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July 2012

That\’s interesting Polly

but British Gas dare not say anything about a 27% rise in profits, refusing to face the Today programme to explain why.

I hadn\’t known that the Today program was now part of the economic governance of the country. A Star Chamber before which a business must explain itself.

And who is surprised about this?

A coalition of terrorist groups including the Real IRA, the Republican Action Against Drugs and a loose coalition of independent armed factions were said to be merging to form a “unified structure, under a single leadership”.

The union threatens to undermine progress made between Ireland and Britain in recent years, which culminated in a historic handshake between former IRA commander Martin McGuinness and the Queen last month.

The new paramilitary group includes hundreds of armed dissidents prepared to be “subservient to the constitution of the Irish Republican Army”, sources told the Guardian.

This is the simple history of Irish Republicanism….sorry, of the armed wing of it.

Been going on for a century or so at least. Group forms, fights, gets some stage closer to the United Ireland thing. The achievement of Eire, or joint rule at Stormont, satisfies enough that some retire (or, as some more cynical might argue, age and the delights of not hiding in ditches persuade some to). This leaves the hard core/the next generation of youngsters who find it exciting to reform some years later.

IRA, Official IRA, Republican IRA, now 32 County peeps etc.

*Shrug*.

Richard Murphy For Barclays Boss!

No no, I won\’t take no for an answer here.

The likelihood of intense political and regulatory scrutiny on the new chairman and chief executive of Barclays means both must be untainted by its reputational collapse and are likely to be recruited externally, possibly from Canada or Australia.

The bank has told investors it is looking to have either one external and one internal appointment, or two external appointments, a top 10 shareholder in the bank said.

I think the obvious candidate is clear, don\’t you?

Richard J Murphy. After all, he knows exactly what is wrong with banking, exactly what needs to be done in the future. So clearly well qualified to do the job.

He would bring that necessary element of morality to the City. He would, of course, be willing to only pay himself 20 times the lowest salary in the organisation. £200k maximum perhaps, therefore offering the shareholders a substantial saving.

In fact I can only think of one reason why he is not already doing the job. It\’s most, most unlikely that the FSA would approve him as being fit to run a bank.

Oh dear, oh dear oh dear

The new president of the World Bank is determined to eradicate global poverty through goals, targets and measuring success in the same way that he masterminded an Aids drugs campaign for poor people nearly a decade ago.

Jim Yong Kim, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, said he was passionately committed to ending absolute poverty, which threatens survival and makes progress impossible for the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day.

\”I want to eradicate poverty,\” he said. \”I think that there\’s a tremendous passion for that inside the World Bank.\”

Kim, who took over at the World Bank three weeks ago and is not only the first doctor and scientist (he is also an anthropologist) to be president but the first with development experience, will set \”a clear, simple goal\” in the eradication of absolute poverty. Getting there, however, needs progress on multiple, but integrated, fronts.

It would help if he knew a little economics perhaps.

For example, this Washington Consensus/neoliberalism/globalisation shtick has at the very least coincided with the greatest reduction in absolute poverty in the history of our species.

Meaning that, to a first approximation at least, it would seem sensible to continue with the Washington Consensus/neoliberalism/globalisation shtick.

As far as we can tell it\’s even managed to do something in sub Saharan Africa, the place where all other development ideas give up the ghost.

Why stop doing what apparently works?

Well quite

The genial and clubbable Davidson, steeped in politics since his childhood, when Stanley Baldwin would drop in for breakfast, embodied the hereditaries’ belief that there were times when they knew best. Asked in 1991 for his reaction to their Lordships’ defeat of the War Crimes Bill, Davidson said: “I’ve always felt that the House of Lords represents the feelings of the country on certain subjects better than the Commons.”

Given that they own most of it they should be in touch with it.

Hope for us yet

In what could be a plot development from one of the espionage novels that he writes under the name Nigel West, Rupert Allason has become engaged to a beautiful violinist young enough to be his daughter.

Apparently middle aged Downside boys can swap out for the hot younger bird.

I think we can guess who this is can\’t we?

The judge said the child’s supposed father, a married elected politician, had “achieved a level of notoriety as a result of extramarital adulterous liaisons”, noting that it was alleged to be the second time he had made a lover pregnant during an affair.

Has been known to publicly talk about \”whiff whaff\”, no?

You know what I\’d do about this PCS strike?

A strike by 25,000 British border staff aimed at \’inflicting maximum pain\’ on the eve of the Olympics has been called off this morning.

The Home Office has averted 24 hours of industrial action by members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) at airports tomorrow after agreeing a last minute deal.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka says 800 new jobs will be created in the UK Border Agency and 300 in passport offices.

I\’d wait a couple of months. Train up a few more people. Then renege on the deal.

Serwotka has quite clearly indulged in a little blackmail here and there\’s no shame in cheating a blackmailer out of the demanded reward.

Academic paper search

This probably isn\’t online.

Ivanov, V.V., 1997. Ecological Geochemistry of Elements. v. 5. Rare
d-elements. Ekologiya, Moskva. 576 pp. (in Russian).

But would anyone with academic access like to try and find out?

To explain: this paper is the source of a tale that one of the Madagascan columbites has been reported as (occasionally!) containing up to 6% by weight Sc.

The question is, which one?

Thanks to those who tracked this down: especially PaulB. There does seem to be a copy of the book there. But it\’s got some wildly strange registration system. So, I\’ll have to find some other way…..but thanks again for looking.

Chomskbollocks

After a bitter conflict between King and Parliament, the power of royalty in the person of Charles II was restored. In defeat, Magna Carta was not forgotten. One of the leaders of Parliament, Henry Vane, was beheaded. On the scaffold, he tried to read a speech denouncing the sentence as a violation of Magna Carta, but was drowned out by trumpets to ensure that such scandalous words would not be heard by the cheering crowds. His major crime had been to draft a petition calling the people \”the original of all just power\” in civil society – not the King, not even God.

Well, no. The major crime was treason, being that of helping to execute Poppa, Charles I. It\’s the sort of thing that happens to people who, in the long term, lose a civil war.

The significance of the companion charter, the Charter of the Forest, is no less profound and perhaps even more pertinent today – as explored in depth by Peter Linebaugh in his richly documented and stimulating history of Magna Carta and its later trajectory. The Charter of the Forest demanded protection of the commons from external power. The commons were the source of sustenance for the general population: their fuel, their food, their construction materials, whatever was essential for life. The forest was no primitive wilderness. It had been carefully developed over generations, maintained in common, its riches available to all, and preserved for future generations – practices found today primarily in traditional societies that are under threat throughout the world.

The Charter of the Forest imposed limits to privatisation.

Snigger, The Charter of the Forest imposed limits to nationalisation. It was \”The King\’s Forest\” see? His private (ie, the State\’s) hunting grounds. The Charter of the Forest detailed what the common people could do even on the State\’s land.

And this is only a tiny sample of struggles underway over much of the world, some involving extreme violence, as in the Eastern Congo, where millions have been killed in recent years to ensure an ample supply of minerals for cell phones and other uses, and of course ample profits.

What? The Congolese civil war was caused by the lure of the profits from tantalite?

Err, no, I think not. Exacerbated, sure, possibly part financed agreed. But caused by? No, really, no.

The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived. The prevailing view today is captured by Garrett Hardin\’s influential argument that \”freedom in a commons brings ruin to us all,\” the famous \”tragedy of the commons\”: what is not owned will be destroyed by individual avarice.

Proper Chomskbollocks that. Hardin absolutely did not say that the commons must be privatised. All he did say was that if (IF!) demand was higher than the capacity of the commons to supply then access must be managed. He was very clear that it could be governmental (\”socialist\” in his own words) control of access or private. Which worked better (not which was more moral, but which worked better) depended upon the resource itself.

The grim forecasts of the tragedy of the commons are not without challenge. The late Elinor Olstrom won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009 for her work showing the superiority of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins.

More entire Chomskbollocks. Her work was about when does such voluntary cooperation among users lead to adequate (superior if you wish) management of a commons and more importantly, when does it not. A rough rule of thumb is that when the number of users rises above the low single digit thousands then we\’re back in Hardin territory. Government or private property.

That was 150 years ago – in England earlier. Huge efforts have been devoted since to inculcating the New Spirit of the Age. Major industries are devoted to the task: public relations, advertising, marketing generally, all of which add up to a very large component of the Gross Domestic Product.

3% is a very large component of GDP now, is it?

Both recognised that the public must be \”put in its place,\” marginalised and controlled – for their own interests of course. They were too \”stupid and ignorant\” to be allowed to run their own affairs. That task was to be left to the \”intelligent minority,\” who must be protected from \”the trampling and the roar of [the] bewildered herd,\” the \”ignorant and meddlesome outsiders\” – the \”rascal multitude\” as they were termed by their 17th century predecessors. The role of the general population was to be \”spectators,\” not \”participants in action,\” in a properly functioning democratic society.

Yes, I know he\’s quoting the ad men there but it does sound very much like the revolutionary vanguard of socialism, doesn\’t it? Or even the Guardian comments page. You peons should do as we enlightened say.

Could someone tell me why this grammarian is so respected as a political theorist?

Lester Brown argues for globalisation

Bit of a strange one really.

Although the world was hoping for a good US harvest to replenish dangerously low grain stocks, this is no longer on the cards. World carryover stocks of grain will fall further at the end of this crop year, making the food situation even more precarious. Food prices, already elevated, will follow the price of corn upward, quite possibly to record highs.

Not only is the current food situation deteriorating, but so is the global food system itself. We saw early signs of the unraveling in 2008 following an abrupt doubling of world grain prices. As world food prices climbed, exporting countries began restricting grain exports to keep their domestic food prices down. In response, governments of importing countries panicked. Some of them turned to buying or leasing land in other countries on which to produce food for themselves.

Welcome to the new geopolitics of food scarcity. As food supplies tighten, we are moving into a new food era, one in which it is every country for itself.

He\’s normally very vocal about localism. But as you can see, he\’s blaming food nationalism for part of the current problems. The answer therefore must be globalisation, not that nationalism.

Sure, I agree, it\’s just odd to see Lester Brown advocating it.

Women can be naive

Men\’s relationships with their female friends may be fuelled by an undercurrent of sexual attraction regardless of whether they are single but the feeling is not mutual, a new study suggests.

The average man considers the sexual attractiveness of the female bus driver when paying his fare let alone the bird he has coffee with twice a week.

Well of course there bloody isn\’t

There is no law against paying someone in cash

It\’s known as \”legal tender\” for a reason.

Dear God, you pay at the supermarket in cash, at the market stall, at the chippie, at the pub. You doing the paying are just fine. It\’s up to the recipient to make sure they pay the appropriate tax on the money they receive.

@RichardJMurphy agrees that he\’s a tax avoider

Glad to see that the man has finally owned up to it:

At long last the government agrees with me on personal service companies
Tax avoidance, TUC No Responses »
Jul 232012

I have said for quite a number of years that personal service represent tax avoidance activity. I included an estimate of the cost they create in the TUC’s The Missing Billions, for example.

The thing is, we know that Murphy was using exactly this technique himself.

Fulcrum Publishing up to 2003, then The Tax Gap Ltd in 2005, 06 and 07.

So there we have it: the terror of tax avoiders is, by his own admission, a tax avoider. Indeed, the campaigner against tax avoiders is, by his own admission, a tax avoider.

Now, myself, I think that he was obeying the letter of the law and that\’s all there is to it. There\’s in fact no such thing as tax avoidance. There is only tax evasion, which is illegal, and obeying the law, which is tax compliance. Ritchie was tax compliant and there\’s an end to it.

But you\’ll notice that Richard J Murphy doesn\’t think that way. He insists that his own actions were immoral. At which point his well known Christianity should lead him to making amends, don\’t you think?

Like, perhaps, a cheque for the amount of tax and national insurance that he and his wife avoided through those personal service companies. To be sent to: The Accountant, HM Treasury, 1 Horse Guards Road, London SW1A 2HQ. In order to aid in calculating that sum here is the Ur article on how to run a personal services company prepared earlier by one Richard J Murphy. Amusingly, an article for which it is possible the payment went into Fulcrum Publishing.

They send a nice thank you letter so I\’m told. Which he will be able to post on his blog and then we can all stop thinking of him as a…..well, fill in the blank to your satisfaction.

Dear God but Edward Skidelsky is Stupid

Both stupid and authoritarian in fact. His and his Pop\’s new book is all about how we should be such acquisitive little bastards and should just settle down with \”enough\”.

In our new book, How Much is Enough?, my father Robert and I try to rescue the idea of the good life from the snobbery that has so often disfigured it. We identify a set of \”basic goods\” integral to human happiness: health, leisure, respect, friendship and others. To enjoy these goods is to have \”enough\”; to lack them is to be poor indeed. The book is first and foremost a call to individuals to remember what matters in life. But it is also a call to governments to create conditions favourable to simpler, less acquisitive modes of living. The state has a role to play in making it easier for us to live well rather than badly, though how we respond to its prompting is of course up to us.

This is akin to the Swedish idea of \”lagom\” although here he wants the government to impose it on us rather than it to be a societal nudging. So that\’s the authoritarian bit. And of course he and Pops can fuck right off here.

Then there\’s the stupid bit:

The state, then, should drop the mask of neutrality and come out in favour of the good life. What, after all, do human beings need? The answer is not hard to seek. Human beings need healthy bodies and unfettered minds. They need love, security to plan and innovate, private spaces to \”be themselves\”, and time to do as they please, not as they must. They do not need sushi boxes and pre-washed salad leaves. An economic system geared to the production of baubles and gadgets leads us away from the good life, not towards it.

There will be all sorts of lefties who just love this. See! Consumerism! Abolish It!

And Skidelsky Pere et Fils have entirely missed, along with their audience, that this completely destroys the concept of relative poverty and along with that any justification for income redistribution. Worries about ginis simply fade away. For you\’re not poor if you\’re healthy, sane and have time. Time being something the unemployed and the poor most certainly have, health and sanity well provided by the NHS (It\’s The Envy Of The World You Know!) and, well, what else do you need? The Skidelsky\’s tell us that we don\’t need anything else in order not to be poor. So all the whining about \”but he\’s got a bigger car/cock/income\” is an irrelevance.

As long as people are not absolutely poor then they are not poor at all. Thus we can dismantle most of the welfare state.

This isn\’t what they mean of course: but it is what they\’re saying, it\’s just they\’re too stupid to realise it. Alomng with their audience who will lap it all up and never realise that they\’re agreeing to the demolition of all that they hold dear.

Kibbutz numbers are rising!

By not being kibbutz any more:

Most kibbutzim have implemented reforms to become commercially viable and stem decline. Liberalisation – including permitting differential incomes and home ownership – has increased their attractiveness to newcomers reluctant to commit to pure communal principles.

Only about 60 of Israel\’s 275 kibbutzim still operate a completely collective model, in which all members are paid the same regardless of their allotted job. Most of the rest have introduced wage differentials for people employed by the kibbutz – but, more importantly, many members now work outside the kibbutz and contribute a proportion of their salaries to the collective.

Other measures have included selling kibbutz businesses, charging for meals and services, and recruiting agricultural labourers from south-east Asia. The changes, necessary for survival, have been painful, particularly for a generation of kibbutz pioneers wedded to a socialist-Zionist dream.

A note to egalitarian socialists: even among those who volunteer for it it doesn\’t work all that well. Why on earth anyone thinks it would ever work if imposed I\’m not sure.

Being the liberal that I am of course I support any consensual method by which consenting adults wish to run their lives. It\’s the imposition bit I have a problem with. And as the kibbutz movement shows, there are indeed those who prefer to live in such an egalitarian socialism. Well then, if that\’s what you desire then off you go, have fun, send us a postcard occasionally.

It\’s just that you don\’t get to force us into how you want to live.