Coming Soon?

Our world is not a happy place and in some parts the horror of human descent into war and conflict is all too apparent.  In this field Michael Yon has seen a great deal of it. 

His latest post from Syria, Not A Crosswalk presents us with the reality.  There is a lot to worry about.

In this context the attempts by the West to "do something" are not having much effect, let alone success.  If Zero Hedge is to be believed it has gone badly wrong and gives no cause for hope or optimism.  How and where it will end is still an open question.

There are some historians who looking at the past have seen something of a pattern when revolution or associated social and governmental collapse occurs. 

It is one that features in Yon's article.  There are many groups of young men with little education, no real future who are "surplus" and usually detached from their families.

If they are allowed to roam, given some "cause" or belief and then armed they can be a source of serious instability, violence and a breakdown in law and social order. 

If there are people who will fund them, supply the arms and offer basic logistical support then the scope for trouble or even disaster is real.

In Syria this is the case.  There are a large number of such groups very active and cannot be said to control, because such organisation or capability is beyond them.  The result is chaos and all that it implies.

Whether they are defeated or do bring about chaos or a radical change of rule in Syria is difficult to judge.  But when Syria is finished where will some or most of them be going next?

Mandela And Thatcher

In the coverage of the passing of Mandela, inevitably there has been some comment, informed and otherwise on the nature of his and Thatcher's role in the transition of South Africa from an Apartheid State with rigorous segregation and rule to a form of democratic state.

As ever, there are deficiencies in the historical and personal perspective to this.  Using an idea from the last blog, they were both born into the last cohort of The Old World, Mandela in 1918 and Thatcher in 1925. 

Who did they know as young people and what did they talk about?  Mandela in his community could hardly avoid it and Thatcher as a grocer's daughter in the shop would have met all sorts of people. 

They would have both grown up in communities where there were older people around with recollections and personal experience of The Boer War of 1899 to 1902 and the consequences. 

I recall being with people born in the 1860's and after, so it is possible that both of them might have had some sort of personal contact with the few survivors of those born just before then and in a different and violent world.

Mandela was of tribal origin, the Xhosa, a person of high standing born of descent to Kings, Chiefs and heroes within his community.  Thatcher's father was prominent only in the provincial community of Grantham.  The generations before had numbered shoemakers, whose leadership was within the working classes of the Midlands. 

But both were well outside the ruling elites of their youth in South Africa and Britain, yet each became geographically and educationally near to them, Mandela in his schooling and university in South Africa and Thatcher in her ascent to Oxford University.  More to the point, Thatcher's home had Belton House along the road, favoured by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII and his friends as a centre of royal fashion and fun.  It is likely that some hot gossip crossed shop counters.

Mandela was wholly unable to trust the then ruling Afrikaner class and their attitudes in South Africa despite his rise to prominence and as a leader.  Thatcher, in turn, had a great deal of trouble with the Tory Grandees in her own party, some with a vengeful and spiteful disposition.

In how they saw violence it might not have been the same but their knowledge was enough to know the destructive and long term damage that could result in armed conflicts.  Wikipedia has an article on The Xhosa Wars that says that between the last part of the 18th Century and the end of The Boer War there was virtually a Hundred Years War of persistent conflict among the many groups in South Africa.  Mandela must have been fully aware of this history.

Thatcher on the other hand would have been dealing with many families who had lost men in World War One, with widows and spinsters who had lost their men as well as the many crippled, blinded and injured men who had served.  Quite what her own families losses were I do not know.

In the Second World War, the area around Grantham was a huge armed camp with troops of all nations waiting and training for the 1944 Normandy Landings.  I knew men of the US 82nd Airborne and the Polish Airborne divisions.  Also, there were the many airfields with daily and nightly large scale movements of bombers and fighters. 

Before then she would have heard the German Luftwaffe heading for Coventry and the Midlands as well as other targets, at times almost on a nightly basis, as in late 1940. After then she would have seen the news reels depicting the full horrors of the time and been aware of the collapse of economies and communities across Europe.

Neither Mandela nor Thatcher therefore would have needed much briefing or advice on the subject of war, violence and the potential results.  They were both intelligent people attempting to deal with high risk politics in a Cold War world with all its uncertainties.

It is my view that critically, both had some idea of complex situations from their education and backgrounds.  Also, and of crucial importance that they both realised that the pre-conditions existed in South Africa for a dangerous and damaging collapse of society with serious violence.

It was their mutual recognition that it was not a simple matter of White v Non White as too many saw it.  Among all the groups were many sub-groups with differing ideas and ambitions any of whom might provide the trigger for far greater problems.

Mandela recognised that because of the pariah status of Apartheid South Africa it was dangerous and difficult to find a broker to deal with the Afrikaners and associated Whites.  Thatcher, the shopkeeper's daughter, had left the door open to South Africa, Britain then could not afford the losses of trading income or assets..

By the chances of events and international politics she was only person able to do the job of establishing mutual ground with the White elite and to bring them round to a new understanding of their situation.  It is called Realpolitik and it takes an able and perceptive person to understand this and make use of it as Mandela did.

Thatcher for her part, whatever she might have or have not thought, recognised that as far as the Non-Whites were concerned, Mandela and the ANC were the only entity able to manage a relatively peaceful transition that might provide the basis for a state with a rule of law and functioning representative government. Above all she did not want a communist regime.

The world has moved on and those from The Old World are now all gone from power replaced by people with very different attitudes and ambitions.  Also, there are other problems arising.  Rapid population growth, pressure on agriculture and the land, the question of who owns the primary mineral resources, energy supply, water supply and another generation wanting to remove that which followed Mandela and Thatcher.

It is going to take more than a Mandela or a Thatcher to deal with these and the chances are that their realisation of what violence involved and the collapse of societies and intergroup warfare is not shared by some of those claiming to be among their followers.

 

It is not that Mandela or Thatcher were either saints or giants.  It is that their successors seem to be intellectual dwarfs whose knowledge and thinking is dominated by media releases, photo opportunities, personal gain and spinning the story away from truth or reality.

Austerity And Paying For Pensions

When a frisky lad into my forties it was the 1970's and changes were happening.  As one of the age group of the last cohort of the Old World; never to be a teenager because they had not been invented but young to be really one of the age that I was born into we saw the best and worst of both.

By the end of the 1970's and going into the 1980's we were already beginning to feel the hot breath on our necks of the first of the Baby Boomers wanting The Old World out of the way, not satisfied to wait decades before attaining rank in management and politics.

In the 60's and 50's pension schemes had become common in the private and public sectors introduced largely in the 20th Century on the basis of a small number of arrangements of the 19th.  They were strictly drawn up in terms of conditions and eligibility to ensure that they paid their way.

In my view the first cats out of the bag in the 1970's were as a result of the major Heath local government reorganisation merging many authorities and putting many older people close to retirement in difficult positions.  So early retirement was allowed as a "one off".  At least that was the theory. 

Inevitably, many who would have rather retired were out of luck.  Also, many categories of staff did not get it, notably teachers for whom a simple change of who paid the salary was not enough.  They were bought off with a large pay rise.

So the pressure was on.  When severe cutbacks later became necessary in local government more early retirements occurred and because the teachers pay rises have given the budgets a bashing authorities brought in schemes to allow many to go, because for them the cost was borne by the taxpayer.

At the same time along with this and relatively unseen was that the handling of retirements for sickness was eased, again without really being costed in to the eventual liabilities.  Along with these employees the unions for police, fire and other all gained from an easing of the rules.

A key reason was that because of "Austerity" there were attempts at prices and wages control policies as well as cuts.  So in actual pay negotiations the tinkering and adjusting of retirement schemes became part of the game.  A bit here and a bit there put off the evil day of having to pay for it.

In the meantime the demographics got lost in the fog, the expectation of life was going up.  More to the point in the polite jobs it was rising rather faster.  The actuaries failed to keep up with it and began to embrace optimism or were ignored as inconvenient number crunchers of lesser status in the high business of doing pay deals.

Certainly, by 1990 it was my view that sooner or later the door would have to close and some painful decisions taken, so I headed for the exit. I was wrong. Blair and Brown had talked to Fred Goodwin and other bankers and declared that boom and bust was over and we were in to the Goldilocks economy of ever increasing money that would fund all our desires.

Then there is the private sector, another story altogether but related.  My first warning sign came in the 1970's when my father's old firm was taken over by a US financial outfit who stripped out the pension fund on day one.  After 35 years service and a few years retired he was left with peanuts and down to his state pension.

It was listening to Tom Bower in a private meeting who told us what he thought about Gordon Brown's ideas on private pensions that alerted me to the fact that private pensions were not just a treasure to be looted by the banksters and such.  He did not like them and saw their funds as a honey pot to be raided at will.  Which is more or less what happened for so many.

This is where we are today.  In the public sector the demographics have had their way together with all the paper promises of the past.  The result is cuts all over the place to cover the huge losses in pension funds.  The private sector pensioners are prisoners to the pirates of the financial services industry, whose profits are now the key to our GDP.

We may be at the point when this is not going to be sorted out because our politicians cannot handle it.  What happens in the immediate future is anybody's guess but whatever does may not be a happy business.

The Baby Boomers did not rule OK.

Go East Young Man

Today being one of those days, this is limited to an item from Iain Dale on the subject of trade with China.  It says it all really.

Quote:

Iain Dale, 6 December, 2013

ConservativeHome Diary Week 34: Why Can't We See the Chinese For What They Are?

Am I alone in feeling queasy at the way David Cameron has been crawling to the Chinese this week in a craven attempt to gain their favour? “We will be the main advocate of China in the West,” he announced on Monday.

Pass the sick bag. I completely accept we have to do business with regimes we disapprove of – it’s what Bismarck called ‘realpolitik’. But what we don’t have to do is prostrate ourselves in front of them and appear to beg them to like us.

What we should be doing is recognising their agenda. Their strategy is to buy up key bits of our infrastructure and then in 20 years’ time exert their control and influence over us. It’s what they are doing all over the world.

They’re buying up industries and infrastructure which has a common theme – and the theme is that they all revolve around things we need for our everyday life – power, water, sewers. And now I imagine they will buy many of the about to be privatised shares in the Channel Tunnel.

We must be mad. The Germans would no more let the Chinese invest in their nuclear facilities than give them control over their armed forces. And let’s remember that the amount of German trade with China dwarfs ours.

Regimes like China understand it when countries stand up to them and act in their own national interest. They laugh at countries which are so keen to ingratiate themselves that they will do anything to attract inward investment.

Are we really that desperate?

Unquote.

The problem is that we could be that desperate and it is beginning to show.

Flights Of Fancy

Between the storms and the glitch in the computer system at the national flight control at Swanwick, apparently on the switch from night to day control, for those travelling by air it has become uncertain, difficult, frustrating, costly and highly troublesome.

So, this is not an occasion for making fun, more of reflection. that this blog has been making for some time.  Heathrow, we know, it run at full tilt with little spare capacity or margins of error.  Other airports too are on tight schedules.

A lot of people are going to have to do a lot of high stress intensive work to sort it out, hopefully soon, but even then a good many decisions will be made because they need to be made and may not be entirely rational or deeply thought out.

This is the way we do things these days.  Everything is expected to work and function all the time just as it says in the book or as published or advertised.  Unluckily, the world is not like that and things happen.  When there is little or no spare capacity or room for manoeuvre it will become worse and worse. 

Also, as all the eventualities cannot be covered there is always scope for problems.  Not least is human frailty or error, more abundant when things are more complicated,  Once people were far more aware of this than nowadays.  For some science and thought might answer the questions, for others, prayer.

It is possible that today we are all a lot weaker, less capable and disinclined to tolerate the ordinary ups and downs of life.  Watching the old Mitchell and Kenyon (British Film Institute) film from 100 and more years ago it is wondrous how vigorous, alive, happy and able people look, almost a different species. 

If some Director of Opera is looking for a 21st Century production of Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman" (see Wikipedia for both the story of the legend and the Opera), perhaps it could be set on a lost soul wandering the airports of the world striving to get to his desired destination.

Then he meets a check in assistant who takes pity and pledging him her eternal love gives him the boarding pass to where he really wants to go and joins him to fly off into the sky.

It is of course, fiction.  Many of those today, and I suspect as the month wears on will not get to where they want to go.

Dance To The Music Of Time

There is altogether too much news covering too much ground at the moment.  To comment sensibly on it in relation to all that is being said one way or another needs a lot of care.  The trouble is that it is an in and out day when haste takes over.

There are two main concerns.  One is that lost in the torrent of coverage and comment there is something significant happening that we will all miss and perhaps realise when it is too late. 

Also it is one of those periods where the chance is there for those in power or authority to release bad news or do questionable things again that might be missed or not fully appreciated or discussed.

This might or might not happen.  Given the way the world is governed in this media age the second concern is all too likely to be the one that will happen.  But who, what, why, where and when?

Something else which is distracting is the season.  It is when the developed West and some other places lose any sense of perspective and there is almost a month of detachment from reality.  The distractions will vary. 

For some it is the time for "The Nutcracker" ballet by Tchaikovsky.  The picture above is that of the Kirov production and makes a decent wallpaper for the machine.  I am under an obligation at least to do something seasonal so this is the one concession being made.

And soon it will be the Year of the Horse.

                                             

Hot And Cold Running Energy

As a child during the winter months one of the dominant worries of the household was shillings for the meter.  The getting, retaining and careful use of them was critical.  Down the decades the energy question has always been an itch in the mind despite the fact that we have been taking it for granted.

Which was why during the years it functioned The Oil Drum site was one worth watching.  It's bloggers have moved on but are still out there with things to say.  As we know the issues about energy are always ones of fierce debate where technology meets money meets economic functioning meets living life and sadly all meet government.

Euan Mearns has a post on December 4th on UK oil and gas reserves in "Energy Matters" which is well worth a look if only because the lines on the graphs are going steadily down.

One intriguing aspect is that evidently during the years of Labour government not only did we borrow and keep borrowing but we were depleting the oil and gas reserves at a much greater level.  Did the ending of boom and bust, in theory, depend on rapid oil and gas depletion to create A New World of money flows instead? 

The implications of this for the future are huge.  Despite this, most of the national debate we have now is about superficial aspects of the potential impact.  This is not new.  The risks and chances have been evident for a little time now but have been sidelined party because of politics and partly because of the debates about global warming or not. 

Also, there are some hard decisions ahead with no right answers in the sense that there are going to have to be losers.  If the decisions are not made this will still happen except the decisions will be made by events or by others.  The article indicates that both urgent decisions and action are needed just when we are going into a long election campaign interwoven with the Scottish Referendum and the Europe issue.

None of the political parties have much incentive to be the bearers of bad news or to take major controversial decisions and are unlikely to want to discuss this other than to play the blame game.

While the Government Autumn Statement was going on over at Sky Arts 2 was "Gotterdammerung", the final part of Wagner's Ring Cycle, otherwise known as "The Twilight Of The Gods".  It all ends in flames leaving a few poor humans staggering out of the wreckage to try and deal with the mess.

Recalling what happened if the shillings ran out, it is possible that all of us could find out in a few years.