The Scramble For Africa Mark Five

The problems occurring in many parts of Africa at present owe a great deal to the latest version of The Scramble For Africa that has been going on since the apparent withdrawal of European and other powers in the mid 20th Century.

Taking a longer view of the past, as with other territories, there has been a great deal of change down the ages. The first two phases are in the deeper past and about which we have to rely on science, archaeology and palaeontology to tell us such story as they can.

The first is from 75,000 years ago when it is suggested that small numbers of humans surviving a major geophysical event were located in Africa and began to grow in numbers and move across new lands within and beyond Africa.

The second is the period following The Sahara becoming desert allied with other climatic and geophysical events that triggered successive waves and movements over several thousand millennia. This will include what we call the Classical period and the period of the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages.

There is some recorded history in a number of places and much more known about human interaction and organisation. Until recently, the lack of both records and of much real archaeology led to assumptions about the primitive nature of Africa but it seems that what was happening there may have been a lot more organised and complicated than we have thought in the past.

Persons of African origin do appear in other places. Recently, one set of remains has been found in Stratford upon Avon from during the Roman period. We can assume that amongst the Romans there were those of African origin.

Although it seems to be a surprise if you know that the Romans were trading up the Severn, then along the Avon it is navigable to a point close to the Fosse Way and a Roman way station.

The Scramble Mark Three I would put as beginning in the late 14th and early 15th Centuries when we know more arising from the expansion of European, Arab and Chinese interest in Africa. Although the Chinese did not follow through, both the Arabs and the Europeans did establishing both contact and control in many areas.

By and large the Europeans kept mostly to the coastal areas in this period, the interior south of The Sahara being almost unknown to them until the mid 19th Century. The Arabs, however, who spread down the East coast did trade into parts of the interior and had cross African routes to the West.

Mark Three, with its many sided history I would put as lasting until the mid 19th Century. This covers the period of the Slave Trade as we have understood it. We should be aware that there were other varieties of people subjection that were not far removed from this which have lasted until the present.

It was also a period of some large scale movements of people. In South Africa the Dutch from the south at around the same time that other groups were moving down from the north catching those indigenous in a kind of pincer movement.

The Scramble Mark Four begins in the mid and late 19th Century with increased European penetration into the interior and assertion of dominance over both West and East Coasts. Although Britain and France were the principal powers at this stage it was not long before older and more recently formed European nation states began to claim hegemony over parts of Africa.

As the purpose was profit rather than settlement, given the discovery of vast riches of primary resources and the potential for agriculture, the risk of expensive conflicts meant that the European powers made a rare excursion into negotiation and agreement.

The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 parcelled out Africa into chunks of territory with little reference much to geography, ethnic or religious considerations. This exercise led to the identity of many of the existing states in Africa.

It was not long before the rivalries of the European powers led them to self destruct in terms of their Empires in two major world wars that impacted on Africa in many ways. One was to stimulate demands for self rule and to encourage these new states to take some control and direction over their own economies. This became the story of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

By the 1970’s, it seemed that a new era had begun, of self ruling states largely at peace with each other and beginning to control their own futures on a more or less democratic basis. Critically, it was believed that they would be able to manage and control their own resources, finances, trade and commercial structures.

It hadn’t because The Scramble For Africa Mark Five had already begun and was under way. As the Governors, official administrators, and soldiers departed through the front door the arms dealers, bankers, businessmen and commercial travellers were climbing in through the back window helped through by their trained bands of lawyers, accountants, consultants and experts, all trades that the new states lacked in numbers.

The analogy is taken from Nicholas Shaxson’s book “Treasure Islands – Tax Havens And The Men Who Stole The World” which gives a good deal of attention to Africa and the looting of its wealth since around 1980. “Aid” has just become another money go round, a means of lubricating a corrupt and kleptocratic system.

Famous people preach on the need to help the African’s whilst keeping their own capital and income as free from any tax as possible. Once elites had been bribed, corrupted or suborned then the expansion of the tax havens and their services has led to greater losses and impositions than the Mark Four Scramble ever did.

It is said that the ruling family in Tunisia took out $3 billion and more alone. How much more had been removed by others connected to them cannot be known. All these accounts and the movements of money around them are veiled in secrecy.

Now that cheap oil is coming to an end and food prices and other essential commodities are rising in price the fat is literally in the fire. It may not be long before there is a Scramble Mark Six as existing states begin to collapse and all the old tribal, ethnic and religious differences begin to take hold.

And the mass migrations will begin again.

Bending To The Rules And The Wind

One of the curiosities in the large few years and especially during the recent crisis is the absence of much in the way of fraud and other stories in the media and popular press beyond those of the Members of Parliament.

One reason for this is the absence of much in the way of police activity or attention. Even where the regulatory bodies are concerned with some firms and individuals there is very little information that surfaces and not much being pursued in the courts.

Contrast this story from Los Angeles with the UK coverage and this tale is a common one across the pond where police and other authorities are far more active:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-primary-global-research-20110127,0,2316837.story?page=1

Yet it is apparent that a good deal of sharp practice has been going on in the UK at all sorts of levels. Just how did many of the crazy PFI deals get made and who exactly benefited, apart from the obvious people? In the story flagged, the insider dealing will have its impact on massaging financial figures in the markets.

It is my view that in recent years the UK has been awash with petty fraud and worse a lot of nasty, unscrupulous hard ball tactics in the day to day dealings. Add to that fiddled figures, imaginative accounting and careless record keeping so there could be a great deal of money leaking and being taken in ways that would be criminal in other jurisdictions.

So when it appears that the government does not seem to know what it is doing or indeed what is going on in its own departments it is no surprise. We are now living in a state where corruption and dishonesty are becoming the norm.

On the web I saw that some mathematicians looking at the collapse of states, empires and political entities have found that there are many in recorded history where it has happened for no obvious cause. They just implode because of their own complexity, uncertainty, collapse of law and inability to maintain just rule.

Could it happen here?

Grounds For Concern

Lord Coe of Codswallop has appeared before us in his Savile Row suits and delicate personalised premium fragrances rather than the downmarket sackcloth and ashes to admit that Britain is a disgrace to civilisation and the world. The nations and peoples have been astonished and it is the talk of all the bazaars and holy places. An Englishman has broken his word.

The reason is that a modest sports stadium, erected at public expense for a three week sports binge in the summer of 2012, may have its future use altered in order to avoid the more humiliating fate that has befallen other Olympic facilities in the world in the past.

Two soccer clubs have bid to be the future operators. One, West Ham United, whose old ground is becoming creaky hopes to retain facilities for athletics. The other, Tottenham Hotspur, who rather than revamping their existing one at some cost, sees the Olympic Stadium as offering more scope and certainly far better transport links that the present one at White Hart Lane. The Spurs would keep it for soccer and entertainment events only.

Those who follow what is going on in the world beyond football and entertainment probably could think of a number of things in the past couple of decades which they could suggest represent a disgrace to the UK and a shame that is much more serious. As I want this post to be less than ten thousand words, I will skip the potential listing.

A world of brief sound bites and instant responses is also a world of short memories. Is it so long since there was a debate over Wembley? This is now our “national” soccer stadium, built by foreigners with money borrowed on the international markets.

Erected at the beginning of the 1920’s for an Empire Exhibition it became a half decent dog track and speedway stadium used occasionally for football of one sort or another. Once and once only I was wined and dined there with a seat in the Royal Box, it was a surreal experience.

It was used for the 1948 Olympics and some Commonwealth Games but in general was rarely used for athletics events or other sports. It did make a venue for other things. Billy Graham converted thousands to God there following his success with Richard Nixon and there were some rousing pop festivals. There was the soccer World Cup of 1966, was it Argentina or Germany who won?

Anyhow, the soccer bods, by now in control of the new Wembley project dumped the idea of athletics facilities despite the huge government support given to it. Similarly the new Twickenham ground for the Rugby Union avoided the issues that athletics might bring. There have been other major stadia built, also without reference to such sports or the possibility. There was once White City, home to the 1908 Olympics now lost to us all.

This left us with Crystal Palace which was built in 1964 and is now one of five National Sports Centres and becoming run down. Crystal Palace FC soccer once played there but were evicted in 1915 by the military going to Selhurst Park also now suffering wear and tear. They want to return to a new stadium on the site but have considered whether the athletics facilities should be retained.

Are you beginning to have the impression that it is all a long, confused story which does not make a lot of sense? Similarly are you wondering how such a highly centralised state and media operations could make such a sorry mess of the whole business?

There is also the question of whether beyond 2012 there are to be big crowds for athletics. Lord Coe may beg the question by doling out free tickets, again at public expense. But this is not really the answer. The question has arisen before and we know what the answers were.

Up in Sheffield Blunkett and friends put on a World Student Games in a new stadium at a staggering loss. Now it is an arena for all sorts of things, but the basic one is that Rotherham United, a lower division soccer team play their home games there with a great many empty seats in view.

Then there is Eastlands, The City of Manchester Stadium in Manchester, built to host the 2002 Commonwealth Games after a failed Olympic bid and then substantially altered to become a soccer stadium for Manchester City and other events.

Personally, I think the Olympic Stadium should be put into Trust and Leyton Orient and Dagenham & Redbridge soccer teams could share it. Failing that, it might make a superb multi layer covered fungi growing food factory. That way it might even turn in a bit of profit.

Incidentally, in the next few years council taxes in London will be going up by more that the rate of inflation.

Who Owns London?

Those who do not have a few tens of millions to splash out on second or tenth homes will have missed the shindig to celebrate the completion of Number One Hyde Park (look at onehydepark.com and endless stories) in Knightsbridge and opposite Harrods, a subsidiary of Fulham FC just for contrast.

Apparently it was a gathering of our new good and great in the land. Essentially chaps with their hands on oil and gas supplies and others who are at the forefront of the Non-Taxed part of our economy. The sort that Mayor Bossy Boris The Blonde Blunderbuss prostrates himself before at the tinkle of a phone call.

Within these people there are connections with a UK background. There are a handful of remnants of the old landed aristocracy who were lucky enough to marry heiresses owning lands on the fringes of the London of the 18th and 19th Centuries.

They are the ones who were clever enough to move their valuable property holdings into company ownership before Inheritance Tax and the consequences of the long Agricultural Depression could cull them along with their peers.

There are the Crown Estates, the only one that excites the London media and a useful distraction that avoids too much attention on other property owners, especially those media moguls and their friends who have substantial interests in London property.

It is not a simple business. In the middle years of the 20th Century those with mortgages almost always borrowed from UK financial organisations who relied in turn on UK savers or investors based in the UK. Public Sector organisations normally owned their own buildings or rented them from UK property companies.

Much of private industry and commerce were the same, those who owed money on their buildings again were large engaged with UK financial companies. Some of the arrangements had more complex arrangements but it was simple to know who was who and in money terms what was what and the implications.

In other sectors, rentals and leaseholds much the same applied. UK ownership, borrowing, management services and the rest were identifiable firms. You knew where they were, who owned them, for the most part could see their accounts and they were more or less all within the taxable economy.

What is the position now? One of the better known examples is HMRC who are said to have unburdened themselves of property ownership and management. They have sold off and then leased/rented or what back, given over the management of the properties and the rest to attract “investment” into UK government operations.

The general idea was to promote “efficiency” more or less like Santa Claus is said to be an efficient way of distributing goods to the lower age market segment of the leisure products industry. He promotes sales and the reindeer and elves get to eat while he is the public image of a bountiful financial operator.

However, as all parents know the reality is sharp increases in spending out of disposable incomes often now driven by increased debt loading with added interest and servicing costs arising from children’s insatiable demands urged on by a foreign ruthless and relentless marketing and financial servicing operation.

Were I to go through all the ownership, property management, financial systems and the hugely complicated, layered, intricate ways of moving money, credit, debt, added consultancy and accounting costs of all the types of property in London it would be a very long post indeed and that is not mentioning tax havens.

Also, it would be almost impossible to understand and certainly the financing of much is beyond any comprehension. Because not only do ordinary people have little idea of what is going on, nor do our politicians who serve the system, nor does the average financial adviser or pension fund trustee and least of all the people who are actually running the show.

As for the Bank of England, this lot are the equivalent of a pack of drunken incompetent elves under the guidance of a Santa who is in serious denial of his mounting money problems and reindeer out of their skulls on schnapps laced moss and lichen.

Bossy Boris believes in unlimited support for housing benefit for non-working, non tax-paying people lodged in premises owned by non-taxpaying people engaged with financial agencies who pay little or no UK tax all of whom owe little or no allegiance to the UK. One does wonder where his family money is invested in.

But if you go round all sectors of property in London now and ask the simple question of who owns what, where the money is coming from, where the eventual ownership lies, how it is managed and to whom money is owed and what have been the trends over the last twenty years you will come to realise that the UK no longer owns most of London.

London may be the capital, financial and media centre of the UK. but the taxpayers outside the M25 are paying huge subsidies one way or another to sustain a city whose main activity is to extract as much money from the UK and to pay as little UK tax as possible.

If my visit yesterday was any guide, it is not just the ownership that stinks; the air quality there now is the worst I have experienced.

And I remember December 1952.

Food For Thought

What is striking about the media coverage of events at present is not only the relentless attention given to some of the grubbier aspects of our political culture but what appears to be a loss of focus on the nature of the present problems and the means and ends of dealing with them.

Sometimes a head bravely appears above the parapet. Laura Sandys M.P. for South Thanet in the latest “Ecologist” newsletter deals with food security. She points out that in many ways we have been living in a fools paradise that is about to end.

What did catch my eye was the short part where she more or less says that we will need a Royal Navy suitably equipped with Special Forces to ensure that our supply lines are viable and protected. Not only that, but we need to spend more time thinking about our own ability to produce both a wide range and sufficient foods.

To do that and other basic things to enable us to more or less survive economically if it all turns nasty, as it has done so often in the past, our policies need to take into account not just short term fixes or Ra Ra prestige stunts but making sure about all the various elements of the continuance of the polity.

In terms of education the government is going in for Academies. We have those which specialize. The performing arts is one favourite designed to prepare people for a strictly service sector notorious for its very high levels of unemployment, insecurity, low wages for the many and riches for the very few as well as being one of most vulnerable to all sorts of rapid change and fashions.

The there are sports and business studies. It seems we need more gold medalists in the future. Has anyone calculated just how many we are likely to win and so the average cost of each one? At present rates of expenditure each would cost roughly the same as a new Olympic Stadium.

As for “business studies”, in effect what they mean for the vast majority of them is training for the very middling and low paid jobs they can aspire to because not many of them will ever get anywhere near the highest paid. As entrepreneurs of the future will need capital, they are unlikely to get it in the foreseeable future.

For a smack of reality look at what is happening at the LSE which claimed that in 2007 around 30% of its graduates went into the City and related finance sector with many others doing a variety of business and public sector management courses.

I quote what the Director, Howard Davies, will be talking about shortly in public:

“In December the coalition government agreed a new fee regime for EU undergraduates in British universities, along with other changes to the regulation of higher education, following the Browne Review.

Over the next few months universities will need to decide how to position themselves in the new environment. The consequences for the LSE are quite serious, involving the loss of all grants for teaching.

A final decision on fees will need to be made this summer. But how is the School addressing the challenge? And what kind of future can it look forward to under the new regime?”

As it happens the LSE has a great many students from abroad. Indeed it is arguable that its present undergraduate number from the UK is not many more than forty to fifty years ago. My guess is that numerically there are certainly far fewer UK working class men there now than in the 1950’s.

At the same time, the bankers want to import top people, the retailers want to import routine line managers, some sectors are being out-sourced and others rely on contact and particular agency supplied staff. Not least in the media and other parts the use of interns and short term contracts creates obstacles to those who need a real living wage.

Under the previous government the “management” of agriculture has resulted in the reduction of the numbers of farms and farmers and the driving of key skills off the land and out of the rural communities. These are not skills that can easily be dealt with by people with only general management or business studies education.

Much of our food supply is in the hands of large producers and processors under the thumb of the international money men. They are not using much in the way of UK management and even fewer workers.

If the banks are not going to give credit to the middling and small farmers and the subsidies have gone to Europe just what can happen to the UK food supply if the world supply begins to fall well short of basic needs elsewhere?

Again, if you doubt that food can be short, just read some history. I do not need to because I remember all too well the 1940’s.

Anyone for leftovers?

The NHS, Grist To The Mill

After staggering through torrential rain, luckily just ahead of the shunt that closed the motorway, we arrived at the hospital. Again, we had no letter or e-mail; the new booking service has yet to inform us as promised.

Phone calls had been made, but it was apparent that critical advice that should have been in place wasn’t there. Other than all this admin’ things went as they should do; which made a change.

So we were less than happy when we put on the TV when we returned to see Dave At The RSA doing his serious concerned chap routine to convince us that it was all about “Change”, he alleged for the better. What does he think has been going on for the last sixty odd years?

In the thirty five years before the inception of the NHS, ten had been in major wars and around another ten in serious economic difficulties, counting the bad time after 1918 in with the better known Great Crash.

There was a mish mash of local, Poor Law, private, academic and various forms of community services that had tried to cope with the demands of an increasingly urbanised population.

All in all, it was not in good shape and without the resources or means to deal with the mounting health problems and the pace of development in the science and the technology of medicine.

As the creation of the NHS was a political act, at the beginning it was organisational, financial and control systems that mattered. The medicine and the underlying stresses were low on the agenda, being taken for granted.

Since then we have seen roughly two full generations of the NHS and are now into the early years of the third. The first generation lasted until 1974 when the Edward Heath inspired major changes were made in organisation, again largely politically and financially based rather than in the context of the period and what amounted to a take off in medicine, science and treatments.

I recall in the late 1970’s in our meeting before the Area Health Authority met looking gloomily down the agenda as the Senior Community Medical Officer and I contemplated the problems we were going to have with the politicians who preferred to listen to accountants and “executives”.

We agreed that it wasn’t working well and was becoming more and more disconnected with the reality of the work to be done.

So in the 1980’s Ken Clarke, looking at the problems through his haze of cigar smoke, decided to throw it all up and the air and see how it came down before addressing many of the more intricate issues.

After then in the period of Mrs. Thatcher’s decline and fall and the Major years of trying to get the Tory party to agree to anything, we had years of indecision and uncertainty.

Worse there came to be an increasing reliance on haphazard initiatives, all sorts of schemes, largely promoted by non-medical consultants and worse endless spin and obfuscation of the difficulties and needs for radical re-provisioning and rebuilding.

Then came New Labour, who arrived at what was soon the start of the third generation. By this I mean a period when medical and technical technology were being transformed and research and knowledge were advancing far more rapidly, especially in the new context of immediacy in the transmission of information and knowledge.

So what did they do? One thing was ever more spin and a deliberate policy of “turning” the NHS into a bedrock agency of Labour ideology and beliefs. Also, they let loose the money men in PFI etc., hordes of management consultants from The Big Four and others and financial advisers of all shapes and sizes.

The professionals, doctors and nurses, essentially were bought off to subject them to the new disciplines and there was never ending change and reshaping. What did happen was major distortion of medical provision according to political demand rather than real need.

The funding and organisation of computer services for basic recording and service has been an expensive disaster.

It was all to be paid for by the new boom boom bust free economy. Now there is an expensive mess that apparently we can no longer afford. Also it bears the burden of huge financial liabilities that will extend for two generations beyond that of the present one.

Treatments may or may not be available for many conditions that are not “sexy” or spin worthy. Political criteria will govern who does what where. The mood of the moment is likely to continue to be key to decision making.

It is sometimes in the detail that you see how things are lost. There are many people with dangerous conditions that may cause them to collapse with little or no warning. You may well know one or two.

There is nothing in the NHS to deal with this situation and no system of recording or recognising those who live with such risks. Those than can afford it can sign up with a private service which has a 24 hours response and advice line. But large numbers of NHS are not aware of the meaning and nature of the dog-tags and bracelets.

Nor are police or fire or other services that may be dealing with people who have gone down and in difficulty. Typically, a police officer who sees someone writhing on the floor or not entirely coherent will simply assume drink as will almost all the public. It is the reason why so many now are dying where they fall or in police hands.

Yet the cost of this compared to many things is absurdly cheap, as is the cost of creating awareness both within the services and in the general public of what are high risk conditions and what might need to be done.

And these conditions and needs have been known ever since the NHS came to exist.

Whither The Weather?

Yesterday, Saturday 15 January, in the “Guardian” Environment section, Dr. Germaine Greer delivered a brutal analysis on the matter of the Queensland disaster, “ Australian Floods, Why Were We So Surprised?”. She is stranded up a mountain there at present attempting to save the rain forest. One of the factors in the flooding has been the deforestation in the territory.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/15/australian-floods-queensland-germaine-greer?INTCMP=SRCH

Along with this, she suggests is the usual mix of human greed, stupidity, short sightedness and failure to comprehend the nature of complex events or to plan or deal with them effectively.

Elsewhere, “Naked Capitalism” worries about other consequences of the present floods in economic terms, there could be nasty price effects and strain on the finances of some countries.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/01/la-nina-as-black-swan-%e2%80%93-energy-food-prices-and-chinese-economy-among-likely-casualites-2.html

The “Black Swan” is nothing to do with the new film about ballet or even the much better pirate film of 1942 about Henry Morgan, starring Tyrone Power, but refers to the concept developed by Nassim Taleb, Black Swan Events which means that the unexpected or unbelievable might just be out there waiting to happen, as in the discovery in Australia of black swans, before then held to be always white.

Meanwhile on Friday 14 January , Science Daily (the source of much of Daily Mail stuff, many of whose interns do not really understand it) put up an article from the Journal of Sciences, taking the longer view of climate and weather which gives context. Climate/weather patterns can and do change and have changed. Judging which way we are going is more complicated.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110113082627.htm

All this is a rich source for debate on many matters. What is happening at present may simply be predictable glitches and occurrences with an existing pattern, or it could be the first signs of larger scale change in progress.

But I can say with confidence that in the foreseeable future, I and others like me, will be worse off and suffer a great deal of inconvenience.