The Daily Mail is telling us that Britain could face a £3.2billion bill to bail Greece out of its latest financial crisis. Well, that may or may not be the case – the Greek economy may implode before the deal can be stitched up.
Either way, it is going to cost a lot more than that, as the knock-on effects are going to do serious damage to every economy in Europe, including our own. You would think, therefore, that the UK would be battening down the hatches, trying to minimise the effects of the fall-out. But not a bit of it. We are still chasing hair-brained schemes that can only do more damage to the economy.
Still, at least we don't have to comment about the Irish. They have acquired their own commentator, who is asking many of the questions we have posed – albeit with not quite the same style. Unfortunately, much of this also applies to the English.
COMMENT: GREEK THREAD
We thought he might have waited until Obama blew the whistle, but he cannot even wait that long. Then, Cameron has his little venture in Libya to feed, in order to keep the Kermits happy, and we cannot afford this war as well ~(or either).
And while the military want to maintain a presence, one can actually understand the reluctance to accept their assurances as to what is necessary, not least when we learn that "serious intelligence failures meant British commanders were unprepared for the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan".
One has slight difficulty with this. It seems more likely that these were not so much intelligence failures, as the complete absence of intelligence ... amongst the High Command who planned and executed this operation.
From this distance, briefing MPs on likely developments, we were able correctly to anticipate Taliban moves which these brave and highly-paid soldiers, with all their resources and staff, could not detect, even some time after the enemy had made their play. Yet, now these same military geniuses want their current advice to be taken seriously.
Through gritted teeth, we have to concede that Cameron is right to pull the plug. In fact, the move is long overdue. But now he has the convenient excuse of the OBL death narrative, he should get the troops out as fast as possible. Our only consolation is that he is probably doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
COMMENT: AFGHANISTAN THREAD
... all this will be yours - and this: a superb sequence from Zerohedge. The summer hasn't even started yet, but the Greeks are on (another) general strike, and the government is even flogging off the tea towels in a bid to avoid default. This is NOT going to succeed, and we are not insulated from it, any more than we are from the growing crisis in Ireland, or the impending disaster in Portugal.
But such is the situation in Greece, that even the Huns are beginning to think that the Greek government pulling out of the euro would be a good idea. It really is that bad. And behind that, default is only a matter of time.
Meanwhile, the New York Times paints more of the picture, this regarding international trade. In Ireland, imports were still falling as this year began. Greek exports began to recover last summer, but import volumes continue to plunge and are nearly a third lower than they were at the peak in 2008. And still Greece exports only about a third as much as it imports. That is a measure of the lack of competitiveness of its economy.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are in uncharted waters here. History is being made, none of it good. Is it really believable that the British media is still mainly concerned with outing slebs on Twitter?
COMMENT THREAD
Slowly, but with the force of a mudslide, it is gradually dawning on the Irish quite what a mess they are in. Some have known for a long time, but we are talking here of the "collective", and the cold, hard, sober facts had still not percolated during the general election, otherwise Labour would never have been elected.
Even now, it is impossible to say quite how deep the knowledge has spread, but the reality could not be more simple to understand. The Irish Government is on track to owe a quarter of a trillion euros by 2014 and a prolonged and chaotic national bankruptcy is becoming inevitable. By the time the dust settles, Ireland's last remaining asset, its reputation as a safe place from which to conduct business, will have been destroyed.
That is the view of Morgan Kelly, a professor of economics at University College Dublin – not that professors of economics mean much these days. They and their ilk got us into the messes we're in, and you sometimes wonder whether some of them have enough wit to tie their own shoe laces. This is why, perhaps, they so often wear slip-ons once they've left home.
Anyhow, this one is writing in The Irish Times, and he seems to know what he is talking about. That is not quite a first, but it is a refreshing change, especially as the man seems to know his politics as well as his economics.
It is not for me, therefore, to replicate the great man's work. It is best read cold and fresh, for those who have not already read him. Ireland is facing economic ruin, he writes, and tells us exactly why, and what to do about it. The solution is not pretty, especially for the political classes. But it is about time the Irish people grew up and did to their politicians exactly what they have been doing to their electorates for the past decades.
What is not said – and nor could it be – is that we're next. The Irish may owe a quarter of a trillion euros by 2014, but we'll owe one trillion pounds by next January. That is not quite as big as our GDP, but it's getting there, and Mr David Cameron's government is increasing the debt, day-on-day, month-on-month, year-on-year.
What is also not said is the misery this is going to cause when the bubble bursts. Paul Krugman,yesterday, was talking about chastising the elites that had caused this mess. Some might look nervously to 28 April 1945 for an insight into what happens when a crowd gets really ugly. Some would be well-advised to be booking their passage to a quieter spot. In fact, if Kelly is only half right, they had better start packing now.
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Under the headline: "Experts write for the Mirror on the EU ruling", we get: "The judges in Strasbourg have got it right". They are, of course, talking about the Court of Human rights. It is not and never has been an EU institution. But these people simply do not have the ability to understand that.
Laughably, the paper talks about "freedom of speech". One wonders why it, and the rest of the media, bother about it. They are incapable of using the freedom they have.
UPDATE: The offending headline has been replaced - the infamous silent edit to cover up the inability to fact-check. As always, being the MSM means never having to admit you are wrong.
COMMENT THREAD
You can never completely write off Heffer. He may occasionally lose his touch – as do we all (the only thing that is ever truly consistent is mediocrity) – but he retains the capacity to come up with a few gems. Thus, in his paying haunt, the Failygraph, he today observes with interest that "we rush to have a referendum on something the Lib Dems feel strongly about, but there is no scope for one on matters that aggrieve a substantial, and not exclusively Conservative, number of people in this country".
There is nothing new in that observation, of course. We have passed it many times, as have many others – that the political classes rejected our calls for a referendum on the EU's Lisbon treaty and instead frittered away £100 million on the AV vote. They will not be forgiven easily – or ever – for that insult. But, says Heffer, breaking interesting if not entirely new ground:Referendums are a powerful means of participating in democracy, but they happen only when it suits those who rule us. They fear what the rights of majorities, if exercised on important issues, would mean to them and their power. Yet the exercise of such rights would be mainly to try to undo the mess that venal and incompetent politicians have created. That process has not even begun; but who can say the people will not, one day, will it to do so?
Therein lie the roots of Referism. To go cap-in-hand to The Man and ask Him, "pretty please", for a referendum, and then leave it to Him as to whether he abides by the result, is a form of participation. Equally, setting up campaigns, which nicely ask for change and give you a little voicy in the "corridors of power" are all very well. But, in truth, they are "Uncle Tom democracy".
Referism, on the other hand, is about the transfer of power, releasing people from the bondage of the elites and vesting in them control over their own government. It is about changing the relationship between government and the people, one in which the government says please.
This is achieved by the annual referendum – a mandatory, unchanging part of the constitution. Itrequires the administration to go to the people each year to ask them for money, and it empowerspeople to say "no". That is real power. Anything else is play-acting.
In that corner is this weekend's Rally against debt, a well-intentioned if entirely fruitless exercise, not least because it will attract no more than a few hundreds, that may stagger into four figures. Such activities are not helpful because, in the scheme of things, they are a demonstration not of strength but of weakness. They send a message – one of comfort to The Man, that he has no opposition that need trouble him.
Most of all, though, these things don't work. They don't have any traction because they are sterile. They do not set demands of any substance. They are playing around the margins, dealing with peripheral issues, and asking rather than telling. They are the stratagems of the weak.
On the other hand, if there is to be real change, there is only one issue worth talking about, and only one worth fighting for - power. That was the thinking behind my "million angry people" (MAP) concept. Until and unless we are able to put a million people on the streets of London, we are nowhere. But what was missing there was the "ism" - the "vision" that is so necessary to drive a movement.
The need for large numbers recognises that any worthwhile power is never given away. It has to be taken. The nobles at Runneymede did not ask King John for Magna Carta, they summonsed him. Then they demanded his acquiescence. Had they not got it, they would have killed him. We do not wish to slay our masters. Therefore, we must project our will through force of numbers.
The more immediate problem, though, is the slaves are used to their chains. They have grown to like the comfort, stability and security afforded by them. And the Uncle Toms have ambitions to sit at the table with the Masters, and share crumbs from their plates.
For this reason, you will not see an immediate surge of support for any idea which gives power to the people. But the power is there for the taking, if there is a leadership willing to take that bold step. And, as Heffer didn't quite write: "who can say the people will not, one day, will it to do so?"
The power of the idea is unstoppable.
COMMENT: REFERISM THREAD
Methinks the pontiff is getting his religions mixed up. He should stick to the one he's already got. That is in far more need of care and attention than the climate.
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Even when the MSM tries to be serious, they can't quite cut it, although some mild entertainment is afforded watching them try. Toby Young is in the frame in the Failygraph, offering his wisdom about the "meltdown" of the Left throughout Europe.
This is not offered as a comedy routine, or political satire, so we must assume the man is serious when he suggests that across Europe we are seeing the fracturing of both the state and the super-state as sources of tribal identity.
The EU, he says, has only ever commanded the loyalty of the liberal middle classes. As their political alliance with traditional working-class voters collapses it seems increasingly unlikely that the EU will survive the current economic crisis, at least not in its present form.
We need not dwell on this muddy thinking, other than then to observe that Young finds "more surprising" the "decline of the state as a unit capable of commanding people's loyalty".
Why, when we have had the political classes throughout the EU, the EU itself and the bulk of the "liberal" media working for the last fifty years or more to undermine the concepts of nationhood and nationalism, is Young at all surprised by this? With states now unable to provide a focus for the aspirations and needs of their peoples, why on earth should it be a surprise that they no longer command loyalty?
However, one should never fear. What the Left needs, says Young, "is an intellectual colossus, someone capable of articulating a vision that re-unites the liberal intelligentsia with the traditional working class and persuades them to put the interests of the collective – whether the nation state or something larger and more abstract – before those of their family and their tribe".
This is interesting, and makes it worth reproducing, as it offers the notion that a political renaissance of the Left should have an intellectual base. With that, I cannot disagree, although there is no sign of any intellect in the ranks of the Left, much less a "colossus". Young then goes on to say that this person should then articulate a "vision", and again I cannot disagree.
Even when we have a man incapable of analysing what is happening, therefore, we still have someone who seems capable of identifying the core of a solution. Across the board, that is what we need, exactly the idea of the "ism" to which we have devoted so much effort.
One thus, almost begins to warm to Young, when he asserts that, ultimately, the reason for the left's political failure is the "intellectual vacuum" at the heart of the Left-wing project, the absence of "an intellectually robust alternative to free-market capitalism". He then spoils it all by concluding that, in the meantime, "Right-wing and nationalist parties will keep on making gains at the Left's expense".
The joke here, of course, is that the so-called "nationalist" parties are largely left wing, soaking up the traditional working classes who are sick to the teeth with their betrayal by the political elites.
That we have been betrayed by them comes from no less than Paul Krugman, an archetypal member of the elite, who offers his own analysis in The New York Times. Take it or leave it as you will, but his view is that our present predicament is caused by the bad judgment of the elite (singular).
The real story of Europe's crisis, he writes, "is that leaders created a single currency, the euro, without creating the institutions that were needed to cope with booms and busts within the euro zone. And the drive for a single European currency was the ultimate top-down project, an elite vision imposed on highly reluctant voters".
While Krugman is in part right, his view of the euro is typical of the crass clever-dick, the man who thinks he knows everything but knows nothing. For sure, the euro was "top-down", but it was a political project. Creating the necessary institutions to manage a single currency were simply not politically feasible at the time. Thus the euro was born to fail, waiting for a beneficial crisis which would then legitimise the "economic government" that the project needed.
Krugman actually talks about the need to avoid making up stories about our current predicament that absolve the people who put us here there. In so doing, we cut off any chance to learn from the crisis, says. Thus, we need to place the blame where it belongs, to chasten our policy elites. Otherwise, they'll do even more damage in the years ahead.
And there he is so wrong. Our "policy elites" are shameless. They admit no wrong, and there is no one to bring them to book. They are powers unto themselves and attempting to blame them is going to achieve nothing. We need to bring them back under control. And there Young does at least have a point – there is that lack of an intellectually coherent vision to inspire the masses. We need to fill that "intellectual vacuum". Then we chasten the guilty.
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But the man is still a liar and a thief. Nothing has changed between then and now - it is just more obvious. But that he is even being considered for a ministerial post, depending on the precise nature of the report from the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, is a disgrace.
That, though, still illustrates the divide between us and them. They just can't stand clear of the bubble and see how it looks from outside.
COMMENT THREAD
This is General James Bucknall, in an "exclusive interview" with The Guardian. One can't help but smile at the self-importance of the newspaper, retailing nothing more than a statement of the bleedin' obvious. After all, even without the benefit of a brass hat and knitting badges, just this morning, we were able to say:As coalition forces move out and Afghan security forces take over, the Taliban will move in. We will end up with a north-south split, and civil war – within a year of our departure.
But God knows why the paper thinks we should be impressed by a general who has nothing more to offer than what we can work out for ourselves. What might be impressive is a soldier or a diplomat who actually understands something of the geopolitics and comes up with a plan that has a chance of succeeding.
In days of Empire, we had such men – even Abdur Rahman was impressed with Curzon. In this piece, The Guardian does enlist Sir William Patey, Britain's ambassador to Kabul, but he does not strike one as a man of vision, any more than is Bucknall. We are doomed to be served by midgets, attended upon by newspapers which could not even recognise greatness if they saw it.
COMMENT: AFGHANISTAN THREAD
The good news is on WUWT, with the story amplified here. The latest is that Greenpeace are saying they will appeal the decision to remove them from the charities register. And with this going down in NZ, Anthony Watts asks: "can the rest of the world be far behind?"
The answer, of course, is "yes". The British (and the international media in general) has so far ignored the news and, most likely, will continue to do so. Therefore, it will become a non-event, and Greenpeace will be able to contain the damage.
The fact that these eco-NGOs are given charitable status is an ongoing scandal, especially with the likes of WWF, which is just one vast, money-making enterprise. But then, with our Charities Commission, we can expect no intervention of any note.
COMMENT THREAD
As the head of steam builds up for shale gas and other unconventional hydrocarbons, it was inevitable that there should be a backlash. It was also a foregone conclusion that the BBC should be the cheerleader.
The shale gas revolution promises an endless supply of cheap and readily accessible gas, banishing for the foreseeable future and beyond, any idea of energy shortages. And this is the last thing the greenies want. For them it would be a disaster, robbing their socialist, Stone Age agenda of much of its force.
We can expect, therefore, with growing intensity, the greenies to marshal their forces and seek every possible means to block the exploitation of alternative hydrocarbons. If they let these through, they are finished as a coherent force. Undoubtedly, though, this means they really are finished. Even our idiot politicians cannot hold the line forever.
COMMENT: SHALE GAS THREAD
How do you know when politicians are lying? When they open their mouths ... simples. But of course, it isn't always the case. Sometime the truth slips out by accident, as the Wall Street Journaldiscovers, recording that Jean Claude Juncker (pictured), the PM of Luxembourg, and the head of the Eurogroup council of eurozone finance ministers, admits openly to having lied to the media.
This is about that emergency meeting last Friday, revealed by Spiegel online, about the fate of Greece, and whether it was going to pull out of the euro. The story is explored further inZerohedge, noting that Juncker claims the lie – which centres on the denial that the meeting was being held - was justified because of fears of a market collapse. "When it becomes serious, you have to lie," he says.
Says Zerohedge, at this point Europe no longer even attempts to hide that everything is one big lie and that should the truth emerge the market will crash more than ever in history. It then reflects, "and why would the US be any different? It wouldn't which is why we can now safely say that pretty much any information coming out from the government and its proxies that has a stock market impact is false until proven true".
That, in fact, is the new paradigm – one with which the MSM still have not caught up. The babies of the media still work on the basis that governments are fundamentally trustworthy, and should be believed. And, of course, this not only applies to financial information. Can I sell you a ring-side seat to the OBL show? Next performance on ...
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