Caravan news

We're heading back into the 60s/70s. Turn on, tune in, drop out. But I'd suggest a twist.

I've often said to others - especially my wife - never mind New Age travellers, let's become old age travellers. That is, no tats, no drugs, no atomkraft nie danke stickers. Just go where you like by caravan, pretending you're on holiday from your drab dwelling in e.g. Birmingham. That way the police will just see you as silly old crumblies and leave you alone. Bless you, love, we're on our way to Bournemouth for a fortnight, that sort of thing. My Mum used to say people always think you're dafter than they are, just play up to it.

In other words, don't challenge the system, just sidestep it unobtrusively. We're all too interconnected to bring down the system without horrible things happening to us, the ones we love and the ones we depend on. Find your niche. As the Chinese saying goes, better to light a small candle than complain about the dark.

It's not consistent, I think, to complain about Communist strategies for mass social subversion on the one hand and then on the other to advocate something very similar oneself, e.g. withdrawing all your cash from the bank on a given date, a move Ian PJ appears to support, though I well understand the temptation.

The point is not to smash the system - we've seen the joy that brought to Russia, China, Cambodia etc - but to encourage it to mutate to our preferences. CAMRA turned the tide on proper beer, people like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall got Tesco et al to get more serious about humane and organic food - all without torching the pubs and supermarkets.

The first to operate on the new model will doubtless get a free or cheap ride - see the caravanners who've invaded upmarket Venice Beach, a place where they could never afford to buy houses even before they had theirs repossessed - and then the system will adjust.

There's no need for a hey-guys-let's-all approach: do what you've decided, don't put up with what you don't have to, be prepared to pay the price for your decision. If enough others do the same, society will change appropriately; if not, you've suited yourself. I quit teaching in 1989 because I wasn't prepared to put up with the crap and bullying, and it cost me financially - but who knows what carrying on would have cost me? My life has been incredibly richer experientially as a result of realising that it wasn't all decided for me. We forget how free we are already.

No self-destructive emotional spasms, please, we're British.

He who pays the piper

Why do we talk about British freedom and independence when our political and business leaders have sold the country from under us?

Germany's Deutsche Bahn has owned the Royal Train since 2007 and has now just sacked the manager despite his 30 years' service. Follow the money, and you'll see that you have to pay a Frenchman to get from England to Wales across the Severn. The Frogs also own British Energy. Cadbury's is now American, HP Sauce Dutch, Coca-Cola has just closed down Malvern Water, even the UK's tax offices are owned by a property company based in Bermuda... Banking, car manufacture (or rather, assembly), we could go on. It would be far easier to list the few major enterprises that are still (as ultimate beneficiary) British-owned.

A new book by Matt Taibbi reveals that the same is now going on in America.

Will it eventually become a war of the people against their rulers?

UK banking system overconcentrated

According to the advert on the left of this article, the USA has 7,830 banks of which 437 are judged to be in immediate danger of failing. Assuming that happens, that leaves 7,393 banks servicing a population of 310,592,000 - equivalent to a little over 42,000 people per bank.

The UK has "about 400" banks and building societies (FSA list here) to service a population of 62,008,049 - equivalent to over 155,000 per bank.

In other words, the US has about 3.69 times the number of banks per million head of population - a much smaller average customer base, but a correspondingly larger reserve of lesser-sized organisations to take up the slack if one or more of the big ones goes down.

This suggests that it is even more important for the UK to consider breaking up the biggest outfits, because the fall of one of our greatest trees would create a much bigger clearing in our forest than it would in the States.

Pulling the wool, or something

Is there any evidence that the EU seriously expected to get a 6% increase in its budget? Wasn't this merely a headline figure for the punters, so that Europhile leaders could go back to their nations claiming a bargaining victory?

A straw in the wind

Here it comes, the new colonialism.

Politician requiring tuition

Alan Johnson has said he'll need to buy a book on economics now he's been made Shadow Chancellor. He's not alone, as it seems most of political class know nothing about the subject, even though many must have read PPE at Porterhouse.

What one book would you recommend politicians should read before we let them play with the toy train set of our economy?

I think a new Ladybird book would be a wonderful help - they used to be so clear and concise. So much better than turgid, shut-you-out academic and wrong.

Pin the tail on the economic cycle

Where are we in the cycle, would you say? (Click on pic to enlarge.)

Is there such a thing as law? How about the EU?

James Higham draws our attention to a presentation by "Captain Ranty" in which the latter asserts that any law passed by our rulers has no validity without our specific individual consent.

This position has its attractions for those of us who deny that we ever consented to rule by the EU, but philosophically it has its dangers and I think we'd do better to declare that certain decisions by Parliament are ultra vires, especially the concession of any part of national sovereignty, since this is a form of dilution or abolition of the franchise that legitimises the House of Commons itself.

I attempt a doubtless flawed riposte to the freedom-loving Captain, as follows:

If you're going to take what is I think essentially an existentialist position, then remember that Sartre said (in effect) not only are you free but you cannot choose otherwise than to be free. Canonising Jean Genet means that as far as the laws and taxes are concerned, you merely note the consequences of possible actions and then decide to do whatever you're going to do. Externally you are still ruled, but presumably there is an internal change in that while you accept that some have power over you, you no longer concede them the right. There must be some sense of relief, some conservation of psychic energy in that.

But that position is not a collectivist one, for pace Sartre's aberration during the 1968 riots, otherwise he maintained there is no collective freedom. You say "Soon it will be. Soon there will be a million of us. But long before we get those kind of numbers we will have won." We? Win what? There is no "we" and far from a future victory, freedom is an inescapable initial condition. Existence precedes essence.

I believe Sartre said that you could choose to give up your freedom, but I don't think the logic of his position dictates that we should be bound by a previous decision of a past self, any more than by the diktat of another. "I've changed my mind", you'll smile.

Tiptoeing away from this road to chaos, may I suggest that Americans (which group now includes my brother) might do well to reaffirm the Constitution in all its words and guiding spirit. What wisdom your Founding Fathers had, to set down such a massive and beautifully-carved stone as the basis for the nation; we in Britain are much more vulnerable to top-down plutocratic / neo-aristocratic / bureaucratic corruption and revolution, for here the system merely smiles and tells you it's changed its mind.

The future of the British political elite

One law for them...

"Insider-trading laws don't apply to Congress" - reports Denninger. Is that also true for Parliament?