Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Too complicated to care? - by Richard... Tuesday, April 05, 2011


What used to be a very useful and necessary industry has slid so far down the public's estimation that it is regarded as just another rip-off. This is the insurance industry, which is four of its representative bodies bitching to Brussels that proposed new rules are harmful.

Basically, we are talking about the so-called Solvency II capital-requirements regime, which the industry complains, contains parts that are "excessively conservative and prescriptive". The problem is that insurers are being forced into "overcapitalisation" due to fears of another financial crisis. Yet insurers say they are less risky compared with banks, but are being treated by regulators in the same manner.

Holding higher levels of capital, of course, means that insurance products are more expensive, and it also means less choice, as there will be fewer players in the market, as buckle under the regulatory burden, or decide there are better pickings elsewhere. The upshot of this is that we, as individuals take the hit, either in more expensive premiums, or through not being able to afford the products in the first place.

Where the particular damage will be caused, however, is in pensions products, where how long-dated liabilities such as annuities will be particularly badly hit – or so we are led to believe.

But the trouble is that the rules are so arcane, covering complex products in a complicated market, that you are not going to get a torrent of scandalised comment in the Sun, the Daily Mirror or even the Failygraph. And if the insurance companies are bitching, who is going to believe them anyway when they say the industry will be damaged – and who cares?

So it is that probably another vitally important issue is about to fall by the wayside. It is not that people don't care, but that the issue is too complicated to understand, and there is no one there in the popular media who will take the time out to explain why people should care.

Therein, though, lies a more deep seated problem. Likely, the only way of resolving this issue – which comes under QMV rules – will be to tell the EU to take a running jump. And since that is not going to happen, it doesn't really matter what we think, or whether we care. It is going to happen anyway.

No wonder people walk away from politics, but when they then have to pay the bills, the frustration builds up as people realise that, once again they have been had, and it is too late to do anything about it. But, as we keep asking, how long can this last, before there is a serious and uncontrolled backlash – or will such matters simply remain too complicated for people to care about?

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Seventy years apart - by Richard... Monday, April 04, 2011

... but still a shambles. On this day in 1941, the headline speaks for itself as British Forces were settling down to another retreat. And seventy years to this day, the government was braced for another backlash as sweeping losses to Britain's military were announced.

What is getting considerably less publicity is the extent to which the United States has quietly withdrawn its air and sea assets from Libya, virtually ending the military intervention against Qaddafi's armed forces. Hence we now see a partial but pitifully inadequate addition to the British force of four extra Tornadoes, leaving Britain and France badly short of the air and sea capabilities necessary for the Libyan dictator's military adventures, and enforcing a no-fly zone.

The RAF bombers are supposed to be replacing USAF A-10 Thunderbolt and AC-130s, and as many as 100 American fighter-bombers which have been available in the Libyan arena. In consequence, the scale of Western coalition air attacks dropped abruptly by 80 percent.

In all though, even without the additional four Tornadoes, there are still 143 warplanes in action over Libya. However, less than half are combat-capable. The rest are used for surveillance aircraft and transports. And the number of combat aircraft is too small to police the no-fly policy over the entire country.

Qaddafi this appears to have taken advantage of coalition shortcomings to start deploying his considerable fleet of air transports, moving troop reinforcements and equipment to hotspots, enabling his forces to hold down the rebels. It also appears that some of those transports have also been sent outside the country.

According to some reports, they have been loading up at a number of African military air bases on ammunition and spare parts, which the Qaddafi regime purchased from Arab and African sources as well as arms traffickers.

Small wonder, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton had warned that the RAF will need to be in Libya for at least six months. At present rate, though, it looks to be having just as much success as our forces were having on this day seventy years ago.

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Below the line - AMENDED - by Richard...


Max Hastings in The Mail pontificates about the split in British society. But he puts the divide between the public sector and the taxpayer. And as always with the man - he's only half right and misses the main point.

What he miisses is that none of us have any problems with the front line public sector – the dustmen, the nurses and others who do useful jobs. And although many of them could be employed in the private sector, I have no great hang-ups about that either. Many of the corporates which would replace them are just as malign as the worst of the public sector. And I resent being ripped off by the corporate bureaucrats just as much as I do the public sector bureaucrats. There is little to choose between them.

So, the split is not where Hastings puts it. The big divide is elsewhere and you don't have to look hard to find it. It is between the political classes and the rest of us – The Great Man is far too grand, too close to the political classes, and far too much out of touch to understand that.

The thing is that, in recent the past (20th Century), the divide was vertical – with polarisation left and right. That is where Hasting's brain still resides. But he is twenty or thirty years out of date, the last time when he ever understood anything about politics.

Now, the line has moved. The division is horizontal again. That puts "us" below the line, and "them" above it. The division not only transcends the tradition of recent politics, it also crosses the divide between public and private sectors. The private/public line has become so blurred as to be barely discernable in many cases. Most certainly, it no longer so neatly corresponds with any political divide.

In many respects, the private sector is as bad, if not worse than publicly-owned enterprises. When the banks make profits, for instance, they keep them and award themselves bonuses. When they have financial difficulties, they become "too big to fail" and the losses are "socialised", i.e., we pay the debt.

You have water companies, who are profligate in their spending - and generous with their bonuses - yet can't supply the product at times. They simply increase their bills each year to cover up their grotesque inefficiencies. Are they private sector - or simply regional monopolies with a licence to print money? Then you have companies like BAE Systems, whose only customers are governments.

Others like Capita are effectively branches of government. Group 4, which runs prisons, is another one. There are the Housing Associations, which seem to be run for the benefit of their administrators. There are Foster Care providers - multi-million-pound businesses, which have local authority Social Services as their only customers. Yet these are all supposedly private sector.

There are also the multi-national conglomerates, such as the Ferrovial Group, which ownsHeathrow Airport ... and Tata Steel. Where is the accountablity there, and the response to public demand, which supposedly goes with the private sector?

The point is, as made, that the distinction is not about labour versus capital any more (not that it really ever was). But the old 1945 paradigm, which swept Labour into power with a landslide victory, has long gone. Some publicly owned enterprises behave more like the private sector, and vice versa. The distinction was destroyed by Thatcherism, and we will not get it back. And that leaves with the "corporates". Whether in public or private ownership, they are as bad as each other.

So we end up with the new, horizontal division. Actually, it is a return to the old days, before the Labour Movement emerged. When that movement emerged, we had the vertical division of Left and Right. The "left" represented the people (in theory), the "right" looked after the bosses (again, in theory). Its very existence tilted the line, from horizontal to vertical, and we got 20th Century politics. Now, the leaders of the Left have lost their way and joined the leaders of the Right. And as they have merged, the line has tilted back to the horizontal.

The horizontal split is typified by the days of Whigs and Tories, when the politicians had more in common with each other. Those were the days when they looked after themselves, and their own interests. Those were the days when the people were unrepresented. Just like now.

But, if we are returning to the old political model - the original class, or even feudal model - there is nevertheless a new certainty: us "below the liners" have had enough of the "above the liners". What swept out the decaying self-interest of the old systems must be done again. This time, though, we must do it right or, at least, get it wrong in a different way.

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Ten mill down - by Richard... Sunday, April 03, 2011

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There was a time when we thought a hundred hits a day was an impossible dream. That was back in the days when there was a referendum to fight for, and Helen was still with us instead of writingher own blog. Seven years down the line - we celebrate the seventh birthday of the blog on 22 April - and with over 11,000 posts written, we've finally made our ten million.

This is encouraging, but not brilliant. It does not in any way reflect the enormous amount of work that goes into the blog. But then, that's the medium. If I write for the Mail on Sunday, which I do occasionally, my posts on their site go into hundreds of thousands. I am not stupid enough to believe that my writing has suddenly so drastically improved that it attracts all those additional readers. As the man said, it's the platform stoopid. The hit rate is not a measure of the quality of the work.

Thus, it is our slowly increasing band of loyal readers who keep us going - quality of readers, rather than quantity, we say. I actually prefer it that way - writing for thinking people rather than drive-by Tories who haven't the brains to realise that their party died a long time ago and all that is left is the smell.

The dross, we are happy to say, can go elsewhere, to small-minded sites like these which daren't link to us in case they learn something. We thank those who have the courage and the decency to link to us, acknowledging our presence, even when they don't agree with us. What a boring world it would be if they did.

Thus, outside the gilded little claque of brain-dead group-thinkers, we have to work hard for every reader and every hit. We don't pander to our readers - we don't court popularity, and we don't go chasing hits.

And despite so many wishing we would go away, and doing their best to make it so, we're still here. As long as we have readers who are prepared to stick with us - and occasionally click the paypal link - we'll stay here. That is for as long as I draw breath, unless someone can think of a better and quicker way of going bankrupt.

Actually, those seven years ago, when parliamentary research was the game, it looked as if there might be hope. But first Blair, then Brown, and then that unspeakable slime Cameron deprived us of a referendum on what became the Lisbon treaty - offering us the ultimate insult of a referendum we don't want for a voting system nobody gives a fig for.

It thus looks all so very different now, as we dig in for a long, slow war of attrition where, if we could bottle and sell our loathing of the political classes, we would be millionaires overnight. But, while we watch and wait for the opportunity to bring them down, life must go on. So far I've made a successful transition to becoming a full-time writer. Sadly, that may be akin to the man who jumped off a 40-storey tower block, crying "fine so far!" as he passed his 39th floor. You never know.

The bottom line is, though, as long as there is food on the table, and Mrs Eureferendum is there to fetch the coal out of the bath to keep the kettle boiling for me tea, and as long as I have readers who come to the blog and appreciate the writing, then I'm like a pig in muck. With that, I'll keep spreading it in the right direction.

Thank you for calling ... ten million times. Hope to see you back!

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Klepturition - by Richard...

A new word for you ... a polite one, to convey a very old concept. But when you get this, and thenthis, plus this and this, what other word is there that fits the bill?

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Paying the price - by Richard...

It seems that we're not the only ones to rely on Second World War imagery to make a point. The Observer is at it as well.

Writer Colin Smith is pushing it a bit, though, when he tries to make out that the situation in 1941 – 70 years ago - "is a grim warning of how quickly things can change in this vast and empty land if one side has air superiority and better tanks". Does he not realise that "our" side has air superiority, while Gaddafi has the better (only) tanks in the field? That sort of invalidates his argument, one feels.

Making a comparison between Benito Mussolini and Gaddafi, Smith argues that, by the end of February 1941, Mussolini's grip on his north African empire had been humiliatingly weakened. In only 10 weeks, Lieutenant-General Archibald Wavell's 30,000 British and Commonwealth troops had routed a much larger Italian army that had attempted to invade Egypt and capture the Suez canal.

As Smith's narrative goes, the campaign to remove Mussolini from North Africa was then postponed, when Churchill siphoned off some of Wavell's victorious forces, including his best aircraft and tanks, and sent them to help Greece. Enter Rommel with better aircraft and tanks, and by 14 April, we were back fighting on the Egyptian border (incidentally, taking the same bullshit from our newspapers then as we are doing now - pictured).

However, if there was a lesson, it is that Churchill was wrong to denude Wavell's forces in order to mount the Greek expedition, without reinforcing them from the very substantial forces held idle in the UK. But even then, the military and political establishments were convinced that the Nazis were going to invade Britain (or, at least, that is what they were telling the public), which meant that forces were held back unnecessarily.

With the current situation looking rather uncomfortable, the same lesson applies now. You should not expect results unless you are prepared to commit sufficient resources to a venture.

It also reaffirms the age-old lesson that air power alone – short of a thermonuclear strike - cannot be decisive. To resolve issues, you must have "boots on the ground" - and enough of them. Hitler tried to batter the UK into submission with the Blitz in 1940-41, and then, despite having had an expensive tutorial from the Luftwaffe on the limitations of air power, we tried a similar tactic with the strategic bombing of Germany. Neither worked.

Back then, we had no option other than to get stuck in, mounting the invasion of Europe in June 1944, which the bomber barons held was unnecessary. But now it is quite clear that we have no intention of committing enough resources, specifically in terms of ground forces. We simply do not have them. And under those circumstances, we should have left well enough alone. The result of under-resourced intervention is invariably worse than no intervention at all.

There is, however, the other lesson – that when politicians' egos are at stake, sense goes out the window. The one thing politicians never do is learn from history - or even the application of common sense. And the final lesson is that, as always, other people pay the price.

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Powerless - by Richard...


Politically, we already know we are powerless. But, we are now looking at another way of being powerless. Thus, writes Booker, we are fast approaching that long overdue moment when the country wakes up to the scale of the disaster we are being led into by the absurdly unreal, global-warming-obsessed energy policy of our "greenest ever government".

One of the more disturbing instances of this was the announcement tucked away in George Osborne's Budget that he will impose a "£16 a ton floor price for carbon", a measure seemingly so arcane that no one has really bothered to spell out its implications – or so says Booker.

Actually, this is something the media have never really got their heads round. They have lamentably failed to understand that since the system involves the creation of "carbon allowances", which have to be purchased by major industries and electricity generators, with the proceeds going to government, this is a tax by any other name.

And although the media is quick to squeak about "stealth taxes", unless you actually gift-wrap it, with a nice big label marked "tax", the babies don't know what to make of it. So even though it is quite obviously a tax, this is one the media have consistently missed.

What Booker points out, though, is that the "floor price" means that for every ton of CO2 emitted by British industry, and by our electricity companies in particular, we shall all indirectly have to pay what is in effect a hidden tax of £16, rising over the next nine years to £30.

Last year, the coal-fired power stations which supply nearly a third of our electricity used 40 million tons of coal, each emitting up to 2.9 tons of CO2. For this 116 million tons, we shall see nearly £2 billion added to our electricity bills.

The same tax on gas will add a further £1 billion to our bills, thus increasing them by a total of £3 billion a year, rising to £5 billion by 2020. This will add more than 25 per cent to the price we presently pay for electricity, or £200 a year for every household.

This is on top of the price we will have to pay for all the Government’s other “green” dreams, such as the £100 billion it wants spent on 10,000 giant wind turbines, plus another £40 billion to hook them up to the grid. The 100 per cent subsidies for onshore wind power and 200 per cent subsidies for offshore will add further billions to our bills, in return for what will still be only a fraction of the electricity we need.

The effect of this is, of course, going to be traumatic, but it is also going to disadvantage energy intensive manufacturers, to the extent that many will offshore, cutting back employment and the tax base.

However, the response of Euroslime Dave and his merry men is just as babyish as the media, leaving us with nowhere to go except increasing utility bills. By the time they have stuffed us with smart meters as well, and all the other add-ons, electricity – even if you can get it – will become an unaffordable luxury.

I really cannot see this happening without a reckoning though, which means these babies do not know what is about to hit them. That, at least, should be entertaining to watch, when it finally happens.

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Some time - by Richard... Saturday, April 02, 2011

Late tomorrow, from the look of it, we will reach ten million hits - as recorded by one of our several hit counters.

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Gaming the system - by Richard...


The European Union, we are told, has launched an appeal against a WTO ruling that the United States gave aircraft maker Boeing billions of dollars in illegal subsidies, after claiming victory in the dispute.

"The EU has chosen to quickly appeal technical elements of the ruling for legal strategic reasons," said John Clancy, spokesman for EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht. "The EU's victory in this case against Boeing remains very clear for all to see," he said, referring to the WTO finding that state aid provided by Washington reached at least $5.3 billion (3.75 billion euros).

This is the latest move in a seven-year-old battle that saw last June a partial victory for Boeing, when the WTO accepted three out of seven claims by Washington that Airbus had effectively received illegal export subsidies. But both sides have appealed that ruling, so nothing has actually been resolved and, apparently, "a much bigger appeal" from Washington on the Boeing case is in the works.

You can here have some (little) sympathy with the media in giving up on this case. In many respects, both sides are as bad as each other, and both are gaming the system, to extract maximum advantage and to spin the proceedings out as long as possible. Likely, by the time they come to a resolution- if at all - most people will have forgotten what the original disputes were about.

What this basically says though, is that the system is not working ... or, at least, it is not working as intended. The effective outcome is that, if the big battalions are absolutely intent on subsidising their aviation industries, they will do so come what may, no matter what their "international obligations" are, and what any treaties might say.

Now isn't it a pity that the UK – which is a major player in the Airbus subsidy scam – could not take an equally "realistic" view of the EU treaties.

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A worst nightmare - by Richard...


Variously reported, either eight or seven UN workers have been slaughtered by local Afghanis in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, four or five of them apparently Nepalese guards. Two of the guards were beheaded.

The killings arose after a protest by about 2,000 people outside the UN compound in the city, against the burning of a copy of the Koran by an American pastor. Although it started relatively peacefully, it got out control when some protesters grabbed weapons from the UN guards, opened fire on the police, and then stormed the compound, setting fire to buildings. Heavy smoke was seen.

This is said to be the worst-ever attack on UN personnel, with unconfirmed reports that the head of the UN Military Assistance Mission was also seriously injured. The death toll may rise to as many as twenty, and at least four of the protestors are said to have been killed.

Although the proximate cause is an evangelical preacher by the name of Terry Jones, who on 20 March at a small fringe church in Gainesville, Florida, presided over the burning of a Koran, there is much more to these murders than just that incident.

We are not talking here about a primitive, Taliban-ridden outpost of Afghanistan, but the country's fourth-largest city with a population of close on half a million and rising (location below, marked "A").


This is a holy city - Mazari Sharif means "Noble Shrine", a reference to the large, blue-tiled sanctuary and mosque in the centre of the city known as the Shrine of Hazrat Ali or the Blue Mosque. It is believed that the site of the tomb of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Mohammed, is in Mazari Sharif.

Although, by Afghan standards, the city is relatively prosperous and settled, benefitting from both the illicit drugs and gun smuggling trades, the religious connections make it prey to rabble rousers.

But what is intriguing is that the violence should be directed at the UN, which supports a substantial reconstruction and aid programme in the city. The reason, says Christian Science Monitor is an increasing tension and annoyance with the international presence.

For some many years, Afghanis have understood that the bulk of the aid programme is soaked up by the aid agencies themselves, with field workers paid huge salaries and perks, while their own professional classes are poorly paid, and sometimes not at all.

Focusing wrath on the UN, therefore, is not difficult, but when such a violent episode is seen in one of the most settled areas of Afghanistan, it affords little confidence that the rest of the country can ever be considered safe.

And what makes this especially relevant is that the city has been slated to be amongst the first where security is to be handed to indigenous forces. If this has to be delayed, then it sets the whole hand-over programme back, upon which withdrawal plans depend.

There, the Boy has set great store in pulling British troops out of the country from this year onwards, with combat operations ceasing by 2015 – presumably so that he can make more troops redundant. Mazar-i-Sharif says he might have to wait a little longer.

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Political suicide? - by Richard... Friday, April 01, 2011


Serving members of the Army and Navy will be told on Monday that they could be among more than 2,000 uniformed personnel to be made redundant in September.

Those to be made redundant, in a programme which starts next week, will include some soldiers presently completing tours in Afghanistan. Seamen currently aboard warships and submarines in the Mediterranean supporting operations in Libya will also be told they could be included.

For the Tories, this should be political suicide. This used to be the party of the military, the one on which the military could rely on for support – although that always was a myth. But it hardly seems credible that even Euroslime could have handled this so badly, except when we remind ourselves that he never was and certainly is not now a Tory.

Nevertheless, this is not going to do him any good.

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We need a new approach - by Richard...


The formidable stupidity of Baroness Neville-Jones is quite wondrous to behold as she tells the Daily Telegraph that the government needs to persuade the majority of the population that the UK is a single nation. She says there needs to be a new approach in which people did not simply "rub along together and as long as people obey the law that's quite sufficient".

"[We are] trying to convince minorities in this country that they actually do have a long term future here and that it's their country as much as anybody else's", she says in an interview.

But when Euroslime Dave and his Cleggerons are doing their level best to give this country away, when "nationalism" is a dirty word in their vocabulary, and when white heterosexuals are a minority in parts of their own country (and certainly in parliament), we certainly do need a new approach.

We need one in which people did not simply listen to idiot ministers, and make it clear to them that they do not have a long-term future here – or anywhere else on this planet.

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Posted by Britannia Radio at 09:52