The trouble with trade: Walmart

One has to worry about the consequences of a US/UK trade deal. As I’ve said before, getting a trade deal isn’t the problem, its the concession the UK will inevitably be forced to accept as part of that deal.

This week Liam Fox tried to argue that on the one hand they’d ban chlorinated chicken from the UK and in the same sentence so what if we do allow it. Well if you adopt the first position, banning US food products and cars (many of the larger SUV’s will fail current UK/EU environmental standards) the Americans will respond in kind and what exactly will we be trading with the US? On the other hand, if you allow Chlorinated chicken or steroids in beef, you’ll be cutting yourself off from the EU market.

A case in point of everything that is wrong with the US is Walmart. For those unfamiliar with Walmart they are a large supermarket chain known for engaging in fairly unethical practices. Quite often they’ll move into a town and quickly put all of the local business out of business very quickly, turning a once thriving high street into a ghetto. Walmart often offer a full comprehensive range of services. You can get groceries, firearms, fast food and have your car’s wheel’s balanced while you wait. So when I say all of the business in the high street goes, I mean all of it.

As the company is run and operated by a family of staunch neo-conservatives, they have been known to use their companies de-facto monopoly on sales to censor content of  books, CD’s or videos solid in their store. So while they’ll allow you to buy Die Hard with vengeance (despite is sex and violence), they’ll rate anything from Michael Moore as “non family friendly” and ban it from their shelves.

And they achieve their monopoly by vastly undercutting the competition, something they can do by squeezing their suppliers mercilessly. They squeeze their staff salaries so far that many are dependant on welfare. Of course this means indirectly Walmart are in receipt of subsidy from the state and they are often able to pressure counties and towns into offering them tax breaks or free highway construction in return for them setting up in an area (big government get off my back…accept when its propping up my monopoly). And they have a harsh anti-union policy. Any time a union has been successfully established in a Walmart, they’ve shut the store down.

But the problems with Walmart get worse when they decide to leave. After having milked a community dry, destroyed the town centre and devastated the local business community, they are known to just up and leave, often simply because of a slight drop in sales, usually because the local economy is struggling through some temporary problem.

Of course this means the largest employer in said town disappears overnight, making a bad situation much worse, while leaving locals with a long drive to the next town over to get basic groceries. In short it can lead a once vibrant town to basically die, all some very rich people with more money than they know what to do with, can get that little bit richer.

Now granted, the UK has its fare share of problems with aggressive supermarkets and town’s desperate for cash willing to bend over backwards to help them, even when they should really tell them to piss off. For example in Oxford they have a wonderful covered market, which the council (desperate for cash due to the austerity) has raised the rent on local traders by 50% …..twice….leading many to fear for its survival. Meanwhile they’ve been offering tax breaks to the likes of Starbucks to set up in town and paying for road infrastructure to the benefit of Tesco’s.

The difference in the UK is that there are laws limiting the size of supermarkets, protecting small business from monopolistic pressure and employees from union busting companies. Now, I would argue the trouble is that these laws don’t go far enough and are sometimes broken by the supermarkets (who know they can get away with a lack of enforcement). But post-brexit there is a very real risk that all of these protections will disappear as part of any trade deal. So we could well see ASDA (owned by Walmart) pursuing a Walmart like reign of destruction across many of the UK’s small market towns. So if you voted for brexit, congrats, because this, like so many things, this is what you voted for.

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Why tuition fees have to go

I’ve long argued that exorbitant tuition fees English students are required to pay are a generally bad idea. I’ve described before the impact they’ve had on the running of universities and how they’ve turned universities into money hungry corporations. How it has resulted in students increasingly seeing their degree as a commodity to be bought, not something life changing they are earning through hard work. I certainly see the benefit of students making some contribution towards their studies, after all not everyone gets to go to uni and fees do make universities less dependant on the whims of government. However, the more and more I look on it, the more I feel that given the choice between the no-fees system of Scotland or the supermarket uni’s of England, fees are just not a good idea and should be scraped.

The arguments put forward for fees are that they would give student better value for money in their education, more choice, it would increase funding to critical courses, such as medicine and engineering and it would cut student numbers. As these statistics show, in all three cases they have failed and the opposite has happened. Students, saddled with increasingly high levels of debt have becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their courses. Given that engineering and medical courses are more expensive to operate, the mercenary nature of some universities has seen them cut back on these course, as well as shutting down various specialised courses and restricting student’s choices (I don’t think I’ve worked in a uni where one course or another wasn’t in the process of being wound down).

As for cutting student numbers, they’ve been going up until recently. This is just as well, for as I discussed in a prior article, we are entering into an increasingly technology driven age where its going to be harder and harder for anyone without some sort of qualification (a degree, college cert, trade, etc.) to stay employed.

However thanks to the brexit effect and Tory cuts to student grants they are now getting their wish and student numbers are down slightly this year, by about an average of 4%. Now within the meta data there are some alarming numbers, with a 23% drop in nursing, this on the back of a 96% drop in EU nurses coming to the UK to work. So this raises the risk of some serious staffing shortages in the NHS in a few years time.

Another impact of brexit, is that not only have lecturers and researchers begun to leave the UK, but UK universities too are looking to establish campuses in Europe. I recall suggesting that this might happen in the event of brexit a few years ago, and well, now its happening.

Meanwhile students in the UK are now looking at leaving uni with an average of £57,000 in debt. That is a lot of money to end up owing, made worse by the fact that the interest rates are now set to go up to 6.1%. Indeed this is sufficiently high that it for most graduates earning an average entry level salary they will will struggle to pay off just the interest on that loan, and will likely see the principal written off, which basically means the taxpayer pays it.

So in effect the entire student fees system is little more than a tax on millennials to exploit the fact that they don’t vote, while pensioners (who either went to uni for free or paid a fraction of the amount) get an above inflation pension rise every year. Of course, increasingly, it seems the millennials aren’t willing to pay this “tax” and will vote for a party that promises to scrap it and the brexit voting pensioners can go spin on it (again I recall pointing out something like this might happen after a leave vote).

Also we need to consider a more fundamental issue, effectively by raising tuition fees Osborne and Cameron pulled an old fashioned accounting trick. The accumulated student debt in the UK now exceeds £100 billion, which we’ve established will mostly be written off, but the government won’t have to pay that off for a good few years. So in effect they set up a sort of buy now, pay later scheme and create the illusion that they were cutting the deficit.

Now “only” £100 billion doesn’t sound so bad against the back drop of a UK debt level of £1,737 billion, 86% of GDP, noting that it was only 65% of GDP when the Tories took over (and the Tories were elected because they claimed that labour had let the debt get out of control). However given that student debt is rising at about 16% a year, so it will be closer to a figure of £300 billion in 2025 (not accounting for inflation). Add in the expected cost of brexit and its economic impact (another £100-200 billion depending on the breaks) and its not too difficult to see how the UK’s debt levels could exceed the critical threshold of 100% of GDP within a decade, worse than every European country, other than Italy and Greece I might add.

If want to scare away your creditors, you can do it very easily if they discover that you’ve been playing silly buggers with them and there’s a whole block of off the book debts that you’re on the hook for. This is what happened to China recently. The rating agencies cut China’s credit rating due to concerns about debts run up by state owned companies. I was in China at the time and suffice to say, they were less than pleased about this, pointing out that its highly unlikely that all of these debts would go bad all at once and that China’s economy is in a vastly more healthy state than any western state.

Well the danger is that at some point the penny will drop, the rating agencies will apply a similar logic to the UK and we could see a ratings agency downgrade of the UK debts (again!), both public and private. A rating agency cut remember will make everything more expensive, mortgages will go up, personal loans, car loans and yes student loans. So its altogether bad news. Oh and since we are talking about it, as things stand the rating agencies are jittery, telling the EU to go whistle over the brexit bill, you might find its the Chancellor who is whistling if that provokes another credit rating cut.

Now the Tories will probably argue that this is the whole reason why they are trying to sell off student loan debts to the banks. However this risks making the situation worse. Firstly the whole reason for increasing the interest rate was to facilitate this sale. But increasing the interest rate on any loan will increase the default rate yet further. You are also selling off an asset which you know is going to be defaulted on. Its like sub-prime mortgages all over again. And you are creating a mechanism by which a contagion of debt can spread from one institution to another (or to the government). Again, the whole logic behind the Chinese debt downgrade isn’t that the rating agencies doubt China’s ability to pay, its their worry that a default on a loan in rural Gansu province, could lead to the collapse of one local bank and then ricochet through the system until it threatened the finances of the whole country.

Furthermore, saddling young people with an economic millstone and putting them under the thumb of the student loan company (who are known to “punish” students for disloyalty to the UK by ramping up their interest rate), leaving them living on baked beans for many years and putting off important spending decisions (such as buying a house) is not good for the economy. It could lead to economic stagnation (which would prompt another rating agency downgrade!). And why should banks get to profit from that?

So all in all, something has to give. In the first instance, if we don’t actually expect students to pay off this debt mountain, then why make them. Set up a debt forgiveness scheme and cut down student debts to more manageable levels.

As for fees, I still do think that students should pay something for their education, if they can afford to do so. A graduate tax is one idea, or some smaller, more limited level of fees. Alternatively, as pensioners will directly benefit from graduates (i.e. doctors & NHS nurses), maybe going after wealthy pensioners and taxing them (or breaking the triple lock on pensions) might be another solution.

But certainly the current system is just a recipe for disaster. It will lead to skill shortages in key areas, its creating a third level system that is increasingly unfit for purpose and could actually threaten the financial health of the country.

The Tories next big flip flop – immigration

Police were called to escort away a deranged woman who was found squatting in a building in central London, screaming stuff about “brexit” and “Dalmatians“. An appeal to re-home her has appeared online

I made a point in one of my previous posts about how conservatives have a tendency to flip flop, happily willing to sacrifice even the most scared of right wing cattle just to get them through some short term crisis. Well its quite likely that the Tories next big flip flop will be on immigration, which is not great news for the brexit bigots, seeing as this is the whole reason why they voted leave in the first place.

Last week, Jeremy Cunt Hunt was caught leaving Downing Street waving a piece of paper (picked up by a high resolution camera) which talked about how the NHS now feared the consequences of people fleeing Britain post-brexit. Of course this “leak” was almost certainly deliberate. This sort of stuff has happened often enough now that it can’t be just an accident. Indeed the very fact that Hunt reckoned he could get away with this should tell you just how weak Theresa May’s position now is.

That said, what Mr Cunt Hunt was alluding to was not idle paranoia. There has been an alarming drop in migrant numbers notably in nursing (which has seen a 96% drop in applicants from the EU in one year), farming (where a critical shortage of labour now threatens the harvest) and engineering. And its becoming obvious that the numbers will fall further post-brexit with many EU migrants here already talking of leaving and many of those on the continent reluctant to come to a country they now see as xenophobic and racist.

This could potential leading to skill shortages and falling tax revenue. And no we can’t just recruit from within the UK. Where are we going to find several thousand extra nurses a year? Even if we started up a whole bunch of nursing courses tomorrow, it would be four years before the first ones graduate….and they’d probably go work abroad (as some significant portion of UK nurses and doctors chose to do) because they don’t want to have anything to do with the sweatshop conditions of the NHS under the Tories.

Even things like fruit picking are not easily solved. Hire the UK unemployed to do the fruit picking? Ya, ok and you do know the harvest season lasts for like a few weeks, what are they supposed to do the rest of the year? Many of the unemployed you are looking to recruit are “townies” who have little experience of the countryside (I’ve visions of them wandering through the mud in trainers frantically trying to google what is this brown stuff on the ground? And are cows carnivorous?) and have no clue how to harvest crops. By contrast, farm workers from Eastern Europe are happy to come over for a few weeks, live ten to a bedroom, make a bit of cash before heading back to their home country for the harvest there. Ultimately getting British workers to do the farming, even if that was possible, will push up prices by at least 50%.

And suffice to say if replacing farm workers is that hard, what about technical jobs like engineer or academia? There is a quiet orderly withdrawal of academics from the UK going on. Keep in mind that recruiting academics isn’t easy, it can take years to fill a senior academic vacancy.

And anyone who says, but immigration controls won’t interfere with recruitment, no it will, its already doing so. I came across this example on Twitter of a job (looks like a management one) which requires the applicant to be a permanent resident of the UK.

But hasn’t Theresa May made a very “generous” offer of residency to EU citizens here already? Ya she’s promised a settlement which will leave them with less rights than a Jar of Jam. Keep in mind like for like will apply, the EU might well restrict the immigration status of UK citizens in the EU in return. Which will make it all but impossible for certain large UK companies to function (such as Airbus, which has made clear a lack of free movement of workers will have consequences). The flow of migrant workers, filling key skills shortages (and paying taxes), could be replaced by a exodus of retirees streaming in to overcrowd an already overcrowded and stretched NHS.

State interference in a company’s ability to recruit seldom ends well. You are basically putting in place a massive trade barrier. Its ironic how many Tories claim to be neo-liberals, when in fact capital controls or high taxes are less restrictive to a company’s competitiveness than restrictions on immigration. For example, remember how Trump got that factory in Mexico cancelled and created all those American jobs? Well first of all, he had to pay the company off (so it cost the government money). Secondly not a single auto job was transferred to the US, the company exec’s simply took one look at this orange skinned baboon in chief and pulled the brakes on further expansion. So all he did was stop a couple of hundred Mexicans from getting jobs. And what’s the chances that some of them have ended up in the US looking for work?

Trump’s immigration plan has led to abandoned factories and companies scaling back on recruitment

Oh, and one of the US companies in question, has just announced they are about to start laying off workers in the US. This is of course not really a huge surprise. In a crisis a company has two choices, expand, which isn’t really an option for much of the US auto industry right now, as they lack the cash reserves or growth potential to do that (restricting trade with overseas markets means they have no room to expand, unless he can get everyone in the US to buy a 2nd or 3rd car). So the alternative is the company “rationalises” or “explores efficiency savings”….which is corporate speak for “sack people”. While I’m no fan of the Austrian School, there can be something of a stopped clock element to it sometimes. The trouble is that conservatives tend to ignore them.

Back in the UK, brexit has started to give business leaders the jitters, again due to the potential impact of immigration controls. Hence why the CBI recently called for an indefinite delay in leaving the single market. And again, this is not idle paranoia or remoaning, the first year after the referendum reveals some very worrying trends, as this post discusses. UK GDP growth has nose dived, inflation is soaring at a time that average earnings are flat-lining or falling. While the UK trade balance was initially doing well (thanks to the drop in the value of the UK pound), its now starting to tighten.

In Scotland, the Scottish economy is starting to struggle. Predictably (given their inability to understand cause and effect and the fact conservatives have the memory span of a goldfish), they’ve tried to blame this on the SNP and speculation about a 2nd indy ref.

WTF! So let me get this straight, thinking of having an indyref can cause a recession, even though when Scotland actually HAD one in 2015, it didn’t cause a recession….or is that just because that referendum was Cameron’s idea? (and obviously nothing bad that happens is ever the fault of the Tory party!).

The truth is that it has long been pointed out by economists that the Scottish economy is particular sensitive to the impact of any brexit, I recall pointing this out several years ago (back in 2011 in fact), so that the Scottish economy is now in a slump over brexit is not really a huge surprise, this is in line with long term predictions. And once the penny drops in Scotland that is is the fault of brexit, don’t be surprised if support for independence starts to rise.

So all in all, the Tories are going to come under massive pressure not to restrict immigration. Now they’ll talk the talk, make people fill out a lot of BS forms and pretend to do something, but essentially they’ll probably end up doing nothing meaningful. So if you voted for brexit to stop migration, well I’ve got bad news for you. On the bright side, migrants are paying for you’re retirement.

And if that sounds far fetched, well in some respects they’ve already flip flopped on immigration. I recall just a few months ago Amber Rudd on QT defending the ridiculously Byzantine immigration procedures (including an 85 page form) and how yes all EU migrants would have to fill this out and what’s wrong with that?….because the civil service will then have to read all 3 million of them (plus 6 million more for the Irish) and that will take a decade or more (they handle only about 150,000 a year at the moment).

And low and behold a few months later now they’ve said bollix to that, we’ll get all the EU migrants to fill in a form on a website and the Irish will be exempt. Good, I can apply for settled status for my friend in Portugal Ivan Proteus Freely as well as my German cousin Anita Bathhaus 😉 I mean its not as if they can check all 3 million online applications.

Jokes aside, the point is that the current Tory plans on immigration are simply unworkable. They won’t actually cut immigration by much (something that was predicted some time ago).You’ll simply replace short to medium term workers coming over to fill labour shortages (who pay taxes, but leave before they get old enough to become a burden on the state), with older British retirees (who will overload the NHS) and long term migrants from Asia (who tend to plan on staying for longer, as well as bring over their entire family).

I’ll finish by noting how quite a lot of those involved in the brexit negotiations (Dave2, the EU’s Bernier, Theresa May) are all keen mountaineers. Well in mountaineering we have an expression, often called the golden rule of mountaineering:

“Going to the summit is optional, coming back down is compulsory”

I’d make a sign with that written on it and hang it on the wall in the room where the brexit negotiations are going on.

Grenfell tower update

Cladding samples are being taken away for testing across the UK

Given recent events I think an update was needed on the Grenfell fire situation as events have moved rather quickly. As I wrote my last piece there were reports in the media which suggested that the contractors at Grenfell may have used cladding products that weren’t suitably fireproof (and illegal on a building this tall). I was inclined to ignore these rumours until such time as they was confirmed by official sources, ideally the ongoing investigation into the fire. The UK media is well known for jumping to the wrong conclusions and I didn’t think it as credible that such a huge error could have been made given how well regulated the building trade is in the UK.

Well it would appear I was wrong. Tests on panels from the buildings and on other structures across the UK have failed fire tests. At the time of writing samples from 34 blocks have failed fire tests. This has led to a number of hasty decisions been taken by councils across the UK. Several blocks in Camden have now been evacuated as the buildings have been deemed unsafe. Not only is the cladding of concern, but many other factors too, such as integrity of fire doors, fire breaks, risers and evacuation routes. This has left hundreds out of their homes in London, a city with enough of an housing problem as it is. And in Birmingham over 200 tower blocks are now slated to get sprinklers fitted at a cost of tens of millions per block.

Keep in mind all of this is happening before the official investigation into the Grenfell fire has even concluded. The normal process for dealing with an event like this is, take on board some interim measures to keep everyone safe e.g. a complete smoking ban (which is one of the leading causes of fires), ban certain dangerous appliances from being operated (such as the fridge model that started this fire), perhaps bring in fire wardens to patrol the buildings and institute a complete evacuation policy in the event of any fire, regardless of how small. Let the investigation continue and then once all the facts are in place, make an informed decision about what to do next.

Keep in mind, this is not the first time we’ve had safety concerns about flats. In 1968, a small gas explosion in the Ronan point tower block led to the collapse of a whole corner section of the building due to a mechanism known as excessive progressive collapse. And, much as I outlined above, temporary measures were put in place to prevent a repeat performance, followed by a schedule of repairs to fix the issue, once the investigations had concluded.

So I do worry if a weak lame duck government, which knows this crisis is of its own making due to its corner cutting austerity and its failure to adequately regulate the industry, is now running scared and basically setting policy by reacting hastily to scary tabloid headlines rather than informed opinion. This risks making a bad situation worse rather than better.

For starters, are we sure the fire spread up the building via the cladding? Yes the evidence says it might have done so, but I don’t think its proven yet. And sprinklers won’t do much to stop a fire on the cladding. They would help keep evacuation routes clear of fire, but if you’ve got issues with poor fire doors and barriers to stop smoke and flames from spreading, then eventually the evacuation routes will just fill up with smoke and the sprinklers will cease to be effective. I’m not saying sprinklers are a bad idea, I’m just pointing out the risks of making a hasty ill-informed decision.

And there is a more fundamental point here. Many of the UK’s tower blocks are 40 to 50 years old. They were cheap and nasty when they were built and one has to question whether the time has come to start pulling them down. Up here in Scotland a number of the housing associations are essentially doing just that, refurbishing some blocks to get a bit more life out of them, demolishing others as soon as possible. There’s little point in wasting billions on expensive repairs to blocks which you are going to pull down in a decade or two anyway. Indeed, this is what the whole Grenfell saga highlights, the chronic underfunding of social housing that has been going on for decades. Now the chickens are coming home too roost.

Social Housing has been chronically under funded since the Thatcher era, indeed the country essentially stopped building council houses in the 1980’s

And there’s also the matter of regulation. I mean WTF! What are these guys playing at! Did they really think that it was acceptable to put non-fire proof cladding on a building like this. If the media is to be believed apparently the non-fire proof version was just £2 cheaper per panel. So for the sake of enough cash to buy a few bottles of cheap bubbly for the share holders meeting, they were willing to put at risk hundreds of lives. And why weren’t the regulators on the case and kicking their ass? And if there are other issues here beyond the cladding, e.g. poor quality of fire doors (or perhaps even no fire doors) and inadequate risers, then why in blue blazes wasn’t something done about this along time ago! This could not and should not have just come out of the blue.

Perhaps this is the problem, I’ve been assuming that the construction industry over here is as well regulated as it is back in Ireland (if not better), while its becoming obvious that it is actually very poorly regulated. Indeed, now that you mention it, it was pointed out to me recently that in the estate where I live there’s still one or two outstanding issues which the building contractors never sorted out (and the building is at least ten year old!). Nothing serious, but we’ve had engineers around from time to time to inspect and advise. And one has to assume the Tory policy of austerity, which has squeezed council budgets as well as government departments, has played a role in all of this lack of regulation.

Of course in Ireland regulations have tightened up thanks to the EU. This, brexiters, is why we have an EU. Because we don’t want people living in unsafe buildings. And because when one of them burns down due to unsafe practices, guess what, suddenly nobody else what’s to live in a similar building anymore, nor can they sell their flats. And suddenly the government’s got a massive mess that needs sorting out.

So I suspect the fall out from Grenfell is merely a example of what we can expect post-brexit. The Tories will use it to gut regulations their fat cat allies have long disliked. Then when people start dying or scare stories about food safety or dangerously unsafe toys start to circulate, there will be this massive backlash and public anger which the government are forced to fire fight at great expense.

News roundup

I was away in Ireland over the last week, so thought it would be good to do a round up of the news while I’ve been away….

The Prisoner

Theresa “the Maybot” May, has been described as the prisoner of number 10. She is basically a lame duck PM and its not even her first day of her new term yet. She’s had to sack advisers and bring in some of the more odorous elements of the Tory party in order to cling to power for a bit longer.

And already some minsters, such as Hammond (who it was expected would be given the boot after the election) are staking out their stall for party leadership and openly attacking her. And her actions and U-turns with regard to Grenfell fire, shows just how little power she now has.

The return of Gove did surprise many, but it makes sense. Basically she’s stuffing two big egos in the room, Boris and Gove and hoping they take each other out. Keep in mind that Boris dropped out last time because of some “dirt” that Gove apparently has on him. There’s also a significant anyone but Boris wing within the Tories. Keep in mind the whole point of making Boris foreign secretary was so that he’d screw it up and blow any chance of becoming PM. It also looks like David Davis is emerging as the preferred candidate by the Murdoch’s or anyone who dislikes Boris.

Election 2018?

One possible strategy for the Tories is they ditch Theresa, elect someone who can perhaps smile and even interact with “people”, or who knows maybe even hold a baby. Then they have another election. However if that’s the plan, its a bad idea.

Firstly the country has voter fatigue. They’ll have to put Brenda from Bristol on the terrorist watch list if they called another one. I could see a lot of people just going into the polling booth and voting monster raving loony (or UKIP, similar policies basically) just out of frustration.

The Tories are about to be hit with a lot of bad news in the coming weeks. Firstly the whole brexit business is going to mean them making a lot of unpopular policy decisions as part of these negotiations. For example, indications are they’ve already quietly accepted the concept of paying an exit bill of some kind. There will be some leeway to negotiate how much, but its going to be in the tens of billions, perhaps as much as 60 billion….paid in euro’s of course! And then there’s the deficit they’ll run up paying for all of those other promises they’ve made, yet still seeing job losses as companies start moving workers overseas. Estimates from the treasury suggest this could cost up to £66 billion per year.

That’s not the sort of backdrop to an election you want to fight. The one trump card they have is that Corbyn has been going along with their brexit policy and thus will catch some flak himself. However, its a risky strategy. As I believe I speculated years ago, one could envisage a scenario where the Tories held a EU referendum, to their own horror actually won it. Then due to all the negative economic impacts lost a subsequent election to a hard left labour leader, who proceeds to run them and the non-dom’s out of town. That is not that an unlikely scenario now.

With friends like these……

Then there’s the thorny issue of the Tories new allies in hate, the DUP. Or basically the old testament with fortnightly bin collections. These are people who believe in young earth creationism, that we can pray the gay away and they have links to known terrorist organisations. This lot actually transcend the tea party in terms of craziness, I mean they actually think line dancing is a sin. They are basically living proof of Poe’s Law.

It is no wonder they have John Major worried. And when John Major starts criticising you, aka the guy who lose the 1997 election by the largest margin in recent UK history, you know you’ve strayed seriously off course. I mean if you think about it, John Major would now make a better and more competent PM than any of the likely present Tory candidates. When you’re in a hole, stop digging, especially when you hit the water table.

….who needs enemies

And speaking of terrorist supporting sectarians, there’s the issue of Sinn Fein. They have seven MP’s, just three less than the DUP, meaning that if they showed up in Parliament they could all but cancel out the DUP and get up to all sorts of mischief. However, Theresa May can sleep easy because that’s not going to happen. Why? Because they’d have to swear allegiance to the crown and Sinn Fein are refusing to do that.

Back in Ireland his Gerryness spent the last week trying to avoid this elephant in the room. They are willing to trade the post brexit status of NI, the possibility of a border poll, risk a hard border, sit on their hands while the DUP are allowed to screw them over, all to protect their precious ego. Keep in mind that back in the 1920’s a similar pledge of allegiance was applied during early days of Irish independence. When the Irish government announced a change in the law that would require MP’s (TD’s in Ireland) to take their seats or lose them, SF swallowed their pride, declared it “an empty formula” and simply crossed their fingers while making the pledge.

What Sinn Fein have shown by this, or their refusal to enter into government in Ireland, is that they are the eternal protest vote. If you’re angry you can urinate into the ballot box, or vote Sinn Fein. Its basically the same thing and will have about the same effect…although one of those might get you arrested!

Nursing applications down 96%

And speaking of brexit, we are already seeing the first impacts of brexit and the harsh immigration measures the Tories are aiming for. In academia, we are finding it ever harder to recruit good staff. Student numbers are already down. But spare a thought for nursing. Applications for nursing jobs in the UK from the EU have fallen by 96%.

That’s a shortage of about 1,300 nurses per year the UK will have to somehow fill. Keep in mind the typical nursing course will graduate about 100-250 nurses per year, after 3-4 years of training. So its not a problem that can be fixed quickly. And these graduate nurses might not have specialised in the areas where we have shortages (that’s sort of the whole point of recruiting from the EU). So this is inevitably going to mean an NHS that is already stretched will now be stretched yet further. I hope nobody’s planning on getting ill in the next few years.

Now I know what the brexiters will say, oh but we’ll give work visas to nurses with a generous quota. But this misses the point, right now they don’t have to apply for any visa and they still aren’t coming. What are you going to do, send “recruiters“ out to hang around university bars across Europe, get graduates doctors and nurses drunk, whack em over the head and they wake up in hospital in Greenwich, looking for a doctor, only to realise that they are the doctor.

Trump trip on hold

At least one bit of bad news the Tories will not have to deal with thought is Trump’s state visit. Aware that he might not be terribly popular in London (nah, ya think!) he’s reluctant to come. If he wants to have insults hurled at him all he needs to do is go back to NY for that. He has a fairly fragile ego after all.

For example, this week we had the story of how he fired the NY public persecutor because he didn’t answer a call from Trump. Apparently Trump had made requests and repeated calls that the prosecutor knew were illegal (it regarded a case against his son in law) and he decided he had better things to do that explain US law to a professional buffoon for the third time in one day. Needless to say this is a level of corruption we’d expect from an African dictator. On its own this one act is grounds for impeachment all by itself.

Also as a birthday boy treat he held his first full cabinet meeting (yes he’s only just held his first one!). Which involved them going around the room and letting everyone pledge loyalty and line up to kiss his ass. Of course the politically astute will realise that these same guys, like Caesar’s chums in the Senate, will still probably knife him when the time comes. In politics, its the guys who come to you with smiles and kisses you need to watch out for. Just ask Boris!

Merkel Trolls Trump

And speaking of Trump. Angela Merkel, the leader of the free world by default, spent the last week trolling Trump. On the anniversary of Reagan’s visit to Berlin and his famous, tear down this wall speech, she visited Mexico and gave a speech against Trump’s plan for a wall. It is just as well Trump and his supporters are unaware of the concept of irony, because if they were they’d have died at this point.

Furthermore, the trouble with Trump’s wall plan, aside from the enormous cost (of up to $70 billion), the time it would take to build, the ongoing costs of maintaining it….forever….is that a technology has already been invented that renders it obsolete – planes! There’s nothing to stop some Mexican migrant getting on a plane to LAX (which is going to be a lot cheaper than hiring some Coyote to guide him across) and then simply overstaying his visa.

As for harassing American companies about their factories in Mexico, much was made by Trump supporters of how Ford mothballed a car plant under construction in Mexico a couple of months back. However, they’ve failed to notice how this hasn’t amounted to any announcement to build the factory in the US instead. Ford simply abandoned the plan altogether and decided to downsize their planned capacity. All Trump’s done is force Ford’s shareholder to take a hit, deprive a few Mexicans of jobs (and what’s the bet some of them end up in the US) and not created a single US job.

Also we’re assuming that his wall will be guarded by jedi knights. I’ve no doubt the Mexican smuggling cartels will do a deal with a few corrupt border guards and we’ll find the flow of drugs and migrants continues. Border controls generally needs the support of both parties on both sides and Trump has more or less guaranteed he’s not going to get that.

Trump on Cuba

And in other Trump related news, Trump has announced a reversal of Obama’s reforms with regard to Cuba. Yes and who will benefit most from that, why Cuba’s long standing ally – Russia! Well there’s a coincidence!

Quite apart from the fact that these restrictions go against every economy principle the US stands for. Quite apart from hardship this brings down on ordinary Cubans. The fact is that if you want to ensure that communism survives in Cuba indefinitely, then embargoes like this are exactly the way to guarantee this.

So much for strong and stable!

Its laughable this morning. Here we have Mrs strong and stable herself (I can’t write that while keeping a straight face), who undertook an election at the worse possible time, not because the country needed one, but so the Tories could selfishly exploit labour’s low polling numbers. And, having gambled with the UK’s future for the most cynical of political reasons and then lost, she has the nerve to ask for a period of stability during the brexit negotiations. I mean seriously, how out of touch are these Torybots. Not since G. W. Bush stood in front of a banner saying “Mission Accomplished” has a politician been so wrong.

And let us be clear, the Tories lost this election, not because Corbyn is some sort of political genius, but because Theresa May was terrible. After the awful local election results, Corbyn spent most of his time visiting safe labour seats in an effort to shore up support. When the lib dems and Greens approached him about some sort of progressive alliance, being the clot that he is he rejected this, even thought it ultimately meant the Tories winning crucial seats (I mean god forbid someone who isn’t a bearded hard left brexiter winning those seats! Obviously Corbyn thinks it would be better a Tory win them instead!). Note that several high ranking Tories, including Amber Rudd and IDS only survived by a margin of a few hundred votes. Zack Goldsmith managed to get elected by just 50 votes. So had Corbyn agreed to this progressive alliance, its very likely we’d have seen some pretty major scalps last night.

He also flunked a number of TV interviews, getting basic facts about his manifesto wrong. They had to hide Diana Abbot away after she buggered up earlier on in the campaign. So this is clearly more a case of the Tories losing the election rather than labour winning. And they squandered a 20 point lead at the start. Because while Corbyn wasn’t great, Theresa May was unbelievably $hit! As the spectator put it “Theresa May has the warmth, wit and oratorical ability of a fridge-freezer”.

The Yellow Submarine

Around Whitehall Theresa May has a nickname – the submarine. Because when the going gets tough, she dives below the surface, hides and runs away. And that was basically what she did for the bulk of the election campaign. She chickened out of the debates, she refused to do interviews on local radio or on the BBC’s flagship Today programme, avoided crowds (save a few carefully choreographed campaign events) or “people” in general. When rumours of cuts to pensions emerged, a possible “dementia tax” to go with the bedroom tax, she was flip flopping like crazy. At one point during a factory visit the press were locked in a room to stop them asking awkward questions. So I have to assume that when she talked about being “a bloody difficult woman” during the brexit negotiations, her plan involved hiding in the loo and waiting for the EU to push a favourable exit deal under the cubicle door at the 11th hour.

The two terrorist attacks didn’t exactly help, leaving the Tories looking like a deer caught in headlights. The Tory cuts to policing occurred on her watch as home secretary. This is something she can’t dodge blame for. She mumbled something about changing the law or doing away with the human right act, because we know how much the terrorists value human rights, that’ll show em!

And her best bro Trump didn’t exactly help matters by attacking the London mayor in the middle of a terrorist incident, something which she failed to condemn. And recall her invite to him to come over next month is still valid, something that inevitably cost her votes and almost cost her dearly.

Then there’s the issue of brexit, the whole reason apparently for her having an election. And what exactly is the Tory policy on brexit? F*ck knows! Other that the vague idea that we trust Mrs strong and stable wobbly and inept, she goes into Brussels, doesn’t talk to them or give away anything, keeps her cards close to her chest and somehow gets to have her cake and eat it. A sensible strategy if you’re playing gin rummy for a half a packet of crisps, but not when negotiating with the EU over something this important. Trying to play brinkmanship with the EU is like trying to play chicken with a freight train. It ain’t going to swerve or stop because it can’t and frankly it doesn’t have too. Just ask the Greeks.

By contrast the labour strategy, which is to negotiate something along the lines of the Norway model, or the lib dems (another referendum) are far more sensible positions. More importantly for a voter, you know exactly what you’re getting if you voted for them. It dawned on me a day or two ago how badly this could play for the Tories when I was talking to a brexit voting Tory. And he could not explain to me how the Tory strategy was going to work. So if brexiters and Tories are having doubts, you can imagine how this played with remain voters (or those soft leave voters who were essentially conned into voting leave).

Now too be fair, election’s are difficult times for Tories. They have to constantly resist the urge to resort to lizard form, they have to go outside during daylight hours and remember not to call voters plebs. They rely on the right wing media to paper over the cracks. And true to form the Daily Mail and Express editors had their tongues firmly attached to May’s ass for the last two weeks. But this time the cracks were more like chasms and crevasses. Attempts to shore up the Tories involved pushing things to levels of Monty Pythonesque absurdity where even UKIP members started to doubt them.

Consider that the Daily Fail devoted 13 pages on the eve of the election trying to paint Corbyn as pro-terrorist, because its possible that one of the terrorists might have once attended a labour rally (obviously to support Corbyn, not because he was casing the event as a possible future target). Okay, and Jimmy Saville was a Tory supporter, knighted by Margaret Thatcher, so by the same Daily Mail logic does that make all Tories pedo’s?

The great British weather

Finally, we have the weather to consider. It was raining yesterday morning, although it cleared up a bit towards the evening. This would have effected the outcome because older people (who tend to vote Tory) tend to vote in the morning, while younger voters (who tend to vote for left wing parties) tend to vote in the evening on the way home from work. So its possible that a few hundred votes in key marginal seats were lost because some pensioners opened their curtains in the morning and thought well I ain’t going out in that and stayed in bed.

The Jock vote

In Scotland the parties fought for every vote

In Scotland it wasn’t a great night for the SNP. That said, they won all but three of Scotland’s seats last time, so it was inevitable that they were going to lose some seats this time. Also the success in 2015 was borne out of two factors. Firstly labour took a very firm stance during the Indy ref of opposing independence, despite the fact that this meant pissing off 45% of the electorate and a majority of voters in several key seats in and around Glasgow. The Tories meanwhile spent the 2015 campaign going on about how Miliband would be in the pocket of those sneaky soap shy Scots. This meant that both labour and the Tories were almost wiped out in 2015.

This time around, labour took a more neutral line towards independence and the Tories focused primarily on soaking up the anti-independence vote. All the literature in my door from the tories was about how the lib dems and labour have no chance, only the true blue Tories can beat the SNP. There was even a Tory poster outside the polling station (which most surely be illegal) proclaiming that the lib dems and labour have no chance of winning here (just as well I voted SNP then, who beat the Tories!). For the record, the lib dems and labour won back several seats in Scotland.

Naturally the argument presented in the media is about how this means Indyref2 is off the cards. Well keep in mind the SNP still control 60% of Scotland’s seats and there’s a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament. If the indy ref result was based on these metrics, they’d win easily. There is, as I’ve discussed before, a dilemma for the SNP. They would like to hold a 2nd referendum ASAP to try and ensure Scotland stays in the EU. On the other hand the more bad news from brexit builds, as well as the anger against the Tories in Westminster (given that independence offers the opportunity to rid Scotland forever of Tory rule) the more likely they are to win.

Weighting up the factors, I’d opt for the long game and wait. That said, I think the SNP need to put in place the necessary measures such that, if it becomes clear that the brexit negotiations are going to result in Scotland getting royally shafted (e.g. tariffs or migration restrictions that will wipe out certain key industries), then a referendum can be called and held quickly. In short there needs to be a big red button on Sturgeon’s desk and while she shouldn’t press the button, the threat that she might should be constantly hanging over the brexit negotiations.

Lessons learnt

So what lessons can we learn from this result? Well I would argue the reason why the polls were wrong this time, as with the previous election and the EU referendum is because there are a lot of angry and confused people who are trying to send a message. Its a rambling incoherent message from the sort of people who have no clue how politics works (e.g. the sort who were googling “what is brexit?” the morning after the referendum vote), but its quite clear what it is – no more austerity. The Tory policy of austerity has cast many millions in the UK into the sort of poverty we should have left in the last century. Until the Tory cuts are reversed, we’ll continue to see random and difficult to predict results like this in all future elections and referendums.

Now granted, ending austerity is easier said than done. Taxes would have to go up. Non-dom’s will have to start paying their fair share of tax. Areas spared from cuts (such as pensions or defence) might need to share the pain. While I think there might be a need to take certain privatised public services that are failing back into public ownership, wholesale re-nationalisation isn’t something the country can afford right now. And naturally a hard brexit is out of the question, given the negative impact that would have on tax receipts. There are, as the Tories say, no magic money trees, but that applies to both parties.

Given that we must now call into question the validity of the EU referendum result (i.e. a large chunk of the leave vote was just a protest vote), there is no mandate for a hard brexit. A soft brexit, with perhaps a 2nd referendum later seems a more sensible strategy. So less a divorce and more of a trial separation.

Thirdly, the UK needs to ditch its ridiculous first past the post election system. The rest of the civilised world used some form of proportional representation (or the two round voting system in France), which is a much fairer and more reliable system. Now supporters of FPTP will say, oh but PR leads to political instability and hung parliaments, while FTTP leads to more stable government….LOL! well I think we can bin that argument after last night.

I mean seriously, at the last election the Tories secured a majority with just 37% of the vote. Which when you account for turn out means they had a majority with the support of just 25% of the electorate. That’s not democracy, its a perversion of democracy. Had just 639 votes gone from the Tories to labour then we’d have gone from a Tory majority in 2015, to a hung parliament. And, as mentioned earlier, there are MP’s who lost their jobs, or came very close to losing this time by just a few hundred votes. They may well have prevailed (or lost) simply because it rained at a particular time of day. That’s how fickle the FPTP system can be. Its basically a form of high stakes lottery, an insane way to run a country and a grossly unfair system.

Send in the clowns

Are these lessons going to be learnt? Well not by the Tories! Already the word is they are going to form a coalition with the Ulster unionists. For those with bad memories, it was Tory pandering to the unionists and euroskeptic backbenchers that crippled John Major’s government and led to Tony Blair’s landslide victory in the 1997 election. To call the unionists unreliable allies is if anything an understatement.

Theresa May is greeted by her new coalition partners

On paper they are fairly gung-ho, pro-hard brexit, send the EU and all the Poles to hell along with all the Catholics. Unfortunately, as a hard brexit will probably wipe out the Northern Irish economy and likely lead to a collapse in the peace process, a border poll and them all becoming Irish citizens, the Unionists will be prone to sudden flip flopping. We could see the scenario where the Tories are in the room negotiating with the EU, digging their heels in on a particular issue, only to be handed a mobile phone with a tweet from the DUP stating that not only do they no longer support the government on this issue, they will walk out of government unless they reverse their position.

Note that adding together the DUP and Tory seats, they have a majority of just 2 seats. So all it takes is a handful of MP’s (e.g. those who won by just a few votes in a pro-remain constituency) to either vote against the government or abstain…..and one of those is Kenneth Clarke (so on brexit its potentially a majority of one!)….and the government can be outvoted. And keep in mind that the fixed term parliament act means that in theory if the Tories form a government, which then collapses, the opposition can block an early election. Protocol would then dictate that the leader of the opposition (currently Corbyn) would then be invited by the Queen to try and form a government, presumably some sort of progressive alliance.

So returning to the question at the beginning, should the opposition parties cut Theresa May some slack? Absolutely not! Stick it to em! The Tories have selfishly prioritised their own needs above that of the country for too long, they will continue to do so, even if it means driving the country over a cliff edge. So the opposition should try to block them at every turn, using every trick available to them and basically paralyse the government in the hope of forcing them out. Then a progressive alliance can take over. And while I’m not a huge fan of Corbyn, he’s certainly a better pick for the job. Theresa May has demonstrated over the last two months why she is wholly unqualified for the job of PM. The Downing street cat could do a better job than her!

Rolling back the years

I have to finish by contrasting with the political situation in Ireland. We’ve just elected our first openly gay Prime minster, who also just happens to be the son of an immigrant (I suspect the Daily Mail readers all fainted when they heard that one). Keep in mind that it was illegal to even be gay in Ireland right up until the 1990’s (yes really!).

So Ireland has progressed a lot over the last few decades, in part I might add because we have this thing called “a constitution” (UK readers might need to google that one) and a PR based voting system. There should have been an election by now in Ireland, as there’s a minority government and both the main parties are keen to sort it out with an electoral show down. But it was decided, for now, that any election should be delayed until some progress is made with the brexit process. While Irish politicians aren’t great (a shower of gombeens, feckin edjits and cute hoor’s as me grandpa used to say), they are a heck of a lot more mature and professional than any UK politician. And again, that’s probably down to our political system and its checks and balances.

So while in an Irish election you face the choice about whether you want shower of gombeen’s or mob of cute hoor’s to take us into the 21st century, in the UK election the choice is between a labour party who wants to take the country back to the 1970’s and a Tory party who want to go back to the 1900’s. That’s how far the UK has slipped in the last few years. The UK is about as strong and stable right now as a one legged stool and its on the verge of becoming a basket case, a failed state.

Election update

As I mentioned before, its clear that labour is doing rather better than expected. However this isn’t so much because Corbyn is some sort of political genius, more because “chicken” May is screwing the campaign up. As the spectator (a Tory rag!) puts it “Theresa May has the warmth, wit and oratorical ability of a fridge-freezer”.

About the only thing she got right was the decision to the polls. Because if the Tories are struggling now, what chance do you think they stand after all the bad news from brexit hits and labour have a vaguely competent leader?

Childcare

There have been more than a few face palm moments from Corbyn, for example childcare. For anyone who doesn’t know, this is a major issue, one that could easily win labour lots of votes if they could come up with a coherent policy.

UK families spend on average £6,000 on child care per year, about £500 a month, more than some people spend on rent or mortgage payments. And that doesn’t buy you 40 hours a week of child care. No it gets you only 25-30 hours a week. Meaning a working couple will need to set up rota where one starts work late and the other finishes early and they take it in turns to take off Friday afternoon’s. Of course if you are a single parent, this means you simply can’t have a full time job. And if you can’t afford to spend 6k a year then that means one parent can’t work at all (or a single parent is forced onto benefits). So many in the UK are forced to choose between a child and a career as a result.

So if labour could propose something sensible here it would be a major vote winner…..but of course Corbyn being Corbyn he flunked it. I mean how can the Tories be losing to this guy? And Diane Abbot similarly fluffed her lines on policing earlier in the campaign. Then there was the issue of the debates. I don’t think Corbyn did terribly well in any of them, but at least he actually showed up, unlike chicken little May, the Turkey of Maidenhead.

Magic money trees

The Tories main go-to excuse now seems to be to try and paint labour as the party of tax and spent. However this betrays the reality that the Tories have run up a larger deficit in just the first 5 years than labour ran up over 13 years of Blair and Brown, despite all of the austerity measures taken (or perhaps because of those measures and the freeze it put on the economy).

And brexit threatens to make the situation worse. Restrictions on trade with the EU, migrants (who pay taxes) leaving and labour shortages depressing growth will all lead to a drop in tax receipts. At the same time, rising inflation will push up the government’s costs. And of course they’ll need to pay various one off fees and costs to the EU or to set up agencies that basically replicate what the EU does, as well as the various unfunded promises they’ve made to various special interests, which all told will costs some figure in access of a hundred billion. Which kind of does put some of the promises labour have made in prospective. In short, the Tories also need a magic money tree, indeed they need a whole forest of them.

The Tories also talk about building loads of council homes, ignoring the fact that it was they who destroyed the UK’s system of council property in the first place. And if all the migrant builders leave, who exactly is going to build all these new homes? Do they have a 100,000 or so experienced builders? Oh no wait, they cut back on funding to programmes like that leading to major labour shortages.

Pensions

It is perhaps inevitable that the Tories will have to cut public spending and do so on a large scale (I mean its not as if they are going to raise taxes!). And pensions are the one thing that has escaped the Tory axe so far. They’ve more or less admitted that the winter heating allowance will be means tested in future. However I suspect this is just the thin edge of the wedge.

It is, to be fair, a little silly to be dishing out benefits to pensioners without means testing, yet forcing the disabled or poor to undergo Daniel Blake style humiliation and hot coals to get the benefits they need. It is one or the other, either you don’t means test any benefits (hence why I favour a system of citizen’s income) or you means test everybody, pensioners included.

The fact is that the UK pension system is simply unaffordable post-brexit, cuts are now inevitable. When the current retirees were paying their taxes most of the benefits they now enjoy didn’t exist and life expectancy’s were such that it was assumed most of them would be dead by now. So the fact is they’ve not paid in sufficient taxes to fund their retirement. Those of us working can’t afford to make up the difference. The new labour plan to bring in lots of migrants to fund pensions was rejected, often by the very older generation who voted for brexit. Private pensions are similarly underfunded and likely to see a shortfall. So it seems clear to me that these cuts will probably be just the start of a rolling back of pension benefits, much as a warned would happen in the event of brexit.

Re-nationalisation

One potentially popular labour policy is the re-nationalisation of public services privatised by the Tories. Now this is something I would support. I would argue that the inherent problem with the UK’s privatised public services is that the system of privatisation set up by Thatcher (an ideology the Tories themselves have now essentially abandoned) was flawed from the start. They allowed the spiv’s and speculators in the city to write the rules of privatisation, who inevitably came up with something that only benefits them and not those who use the public services. Hence why the costs of services such as the railways, electricity and water charges have all soared, as has the cost to the UK taxpayer to subsidise these industries, which is now higher than it was when said services were publicly owned.

But the devil is in the detail. I would sell re-nationalisation as a temporary measure to correct the inherent flaws in the Thatcher era system of privatisation. Indeed, the irony is that many of the UK’s rail firms are owned by foreign state owned rail companies (we’ve essentially outsourced running the railways to other countries because its against the Tory’s religion to nationalise them ourselves). I would primarily focus on forcing the privatised public services to follow through on what their franchise contracts require them to do and then try forcing them to give up those contracts (or allow a partial government buy out) if they are unable to comply (my guess is most of the failing ones will just give up and walk away rather than risk losing more money). And I won’t worry too much about privatised services that are actually well run, focusing on those that need to be fixed (e.g. southern rail). Keep in mind that labour will almost certainly be dependant on other parties, so any plan without cross party support is doomed to failure.

However, Corbyn’s plans here are largely uncosted and clearly ideologically driven. Hence they would likely be rejected by the other parties and he’d have to fight lots of messy court cases to force the franchise owners out and then pay them compensation. In short, its probably not going to work, even under ideal circumstances. And this is unfortunately a common thread throughout the labour manifesto.

Now like I said, there Tories have lots of things that are uncosted too and they aren’t being straight about the cuts they are going to have to implement. But labour that doesn’t give labour the excuse to just make stuff up.

Goodbye Mr Fox

And one issue that isn’t being raised is Fox hunting. While the bulk of the country is opposed to fox hunting and feels the matter was settled, the Tories, being a party of toff’s have never forgotten about the issue and its likely they’ll be trying to re-introduce it all over again. This is the danger with a Tory win, they will be resurrecting lots of long dead political issues and trying to score idealogical points while the country falls apart all around them.

Trump

And Trump will be coming over in July (well unless Corbyn wins and tells him to get lost). Theresa May is clearly in his pocket. While leaders around the world lined up to condemn Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris accords, May was silent. When he say fit to attack the London major in the middle of a terrorist attack, again barely a peep from Downing street.

So a vote for the Tories is a vote for the UK becoming the 51st state of Trump. The UK will be surrendering its sovereignty to the US, as well as accepting US trade standards, including milk and beef loaded with steroids and chlorinated chicken.

Terror attacks and policing

And speaking of terror, its ironic how the Tories try to portray themselves as the party of security and stability. The fact is that policing in the UK is chronically underfunded and they are squarely to blame for this, as there are 20,000 less police officers now than there were when they took over. Policing is now so bad in the UK than certain crimes (such as burglary and petty theft) have undergone defacto legalisation, simply because there’s not enough cops to enforce them. And recall that May’s previous job as home secretary means these cuts happened on her watch.

Its all well and good the Tories mumbling about how they are going to respond to the recent attacks by arresting certain people or tighten this law or that, but one has to ask A) who is actually going to arrest these people and with the prison service over stretched where were you planning to detain them? B) if there’s actual evidence of wrong doing on their part why in blue blazes weren’t they arrested months ago? And C) if there’s no actual evidence, they your talking about internment, which they tried on the IRA back in the 70’s and that didn’t exactly work out did it?

I think its also important to acknowledge the factors driving terrorism. Namely the UK is helping prop up various corrupt and despotic regimes in the middle east, who use anti-western jihadi rhetoric as a conduit to deflect anger away from them. The UK (and the US) are also in the process of stealing middle east oil as well as supporting Israel’s occupation of the West bank. So here’s a crazy thought, but how about we don’t sell these regimes weapons any more, we move away from oil toward renewables, we kick the oil sheik’s out of London, freeze their accounts force them to go home and fix their country’s problems.

Certainly though more police and reversing the Tory cuts would help, for many reasons unrelated to the recent terror attacks. But I fear many will vote Tory now as the party that will keep them safee, when instead your voting for a party who’ve kicked a hornet’s nest and plan to keep kicking it, because hornets are well known to calm down if you keep annoying them.

An ideological election

All in all this is the sort of election where you can’t really rely on the manifestos. I seriously doubt whoever wins will stick to what’s in the manifestos. Indeed, its the things not in the manifesto’s, the unpopular decisions they’ll have to make that should really be deciding this election.

 This is very much an election about ideologies. Indeed this is probably the reason the Tories have taken a dip in the polls. They don’t really have an ideology anymore, they’re basically UKIP-lite.

Unfortunately there’s just enough dump and racist people in the country, or those turned off by labours move to the hard left, that the Tories will probably win anyway for all of the wrong reasons.

Blogging catchup

I’m just back from a trip overseas on business, so I thought it would be a good idea to catchup.

Trump pulls out of Paris climate treaty

It was perhaps inevitable that Trump would pull out of the Paris climate treaty. He’s rowed back on nearly all of his campaign promises, as inevitably many of these policies were just unworkable or unenforceable. The Paris treaty was one of the few things he could actually change, largely because it will take until nearly the end of his presidency to complete the withdrawal (meaning a few months later his successor might well opt to simply re-enter the agreement).

However it has to be said the main loser is going to be the US. There’s a serious case of deja vu here. When G. W. Bush dropped out of the Kyoto protocol, making the same lame arguments about “jobs” and “growth” the end result was that many of the technical experts in fields such as electric cars, fuel cell research and solar panels all went abroad, mostly to Europe and China and helped investors there found companies that are now worth tens of billions of dollars and employ many tens of thousands of people. And inevitably they then exported this technology back to the US. In other words thanks to Bush America ended up having to buy its own technology back off the Chinese and Europeans. Hardly putting “America first” was it!

History will now repeat itself. If Elon Musk gets into trouble and has to start letting staff go, no doubt they’ll just head overseas and get jobs in Chinese or European renewable multinationals. He himself might well get bought out by some Chinese investors who move production overseas. So how exactly are Trump’s actions going to create jobs?….well aside from more jobs in China anyway!

Furthermore, the US hasn’t really got a choice in the matter. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. As I’ve discussed before, the shale gas boom is eventually going to run out of steam. And there’s already signs of a slow down. Climate change is a crisis that will hit the US hard. So regardless of what Republicans think the US will have to give up fossil fuels eventually. What most countries are opting to do is a slow gradual transition. This means that the positives of a renewables boom (i.e. more jobs, more stable energy prices) tends to cancel out the negatives (higher energy prices, the temporary disruption caused by installing renewables infrastructure). Germany is the poster child for this, but a similar policy is playing out in Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Norway, Scotland and Portugal to name a few. And yes, in all of these countries the renewables boom has largely been a positive that has greatly benefited the economy.

However, trying to undertake a crash course in fossil fuels phase out, which Trump has now all but guaranteed America will have to carry out eventually, will likely to be very disruptive to the economy. In short there’s a hard way and an easy way and Trump just committed America to the hard way. The country will be forced some day to undergo a dramatic shift away from fossil fuels, likely when supply shortages, high prices and the damage caused by climate change starts to bite. And they’ll be also forced to import most of the technology to do so from abroad. So Trump has more or less signed America economic death warrant.

Leader of the free world

Indeed, during Trump’s recent European tour it became rather obvious what level of damage he’s already inflicted on America’s reputation abroad. The fact is that Trump is probably one of the weakest president’s America has ever had. Allegations regard him and his families ties to Russia (and the Saudi’s) have crippled his administration. Plus its all well and good making campaign speeches about how much America pays for NATO. However, around the G7 table it will no doubt have been pointed out that most of America’s military spending is on things nothing to do with NATO (while countries like Germany and Poland spend almost their entire military budget on NATO related activities).

And then we have the issue of Trump’s silence over the Portland murders of two men who came to the defence of a Muslim woman being abused by a Trump supporter. It would have been very easy for him to condemn this, but he did not do so until a good week after. And even then the announcement came from the official US government account, not his own twiter account. This could not be a clearer signal that Trump isn’t just saying racist stuff to curry favour with the KKK brigade, but he is actually a racist and a fascist himself.

The resulting power vacuum means that someone else had to take up the mantle of leader of the free world. Given that May is leading the UK into self imposed exile (and economic suicide) that rules out the brit’s. So it now falls to Germany to lead the free world. This has both positives and negatives. On the positive side the Germans, even right wingers like Merkel, are considerably more sensible leaders than any recent American president. On the downside, Merkel is a bit risk adverse and not really the sort of person who is good at handling a crisis (as the situation in Greece proved). And the end consequence is a Europe and an EU that’s even more dominated by Germany than before.

Playing chicken

I need to do a more detailed update of the election situation, but suffice to say the Tory lead is slipping. This was always the risk, elections are fickle affairs, even with the massive lead the Tories had in the polls at the start there’s always a danger events will turn against them. Its possible the polls are wrong and that labour support is being overestimated. But of course its equally possible that the labour lead is being underestimated. While the probability is that the Tories will still win, that doesn’t mean a Tory win is guaranteed (I’d say its an 75% chance of a Tory win, 20% chance of a hung parliament and a 5% chance of a labour win). And all it takes is one scandal, one leak of something the Tories don’t want to reveal in the next few days and the outcome of the election could change.

Of course the Tories must also acknowledge that they are doing badly not because Corybn is some sort of popular political genius in charge of a united party. He’s been unable to get basic facts right and most election literature I’ve seen from labour candidates avoids even mentioning him (by contrast the Tory, lib dem and SNP literature does mention Corbyn, so he’s an electoral asset….for the other parties!). So the reason why the Tories are doing badly in the polls is because they are making a pigs ear of an election that they should otherwise win easily.

Take the recent election debates, where the wicked witch of Maidenhead Theresa May refused to show up. This was a major miscalculation. Granted, given the risk of her reverting to her true form, showing up to a debate with “people” was always going to be a bad idea. But not showing makes her look weak, arrogant and too chickshit scared to face Corbyn. How exactly is she proposing to deal with the EU if she’s too afraid to face off against some bearded hippy? So this decision could well backfire badly. Although given that the main winner of the debate were the Greens and lib dems, so its likely labour will lose support as well as a result of the debate.

The fact is that unless the Tories win by a significant majority this will be seen by her party as a political failure on her part and I’m guessing there will be a move against her. Then again, I’ve a suspicion that the real reason for the election is that the Tories are hiding something, quite possibly that May will be resigning soon for health reasons (or that she’s about to get caught up in some major scandal and forced to go). So that might well be the case anyway.

Living in a different era

One of the problems with Brexit and any Tory election victory is how it has puffed up the bigot brigade, who feel they can now throw their weight around. For example, we have a slum landlord type in England who is now refusing to let property to “coloured people”. We have a jobseeker who was dismissed as a “left wing loon tree hugger” (in an e-mail sent to her) and the number of racist incidents reported countrywide has doubled since the vote with 1 in 3 minorities now reporting some form of abuse.

One is forced to conclude this lot live in a different world and brexit has allowed them to start acting out their insane fantasies. However, this puts them at odds with reality, which does bode well for the country’s future.

Take northern Ireland, a key potential flash point for the brexit negotiations. Any changes to the status of the NI border will have profound knock on implications both in Northern Ireland and the South and thus effect the peace process. On the other hand a lack of a hard border makes a hard brexit an exercise in futility. Any migrant can simply get on a bus at Dublin airport and be in the UK within two hours. And as I’ve pointed out before, its goods not people that the UK needs to worry about. An open Irish border with different tariffs either side of it would be mercilessly exploited by smuggler gangs, undercutting the UK economy and probably bankrupting the economy in NI.

However whenever this issue is discussed in the media, scroll down to the comments and you’ll get lots of the brexit bigots referring to Ireland by the historic term “Eire” and voicing their deluded fantasies that not only is there no risk of a border poll (and Northern Ireland voting to leave the UK) but that Ireland might actually vote to re-join the UK. That’s how far out of touch this lot are.

For those who don’t understand the controversy, shortly after Ireland’s independence in the 1920’s the UK adopted a policy of referring to the Irish Republic as “Eire” as they felt that using the English word “Ireland” could be interpreted as support for a united Ireland and they didn’t like using the word “republic” as they were peeved at how we’d rejected rule by the crown. The British stuck to this policy rigidly to the point of absurdity. During the 1948 Olympics in London while all the other nations paraded under a banner with the name of the country in English, Ireland was forced to parade under the “Eire” banner, the only time in Olympic history a country has paraded under its native language.

Of course the irony here is that “Eire” is the Gaelic geographical name for the Island of Ireland. So actually by adopting this policy the UK was arguably voicing support for a united Ireland. This explains why in 1949, presumably after someone had lent them an English/Irish dictionary, the UK did an about face and took to referring to the Irish state as “the republic of Ireland” (or ROI for short). So when I say Brexiters live in a different era, I am not joking, they are literally sticking to a UK policy that dates prior to the 1940’s. That’s the sort of attitude you’re dealing with.

Downgrade of Chinese debt

One story that seems to have been missed by many was the downgrading of China’s debts by the rating agency Moody’s, blaming concerns over China’s growing private debts. This is the first time the Chinese have suffered a downgrade since 1989. This provoked a furious response from Beijing. Although arguably this less than measured and diplomatic reaction did more harm than the actual downgrade itself.

On the one hand I’d say the Chinese have a point. Its all too obvious that the rating agencies are biased. I recall someone from the Brazilian finance ministry once bemoaning the fact that during the Workers Party era they’d pass a new policy on something completely unrelated to Brazil’s ability to service its debts (e.g. health care or employment law) and the rating agencies would hit them with a downgrade. Even though the UK or US government might well have down something very similar a few months earlier yet they didn’t get hit with a downgrade. Consider that the US has elected a president recently who boasted about reneging on America’s debts. If China is in such big trouble that its credit rating should be cut, then fairness would require that America’s (and the UK) should lose its A rating altogether.

That said, there’s no smoke without fire. Interbank lending and lending to local businesses as well as growing credit card and mortgage debts in China represents something of an unknown quantity in the country, with it unclear how much has been lent to who and how safe those loans are and what’s going to happen when those loans are defaulted on.

Now some will react with glee to the news China might get into trouble. Think again. Alot of the debt buying going on worldwide, both private and public debt, is being handled by China. So if China catches a cold the rest of might get Ebola. Any change in policy in China, e.g. they stop buying bonds or raise interest rates, would have a amplified knock effect in the west. Mortgage rates would soar, inflation would skyrocket. A devaluation of the RMB would suddenly make many Western goods uncompetitive and could push Western states into recession. While its often pointed out how much of America’s debt’s (both private and public) is owed to China (and thus Trump supporters seem to feel they can just up and renege on that), they forget that two thirds of it is owed to other Americans, mostly pension funds. So any American default of its foreign debts to China would likely bankrupt the entire US pension system overnight.

So this is something that should concern us all. Anyone urging the likes of Trump or May to play some sort of “great game” with China needs to realise what’s at stake – namely keeping your job and not living out your retirement in a dumpster! The trouble is, as recent events have shown above, there’s more than enough people in both the UK and US who will cut off their own nose to spite their face.

The biggest corruption scandal in history

And speaking of Brazil, operation car wash, the investigation that brought down the presidency of Dilma Rousseff, continues and its quickly growing into one of the biggest corruption scandals in world history. Its becoming clear also that crimes of Rouseff or her predecessor Lula were actually fairly minor and that the main reason why she was removed was more because she refused to try and slow down or halt the investigation. So her impeachment is looking more and more like a de-facto coup.

And the current president Temer and his party have their grubby little paw prints all over this scandal. Its clear that they have been on the take far more than Rouseff’s workers party. And since coming to power, we’ve seen key persecutors fired and replaced with political lackies of the president, judges dying in mysterious circumstances, witnesses disappearing, etc. To say this stinks is to put it mildly. There is a very real risk this crisis could bring down the entire Brazilian political system or possibly lead to a coup.

Ruinair

Given past experience with British Airways I purposely didn’t fly with them this time and avoided Heathrow like the plague. So I wasn’t entirely surprised by the news that BA had all sorts of IT problems (not that their recent penny pinching cuts have anything to do with that!), nor with news of them leaving passengers in the lurch.

The fact is that the only difference between BA and Ryanair is that Ryanair are cheaper and generally on time. In a crisis BA will just fob you off and abandon you just as quickly as the budget airlines. So you may as well fly Ryanair or Easyjet and save yourself a few bob. And I am by no means alone. I know lots of business traveller who won’t get on a BA flight, even if their employer is paying for it. I welcome the day when BA collapses, much as Alitalia is currently going bankrupt.

The libertarian slavery paradox

The Political compass as libertarians see it

I happened to be watching the remake of the TV series Roots recently (based on the Alex Haley novel) and it did occur to me how it creates a bit of a troubling problem for libertarians. They like to see themselves as the ultimate liberals at the opposite end of the political compass to nazi’s and authoritarians. However I would argue that logic would dictate that any libertarian society would inevitably eventually become a slave owning society.

Think about it, in a libertarian society if someone owes you money or compensation for something, how do you get them to pay? Let’s suppose someone did a shoddy job tiling your roof, or he ran over your 6 year old kid and she’s now paralysed for life and needs expensive treatment, or someone simply defaults on their loans to a bank without paying (which is bad news for savers, recall there will be no federal insurance on banks under libertarianism, if enough borrowers default the bank goes under). Without a government, in a libertarian society with lax law enforcement and little to no regulations means that courts will be toothless. And without some sort of authority to enforce the law people, in particular the wealthy with their vast fortunes and private armies, can simply ignore the law. And those at the very bottom, can simply shrug their shoulders and say, well I’m broke, I’ve got nothing to pay with, I own no property, so your screwed, now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go get drunk, then drive to the park and fire my gun at squirrels near where your children play.

And the thing is that this wouldn’t only be allowed in a libertarian society, it would be considered a perfectly moral act. Libertarians often claim to follow the philosophy of Objectivism, which basically amounts to saying that its okay to be a selfish jerk and that being a kind and caring person who gives the slightest thought for others is morally wrong. In such a society, it would be considered okay to default on debts and basically screw everyone else over. This will be normal. But if everyone did that, society would quickly fall apart. Banks won’t lend money to anybody, even those with good credit. Doctors would refuse treatment without payment up front (and patients with any sense would refuse to pay until the treatment was completed). Without some sort of a system (let’s call it “a government”) to make sure people honour their obligations, the whole economy would unravel.

Now libertarians would say, oh but we’ll just have this code of honour whereby if anyone does something bad we’ll give them a terrible review on Facebook or something. Ya, and is that actually going to help? Donald Trump went bankrupt four times, you’d think after the 2nd time people would have learnt the lesson not to lend him money. You’d think nobody, least of all libertarians would have voted for him, but here we are. There are a host of well known scams around, many of them simply modern takes on old con tricks, yet thousands still fall for them every day.

They have this TV programme on UK TV called “Rogue Traders” where they set up a sting operation and catch various con-artists, dodgy used car salesmen, telemarketing fraudsters, cowboy builders and rogue tradesmen and then essentially name and shame them. Thing is, very few end up out of business. Some of them keep appearing in multiple episodes, sometimes under a new name or sometimes openly trading under the same name (one even put “as seen on rogue traders” on the side of his van!). Generally what’s stopped these people becoming season regulars is that the authorities eventually caught up with them and put them out of business.

But in a libertarian society there’s no authority and no social safety net. So how do you enforce any sort of law or civil suit? My guess is that what will happen is when the repo men arrive to cart away someone’s stuff, if they don’t find enough stuff to pay the debt, they’ll take away the debtor and his family and force them to work off the debt. This is pretty much how slavery worked in a number of society’s throughout history and how the practice of bonded labour works to this day.

Now libertarians will no doubt say, no we’ll outlaw slavery. But its going to be impossible to enforce that when the rich and the powerful have their own private goon squad. And unfortunately even in this day and age there’s several parts of the world where bonded labour is still practised, despite laws outlawing the practice. And it tends to occur in places where the government’s authority is weak or corrupt. For example in Somalia and Libya, countries with little in the way of government and lots of guns (as close to a libertarian society as you’ll find!) there are active slave markets.

And there’s the second problem for libertarians, democracy would collapse pretty quickly in a libertarian society. Taking objectivism to its logical conclusion, the easiest way to win an election is to bribe election officials and intimidate voters. e.g. the wealthy landowner threatens mass evictions, the billionaire says his goons will go on the rampage if they don’t win the election. This is how African dictators can win elections with margins of +90%. And even if the wealthy lose the election, they can simply ignore anything the government does that they don’t like, as they are essentially untouchable in a libertarian society.

In a society whereby the wealthy can grow their fortunes unchecked and utilise the power it gives them without any checks or balances, then it becomes essentially impossible to have a democratic and free society. Take for example Rockfeller or the other billionaire’s of the “robber baron” era. With no government to break up his monopoly (and an Objectivist philosophy that basically said it would be morally wrong for him to give anything away to charity) his fortune would have grown even larger, his descendants would now not only control 90% of the US oil supply, but probably 90% of the US energy supply as well as many public utilities (e.g. internet access, water, hospitals, police, fire services, etc.). At this point, they become the defacto ruling royal family of the US, emperors in all but name, with the role of US president essentially becoming “ass kisser in chief” (you can just see the debate with Hilary and Trump demonstrating their butt kissing techniques).

Now libertarians will say, oh that would never happen, we’d just boycott the business of those we don’t like (in which case you need to go look up the meaning of the word “monopoly” cos that’s sort of the problem, you can’t boycott a monopoly!). Or they’ll argue that sooner or later another billionaire will build up an even vaster fortune and take over. Oh great, so because one rich asshole is better at screwing us over than some other rich asshole, he gets to be emperor instead. Ya, that sound way better than our current system of government!

The sad fact is that libertarianism only works if you ignore the last thousand years of history. A libertarian society would quickly become a feudal society, where the rich will grow vast fortunes unchecked and abuse their power without limit. Where the poor, if they are unable to pay the vastly overinflated prices the rich with their monopolies charge, will be at risk of being sold into slavery. Where speaking out will be impossible, as the press and internet are controlled by the rich. And those who do a Robin hood and fight back will be derided as socialists and terrorists.

In truth, if there’s anything that libertarianism is at the oppose end of the political spectrum to it is democracy and free markets.

Gibraltar and article 50

Brexit threatens to make a monkey out of the UK

The EU’s response to article 50 was fairly conciliatory and to be honest about as good as the UK could expect. If the EU wanted to be nasty, they could have taken the opportunity to pull funding from all EU farm subsidies, university research and development aid to the UK for all projects that would end post-brexit. Then slap all UK students in EU universities with a massive bill for their fees and ex-pats with fees for healthcare costs. They could have given MEP’s the day off, stopped Farage’s salary packed him off on the Eurostar home, handed out bottles of Champagne and declared a new EU wide holiday “so long suckers day”. But they didn’t.

But instead the plan seems to be to sort out the exit from the EU first then talk about a trade deal. This is as good as the UK is going to get. As one MEP pointed out, brexit is in of its self painful enough (self inflicted) punishment, the EU doesn’t have to be nasty. As for the Theresa May’s plan to essentially play chicken and brinkmanship with the EU, this is the equivalent of her driving towards the EU in a mini cooper, while the EU is in a truck driving towards her. And given that the EU has to balance out the consensus of 27 member states, its a truck that’s on cruise control. The EU won’t blink first. The eurozone crisis should have made that fairly obvious.

Of course the bit that got the tabloids worked up was how the EU appears to be backing Spain over Gibraltar. This is hardly surprising. Put yourself in the EU’s shoes. Suppose your a boss of a company, two employees are in dispute with one another over something. One is one of those nightmare employees who is always causing problems, who fortunately has already given his notice. The other is not your most dedicated employee, but he’s certainly loyal and generally pulls his weight. Who are you going to back up?

Personally, while I understand why Gibraltar’s citizens want to be part of the UK, I can’t understand why the UK wants with Gibraltar (I’m told by ex-pats its a grotty little tourist trap), nor what Spain wants with it either. Personally, I’d try and sell it to Morocco or some gullible Saudi sheik. However, Gibraltar’s post-brexit status does hammer home the sorts of issues the UK will face post-brexit. If the UK wants to maintain air links with Gibraltar, that will require EU agreement. So everything will have to take a week long sea voyage there or go through Spain (or possibly even Morocco). If the UK imposes strict border controls on the EU, then the EU will reciprocate, Gibraltar citizens will need a visa just to go into Spain to go shopping and visa versa. Trade and tourism will collapse. Leaving the EU common market and suddenly all the food and resources the colony needs gets slapped with tariffs ranging from 10-30%. In short, unless the rest of the UK is willing to pay a lot of money to subsidise Gibraltar, it will become non-viable pretty quicly. The locals will all leave and the UK will own a ghost town.

Naturally fighting talk about going to war to protect Gibraltar is just plain silly and shows how far divorced from reality the brexiters have strayed. Are they seriously proposing to attack a NATO ally because the Spanish make Gibraltar pay an extra 20% more for olive oil and they make the locals fill out the same sort of visa application form the British make Spanish fill out upon arrival at Heathrow?

But the thing is this will apply to the whole of the UK as well, Gibraltar is merely a microcosm of the problem. Any immigration controls or restrictions on free movement of people or goods, will be reciprocated by the EU. Smugglers, both those on the Irish border and the channel ports will be having a field day. An interesting article for example about the lengths smugglers of tea would go to in days gone by to outwith the tax man.

Furthermore, given that Spain has now indicated that it won’t block Scotland joining the EU, this suggests a secret horse trade has gone on. The EU has given Spain some leeway over Gibraltar, in return for which they will not object to Scotland joining the EU in the event of a yes vote. I warned before that if Tories plan to rely on “the Spanish option” to block Scottish independence, that’s not going to work….of course if Gibraltar really wants to put the cat among the pigeons, the thing to do would be to vote to join Scotland (they’d get to join the EU again and piss off the Spanish!).

But certainly if you heard a popping noise this Friday that was the sound of the brexiters bubble bursting. It should be obvious now that they are not in the driving seat. The UK’s options are to take the best deal the EU offers them, or screw the country over by exiting without a deal. Which isn’t much of a choice.