Play Up And Play The Game

Who needs traditional politics when there are exciting things happening in Football politics?

This one has all the makings of being a very lively matter. It is from the Tax Justice dot blogspot dot com of Thursday 29th April and concerns FIFA claiming a penalty against Tax Justice Network for tackling harder than they like..

At least it will give us something interesting next week.

Quote:

The latest newsletter from Offshore Alert states that:

"The governing body of world soccer – FIFA – has attempted to intimidate Offshore Alert ahead of our conference in Florida next week at which allegations of fraud and corruption within FIFA will be made.

In a letter to Offshore Alert on April 23, FIFA's attorney, Lawrence Cartier, of London-based law firm Cartier & Co., issued a thinly-veiled threat of a possible libel action should a session by journalist and film-maker Andrew Jennings contain any "defamatory statements."

We are pleased that Offshore Alert has pledged to "proceed unfettered by outside interference." As they note, quite rightly:

"British libel law is widely considered to be repugnant, particularly in the USA where, in fact, British libel judgments have been held unenforceable in at least two states because they were, literally, considered to be repugnant to each state’s public policy.

"It lends support to illegal activity by discouraging journalists from exposing those who deserve to be exposed, all the while enriching attorneys at the expense of society in general. It is a third-world law that has no place in a developed society."

Unquote

But it won’t be as much fun as watching the basketball games in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Should you be worried about what happens in the next year or two after all the recent fuss and have been seeking guidance from the UK media and all those immensely knowing pundits I regret you will not be aware of one little problem that might well bear on all the others.

http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm is entitled “The Imminent Crash of Oil Supply: Be Afraid.” I was pointed to this by the site “Some Assembly Required” on ckm3 dot blogspot.com today, Thursday 29th April in the last on the daily list titled: “Quoted”.

The Counter Currents dot org item under their section on “Peak Oil” posted on Thursday 22 April by Nicholas C. Arguimbau is a long one but does have some authority and the title makes it clear what it is about. Simply, it states that there is going to be an oil supply problem which we are too late to deal with. To all intents and purposes the situation will worsen so much over the next twenty years that we will have to learn how to do without the stuff.

For those who believe that the problem can he addressed by drilling more and drilling deeper there are two issues. One is the more severe pressures and conditions that arise at depth, exemplified by the current blow out in The Gulf of Mexico. The other is EROEI or Energy Return On Energy Invested that is the energy cost of extracting energy from whatever source. This idea might explain why the Romans never really went into coal mining.

If it happens or when it happens who will be blaming who?

Immigration - The Context

The Gordon Brown gaffe I understand arose from his conversation with a lady who was referring to the numbers of Eastern Europeans who had moved to Rochdale.

As it happens I know my DNA and my male Y chromosome is the result of a mutation that occurred around 25 to 30,000 years ago amongst early migrants from Africa. It is common over much of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the far North and appears further afield, notably in the Hindu Kush, perhaps carried there by the Macedonians.

Quite how or when mine arrived in the Atlantic Isles I cannot know, there are too many options that begin with end of the last Ice Age. What I do know is that it is found in The Malverns around four hundred years ago. Other parts of my DNA are from elsewhere in The Atlantic Isles from Caithness to Cowes and from Great Yarmouth to Sligo and from further afield in earlier generations.

It is safe to say the world is my family. The mainstream view of the geneticists is that our human species derives from a small number of survivors of the planetary volcanic crisis of about 75,000 years ago. Their descendants moved on and spread about the face of Earth. It seems that we are all cousins by one degree or another, I repeat all.

The immigration issue should be about the future, not the past. We are carrying a large amount of baggage from the 20th and 19th centuries and seem unable to rid ourselves of past fantasies about our status, influence and ability to manage life in the ordinary world. The real issue is the numbers.

Given the scattered indiscriminate movement down the eras many of us may not be what we think we are or what we would like to be. In that time there have been around three thousand generations to spread out and mutate in our DNA, bodily structure and appearance in various ways. Our breeding pattern is not seasonal or confined to particular nutritional sources and can be multi-partner. So we breed rapidly given the right circumstances and variations will occur.

So much for the baggage of race; what about the numbers? China has a population of around 1.3 billion, India of about 1.2 billion, Pakistan about 170 million, Bangladesh about 165 million and Nigeria about 155 million. If each has only a small proportion of its population migrating to the UK the number arriving here will amount to a larger proportion of the UK population.

There are many well populated bits and pieces of Empire and other places that can add to the numbers for one reason or another. We have opened our doors to all in EU. It seems that many from poorer countries with less generous social services have responded to the imperatives of comparative advantage. Also, quite a few French have had better luck in London than in Lens or Lyon.

In the second decade of the 21st Century we are in a very different world. There are more human beings on Earth now than ever before with an increasing proportion located in vast conurbations totally dependent on outside supplies of food, water and energy. The technology of transport and reductions in real prices has meant that large numbers can be carried from place to place and continent to continent at lower cost than ever before and with greater ease.

The development of media and communications has meant that many can define themselves in terms of other places and beliefs rather than according to the place they live. Many belief systems and national identities owe more to past propaganda and group myths than to any historical reality. It can be worse. Some people identify not just with real human groups but with fantasies created by the media for profit. Should I go into my Dr. Spock routine?

At present we have politicians losing sleep over their campaign promises and what cuts may or may not be made and how to persuade the electorate that all will be well. At the same time the mind baggage they carry means that they cannot admit that major increases in the population of the UK by whatever means will impose any sort of problem in respect of public expenditure or services.

Almost all the migrants and subsequent and other births will be in existing major conurbations or related urban areas and will require housing, the full range of public services, a health service free to all, and access to the benefits system, employed or not. It will require water, energy, and last but not least, food most of which will have to be imported and paid for by vastly improving the Balance of Payments despite an increasingly adverse Balance of Trade.

We are being asked to believe that these monetary imbalances can be covered by people sitting by computers in London flogging dodgy insurance deals, trading even dodgier financial instruments and screwing debt ridden residents despite the richest of the money men avoiding the most onerous tax liabilities.

The theory is that immigration necessarily allows GDP to increase to pay for all that has to be provided. This assumes that the migrants will be paying tax. Perhaps all of our richest recent migrants pay very little tax at all having their wealth in tax havens. The London Cronygarchy which employs a lot of cheap migrant labour argue the trickle down theory. Sadly, most of the trickling goes in import heavy consumption expenditure, overseas property investments and using minimum pay or zero wage labour.

Most of the poorest do not pay much tax and when their children and their relatives arrive some will add to the numbers of dependents and potential claims for benefits. Many migrants seem to be bringing in quite elderly relatives unlikely to work. A proportion do contribute more than they cost but for some it will be less because of the needs of their families. The government omits remittances from the calculations as well as incidental benefits exported.

Since 1997 the government has trashed the agricultural sector and given the big supermarkets, largely owned by big finance, almost unlimited power over the land. A consequence is that our food supply increasingly is imported from places that do not give a secure supply, largely on a just in time basis and dependent on petro-chemical based fertilisers and transport. Land is being made over not to feed us but to feed ethanol into our petrol tanks. Hunger could be less than a month away.

The energy policy badly needed has been deferred because it is difficult and does not win votes. The infrastructure of the water industry needs renewal as well as the expansion of storage, another policy area largely ignored to keep the money men happy. The NHS is in real trouble, the government tolerating casualty rates akin to a bitter military campaign and even starving the patients.

Education in a country with sixty million people means spending huge amounts, yet the cry is that we are critically short of many skills and talents. More are attending university than ever before but Tesco has claimed it cannot manage its shops without importing literate staff from abroad. Does nobody see the disconnection?

Housing policy amounts to building a new generation of urban slums. Benefits policy undermines family and community life. In terms of law and order an increasing number of patches of UK territory are now garrisoned effectively by gangs and groups not just outside the law but protected by it whatever they choose to do to others.

If the UK political system cannot cope with the issues arising from government debt and has to go begging because of past profligacy and population increase whether from existing or new population unsupported by provision for food, water and energy, then it will have to resort to some very unpopular measures.

Beggars cannot be choosers.

Maps Do Furnish A Room

The BBC has been running some interesting programmes (gasp) lately on the subject of maps and map making, parallel with items about Captain Cook and his mapping on satellite documentary channels. The reason is a major exhibition to open on 30 April at the British Library on the theme of “Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art”. It is difficult to imagine at the beginning of the 21st Century how mapping was regarded in the past and its political and intellectual significance.

A good map can indicate in what appears to be simple visual terms what is a very complicated set of facts and ideas. The one above is taken from Economic Road Map dot com of 23 April quoting an interactive feature in Forbes on the subject of China Widens Its Reach in the extent of investments by Chinese firms and arms of its government in recent years.

What is striking about this map is that if you combine the British Empire of the 19th Century with a plot of where the overseas investment was going from the City of London in that period then there would be a strong similarity. Clearly, Imperial Russia was no part of the Empire, but there was a lot of investment there and in Imperial Russian Bonds. Equally, in other parts of the world beyond British control there was a capital in their developing railway and other communication and financial systems. A good deal of growth in the USA came from British money.

In the 1870’s Disraeli, with money borrowed from Rothschild’s, snapped up the Khedive of Egypt’s shares in the Suez Canal Company when he became financially embarrassed. In borrowing on a large scale for consumption purposes, the Khedive had not looked at the small print and when by the 1880’s he defaulted Britain put in a Baring (Evelyn Baring later Lord Cromer) and the troops and took control. This led inevitably to the entanglements in the Sudan to protect British interests. Gordon of Khartoum may have thought he was dying for Christianity but in practical terms he was there to protect shareholder value of the City’s major investment banks.

There is an academic debate over the scale and natures of China’s seagoing ventures at the turn of the 14th and 15th Centuries. Was it all about astronomy and mapping? Was it the search for new lands for trade, commerce and perhaps control? What did happen is that China, on a change of regime, stopped the voyages. Given their scale it is quite possible that it became apparent that the potential returns and benefits were not going to be enough. But that was then and in a different era.

How long will it be before China and perhaps others begin to demand more say and more action in the affairs of this nation and that in which they have substantial investments? Just how long will the heavily indebted nations of the West be able to lord it over the councils of international organisations and other entities? What is the old jingo way of putting it? We have the men, we have the ships, we have the money too?

So as our politicians and others in the debt laden parts of Europe play pat a ball with their voters how can one explain simply to the electorates that in the last analysis neither we nor they are in control or really in charge? The Greeks apparently had a choice. It seems that had an offer from China and Russia which seemed to be on generous terms and without too many strings, if they could believe it. From Germany and the EU the money came an offer with a clearer price. At the moment the Greeks have opted for Europe, it seems.

If it is necessary, whose offer will our next Prime Minister choose when the bills come in?

Scotland Fair And Foul

This was posted by Euan Mearns in The Oil Drum web site on Saturday 24 August about Alastair Dawson’s book “So Fair And Foul A Day” relating to the impact of geophysical events on the Scottish economy and history. Whilst the book takes Scotland as its basis it is necessary to remember that climatic and weather conditions, never mind the consequences of geophysical events, do not take much notice of recent man made political boundaries.

All the upland districts of the Atlantic Isles were affected as well as the arable areas. It is said that during the period of the Highland Clearances more people left the Yorkshire uplands to migrate than the Scottish.

Quotes below:

Introduction:

With the eye of the global media now firmly trained on Iceland, this is a timely reminder of the power our restless planet has to disrupt our daily lives. With air traffic still grounded across much of northern europe, it is truly inconvenient to be a tourist stranded abroad, or to have cancelled a holiday or business trip. But in the grander scheme how serious is this really? European politicians are now awakening to the possibility of this inconvenience dragging on for days or even weeks and are now describing this inconvenience as a crisis.

Now no one knows how this eruption will develop. But historical records describe how previous eruptions on Iceland had truly catastrophic impact on Scotland's climate and on the welfare of its people during the tenth to eighteenth centuries.

Below the fold are three excerpts from Professor Alastair Dawson's excellent book, “So Fair And Foul A Day” that gives an account of the impact of earlier Icelandic eruptions.

From the book:

The Eldgja Fires

Some of the most stupendous volcanic eruptions in Iceland took place some time between 934 and 940. The eruptions happened in the district of Eldgja in southern Iceland and nearly 220 million tonnes of sulphate aerosols were injected into the northern hemisphere atmosphere, which combined with water vapor to produce around 450 million tonnes of dilute sulphuric acid that was dispersed worldwide into the troposphere.

The Eldgja volcanic vents stretch along a 75 km length of southern Iceland between Mt Katla and the Vatnajokull ice cap. The early settlers of Iceland must have been amazed by what was happening. Hundreds of square kilometers were covered by lava flows associated with 15 separate eruptions taking place over a 6-year period. Some of the columns of ash are thought to have been in the order of 14 km high. The sagas tell of the destruction of farmland, the abandonment of land.

Some families are even described in the sagas as having attempted to rake the cover of volcanic ash from fields. No one knows for sure what the effects were on the weather of northern Europe. Some information can be gained from a similar, though less extensive, eruption of Laki in Iceland during 1783-84. It is well known, for example, that the years following this eruption were associated with the lowering of air temperatures across Northern Europe, the occurrence of dry sulphurous fogs and damage to crops and vegetation.

From what we know, the Eldgja eruptions were twice as big as those of Laki. Thus we may expect that the effects on society were at least as severe as those associated with the Laki eruptions, which took place throughout the summer of 1783. Although hardly any historical accounts exist for this period, there are descriptions of drought in Ireland at this time, when the mountains of Connaught were burnt with celestial fire, and the lakes and rivers dried up. There is also an account for 941 of a great frost across Ireland and the freezing of rivers and lakes, but no information is available for Scotland.

Page 122 - Living in a Freezer

After another cold winter in 1689 to 1690 we enter the 1690s, associated by many with the lowest air temperatures throughout the period 1350-1700. Across northern Europe it was once again a time of dislocated society, population decline and abandonment of farmland. Scotland's climate was already in shock from freezing winter temperatures and wet summers when a series of volcanic eruptions took place. Mt Hekla, in Iceland erupted in 1693, depositing ash across much of Iceland and as far afield as Scotland and Norway.

It is also well known that a major southward extension of sea ice took place at this time across the Northern North Atlantic. Whenever this happened, the tracks of storms were displaced further south than normal, leading to bitter winter winds and exceptionally high rainfall across Scotland.

The year 1694 was particularly disastrous, since it was the first of seven years of famine across Scotland known as "King Williams Dear Years". The famine took place prior to widespread potato cultivation in Scotland and hence there was a great dependence on grain.

The famine is said to have begun with a cold east wind and sulphurous fog (from the Iceland volcanic eruptions) over the whole country. Hugh Miller from Cromarty, a self taught geologist and natural historian, one of Scotland's great figures from the nineteenth century, tells us in the only known written account of this remarkable event:

One night in the month of August 1694, a cold east wind, accompanied by a dense sulphurous fog, passed over the country, and half filled corn was struck with mildew. It shrank and whitened in the sun, till the fields seemed as if sprinkled with flour, and where the fog had remained longest - for in some places it stood up like a chain of hills during the greater part of the night - the more disastrous were its effects.

From the unfortunate year till 1701, the land seemed as if struck with barrenness, and such was the change on the climate, that the seasons of summer and winter were cold and gloomy in nearly the same degree. The wanted heat of the sun was withholden, the very cattle became stunted and meagre. November and December, and in some places January and February, became the months of harvest, and labouring people contracted diseases which terminated in death when employed in cutting down the corn among ice and snow.

Page 143

1783 - a disaster across northern Europe

Then things deteriorated even further. In June a major volcanic eruption started in the Laki area of Iceland. The eruptions became more extensive after late July 1783 and continued until January 1784. The effect on the weather of northern europe was immediate. Across Scotland, clear summer skies were soon replaced by a haze of dust and a sulphurous fog which obscured the sun for 3 weeks.

In her diary from Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, Janet Burnett, unaware of the volcanic eruption, described how the leaves on the plants in her garden and the crops in the fields were withering yellow. In fact, the year became known in Scotland as "the year of the yellow snow".

The magnitude of the Laki eruption can be gauged by its catastrophic effects in Iceland. approximately 53% of Iceland's cattle, 77% of the ponies and 82% of the sheep died, together with 20% of the island's population. The Icelanders seemed to be facing complete extinction.

A committee was appointed in Copenhagen to devise means of relief. There was even a plan considered to evacuate the island and remove the entire population to Denmark.

Unquote

Perhaps you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

My grandma, who I knew quite well, knew her Dad who knew his grandma who knew her grandpa who knew his grandma who knew her father-in-law who knew his grandma, aunty to the lady above, whose family were adjacent to and connected by marriage to a family who knew William Shakespeare quite well. By my count The Bard wrote his own stuff albeit a great deal on a "cut and paste" basis for plots and themes.

There were just too many people around in Warwickshire and London then and later who would have been aware that he did not had that been the case and the later generations were around Lichfield at the time of Garrick and Johnson.

He would have made a great blogger. So there.

Choice Or No Choice?

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the National Health Service is the Chinese Army/Praetorian Guard/Janissaries of the General Election campaign, take your pick. Important as health matters are to all of us and admitting the large number of people it employs directly and indirectly it remains that the health provision we get is only that which we can afford.

My local constituency seems to have five candidates. Generally regarded as a “safe” Conservative seat this has coloured the stance of all of them. My previous home was in an ultra safe Labour seat, once held by a local man who had done real work who was replaced by a media shoe in from London to suit Big Tony.

Our present MP is to retire to concentrate on, errr, media work. Quite how much of the past vote was “personal” or not is an interesting question but not one that should have much effect. The person was as good at giving offence to particular interests as garnering votes by effort and publicity.

What have I got? There is a UKIP candidate, a local who does not look tidy in a suit. There is no leaflet yet, but the UKIP web site tells me that the views are “right on” with the things that UKIP is most determined about. The level of interest locally suggests that this candidate will be lucky to save the deposit. This person is the only one who apparently does not list the NHS high on the priority rating being concerned more with economics and self government for the UK.

The Labour candidate is the most remarkable. An NHS doctor, so very much of the client state, apparently in October 2008 was in Florida securing the election of Barack Obama to the American Presidency (was this paid secondment?). This was achieved by reading out at major rallies the text on the back of the Labour Party Membership Card which includes “for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many and not the few.” In your dreams, matey, in your dreams, if you do get elected, Mandy will want a quiet word.

I do not think the chances are great if only because amongst the many pretty pictures is one that really will frighten the locals. It is one alongside a man with staring eyes who carries a big banana, indeed Miliband The Merciless. Fear gripped my vital statistics. Oddly it was this bit of the leaflet that refers to the candidate’s medical career. So vote for me or else.

We do have a Green Party candidate. For disgruntled types like us this might seem to be the best option, however Green it might be but it is not without problems. The NHS features at number three behind living wages and a million new jobs with bashing the bankers to follow. It is possible to discern the Militants of the 1970’s and 1980’s behind the fog of promises. This party means state controls and spending on a much greater scale and to allegedly “community” purposes whatever that means.

For the Lib Dem’s we had the ultimate accolade, a personal appeal from St. Joanna Lumley of Sagarmatha. Her commendation of our local candidate reads like a cross between a Nobel Prize eulogy and the compulsory compliments paid by visitors to the Emperor of China. Nobody, nobody can be that perfect. A local worthy with a clean record maybe and one who knows how to present the party line.

But my dear, the policies as well as the people. Never mind the lack of realism. For the UK to be bundled into Europe in the middle of the present financial mess will mean a bigger and fuller surrender than even Heath and Wilson achieved between them. The Lib Dem sent us two things, in one the NHS was in prime spot and the other was going on about community in a town stripped of its greengrocers, most of its pubs and post offices as well as almost all the local shopkeepers.

Which leaves us with the Conservative. Alas a lawyer who is given to good causes but at least with some mention of business and the private sector. But the NHS is there at number two in this case as well as the genuflections to the altars of community. There are claims to local commitment but there is no hint of what other interests might be tucked away. What lobbyist or consultancy interests might be lurking behind the curtains? If they are not there now, the Conservative is elected and Cameron has a majority then our MP will be getting offers that may be impossible to refuse.

I keep complaining that there are things that are missing in the Election Campaign and it shows in the offerings of the various candidates. The war, the debacle of the drugs trade, the increasing divisions and tensions, the sheer incompetence of much of government, the challenges we will have in maintaining a great deal of the basic structure of our living and the loss of much of our law and ability and the degradation of the urban areas.

As for the NHS; are any of them aware of the disastrous shambles it has become? Are they aware that it might be close to meltdown and that as the largest source of employment and incomes in the UK it could become the quicksand of the economy?

If all the other candidates in the UK are like this lot it can only get worse.