Gordon Brown at the Chilcot

The cunt's actually going to worm his way out of this?

"Aww, well aye, I did pay for Iraq, but I didnae know it wis all lies at the time like, you ken I wis only the SECOND most powerful man in the country at the time, not the first? I just gave my good pal Tony, who I always loved and trusted, the benefit of the doubt, like I usually did on matters, particularly those of life and death. I just fronted the cash wis all."

SUCH. UTTER. HORSESHIT. Such a ludicrous story, and what would be hilarious if it wasn't so unjust is that people might believe it. Gordon Brown is a sneaky, deceiving bastard and hope he rots in hell but begins rotting whilst alive on Earth, which is, in fact, probable already.

Nice one...

The Nameless Libertarian in quality form, describing a recent book by a Labour PPC on why to vote for her excuse of a party, citing several luminous celebrity endorsements such as BONO!!! (obviously) and JO BRAND!!! (oh isn't Brand's shitty brand of shit comedy so wonderfully endearing, dry and quintessentially British; she must know about electoral politics, I bet she could tell me all about Tory Education policy detail by detail. I particularly like when she talks about her period).

TNL onto a winner as he observes:

"I want to write a book. It would be called “Why celebrities are cunts, and how they have helped to destroy politics.” Because that’s what this is – the debasement and destruction of political discourse in this country. Soon, we’ll be in a position where parties cease to publish manifestos, and instead commission a special edition of Hello! magazine that contains celebrities as charismatic and convincing as Chris Martin out of Coldplay wibbling on about why we should vote Labour because “it’s like good, and stuff.”

So fuck off. Fuck off the lot of you."

Couldn't agree more, or better.

It seems that the only people these days attracted to politics are vacuous cunts, and that the only musicians attracted to politics are vacuous musicians, and general cunts.

Mugabe, the Zimbabwean Cameroonian

Apparently Mugabe would be voting for the Tories in our upcoming General Election, if he could.

"We have a better chance with (British Conservative leader) David Cameron than with Brown."

The fact notwithstanding, Mr Mugabe, that I think you have as much a chance at bettering your situation with David Cameron as we in Britain do, you should really consider poor Gordon Brown's feelings.

He has followed your economic and monetary stance to a tee since the financial crisis hit. You're maybe annoyed that he copied your idea, but frankly, people have been printing money since Weimar, and I'd like to see the legal documents pertaining to your patenting of hyperinflation.

"Conservatives are bold, (Tony) Blair and (Gordon) Brown run away when they see me, but not these fools, they know how to relate to others,"

Firstly, I hope Brown and Blair have actually legged it upon seeing your presence, because that would actually be too damn funny. Secondly, your portrayal of the Tories as bold fools is way off the mark. They're just fools, but sadly, probably have the prerequisited cleverness to get elected.

Not tricky though, considering the opposition.

Anyway, nice to get your two cents Robert, but haven't you got some Caucasians to displace?

Poor Explanations #1: I, er, had a baby... also Kill Consensus

Some of you may be wondering where on Earth I've been. Most of you probably won't have been. Some of you who read this blog probably are unsurprised by my sporadic absences, although 9 months so far tops the lot.

It's been 9 months since my last post.

I wish I could tell you I went to travel the world and try local delicacies we consider in this country to be housepets. I wish I'd been doing that.

I was thinking I could say I got pregnant and just gave birth, but that too would be misleading (I haven't given birth for 3 and a half years now).

Now for the real reasons. I don't really know. I could point to loads of things? Political apathy/fatigue/despair? All that's true, but really, I started blogging to begin with because I was apathetic, fatigued and despairing at the UK's political choices. Though, yes, now things are much worse.

The past 9 months, we have travelled far nationally and globally down the road to totally fucked-dom.

I like to think there's an alternate universe where all the things that elites and politicos have done in the past few years, both in this country and in others, which have caused our rotten situation, were not done;

where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of British soldiers, were still alive, at home;

where bankster crooks on both sides of the Atlantic hadn't looted our economies into a crumbling ruin of debt while simultaneously consolidating their power over the financial system to a scale never before seen;

where authoritarian trends in the UK, and expansion of the EU project, had been stopped in their tracks by freedom-loving souls;

where the scientific debate about the environment hadn't been hijacked and warped into a dogmatic, political farce;

where interventionist choices made in Middle Eastern affairs that have brought the region so close to the brink of a major regional war, which would have painful global implications, hadn't been made;

where the only apparent "choice" we have in the upcoming General Election is between a pathetic, bullying slimeball, and a pathetic slimeball; (Nick who? Cloggs?)

where Americans hadn't been duped into voting for the smiling, hopeful visage of Obama - who is nothing more than a visage. That said, the "choice" was between him and John Me-No-Likey-Brown-People McCain.

And maybe, if we can find a loophole or a wormhole, we can reverse all the damage. But that seems far-fetched. So we have to stand up for ourselves today, and not waver, and yes, I'm chiding myself here more than anyone else.

Other reasons for lack of blogging? I was busy. This is true; I spent the summer at a rather rigorous work placement in the field of marketing and entrepreneurship, and am otherwise very occupied by Uni, friends, music, nightlife, chemical experimentation, females ... the usual for a 20 year old student.

But also, I feel I must have very mild ADD, because I struggle to stay interested in any one thing for long, and that's why a purely-politics based blog became difficult, when it stopped being my primary interest, or fluctuated in the rankings, so to speak.

So this blog has been re-branded, re-styled, and the direction is going to change, to a much more personal and multi-purpose blog. This started off as "Voyage of Discovery" - a journey of self-discovery of my own political opinions, and it turned out I was a libertarian, small L and capital L for LPUK, the UK's first and only Libertarian Party, of which I am very proud to be a part of, having joined so quickly after its birth, now led by the enigmatic Chris Mounsey.

The LPUK has exceeded all my expectations in its growth and the sheer vibrancy of its ideas. I began the regional branch of LPUK, Scottish Libertarians, in December 2008, and honestly, if you take a look at the progress made since Duncan Soutar and Steven Sexton since they took the reins, it is fantastic. I was, frankly, neither particularly organised or focused enough when I started it up, and it is being developed into something much bigger now, with regular meetings in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and probably other places I've forgot.

So politics and economics from a libertarian bent will no doubt remain one of the, if not the, key themes of my writing here, the only difference being now that I may focus more on the global situation, because, as important to us in the UK as our troubles are, the global strife that is just beginning is like a compounded, magnified representation of what's going on here.

But I figure, if I ever get bored about DOOM DOOM DOOM, and politics generally, which is inevitable based on past experience, I can write about some of my other big interests. I actually did a little list of everything I wanted to write about earlier, not in any defined order per se, but probably not far off the order it's in:

- Global Economy/Politics

- UK affairs (bureaucratic/authoritarian State, freedom, the idiocy of it all)

- UK Libertarian Party

- Philosophy

- Music

- Creative Writing

- LOST (which is on tonight, result)

- Tennis

- Personal Stories/General Interest


You see, I also love philosophy, I love music (play and write in a band, and am moderately but not enough active in the Glasgow scene), Lost is my favourite TV show by a mile, I like sports, particularly tennis, and I write a lot of stuff besides blog posts and songs. So this blog is going to become the hub for all of that.

So. Er, to sum up, no, I didn't have a baby, although I'd like one sometime around the time I'm 67 and a half, and secondarily, we're in danger of burning in the slow fire of consensus.

The bitter pill is that the consensus is whatever the great faceless THEY say it is. And right now, THEY are saying we need more security and less freedom, more taxes and less freedom, less sovereignty, less purchasing power for the pound, and implicitly, less savings, less manufacturing and production, and more debt, which to my mind is all tantamount to less freedom. We are being cleaved, whether we like it or not, to the cold dead bosom of the zombie State.

She needs us but we don't need her, and the only reason so many people cling so willingly to this fat, old, cancerous hag is because she's conned them into thinking they do.

They don't They never did. You don't. You never did. And if we want to stop the steady (or, who knows, possibly rapid) decline in freedom, economic power and stability, peace, and fresh ideas, we need to beat the consensus to a pulp, batter it until it is unrecognisable, so that fresh eyes can look at situations without the dogma and circularity of "the mainstream", and debate rationally to recognise how we might stop the rot, before it's all rot. We do this by relentlessly, passionately, being the alternative voice of reason and sense, because we believe in trying, but never trying to enforce, the preservation what is good and right, and not meaning to go all hippy on you, but is there any better way of summing up what's good in this world than in the three words, peace, love and freedom?

Orwell wrote in 1984 that the future was a boot stamping on a human face forever. Right now, for us in Britain at least, we're not there yet. The boots are in the closet, but they haven't got us on our backs yet. They're slapping us in the face everyday, testing our limits and thresholds, and aren't finding much resistance. So let's show them some resistance.

And I think that if we work our asses off, maybe, just maybe, we can tie the shoelaces of her steel-toed boots together before she goes for the first real stamp.

The Good Guys

As far as MP's expenses go, it is very easy to fall into the toxic, negative viewpoint, that "they're all it" - they're all corrupt bastards with their snouts in the trough.

But for all of us railing against the lack of integrity in our Parliament, it is important to maintain a level of honesty ourselves, and appreciate and acknowledge that there is a whole host of MPs who are doing the best they can, who refuse to mooch of the taxpayer and who refuse to compromise their integrity and the trust of their constituents who voted them in. In short, power can corrupt, but it doesn't have to.

The Telegraph has done a series of articles detailing who "the good guys (and girls)" are in Parliament. The House may have fallen into disrepute, but that does not mean that every individual parliamentarian who composes it has personally fallen into disrepute. Read the articles here, here, and here - and whatever your anger at the broken, corrupt system, don't forget these people.

We need an election, no doubt. But let's not chuck the finite amount of good apples in the basket that we have along with the significant amount of bad apples. Our democracy is broken. It has been tainted by an insular, entrenched political class - but that does not mean that all of our parliamentary representatives have also been tainted.

And to the Labour Party's credit, a notable number of the good bunch come from them. When the General Election finally comes along, let's not go mad with anger and hatred.

Funff Jahre Plan!

Via Diary of a Geek in Oxfordshire, I found this rather entertaining:

"The First Five-Year Plan will focus on stabilising Britain for the future, and is to include the following key points:

The immediate removal of Sterling from all Exchange mechanisms;

The immediate and complete nationalisation of all private enterprise, to reduce and eventually eliminate Government debt;

The elimination of unemployment by retraining all those currently unemployed as Political Commissars, who will then be posted in all the newly-nationalised companies to offer advice on meeting NuLieBore targets;

The elimination of MP's expense scandals by the removal (and imprisonment if necessary) of the free Press;

Radical reform of the Electoral system granting suffrage rights only to NuLieBore MPs."

The funny thing is, for a moment I almost thought it was genuine. My mind clicked back into plac about here:

"Under the terms of the Plan, Gordon Brown will be elevated to the position of 'Great Heavenly Leader, Coryphaeus of Economics, Father of the British Socialist Nation, Brilliant Genius of Humanity, Great Architect of New Labour Social Justice, Uphill Gardener of Human Happiness'."

I pronounce myself amused.

Peter Schiff talks engagingly about the stock market, bonds, and the dollar:



H/T Lew Rockwell

Obama vs Cheney - THE BIG ONE

Our American cousins seem to have gone a bit doolally over the supposed massive showdown between Barack Obama and former Lord of the Sith Dick Cheney, as they supposedly battle it out by each doing speeches on national security within minutes of the other.

The gist of Darth Cheney's speech was more or less:

"We need to be able to torture and send to permanent, illegal detention facilities anyone who we even suspect of maybe being a terrorist, in order to keep the entire American people safe. Tha Barack Obama isn't willing to do that shows that he is a soft, woolly, pacifist liberal with no backbone."

The gist of the President's speech was more or less:

"Nuh-uh, in case you haven't noticed Dick, I've done some bad-ass shit too."

I suppose I'm just bemused by the fact that Obama's big title fight challenger on national security policy seems to be from a man I didn' t think had any credibility.

Nick Griffin is horrendously ugly

I can't be bothered analysing what a disgusting, illiberal, socialist, fascist, racist, fucking Nazi society of plebs, paedophiles and slimy wankers that make up the team behind the BNP are - I may get into that another day, but there's a good chance that when I do it will be the most abusively foul-mouthed, crude post this blog has ever seen, because there aren't words to describe how much I utterly despise every single little thing about their ideology.

But I'll leave my blog-battering of the BNP for another time. For now, I thought I'd pass light comment on just how ugly Nick Griffin is - and I don't mean inner ugliness of character, though there is undoubtedly that too. I'm referring to simply his face-value physical appearance. The man is fiendishly ugly.

Take a look; is it that much of a stretch? I'd been wracking my brains trying to work out which ugly fictional creature Mr Griffin reminded me of. And then I realised I was asking myself the wrong question, and should have actually been acting: what ugly, factual human do the villainous Sontarans from Dr. Who remind me of? Answer: Nick Griffin.

Goodbye, Mick

As readers even remotely aware of my political persuasions can probably guess, I'm not remotely inclined to our Speaker Michael Martin, and am in no way sad to see him go.

That said, watching his statement on the box, I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for our Mick. I do understand the implicit difficulties in having a Speaker who can't actually really Speak, but at the same time, why is one man taking the flak for the entire, disreputed House of Commons?

It seems a diversionary tactic to me, and isn't going to solve the problems of corruption that have come as the result of an entrenched, insular, greedy and arrogant political class.

Speaker Michael Martin may be many things, but what he is not is an adequate scapegoat. The adequate, deserving scapegoat should be Parliament itself.

It should be dissolved immediately, and a General Election should be called.

Dan is Uncontainably and Unnecessarily Excited

It's the LOST season finale tonight! I'm so ridiculously excited that I am going to watch it live, streamed in from the US, beginning at 2am and continuing until 4.

I don't usually talk about much else besides current affairs here, but I thought that, in light of my effervescing excitement at this televisual prospect, which is, as I write, a paltry fifteen minutes away, I would share it with you, dear reader.

If this piques up any interest from commenters who also follow this most marvellous of mind-f*cking TV shows, I may well review it tomorrow, in the manner of the film and TV reviews done by such bloggertarian stalwarts as The Nameless Libertarian, whose Dr. Who reviews I must admit to rather geekily enjoying.

Anyway, if you're not a "Lostie" then I'm about to hit you with a barrage of pre-finale questions which will make absolutely no sense to you.

• Can events in the past be changed, or did "whatever happen, happen"?
• How the hell does Locke expect to kill Jacob?
• Who, what, or when is Jacob?
• What's the deal with that big four-toed statue?
• Is Richard Alpert really a bad guy, especially after his comment that Locke's nascent leadership may "be trouble"?
• Has there ever been a more awesome TV villain/(ambiguous hero?) than Ben Linus, as played by the electric Michael Emerson?
• and finally ... WHAT THE HELL'S GONNA HAPPEN? AAAAHH I CAN'T WAIT.

Yes, I'm a total, utter geekazoid. Deal with it.

So deflation was a load of old cods-bollocks? Yes siree.

The real risk, like I've always said, is inflationary depression - like stagflation, but really bad. But until the mainstream politicos and economic "experts" get their act together, the rest of us can sit back and try and glean some sort of dark amusement from the continuing disprovals of mainstream economic theories, as the economy slowly crumbles.

Good on the French!

As a French student, who will be going there as part of my degree in not long over a year's time, it is good to learn that, despite the fact that their President is a narcissistic moron, they sometimes come up trumps, as I see via Guido:

"France has just cut booze and restaurant sales tax from 19.6% to to 5.5%. Booze taxes are already reasonable in France, this makes going out even more reasonable. "

Excellent! A 14% cut! It's hard to even imagine that happening here - no wait, it's hard to even imagine imagining that happening here.

Expenses Expenses Expenses

You may have (though probably not) noticed a pointed quietness from yours truly on the issue of MP's expenses. Believe me - this is not because I have any reservations about calling out the trough-snuffling MPs for what they are: corrupt, and unfit for public office.

I'm just immune to caring about it. I really just - don't - give - a monkey's. And admittedly, this is probably A Bad Thing.

But it is no surprise to me to learn that many of our public representatives are looting the public purse; that we live with a parliamentary system that is endlessly exploited by those within it for their personal gain. This, for me, is not news. It is a boring, disappointing formality of political life in this country. It doesn't rile me into a state of angry-Mr.-Blog-Twice-A-Minute as it seems to do with many of my fellow bloggers. The predictability of the whole thing - of the angry bloggers, and the weaselling justifications of the apologists, and the clamouring of political leaders to "seize the initiative" - does never cease to at least amuse me. But I feel rather aloof from the whole farcical saga.

Of course, deep down, it does annoy me. It irritates me. The egregious misuse of public money always annoys me. But the very last thing all these stories of MP's expenses do is surprise or outrage me.

I suppose, for me, I just feel that if your beef really is political corruption - and I would say it is one of mine - then there are so many larger and more important examples of waste and political corruption that, in their frenzy to nail MP after MP on their expenses claims (quite rightly, don't get me wrong), some on the blogosphere seem to be overlooking.

QUANGOs.

Fake charities.

The non-existent (as of yet) and consistently delayed Iraq War inquiry.

The corruption of corporatism and lobbying - big business and big government joined at the hip for the purpose of their gain, not ours, and the revolving door scenario between senior corporate employees and senior parliamentarians.

That's four far more pressing examples of waste and corruption, in terms of proportion. Next to these, all the recent elaborate expense claims border on trivialities. Now like I say, I do understand that it's a matter of principle, and I hate the fact that crooks are taking our money to watch "Ben Dover and the Cyberdykes" and buy bath plugs (which I hope aren't somehow indecently connected) - but I just wonder if we aren't missing the bigger picture. The expenses saga is undoubtedly one of the more overt examples of how b*ggered our political system is - but that said, it is just one of many, and a proportionately modest example at that.

So that's why I'm not being such a zealous activist in the cause of exposing our corrupt MPs, though perhaps I should be. I'm just not catching Expensivitus (or better, still, MPs-are-swine Flu) like a lot of other bloggers are.

That said, do sign the petition, co-authored by the TPA and FOI campaigner Heather Brooke, calling on all MPs expenses to be

The Guilty Party

Mark Steel is on rather good form in today's Independent, on the New Labour car-crash, and their panicked attempts to "re-engage" with us:

"It's as if a builder had a discussion with you that went: "I have to accept that the bond between us has been fractured in these difficult times, which is why I'd like this opportunity to reflect on the many positive aspects of our work."

"You blew up my house."

"Yes, and this was an unpopular policy, and I recognise it as such. But I'm sure that when the time comes, you'll decide that I am the builder best qualified to lead you out of the rubble.""

Via Dan Hannan, the Centre for European Reform has released a report which summarises the state of our State as such:

"Britain will have Scandinavian levels of taxation and American levels of public services and social welfare."

Well if that doesn't just knock the smile off your face, eh?

Best of both worlds.

He's Unbelievable

I'm just watchinga clip from today's PMQ's, where David Cameron is asking the Gorgon about thee Hazel Blears "Youtube if you want to" article, and why she is still in the Cabinet.

Now, I can understand why the Gorgon does not fancy the idea of answering this question - but it is a legitimate question nonetheless. He's a friggin politician - he doesn't have to answer it truthfully or concisely; in fact, it's pretty much his job not to. As PM at PMQ's, he's expected to deflect/parry/lie when answering uncomfortable questions - but he doesn't do either of these things. He pretends he just hasn't been asked, and talks about whatever he feels like, normally consisting of "do-nothing", "jobs", "mortgages", "help", "unemployed", and "action" on randomised looping. He doesn't even address the basic content of the question.

Now I can't really recall much of what PMQ's were like before Brown - I am a young 'un after all. I remember snippets of Blair at the podium, and very very vague images of Major, but little else. Someone with a little more age and wisdom can perhaps inform me - is this how PMQ's has always been done?

I accept as a given that since the dawn of time, politicians have lied and obfuscated and given oblique, unsubstantive answers to questions they didn't like. But the answer, however, should at least logically proceed from the question, even if it consists of utter face-saving rubbish, surely?

But the Gorgon doesn't even make a single attempt to address Cameron's questions at all, even vaguely or insincerely. And Cameron asks more or less the same question twice. But no, Gorgon just ploughs off on his own tangent. It's probably the most tedious, exasperating thing I've ever seen. He is, one hundred percent, absolutely clinically selectively deaf. There can be no question of that.

How can it be called Prime Minister's Questions, if the Prime Minister doesn't even address any part of the questions? It's beyond "not answering the question" - a phrase more often employed when a politician addresses the content of a question but fails to adequately and specifically answer it - and is far more like "pretending the question never happened."

It's beyond a joke. He is an utter, utter embarrassment to watch, knowing full well that, somehow, I am the citizen of a country led by that stammering oaf. PMQ's is kind of like really cringeworthy reality TV.

The concept pitched to the producers:

"Right, We'll get this really incompetent, arrogant, gloomy moron who is impervious to any criticism, justified or no, and make him the Prime Minister, and he has to take barrages of questioning by verbally-literate politicians every week, and we'll watch him crack and squirm and humiliate himself."

"Sign here. When can we start?"

Why is PMQ's called PMQ's? The "Q's" part of the acronym is 100% redundant. It's more like PMTWIR's (Prime Minister's Tangential and Wholly Irrelevant Ramblings). Nah, it probably won't catch on, but I like it. I tend to like things that are pointlessly convoluted and wordy.

P.S. If you haven't already, don't forget to petition our dear PM to resign. It's for the best.

People of Manchester ...

Tell the government to b*gger off with their ID friggin cards, by not volunteering for one.

If they really want us to have ID cards then they can impose them on us by force, and end this sad facade that, in the end, we have any say in the matter. I, for one, will burn mine and piss in its ashes.

Tell them where to go, Manchester.

I suppose the title of this post should really be British Nationals of Manchester, because foreign nationals are certainly having no say in the matter.

Ian Dalton, Swinebuster #1

Thank God they've brought in a Swine Flu Tsar, Ian Dalton, to deal with this ever-deepening threat to all of humanity:

"The appointment came as the number of UK cases of the H1N1 virus reached 28."

AAAARRRGH, 28? That's nearly one two-millionth of the population! We need a serious Tsar for serious Swine Flu.

"Ian Dalton, currently chief executive of NHS North East, will become national director for NHS Flu Resilience.

He will ensure that the NHS "is in the best possible position to protect the population," the health secretary said."

I do hope he's not getting a pay rise for this.

History Repeating

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know of my derision for Keynesians, and that I find the fact that the theories they hold so dear to are currently in prominence throughout the world's corridors of power deeply disturbing.

I've said this before and I'll say it again - history proves you can't spend your way out of a deep recession/depression. And reinflation may work in a shallower recession, such as the NASDAQ downturn at the start of the century, but all this means is that you delay an inevitable recessionary/depressionary crisis that makes its predecessors pale in comparison in terms of economic devastation.

That's what I believe we're looking at now, as in the 1930's: the bubble that cannot be reinflated. And trying to do so will only worsen the situation.

I always bang on about the Great Depression and how, contrary to the views of the prevailing mainstream consensus (that same prevailing mainstream consensus who didn't see this coming when it was staring anyone of the Austrian persuasion in the face for years), it was - FACT - too much monetary, fiscal and regulatory government intervention which caused the "Great"Depression. Emphasis on "Great". In that FDR greatly deepened, entrenched, and generally worsened the crisis. That is FACT.

But just to prove my point, and because I'm too lazy to produce any of my own stats, I'll give you some nuggets of solid statistical fact from Robert Murphy's new book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal".

One prevailing nonsense totally taken apart by Murphy is that of Hoover as Free-Market-Do-Nothinger, following whose tenure Roosevelt had to come in and fix everything.

The only way this little story could be any further from the truth would be if Hoover was also secretly an Egyptian woman and Roosevelt a closet sufferer of syphilis. Here are the FACTS (Factually Accurate Cunting Truths, Shitheads!):

"Hoover's response to the stock market crash was an enormous increase in government spending, with the budget exploding by 42 percent over his first two years … it is true that Hoover blinked and tried to tame the unprecedented (at the time) peacetime deficits. But this was only after the "stimulus" approach failed horribly."

Stimulus in the 1930's: FAIL
Stimulus today: WILL ALSO FAIL.

Because the approach fundamentally does not work. In fact, the government is the most inefficient "spender" in society. Spending can stimulate growth if consumers want to spend, but they will only spend at the level they are comfortable with, and on what they think is best for them - and they're a damn sight clearer on what is the best, most efficient way to spend their money than the government is with their - no, sorry, our - money. And by taking our money and spending it on the utter shit they do - do I need FACTS to back up that assertion, I mean we see it literally every single day, on every hare-brained half-baked initiative and authoritarian scheme - they take from the productive parts of the economy and give it to the unproductive. The same way that in the bailouts, they give to the unproductive and implicitly take from the productive.

Another FACT, this time countering monetarist misconceptions:

"So we see that immediately following the stock market crash, the Fed began flooding the market with liquidity and in fact brought its rates down to record lows…. If the ostensible cause of the Great Depression — the one factor that set it apart from all previous depressions — was the Fed's unwillingness to provide sufficient liquidity, then how could it possibly be that the Fed's record rate cuts proved inadequate to solve "the problem?" "

Record low interest rates and excess liquidity in the 1930's: FAIL.

Stands to reason that those policies repeated to combat this depression will, also, FAIL

Are there any historical successes in dealing with a depression, then? Is there any hope *sob sob*.

Why, yes, little Helm's Deep boy, there is always hope. Enjoy these couple of FACTS:

"In the Austrian view, depressions come about because expansion of bank credit results in malinvestments. Because these need to be liquidated, the government should follow a "do nothing" policy that allows the market to return to normal conditions. When this policy was followed, recovery from depression took no more than a few years, in the 1873 depression, in contrast to the total failure to recover during the New Deal. The results were even better in the 1920–1921 depression, when both Wilson and Harding slashed government spending: "the 1920–1921 depression was so short-lived that most Americans today are unaware of its existence." (p. 71)"

But sadly, one can't help but think that this solution is not one which is around any nearby corner. It's far more likely that something like this is around the bend:

"Ordering the public to turn over its gold — under penalty of a $10,000 fine and up to ten years in prison — was a clear-cut robbery."

That was Roosevelt's gold policy. Seeing as Roosevelt is Obama's historical bumchum, and Gordon Brown is his present-day bumchum, I may renege on buying an ounce of gold when my trust fund comes through in September. What thieving bastards (they will probably be).

So, basically, to sum up, either the Keynesians are right, and the only problem with the various attempts at stimuli in the 1930's was that they weren't enough (a theory with absolutely no basis in reality or history), or we're all f*cked.

Which is it?

H/T David Gordon at Mises blog.

What makes you "right" to lead, Gordon?

Via DK, I see our Home Secretary is doing her clenched-teeth best to stand behind the Gorgon:

"Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has become the latest cabinet minister to come to Gordon Brown's defence, amid continuing speculation about his leadership.

She said he was "right" for the country..."

Nothing bugs me more than these sort of inane comments. We are supposed to live in a democracy - therefore the only person "right" for leading this country is whoever we say is.

And seeing as the Gorgon has NEVER received any democratic mandate to govern in the prime ministerial capacity, and seeing as every opinion poll cements clearer and clearer that the public has practically zero confidence in him, he is, quite evidently, NOT right for the country.

And, personally, that Jacqui Smith says he is "right" merely confirms, for the billionth time, that he is not.

Gorgon, call an election. End this humiliating farce. Currently the leading petition on YOUR website, beating the nearest opposition by over 20,000 signatures, is the one calling for your resignation. If you don't have the decency to do that, then, at the very least, call an election. Don't give us another year of this. Don't bring this country to a total of THREE YEARS under your unmandated government's corrupt, deaf, shallow, ludicrously incompetent and utterly embarrassing rule.

Don't.

Er, chill out...

Not one to foment panic, the World Health Organisation has tried to gently reassure us all that:

"ALL OF HUMANITY IS UNDER THREAT!!!!!!!"

Now it would be terribly embarrassing for me to downplay the risks of swine flu and then die from it in the coming months along with a fifth of the world's population, but come on, really ... is there any need for this alarmism when at present, in eleven countries there are a few hundred cases between them, and outside of Mexico, er, one fatality.

I know, I know, safety first - no harm in upping the threat level to 5 out of 6, just in case. Who knows - those warning of an international pandemic may be 100% vindicated by the time it has all played out.

But can we just not lose our heads here? If thousands start to die across the globe, let's really start worrying. But until that point I'd prefer it if the WHO didn't feel the need to tell me, with little basis in reality, that I and my entire species are in immediate existential danger. The WHO is calling for "global solidarity." What is it about any alleged "international crisis" that globalists feel the need to blow it out of all recognisable proportion, presumably in order to justify some drastic "global action"? Who can forget bird flu? Or that old favourite, AGW? More recently we've had the economic crisis, in which we were promised a ludicrous scenario of utter apocalyptic economic meltdown if massive co-ordinated international action wasn't taken.

B*gger them all. If the shit hits the fan with this swine flu business, we'll all know about it. Until that possibility materialises however, I don't think any international institution should be trying to worry us anymore than we already are - with all these other "massive global crises" or potential crises we're crapping our pants over.

Like I said, it could be embarrassing, if swine flu really is the pandemic the everybody-panic crowd say it is, for me to downplay it, but I mean ... really. Where have we heard this before? Oh yeah, I remember, it was a few years ago when bird flu was going to wipe out a third of us or whatever. I recall prominent figures predicting an outbreak, within a fairly limited period of time, with some certainty. And quelle surprise, it never happened.

And have you noticed our big headline-making diseases all seem to be named after animals? Mad Cow Disease, Bird Flu, Swine Flu ... on their way soon are Sheep Fever and Horse's Veruka.

Come one, come all, ye activists and petitioners...

... let's get the Gorgon outta there! If you need to be reminded why Gordon Brown and his band of Nu-Labour swine should have been removed from office yesterday, allow me to sum up:

• Iraq: lies lies lies, and a million Iraqis dead - the UK's involvement bankrolled by the Gorgon.

• Civil liberties and personal privacy: think of 42 days; of complicity in US torture; think of ID cards and expansive databases of your personal information; think of our criminally negligent data security; think of the restrictions upon Freedom of Assembly; think of CCTV on every street corner; think of Privacy International's indictment of our nation as an "Endemic Surveillance Society"; think of unmanned drones coming to a sky near you to "track criminals"; think of local groups set up by the government to "monitor tensions" in their communities - and think of what else may be around the corner.
  

• Think of the apparent needlessness for a democratic mandate to legitimise our PM's rule - the Gorgon's "long-term vision", whatever that is, is far more important.


• Think of broken manifesto pledges - 50% income tax on top earners; no referendum on the Lisbon Constitution.


• Think of his callous childishness as he giggled maniacally in his seat during Dan Hannan's speech, and not long after, during David Cameron's response in the Commons to the Budget.


• Think of his empty, hollow, deceitful and monotonously dull soundbites and other assorted drivel, and realise the lying beggar has about as much substance as a wisp of frigging candyfloss.


• Think of pensions: plundered.


• Think of our gold stocks: packed up and sold to the lowest bidders.


• Think of our economy sinking into depression and our banking system massacred by crooks who took abundant easy credit and mal-invested it by taking ridiculous risks - and remember such prize quotes as "an end to boom and bust" and - when the false credit boom was in full flow - "I want to do even more to encourage the risk-takers" - and also remember that all that easy credit came from the Bank of England, with the blessing of the Gorgon.


• Think of our public finances: utterly b*ggered. Tax burden is high and increasing; spending is highly wasteful; borrowing is through the roof; and there's every reason to suspect our national credit card is coming close to "maxed out". I doubt if even the IMF can bail us out of this mess.


• Finally, think of the recent Damian McBride affair, in which, as if anyone needs reminding, senior Labourites discussed peddling vicious lies about a man who had just lost his disabled son, and ask yourself - did the Gorgon, possibly the most micro-managing leader our country has ever known, really have no idea what was going on? I think I'll call "bullshit" on that one.

So in this spirit of anti-Gorgonism, do petition our dear leader to resign, would you? And while you're at it, why not send the Prime Minister an old shirt to symbolise your distaste with his budget last week? - because of course, let's not make-pretend that our alleged "Chancellor of the Exchequer" really had much say on the matter.

Or, if you want to go further still - and I know I'm about to get into rather abstract territory here, but what the hell - why not join or donate to the LPUK? Because when it's all said and done, while the Gorgon may be a walking disaster, his likely successor Mr Cameron isn't going to bring you much better except maybe a little more poise and grace. You want the real antithesis to the Gorgon's sneaky, malicious and yet incompetent authoritarianism? The LPUK is it.

Your move, folks.

No First Strike

CNN correspondent Walter Rodgers has written an excellent article regarding the dangerous counterproductivity of potential airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities:

"Israel has acted unilaterally to squash a perceived nuclear threat before. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin sent fighter jets to knock out Iraq's "Osirak" nuclear reactor. Israel claimed that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and that it had no choice but to bomb it out of existence. In 2007, Israel bombed a facility in Syria it claimed was a nuclear reactor.

Any strike on Iranian reactors would be a different matter entirely. Osirak was a lone, poorly guarded, and inoperative nuclear plant that had a year earlier been damaged by an Iranian airstrike. The Iranians have taken considerable precautions to build their facilities on something more solid than desert sand. At present there is but one facility, Bushehr I, but Tehran is gearing up to build an entire network of nuclear plants. Israel would be bombing until the Shah comes home to merely delay what is an unstoppable Iranian nuclear program."

The idea that Iran has not taken significant steps to harden and possibly even hide some of their installations is ludicrous - most analysts predict that even the smoothest IAF operation would only be 70-80% successful. Is such a probable success rate worth the potential ramifications of any strike?

"Consider:

•Iran has signaled that if attacked, it would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil flows. This would plunge the world into economic calamity.

•Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, is believed to have more than 42,000 missiles, according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak – enough to make Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv burn like London did during the Nazis' Blitz. Hezbollah is believed to have terror cells in Europe and North America. It has struck in South America, and many terrorism experts believe it is potentially even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Iran, using this proxy force, would probably unleash it on the world if Netanyahu were to bomb the Bushehr I reactor.

•It would trigger a tsunami of anti-Semitism that would inevitably translate into violence against Jews worldwide.

•Such a strike would be perceived as further evidence of a US-Israeli global war on Islam. Islamist fighters from Marrakesh, Marseille, London, Cairo, Karachi, and Tehran would enlist overnight by the thousands and march to Iraq and Afghanistan to wage jihad against the American troops there."

We underestimate the regional reach of Iran at our peril - they may only have the military output capability of Finland, but they have influence and clout that far surpasses that.

I would add to Rodgers' above list the possibility of widespread radioactive contamination of up to a thousand miles around Bushehr were it to be struck. I'd also add, on top of the blocking off of the Hormuz Straits, the possibility of sympathetic Shi-ites in Saudi Arabia sabotaging - or potentially a salvo of missiles from Tehran setting ablaze - that country's eastern oil fields. Then there's the risk from Iranian missiles to US vessels, such as aircraft carriers, sitting in the Persian Gulf, and more dangerously, the risk to oil tankers - a risk that insurers may not be willing to tolerate.

You think the economy is in dire straits now? How about, with a quarter of the world's oil supply coming from the region suddenly cut off, oil at $200/$300 a barrel?

What needs to be understood is any Israeli strike would be seen by the Iranians - rightly enough - as blessed with American complicity. US strategic interests in the region - and, accordingly of course, UK interests too - would be seen as fair game. That's why Iranian retaliation against oil-suppliers such as the Saudis - not forgetting too that they are longtime adversaries of Iran as well - is not unrealistic. Nor is it unrealistic to predict that Iran could bring more chaos still to the already-chaotic situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Iran proved its clout in Afghanistan in the initial US invasion, by helping the US and the Northern Alliance defeat the Taliban and catch senior members. The Mawaz-i-Sharif region, for example, is predominantly Shi-ite and sympathetic to Iran. One former CIA officer, Philip Giraldi, reckoned that backed into a corner, Iran could even have the capability of reaching right into Kabul and successfully ordering the assassination of President Hamid Karzai. This, in turn, could ignite a deadly civil war in the Af-Pak tribal regions between Tehran-backed or at least sympathetic Shia proxies and Iran's sworn enemies, the Sunni Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Can you see the already reluctant NATO countries being willing to commit their troops to an all-out civil war?

Finally there's Iraq:

Iran owns Iraq.

Maliki's Iraqi government sits snugly in Khamenei's back-pocket. Or, in the words of President Ahmadinejad himself:

"Iraq has been transformed into a strong bastion in defence of the Islamic revolution."

Or, in the words of Robert Scheer, at The Nation, commenting on Ahmadinejad's "lovefest" of a visit to Iraq in March '08:

"What leverage does the United States have over Iran when, as the image of Ahmadinejad holding hands with the top leaders of Iraq demonstrated to the world, we have put the disciples of the Iranian ayatollahs in power in Baghdad? There is no face-saving exit from Iraq without the cooperation of Tehran, and the folks who call America the "Great Satan" now hold the high cards.

How interesting that Ahmadinejad, unlike a US President who has to be airlifted unannounced into ultra-secure bases, was able to convoy in from the airport in broad daylight on a road that US dignitaries fear to travel. His love fest with Iraq President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who fought on Iran's side against Iraq and who speaks Farsi, even took place outside of the safety of the Green Zone, adding emphasis to Ahmadinejad's claim that while he is welcome in Iraq, the Americans are not."

Ahmadinejad travelled that dangerous road, pre-announced, in broad daylight, to signal to the world the true owners of Iraq. Few people seem to know this, but during Saddam's tenure, current Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki and other members of his organisation fled to Iran, where they were taken care of by the Islamic Republic. They are, indeed, students of the Islamic Revolution. And so yes it's true - for some bizarre reason, whilst perusing the list of potential candidates to head their puppet government, the Americans eventually plumped for al-Maliki and his merry band of Khomeini's children, bestowing upon Iran a strategic gift they could have otherwise never have hoped for:

"Iran is now a major trading partner of Iraq that has offered a $1 billion loan, the border is increasingly porous as religious pilgrimages have become the norm, and many investment projects supervised by Iranians are in the works. Instead of isolating the "rogue regime" of Iran, the Bush Administration has catapulted the theocrats of Tehran into the center of Mideast political power. There can be no peace, whether in Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq, without the cooperation of the ayatollahs of Iran."

Consider the disorder those same ayatollahs could wreak in Iraq in the event of Israeli/US attacks. Iranian troops and militiamen would flood through that porous border to be welcomed by their Iraqi Shi-ite counterparts - many Iraqi Shia militias work as government proxies anyway, but hell, in such a situation, the discretion of proxies may be thrown to the wind, and government forces themselves may sign up to the Iranian project of shooting the Allied Forces the hell out of the country. The alleged success of "the Surge" (which, of course, consisted of little more than the Americans bribing the Sunnis into stopping killing them) would be revealed as the facade it really always was, and would soon fade into distant memory.

And from there, who knows what might happen?

All of this is, of course, a nightmare scenario - but no less plausible for being one. None of it need happen. All that's needed is for sense and restraint to prevail.

Nightmare Budget

The little gloss that remained on the New Labour project was stripped away by today's budget. I've always thought Alistair Darling looked like a seagull, and as seagulls are prone to doing, today he has shat all over us.

Apparently, gambling on rapid economic recovery by 2010, he has hiked up taxes on fuel, booze, fags, and upped income tax for high earners to 50%.

The reality: the government forecasts for recovery are utter, utter crap. 3.5% growth by 2011?! Are you kidding me? They must be smoking some good crack.

The government's contention that with enough spending and borrowing, we can pull ourselves out of the downturn in a year, is complete hooey; an example of brainless Keynesian dogma, based on a totally fantastical theory of how an economy actually functions.

For everything that could have been announced in today to improve our situation, the opposite was done. Taxes, spending, borrowing, debt - all significantly up. The borrowing and debt statistics are terrifying.

Borrowing is forecast as £175 billion this year alone; £606 billion over the next four years. This is dire news for already battered sterling. We can look forward to more failed government bond auctions. What happens if our foreign lenders universally decide our credit card is maxed out? I wonder if such an eventuality is all that far away, particularly now that, rather than taking the first tentative steps towards reining in our deficit and closing up the gaping black holes in our public finances, we have instead announced to the world our plans to continue at quickening pace down the slippery slope of national bankruptcy?

UK net debt is forecast to be 59% this year, 68% next year, and rising to 79% by 2013-14. The golden fiscal rules seem a long time ago now, don't they?


These figures are unprecedented and catastrophic, and to see the Gorgon smirking and giggling while David Cameron lambasted him for these very things was a damning indictment of the type of man the Gorgon is: he just doesn't give a shit.

The scariest thing about it all is how woefully inaccurate these governments forecasts nearly always are - normally the reality ends up being much higher.


And so much for axing the beer tax. 2000 pubs closed in the last year, and yet the Seagull hikes up the tax again. You can't even drown your sorrows at the mess of this country without getting financially shafted by the State.

And finally, a big middle finger from the government to anyone who is successful enough to have a salary of over £150,000. If I was earning that much, I think I'd rather gouge out my own eyeballs than, quite literally, directly split it with the government. Just on principle, no one should ever have to give 50% of their income directly to the government - lump indirect and stealth taxation in there, and let me tell you: if a brain drain does indeed take place, I certainly won't be criticising the brains.


Mary Riddell, writing, bizarrely enough, in the Telegraph, lauds the budget's "boldness" and how "redistributive" it is, calling it a "Robin Hood budget."


No Mary - Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. The State is stealing from the rich to give to the State. This budget is shafting us all, and shafting our children, and shafting our children's children. The very fact that the Seagull has taken a particular interest, this time round, in shafting our most efficient wealth-generators, probably to no benefit in terms of tax revenues - in fact, possibly to its detriment - is proof that the government do not have the interests of the average Brit at heart.

They have the interests of their dogmatic political base at heart - those who bray for the blood of the wealthy and successful, and whose idea of social equality amounts to little more than equality of poverty. There is nothing noble, moral or "fair" about thieving more than half of a man's income to fund a public sector and welfare state so bloated and bureaucratic that it has become almost unrecognisable as a provider of basic services, or to pay for ridiculous, expensive initiatives and schemes dreamt up by morons insulated in the cushy political class which never deliver on their promises - just because said man is wealthier than others.

That the Tories won't just stand up and say this is very sad.

When it's all said and done, I think Labour know they're screwed. They are scorching the earth for Cameron. I think they know that the levels of debt and borrowing as they stand are not sustainable for much more than a year or so - they are just banking on the hope that it doesn't all unravel before the election, so that their defeat will maybe, just maybe, not be the humiliating and utterly crushing defeat we all hope it will be. That's what the 50% tax on top earners was all about - a desperate attempt to consolidate what they have left of a political base - namely a bunch of sad, angry leftwingers who cling to the belief that there is any place left for class war and that class warriors are fit for any purpose than reminding us of an embarrassing, depressing past.

Then Cameron's UnTories will come in - and Labour are praying that they will do exactly what I hope they have the balls not to do, but suspect will be the case ... nothing. At least, nothing significant. They might reverse a couple of things, tinker a little here and there, change the rhetoric a little, and generally seem like a bit of fresh air. But I sincerely doubt, as do Labour, that David Cameron will have the gumption to take any of the drastic action needed to try and set the economy back onto an upwards trajectory, and roll back the stifling state. And, perhaps, by the time they get into power anyway, it may already be too late and the damage will have been done: earth scorched past any chance of relatively fast recovery.

This was the Bugger-it-all Budget. The Shaft-Everyone Budget. The Nightmare Budget.

Will the last one into the poorhouse please turn off the lights? And be careful of the flying seagull shit.

The AGW Consensus: Crumbling

Fresh climate scepticism is afoot across the globe, from distinguished scientists to prominent public figures. Let's go through some of them them.

1. Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, on climate computer models: "I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in." See his Youtube videos here and here.
   
2. Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, is quoted as saying that the "models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view."
   
3. Richard Lindzen, Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examines negative climate feedbacks: "Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age." Love that one.
   
4. Australia’s foremost Earth scientist, Ian Plimer, has published a new book: Heaven And Earth: Global-Warming – The Missing Science. Prize quote: "The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology."
   
5. Dr Claude Allegre, renowned French geochemist and public figure, and likely to become head of France's equivalent to the EPA: "The cause of this climate change is unknown."
   
6. And of course, good old DUDE extraordinaire and president of the Czech Republic (and the EU), Vaclav Klaus: "Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment."

It'd be nice to think a new consensus might soon be formed - one in which the theory of AGW is consigned to the dustbin of overblown-errant-nonsense-we-never-should-have-believed-in.

£15 billion in spending cuts

That's it, Chancellor?

Far, far too little; far, far, far too late.

Who believes this?

Loud YAAAAWWWWWNNN.

George Osborne: NO MORE SMEARS! : -

"AN INCOMING Conservative government would remove the sleaze culture from Downing Street left by the e-mail scandal involving a prime ministerial aide, shadow chancellor George Osborne vowed yesterday."

Yadda yadda yadda, bla bla bla.

I'm genuinely curious: does anyone, a single person on this planet, seriously believe that the sleaze culture would be any different under the Tories? I genuinely want to know.

Just look at that slimy toad Osborne: if sleaze had a face, it would be his. You just know, don't you, that his "vow" is as empty and vapid as his party's raft of policies - not to mention unoriginal. Who remembers Tony Blair's call for a government that was "whiter than white"?

Clearly, George Osborne thinks the answer to that question is "not many". The political class really do take us for absolute morons. With goldfish memories. And, sadly enough, they may well be right.

It may explain why what we seem to get, every frigging time, is a government sleazier than the last. Sleazier than sleaze. We vote them in!

How bloody boring and predictable is the dull cyclicality of UK politics? For the love of God and mercy, people, vote LPUK.

LPUK News

The Libertarian Party UK has officially launched its South East branch.

I applaud the hard work of our South East lot and wish Richard Williams, Jenny Scott-Thompson and Rob Waller the best of luck.

We're looking for candidates for local elections and PPCs for the General Election when it comes - if it sounds like something you'd like to do, e-mail us at contact@lpuk.org. Or you can donate here.

As for the Euro elections - SPOIL YOUR FRIGGIN BALLOT! Don't legitimise the EU, for God's sake.

BNP Ascending

My pet theory is that the BNP would have nowhere near the amount of political traction and publicity they have if it wasn't for Labour ministers repeatedly talking about them to the media.

That said, a new study has come out saying the BNP's gains are real, via People's Republic of South Devon:

"The British National Party has grown more rapidly than any other in 21st-century Britain, and is on the brink of an electoral breakthrough which would bring media attention and serious European cash.

That’s according to a new study by Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford to be published later this year.

Titled The New Extremism in 21st-Century Britain, the study posits that the modern-day far right has positioned itself to the left of Labour.

Anxiety about immigration may have fuelled the BNP’s rise, but under the leadership of Nick Griffin the party has developed a full manifesto of policies, including large increases in state pensions; more money for the NHS; improved worker protection; and state ownership of key industries.

According to the study, the BNP is gaining new support from older, less educated, white working-class men – voters from Labour’s historical base who feel they have benefited little from the past decade of Labour government."

A few questions: if the BNP are positioned to the left of Labour, and have a full raft of policies to the left of Labour, doesn't that make them, well, "to the left", as opposed to the "far-right". Just sayin' ...

Secondly: what does it say about the party in government that their natural "historical base" of voters has progressed (or regressed) towards supporting a party who believes in preserving the integrity of "the indigenous peoples of the British Isles"? I suppose this is where "British jobs for British workers" came from, eh, Gord?

Apparently, "roughly one-fifth of white British voters share the BNP’s views." If this is even close to being true, we as a nation need to ask ourselves some serious and probing questions.

This brings to mind an extremely thought-provoking post from Devil's Kitchen a while back, in which he advanced the theory that the government is subtly attempting to foment an ugly, insular sort of nationalism in the British public, by creating the sense of being in a "state of siege" and restricting us from interacting with foreign cultures : -

"Well, let us ask ourselves what is required for a real nationalist fervour to set in; well, the population should think of anyone else as "outsiders", "foreign" and, if possible, somewhat inferior.

One of the best ways in which to do this, is to stop your population from ever actually interacting with foreign cultures. The British are already pretty adept at this, usually being "British" wherever they go and making little effort to appreciate or blend into said culture.

The next thing is to ensure that your population remains ignorant of said foreign cultures at all; in this way, they can be caricatured as "bloody foreigners" or "not like us" (for which read "inferior") and not, actually, human beings (like yourself) at all.

The final stage is to convince your population that they are under a state of siege: that all of those foreigners are only out to destroy your population's native (and, of course, innately superior) culture.

Sounding familiar yet?

OK, let us move onto some examples, shall we? For keeping people in ignorance, few things are better than to ensure that they have no knowledge of foreign tongues. This government has made a step towards that—as Jon Worth points out—by removing the requirement for schoolchildren to learn a foreign language (not that language teaching, in our state schools at least, was anything other than fucking abysmal in the first place).

And as for convincing the population that they are under a state of siege... Well, where should I begin? After all, if the government isn't enacting draconian legislation to convince us all that we are about to be blown up by disgusting foreign Muslims, then they are planting scare stories about how all of these Poles are coming over here and taking our jobs and women.

Of course, there are a number of countries that speak our language, and might not seem that foreign. Well, that's easy: make sure that very few of them can stay in the country through yet more draconian foreign labour laws, and ensure that they are marked out as foreign by having to carry an ID Card that (at present) the natives do not have to have.

Climate change, of course, offers yet another prime opportunity. After all, they are already trying to imply that flying anywhere is going to kill Gaia: if you cannot fly anywhere, then your chances of interacting with any foreign culture is pretty small. It is even smaller when travelling anywhere, by any means, is socially unacceptable.

And if importing anything is frowned upon for the same reasons—that it racks up "food miles" or "toy miles", etc.—then the number of people doing business with any filthy foreigners is also reduced.

And, of course, if importing things is bad then we really are going to have to rely more and more on our own resources. And, if that includes food, as I pointed out at the top of this increasingly long essay, then inducing the population to believe that they are under a state of siege is going to be a piece of piss: after all, when no one has enough to eat (although just enough not to descend to anarchy), who are they going to blame it on? Why, the filthy foreigners, of course.

So, we end up with a country in which the natives know little of foreigners and their culture beyond the fact that they are inferior, and which believes themselves to be under a state of siege. And there, my friends, you have the perfect conditions for some real, good, honest-to-goodness, paranoid, dangerous Nationalism."

Certainly some chewy food for thought ...

Add our economic problems - caused, of course, by them Yankees - to that maelstrom, and the social unrest that will undoubtedly follow, and electoral breakthroughs for the BNP don't seem too far-fetched - and not just in the European elections.

Us "Gloomsters"

There's something almost cute about the optimism Simon Wolfson, chief exec of Next PLC, writing in today's Times, has for the UK economy.

"Moderation in print is harder than it looks. So an article suggesting that things are not as bad as the gloomsters would have us believe, without saying the recession is over, is a real challenge. But that is my view. The recession will still take a while to end but the worst is probably over."

This is more or less the view of the government, too. It's also the view of one of my best friends, who has bet against me £300 that in the next five years, the UK will not officially enter into a depression. Ker-ching!

Let me say right now that I would like nothing more than for these optimistic outlooks to become reality. I'm not a "gloomster" because I want to be, or because I'm particularly keen on being gloomy and depressing the crap out of everyone in any given room should the conversation turn to matters economic. It's because the "gloomsters" are right. It's because they predicted the crisis again and again. And I believe we're facing a global inflationary depression and a downturn that will last at least ten years. Sorry.

Mr Wolfson's central thesis is centred around the idea that although, yes, things may be bad, there are two economic indicators showing that it's nowhere near as bad as we are led to believe and that "the worst is probably over." I'll bite back the usual retort of where - have - we - heard - that - before? - (well actually, that's a lie, I won't bite it back; it's a very valid point that I like to continually make) but I will try to address the key points behind Mr Wolfson's unbounded optimism, and break his naive little heart, turning his optimistic smile into a gloomy frown. Sorry, Simon.

Firstly:

"Unemployment is indeed rising but crucially employment is not falling nearly as fast. Since its peak in May employment has fallen by 162,000; in that same period unemployment has risen by 401,000. So while more people are claiming benefits - and this is a headache for Government - the larger labour market means that the impact on national earnings will not be as extreme as expected."

So in the last year, unemployment has risen faster than employment has fallen. So what? Both rates are dire. Let's put this in perspective.

At the end of 2007, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) predicted that 2008 would provide "easily the worst" jobs market since 1997, forecasting growth in the labour market of only 0.25%. Now, employment is actually decreasing, that is to say, it is not growing at all but contracting. This, now, is of course not news - but placed in perspective with the last decade, it is an indicator of just how bad a state the economy is in.

As for unemployment, the fact that from February to March this year, it rose at the "fastest pace since records began", kind of says it all.

Moreover, despite pointing out the disparity between rates of employment and unemployment, Wolfson fails to draw any distinction between private and public sector employment. Before the economy crashed, our government use to like talking about the steady continuous job growth they'd overseen in the last decade - of course, all this really meant was that whenever there was a shortfall in private sector growth, the government simply enlarged the public sector to balance out the figures. The government likes "creating jobs" this way because when the public hears there are more jobs, they see it as A Good Thing. More jobs mean higher productivity, which means more stability and prosperity. Wolfson takes this view as well. Sadly, more jobs is only A Good Thing when these jobs reside in the private sector.

Jobs in the private sector are there to provide a necessary service. Companies employ people when they think they need them to succeed in the market, and they pay them according to what they think their labour is worth, coupled with how much they can afford to pay out. If they overvalue or undervalue their labour, if they have too few employees, or not enough, one way or another they will suffer competitively in the market. Thus they are incentivised to provide the best service they can, as cheaply as they can - and those who do this best are the most productive.

The public sector, on the other hand, competes with no one. It shows: for every quid we pay the State, only 50p of it reaches frontline services - the rest is swallowed by pointless bureaucracy. This would be a surefire road to failure in the private sector. And who recalls former trade minister, Lord Digby Jones, coming out against our bloated public sector? He said:

"I was amazed by how many people frankly deserved the sack - and yet that was the one threat they never worked under, because it doesn't exist as long as they have not been criminal."

And he called for half of the civil service to be culled. The government could function just as well - in fact, more efficicently - without a sizeable portion of its ever-increasing stream of penpushers and middle managers. As opposed to being employed because there are necessary roles for them to fulfil, they are employed for reasons of political expediency - and as opposed to being brought in to do specific necessary work, they are found work to do. This is not productive labour, but unproductive. More than that, it is counterproductive to the economy as a whole, because it is taking human capital (i.e labour) from the private sector, as well as just capital (i.e more money in taxes - or borrowing, for which we will eventually be taxed), to fund unproductive activities. Taking from the productive to give to the unproductive is counterproductive.

And of course, as private sector jobs slump in this crisis, the public sector is insulated from it. In fact, the public sector payroll is having names added to it. As we lose our jobs, they get more, and we're footing the bill.

Onto Wolfson's second key point, on mortgage-backed securities:

"Alongside more encouraging employment statistics it appears that the problem of bad debts is not quite the catastrophe the markets were expecting. A key indicator of this is that defaults on mortgages are nothing like as high as the depressed prices of mortgage-backed securities would suggest.

Mortgage-backed securities are large pools of mortgages lumped together by banks and sold on to investors so that the banks can raise funds. In a given pool the best 93 per cent might be classed as triple AAA. Investors who buy these securities will only lose their money if more than 7 per cent of the total loan is not paid back. A 7 per cent loss would require many more than 7 per cent of borrowers to default, because the value of repossessed properties is likely to cover a significant portion of any unpaid loan.

Let's say the mortgage loans represent a not untypical 70 per cent of the value of the underlying property, even if the properties fall in value by half the bank will recover 71 per cent of the value of its loan. So, in this example, for the AAA bonds to incur any losses an astonishing 23 per cent would have to default - that's more than one in five. That is simply not happening; repossession rates are still well below 1 per cent.
...

The conclusion must be that mortgage-backed securities are now trading at way below reasonable value. In time, the smart money will take advantage of this and banks will see the market value of their assets increase. This will free up the banks to lend more money and, slowly but surely, the banking sector will come back to life."

Mr Wolfson's stats here are dubious. To be fair, he doesn't outright say it, but the implication from his article is that your average mortgage-backed securities have a loan-to-value ratio of 70%. This is disingenuous: it's much closer to 90%. Meaning that the values of repossessed properties are going to take a fair amount less of a chunk out of an unpaid loan than Mr Wolfson supposes. Plus the sheer expense of foreclosure decreases that chunk further.

Also, most of the securities were heavily leveraged - in which case, instead of a more than 7% loss being the point at which investors lose their money, you're looking at closer to 1 or 2%.

Wolfson's conclusion that "mortgage-backed securities are now trading at way below reasonable value" is off base - the reality is everyone is playing a massive game of make-believe, and no one really knows the value of mortgage-backed securities. Previously, under the "mark to market" valuation accounting methods, the securities were valued relatively to similar assets on the open market. Those rules have since been relaxed and allowed banks to pretty much value them at whatever they fancy, irrespective of the risk of default or rate of return (very low, with interest rates as they are). Thus, the insolvent may pretend to be solvent. It's a mad state of affairs.

My hunch is that the securities are as "toxic" as the gloomsters say. But that said, liquidity could return were they to be priced reasonably - i.e. at market prices, i.e. cheap. The problem is that then we would finally see which banks were insolvent - a prospect the banks (and their new overlords, the government) can't tolerate.

On one more Mr Wolfson's rather fleeting points:

"At the beginning of this year... we also pointed out that the financial pressures on many of those still in jobs would be reduced because of lower mortgage payments and fuel and energy costs."

Does Mr Wolfson honestly believe, what with interest rates as they are and quantitative easing underway, that rapid price inflation is not on its way? It's starting tentatively at the moment - shop prices are up, and oil is back up over $50 a barrel. It's coming, slowly, but it's coming nonetheless, and sooner or later it will take off. Stagflation is on its way - rising prices but a continuing slump. Just you wait.

Mr Wolfson is not an idiot by any stretch of the imagination, and in his article he says some very wise things about the state of our public finances - but as a commenter put it on his article:

"Unfortunately this analysis has the fundamental flaw of believing that this recession is an anomaly, believing that the economic situation of the last decade was sustainable."

Of course, Wolfson is the CEO of Next. I don't say this in an accusatory manner, but it's fair to say he has a personal stake in propagating and believing himself the myth that the consumer "boom" of the past decade and a half represented anything more than the collective gorging of most of the western world on a sweet, bloated pie of easy credit, borrowed money and fake prosperity. We were off our tits on it, and now it's time for a brutal hangover.

And I certainly didn't hear any high street retailers predicting any of what has happened.

This is just beginning. See you on the other side.

Done to Death

But what the hell, the Downfall spoofs just keep on coming, and after all this time they're still quite funny. Now Damian McBride's got one too.

Iain Dale likes some truly horrific music ...

I honestly don't mean this maliciously, but there are some real shockers in Iain Dale's top 100 songs so far - see here and here.

A darn good giggle, it has to be said. In his defence, there is some Radiohead and Dave Matthews Band, and the pedigree of music may improve as he goes through his top 50.

Still - hahaha.

Busted?

"Aw fuck, am I fucked?"

As Don Corleone says to Tom Hagen in The Godfather: "But I didn't know until this day that it was Barzini all along."

Except replace "Barzini" with "Ed Balls", because rumours are surfacing from a "Downing Street whistleblower" that Ed Balls is the nasty little shit behind this entire Smeargate scandal. Guido has more for us tomorrow on Smeargate: the sequel.

Who else is praying that this is true? How good would it be if Ed Balls was booted out on his arse! The Gorgon's trusted #2 - my guess is the Gorgon itself wouldn't be far behind. The celebrations I'd have ...