Saturday, September 07, 2013

Spain: "What is 'the crisis?'" - by Brett Hetherington

Brett Hetherington's latest article in Catalonia Today magazine (reproduced with the kind permission of the author):

(Photo: Javier)

This so-called crisis, which would more accurately be called a“depression” is a thousand varied things that need never have happened.

Despite the occasional sensation that life is just continuing on very much as before, the crisis here is certainly the more obvious things that many of us see when we care to look: more beggars on the streets, long queues in shoe repair shops, the recent appearance of solitary men selling tissues or cigarette lighters on the trains and Metro, a greater number of empty shops for sale or rent (or replaced by cheapo-import Chinese shops) and it is also reading more socio-political graffiti on walls.
 
The crisis is a European-wide failure of institutions like the financial system and the pathetic political response to it, but it is also a very immediate, local phenomenon.

In the small town where I live, three years ago there was both a bank and a restaurant – now there is neither.
As well, there are the abstract statistics that simply cannot put a human face to this tragedy - day after day of grim, sullen economic news.
 
Three months ago, a newspaper headline stated that “60% of Andalusian children live in poverty.”
 
This sounds remote and abstract until we learn that there were children in Catalonia who were still going to school in July just to eat lunch, and they had to do this because it is next to impossible for their parents to provide daily meals at home.
But the crisis is about work too.
 
It is hearing that another man has lost his job, or finding that your wife's job has been cut in half and therefore her income has also been halved.

It is thousands of workers still lucky enough to have a job but not being “lucky” enough to get paid for their labour...for yet another month.
 
And it is the insult of "mini-jobs" - (the underpaid mileurista is seeming like the one who is well-off) or it is listening to people at a café talking about the benefits of learning Chinese or German, ahead of English.

As well, the crisis is the news media being full of corrupt, cowardly politicians talking about everything except what could end the crisis.
 
For thousands of people not in the aptly-termed “political class”, it is a rapid or a gradual descent into poverty – what George Orwell called “the crust-wiping,” - that constant search for ways to save money but still ending up unsatisfied after you eat.
 
On top of all this, the crisis is that all-day sensation of being unpleasantly squeezed by the invisible forces of debt, a permanent unconscious burden that is carried by the unemployed and under-employed when a family has no genuine bread-winner.
But what is it that has saved this country from violence, riots and social disturbance on a grand scale?

The family.

The extended family, acting as helpers, carers and givers of money, love, and as many kinds of assistance that you can think of.
 
Without this blood-linked stability across Mediterranean Europe, things would surely be even worse.

Sometimes, when I have thought about the crisis I have been reminded of a Bob Dylan line about how the sun starts to shine on him.
 
But then (in a single phrase that could speak for millions of Europe's economic victims) he sadly sings “but it's not like the sun that used to be.”
 
[A version of the above text was first published as an opinion piece in Catalonia Today magazine, September 2013.]
 
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

All most offsetting – land developers and nature conservation

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson posted a cheery piece on biodiversity offsetting on the BusinessGreen website this week[1].  It’s a masterclass in positive propaganda - teachers, get your students to highlight all the whoopee phrases.

Essentially, if some developer can’t unleash his yellow bulldozers because Gussie Fink-Nottle has identified a rare newt on the site, then shift the dem’ thing. “Biodiversity offsetting can ensure that they recreate the same or even a better environmental site somewhere else.”
There’s a tiny tinkle of worry about that “can”. A more balanced and informative briefing is on the Parliamentary website[2], which recognizes that “badly planned offsets could result in a loss of biodiversity by allowing inappropriate development to proceed, or by compensating inadequately” and makes reference to the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme, whose Advisory Group includes a number of respected conservation organisations[3].  Friends of the Earth are against, the Woodland Trust is wary, as Thursday’s Guardian’s “licence to trash nature” piece shows[4].

Paterson says the Environment Bank supports the scheme. It would, as becomes clear when you look at their site[5]: “The Environment Bank Ltd (EBL) is the leading trader in the UK in environmental assets (natural capital stocks), enabling and brokering deals between buyers (developers, corporate, investors) and sellers (landowners, farmers, conservation bodies, land management companies), thereby facilitating new markets to substantially increase investment in the natural environment.” Ultimately, the EU’s behind it, as the passage goes on to say: “At EU level, the European Commission is currently developing policy for a ‘no net loss initiative’ scheduled for 2015.”
The Environment Secretary paints a rosy picture of compensation with (possibly) bigger or better alternative land. “Bigger” is easy to understand, but it’s not obvious what “better” will mean in every case – microclimates and local ecosystems are very subtle; even “similar” could be a challenge.

DEFRA is consulting us until 7 November[6]. Naturally, to hear is not the same as to obey, but silence betokeneth consent, as Sir Thomas More reminded the court.



[1] http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/opinion/2293143/biodiversity-offsetting-a-chance-to-improve-the-environment-and-grow-the-economy
[2] http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn_369-biodiversity-offsetting.pdf
[3] http://bbop.forest-trends.org/pages/advisory_group
[4] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/05/biodiversity-offsetting-proposals-licence-to-trash
[5] http://www.openness-project.eu/node/7
[6] https://consult.defra.gov.uk/biodiversity/biodiversity_offsetting

 
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Friday, September 06, 2013

Syria: yet another pipeline, yet another enemy

David Malone looks at Qatar's interest in extending the Arab Pipeline (not to be confused with the TransArabian Pipeline) through Syria into Turkey.

What a curse oil and gas have been. US, Israel, Russia, Egypt, Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood vs.  other Islamic sects and political parties... how could anyone keep on his feet in a boat everyone is rocking?

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US complicity in Syrian chemical attack?

"Yossef Bodansky [...] was, for more than a decade, the Director of the US House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare," says the bio on OilPrice.com. His 28 August article states that US intelligence was involved in meetings with Syrian opposition forces before the 21 August chemical weapon detonation that has been blamed on the Syrian government.

"Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and US Intelligence [“Mukhabarat Amriki”] took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Very senior opposition commanders who had arrived from Istanbul briefed the regional commanders of an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development” which would, in turn, lead to a US-led bombing of Syria."

The link to the OilPrice.com article comes via the August Corbett Report video, republished on The Tap blog.

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Oil, gas and Syria

Mike Shedlock repeats his strong suspicion that the impending incursion into Syria is to do with oil. He illustrates this with a German map of the Transarabian Pipeline which also appears on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Arabian_Pipeline

Apparently written in 2008, the Wiki article says that the line ceased operation in 1990 and "Today, the entire line is unfit for oil transport."
 
But things may have moved on since then. There is another line to note, the Kirkuk-Banias Pipeline:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkuk%E2%80%93Baniyas_pipeline

This too has been out of service for some time, but in 2010 Iraq and Syria "agreed to build two new Kirkuk–Baniyas pipelines" for heavy and light oil." It has been said that President Assad saw this as part of a "Four Seas" strategy to become a key link between the East and the Mediterranean.

Martin Armstrong says that Assad has been blocking the Nabucco gas pipeline, the West's counter to Gazprom's tendrils in Europe:
 
http://www.economist.com/node/14041672

But there's also the question of not putting all your eggs in one basket. The proposed Nabucco pipeline route in the above 2009 Economist Magazine map runs from Kurdish areas via a semicircle though Erzerum and on to Ankara and Europe, giving Turkey control of additional vital energy supplies.

It's possible that the West has seen Syria not so much a threat, or obstacle, as an opportunity to diversify supply lines.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Thursday, September 05, 2013

Belief in experience

I’m not a close follower of Santayana’s philosophy, not making much use of his ideas on modes of being for example. Yet I greatly admire his wisdom, his elegant insights into the human situation.

Take this quote for example:-

Belief in experience is the beginning of that bold instinctive art, more plastic than the instinct of most animals, by which man has raised himself to his earthly eminence : it opens the gates of nature to him, both within him and without, and enables him to transmute his apprehension, at first merely æsthetic, into mathematical science.

This is so great a step that most minds cannot take it. They stumble, and remain entangled in poetry and in gnomic wisdom.

Science and reasonable virtue, which plunge their roots in the soil of nature, are to this day only partially welcome or understood. Although they bring freedom in the end, the approach to them seems sacrificial, and many prefer to live in the glamour of intuition, not having the courage to believe in experience.

For me, a key phrase here is not having the courage to believe in experience. Surely it does require courage to believe in experience – often considerable courage.

What Santayana does so extraordinarily well is draw our attention to it without the need to illustrate his meaning. He writes as if he is fully aware that there will be those who know just what he means and those who don’t. He isn’t writing for the latter group.

Maybe we experience told him there was no point and he had the courage to write on that basis. After all, the courage to believe in experience isn’t something easily instilled in others merely by words. Santayana knew he wasn’t likely to stiffen the rational backbone of anyone lacking this most necessary brand of intellectual courage.

Science and reasonable virtue, which plunge their roots in the soil of nature, are to this day only partially welcome or understood.

Indeed - they still are.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Decision time for America - and the free world

“By 930, most arable land had been claimed and the Althing, a legislative and judiciary parliament, was initiated to regulate the Icelandic Commonwealth [...] The Commonwealth lasted until the 13th century, when the political system devised by the original settlers proved unable to cope with the increasing power of Icelandic chieftains.” - Wikipedia on Iceland

And the implication for the USA?
Say 930 = around 1910, 13th century = 21st century.
Karl Denninger fulminates on the illegality of mortgage transfers into those bundled swindle-packages - and the banks could still win anyway. Jesse reflects on Frank Church's warning from 1975 that the nation could head into a spy-ridden society, and it has; and John Kerry says war can now be declared without Congressional approval, though that is still being sought.
You will have the rule of law, or the rule of persons. You will be citizens, or subjects. You will be safeguarded by a Constitution, or ravaged by untrammeled power.

This is the three-century decision point.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

FACT: dragons really do exist

"A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament."
 
 
In mythology, there are dragons or wyrms, but also two-legged or legless, poisonous or fiery wyverns, or lindworms. I have seen long ago but cannot now find on the Internet an engraving, possibly sixteenth century, of one of the latter, destroying whole villages with its fiery breath. I wondered then how someone could dare invent something on that scale, so disprovable.
 
And then on St Valentine's Day 2013 (or 15th February, depending on the time zone you were in at the time), one visited Chelyabinsk.
 
This time the evidence was direct and undeniable, not merely reconstructed with an artist's imagination. According to James Higham, Russians commonly drive with dashcams because of the risk of fake, compensation-seeking "accidents" like this. And so at last we got the proof, for the world to see.
 
Down it flew, a long, fiery shape with a snake-like body and no legs, its deafening roar sufficient to blow in windows and doors and knock down walls, the flames of its breath bright enough to cast shadows. Had it not landed in an ice-covered lake, but hit solid ground, the destruction would have been enormous, as it had been a century ago in Tunguska.
 
Here be dragons.
 








Images taken from this video compilation, and this.
 
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Britain's food security: the future challenge

Land area needed to feed a family of four. Graphic: Dave Llorens (2011)
According to this Wikipedia article, for each square kilometre of arable land Russia has 117 people to feed, the US has 179, and the UK... 1,077. In a future where energy has become very expensive and other countries feed their own people first, could Britain sustain itself without imports?

The infographic above suggests not. The author calculates that a family of four would need 89,050 square feet of land for food, or slightly over 2 acres. Per 4 people in the UK, we have 39,977 square feet of arable land, i.e. only 45% of the estimated requirement.

We may not always be able to fly in cheap vegetables from Kenya and Zimbabwe, and out-of-season fruit from around the world.

Do we have a plan?

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Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Salt Power

Where river meets sea we have an opportunity to extract not just tidal energy, but energy derived from the difference between salt water and fresh. Maybe if energy policies were rational we wouldn’t have such opportunities, but we are where we are.



With pressure retarded osmosis, or PRO, the idea is to take advantage of the osmotic pressure created when river water and sea water are separated by a semi-permeable membrane.

Under these conditions, water molecules from the river pass through the membrane into the sea water, creating a pressure on the sea water side of the membrane which may be used to drive turbines and generate electricity.

A pilot plant in Norway which has been generating a few kilowatts since 2009. As with so many sustainable energy technologies, the problem is one of energy density. There simply isn’t much energy to be extracted from each square metre of membrane.

Huge areas of membrane, in the order of square kilometres may be required to scale up the technology, but these membranes are also prone to fouling, so the technical issues are formidable.
 


A less developed but simpler and perhaps more interesting way to extract energy from seawater and river water is Reverse Electrodialysis or RED.

In the RED approach, the osmotic energy of mixing fresh and salt water is captured by directing the solution through an alternating series of positively and negatively charged exchange membranes. The resulting chemical potential difference creates a voltage over each membrane and leads to the production of direct electric energy.

As with PRO, there are many technical hurdles and much research to be done, but a Dutch company called REDstack B V began work on a pilot plant in July. Both technologies are clean, highly modular and relatively well understood.

Could the Severn estuary be used to generate both tidal power and power from a technology such as PRO or RED?

We certainly have the ingenuity - pity about the politics.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The war for the Mediterranean

Simplified version of the Hereford Mappa Mundi (c. 1300). Picture source: Atlantis Maps.com
CNN reports that the number of refugees from the Syrian civil war now exceeds 2 million. Yet Classicfm radio news this morning says that people are showing some reluctance to give money to charities working in that area. I can understand why, since I fear we've already been paying involuntarily through our taxes to create and inflame this disaster.

The US certainly has, according to Barry Ritholtz, for the last 6 or 7 years. But I suspect that the UK, ever keen to show that it still has a real pair, not Neuticles, has been assisting, as it did with the clandestine insertion of an SAS unit into Libya to help oust Gaddafi. The Syrian government has admitted responsibility for shooting down a Turkish warplane it says was violating its airspace, but denies firing an artillery shell into Turkey and rebels in Damascus have allegedly confessed that they were the ones who let off the chemical bomb that nearly precipitated direct US military intervention.

I think history will judge that Secretary of State John "we know" Kerry's reputation is now toast, but it hasn't dissuaded him from a hawkish insistence that Obama can go ahead even if the Congressional vote goes against him. And we now hear that the ruthlessly ambitious and pseudo-affable Mayor of London is proposing a second vote in Parliament so MPs can be given the chance to get it right this time.

Those who set a fire cannot be certain of controlling its spread. Burning round the eastern Mediterranean, the flames could tickle other countries too, as Russia becomes involved in the new Great Game. The same tactics that have destabilised the Arab Street could be used against nations on the northern coast of the Middle Sea, which have been suffering as a result of the overbearing rule of the EU and the predations of international banking. Greece for example, with its high youth unemployment, history of internecine strife and 8,500 miles of coastline, might be a tempting target for subversion and infiltration.

You can lose power through overreaching. I used to have a postwar edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and one of its articles traced the roots of the Reformation to the attempt by mediaeval Popes to maintain and strengthen their control while Western countries settled down and their kings grew stronger. Is the US risking upsetting the balance of power by trying to secure the Levant?

Conversely, the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed Russia to get a better grip on its affairs and its developing energy resources are giving it something to bargain with rather than invade. (She also has a very promising agricultural position: 117 people per km2 of arable land, versus 179 for the US and - dangerous, this - 1,077 for the UK.) The potential economic power is seen in control of gas supplies to Northern Europe, but also perhaps in the events that led to the fall of Greek Premier Kostas Karamanlis in 2008 - he was negotiating with Russia for their South Stream gas pipeline, a rival to the EU/US Nabucco line. There are even allegations of an assassination plot against Karamanlis and foreign threats against the Greek government.

It doesn't take much to drop a country into chaos. It's said that a satphone and $20,000 can get you an African armed revolutionary movement. A organized minority can overthrow and seize a nation. For example, in the Soviet Union of 1986 only 10% were in the Communist Party, of which more than half were industrial workers and farmers; in pre-Purge 1933, maybe 2.5%; in 1918 just after the Revolution, a mere 200,000 members or one-fifth of one per cent.

In Greece, the average electoral turnout for the Communist KKE has been over 6% since 2000, and back in 1958 it was 24%. The average of c. 470,00 votes (not that voting means much to Communists, and some of the most dangerous will stay in cover) represents around 5% of the population aged over 15. The KKE vote halved between May and June last year (from 536,072 to 277,122) and one has to wonder whether there may be some foreign support for some of the alternative parties; but Greeks are quite capable of quarrelling without the help of outsiders. The point is that the politics there are volatile, and there are lots of hormonal youngsters to recruit for one cause or another.

Not that Greece is the only southern European country ripe for trouble. Think of Italy and Spain; and the Balkans. A direct confrontation between major global players seems unlikely, at this stage; but goodness knows what is going on in the world of Spy vs. Spy. And it's not only the US Sixth Fleet aiming to "keep the peace" in the Eastern Med: Russia is reported to be sending a missile cruiser and an anti-submarine ship.

Russia still has only one port that is ice-free all year round, and that is on the Baltic and separated from the Mother Country by the land of three other nations. But she controls land joining the Caspian and Black Sea, and has ethnic Slavic connections with Bulgaria, Macedonia and even currently Turkified Slavs in Anatolia. Oh, for free naval passage through the Hellespont and a base in Alexandroupoli, or even Thessaloniki.

The sides are getting too close to each other. A little less car use and turning down the central heating a bit might save us from unintended consequences in a very perilous game in the centre of the world.

UPDATE (3 Sep 2013): Steve Quayle says the plan is to use Syria to break Russia's plans for gas exports in the region (htp: Autonomous Mind).

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Monday, September 02, 2013

Italy (sort of) taxes high frequency trading

http://www.capitalbay.com/latest-news/297010-new-principal-suspended-2-days-after-showing-students-scary-terminator-spoof-video-he-made-to-introduce-himself-to-school.html

Italy has today put into effect a tax on high frequency trading (HFT). Aside from raising some desperately-needed revenue, it may help make the financial markets a little less unstable. For as firms develop ever faster computer-based share trading systems, we risk something like the financial version of a "Terminator"-style Skynet catastrophe - except that the machines are merely following the rules shoved into them. "Garbage in, garbage out", as a college friend repeatedly told me 40 years ago. It can certainly be terminal for some:

"In 2003, a US trading firm became insolvent in 16 seconds when an employee inadvertently turned an algorithm [automatic trading program] on. It took the company 47 minutes to realise it had gone bust," said Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England in a speech given in Beijing two years ago (pdf). He also noted that for a brief moment during the "Flash Crash" of 6 May 2010, "Accenture shares traded at 1 cent, and Sotheby’s at $99,999.99. [...] The Flash Crash was a near miss. It taught us something important, if uncomfortable, about our state of knowledge of modern financial markets. Not just that it was imperfect, but that these imperfections may magnify, sending systemic shockwaves. [...] Flash Crashes, like car crashes, may be more severe the greater the velocity."

Zero Hedge had been advocating a "Tobin Tax" on HFT before the Flash Crash happened (Keynes had mooted the same in 1936!) to put what Haldane calls "grit in the wheels." A few months after the crash, financial expert Martin Hutchinson also called for it, and he repeated the call a year later, with a proposed refinement that would see one rate for shares, a smaller one for bonds and a higher one on derivatives.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock, writing in January, disliked the idea altogether, citing the experience of Sweden and claiming that such a tax would merely drive trade away from exchanges where it was introduced. But that may not be so simple: big trading firms pay big money to site their own computers right next to the exchange (it's known as "co-location") and given the incredible speed of cyber-trading, this huddling up confers a microtime gunslinger's advantage that may make the tax worth paying - after all, the co-location rent is a tax they're already more than happy to fork out.

"Mish" also objects that the tax will reduce liquidity and make the market more volatile - but Hutchinson counters: "In periods of turbulence, the liquidity that HFT supplies is quickly withdrawn, as the institutions operating the trading systems shut them off for fear of large and destabilizing losses. Indeed, liquidity that switches off when it is most needed is of no use at all. To the contrary, it destabilizes the market rather than stabilizing it." He adds that HFT is all about trading on unfair terms anyway; it "should qualify as inside information, and thus be illegal."

According to the FT today, Italy has plumped for a mixture of charges focusing on HFT and "side bet" derivatives - but exempting transactions by certain kinds of intermediaries. Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge notes that this is a horse-and-cart-sized hole in the rules and traders will scramble to redefine themselves. But according to Hutchinson, "a Tobin tax could severely hamper [the] trading revenue" of some major banks (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley) as "these banks already are in bad shape"; so the market-maker exemption may not be about favoritism.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Shale: Another Nail in Osborne's Coffin

Balcombe Blame Rests Here
Or rather, the coffin of his reputation as a strategist.

Oh yes, it's been dead awhile, stone dead.  But by my reckoning, his screw-up on shale is almost up there with the fatal boundary-change abortion.

In both cases, Master George the master-strategist seems to have identified clearly enough the paramount significance of a particular issue.  But instead of following through, of giving it the undivided attention and planning and execution it merits (being An Issue Of Paramount Significance, yeah ?), he farts in its general direction and assumes that plaudits are in order for his spotting, and farting at, the obvious.  But a real strategist understands that strategic insight is empty without genuine, unremitting, practical application to the task of figuring out everything that follows, in grinding, boring detail - and actual implementation of the needful.  Whatever it takes.  With no loose ends.  Because, hey, it's of Paramount Significance.

We know how the boundary changes ended: so what happened with shale ?  When the initial Cuadrilla discovery was announced, we wrote here: This Is The Big One.   Others (e.g. Mr Worstall) followed our lead, and soon it was recognised by all and sundry. See, George, it is really obvious (& let me quickly add that C@W was by no means alone in trumpeting the matter).  George duly cottoned on too and started running his own energy policy - hatching tax breaks (unnecessary) and a streamlined permitting regime (stupid, at least in the way it's been done), with a bit of gratuitous green-baiting (Juvenile George's stock-in-trade).

But what else obviously follows from the obvious significance of shale ?  Why yes: every Green and Red and general unwashed malcontent and transgressionist across Europe would realise that shale gas (if actually found here) could be the death-knell of their various stone-age / statist dreams.  Accordingly, they would be out in force to try to prevent drilling, with a lot more chance of drawing the crowds than (say) the rather recondite NoDashForGas sit-in at West Burton.  Oh yes, this too was entirely obvious - we predicted it here last year - and is a major vulnerability of the whole UK shale gas prospect.

With the Battle of Balcombe rumbling on, there is no need to rehearse just how far short of a strategy we are: and I unhesitatingly blame Osborne.  There is nothing good to be had from going abut the job clumsily and pissing off conservative Middle England in the process.

Is all lost ?  Well, if this were Germany we'd be in really big trouble, because their greens (and the old superannuated Atomkraft-Nein-Danke brigade, now in well-heeled retirement with time on their hands and misty recollections of their glory-days to perpetuate) have serious stamina, as witness the very long-running Battle of Stuttgart Station.

But our homegrown greens are a little less committed.  I maintain that the UK shale programme is vulnerable to the antis, but there is certainly an optimistic scenario.  Those with long memories will recall the massive pro-coal-mining demonstrations in the early 1990's, when Michael Heseltine (sic) was at the DTI and allowing large-scale pit closures to take place.  A short moratorium, a general return to the sofa to watch whatever was the compelling soap of the day; and after a couple of months all was forgotten and the pits closed as planned.  Likewise in the first year of the NuLab government, some more pit closures were announced: cue massive popular hostility to the Dash For Gas (yes, even then - and that was technically the second D-F-G; the current one is the third).  And what did young Peter Mandelson do then ? (yep, he was at the DTI in 1997).  Why - another moratorium ! - this time on new gas-fired power plant permits.  And after the usual short interval ... well, you know the rest.

So there's at least a chance the great unwashed just pack up and go home**.  Therefore, if there is a decent strategist somewhere in Whitehall (and I very much think there is) there is at least the possibility of getting this show back on the road.  There is, after all, no great rush.

If a real strategist takes charge, there is one final optimistic precedent worth noting.  In the first Thatcher government a truly strategic attack on the NUM was being hatched under a properly thought-out, comprehensive plan (which embraced such details as building coal stocks to unprecedented levels, uprating Felixstowe for coal imports, building the A14 to get them to the Midlands by road, and installing an infrastructure for coordinating the Police nationally.  See, George, that's what a real strategy looks like.)  In 1981, before all this was complete the NUM went on strike for a pay rise.  So Thatcher ordered a tactical retreat - looked like a horrible climb-down at the time - reculer pour mieux sauter, until things were good and ready.  Well, you know the rest.

So all is not lost.  But Osborne ... his failings are inexcusable.  Is there really not a better candidate for Chancellor on the coalition benches ?  That's another job where strategy is at a premium, n'est-ce pas ?


** having a few spare hours last week, I monitored the tweeting on events at Balcombe.  Somewhat to my surprise, having been at frenetic and very high-volume levels all week, it fell off dramatically after lunchtime on Friday.  Does this mean all these tossers are tweeting from work ? Watching the cricket ?  


This post first appeared on the Capitalists@Work blog


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A question for Ayn Rand followers

What is the point of "rational self-interest"? Everything you do for yourself is lost when you die.

Perhaps it's an observation rather than a precept.

But it needs unpacking - what's the self? What are the drives that count as "happiness"? Are you exercising your freedom by obeying your impulses?

Reminds me of what little I understand of Sartre. Having proved to his satisfaction that man is a futile passion, he then tries to build on the void - you should be brave, honest. Why? When you're gone, you won't be able to applaud yourself or stick any trophies on your ethereal shelf.

The "selfish gene", that I can understand. But that implies that the organism lives for the next generation and for others that share its genes, not itself alone.

We share about half our genes with bananas, I'm told.

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Haunting

http://xkcd.com/1259/
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Sunday, September 01, 2013

Delingpole in love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ooKsv_SX4Y
Professional contrarian James Delingpole has taken a look into the mad, staring eyes of Ayn Rand and fallen head over heels:

I’m now half way through Atlas Shrugged and I’m loving almost every moment. But Ayn Rand isn’t someone you read for pleasure, I’m beginning to realise. She’s someone you read so you can underline sentences and scrawl in the margins ‘Yes’, ‘God that is so TRUE!’ and ‘YES!!!’

It's a coup de foudre: as he admits, he's only halfway through the book. The intemperate marginalia suggest a loss of balance.

Discounting for a moment the possibility that he's gushing annoyingly because it might increase his chances of another booking for Any Questions?, I have to wonder why it's necessary to counter one extreme with another. Is the only answer to Communism, Objectivism? If all that matters is opposites, would Mein Kampf do just as well? After all, Rand appears to have been very taken with the triumph of the superior person's will.

I recall a Conservative election advert - was it as early as 1979, or would it have been in the Eighties? - where the voter's choice was represented as being either Tory or Labour, and nothing in between: the Liberals were symbolised by a contemptible little boneshaker of a car rattling down the centre line and meeting a noisy end round the corner, with only a hubcap rolling back into view. On the other hand, I also remember the first time I tried punting: you head towards a holly bush on the left, correct hard and find yourself making straight for some thicket on the right. Very clever of the ad firm (the Saatchis?) to persuade us that dualism is the only way.

Words, phrases, images can be intoxicating and misleading. We translate reality into our code system and then stick to the translation -  think of our false memories of places and events, and Alistair Campbell's subordination of fact to "narrative".

One has to distrust stirring prose that divides us into camps: shale frackers vs "hard-left, deep-green pressure groups", "wealth creators" vs "looters". One can see that fracking may give us a few years' opportunity to reform the ergonomics of our economy, without either believing that the boom will last for a century or that we will all be poisoned and our homes disappear into sinkholes. Similarly, one can value the contribution of entrepreneurs without seeing everyone else as a bloodsucker.

But maybe Delingpole is just doing a Matt Ridley. Maybe he's not really nuts, just crazy like a fox, dressing up in whatever meretricious opinion will scandalise. After all, as Wilde said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

On the other hand, instead of throwing sticks of TNT around in the attempt to get attention, you could try taking your coat off and work up a sweat, digging for the truth.
 
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Defending savers: an email to Peter Hitchens

Dear Mr Hitchens

I'm glad you're taking up the cudgels for savers. You may (I hope) be interested to know that when NS&I ILSC were first introduced in 1975, both the Government and the Opposition explicitly accepted that there was a moral obligation to savers to protect them from inflation, and with your and the Mail's resources you may be able to get more of the back story.

Here are two relevant Hansard extracts:
________________________________
Hansard record of House of Commons debate, 10 July 1975:

Mr. Neubert

Does the Minister accept that the opportunity to invest in inflation-proof schemes is an act of belated social justice to millions of people who have seen their savings irreversibly damaged during the recent rapid rise in the rate of inflation? Will he make recompense to many of them by easing up on his vindictive attacks on the principle of savings embodied in the capital transfer tax and the wealth tax?§Mr. Barnett

The hon. Gentleman has put his supplementary question at the wrong time, because National Savings are rising very well at present. I am sure he will be delighted to hear that. As to what he called "belated social justice", I am sure he will pay due attention to the fact that the scheme was introduced by a Labour Government and not by a Conservative Government.Mr. Nott

Is the Chief Secretary confident that a further extension of index-linked schemes—which are welcome to savers—will not cause a diversion of funds away from deposits with building societies, leading to a rise in the mortgage interest rate?§Mr. Barnett

We are, indeed, aware of those problems. That is precisely why we introduced the scheme in this limited way.

Hansard record of House of Lords debate, 4 November 1975:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1975/nov/04/national-savings-schemes

Lord LEE of NEWTON

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that while the index-linked schemes are extremely good value for money, it would be a good idea—as inflation has been rather rampant—to increase the maximum amount that can be invested in them?
§Lord JACQUES

My Lords, the Government have two conflicting obligations. One is an obligation to the taxpayer to buy goods and services as economically as possible, and secondly there are certain social obligations. The Government believe that by the action they have taken they have got the right balance.

_______________________________________

I have been trying for 447 days so far to get my MP (John Hemming) onside and so far I've sensed a definite reluctance to consider this issue important. When I gave him the above extracts (for the third time - I suspect he doesn't read his correspondence with sufficient attention) he very grudgingly said (by email, 22.07.2013) "I will ask [my researcher] to put these points to the minister with the suggestion that a small number of index linked bonds should be made available with a limit as to how much any one person can hold."
__________________________________
A further point:

You may have seen that on 9 August the Treasury announced retrospective changes to NS&I savings products held by savers, some of whom will now be very old and may even depend on them for funding care. The date of the announcement is suspicious, coming as it does in mid-holiday silly-season time. But the date that these changes are due to take effect is even more suspicious: Armistice Day 2013 - a good day to bury bad news?

It occurs to me that this apparently cynical choice of date could be effectively turned against the pocket-robbing spivs of the Government, since it may be possible to track down WW2 survivors who now hold NS&I products - do you think this could be worth a try?
_____________________________________
If you'd care to glance through my attempts to get heard - and read the stupid, guff-filled and irrelevant responses from various Treasury ministers - please see below for the links to my humble amateur blog/magazine:

Part1 - http://broadoakblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/fighting-government-for-savers-and.html
Very best wishes

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Media bias? Syria, chemical weapons and napalm

There is some confusion in media reporting on Syria, and I wonder whether it is deliberate. BBC News at Ten talked about chemical weapons a couple of nights ago, and then screened an on-the-ground report (no longer available on BBC iPlayer) showing the burn victims of an air attack on a school:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b038zlbl/BBC_News_at_Ten_29_08_2013/
Trouble is, the wounds look like the effects of napalm, a mixture of petrol and gel that sticks to you as it burns. As it was invented in 1943 it was obviously not proscribed by the Geneva Protocol of 1925, nor is it banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention, which took effect in 1997.

Wikipedia says its "use against civilian populations was banned by the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in 1980" but, sorry as I am that anyone at all should suffer, I have to wonder what these "schoolchildren" were doing that might have prompted an air strike. If a teenager is firing bullets and RPGs, is he a civilian?

And although the horrible injuries seem perfectly genuine, there was a slightly stagey feel to the BBC clip, as I have noted before. As with those Middle Eastern demonstrators who hold up placards written in English, one gets the impression that people there are learning how to play to the Western cameras; they're far from stupid, and propaganda is an important element in modern warfare.

By the way, the same Wiki article notes that although Protocol III to the CCW restricts the use of all incendiary weapons, the US itself has not signed that part. The US made enthusiastic and terrible use of napalm in Vietnam, sometimes adding white phosphorus to the mixture so that it continued to burn to the bone even if the victim dived into water.

So, is it merely age-related daftness that made me conflate the banned use of "chemical weapons" with a possibly legal possible napalm attack on possibly innocent civilians, or was the BBC "nudging" us into support for military action against the Syrian government? The news media have form in angling coverage - remember the 1992 pic of Bosnian Muslims apparently caged behind barbed wire? There were real atrocities in that conflict, but surely the news media, who are our ears and eyes on the wider world, have for that reason a special duty to be carefully truthful, unbiased and critical, and to give us context as well as image; I don't feel we've had that.

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