Author: Chris Snuggs

The aroma of British politics!

Such a shame that British electioneering couldn’t be honest.

Well, the British General Election Campaign meanders along towards the final week before we are put out of our misery on May 6th.

Sadly, the main topic of interest has been the success of Nick Clegg in the Leaders’ TV debates. The new young face on

Nick Clegg

the block has proved once and for all the huge power of television. Not one single Lib-Dem policy or personnel changed during the debate, yet the mere appearance on the telly of a new, personable kid on the block has rocketed his party up the ratings.

Well, not exactly rocket science, but sobering all the same. However, more importantly, most policy discussion seems mired in a series of scare-mongering ploys along the lines of, “Don’t vote for that lot or this terrible thing will happen.”

Yes, perhaps this is the stuff of all elections, but this one should have been a bit different since

A) it comes after a long period of power held by the Labour Party and whichever way it goes will mark a historic change and,

B) the stakes are so high as Britain hovers on the edge of joining the economically-challenged PIIGS [Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Ed.] of Europe.

We desperately need a government that can take us safely away from that particular event horizon, but to choose one rationally, we need the “truth” about what really needs to be done to reduce debt.

But sadly, we seem infected by the Greek syndrome, an ability to see the bleedin’ obvious, which is that nobody can live beyond their means for ever, much as they might like to.

So, we’re having to look for “the truth” further afield, to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), for example. According to them, the cuts in public costs will have to be as deep as any made since World War II. (Oh, and thank you to Labour and the banks for jointly getting us into this sorry mess.)

Here’s a brief quote from that BBC link:

The UK faces the deepest spending cuts since the late 1970s if the three main parties are to meet their budget commitments, new analysis suggests.

The years between 2011 and 2015 must see the largest cuts since 1976-80, according to a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Here’s Stephanie Flanders, the BBC’s Economics Editor writing in her blog:

They may disagree in public, but privately they couldn’t agree more. On the single most important issue facing the country after this election, our politicians think it’s better to keep us in the dark.

WHERE is the party explaining this clearly and unambiguously to the people? In other words, TELLING THE TRUTH?

I don’t see it. Neither of the big, old dinosaur parties are being straight with us. The Tories are proposing to spend even MORE on the NHS, (National Health Service) that sacred cow that nobody dare speak any ill of, while Labour seem to be promising to spend more on just about everything despite our £163 billion borrowing this year.

Why is this? It can – I submit – only be because they don’t think the public will understand and accept “the truth”.

If party A tells the truth and admits the cuts in public services will be deep and involve some pain and party B LIES and says it will “preserve frontline services” (the Labour line) then they (Party A) fears the public will not buy their version and opt for whoever promises them a fantasy instead, or in other words a gradual recovery without too much pain and in particular for themselves.

So, there is deep cynicism and an extreme economy with the truth from all parties who fear a voter backlash if they tell it. This is rather a sad reflection on the Labour Party’s proud boast of “education, education, education” of 1997.

Apparently, the British public is so stupid that they can’t be trusted to believe the truth when they get it. Of course, this could possibly be because they are so UNUSED to getting it and moreover because this policy of spinning smoke and mirrors worked so well in previous Labour victories.

Clear as mud!

By Chris Snuggs

Today’s Understatement of the Year

The EU Bailout!

German Chancellor Angela Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has questioned whether Greece should have been allowed into the eurozone in the first place.

She said the decision “may not have been scrutinised closely enough”.

Indeed, Angela. Indeed it may not, especially as Goldman Sachs organised some “credit swaps” (now illegal) that helped Greece disguise the size of its deficit.

Perhaps something is lost in translation, but why the “may”? Why can’t people bring themselves to call a spade a spade? The “may” is totally misplaced, isn’t it? So why say it?

See also this recent piece on the BBC.

By Chris Snuggs

Mr Micawber Strikes Again

Stating the obvious? So why is the reality so different?

British Chancellor with his famous red budget box. Is he proud of his vast borrowing "requirement"? He seems happy enough .....

Like Greece, Portugal is terribly indebted. Not because dirt-poor Senora Tristeza who sells in the local market decided to vastly overborrow more than she could pay, but because her government did.

Likewise, I did not ask the Labour government of Britain to borrow vastly over our repayment possibilities so that my son will be in hock for decades to come.

What is this absolute rubbish about “the borrowing requirement”? The British Chancellor comes out with this glib statement every budget day as if there was some cosmic compulsion that there should be a “borrowing requirement”.

NO, there shouldn’t …. Nobody FORCES us to borrow money, except perhaps in wartime. No government, and especially the current one, EVER says “No, we can’t afford that, we haven’t got the money and NO, we’re not going to borrow it.”

They just up the “borrowing requirement” automatically to pay for all their pet schemes and shibboleths. It is NOT a “requirement”.

It is a giving way to cowardice and greed, taking the easy way out. It is trying to impress people by the clever way they spend our money. They “require” to borrow because they do not have to courage to say (particularly near to elections): “Sorry people – we just can’t afford X, Y or Z as the money just isn’t there. We must be patient and live within our means.”

But it is time everyone started living within their means.

Individuals have a hard time sometimes, especially those desperate to get a foot on the housing ladder or parents desperate to get their kid into a good school, but the government does not have these excuses. There is NO excuse for building up vast debt. You have to live within your means.

This is so stunningly-obvious I wonder why it has to be said, but vast borrowing has become so endemic people think it is normal. And the levels of borrowing involved here are absurd. What sort of endictment is it of capitalism that several European countries (on the richest continent on the planet!!) are in great danger of going bankrupt?

Or, to put it another way, of defaulting on the debts that they cannot afford to repay? And even if they CAN pay they are also paying staggering amounts of interest, all money down the drain to fat bankers somewhere …..

Borrow to build a new railway because you’ll get the benefits back in emissions and efficiency savings. OK.

But borrow to pay civil-service bonuses and index-linked public (but not private!!) pensions and £60 billion on unelected quangoes and you will never get the money back. Someone will have to earn it, but the milch camel is staggering.

We need wise, courageous and fair-minded government which thinks of the long term. What are our chances of getting it?

By Chris Snuggs

Perkins and the Red Boxes

Current British Chancellor Alastair Darling has reverted to the original box first used by Gladstone in 1860.

Despite his trials at the ministry Perkins has been promoted!! Now he’s PA to the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. It’s now a few weeks before Budget day in 2005 …

“Perkins – the old red box looks a bit battered.”

“Well, it is 150 years old, Sir. It’s a sort of quaint British tradition.”

“Perhaps, but it’s not up to my modern, dynamic, ‘look to the future’ image. Please arrange to get some new ones made.”

“‘Some’, Sir? It’s only used once a year for a couple of hours.”

“Even so Perkins. We need a couple of spares and I must look the part. Besides, it’s a good opportunity to renew all the boxes used by other ministers. We should get a discount for quantity ….. Is there a problem?”

“Well Sir, the boxes are specially made, with lead and stuff so that if you are at sea and someone tries to get it you can chuck it overboard and it’ll sink.”

“Oh really Perkins! When am I going to be at sea with my budget?”

“No comment, Sir …”

“But we must move with the times, Perkins. What will this all cost?”

“About £400 a box, Sir – and about £60,000 to renew the lot!”

“Well there you go. A bargain.”

“But £60,000, Sir. We are already billions in debt!!

“Exactly. Compared to our existing debt £60,000 is a microscopic fleabite. See to it at once Perkins.”

“Of course, Sir. But are you sure? I could get you something reasonable from Woolies for £25.”

“Woolies, Perkins? What would people think?”

“Well, they might think you were trying to be frugal, Sir!”

Frugal? Frugal? What exactly is that, Perkins? Never come across it before.

“Quite, Sir.”

By Chris Snuggs

Greek Farce – Act IV, Scene III

P’sst!  Got a dime?

This bloke needs a reality check. If he is not going to ask for the dosh “formally” how IS he going to ask for it? Over a pint

George Papandreou

at the pub?

And what exactly are “preparatory moves”? A long sidle up to the Treasurer standing at the bar?  And how do you “prepare” to ask for 30 billion euros? Either you ask for it or you don’t? Oder?

Perhaps something is lost in translation ……

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has said his country is making “preparatory moves” to take advantage of a multi-billion euro rescue package.

He added, however, that Greece would not necessarily make a formal request for help.

STOP PRESS: Alex Brummer of “The Daily Mail” makes a very serious charge here in relation to Goldman Sachs and Greece’s financial status before entering the euro.

STOP PRESS TWO:  The BBC are reporting that Greece has formally asked for the dosh!

By Chris Snuggs

Greek Farce: Act III, Scene I

Greeks taking farce to new heights

Athens

Well, Ancient Greeks used to have tragedies; modern ones are better at farce, and so the “Shall we bung Greece billions of taxpayers’ money or not” farce rumbles on ….

It seems that the rising cost of borrowing for Greeks plus various warnings from people like George Soros about the possible collapse of the euro have pushed the EU (and in particular Germany) down a path they would have preferred not to go.

A vast loan at 5% has been offered, which is substantially below what the Greeks were having to pay before. So, crisis over? They can sleep well in Brussels again?

Errrmmmm …… hands up those who think Greece will ever be able to repay this money? Oh, at the time of writing (Monday 12th April) they haven’t yet ASKED for the money …. it really IS a farce rather than a tragedy, isn’t it?

Is there anyone on the planet who thinks they WON’T have to take the money? That they can get out of this mess WITHOUT it? No, nobody, except perhaps (as I speak) the Greek government itself. Well, they got the country into this humungous shambles in the first place so you’d hardly expect them to know what to do about getting out of it. This of course is in sharp contrast to the British government, which claims it is the ONLY party that can get out of the mess it itself created.

The reaction of German and British taxpayers to the bailing out of Greece (even though technically speaking it hasn’t yet occurred) is not yet clear ……. Neither is that of the other group of PIGS (Portugal, Italy and Spain). Incidentally, I am not sure how close the UK is to becoming a member of this rather grisly club, but as the country is still borrowing vast amounts at every tick of the clock it can’t be far off qualifying for full membership.

I did see a calculation this morning that the British taxpayer (I refuse to say government; all they do is pass on OUR money) will have to cough up around £600 million to help save Greece.

Of course, in return the Greeks will immediately start working as long and hard as we do, collecting taxes as efficiently as we do and avoiding corruption as well as we do. Yes, I am reporting from cloud-cuckoo land.

Well, we seem to be around Act III, Scene I in this farce, so there is plenty more entertainment yet to come, no doubt some of it tragic.

Today’s quiz question: What have lazy, corrupt, inefficient little countries in common with large, obscenely-rich banks? Answer -> They can’t be allowed to fail and some poor, hard-working mutt somewhere is going to have to bail them out, not that he’ll have any choice in the matter, this all being decided by the Great and Good (and Rich) in some posh office somewhere far away.

What you once couldn’t have made up now seems an almost daily occurrence.

By Chris Snuggs

No, No, No – STOP IT!!!

A suit was filed last week in the US against Goldman Sachs by the US government’s financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

GS is an example of all that is morally and practically wrong with capitalism. This is an obscenely-rich company whose ludicrously-rewarded executives do not actually do anything that I would describe as “work”. Their activities do not in

Goldman Sachs HQ

my estimation benefit the world in any meaningful way. They are parasites which feed off the backs of real workers (nurses, police, teachers, firemen, bridge-builders, electricians and so on) and – as in the recent shambles – end up practically killing the host.

There is a good case for forcibly putting them out of business and completely reorganising financial services, with the accent on SERVICES. A functioning society needs investment and jobs. Banks should be there to look after money and provide investment to companies, not shuffle around paper to make themselves obscenely-rich.

GS and others apparently have some sort of electronic system that operates automatically and instantaneously to market movements, allowing them to make vast sums by doing no work. NO WONDER bright graduates seek to join such leech-like firms instead of becoming teachers, researchers or otherwise seeking to do something useful for society apart from themselves.

If they are guilty, I hope we see the company broken up and put out of business. The criminal deception is no different from that at Enron, where people pretending (with already vast salaries) to serve the public were conniving to do criminal damage to put up the cost of their product. They were given a severe  penalty, and it should be the same for any white-collar worker if found guilty. I don’t have much hope for the eventual down-to-earth-sizing of GS (they are well-connected and can afford good lawyers …), but I am not the only person angry about all this greed. Get past the cosy confines of Wall Street bars into the real America and there are plenty more who feel the same way.

By Chris Snuggs

This Month’s PAFF Award

Bob Dylan  a serious threat to ….. only China knows!

Congratulations China. You win this month’s Paranoid Fascist Fatuosity award by refusing to allow an ageing Bob Dylan to perform in Beijing and Shanghai.

It seems you are concerned that he might inspire people, and no doubt mostly your youth, to revolt. And (apart from political freedom of course) revolution is the last thing on your mind, even though a revolution spawned you 60 years ago.

So Dylan will live on for Asians only on CD, but thank goodness for that! Michael Jackson may have been the self-styled “King of Rock”, but Dylan was astonishingly and iconically original and unique.

I say “was” of course not out of disrespect to today’s version, but with those amazing years of the 60s in mind when protest was in our very soul and played its part in the revolutions of 1968 and later the big one, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR.

On second thoughts, perhaps the Chinese Communist Party is not so paranoid after all. As my psychiatrist once said to me: “No Mr Snuggs, you’re not paranoid; they really are out to get you.”

Still, what a pity. What a sad reflection on the so far failure of “globalisation” to penetrate far into CPP mindset. Where is the Chinese “Glasnost”? Where lurks the Chinese Gorbachev?

Just in case you’d forgotten, here are some of the words that apparently strike such fear into the Forbidden City. Just as in the British civil service, “change” is not something welcomed with open arms:

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,
And don’t criticise what you can’t understand.
Your sons and daughters are beyond your command,
Your old road is rapidly aging.
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand,
For the times, they are a-changing.

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.
The slow one now will later be fast,
As the present now will later be past.
The order is rapidly fading,
And the first one now will later be last,
For the times, they are a-changing.

PS Most “serious” western newspapers did in fact report that the tour was cancelled because permission was refused by the authorities. However, just because the CPP is fascist – and of course all fascists maintain strong censorship – it doesn’t necessarily mean they are ALWAYS guilty. “The truth” is sometimes an elusive quantity. Well, re the Dylan tour, here is an alternative version of what happened …. perhaps the last page has not been told.

Bob Dylan

By Chris Snuggs

Horror at Smolensk

Will this air crash be a milestone in improving relationships with the Russians?

The Poles are naturally turning out to mourn their President and other leaders killed in the tragic accident at Smolensk.

Sadly, I fear that if and when the investigation turns up the truth about what happened the reaction may be more questionable. The Russians have apparently recovered the black boxes and presumably cockpit recordings, and what already seems clear from ATC Officers involved is that the pilot had categorically refused “instructions” to land at another airport, Smolensk being judged by ATC to be too dangerous.

Now others on Learning from Dogs will know far better than me, but it seems to me extraordinary that a professional, experienced pilot would refuse such advice and try to land in such appalling weather conditions.

This of course begs the question of why he did so, which is where the deceased President may come in.  An extract from the NY Times of April 12th:

Investigators examining the crash appeared to be focusing on why the pilot did not heed instructions from air traffic controllers to give up trying to land in bad weather in western Russia on Saturday morning.

Their inquiry may lead to an even more delicate question: whether the pilot had felt under pressure to land to make sure that the Polish delegation would not be late for a ceremony on Saturday in the Katyn forest, where more than 20,000 Polish officers and others were massacred by the Soviets during World War II.

Let us hope that it was mechanical failure of some kind (though early reports seem to rule this out) rather than the repetition of a previous incident where the Polish President had argued with the pilot of his plane.

This tragic event is of course surreally-ironic, as if the grisly hand of Josef Stalin had risen from the grave to cause the deaths of yet more Poles in addition to the 20,000 or so murdered in Katyn Forest on his direct orders.

As one who grew up during decades of Soviet denials of responsibility for this cruel genocide, I have been moved by the reaction of the Russians to all this, and no more so than by Putin himself. This is a man who referred to the demise of the Soviet Union as “the greatest tragedy of my life”, yet his grief and fellow-feeling for the Poles have been clear and genuine.

It was already a major breakthrough that Russia should have after all this time so clearly accepted responsiblity – and made apologies – for the Katyn massacre. That Putin and others have shown such fellow-feeling for the Polish loss gives one hope for a deeper reconciliation after the terrible schism in Europe caused by the Russian Revolution and seizure of power by Stalin, possibly the most murderous dictator in history. It was always insane that Russia should be our enemy; let us hope that by and by they will become our firm friends and allies.

By Chris Snuggs

Today’s No-Brainer

Bottled water …..

… in developed countries is not only an insanity but also an obscenity.

  • It is no healthier than tapwater. If it were essential to health then how come we oldies survived before? Logically, the Human Race should have died out.
  • It tastes no different, unless you buy it fizzy – but you could add your own fizz at home.
  • It costs VASTLY more than tapwater.
  • It is VASTLY more profitable to producers than gasoline for oil companies.
  • It is VASTLY more expensive to produce – around 1500 times more than an equivalent quantity of tap water.
  • Its transportation produces significant amounts of harmful emissions.
  • It is VASTLY wasteful; water is scarce, yet it takes 7 litres of water to make a 1 litre bottle plus the contents.
  • It leads to VASTLY-INCREASED pollution. ‘see “Giant Rubbish Dump Accumulating in the Pacific“
  • It soaks up resources that could be better used, including to save lives of people dying from lack of or dirty water.

In short, it is absolute folly. What on earth is there going for it? At the same time, it is big business and very popular? Why?

  • Are people ignorant about all the above? That’s quite worrying …. not much future with so much ignorance about.
  • Are people paranoid about what comes out of their taps? Oh dear –  paranoia is not good for us.
  • Do people place their vanity and status-image before the above-mentioned points? Hmmmm …..
  • Are many people just suckers for slick advertising? I guess the answer to that one is a straight “Yes”.
  • Have millions of people no common-sense and/or social conscience? Oh dear, this time it’s a clear “No”.
This is pretty!

Bottled water is nonsense, except of course where there is no alternative.

If rich, fat Westerners really like bottled water they could export it to developing countries where millions die through lack of or poisoned/polluted water every year while at the same time pouring funds into building water infrastructure for these very same people.

Yes, I know the industry provides jobs, but so did making nerve-gas for the Nazis.

The point is, we should direct our energy and money into things which are not totally unnecessary and destructive. I’m not a great fan of the “nanny-state”, but in some areas – and this is one – the government should be taking a more forceful lead. Help us kick our silly, selfish, faddish and destructive addiction to bottled water.

Some excellent links on this topic:

By Chris Snuggs