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Draghi: It\’s all about the politics

Sigh:

Mr Draghi claimed that the currency was “absolutely not” in danger when asked by France’s Le Monde newspaper in an interview.

“We see analysts imagining the scenario of a euro zone blow-up,” he said. \”They don\’t recognise the political capital that our leaders have invested in this union and Europeans\’ support. The euro is irreversible.\”

Yes, there is a lot of political capital invested in the project. That certainly does make the politicians more stubborn about admitting to a mistake.

But as ever, just because you want to ignore economics does not mean that economics is going to ignore you.

Given that the euro is, in economic terms, a quite glorious cock up, it will be found out. Indeed, it is being found out. That depression in Greece, that near depression in Spain and here in Portugal. They are the result of the euro.

So it\’s not that the euro will fail, it\’s that it has.

The Home Office: Hang \’em all

Commonwealth recruits to the British forces can claim citizenship after four years’ service.

But a Sunday Telegraph investigation has found that a growing number are being refused it. Unable to work or claim benefits, they and their families rely on charity handouts to survive.

Yes, there are rules. Yes, some of them have broken some of them.

Lance-Corporal Bale Balewai, a Fijian, served for 13 years in the Army, including operational tours to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Northern Ireland, winning four medals, exemplary reports from his commanding officers and even being used in recruitment adverts.

He has a British wife and children. But he has been refused citizenship, banned from working, and faces imminent removal – because he once accepted a commanding officer’s punishment after getting into a fight with another soldier.

The punishment was imposed at a military summary hearing in the CO’s office lasting ten minutes. L/Cpl Balewai had no legal representation.

No witnesses were called and he was not told that five other soldiers were prepared to testify that he had acted in self-defence.

However, for immigration purposes, a military summary punishment counts the same as a criminal conviction in a civilian court, disqualifying the applicant from citizenship.

Give over you fucking tosspots.

We\’ll have a much more pleasant land once we\’ve hung the last Home Office Minister with the intestines of the last Home Office bureaucrat.

I know the Church of England is a strange one but…..

All of which presents an opportunity to clear the decks and say why I am not a liberal. No, I\’m not a conservative either. I\’m a communitarian. Blue labour, if you like. But certainly not a liberal. What I take to be the essence of liberalism is a belief that individual freedom and personal autonomy are the fundamental moral goods. But I don\’t buy this. What we need is a much more robust commitment to the common good, to the priority of community.

So the former Canon of St Paul\’s doesn\’t believe in the idea of individual salvation then? The very basis of all Christian Churches?

Given that they\’ve had Bishops who weren\’t all that certain over the God thing I suppose it shouldn\’t come as much of a surprise.

No, HSBC did not

This week evidence emerged that HSBC abetted massive money laundering by Iran, terrorist organisations, drug cartels and organised criminals.

What we actually got this week was evidence that HSBC\’s internal controls were not good enough for anyone (the bank included) to know whether they were laundering money for these various peoples.

This is not subtly different from the accusation: it is very different.

Err, No Ms. Orr, No

They let big business run riot, as neoliberalism demanded,

Letting big business run riot is corporatism, not neoliberalism. We neoliberals are all about taming big business through ensuring competition and a level playing field.

We don\’t say there should be no regulation: we just differ on who regulates and how. Thinking that, most of the time in most situations, it should be the consumer through their spending and actions.

Except when they cannot.

Imagine the implications of accepting that some multinationals will always opt out of paying their taxes, and that if they do choose that, then the cost of everything the state provides – from the packaging (eventually garbage) they generate, to the state-educated people they employ, to the judicial system they need to conduct their business, will be billed to them directly.

Yes, let us imagine that. Given that the majority of what government spends money on is redistribution of incomes plus the health service that companies do not, by definition, use it would more than halve their bills, wouldn\’t it? Can\’t see them objecting really.

So, a question about our Bradley

Three sets of Olympic medals, so he\’s a CBE.

That\’s the way it goes: MBE, OBE, CBE, KBE, each successive games you get medals at (golds, I think, no?).

The question. Is a Tour de France title going to be counted like an Olympic gold?

Sure, sure, two days to go yet, but is winning going to mean a KBE?

Timmy elsewhere

At the ASI.

UK crops fail: so we\’re told we must eat UK crops and not imports?

Thanks to Tim Daw as well for correcting my maths…..

The problem with this hypothesis

Too much fizzy pop or sweetened fruit juice alters the body’s metabolism, so that the muscles use sugar for energy, instead of burning fat, a study found.

The effect is long-term, making the pounds harder to shift and raising blood sugar levels, which increases the risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes, it was claimed.

Is that the same would be true of any bolus of sugar that passed through the system. Like, say, our Neolithic forefathers feasting on the various fruits as they come into season.

Thus I\’d put it down as bollocks personally.

\’N\’ Jesse Norman Can Fuck Off \’N\’ All

This is not a good idea:

The final proposals were sent by the rebels’ leader Jesse Norman MP to Patrick McLoughlin, the Tory party chief whip and to Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin on Thursday.

The seven point plan includes a proposal to allow mass membership organisations – such as the CBI, TUC, General Medical Council or even the RSPB – to elect their own peers.

This is coding the Corporatist State into the legislature.

No, just no. We really do not need or want this disgusting reminder of fascism.

Update.

Our Jesse Norman has been in touch to point out that the story I\’ve based this upon is well wrong. Specifically, he assures me that the original is \”wildly misleading and inaccurate\”.

So I\’m off swearing and spouting bollocks on the basis of insufficient information. Oh such a change from the regular fare here, eh?

At least we do agree on one thing: this sort of corporatism would be an appalling thing to do.

Carbon Taxes Do Too Work: Australian Edition

From Matthew Leigh:

The Herald contacted Bradbury, who like many small businesspeople is struggling to work out what price increases he will face as a result of the tax. He said he made his 8000 extra pies a year estimate on the basis of what he would need to do to cover an 18 per cent electricity increase and a 5 per cent increase in all his other inputs, if he did not raise his pie prices.

A 5 per cent increase is well above Treasury\’s calculation of a 0.7 per cent increase in the consumer price increase.

Bradbury, who makes about 140,000 pies a year, says he\’s waiting to see actual price rises before any adjustment to the cost of his pies. He has also installed more efficient ovens, which might offset some of his increased power bills. In other words, it might be an 8000-pie hit, but it very likely won\’t be, and it certainly won\’t be if he passes on some of the extra costs.

As Matthew says:

More efficient ovens? That looks to me like a real-world example of someone changing their behaviour in response to a tax, in a way that will help the environment.

As he goes on:

I wonder if Murphy would consider that tax avoidance.

Quite possibly.

Timmy elsewhere

For if people can just do it for themselves then what price politicians and their client states of clipboard wielding box tickers? How can government justify nicking 50% of everything everyone produces in a year if it turns out that problems can be solved just by people of good heart getting on with things? Who needs fucking generals when the sergeants of society can organise the little platoons?

That’s what’s motivating Timms, Green and Creagh: as and when they get back into office they want to make sure that they get to tell people what to do instead of leaving us all to get on with it.

Sod ‘em. Free people have solved this problem freely. Leave ‘em alone.

Remploy: To be fair and balanced

An email I have received from one of the Remploy workers/trade unionists:

Your article Remploy on strike

July 20th, 2012 · No Comments

Is one I wish to bitterly dispute.

I am a Remploy employee at Remploy Spennymoor in Co Durham and have worked there for the last 34 years. I am also a Union branch secretary for Remploy disabled employees and an elected member trustee on the Remploy pension scheme as well as being a national negotiating delegate for the Trade Union consortium. All of these roles mean I have regularly met with senior management and the board of directors as well as having access to financial information over the years.

So let me explain.

This is only an accusation thrown out by the minister who is only repeating what she is being advised is a suitable political argument to close Remploy.

The correct interpretation is this.

This cost is derived by dividing the subsidy provided to the Board of directors to run Remploy by the number of employees it employees.

I would put it to you that the way to manipulate these figures to arrive at a high cost which you mention as being 25,000 per disabled employee is this.#

Since overheads generally go up each year the cost of running factories like any other business also goes up. However if you reduce the number of workers in either the company or a factory the cost per person goes up accordingly.

Let me give you an example. Since 2008 we have had 2 rounds of voluntary redundancies which has slashed our workforce from over 5,000 to under 1500. In my own factory in 2008 50% of them went in 2008 under voluntary redundancy. (just 5 people have found a job since by the way )

Of course the cost per person has gone up. As I said in my factory the cost per person doubled because of this situation which is now used to beat us over the head with verbally by the minister Maria Miller.

But it does not mean that the actual cost to the taxpayer of employing a disabled person has gone up. This is a paper exercise weighted to manipulate cost per person.

(I myself know a number of factories who got their own costs down to a level approaching only £10,000 per person. Despite the government wanting factories to fail)

So how can this be?

By having a structure of over 500 managers including highly paid senor managers and directors which equates to 1 manager for every 3 people in a factory( plus expense accounts) which is also part of the subsidy given by the government. Meaning this 25,000 also includes their costs not just that of a disabled worker.

You also need to add this in also. Remploy created a central costs dept.

Basically what this meant a lot of money was being paid to them by ever factory. For example did you realise that to have a computer on site it cost the factory over £100 per week. Where can you get a computer, which are now ancient by the way, for £100 per week?

An email account costs £100.

If your factory had its workforce slashed and despite increasing productivity by 12% in 12 months you were to find yourself in a similar situation where jobs were turned away as being to costly and only low paying jobs were taken on, in addition tot these costs you would find yourself in the same situation as remploy factory workers.

We all feel utterly angry and bitterly insulted by this political argument to justify our closure. Disabled workers tend to earn just over £200 per week to take home. Its not even £14,000 per year. If we were given the opportunity to make money in the factories then the cost per person would soon go down and the profit could be used to employ more disabled people and invest in factories.

That does not happen because this government wants factories to fail. Because its an easy way of attacking the pubic sector.

Same argument is used to turn people against each other that private sector = good

public sector = bad.

Check it out where you can, when you can, but I would hope you remove that 25,000 bit.

Kenneth Stubbs

GMB TU Consortium Delegate for Remploy (North East)

The truth or not of any of this I have no idea. But good to have both sides, eh?

And if the above is true then there\’s certainly some of that old \”as we\’re subsidised we\’re horribly inefficient\” isn\’t there?

And finally: what possible justification is there for a £25,000 a year subsidy to produce £14,000 a year wages?

Finally finally, aren\’t the unions getting better at this online response stuff?

Remploy on strike

Difficult one this isn\’t it?

Because of course the disabled (Oh Lord, better say differently abled, eh?) do indeed deserve our support. There but for an accident of genetics, mutation or foetal development go any one of us. Such outcomes which depend upon pure blind chance yes, it is right that we all club together, those of us who got the lucky tickets to aid those who didn\’t.

However:

On average, each Remploy worker is subsidised by the government by £25,000 a year.

Is this the best way to do it? £25k a year is a tad over median income. That\’s a pretty hefty subsidy to a job……a job which doesn\’t pay median income.

And one more thing. How much industrial power do people receiving such subsidies have? In which case, what\’s the point of the strike?

Dear Lord, what scummy little bastards

Mr Lisitsin was approached by Alexander Shadrin and his company Eco3 Capital to provide funding for the deal. The Russian businessmen knew each other through their membership of the Russian Orthodox Church. Mr Lisitsin backed the scheme on the understanding he would provide £2m as equity to help buy the land for £12.3m.

Unbeknown to Mr Lisitsin, the three defendants – helped by their agent and co-defendant in the case, Alexander Shadrin – used his money to buy the land for £9.3m before immediately selling it on to Mr Lisitsin for the higher price.

This is, well, at risk of libel I\’ll simply quote:

Between them, Mr Balfour, Mr Maggs and Mr Shadrin, shared over £1.5m of the profit that resulted from the “turn”. Mr Mellor was paid a £500,000 consultancy fee. Not only did the presiding judge, Mrs Justice Rose, find the defendants were complicit in fraudulent misrepresentation, she also called into question the evidence they presented.

Mellor wasn\’t being sued.

But really, that is just total scumbag behaviour.

The most important part of the story though is this:

Speaking after the case Mr Lisitsin said he welcomed the decision.

He said: “I welcome the ethical and professional standard of the English judicial system. It is a reason to do business in this country.”

Another phrase for this is \”the rule of law\”. Whosoever you may be, however high and mighty, you really do face the same strictures as everyone else. And that, of course, is one of the things which is worth defending in our current society. Rather than, you know, replacing it with the spirit of the law as to be decided by whichever fuckwit manages to gain political power……

Isn\’t this Olympic thing going well?

Up to 5,500 immigration officials will strike next Thursday in a dispute about job cuts and pay, disrupting nearly 130,000 passengers as they arrive the day before the Olympic opening ceremony.

Yes, of course people have the right to withdraw their labour. They have both the legal and moral right to strike.

We also have the moral (and legal, there is no law against this) right to react to such blackmail as we see fit.

For it is obviously blackmail. The day of the strike has not been chosen at random, it is clearly and obviously an attempt to capitalise upon the Olympics.

My suggestion would be slightly difficult to organise as there\’s no obvious identifying mark of who is a border patrol officer who is striking in this blackmail attempt. But if it were possible to identify them I would argue that we should simply withdraw our labour from them.

No pints in a pub, no sarnies from a cafe, no workmen coming around to fix the house. No petrol from the garage, a refusal to allow them on public transport. Quite simply, they do indeed have the right to withdraw their labour from the market over our treatment of them. I stand by their right to do that as well. All I am suggesting is that we also have the right to withdraw our labour from them over their treatment of us.

They blackmail us, we blacklist them.