We'll All Pull Together

With President Obama of the USA meeting Vice President Xi Jinping of China today to discuss matters of mutual interest, such as mutual political survival, it was a case of the bust now shaking hands with the bust future. The figures for the US Debt it seems will reach levels beyond the reach of mere mathematics.

In the meantime China is discovering that property markets and banks do not always go well together, especially if too much credit is flung around and too much fiat currency is pumped out to keep the show on the road. China may discover that it needs all the wealth it has built up recently.

If that is the case it will have less to lend and less to buy into financially embarrassed European countries. The UK has displayed its solidarity with Europe with the ratings agencies looking doubtful about its immediate prospects. Quite what this will lead to is not certain. But it is unlikely to be good news.

In Spain a village where the inhabitants were backward and mistrusting they have brought out the old pesetas they kept out of distaste of a new currency. Now they look almost at the cutting edge of monetary thinking and theory.

I recall Portugal in the mid 1970’s, months after the collapse of the regime of Salazar and his successors. It was a desperately poor country with extensive hardship. Will the Euro crisis now lead to a collapse of constitutional government and a reversion to the more traditional authoritarianism? Bring back the yoked oxen.

Don’t mention all those wars, civil and other wise in progress. The amount of explosives, ammunition and general hardware in use should at least give a much needed boost to the armaments industry. It may account for all the flying visits by UK politicians to here and there putting in a word for our chaps.

One historian, his name forgotten, my apologies, has come up with a theory that if one is looking to see where trouble has occurred in history there is very often present a surplus of young men without any employment or prospects.

If at the same time for religious or demographic reasons they are not matched by an equivalent number of unattached ladies available for company and to give favours then the men tend to get out of hand. They do not necessarily need much excuse either political or religious but one or both come in very handy to justify all the mayhem.

To complicate our thinking there are those pointing out that it is not so much money that matters but energy, its sources and uses. Money is simply a means to an end and that can only be achieved in the modern world by the ability to buy or the possession of energy.

If you are muddled then so am I, but what is frightening is that we may be a lot less muddled than all those people in the capitals and financial markets telling us what to do and why.

Luckily, I still have a few pesetas left from long ago, hasta la vista!

2012, Jubilee, Olympics And A Snap Election?

When Her Majesty succeeded her father in 1952 she was monarch of an Empire in the process of being ended in collapse by her Ministers and a United Kingdom glued together by increasing social spending and promises for the future. It was pinch and scrape for most but there was a hope for better things.

By 1977, at 25 years the glue had begun to fail because much of the spending had been badly handled and too many promises could not be afforded. So her Ministers had opted for a rough and ready merger with Europe, dumped what was left of the vision of Empire, collapsed the nation’s finances and had brought in the IMF to supervise her Silver Jubilee.

In 2002, at the 50 year Golden Jubilee the difficulties in her family and other changes made the celebrations more muted. Especially in that she now had Ministers pathologically resentful about being upstaged by anyone or anything. This lot on the back of cheap oil and cheap money had sold out to financial interests and allowed Europe to collapse our sovereignty.

So in the 2012 Diamond Jubilee, Her Majesty will be presiding over Ministers who have witnessed the collapse of Europe triggered by a collapse in the financial sector with all the prospect of a collapse in any real future for the UK. The question now at the end of 2011 is which Ministers might these be?

There are all the signs to an ancient election watcher that the Prime Minister could be in process of getting his nags to the starting tapes for an early snap election when the runes and the weather forecasts are right. Could it be February?

If he calls the race right we could be looking at a Conservative Government very different in membership from the present Coalition Collection, now going at sale price as the lease runs out.

If he is wrong we will be looking at a Labour Government whose functioning model will probably resemble Fred Karno (see Wikipedia) more than any of the usual political philosophers. These Ministers could finish the job off in the way of collapses.

Either way the Olympics Ceremonies may be amongst the last she undertakes of a UK in any visible shape economically or politically. She will have gone from being the heir to a huge Empire to being the last monarch of the UK. What will History make of this?

By the time of the next Jubilee Her Majesty may find herself in Tamworth as Queen of Mercia, or if she is lucky down at Winchester as Queen of Wessex. If it is worse it will be Edinburgh as Queen of Scotland trying to sort out all the factions. The really bad one would be York or Durham as Queen of Northumbria.

The locomotive above was built for the LMS in 1935 and was named “Silver Jubilee” for King George V.

Happy New Year.

The Fox Has Left Its Lair

We have heard a great deal about Mr. Fox and his friends in the last few days.

It is difficult to know what to say about how our government functions or not.

Perhaps this says it all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WRdJ5wBXpo

But which one is Cameron?

Spot The Backyard Beast

When you come upon a particularly foul pile of material left behind by a wandering beast and it is within the forest of property capers planted and fertilised by the Labour Government then you will see the paw marks of the Great Grumpy Grabber. Unluckily this beast often strayed into ordinary communities.

It is said to be a humanoid variant from a long past era, possibly the Cretaceous, who has survived and found a welcome home in Labour as their last remaining senior being from their former base support. The Grabber acted as a sort of totem and symbol of being, although his use of his pole was unreliable.

It is a pity that the media, too many of whom were implicated in the strange life of the forest, have never looked hard at all the major capers involving property and financial deals related to building investment as well as redevelopment.

Unfailingly, lurking in either the background at least or scavenging what there was to had from the prey that fell into their hands would be the GGG himself. Beginning as a small creature dependent on a burrow given by his trade union he has amassed a great pile of homes and fodder for his and his family futures.

You may think he has now gone into the wild. Do not believe it, the smell is still there, the foulness left behind in almost every public service sector he got his teeth into and others and the costs of clearing it all up are down to you. His presence still haunts the darker corners of politics.

And the media is still paying him money for special appearances.

Stand To The Guard

With all the troubles about this currency and that and these worrying figures and those our many and various leaders seem to be at a loss to know what to do next.

Looking around the web, it seems that they are not alone, and while everyone is worried nobody has any real answers.

For some reason both Merkel and Sarkozy, never mind Cameron and Miliband, in their different ways remind me of the sentry in the cartoon above.

Politicians For Sale, Cheap Offers

Again, two things that do not seem to be closely connected but in a way mirror what is going on. One is the cast list at The Chequers Theatre of Dreams, or rather the guest list at the country residence of the Prime Minister during the period since Cameron’ took office. The other is the group of money men rallying to the cause of New Labour.

As someone trained to look at not only at what is there but what is not it is sometimes more interesting to work out what isn’t and perhaps why. If what is there is worrying then what is absent may be a greater cause for concern.

At Chequers many of those pitching up for the good grub and chat would have known what to expect. They were much the same people as visited during the high and mighty years of the Blair’s and later during Brown’s more sober time. Others new to the place are from the same groups and having the same interests.

Apparently, there is not much evidence of Charity, nor of the Services fighting all those wars, nor of the many excellent people in many fields who might have much to offer in any informal and personal conversations with each other or leading members of the Cabinet. Bluntly, there is not much vision or intellect but a lot of money, property and celebrity.

Meanwhile over at Stony Broke Manor, the Labour Party, it is concerned that the shortfall in its budget could lead to effective insolvency. As in it’s time of government there is a mismatch of the figures and a lack of clarity about where the money has been going. What is clear that more is going out than coming in and borrowing can only go so far.

It seems that a number of financiers have appeared at the door to offer money to help it through its period of immediate difficulty. There appears to be a limit as to how much the Trade Unions can offer without getting into worse trouble themselves. Also, the demands of the Unions are such that it is advisable not to become too reliant on them which is where high finance has it uses.

We have government computing services and IT apparently in the hands of a cartel that have leached untold billions to not much purpose. Also, the Ministry of Defence is largely a supply depot for armaments companies and related contractors, also taking billions.

Also, many other departments far too close to suppliers and firms engaged in out sourcing contracts. Also, many foreign companies actively buying up our public utilities with their quasi monopoly powers. Lastly, but not least, all those accounting, consulting and finance companies engaged in various expensive wheezes and things like the Private Finance Initiative.

At Chequers the wine list is said to be very good. Unluckily, Labour do not offer decent beer and sandwiches any longer but are down to Sainsbury’s special offers.

The Cotwold Morris Dance To The Music Of Time

Apparently, there is something that in the recent past that has not been mentioned for fear of upsetting the neighbours and others. It is the existence of the Chipping Norton Set, a group of close like minded people who have had great influence over the affairs of state or something.

Amongst them is David Cameron, the local MP, It seems rather like the Cliveden Sets of old, only without the class. That of the 1930’s (The Astors) so deeply impressed the then German Ambassador, Von Ribbentrop that he assured The Fuhrer that Britain would not fight but come to terms.

This set was both a liability to the nation and a continuing embarrassment to the Conservative Party. Amongst the many reasons why so many voted Labour in 1945 was that they had no wish to be controlled by such cabals in future.

The Cliveden Set of the early 1960’s (Profumo with Astors) was more of a louche collection of funsters. The problem there was that associated with those seeking relaxation away from the public eye were sundry Soviet and other intelligence operators. This business seriously damaged the Conservative Party and led to the election defeat of 1964.

Buckinghamshire has become rather suburban and down market, the good properties there may be all very well for arrivistes such as the Blair’s and the more demonstrative celebrities but it lacks the je ne sais quois of a true clique of state.

Quite why poor old Chipping Norton, once a perfectly decent working market town should be home to the mega rich media and political meddlers and shovers intent on destroying the United Kingdom for the benefit of the bottom line is one of those accidents of history.

The district is one I knew from back in the 1950’s. I once lost a wheel there driving a recently serviced mini-bus back from Twickenham with my rugby club gently relaxing amongst the beer crates. The wheel came off as I came round a tight bend and luckily the bus stayed up.

The Gods were kind to us. When the passengers had disentangled themselves there was a village pub across the road with a supply of Hook Norton sedatives. When the authorities arrived, after some time, I was told cheerfully that Chipping Norton was a bad place to have a car crash because being close to boundaries meant that it was on the fringe of everywhere.

Fans of Gillie Potter, the mid 20th Century comedian will know of his “News From Hogsnorton”. He had a dry deadpan academic style of patter that exposed the frailties and idiocies of people, notably figures of authority and the BBC. His work has not worn well, despite it being very popular in this time. It was widely believed that the fictional “Hogsnorton” was really Chipping Norton.

His world was one of chaotic stupidity, disorganisation and selfishness with people whose arrogance was exceeded only by their short sightedness and bone headed attitude to life and others. Of course, it has all changed, see the link below for the names. One splendid irony here is the presence of Astor’s nearby, family of Mrs. Samantha Cameron.

There is nothing quite like tradition in politics, is there?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013040/News-World-phone-hacking-Cameron-Rebekah-Brooks-Chipping-Norton-sets-gilded-life.html

Tweedledum And Tweedledee Ride Again

With the stage set with Cameron and Miliband the main protagonists, the mind wanders back to other similar political contenders of the past. I will skip the longer history but the BBC4 piece on the decade long era of Wilson and Heath gave me reminders of how bad it was and how little we have learned.

By the time this began in 1964 I had been working a while, mortgaged, with children and hard pushed to run an elderly Standard 10 car on the family budget. In an age without credit cards, when food was relatively more expensive and when consumer goods in general were relatively costly in comparison with disposable income, there were no foreign holidays, no big spending and necessarily a close interest in politics.

After a job change a couple of years before, in 1967 I was asked to give a short talk to the local Junior Chamber of Commerce about what the Wilson government were faced with. My thesis at the time was that it did not look good and it was clear that we had ugly choices in whether to try to have progress and prosperity in industry and commerce i.e. “growth”, continue pretending to be a world power or whether the welfare state was sustainable.

My boss heard about this and was livid, denouncing me to all and sundry for my lack of loyalty, my failure to understand the crucial need for prestige, my suggestion that the British Government had significant imperfections and that the British pound could not continue to be central to the world economy and future.

Six weeks later the pound was devalued, we departed from East of Suez and it was clear to any sane person that the game was up. My boss never spoke to me again, so I moved jobs.

The trouble was that sanity was not much in evidence in the higher reaches of the governments of either Wilson or Heath. Because of the system we had politics that turned almost solely on the then marginal constituencies, what was spent on who and keeping the London media happy. If you look at exactly were the marginal seats were then it will tell you a great deal about many decisions at the time.

What I see little of is just what was in the heads of either Wilson or Heath. We see all the hindsight studies about who did or said what at the time. But what were the experiences that shaped them? Wilson was a bright boy who went to Oxford and was on course for an academic career when the war turned him into a senior Civil Servant largely dealing with supply and the Home Front.

In the 1940’s this meant the centralisation of almost everything and the extension of state power and interference into every aspect of life, in short “Whitehall Knows Best”. The 1945 Election meant a Labour government determined to secure the “commanding heights of the economy” and run them for the theoretical good of the State, which is where the Labour party began to come apart at the seams.

Wilson’s economics were learned in the 1930’s and whilst he may have kept up with the subject it was already moving rapidly in several directions. Certainly, it was very difficult to work out which was most likely but Wilsons background was not going to help make the right decision.

Heath on the other hand, another bright scholarship boy, spent time in a Europe riven by enmities and civil conflict leading to war. He then served in the Royal Artillery and seems to have done his duty very well. But The Gunners way of working was not quite like that other arms. This is a large subject I will skip. But the Gunners were highly organised, needed managing in detail and precision was the key to their efforts across their activities. Quite unlike politics in the UK. Also his economics were learned at the same time and in the same town as Wilson’s.

After the war, Heath pitched up in the Ministry of Civil Aviation for a brief spell. This ministry at the time was almost a total statist organisation. Like many other nations there was a firm belief that all aviation, military and civil was a central government operation and any civil elements were incidental but worked under direction.

Then Heath went on to Brown Shipley and Co., private merchant bankers with a central role in trade and financing. Again, basic to many of these companies was the need to keep the UK at the centre of world finance, almost at all costs. The firm still exists and can be googled. It has a brief history on the web page.

After that in 1950 Heath entered politics and make rapid progress because of his diligence, Gunners attention to detail and contacts in The City. But between him and Wilson, apparently so different, there were common intellectual and general policy interests that would take them along similar lines with disastrous results.

It is all there on the web to be seen in the biographies. There were the clumsy defence economies and the endless bad decisions with consequences that could have been foreseen however unintended. Also, the major changes to local government, the Health Service, major industries that were destructive of jobs, growth, and community and not least the surrender to Europe.

The reason was really quite simple. When the two of them, with their cronies and media advisers went in for hyperactive State activity they did not see or realise how the changes in progress in many areas were going to change the structure of industry, how commerce operated, how people would choose to live their lives and how finance was going to become so dominant.

So what changes?

Noises Off

Once popular farces were a staple of West End Theatre, either three act or two act they made audiences happy and were great fun to watch. The world has moved on now and they have become rare events. TV and other media comedy has different ideas. But I wonder if the British tradition of farce has now taken over politics?

Almost everywhere you look in our systems of government, law and administration you see not simply the basic elements of farce but situations where it is the way our leaders and power brokers run their own affairs and those of the nation.

But this is not fun. Certainly it may be satisfying to laugh at weeping members of the House of Commons being carted off to prison for expenses and other fiddles for which there is no rational explanation only greed, stupidity and arrogance but these are the people who have been passing all these laws.

Yesterday I saw a report in which a peer under the cosh for House of Lords expenses was saying that the second chamber of our Parliament was really a cash machine for passing peers and their friends. There are alleged to be 792 of these people all in the queue. There have been some odd people, very odd in some cases pleading that from time to time it is rumoured they do something useful, but this has escaped me.

If they are so good and so experienced in high affairs how come we have had in the last decade or more a tidal wave of badly flawed legislation that has all but ruined the economy, any community, much of family life and a great deal more?

How come that in the last months of the Labour government the House of Lords permitted a deliberate wrecking policy to ensure that the country would become almost ungovernable and what attempts were made to put things right would be obstructed at every turn by organisations filled and run by Labour placepersons.

Human Rights ideals were turned into the farce of judges attempting to end free speech and for that matter any academic debate that any corporation disliked as well as ensuring that fraudsters, criminals, dealers in drugs and death were freed from criticism or questioning, even by Parliament or the police.

The funding of capital projects in the public sector had saddled major areas of vital provision in health, education, social care and the rest with huge debts that will impact the budgets in such a way that only major cuts will solve.

In addition, so many more crimes, duties and regulations have been created that few people know what they are about or why or what to do. And that is those who are running things let alone the poor ordinary citizen who no longer knows who governs, why or what they are doing.

Whilst all this is going on the world economy still looks too prone to any adverse event or development. The stresses in Europe are increasing. Many more people are on the move. There are wars still being fought and in the making. So what do we see on the TV?

The President and the Prime Minister playing ping pong as a break from the party re-election games. But which of them will lose their trousers?

Playing Politics

Whilst our child politicians continue with their various games of tag and leapfrog in the junior playground, in the senior one the big boys are being to fight again. It is beginning to get rough there as the things they want are in short supply, chiefly money and there is too much confusion about they ought to be doing.

It won’t be long before some of them are back amongst the politician juniors wanting to take whatever they have whether they want to give it or not. We little people in the infant and nursery playground can only wonder what is in store for us. The juniors will be coming to us to make up for their losses.

The difficulty is that it seems that the card and other gambling games that are the main feature amongst the seniors because so many of the cards are marked and the dice loaded nobody really knows who has what and what one owes to another. On top of these the game of bulls and bears is turning bad again where so many of them have bet so much money.

We infants have been kept happy with pretty pictures and visits from clowns and other entertainers. Also, we have been made lots of promises of more parties and fun to come. Unluckily there is a rumour that the teachers may soon come back from the public house and we will be back scratching at our slates with pencils and learning that sparing the rod spoils the child.

But even the teachers have trouble with the big boys. The result is something of a stand off where the seniors go through the motions but are then allowed to do exactly as they want when teacher tips the wink or looks the other way.

There are times when the teachers go in with the boots and fists but only at the weaker of the big boys. It does serve however to cause the others to remember their place. It is not the law of the jungle; that is much nicer place where the creatures tend to take care of their young and normally eat only what they need.

Unluckily, the seniors are not like that. As well as taking everything they do enjoy mindless vandalism and arson. They often call it creative destruction because out of the ruins something new will emerge.

The trouble is it is often bigger than needed, ugly and costs a fortune to keep up. Quite why the teachers think this is a good idea nobody is sure, perhaps it is that it is not long since they were big boys and have not quite lost the habits.

Ring a ring a roses, a pocket full of posies, a’tishoo a’tishoo, we all fall down.

Middle England Or Middle Earth?

Ed The Red it seems wishes to retrieve the support of Middle England for Labour. So forget Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the old Labour heartlands where the working class has all but gone. The people who matter are in the marginal seats in England. They are those on the edge of prosperity who are extra sensitive to changes in the structure of their income and holdings.

Is this just an appeal to New Labour and his present paymasters or is it for real? They have lost their grip on all those high paid high pension entitlements in the machinery of state and its associates and they want them back, fast. Others want their hands on power again because as time moves on others will soon replace them.

So what is he saying? It is the old myopic meanderings of one of sons of the London Mediocracy now elevated by his own kind to lead the party of that class? He has had almost nothing to do with ordinary people or ordinary workers in the whole of his life and neither did his parents. They were recent academic migrants so there is a total absence of family history in the Atlantic Isles in his background.

Corpus Christi at Oxford would not have provided much, nor would LSE in the period he was there, nor would his career before election in 2005. Were he to be a man of huge and encompassing intellect or someone of outstanding contribution to one thing or another, business, academia or the military it might be an explanation. But he is none of things.

It seems that he has political skills superior to those of his contemporaries in the Labour Party. This, given their recent record, is hardly a major achievement. We had a Prime Minister like that after 1997 and look what happened there. That one knew little about anything and understood less except where the money was for him. I fear it looks like more of the same.

What Middle England are we talking about? It is claimed now that only one per cent has more wealth than ninety per cent of our population. The figures are very complicated but it seems to be near the truth. This leaves nine per cent, who are assumed to be prosperous but not so rich as the plundercrats at the top. It is from this group that so many of the London Mediocracy come from. They are certainly a lot better off than the great majority of most of the poorer lot below.

Amongst this lower ninety per cent, there will be a proportion of people who are “comfortable” with a decent disposable income and limited debt. So Middle England therefore means that group of people, substantially in the south east or in areas outside urban centres, where many of the marginal constituencies are. It also means control of London.

These are the areas where the Middle England of fable lies. Is it beginning to be more of a fiction than a political fact? Increasingly these are now a minority as more and more feel the pinch and lower their expectations of being ever free from debt or having any margin of savings. They are also older and as this is the case disappearing ever more rapidly with the arrival of the grim reaper, the costly carers, or the depletion of savings and reduction in real incomes.

What few seem to understand is that the extraction of so much wealth and income from the UK has reached a level where it has now impacted not only on those at the bottom but those in the middling reaches as well. This has occurred in the USA and is happening in the West generally. It is simple to understand, look at all the bills you are paying and follow the money.

We have a wreck of an economy, a wreck of a constitution and almost everywhere you look it is complicated, chaotic and hugely vulnerable to even minor disruptions. I regret that an early 1990’s Masters degree in mathematical economics from the LSE, a touch of political philosophy from Corpus Christi and a few back room political skills honed in student politics and through media contacts are not enough.

Worse still, as you look amongst the ranks of all the political parties, all you see is the same with a few exceptions.

Middle England? More like Middle Earth nowadays, but then Tolkien who was at Merton along the street from Corpus Christi, did see service in some real life.

Government? What Government?

A few days ago I posted a comment on a site concerning the listing of all the major players in the Tax Haven networks. This was to the effect that they and their global financial associates now ruled the world and the governments that are supposed to be elected to govern are only their local accounting clerks.

We are just becoming aware of how little the UK government can actually do now in the way of making and implementing decisions and how little effect the views of the people they are supposed to represent have any real impact outside the occasional media flap.

We are all aware of how large a part the EU plays now in our day to day lives. We are still not aware of how much Labour gave away authority to non government organisations run by appointed cronies. Then there is the “landmine legislation” passed by Labour in its last weeks to disrupt and impair the work of the incoming government.

There are a large number of international agreements which restrain and affect the decisions of the UK government, of which the current debate on extradition is only a small part, however important.

In the meantime financial authority has seeped away with the gradual loss of UK control and ownership of major sectors of the economy. This has gone along with major losses of potential tax revenue to the tax havens.

This has been exacerbated by all the gross wastes in spending, a great deal arising from the surrender of authority by the government. On top of this we are having to bridge the tax gap because no taxes, no spending and borrowing means spend now and pay a lot more later.

All the libertarians who welcome the removal of wealth, profit, income and control from the economy do not realise that it does not mean freedom. It means the movement of control to an unelected and outside power base. This is not freedom or democracy, it is quite the reverse.

It seems that not only is the EU too big and bureaucratic to govern properly, but even the USA can not longer govern itself, especially with big money buying up most of the Senators and Congressmen. Around the world the story is of collapses and attrition of government and the erosion of any real democratic politics.

From a post by Nate Hagens on the Oil Drum web site on August 28 this week that express his concerns about the USA:

Quote

Now an insight. This thought has been swirling around in my head for some time, waiting to peek its ugly head above the grey surface. It struck me this week after having some discussions with some Washington DC inner beltway types, someone at the IEA, and someone at the Fed, that there exists no institution that is going to take a leadership role addressing our current problems.

The tea leaves are too disparate and threatening to the status quo. There also is no individual or natural demographic of individuals that on their own can reframe our value systems going forward. At a minimum, it's going to take a) education b) a 'hitting the bottom' moment and c) hard work and sacrifice from people that have the skills and passion to effect change.

But most of the people that are effecting change now are not thinking about the Federal Reserve death spiral in the coming 5 years, and what that implies for social stability and the future of global energy supplies and interconnected trade relationships.

My insight, in a nutshell, is that shouting to the world about the problems, isn't not working because people are afraid, or ignorant, or feckless, but because they don't know what to do. And this especially includes institutions.

As such, my insight this week is that neither individuals, nor policymakers (current) or institutions are going to mitigate the energy/economic/environmental tsunami coming our way. There have to be new institutions, flexible and with urgency, formed to address

a) How to get through the financial bottleneck, and
b) How to move forward with different value systems other than growth/debt based models.

WHERE ARE THOSE INSTITUTIONS??

Unquote

Well they aren’t here in the EU, or in the UK, or in any other country. The irony is that one of the few countries that might retain some balance is Germany. And guess who wrote the constitution for the Federal German Republic?

Amendment

The Gordon picture in the previous blog seems to come from Old Rightie, I might have known. He states Ludlow Town Hall, admittedly a hgher class of place than The Royal Society of Arts., and his home patch I believe. Was he in "The Wheatsheaf" around Easter of 1953 when I had a pint or more there? It was at Ludlow Castle in April 1502 that Arthur, Prince of Wales died tragically young. It was his younger brother Henry who inherited the throne as King Henry VIII in April 1509, one of the great "What If's?" of British History. It's been a lot quieter since.

Teaching Young Dogs Old Tricks

The present uncertainties arise for a number of reasons. Our new crop of youthful members of parliament has grown up since the late 1980’s. There are some remnant old stagers around as well as those on the Left who burble incessantly about Mrs. Thatcher. This seems to be their modern fetish in line with the worship of antique pop groups. Back in the 1950’s I do not recall us wittering on about Ramsay Macdonald or paying good money for 1920’s ballroom dancing melodies. As for dancing the Charleston, I mean my Dad did that and well who wants to do that kind of thing?

For all of her media dominance and thrust of her personality, Mrs. Thatcher still presided over a party of many parts. It was a coalition of one kind, unluckily because of the electoral system with some bits missing that should have been there. Old Labour always was a coalition where the Methodists traded uneasily with the Marxists, never mind the rivalries of the many trade unions.

Nowadays, but not then, you will find the boilermakers in with the collective of sex workers and a bundle of local government personnel and shop workers as in the GMB, yes dear reader, I am a member of that union, it is a long and strange tale.

Under John Major the old Tory party began to disintegrate and despite the efforts of its publicity people is still fragmented. The difficulty now is that under the Great Leader concept of party management the old checks and balances have gone and it is all very messy.

New Labour has abandoned its traditional base to build up a client base by huge spending in the public sector. It has created a new middle class who are not so much consulted as directed by media and modern management techniques and whipped along by bonus payments and target setting. The BBC is a case in point. The dictatorial nature of New Labour originates amongst the extreme Left groups that so many of them belonged to whose intellectual inspiration was East Germany.

The Liberal Democrat’s began as a coalition of sorts, essentially the dissatisfied meeting the disorientated. Bits that might have remained have dropped off, as Greens and such, but they have become a raggle taggle bunch of camp followers who can see only Europe as the future and Britain as an off shore base for good intentions for the world who will take no notice.

In office New Labour has taken advantage of its position by a process of “creative destruction” which has been very effective on the destructive side but very bad on the creative. They have certainly created unsustainable debt and expenditure levels but not much else.

The only people they have compromised with are the money men and the big spenders. For the rest of it they have steam rollered Parliament, dismantled the old civil service, the Foreign Office cannot even be civil to The Pope, and have created a web of entities and activities too big either to control or to co-ordinate.

In short none of the three major parties has any real experience of the nature of discussion, manner or management of a real coalition situation and of their members few have either grown up or been obliged to conduct any serious business or work in negotiation to achieve the results needed. It is quite literally like putting not so much the lunatics in charge of the asylum as the predatory animal packs in charge of the zoo.

Historically, at different times and in different places similar situations have arisen before and the results are not happy ones. In some cases the political entities just disintegrate as a whole, in others one form or another of absolute government occurs, perhaps after a period of bloodshed and misery. Occasionally, the state concerned just staggers on from one disaster to another. Lastly and all too often the state goes off the map as it is taken over by outsiders in one form or another.

Is anyone taking bets?

Volcanoes And Other Fall Outs.

Well, I called Iceland right and for those looking for follow-up Bill McGuire in today’s “Times Online”, Friday 16th April has a good piece in the Comment section titled “A Few Grounded Planes, We Got Off Lightly”. Bill is a man for whom I have a great deal of respect.

What else has been going on? Not much really, so last night we put on a saved programme “Beautiful Minds” second out of three from BBC4 dealing with James Lovelock, the individualist scientist whose insights and Gaia Theory attract so much debate. He was telling us that we are all doomed in the nicest possible way.

For a more local type of doom Market Oracle dot co dot uk on 13th April has a long and detailed analysis by Nadeem Walayat, titled “Britain’s Accelerating Trend Towards High Inflation And Debt Default Bankruptcy”. It is a subject you do not hear a lot about although it is touched on by some people who tell us that they can increase and cut public spending at the same time without increasing taxes to inconvenient levels and let us all have all the presents we want for whatever festive season is appropriate.

There are other things we do not want to talk about in front of the children or those of a nervous disposition. There is Afgh….(shush!!!)..There is the £500 billion needed to sort out all that infrastructure and there I was thinking the Olympics were the key investment. There are other things as well. “Care In The Community” is on the verge of collapse. The NHS has abandoned and stopped bothering about anything that does not require targets to meet set by media advisers in London.

Around the web there is a good deal of mention of knob twiddling on TV. The thesis is rather than thought or analysis we should all base our political responses on the instant of time we react to the personalities involved. So what promises might have prompted me to hit the top buttons?

Free beer for the workers! Ban binge drinking! Spend more on OAP’s, Education roads and social services! Cut local government expenditure! Hang the Kaiser! Unify with Germany! Bring the troops home! Declare war on Russia! Hang the bankers! Easy credit for all! Tear down the barriers to foreign investment! Keep British firms British! End celebrity culture! Give peerages to game show and TV reality show entrants! The list could be endless.

At last the plumbing work in the bathroom has just been finished. I think will go and sit there quietly for a while, if only to avoid the fall-out.

Peerages Going Cheap

There is a report in the Sunday Mail, the journal of record for the celebrity classes to the effect that Mrs. Pauline Prescott wishes her husband, John Prescott of this Parish to assert his right to a Peerage. This comment is serious and not to make jokes on the line of "That's no lady, that's my wife" or such.

It is my recommendation that when he rightly gets his come uppance he should be dignified with the title of Lord of Prestatyn in the County of Clywd and of Little Weighton in the County of Yorkshire.

No explanation is necessary.

Humbugs And Tarts

Watching politicians make fools of themselves on C4 Dispatches in Monday’s item on lobbying was instructive and predictable. Those of us who believe that the nation has been sold out to outfits with little or no interest in our actual welfare or futures will have had all our prejudices confirmed. Of a choice set of offerings I vote for Hoon The Hopeless cosying up to American Private Equity Companies to assist in their impending takeovers of European national defence champion firms.

Coming in the same week that the government announce that light tank production is to go to General Dynamics of the USA rather than BAE is intriguing. Does that mean that BAE is heading for the financial knacker’s yard and a sell off to Americans? Or is it to ensure that Gordon Brown gets to do a big TV interview with President Obama during the election campaign?

Hoon was rabbiting on about strategy. Has he any clue what it might actually mean or imply? If you want something serious on this I picked up on the Economic Road Map dot com web site called “When Giants Fall” (allied to Financial Armageddon) of Mark Panzner on March 20 an article “Peering Out To The Future” referring to a UK Ministry of Defence Document “Global Strategic Trends Out To 2040” available for download. It is 169 pages long and full of interesting comment.

So when we read all about it concerning politicians putting a price on their services, all I can do is give a weary sigh and ask what does one expect of politicians? When Parliament began under the feudal system the number of Lords was tiny and most either related or closely connected to the Crown.

They were the ruling House and the House of Commons was there to be consulted and informed. This was composed of the Knights of The Shires and even the Boroughs were represented by landed interests. The leading Knights were either related to or part of the network headed by the Lords. They were all in each others pockets.

By the time of the Tudors and Stewarts some of the Boroughs were sending leading merchants and burgesses into the House of Commons, but they in turn were linked through their trading and money dealings with the landed class. During the time of the Tudors and Stuarts anyone with enough money and clout could buy themselves a monopoly or get a Charter of Incorporation for control over some economic activity.

King James I of England and VI of Scotland was more careless than most. Selling off a key part of the wool trade to one City man wrecked one of the basic parts of the economy with the unintended consequence of triggering fiscal problems worsened by his high level of public spending. He might argue that Masques and Pensions acted as a stimulus but it did not work. The fall in the tax revenues and blunders in trying to correct it set off the long fuse that led to the Civil War.

By the 18th Century the political system had evolved further and then depended on a highly complex landed and monied City based Cronygarchy operating more openly but no more efficiently in the name of freedom. This was restricted to males in the richest five or so per cent of the population. The Reform Act of 1832 began to let in many more from finance and commerce to the House of Commons and some of the richest strayed up to the Lords.

This did not change the pattern of a lot of people still very much in each others pockets and this continued until 1914 by which time members of the House of Commons had gained a relatively small income essentially to cover basic London expenses. In the 1880’s running Egypt was handed over to a Baring to restore our lost investments. The Boer War was triggered by the gold and diamond mining interests and by this time the network was becoming looser, fractured and more complicated, the Marconi Scandal was a case in point.

In the 1920’s we had Maundy Gregory in action with peerages for sale and in the House of Commons constituencies could be often bought. By the 1930’s it was major industrial companies and the press barons that ruled with people like Rex Mottram of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” around. Money still talked and even Ramsay Macdonald was taken on the ride. By this time the growing Labour Party had developed its own networks in the Trade Unions and local parties.

In the 1950’s Big Tobacco ran the Tory party, between the Treasury revenues and marginal constituencies in Bristol and elsewhere the health people could go and whistle. Along with the bosses of the major industrial firms and the leading City firms the Tories went one way and the Labour Party went another. Unluckily under New Labour and its pressure to change everything the Tories lost the money men to Labour who let them off the leash and industry to the state Quangos.

So now we have an unholy mess and in many ways we are going back to 1603 with a Commons full of placemen, a Lords full of cronies, power given over to an elite of money and land and a Parliament under the thumb of a big spending dictatorial state that will allow no opposition or criticism.

Wandering through the concourse of Waterloo Station on Monday I saw something that at one time would have fulfilled one of the highest ambitions of life. It was a sales point devoted to selling humbugs and there were jars of them of all shapes and sizes. I had to pass it by, the remains of my teeth, never mind the digestive system, are no longer up to it.

The area around Waterloo Station had been one of the more downmarket areas for those looking for ladies described as “tarts” until the Butler reforms of the late 1950’s. The ladies in the vicinity were popularly known as “Tuppeny Uprights” available for servicemen in a hurry to catch a train. Economically this was a classic example of profiting on the basis of low price and high turnover.

There is a story of some American Airmen, rather better paid than our own, during The War making their way to Westminster Bridge, usually kept clear of such ladies and asking a constable where all the real “tarts” were. He put his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Palace of Westminster saying “There are all in there but they cost too much for you lot”.

This could be a very old chestnut, one can imagine a clutch of Scots profiting from the accession of King James to the throne in 1603 wandering along London Bridge looking for company, not finding it then asking the Watchman where the “tarts” are and he points to the Globe and Rose theatres making much the same comment. It might explain why The Bard did so well from his enterprises.

One way or another the majority of our modern politicians are in essence “tarts”. They are very inefficient, rarely deliver what they promise and very expensive. If we want more open and better governance then we are going to have to change the system quite radically. This means a new constitution and new representative bodies. If you care to call it that, I mean a revolution.

All we are getting at the moment is humbug and more humbug by the jar. The latest row about naughty men and women making promises for money are almost beside the point. In the MoD publication referred to above on Page 91 in a chapter dealing with Strategic Shocks it refers to issues arising from the collapse of “Pivotal States”. It gives several possibilities.

The one it should mention and does not is the United Kingdom.

Election 2010 - Jack Straw's Castle

The Labour Party is close to the bottom of the barrel. With fifty to sixty days to go before a general election the latest whizz bang notion is , wait for it, wait for it, Jack Straw to announce the reform of The Lords for the umpteenth time on The Ides of March. This time round there will no longer be Lords, so we can abandon all those personal fantasies we might have had. We will have a Senate. What, you may well ask?

On Wednesday 10 June 2009 last I posted on “The End Of The Peerage Show” and really do not need to add much to that except to reiterate that before reforming The Lords we should at least have some idea of what it is intended to do. Moreover, if it is to be elected then by what means and on what basis will it differ critically from the House of Commons? Once The Lords was called the Tory Party at prayer because of the political and religious background of most of its members; so what is any new Senate intended to be? The Labour Party at the trough?

The USA has a Senate and this numbers rather less than the proposed UK one. Also it has key and central constitutional functions. The UK one will have nearly three times more members and probably no such authority. It is unlikely to match other second chambers where they exist around the world unless somehow Labour now intends to transform the UK into a Federal State. But the EU is becoming a Federal State so how is a Federal State within a Federal State, both flawed in key respects going to work?

The answer is probably the same as the one that can be applied to virtually all of the reforms, reorganisations, initiatives, projects, modernisations, rationalisations, devolutions and goodness knows what of the last thirteen years. It will be one almighty, costly and damaging mess. It will add to the confusion, uncertainty, contradictions, complexity and opaqueness of our administration. It will be very expensive and a useless addition to the machinery of government.

The notion of Senates for the most part comes from the example of Ancient Rome and the history of that body is not entirely a happy one. On that note Jack Straw in his relation to Gordon Brown reminds me of Servilius Casca and Julius Caesar.

What might have Casca said not long before he struck with his dagger? “You’re doing a great job Caesar, we’re right behind you!”

Water Water Everywhere - Plumbers & Politicians

The plumber clicked his teeth. There is work to be done and replacements are necessary. (Obscenities deleted). There is good news and bad news. The good is that he with other local plumbers are not much in demand at present, so the job can be done. The bad is that his regular suppliers, a nationwide group have gone out of business. So have his next choice major suppliers and he will have to make phone calls. When he phones later he has found one who has taken over the book of another and does have the items needed. The job will cost more.

We do not hear much about this kind of experience in the media, nor from the government. Plumbers are not “front line services” and are strictly private sector. It is my theory that when the legions left Britain and took the water engineers with them that was the beginning of the Dark and rather dirtier Ages. On the local news today a Water Company representative was saying that our part of the country is a “water stressed” area and we need to use much less, husband our resources and pay more. The government want another million people living round here pronto, water or no water.

Another choice example of joined up government was provided by Lord Adonis. Put Adonis into Wikipedia and see that he was a mythical cult figure, as in the picture above by Giordano. Our Adonis is all too real. Only weeks ago he was promising a £40 billion high speed railway from Neasden to the North yet today we are told that the Inter City 125 Class of 1976 due for replacement and/or renewal is put on hold for an indefinite period. Currently these train sets serve two very busy main lines, the old Great Western Railway and East Coast Main Line.

But like the Adonis of old, our politicians of today live in a world of myth and fantasy with gods whose works only the few can be privy to. Those who watched the BBC4 programme on The Treasury last night would not be at all surprised. In the series of three; the others were the Home Office and the Foreign Office, it was the last few minutes that were most interesting.

In the earliest stages after 1997 Blair and Brown often had private conversations with nothing on record and no minutes taken of decisions. Strangely they came away from these with entirely different perceptions of what was going to happen. After the relationship went bad, Blair turned to Sofa Government and Brown to being a latter day Oracle of Delphi. Blair tried to do government by media and Brown by financially micro managing each and every government department without either advice from them or any form of real analysis.

When a posse from the Treasury went to talk to the media hoods of the Prime Minister’s office they told them as little as possible because it would be promptly leaked. Blair increasingly tried to make decisions on the hoof using one or other of his cabal. He sent the nation into war on the basis of friendly conversations with Americans.

During Brown’s time at the Treasury its staff was almost completely turned over, rehoused and forced into a different set of thought processes, “can do any which way” as opposed to weighing up the possible and the priorities. Two crucial elements were lost. One was the collective memory which meant that nobody had any experience of a rough ride economically. The other was the capacity for rational analysis in the area of economic complexity.

The job was to deliver what Brown wanted at any price. If Blair’s Defence people needed helicopters to fight wars and Brown wanted PFI deals for new offices, then the offices it would be. One price was that the Treasury first gave away its control over interest rates, handing them over to the Bank of England with financial targets that ensured excessive and uncontrollable credit inflation.

Then largely by informal personal means major areas of funding and debt creation were handed over to the City grandees who took both the Treasury and all the taxpayers for a long long ride on the biggest financial roller coaster in history. When the banks then went bust a few more informal chats on the quiet organised huge bail outs for the benefit of those concerned.

If the plumber tried to run his business on this basis it would be a right mess, in more ways than one. Also he would not last long. If Brown and Blair had the job they would probably couple the toilet to the wash basin and put the header tank where the bath should be and vice versa and then organise a media event to say This Is The Future.

Most likely they would try to screw the S-Bends into each other.

Cronygarchy - The End Of Democracy

Cronygarchy? You may well ask. Having already suggested that we dump all our 17th to 20th notions of this “ism” that “ocracy” or other “archies” in the light of a very changed world it is time to come up with something else. Like the scientists who discovered that were something called an atom or those who found that the atom was made up of particles I am trying out a new thesis.

You may have gathered, between the awards ceremonies, private lives of famous people, missing pets, Winter Olympics and rows over expenses that there is a General Election in the UK soon and your votes are being sought. This is for people to be elected to the House of Commons and if one party secures more than half the seats they will assume power in Whitehall. If none do, then there will be some deals struck to which the electorate will not be party to decide who does what.

There is also a House of Lords, but the electorate will not be troubled. This will soon be packed with the friends and neighbours of the winners in the House of Commons to out number those put in by the previous administration.

The people who are elected to the House of Commons you might assume will represent a large part of the electorate in all its diversity. This might sometimes have been the case in the past but not any more. From both Houses of Parliament the Captains and Kings have gone, along with those who rose from the ranks of ordinary trades and local business.

What we have had under New Labour is a form of Cronygarchy that having been given a long time in office by the vagaries of the electoral system has put so many of its cronies into the House of Lords and the agencies non-government organisations it has created (NGO’s) that we have lost sight of who rules, how, or why. It has allied itself closely to other cronygarchies in Europe, Russian, and elsewhere and could be argued to be simply a sub-set of what amounts to a global financial cronygarchy.

This is because what is one of the defining features of any cronygarchy is acquisition. Normally this requires power; military or political or ideological preferably all of them, but at least two, the ability to maintain enough other people in support roles and critically through these to reduce the majority to servility in one form or another. Simple forms are slavery and serfdom, complex forms include consumerism (bread and circuses) and imperialism. Complex forms usually subsume one or other simple forms in some form, not always obvious.

In the past sub-sets and varieties of cronygarchy include all forms of dictatorship, most religions, all the “ocracies” etc because each will either be formed or entail a type of cronygarchy. Like particle physics it can all be quite difficult to analyse and work out but if the essential principle is understood then things begin to fall into place.

The rise and fall of cronygarchies is another difficult field because each contains the elements of its own destruction. This arises because necessarily all the cronies and their respective supporters are in the business of acquisition. However, in order to create the conditions to allow such acquisition whilst the existing form might be overturned by a simple takeover or coup, too often an extensive breakdown is needed to accomplish the task.

In the 20th Century major world wars did the job in some cases, in the 19th the attempts to create what were called “democracies” and/or “representative government”, a high risk tactic as the old British upper classes discovered. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries the surge into globalisation has created another breakdown.

In the middle of all this in the UK we are now invited to see if we want to chuck out one lot and replace them by another. Unluckily, we have a problem, alas not one but several. There was an old film, perhaps Three Stooges, maybe Marx Brothers or The Crazy Gang, where the group who have created a shambles are ordered out of the hotel through the revolving door, only to reappear having changed their jackets and hats. If you look at the background, interests and the lobby and commercial entities that most of the Tory prospectives haves signed up to it is much the same as those of New Labour.

In other words the Tories that come in will be simply another and related sub set of a sub set of the prevailing UK cronygarchy that I have called The London Mediocracy. As I said “ocracies” are a form of cronygarchy. Their problem will be the “Scorched Earth” breakdown that I suggested that the present government were embarked on many months ago in order to create the political conditions to allow Labour back in power next time around. Unluckily neither Labour nor Tories, nor any other party in the UK are remotely in control in what is going on and what is going to happen.

The House of Commons was once the major legislative body, the check on the Executive and responsible for the redress of grievance. Now, it does virtually none of those things and is almost defunct in practical terms. The EU is the major legislator, sundry government departments’ media advisers and NGO’s do a good deal as well, and the Human Rights Industry, a nationalised company directly under EU cronygarchy control has taken over the third. The UK libel laws ensure that anyone who tries to complain cannot, like the academics who wish to debate the mathematics of hedge fund dealing which supports so much of our cronygarch’s finances or the nastier activities of the property men involved with nationalised banks and funding the personal activities of politicians.

Wherever you look in government and administration you see staggering greed, incompetence and waste characteristic of a cronygarchy which has elevated acquisition to its most damaging level. It is rampant in the NGO’s, public utilities, and even local government (don’t tell the peasants how much we are getting, they may not like it and hurt our feelings). In the UK there are some parallels with that of the 18th Century. The huge increase in what is defined as crime, the pauperisation of the ordinary people, the displacement of population from the rural areas and their replacement by those with money made from money.

What kind of breakdown and on what scale is necessary to rid ourselves of these people and what do we need to create to take their place? We do not know and there is nothing on offer. Something is going to happen because cronygarchy’s do not last they always end in ruin.

So what are you giving up for Lent? I think I might give up voting.