Category: Morality

“THE RIGHT STUFF”

Football – and the winner is ……. money and the lust for fame.

Well, the England v Germany game was tragic of course. But it wasn’t because:

  • the England team lost
  • they played not only badly but moronically, with an idiotic rush upfield of the whole defence as if it were the last few minutes of the game, thus allowing the Germans to score more or less at will
  • they repeated a few minutes later EXACTLY the same error as described above
  • the Germans scored a goal straight from the kick-off, which BBC commentators said they had never before seen in an international match
  • many of the players seemed “tired”, though this didn’t seem to trouble other players of the Premier League who were playing for other countries
  • the English players mostly plodded about like sleepy elephants compared to the racing panthers of Germany (resisting the temptation to say ‘panzers’)
  • the 5 million quid manager didn’t seem to have a clue; playing people out of position in a 4-4-2 formation that NOBODY else uses
  • there were no specialist wingers; quite useful for getting behind the defence and lobbing in crosses, a strategy that seems as foreign to the manager as he is himself
  • the same person was clearly unable to motivate and organise his players; as he speaks a different language this is not all that surprising – NO OTHER NATIONAL TEAM has a foreign manager, but we have to be different
  • the manager – with three goals needed in 15 minutes  brought on Emile Heskey as our ‘last hope’,  no doubt a worthy person but with a very poor goal-scoring record
  • the forward with the best goal-scoring record of all the English team (Crouch) hardly got a look-in
  • the players were clearly disorganised and uninspired
  • there seemed to be little real leadership on or off the field, with rumblings of discontent in the camp
  • for all of the above the FA is paying this hopeless manager nearly £20,000 per working day of the year

No, all the above is or was silly – or perhaps a better word is “pathetic”. The real tragedy concerns the goal that wasn’t.

The Goal that wasn't ....

Of course, this was every bit as silly as the rest of it, FIFA looking completely ridiculous by its refusal to contemplate the use of technology to enhance “fairness” (a concept I am quite keen on but which seems a bit out of fashion generally). It seems that some of the vastly-paid and expensively-hotelled world-ranging FIFA executives think that technology would “reduce the drama”. I am seriously hoping that Argentina “do a Lampard” on Germany in the Friday game so that the idiocy of this policy will be rubbed in, especially to the (rather sadly) gloating Germans.

But we STILL haven’t got to the tragic bit, which is that the Germans missed a chance to be remembered for ever as the team that owned up to a goal. Neuer, the German goalkeeper, has said that when the ball rebounded from the bar and went in (as it clearly did) he at once reached behind, grabbed it and hoofed it upfield “so that the referee wouldn’t think it had gone in.” which of course (being blind) he didn’t.

In other words, Neuer KNEW it wasn’t a goal but didn’t say so. With this action he joined the serial cheats, divers, “get-an-opposing-player-sent-off” and Maradona “Hand-of-God” players who will do anything to win. These are people to whom the concept of sportsmanship, fairness, honesty and “doing the right stuff” are alien.

In the case of Maradona, the ability of humans to reach the peaks of irony was once again illustrated when before the World Cup started he made a plea for “fair play”. I am unaware that he has ever apologised for his own cheating, but of course it is much easier to urge other people to behave in a certain way than to do it yourself.

Anyway, I do not claim the English would have done any different; we’ll never know. Just as we’ll never know what the score of this match WOULD have been HAD the goal been given. What we DO know is that we’ll be thinking for the next forty years about how silly and unjust this was just as the Germans have been whinging on for the same length of time about 1966. It could and should have been so different. HAD the Germans gone at once to the ref and said: “It was a goal”, they would have been moral heroes for the rest of footballing history rather than remembered (by me at least) as just another bunch of cheats.

The tragedy of course is that a TREMENDOUS OPPORTUNITY was lost to make a pitch for honesty, fairness, sportsmanship and decency. What an example that would have been to everyone, especially our kids! And WHAT A CHANCE to dump for ever and ever the image of football as a cheats’ activity dominated by the false Gods of money and fame as well as the stereo-typed image that some idiotic Brits have of Germans as unfeeling Nazis.

No, their instinct was NOT to admit the goal and to benefit from an unfair error. Sad … for the next 40 years we’ll be talking about the unfairness rather than what a wonderful gesture they made.

Oh, and as for 1966, let’s lay this ghost to rest. There was NEVER ANY QUESTION that it wasn’t a goal. The referee and linesman on that day BOTH said it was a goal and it is obvious from the reaction of the players that it was a goal, even if in those times the cameras were not as sophisticated as today’s and cannot definitively PROVE it was a goal. I am afraid this 1966: “It wasn’t a goal – we wuz robbed.” stuff is a bit like the urban myth: “The German army was stabbed in the back by politicians.” that Hitler exploited after WWI.

Well, for me the World Cup has lost some sheen; it is all so silly, nationalistic and rife with unsportsmanship. All that one lives with (one is used it these days), but the missed opportunity to make a moral stand is one I deeply regret.

I hope it is clear that this has NOTHING TO DO with my being English. Had our boys done the same I would have been just as sad, even more so, as – perhaps stupidly – I would like to think we are made of better stuff. However, football is not cricket and even cricket is often not cricket today either.

By Chris Snuggs

BP and Congress

Truth – 0, Lawyers – 1

Hayward of BP taking the oath

I can’t possibly add anything of substance to the hours and millions of words spoken about this tragic event.

All I felt as I watched the Congressional Hearing live on CNN was both embarrassment and sadness as a fellow Englishman demonstrated how the lawyers have won.

Hayward, from the couple of hours that I saw, said nothing of substance, nothing of real value and nothing that recognised how the American people, and the world in general, deserved openness and in-depth answers.

Very poorly advised, in my opinion.

Tragic.

By Paul Handover

How big bankers became outlaws

[This is another Guest Post from Patrice Ayme which appeared on his Blog on the 28th April.  It has been slightly modified by me. Ed]


Celebrating Goldman Sachs, while acknowledging that it is far from being all their fault.

Point One: We are living in a state of law. Supposedly.

Point Two: That State is democracy, the rule of the demos, the people. It is not the rule of the bankers. Supposedly.

Point Three: Political leaders have recently given PRIVATE unelected individuals, the bankers, the means and the right to create money, the money everybody uses, through debt, ex nihilo, starting from PUBLIC funds  (Called, somewhat misleadingly, the fractional reserve banking system.)

Point Three contradicts the union of Point One and Point Two. Power is supposed to be exerted by the people, but money is power. Big bankers create money at will, with the complicity of the political leadership. So they create power at will.

Thus, the present system incites (big) MONEY CREATING BANKERS TO BECOME GANGSTERS, and then OUTLAWS.

It is as simple as that!

Thus one needs to get rid of the private fractional reserve PUBLICLY funded money creating system.  The situation has been rendered worse in the last decade by the blossoming of synthetic derivatives which are out-of-this-world bets which could not possibly be paid back.

Synthetic derivatives of derivatives transformed a 300 billion dollars loss in real mortgages into a potential exposure of 24,000 billion dollars, thanks to the leverage of the derivatives squared.

Then political leaders, accomplices with the bankers, offered to pay the 24,000 billion dollars, on behalf of taxpayers, leaving the economy in tatters.

Not all is lost: Goldman Sachs got its entire 2008 profit, 13 billion dollars, from taxpayers, through AIG, thanks to US politicians, and the USA loves a winner. Love and dove, there are still many a feather to pluck.

By Patrice Ayme

P.S. Synthetic derivatives are, mathematically and philosophically, a generalization of the license of the privately managed, publicly funded, fractional reserve system, thus proving further, if need be, how erroneous the latter can be.

P.P.S. The fractional reserve system ought to be kept, to provide the capital needed, simply it ought not to be anymore the province of a small private oligarchy gaming it.

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

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good!

Iceland’s ash casts an enigmatic spell over Japan

It seems that there has been nothing else on the news following the eruption of Mount Eyjafjallajokull
in Iceland, which was of particular interest to me  because on the 10th April I was flying from New York across the southern area of Iceland on my way to Rome, since which time I have passed through the UAE and Singapore on my way to Japan.

My work replacement was due to arrive on the 18th April after a holiday in the Mediterranean, but the flight which he was on was diverted into Paris because UK airspace was suddenly closed. He managed to continue his journey by train, ferry, car, taxi and bus but was then stuck in England. My duty had to continue but there seemed little point in propping up a hotel bar with other crews, so I decided to turn the situation into something positive.

After an exploratory trip into Tokyo, it was Paul, our Editor in Chief who put me in contact with his sister and her husband in the city, and another friend who suggested I should jump on a train and go to Hiroshima to see his son, who I know, so my travels started.

The transport system in Japan is extremely well organised with instructions and information well displayed in English along side Japanese. Everything is clean and modern, and runs to the second! At short notice I decided to make the journey to Hiroshima in this once in a life time opportunity, and there was the famous bullet train a monster of modern technology, which runs on banked rails at steady speeds of 400 kph.

Mount Fuji - Japan

We sped along through ever changing countryside. Initially the skyline was of mainly high rise buildings which changed to two story properties once we were out of town. The new leaves of spring and the famous blossom of the plum and cherry trees, and the quick glimpse of a Japanese water garden. Industry is mixed with small allotments, and tiny houses, roads and rail lines raised from ground level to make everything fit, and above that cables and wires, because of the threat of earthquakes, and past the stunning Mount Fuji, white with snow against a blue sky.

I never met such polite people, and on the train the guards and girls who pass through the carriage with drinks and food bow when they enter and leave. They are so well dressed and smart. No graffiti here!

Familiar Japanese trading names on local buildings, and strangely a huge Union Jack flag. I wonder how there can be so many buildings and parking areas full of cars ,but seemingly no people in view, but many large span bridges arching across hill sides to join places together.

Through Kyoto where there seemed to be a lot of energy being used, for purposes that were not immediately clear. College students in smart suits with white shirts and blue ties, passed quietly through the train. I noticed each time they had left the train at a station they took their rubbish with them, and put the seat back in the upright position!

The A-Bomb Dome

At last after four hours we arrived at Hiroshima, which today it is a lovely modern city of which to be proud. There is just one damaged building standing in a stark fashion at the waters edge which is all that it takes to remind us of such devastation and the Garden of Peace, there to allow some quiet reflection.

I took a 45 minute boat ride to Mijajima, now a World Heritage site. This beautiful island is probably 15 miles from Hiroshima, and there amongst the beauty of the trees and a 500 year old shrine wander the deer, quite happy to sit as people pass by.

My thought as I came away from Hiroshima was that all leaders of any country with any connection to Nuclear weapons or power should be made to attend the A-Bomb Dome and reflect. As all the plaques say this must never be allowed to happen again.

By Bob Derham

Papal spokesman loses marbles

Not quite the best way to manage one’s ‘news’.

Fr Raniero Cantalamessa

I’ve been trying to think of the right word, and I think I’ve finally managed it – “stupefying”. This is in connection with Fr Cantalamessa’s remarks comparing the current criticism of the Roman Catholic church hierarcy with anti-semitism, this in relation to the on-going child-abuse scandals that are rocking the Roman Empire.

I don’t like to kick a man when he is down, and Fr Cantalamessa is clearly challenged on a wide number of fronts, including cerebrally.

The Catholic Church is in a totally indefensible position on the abuse front; the Pope himself is accused of failing to take action (always the easy course) in his earlier career when presented with clear evidence of wrong-doing.

No, the only possible reaction was to assume great humility and sorrow and issue grovelling apologies.  No doubt the usual politicians’ standby soundbite would not have gone amiss: “Lessons have been learned.”

I give  Fr Cantalamessa some credit for saying what he thinks instead of passing his comments through a gruesome PR spin merchant, but unfortunately he has got it completely wrong. And it’s no good the Vatican claiming that these remarks “did not represent its official view”. They were after all printed in full on the front page of the Vatican’s own newspaper “L’Osservatore Romano.”

As Peter Isely of SNAP (survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) put it much better than I could:

“They’re sitting in the papal palace, they’re experiencing a little discomfort, and they’re going to compare themselves to being rounded up … and sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz? You cannot be serious.”

Porr old Fr Cantalamessa should get out and about into the real world a bit more.  Someone should send him a copy of Mother Theresa’s biography or “Five Chimneys”

Has he seen “Schindler’s List”, even though what was shown there was extremely mild compared to the horror of the reality?

Sorry Fr Cantalamessa, you score nul points on this one ….

By Chris Snuggs

Why do we cheat?

Behavioral Economist concludes that most people cheat.

In a very interesting video on the website TED, Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, explains his research into why people think it is okay to cheat and steal.

Here is Ariely’s presentation from YouTube:

From his research, he concludes the following:

  • A lot of people will cheat.
  • When people cheat, however, they cheat by a little, not a lot.
  • The probability of being caught is not a prime motivation for avoiding cheating.
  • If reminded of morality, people cheat less.
  • If distanced from the benefits from cheating, like using “chips” instead of actual money in transactions, people cheat more.
  • If your in-group accepts cheating, you cheat more.
Dan Ariely

I quibble with the interpretation of some of his findings, which may justify a separate post on how people perceive what they do and do not know, but there are always issues of this sort with a given research project.  Where I draw the line is when he expands his conclusions to include all of Wall Street and the stock market, which is totally beyond the scope and nature of his research.

On what basis does he draw this conclusion?  As explained in this short video (as I have not read his book, though I’ve read excerpts and am familiar with the study upon which the book is based), Ariely claims that because stocks and derivatives are not in the form of money, they “distance people from the benefits of cheating,” which leads individuals who engage in the stock market to cheat more.  He alludes to Enron as proof.

This is almost too silly to spend a lot of time on trying to discredit, but I fear that a lot of people who hear his talks or read his book may be lulled into accepting what he says about the stock market as true.  But it is not! Enron is the exception, not the rule.

Companies who issue stocks are raising money to provide a good or service that is valued by society; they are rewarded by profits.  Investors who buy and sell stocks, trade derivatives, and invest in portfolios are trying to make their money go further. They are trying to earn a return on their savings.  Cheaters do not survive in the stock market, unlike the “consequences-free” classroom in Areily’s experiment.

On the other hand, these factors are in glaring abundance in the government:  politicians never “see” the taxes they spend as the hard-earned income of the citizens. And the “benefits” of cheating, including power and privilege, are amorphous and vague, and couched in the so-called morality of “doing the greater good.”  I’m surprised Ariely does not condemn the federal government using the same logic as his does the stock market.

His last take-away from this research project?  That we find it “hard to believe that our own intuition is wrong.”

I think Dr. Ariely ought to apply that caveat to the conclusions he draws about his own research.  Very interesting, very compelling, but his interpretation of the results as they apply to the stock market falls victim to the very same biases that he claims to find in others.

by Sherry Jarrell

Let there be markets

Here’s a novel idea – make markets be markets!

I apologise for the rather trite sub-heading but it was a bit of attention grabbing to promote the results of a recent conference called Let Markets Be Markets.  It was published by the Roosevelt Institute and had one very impressive line of speakers.

One of the speakers was Simon Johnson of Baseline Scenario fame, a Blog that Learning from Dogs has followed since our inception.

Here’s 8 minutes of Simon pulling no punches.

If you want to read and watch other presentations, then Mike Konczal’s Blog Rortybomb is the place to go.

As this Blog has repeated from time to time, this present crisis is a long way from being over.

By Paul Handover

Stop Flaunting Sexuality Please

Oh, this is really clever! Not!

I was stunned the other day to read this:

In the latest development in his campaign to show how dramatically the Tories have changed, David Cameron has published the party’s first-ever official list of openly gay MPs.

The Conservatives say they have 20 openly gay candidates standing in the Election. Of those, 11 told party chiefs they were ‘happy’ to be named in the first authorised list of gay Conservative candidates.

David Cameron

Homosexuality is no longer – thankfully – a crime.  It has always existed and no doubt always will. It is therefore – logically – a normal feature of human society. Isn’t it time to accept it as such and stop flaunting it constantly in the media? Can we not keep private those parts of our lives which are private? Do heterosexuals go around flaunting their heterosexuality?

Why on earth does a potential government-forming party feel obliged to publish lists of people’s sexuality? Why do I suddenly feel as if I am bizarre in thinking that one’s sexuality should be something private? Personally I haven’t got the faintest interest in other people’s sexual inclinations. Like religion, it should be personal and not eternally flaunted in the media.

And it is all illogical. Either homosexuality is normal or it isn’t. If it is (as it is), then why the constant need to bang on about it, as for example in the Tory party? What on earth has it got to do with running the country? Are the Tories supposed to be better-qualified to run the country the more homosexuals they have? Is there a point at which having TOO MANY becomes a negative point? Would they then start to proclaim how many heterosexuals they had? On a personal level, I keep my sexuality to myself. It is nothing to do with you and certainly not with running the country.

It is analagous to sex in the media. It is overdone. The endless superficial titillation and flaunting of sexuality is demeaning of the Human Spirit. Sex is – or should be – a private matter. It’s better that way. It is more mature that way, but the media – and now the political parties – sink to the lowest denominator instead of focusing on what really matters.

Please, please give us some politicians with common-sense.

By Chris Snuggs

The EU and the European Taxpayer

Integrity? Here is your quiz question for today:

Which international, taxpayer-funded organisation has an unelected crony of the British Prime Minister in a high-level post (though not the highest) who earns more than the President of the United States and double the salary of Hillary Clinton?

Clue!

Yes, you’re right. It is the European Union. This is an organisation of member states that in principle is supposed to be

Baroness Ashton

about creating a free, democratic and open market in Europe. It has turned into a proto-state (in the eyes of the Brusselocrats) which – therefore – has to have a “Foreign Minister”, in this case Baroness Ashton.

This is a person with very little knowledge of international affairs sent by Gordon Brown to Brussels because he couldn’t afford to lose Peter Mandelson or David Milliband. This is a person never elected to any public post, yet who receives a vast salary and benefits package higher than that of ANY of the Presidents and/or Prime Ministers of ANY of the member states of the EU.

As “The Daily Mail” points out, in addition to this very large salary the Foreign Minister also enjoys an extraordinary raft of other benefits:

“Her basic pay of £250,000 is double that of her U.S. counterpart, Hillary Clinton (who’s on £124,000). And on top of that, Lady Ashton is entitled to a raft of benefits including a £38,000 yearly accommodation allowance, £10,000 annual entertainment budget, two chauffeurs, plus thousands of pounds more in sundry allowances and – if she survives – a pension of £64,000 pa (three times the average salary in Britain) plus a “golden handshake” of over £450,000.”

All this goes hand-in-hand with billions spent on the new EU “diplomatic service”.

But hang on a minute! The EU is NOT A STATE!

The EU has no army! Baroness Ashton as “Foreign Minister” can decide on practically nothing that the key heads of government do not agree to. So what is going on here? Is all this vast waste of public money in a time of financial crisis either A) the bloated pretention of Brusselcrats who have a delusional idea of their own importance or B) another brick in the wall which one day WILL be a United States of Europe.

One can see how the thinking goes: “We’ll set up a “Foreign Ministry” so big and powerful that one day they will just have to agree to creating a single state to justify it. And of course the more it costs, the more important it obviously is and therefore the more powerful we ourselves will be. And naturally, the more jobs there will be for us to go to on the Brussels merry-go-round.

Of course, it is both A AND B. And how can they afford these humungous salaries? Well, because they can get away with it. In theory they are accountable, but in reality? How many people even know who their European MP is? Once you get onto the Euro Gravy Train it disappears out of sight. Nothing the voter says or does seems to stop the bloated upward creep of salaries, allowances and pretentions.

How ANY Brusselocrat can justify such a ludicrous salary for an unelected and essentially unimportant  “minister” is a mystery. The main justification seems to be “self-interest”. The EU is NOT A STATE. States have Foreign Ministers.

It is dishonest and amounts to theft of public funds. But that is not the WORST of it. The saddest thing is that it damages the morale of those who – like me – used to believe in a Europe united but not “statefied”. I want a free and open market. I do NOT want a United States of Europe. But this is where they want to lead us, and – like a black hole – each year sees a tiny creep in that direction, or in the above-mentioned case, a BIG creep. I also do not want a venal, money-grabbing, bureaucratic elite in Brussels which makes 80% and rising of British law.

Once again, one wonders if delusional pretentions will bring the whole edifice crashing down and the baby go out with the bathwater …

By Chris Snuggs