling greenhouse gas emissions and tut-tutted about the naughty Indians and Chinese. The reason they did not put a Social Cost and Climate Levy on imported goods from Asia was that they wanted every day to be Xmas for the electorate with lots of cheap toys from abroad. When confronted with the fact that less able and educated Western youngsters could not get work they just shrugged and stated that "Globalization was inevitable", by which they meant they did not give a damn and were happy to acquire cheap MP3 players even if this did cause factory deaths in China and riots in Croydon.

The GDP Growth in Western countries has also been due to criminal activity in the US where:

"the major banks set up a system for documenting mortgages that was extra-legal, and which undermines the foundation of title on real estate, and was followed by illegal practices to force through foreclosures. In short, the banks may be about to be able to get away with illegal practices for which any ordinary person would be, if you forgive the expression, nailed to the wall."

The credit rating agencies in the US also seem to have been committing fraud, except for their defence that they only offered advice, not ratings that anyone should believe. These semi-fraudulent ratings created hundreds of billions in bad debts.

There can be no doubt that the USA has been the scene of white collar crime on a scale that could not even have been imagined. Crime that involved the government itself so that offences are now being removed from the statute book with the sole intention of letting the criminals go free (false selling, robosigning, dumping of toxic assets etc). This criminal behaviour also affects British banks operating in the US , RBS is facing action over $30.4bn, HSBC over $6.2bn and Barclays in relation to $4.9bn of sales of toxic assets alone.

Measures could have been taken to fix the problems in 2008 onwards. The first measure should have been to regulate the banks again. The governments failed to do this because the bank's casinos were profitable once again. They conveniently forgot that when the banks make a profit their senior staff put it in their pockets and when the banks make a loss the tax payer pays. Now look, without regulation when the Eurozone breaks up our banks will actually collapse and we will be penniless. Yes, totally washed up like Germany in the Great Depression.

Our governments could have stopped migration but despite the promises they have done nothing. They could have introduced sly duties on Asian manufactures to restore our own industry but they have done nothing.

Overall it seems as if the US financial sector was run by a cabal of white collar criminals and the British Labour Government were working on a psychopathic plan to bring down the global capitalist system. No, really, the Yanks let their financial system be run by real criminals and the Labour Government really was full of Marxist extremists operating under cover. Really. No, its too big a truth to comprehend isn't it? Shake your head and carry on, we know the 1970s Trots and Marxists who governed Britain from 1997 were trained to be subversive and we know that bankers conspire together but we couldn't really have let it happen could we, surely the journalists would have spotted it or the opposition parties or someone? Strangely some of them did spot what was going on but no-one listened. Jack Straw even wrote a letter to the paper declaring he was a Stalinist but no-one thought "hang on, Stalin is just behind Hitler in the world league of ultimate villains.... and this guy is Home Secretary!". There is a flaw in democratic systems: if you have 20 able friends who are fanatical about politics and are prepared to be subversive and lie about your true intentions you can capture a political party and rise to govern. This happens routinely nowadays.

The British electorate is the most amazing part of this story. Half the electorate seem to think that Labour was blameless in the world economic crisis. Labour was largely instrumental in the crisis and has left Britain and the world in such a mess that I genuinely fear for recovery.

The worst damage to result from the collapse of world banking is the indebtedness of Southern Europe. If the Eurozone breaks up the Western banks will collapse and we will be broke. People will die. This is very serious indeed. If the Eurozone becomes a fiscal union this will not happen. Instead there will be increasing civil unrest in the Southern part of Europe and countries will secede from the Eurozone over 10-20 years or the EU will become a totalitarian state suppressing the South.

See:

EU Membership and laying up treasure from overseas

The UK Housing "Crisis"

2011-08-30T02:36:00.000-07:00

The coalition government promised to reduce the influx of people from hundreds of thousands annually to tens of thousands. How have they done? The following quote is from the Home Office Immigration Statistics:

"The number of people granted settlement (allowed to stay permanently) reached a record 241,000 in 2010 (including dependants), having increased significantly in recent years. However the latest data, for the year to June 2011, show an 8% fall in grants of settlement (208,000), with decreases in both the work and the family categories. In the second quarter of 2011 there were (only) 4,800 asylum applications..."

Property analysts clearly link this influx of people to the housing crisis in the UK.

What is the governments response to the need for hundreds of thousands of new homes to house these people? England has an appalling housing crisis so what will the government do? Decrease inflows? No, they propose to overturn the planning regulations that have at least preserved some semblance of "England" in the face of epic population inflows over the past two decades:

Mr Shapps, the housing minister said that: "there were also plans to allow land twice the size of Leicester to be released in order to build homes across the country."

This should make any English person weep. Our governing classes are happy to continue this epic migration, destroying our natural and social environment, creating problems from adult illiteracy to economic collapse for no reason other than that it makes them appear holy. The electorate must promise themselves that they will not vote for the pro-migration parties (labour and lib-dem) and avoid voting Tory until this migration crisis is resolved.

Incidentally, if you are anti-immigration you have a democratic tool, just never vote Labour again, Labour set up the current mass migration in 1997 - just look at the migration graphs.

The graph above shows the scale of UK immigration. (See Office of National Statistics Figures. Notice how Labour doubled the migration rate as their first policy initiative in 1997 and also the epic scale of UK immigration which accounts for 30% of all EU population growth - equal to the population of Birmingham every 4 years).

See

Predicted population of Britain

Is the pro-immigration lobby racist..?

Record A Level and GCSE Passes again. Journalists fail to interpret results again.

2011-08-25T02:33:00.000-07:00

Journalists and the media have failed the annual examinations for yet another year. They still cannot pass even the tick box for "What sort of exam are you taking?". Little wonder the country is in a mess when the media guardians of our democracy are such sloppy morons.

See Record A Level Passes Again - I am not going to re-write this every year, its bad enough living in "groundhog day" without writing about it.

Foreign views of Riots

2011-08-24T01:56:00.000-07:00

These are fairly predictable but I would recommend reading the whole "Ask a Filipino" article.

Ask a Filipino: "I noticed there is not only little-to-zero intermixing among races, classes or religions, there’s in fact noticeable antipathy among members of these racial, social and religious groups. "Us versus them" is a recurring thread. Even a supposedly non-violent British protest is shocking to the uninitiated, with banners proclaiming "Death to the Queen" fairly common."

New York Times: "As the budget cuts take hold, risk of unemployment increases and social measures like youth projects are sacrificed, Mr. Beech said, and “all logic says there will be an increase in antisocial behavior.”

Times of India: "Tottenham has a large number of ethnic minorities and includes areas with the highest unemployment rates in London. It also has a history of racial tension with local young people, especially blacks, resenting police behaviour including the use of stop and search powers."

The Egyptian Gazette: "The deep seated problems, which face British society will not be solved overnight. The criminal behaviour of young hooligans needs to be condemned and brought under control, but the issues facing Britain, which they raise go much deeper than setting shops on fire. Where once the family was the backbone of the nation, now television soap operas in Britain present as normal every kind of abnormal behaviour. Where once it was natural to look up to older people and to contribute one’s best to society, now it is normal to insist on individual human rights, no matter what influence that has on society as a whole. Religion is no longer even to be talked about."

Moscow Times: "The policeman who pulled the trigger on Duggan had only one child, whereas Duggan fathered four. The world can probably tolerate a ratio of one gangster for every policeman. But if in the next generation there will be four Duggans for every policeman, that will mean the end of law and order."

Tehran Times: "But while those in the Middle East have marched in the hope of positive change, Britain's violence has been almost nihilist, focused on looting and a quick burst of the sort of publicity and power inner-city youth feel they have long been denied."

Asia Times: "If there is no absence of ability to address basic needs and the environment exists for hardworking people to succeed, why then are the rioters in London showing their ingratitude towards the welfare state? The question boils down to one of negative and positive reinforcement strategies: for too long the left in Europe have argued that society's failures must be embraced rather than cast out for life's hard knocks. The burning shops of London are proof that leftist thinking is dangerously wrong - the rioters aren't sated by the welfare state, they are spoiled by it."

The rise in crime generally since 1955

2011-08-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

The following graph shows the crime rate for the UK Courtesy Civitas:

Below is an extract from the Civitas paper "The Failure of Britain's Police: London and New York compared":

"Crime rose rapidly in this country after 1955. That essential point, the explosion of crime from 1955-92 and the continuing historically very high level, is sometimes overlooked when ‘the rise in crime’ is taken to have started with Thatcherism. It is assumed that, as far as law-abidingness is concerned, the country would be somehow back to normal if it could return to the figures of the early 1980s. The police did indeed record ‘only’ 2.5 million crimes in England and Wales in 1980, and recorded a rise of two million crimes by 1998/99, to 4.5 million. But the starting point of 2.5 million crimes in the pre-Thatcher years was itself an astonishingly high figure by the standards of previous generations. The difficulty is not to find the numbers but for them to be believed, so incredibly small do they seem to a later generation.

In 1955, fewer than 0.5 million crimes were re-corded. In 1960, 0.8 million. In 1970, 1.6 million. In 1980, 2.5 million. In 1990, 4.4 million. The figure peaked in 1992, when 5.1 million crimes were re-corded.

8 The series is broken in 1992, when figures on a new basis included more offences as ‘crimes’. On the new basis the crime figures show a 22 per cent fall from 5.6 million in 1992 to 4.5 million in 1998/99. The series was again broken in 1998/99. The figures on the new basis of comparability show a rise from 5.1 million in 1998/99 to 5.3 million in 1999/2000, and a fall from 5.3 million in 1999/2000 to 5.2 million in 2000/01.

9 The best estimate for the latest period is that, when the difficulties of comparability are laboriously calcu-lated, there has been another ‘real’ increase of about two per cent in all crimes recorded by the police in 2001/02 as compared with 2000/01.

10 These falls in the overall crime rate since 1992, and a rise of ‘only’ two per cent last year, have been spun—and naively accepted—as a reason for congratulations all round.

11 In January 2003 a Home Office publication asserted that the chance of being a crime victim ‘remains historically low’.

12 In 1972 there was a total of 1.7 million crimes.

13 In 2002 there were 5.8 million crimes.

14 In 1972 firearms were used in the commission of 2,100 crimes; in 2001/02 firearms were used in the commission of 22,300 crimes. In 1972 handguns were used 254 times; in 2001/02, 5,900 times. In 1972 firearms were used in 570 robberies; in 2001/02 5,500 robberies. 1,970 of these 5,500 armed robberies were armed robberies on the public highway. In 1972 there were 8,900 robberies in the whole of England and Wales; in 2001/02 there were almost as many,6,500, in the London borough of Lambeth alone.

15 Our problem, then, is only partly the rise in the crime rate since the Thatcher years, ameliorated by some remission in the 1990s. It is the fundamental shift within two or three generations, and especially the enormous shift that began about 1955, in the law-abidingness and ‘policeability’ of the English."

It is interesting to compare US and English crime rates. The absolute figures are in the graphs below are open to debate but the way the figures change over time is fascinating:

Notice how the England and Wales figures just kept climbing. (The murder rate in the USA is much higher than the UK murder rate which is the only redeeming feature of the figures for England and Wales).

The homicide rate has a slightly different profile. Homicide in the UK is discussed in depth in The House of Commons paper: Homicide Statistics. The figures for murder seem to correlate with the dates at which the death penalty was abolished or, in the case of the USA, the dates when the death penalty was abolished then re-introduced. The charts below are from the House of Commons paper and the data is tabulated at the end of this article.

The abolition of the death penalty was in 1965.

The Latest Figures show that the murder rate in the USA has stabilised at about 5 per 100,000 - at the pre-moratorium level of murders (compared with about 2 per 100,000 in the UK).

If the US figures are correct then several thousand lives are saved each year by executing about 60 people a year (of whom perhaps 5 or 10 are innocent of offences that would require the death penalty). This is a dramatic deterrent effect if true.

The figures for crime in general correlate with the introduction of Television in the 1950s which changed attitudes, especially those towards drugs, in both countries. To find out why, see:

The London riots and the mediocracy

The London riots - what the hell did you expect?

Table of UK homicides from 1946

1946	347	1979	546
1947	371	1980	549
1978	341	1981	499
1949	298	1982	557
1950	346	1983	482
1952	328	1984	537
1952	400	1985	536
1953	327	1986	563
1954	311	1987	599
1955	279	1988	547
1956	315	1989	525
1957	321	1990	555
1958	261	1991	623
1959	266	1992	581
1960	282	1993	565
1961	265	1994	632
1962	299	1995	663
1963	307	1996	584
1964	296	1997	650
1965	325	1998	629
1966	364	1999	760
1967	414	2000	792
1968	420	2001	891
1969	395	2002	1048 (Harold Shipman killed 172)
1970	396	2003	853
1971	459	2004	868
1972	480	2005	765
1973	465	2006	759
1974	599	2007	753
1975	508	2008	651
1976	488	2009
1977	418
1978	471