Another charade - by Richard... Thursday, June 30, 2011

Another charade - by Richard... Thursday, June 30, 2011

"The notion of Cameron being a strategic genius who will throw off his cloak of Europhilia and reveal his inner democratic nationalist is laughable given the catalogue of pro EU actions to date. So it seems the ignorance is all pervasive and the effort to make us buy into it is being reinforced at every opportunity. The gullible constituency where this idea is being swallowed is obvious to all who look – the British media".

That is quality writing from Autonomous Mind, commenting on the latest report in The Daily Mailwhich parades the EU's so-called "power grab", the one that even seems to have the loss-makingGuardian slightly troubled.

The Mail has "David Cameron" facing pressure to veto the latest "ludicrous" cash demand from Brussels after it announced plans to slap three new taxes on Britain, after the EU Commission – so we are told - "revealed budget demands which would cost UK taxpayers £10 billion".

However, we are not talking about the "budget" here, even if a commission official triumphantly parades it as "a trillion euro budget". It is in fact the EU's Multiannual Financial Framework for 2014 – 2020, the manoeuvring for which got underway yesterday when Barroso slime announced the commission proposals at a press conference, telling us that "the European Union works everyday to help realise the aspirations of our 500 million 
people".

The hubris of these people knows no end, but you would not get any sense of this from the Mail, which now no longer attempts to educate its readers. Instead, like the parochial British media always does, it pins a Union Jack on its report, and couches it in domestic terms, the ultimate insult to its readers, whom it believes are not interested in EU stories unless there is a direct British dimension.

This is a charade that is going to run and run but, in the end, Cameron will do a deal. He has faithin the EU and will, therefore, deliver another sell-out. So the wheel will go round and round. It is not going to stop until we decide to stop it.

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Corporate clever - by Richard...

One thing we can say about this is that, at least, it was his own money. But it also says that the corporates are not good at judging moods and trends - and not for the first time. They just have more money to throw about, and occasionally strike lucky.

It should also remembered, though, that this is the same Murdoch empire which is running theTimes paywall experiment ... and probably with the same level of success. Had it been a runaway money-spinner, my guess is that we would never have heard the last of it.

As it is, we hear cautious claims, but get no figures. It cannot have been that successful, otherwiseThe Failygraph would have leapt in and converted its 31 million audience into a cash cow. But at least one now gets a feel as to how that particular corporate turned a profit. It is concentrating on its web presence, sacrificing quality in the pursuit of volume. This is a tempting model, but as the Murdoch corporation shows, it can also generate huge losses in the longer term.

Lots of money buys a loud voice, though - and there are plenty of people drawn to the snake oil seller with the biggest megaphone. That is often confused with success, especially as the discordance can so easily drown out the quality blogosphere.

Much as the corporates would like to see it disappear, though, there is a corner which seems to be quietly prospering, living off its voluntary donations. One wonders how long the corporates would survive with perhaps the only model around that keeps its creators honest.

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A question - by Richard...

The biggest strike for five years, we are told, will cause huge disruption to schools, courts, travel and much else. It will be the most serious industrial challenge to Dave's coalition since it was formed. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, lecturers, civil servants and other workers will walk out for 24 hours in protest at plans to change their pensions, cut jobs and freeze pay.

The question is this: why is it that the people with their hands out for our money can be so easily induced to take collective action when their income stream is threatened, yet we the PBI who have to pay the bills are reluctant to mobilise (or are incapable of so doing)?

Only to an extent is this a rhetorical question. We know that the reason why there will be marches and demonstrations today is because the unions, with the huge staffs and volunteers, will be out organising – and will be funding the activities. There are no equivalent organisations which serve the taxpayer.

There is, of course, the Taxpayers' Alliance, but I've come to see that as an Uncle Tom organisation – like Open Europe. Basically, it is a front organisation, set up as a covert Tory operation to add weight to the fight against Labour, and now pulling its punches in case it embarrasses its paymasters.

Arguably, the politicians represent our interests, but they have long since ceased to do that. They look after their own interests, which are not ours. We, the people are therefore, effectively unrepresented.

But the more I think about this, the more it seems forever to have been the case. We get much rhetoric from our own side about the Magna Carta, but that was not negotiated by the people, for the people, in the manner of the American constitution. It was the Barons – the rich and powerful – looking after their own interests.

Basically – and taking a hugely simplistic view – we emerged from feudalism into a capitalist society, which in many respects was vile.

This was the sort of society which, during the war, compensated ship owners for the loss of their vessels when they were torpedoed by U-Boats, but stopped the pay of the sailors who manned the ships, the moment the water lapped over their boots. If they were lucky to survive, and clamber into a lifeboat, those sailors waited for rescue in their own time, without pay or compensation.

It was during the Second World War that the yearning for a better, fairer society drove the emergence of socialism as a powerful political force in the UK. This seemed to offer the needed corrective. But, after the 1945 landslide election, instead of socialism, we got unionism.

Union power effectively destroyed the vision of a New Jerusalem that had sustained political activists during the war. And so out of control did it get that it needed Thatcher to rein in the Union Barons – which she did in the early 80s.

However, there was no real ideology behind Thatcher – the concept of "Thatcherism" was devised by her enemies, and emerged as a political idea, ex post facto. Thus, in neutralising the unions, and in her drive for privatisation and her attempts at "liberalising" the civil service, she merely opened the way for the current dominance of the corporate, strengthening a trend that was already established.

In our progression as a society, therefore, the British have journeyed from feudalism, through capitalism and then unionism, as the dominant powers, to arrive at corporatism – where we are now. All Thatcher really achieved was to force institutions to re-invent themselves as corporates, shorn of political and humanitarian ideology.

At each stage of this historical journey, we the people, have been left out. The powers that be have given us democracy as a sop, but as the sage once said, if our vote actually meant anything, they would soon put a stop to it. Democracy is not an "ism" – it does not define an ideology. It simply offers us the pretence of being able to chose our masters, without giving us any real means of controlling them.

Thus, the question stands. Tomorrow, public sectors marches, representing corporate interests – watched over by the corporates that form our government. Why is it that we, the people, the ones who are always left out, are not also on the march - and in greater numbers?

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Voting for oblivion - by Richard... Wednesday, June 29, 2011

To absolutely no one's surprise, the Greek parliament has voted for the austerity package necessary to qualify for the latest round of the EU/IMF bale-out. The vote was 155 for the package, and 138 votes against.

One member of Papandreou's ruling socialist party voted "no" - offset by and MP from the conservative opposition, who voted "yes" - whence the speaker informed members that the socialist had been expelled from the party.

By this means, the political classes have looked after their own interests, and condemned their country to a lingering death. We now wait to see how the people react. So far, the violence looks pretty uncoordinated and the police seem to be coping with it. They do not seem to have been seriously challenged - although very serious amounts of tear gas are being used (14:10 hrs BST).

A fire broke out outside the Finance Ministry as clashes between protesters and police forces continued. A black cloud could been seen coming from the ministry's ground floor entrance. Police reported that protester set on fire the Post Office inside the building. Clashes were becoming increasingly violent and hundreds of people are throwing stones at the police.

Sundry acts of vandalism could be seen, with street furniture being damaged, traffic lights wrecked, and glass partitions smashed. Crowd and police seemed to be playing cat-and-mouse. Gratuitous violence was evident on the part of the police, with individuals caught by the police given beatings. Tear gas seemed to be a weapon of first resort, as the skirmishing continued.

As the evening drew near, small fires were constantly being lit, with a number of refuse skips being set on fire. Clearly, this was not a low-carbon riot. Some attempts were being made to break into commercial buildings adjoining the square, in what was often unpoliced space. And yes, paving slabs were being smashed up to provide missiles to hurl at the police. The police themselves were not inhibited in throwing them back into the crowd.

But as darkness fell, the crowds had not taken the place completely apart. But there is always next time. As Zerohedge points out, there is not even one person alive who believes that within a year the third bailout of the insolvent Greek country (with even more stringent austerity measures) won't be on the table.

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Asleep on the job - by Richard...

Millions of pounds of British aid money, the Daily Mail tells us, is funding coal-fired power stations in developing countries – even though their use is being scaled back in this country. It continues:

The level of spending on fossil-fuel plants by the World Bank, which receives billions from Britain, is "unacceptable" at a time when tough climate change measures are being rolled out at home, a "powerful committee" of MPs has declared. The bank is backing projects such as a 4,800megawatt coal-fired station in South Africa that is almost five times the size of those in the UK.

We are also told that the World Bank is supporting Indian plans to build nine new power plants, a project which environmentalists have condemned as one of the biggest new sources of carbon emissions on earth. In most cases, we learn, the projects do little to increase access to energy for the very poorest.

Well, what a wonderful thing it is that these people are really on the ball. We did the Indian story inDecember 2009 and the South African story the following April.

Between the media and the political establishment, there is nothing to choose when it comes to their level of ignorance. They come in years late, feeding off each other, ending up with half the story. They cost us a fortune and then draw the wrong conclusions – usually when it is too late to do anything about it. 

If these people had their wits about them (a joke, I know), they would have been on to this issuewhen it was happening. Now, it is just idle prattle.

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Trapped in the bubble - by Richard...

Benedict Brogan writes in his clog, under the title: "David Cameron and his party are on a collision course over Europe".

However, one can only look pityingly upon his effluvia, which contains such gems as: "Conservative MPs rejoice in a leadership team of Mr Cameron, George Osborne and William Hague that is unequivocally sceptical about the EU".

But it cannot be that Brogan is that stupid. If this represented stupidity, the man would be unsafe to let out on his own. What we are dealing with is the bubble effect. Within the putrid environs of the Westminster bubble, inhabited by Brogan and his likes, such a statement looks eminently rational.

The problem with the bubble, though – as we have sometimes observed – is that it imparts on the denizens a sense of rectitude and invincibility. Thus, while by far the majority of Brogan's commenters disagree with him, and many profoundly so, this will not have the slightest impact. 

Brogan thus starts off with the premise that he is right. Anyone who disagrees with him – and especially if they are outside the bubble – must, by definition, be wrong. Then the argument become circular. Everyone outside the bubble is "wrong". And all these "wrong" people disagreeing with him simply reinforce his sense of rectitude.

This, once again, reinforces the view that you cannot argue rationally with these people - or at all. The only thing you can do is drag them outside the bubble and deprogramme them. In older times, they were dragged out and killed, but we don't do things that way any more.

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Why only a "little"? - by Richard...

In The Irish Times Vincent Browne writes under the title: "Ireland left to count the true cost of euro dream".

For Ireland, he says, the crisis has not been just transformative of the society brought about by the Celtic Tiger, it has also been transformative of our relations with the EU. Initially, we were the supplicants, pleading for favours via the Common Agriculture Policy, structural funds, regional policy. Then the model students, obedient and so appreciative.

Now, one of the problem children, truculent and resentful. And perhaps a little sceptical of a venture that is inherently contemptuous of "ordinary" citizens of the union, exclusionary and instilled with an ethos we should never have signed up to.

The question which springs to mind here is why the reference is to Ireland being "a little sceptical". What does it take to make the country a lot sceptical?

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They still can't get it right - by Richard...

The Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is not an EU institution. The judges are not EU judges. They come under the Council of Europe ... which is why the court is in Strasbourg, rather than in Luxembourg, as with the ECJ.

What will it take for these dimwits to get it right?

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Doing the honest thing - by Richard...

A splendidly indignant Peter Hitchens is fulminating about "Dave" doing the talking (telling the military to shut up and do the fighting), while the war dead from Afghanistan are to be sneaked out of the back gate of RAF Brize Norton when it takes over from Lyneham (a few weeks from now) as the arrival point for the fallen.

They will then be routed down side roads to avoid nearby Carterton – a town almost exactly the same size as Wootton Bassett – and make their way to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford along A-roads and bypasses. There'll be a small guard of honour near the hospital entrance (there already is) but somehow or other the cortege won't go down any High Streets, thus avoiding what has become a media circus.

All of this, however, has to be viewed in the context of the complete and utter failure of the Afghanistan campaign, typified by the experience of the Kajaki power project, as narrated by the BBC's Mark Urban on yesterday's Newsnight, and repeated today in a BBC documentary.

He refers to a series of the heroic adventures, starting in 2007 and culminating in August 2008 with thousands of British troops taking part in an operation to escort a 200-ton turbine to the Kajaki Dam on the Helmand River, 100 miles north-west of Kandahar City.

The aim was to improve the hydro-electric scheme there, adding a turbine to the two already installed. This was part of a project that has so far cost more than £29 million, and was (and still is) regarded as an essential part of the hearts and minds campaign in the region.

But, three years after so much blood and treasure has been expended (albeit with the bulk of the cash being shelled out by the Americans), the third turbine lies unassembled – the parts littered about the weed-strewn site, exactly where they were left by the British military.

What makes this so desperately sad is that even the slightest knowledge of the history of the areawould confirm that the project was never going to achieve its desired aim, even if it had been technically successful.

Not least of the problems was – as Booker recorded in September 2009 - that the power lines and sub-stations which feed the electricity to several towns were controlled by the Taliban, who charged money to customers for allowing the juice to reach them. 

So obvious, in fact, were the defects of the scheme that a year before, in September 2008, The Guardian, while acknowledging the "brilliant courage and ingenuity" of the British, dismissed it as a "glorious but dangerous folly". 

The Kajaki, it said, has been a 90-metre-high, rock-filled demonstration of foreign good intentions for decades but has never delivered the promised benefits to Afghanistan - a political showpiece and always has been since it was built (but not fully completed) in the 1950s by the US to compete with Soviet projects elsewhere in the country. 

Such was the delusional attachment to the scheme, however, that this brought a pained rebuttalfrom then defence secretary Des Browne. The project was not merely a symbol, he declared. "If it were only that, we would never have sent our people on such a risky mission". 

Thus, sense and analytical judgement had been submerged in tales of derring-do, marking the self-declared "successful mission". Typical of the period, we got Lieutenant Colonel Rufus McNeil, Comanding Officer 13 Air Assault Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps, declaring of those that had run the hazardous convoy, "Every one of the soldiers did fantastically well."

Well, indeed they did, but it was still a complete waste of time, money, effort – and lives. By December 2009, The Guardian was back on the case with a report headed: "Taliban stalls key hydroelectric turbine project in Afghanistan". The strap read: "Convoy diverted British troops from front but generator may never be used".

The enormous hydroelectric turbine dragged at huge cost by British troops through Taliban heartlands last year, said the paper, may never be installed because NATO has been unable to secure a 30-mile stretch of road leading to an isolated dam in northern Helmand.

To install the turbine needed, amongst other things, 900 tons of cement for new foundations, but security had deteriorated to such an extent that British troops were having to be resupplied by air drop and helicopters. Even the BBC reported the problems.

Now, with additional US troops in the region – but for a short time only – USAid, which is managing the project, remains convinced that the project is worthwhile. US aid officials are now claiming that turbine could be installed in 24 to 30 months. 

This is so much moonshine. No more now than in 2003 when then current project was first mooted, is this a feasible project. It remains, as always, a testament to the vain, unrealisable hopes of the coalition forces that they can bring peace and stability to Afghanistan.

Returning to Hitchens and his indignation, one recalls an episode during the London Blitz in 1940, when a cash-strapped council in the East End, finding rather fewer houses on its patch requiring collections, redeployed some of its dustcarts – cleaned out and painted a tasteful black – as hearses to collect the war dead.

Given the quite obvious disdain in which Dave holds the military, and the utter futility of the war in Afghanistan, where lives are being thrown away for absolutely no purpose – to say nothing of our hard-earned cash – he might consider following the example of the East End council.

Thus, for as long as Dave and his cronies continue to throw away lives for no purpose, he might as well do the honest thing and hire in a dustcart, instead of wasting money on expensive hearses that the public now will not be seeing. The symbolism would be entirely appropriate and serve merely to underline what our masters are doing with our money and soldiers' lives out in Afghanistan.

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And plan B is? - by Richard... Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Call me Dave said he was going to repeal the Human Rights Act. That was one of his many lies ... but now he has to deal with this.

So, what's your plan B, Dave?

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Sun shines ... Greeks strike - by Richard...

It is getting as predictable as that, with the first day of a 48-hour general strike in progress – the fourth this year - and crowds converging on Syntagma Square, where parliament will vote on sweeping spending cuts.

"We don't want your money Europe," Iamando, 36, told the agency, AFP, on the square with police already out in force at 6 pm "Leave us alone - please, please, please," she cried. 

Initially, as pictured, the inevitable march past parliament looked pretty orderly, with the situation well-contained by the police. Later reports though have riot police firing tear gas at youths hurling rocks near the finance ministry – the scene of earlier disruption. 

We are also told that hooded youths ripped up paving stones and set trash bins on fire in central Athens as police gave chase and fired tear gas and stun (sic) grenades.



Meanwhile, it seems that the French are cobbling together a rollover deal – giving Greece a 30-year repayment holiday, enough perhaps to be able to park the crisis, or perhaps not. There is much talk of "voluntary" participation" by the banks, which seems about a voluntary as someone jumping out of a window when their house is on fire.

Within all this, though, there seems to be a change in tone, which may or may not be significant (below). 

Protesters of a communist party-backed union, PAME, are hanging banners in English and Greek reading: "The peoples have the power and never surrender. Organize counterattack" in front of the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis. This rhetoric is more strident than we have seen before – albeit that reporting is poor and that is most certainly distorting perceptions.

Zerohedge, however, has live streaming (and here),where copious and frequent use of tear gas could be seen, while the blog itself notes a "far more violent tone".

Whether this is a last hurrah, while the "colleagues" do deals in les couloirs, is anybody's guess. But, for the moment, we can confidently report that Syntagma Square is not the place for you if you are after a quiet picnic.

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Losing the will to live - by Richard...

Well, I watched the 13th Century Fox announcement in the Commons yesterday, and the whole of the subsequent debate. Then I read the 82-page report. But you can only take so much punishment before you lose the will to live, so I decided to sleep on it before writing it up.

Having further cogitated, I've come to the conclusion that I'm none the wiser for the travail. More seriously, it is well-evident that Lord Levene, his Defence Reform Steering Group, and thus 13th Century Fox, are not much wiser either.

Yes we agree that there are too many generals, and the number must be cut. But that's low-hanging fruit. We observed as much in November 2009 so it would hardly take a high-powered committee and 18 months to work that one out.

And yes, there appear to be some obvious and necessary reforms amongst the 53 separate recommendations. But even if it was acting purely by chance, you would expect that. And, of course, there is plenty of right-on guff, with the Group telling us that we need to create single, coherent Defence Infrastructure and Defence Business Services organisations, to ensure enabling services are delivered efficiently, effectively and professionally.

The trouble is that the moment you see words such as "coherent" and phrases such as: "to ensure enabling services are delivered efficiently, effectively and professionally", you know they're up to no good.

What one was looking for, though, was some sense that the Group really understood the problems they were looking at, and thus knew where to start the remediation. And here, centre stage is procurement, so that one looked especially for the views on this troubled issue.

What was needed was a clear statement that the failures here stem largely from the inability of ministers and senior military staff to define roles, to match equipment to the roles, then to devise acquisition plans and stick to them.

On this, the Group starts well enough, referring to the Bernard Gray review, where it was noted that successive attempts at reform have concentrated on acquisition delivery, rather than – as suggested – seeing procurement as a symptom rather than a cause of the problems in the Department’s decision making.

We go with that, but what are the problems? And here the whole damn thing falls apart. The Group is not into problem solving, but "lessons learned". Thus, they identify "conditions for success in transformations", producing a Janet & John list that comes straight out of the Common Purpose manual on how to bullshit the public.

Thus we get these headings: leadership: vision; engagement; communication; effective people; implementation; resourced; innovation (which "visibly encourages original and radical thinking, and leverages both independent expertise and internal knowledge"); honesty: "the programmes tone inspires confidence, enthusiasm and a 'sense of opportunity' while being realistic about cuts and challenges"; and benefits.

I will not trouble you further with this, for fear of making you physically sick, but that is a measure of the beast. Exactly as Gray complained, these people are going for "delivery", without seeing the problems as symptoms of a broader malaise.

What one did not find, therefore, were any recommendations of lasting value. This report is about shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic more efficiently, and getting more value from the band. The only merciful thing is that it is only 82 pages long, as opposed to the 296 pages that Gray delivered.

That, I suspect, will be the Group's only lasting achievement – reducing the amount of waste printed matter that goes in the bins.