You can see why The Boy is so keen to get the troops back from Afghanistan. He is going to need them the put out the fires and empty the dustbins. Interestingly, the court staff are also thinking of bailing out, so to speak – they and the teachers, lecturers and other public sector workers.
This is after delegates at the annual conference of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) agreed to a strike ballot of more than 250,000 civil servants for industrial action, with the result due next month. Add a financial collapse to that and we could be in for an interesting time.
COMMENT THREAD
One former IMF official spills the beans to The New York Times about the last time DSK got into a spot of bother:Had Mr. Strauss-Kahn been a less senior person, he might [sic] been fired or at least "sent to Siberia" because of the affair with his underling. He survived an investigation, in part, this person said, because the culture at the IMF dictated "no rules" for the managing director and because there was little appetite to rid the agency of a charismatic and effective leader when an international financial crisis looming.
One rule for "them" and one for "us" the little people ... even down to the "tax is for little people" ethos. May he rot, slowly and painfully.
COMMENT THREAD
And speaking of which, it seems the Tories are out to get those "yellow bastards". What can they mean? Surely all these clever and sophisticated people know the war ended in 1945?
COMMENT THREAD
After decades of dispute and five years of official proceedings, the World Trade Organization issueda final ruling yesterday on the case of Boeing vs Airbus, finding that EU governments provided illegal subsidies as the US charged, and must remove them by the end of the year.
But the appeal reversed the finding that launch aid for some aircraft including the A380 was an export subsidy, on what appeared more like a technicality.
"The Appellate Body today upheld the Panel's finding that certain subsidies provided by the European Union and certain Member state governments to Airbus are incompatible (with WTO rules) ... because they have caused serious prejudice to the interests of the United States," the WTO said.
No doubt we will shortly be getting a statement from the EU commission telling us how the WTO got it wrong. Perhaps they could ask Dr Strauss Kahn to look into it. He seems to have some time on his hands, and would rather like to fly in an Airbus.
COMMENT THREAD
He leaves behind a $441,980-a-year salary, higher than president Barack Obama's, with the added sweetener of it being entirely tax-free. But struggling Greeks, to say nothing of the Irish and Portuguese, will be devastated to learn that the poor man also gives up the $79,120.00, paid in monthly instalments which, according to his contract, comes "... without any certification or justification by you, to enable you to maintain, in the interests of the Fund, a scale of living appropriate to your position as Managing Director".
Readers will be comforted to learn that that was, of course, just pocket money. Poor Mr Strauss-Kahn was also reimbursed for entertainment expenses, plus travel and hotels, for which he and his wife were covered. Additionally, he and anyone in his family were able to fly first class, whenever he was on official business - which, sadly, will no longer happen.
Although now bereft of such income, DSK is fortunate in now having his travel and accommodation expenses covered by the City of New York. One suspects that his legal bills might be a little problematical for a man on such slender means. However, his wife - whom DSK "loves more than anything" – may be able to help out, as she is a multi-millionaire in her own right.
Bur Mr - or should we say Dr - Strauss-Kahn might be able to help out as well. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Paris. He also graduated in law, business administration, political studies, and statistics. As an academic, his research fields include household saving behaviour, public finance, and social policy. He will be able to put that knowledge to good use.
Mr Strauss-Kahn is desirous that we become aware that his sole motive for resigning is to protect the IMF, which he has served "with honour and devotion" - as one does, generously donating his DNA to third world victims room maintenance operatives. From his en suite room in Riker Island, he tells us that all he wants to do now is devote "all my strength, all my time, and all my energy to proving my innocence".
And all this just because, as Time Magazine quaintly puts it, "he has troublesome issues with women who strike his fancy". How sweet.
COMMENT THREAD
Of course, if the investigation finds anything interesting, David Laws might not be "out" as anything for a short while.
COMMENT THREAD
Dellers is going for broke, in a manner of speaking, on the British aid budget. He picks up on the Lashkar Gah Ferris wheel, part of a £420,000 DFID "park for women" scheme in Afghanistan, designed to confound the deadly Taliban. Dellers offers a vision of the lovely ladies of Lashkar Gah trying to eat candy floss through their burkas, as they sail over the top of the wheel. That is certainly one to treasure.
This story I raised on this blog in July 2009 - a story to which Dellers kindly links. But the issue back in 2009 was the death of Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond, killed by an IED in an unprotected Viking personnel carrier. They could not travel in a mine-protected Mastiff because this 23-ton vehicle would have been too heavy for the weakened bridges over which they had to pass.
Strengthening the bridges might have been a useful way to spend some of our £510 million aid programme to Afghanistan, but DFID had instead elected to spend the money on issues such as promoting ''gender equality'' for Afghan women, of which the ''park for women'', complete with its Ferris wheel, was one.
Booker used the story in the Sunday Failygraph a few days after I had published it, and it was then used by The Scotsman. Even The Times caught up with it six months later.
Even before I had discovered this extraordinary story, though, it had already been reported in February 2008 in the Mail on Sunday (picture above), that paper citing Tobias Ellwood MP, who later raised it in the House of Commons in June 2008. It was too early then to make the point about misdirecting money from more useful infrastructure projects, but the graphic stupidity of parking a Ferris wheel in the middle of a war zone makes the Lashkar Gah example the ideal motif for useless aid.
This and much more supports the Dellers theme that we do more harm than good with the aid budget, which should be scrapped forthwith, only a small amount then being reserved for disaster relief. But, despite his voice added to the growing clamour, Cameron is not for moving.
David Cameron's thinking on aid, writes Dellers, is of a piece with those of such towering intellectual sophisticates as Bob Geldof and Bono. He is the man in the crowd at the Make Poverty History concerts with the wrist bands showing how much he cares, and Sam Cam in her hippy threads next to him showing how much SHE cares, and if only we all cared as much as we do, well what a difference that would make…
Well, it wouldn't make any difference at all. Which is why Dellers tells us we don't want a hippy in number 10 Downing Street. What we do need is a man of courage and conviction. And that isn't going to happen for a long time.
COMMENT THREAD
COMMENT THREAD
The babies in the Daily Failygraph have a headline about a rich old lady's visit to Croke Park stadium in Dublin "where British troops killed 14", supposedly on 21 November 1920. The link now removed and this one substituted. The reference to "British troops" in the headline is edited out, critical comments have been deleted and the comments disabled. However, the text still contains historical errors, asserting: "British soldiers shot dead 12 spectators and one player",
Journalist Andy Bloxham has got it wrong and, as Kevin Myers for the Irish Independent informs us, before you start quoting history, it is a good idea to learn it. British troops killed no one there. Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) men did the shooting after the IRA had that morning killed 13 British and Irish personnel, some of them intelligence officers and MI5 agents, for the loss of one of their own. At the stadium, twelve were shot and another two were trampled to death by the crowd and, that evening, three IRA prisoners in Dublin Castle were beaten and killed by their British captors.
Two military courts of inquiry into the massacre were held, and one found that "the fire of the RIC was carried out without orders and exceeded the demands of the situation". Major-General Boyd, officer commanding Dublin District, added that in his opinion, "the firing on the crowd was carried out without orders, was indiscriminate, and unjustifiable, with the exception of any shooting which took place inside the enclosure".
The Daily Fail got it partly right, but the British-hating BBC talks of British "forces". The Guardian has "British army", while the ITN also perpetrates the calumny and talks of "British soldiers", alongside Aljazeera, The Independent and the Irish Times, which have "British troops" massacring 14 civilians at the football match.
You would expect the squalid television to get it wrong, alongside an Arab propaganda station and some of the Irish press - especially the Irish Times. And no one with any sense expects the BBC, the Independent or the Guardian to get it right. But the Failygraph still pretends it's a newspaper. What a sadly deluded little rag it has become. It should not need its readers to do its work for it.
COMMENT THREAD
Reuters is keeping the DSK story on the boil, recording the soul-searching going on in the French media establishment, questioning the role of journalism in keeping quiet about DSK's known sexual peccadilloes. One reason cited for hushing up politicians' sex lives, it says, is that journalists fear for the jobs. Another is that many French journalists enjoy close personal relationships with leading politicians of all political stripes.
Christophe Deloire, author of a 2006 book called "Sexus Politicus" on the aphrodisiac nature of power in France that included an entire chapter on Strauss-Kahn, based on anonymous sources, said the events of the last few days showed there was a problem in France.
"The news obliges us to ask ourselves about the usefulness of journalists. What are they for?" he wrote in the daily Le Monde. "Journalists, who contribute to the public debate, should reflect on this before it's too late."
Looking at this in the round, one can say that there is some resonance here, where it is quite evident that our media establishment is far too close to the political classes. But there is no sign that any of them have either the honesty or even the understanding to initiate a debate. Like the Bourbons, they will go to their fate unknowing, uncomprehending, believing that they are the injured parties.
COMMENT THREAD
However, the ECB doesn't buy restructuring. "A Greek debt restructuring is not the appropriate way forward - it would create a catastrophe" because it would damage the banking system, says ECB Executive Board member Juergen Stark. Fellow board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi says that "a solution for reducing debt but not paying for it will not work".
Stark adds that any restructuring would undermine the collateral Greek banks use to gain loans from the ECB and "this holds true for all kinds of restructuring".
He goes on to say: "It's an illusion to think that a debt restructuring or haircut or rescheduling would help resolve Greece's problems ... A restructuring would wipe out part or all the capital of the Greek banks".
That's telling 'em. They're domed.
COMMENT THREAD
The Spanish are revolting - but then we knew that. They are calling themselves the May 15Movement. The banner reads, "Do not deceive us ... tell us the truth".
Do our muppets think they're insulated from this?
COMMENT THREAD
Returning once more to the issue of our new "ism", the discussion on the forum proceeds apace, raising many interesting points which need to be addressed - and will be in time.
Last week, readers will recall, we had a quick look at the Chartist Movement which effectively peaked in 1848, and one cannot help but contrast the great meeting of that year, on Kennington Common, with the happy little band of 350 who came away from their "demonstration" last Saturday, having prided themselves on the friendly atmosphere and the lack of violence.
The contrast here is with the earlier TUC march, which was used as cover by unrelated groups of vandals to cause damage to diverse property. That violence was absent last week is laudable, but there may be another way of looking at this. One could observe that, had last Saturday's meeting presented any serious (or any) challenge to government, with the potential to force change, it would not have been peaceful. But the violence would have come from the State.
Such was the fate of the Chartists in 1848, where a crowd estimated between 150-300,000 assembled on Kennington Common in South London with a view to marching to Westminster, there to present a petition to parliament. The authorities' response was to mount a large-scale display of force, recruiting over 100,000 thugs, whom they impressed as special constables to bolster the standing police force.
To the frustration of these hirelings, the meeting was peaceful, but those marchers who had made their way to the Common were left in no doubt that any attempt been made to cross the Thames would trigger military intervention. And this was to resist – it should be recalled – the idea of universal suffrage, then considered a revolutionary concept, but one of the main aims of the movement.
The response to this, and much else, tells us that whenever the establishment feels threatened, itwill always initiate the violence, as it did with the Countryside Alliance demonstration in London inAugust 2004. There is no such thing as a peaceful demonstration if you want to change things – the government will ensure that.
Another example of this is the 1932 National Hunger March, held four years before the more famous Jarrow March, where the Communist-inspired National Unemployed Workers' Movement organised a march against the means test. It comprised initially some 3,000 people in eighteen contingents, mainly from depressed areas such as the South Wales valleys, Scotland and the North of England. They planned to meet in Hyde Park in London.
The first contingent left Glasgow on 26 September, and were greeted by a crowd of about 100,000 upon their arrival at Hyde Park on 27 October (pictured above). Before then, they had received little by way of publicity from an establishment media but, on reaching the capital, "...they met an almost blanket condemnation as a threat to public order, verging upon the hysterical in the case of some of the more conservative press".
With the marchers intending to present a petition of a million signatures to parliament, Stanley Baldwin's government used force to stop it being delivered, directing the police to secure its confiscation.
Then to suppress any dissent, the most extensive police deployment since the Chartist demonstration was mobilised. Lord Trenchard, the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, arrayed 70,000 police against the marchers and their supporters. Predictably, serious violence erupted in and around the park, with mounted police being used to disperse the crowd. It took several days before order was restored, with 75 people badly injured.
Interestingly, the march led directly to the formation of the National Council for Civil Liberties. Its founder, Ronald Kidd, set it up after concern about the use of agent provocateurs by the police to incite violence during and after the marches. Nothing ever changes.
Neither this, nor the later Jarrow March in 1936 achieved a great deal directly, although the campaigning continued and paved the way for the Labour Party landslide victory in 1945. But the treatment of the marchers, and of the Chartists before them, remain as left-wing folk memories. They in part explain the hatred of the "ruling classes", who are with us today and find their modern incarnation in the Cleggeron coalition.
What these historic experiences also do is underline the aphorism that power is never given – it has to be taken. While the current administration will happily proffer silly little cosmetic concessions, it no more than its predecessors is inclined to give away any meaningful power.
However, it has to be said that, while neither the Chartists nor the hunger marchers succeeded in their immediate aims, both movements were ultimately successful, so much so that their demands are now regarded as entirely unexceptional.
The establishment response, though, has been to move the goalposts. With universal suffrage being conceded by 1918, it has redesigned and reinvented government, to make the vote irrelevant. By the combination of cabinet government, delegated powers and massive areas, they have reduced the impact of local council votes. At national level, the self-reinforcing combination of the quangocracy and the European Union has effectively lifted much of government out of the reach of the voter.
Whatever their airs and pretensions, though, the establishment always needs our money and labour. The ruling class which was so disdainful of the hunger marchers, and then of the Jarrow marchers four years later, was three years after that embarking on a major European war. But when Churchill in the following year offered nothing but "blood, sweat and tears", not all were impressed. For many working men and their families, that was nothing new.
It was then hardly surprising that Churchill's increasingly strident calls for more production and longer hours were met with significant industrial unrest. By early 1942, almost the entire coal industry was on strike. And despite the strongest encouragement from Churchill personally, thousands of workers bluntly refused to work after air raid sirens had sounded. For many, it was the "bosses' war", and not a few were openly saying that the working man would be better off under Hitler.
While the hagiographies have the poulation in the grip of patriotic fervour, therefore, the real situation was very different. Rather than Churchill's great oratory - which had a mixed response at the time - one of the more important influences which mobilised the population behind the war was the promise of a post-war welfare state. That came with the Beveridge Report of November 1942, and even then the electorate did not trust Churchill to implement it. The memories of pre-war Conservative repression, and broken promises after the First World War, were too strong and too recent.
The point that emerges from this is that, during the war, the normal peace-time status quo was reversed. The government needed the wholehearted support of a united population. And only then, when there was a very real likelihood that the people would refuse to co-operate - in the context of more powerful unions which by had acquired the ability to bring the nation to a halt - were concessions forthcoming.
Those conditions, currently, do not apply. Government does not yet fear the population to the extent previously, and neither does it seek its active participation in activities such as wartime-level production, or post-war reconstruction.
But what the government will surely need, sooner rather than later, is our co-operation in an austerity programme of unprecedented severity – the same progressively being demanded of the citizens of Ireland, Greece and Portugal, plus many others. Currently though, the population neither recognises the scale of the problem, nor accepts ownership of it.
There can be no question, though, that the government is going to have to come clean about the debt problem. It will then have to enlist popular support on the scale equivalent to that of the last war. But, for any co-operation, there must be a price.
For centuries, the government has maintained the ultimate right to determine levels of expenditure, taxation and borrowing, without reference to the people and with only the slender fig-leaf of supposedly democratic elections. The price must be that the people take direct charge of the nation's finances, controlling how much is spent and how much is tax is charged.
In 1848, the people were not thought competent to elect their own government, and even to ask for the right was considered a revolutionary act, legitimising brutal repression.
Less than a hundred years later, basic employment rights for workers were also considered sufficient to legitimise violent repression by the state. To ask for control over the purse strings – the right to control our own money – will doubtless invite a similar response. By the clever and sophisticated people who currently run our affairs, the people will be judged incompetent to perform such a function.
But this is the direction in which we are heading. That is where Referism takes us. The days when we can afford to allow the government, any government, unfettered power to manage the finances of this nation are gone. If we want the job done properly, we must control the beast that is our government, and make it conform to our will.
The power of the idea is unstoppable.
COMMENT: REFERISM THREAD
So why are we totally, completely, utterly unsurprised? Why do we get the feeling that, once again, we are going to be totally, completely, utterly stuffed? And why do we get the feeling that our masters are going to be totally, completely, utterly useless on this?
COMMENT THREAD
The three men pictured could probably walk the streets of any town in England and remain unrecognised. But, respectively (from left to right), in Jean-Claude Juncker, Jean Claude Trichet and Olli Rehn, you are looking at three of the most powerful financial figures in Europe. You may be aware that a fourth has been unaccountably delayed in New York.
Power, however, is relative. These men are not so much exerting their grip on events, as giving way, slowly, desperately, inch-by-inch, in the manner of a desperate climber holding onto a precipice by his fingernails, as the rock face begins to give way.
The rock face in this instance is the Greek bailout, and the absolute refusal of EU officials to consider the dreaded "r" word, as in "restructuring", itself a euphemism for default.
But now, following a meeting of the finance ministers from EU member states, and further consultations at officials level, there is now raised the possibility of a so-called "soft restructuring" – a limited restructuring of Greece's €330-billion accumulated debt, said to be almost 150 percent of GDP.
This is understood to involve extending repayment schedules and easing interest rates on the debt, and is dependent on securing "voluntary" agreements from banks and other private sector creditors, as well as the raft of government and institutional lenders. It is also conditional on the Greek government acceding to an EU/IMF demand that €50 billion is raised from a sale of state-owned assets.
The "soft" debt restructuring contrasts with the so-called "hard" restructuring, which involves part or all of the debt being written off, the route followed by Argentina or Mexico among the more notorious defaults in the recent past. This is something that the EU is struggling to avoid, fearful that of the serious repercussions for the whole of the eurozone.
Thus do the weasel words come pouring out, with talk of a "voluntary extension of loan maturities", "reprofiling" and "rescheduling". It all amounts to the same thing, giving Greece longer to repay what it owes rather than forcing the government to accept another expensive bailout.
Such are the political sensitivities, though, that Berlin – the biggest paymaster – is prepared to play only if other investors take what is euphemistically called a "haircut", so that its taxpayers are not the only ones taking a hit. And the reticence here signals that the German money machine is grinding to a halt.
But whether even this is enough to stop the rot is anyone's guess. Considering how far the "colleagues" have now gone – when they have hitherto been rock solid about demanding full repayment on commercial terms – there may well be even more to come.
COMMENT THREAD
Completely unable or unwilling to address the issues raised by Booker on the child-stealing epidemic, The Guardian instead focuses on attacking Booker, on the basis of criticism by Judge Bellamy.
The thrust of the argument is that Booker did not attend the court proceedings about which he has written, demonstrating that James Robinson, the media correspondent is clearly unable to grasp the issues – viz that reporting restrictions prevent any details of the court cases being published. Every time Booker has sought to obtain details with a view to publication, he has been blocked.
When he originally posted the story, Robinson was unaware even of Booker's rebuttal in last weekend's edition of The Sunday Failygraph, leaving his piece more than a little unbalanced. But then, we don't expect Guardian media correspondents actually to read the work of the journalists they are criticising. Only now that he has been advised of the content have we seen a substantial silent edit. Being in the MSM means, as always, never having to admit you are wrong.
Moonbat is also at it, with such boring, repetitive predictability that it simply re-affirms that the man has lost the plot, and that the newspaper for which he works has given up any attempt seriously at reporting news objectively (or at all, in many cases).
The controversy of the stolen children continues, however, on a legal blog, an entry in the comments pointing out that even when a journalist from the Failygraph actually attended a court, he was not allowed to report any detail, rather making Booker's point. Unfortunately, we are not in the real world here, and any attempt at address the real issues gets lost in the miasma of prejudice and woolly thinking.
There is no hope here – reason has long departed.
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