Founded in 1877 but with 16th century roots in Gresham's original Royal Exchange, the London Metals Exchange has just been sold to the Chinese.
Ironically, the LME is the last "open outcry" market in Europe. Apart from a few brave individuals like Brian Haw (whom Parliament, to its everlasting disgrace, attempted to outlaw), and the Occupy London protestors against which the City, major newspapers and that refuge of the poor and oppressed the Church orchestrated a campaign of condemnation and legal action, we hear very little open outcry against our negligent, incompetent, venal, corrupt, secretive, dictatorial and treacherous overclass. A class that has sold its soul to the money men, who have sold the freehold and seed corn of our economy in the name of "free trade" that is progressively costing our freedom and is only beneficial to the trader. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to see a pattern in the invitees to Bilderberg 2012.
The complacency of the traders and their agents in politics is astounding. Martin Hutchinson was warning of the future decline of the City back in 2007, and around the same time a smirking financier at an Oxford college reunion was assuring us that we'd be cheating foreigners for a long time to come.
How many bricks can you take out of the bottom course of your house before the structure caves in? We don't have leaders; we have Destructors.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Controversy continues over Chinese foreign farm purchases
Further to my recent post on this subject, here's a WSJ article about resistance from New Zealand farmers to the purchase of 16 farms there.
According to Wiki, Crafar Farms was NZ's largest family-owned dairy concern until a crash in milk prices forced it into receivership. The receivers had two goes at getting official clearance to sell to Chinese businesses and got the okay in April this year.
Other farmers are worrying that it's the thin end of the wedge and cash-rich foreign buyers may now start to flood in, snapping up land at prices the locals can't match and ultimately turning Kiwis into tenant farmers. Australians share their concerns - though at least one business commentator there is blowing the free trade trumpet and warning of international tension if it's unheeded.
It's an issue here, too: last month saw a £50m deal between the UK and China, to sell pork products, which is OK in itself, but indicative of the potentially vast demand from the Chinese, so our food may not stay cheap for much longer.
The Daily Telegraph, reporting on this year's Hay Festival, included an interview (see 18:00) with Conor Woodman, author of Unfair Trade - How Big Business Exploits the World’s Poor and Why It Doesn’t Have To. The title is self-explanatory, and the issue is becoming live for us here; as Woodman says, "What concerns me more than monopolies is Chinese investments in parts of the developing world where they are buying up land, fishing, mineral and mining rights. The Chinese have been going round buying up the world and we ought to be concerned by that."
On the one hand, there's land-grabbing going on inside China, where speculators are illegally seizing and converting precious agricultural land to building projects; and on the other, Chinese business is purchasing blocks of food-producing land around the world, including the South-East of England.
Don't expect our negligent, venal and treacherous ruling class to do much about it. Daily Mail business expert Alex Brummer's new book, "Britain for Sale: British Companies in Foreign Hands - The Hidden Threat to Our Economy" shows how, unlike our foreign counterparts, the UK has long been happy to sell off key British enterprises; flogging the very ground we stand on is only an extension of that process.
According to Wiki, Crafar Farms was NZ's largest family-owned dairy concern until a crash in milk prices forced it into receivership. The receivers had two goes at getting official clearance to sell to Chinese businesses and got the okay in April this year.
Other farmers are worrying that it's the thin end of the wedge and cash-rich foreign buyers may now start to flood in, snapping up land at prices the locals can't match and ultimately turning Kiwis into tenant farmers. Australians share their concerns - though at least one business commentator there is blowing the free trade trumpet and warning of international tension if it's unheeded.
It's an issue here, too: last month saw a £50m deal between the UK and China, to sell pork products, which is OK in itself, but indicative of the potentially vast demand from the Chinese, so our food may not stay cheap for much longer.
The Daily Telegraph, reporting on this year's Hay Festival, included an interview (see 18:00) with Conor Woodman, author of Unfair Trade - How Big Business Exploits the World’s Poor and Why It Doesn’t Have To. The title is self-explanatory, and the issue is becoming live for us here; as Woodman says, "What concerns me more than monopolies is Chinese investments in parts of the developing world where they are buying up land, fishing, mineral and mining rights. The Chinese have been going round buying up the world and we ought to be concerned by that."
On the one hand, there's land-grabbing going on inside China, where speculators are illegally seizing and converting precious agricultural land to building projects; and on the other, Chinese business is purchasing blocks of food-producing land around the world, including the South-East of England.
Don't expect our negligent, venal and treacherous ruling class to do much about it. Daily Mail business expert Alex Brummer's new book, "Britain for Sale: British Companies in Foreign Hands - The Hidden Threat to Our Economy" shows how, unlike our foreign counterparts, the UK has long been happy to sell off key British enterprises; flogging the very ground we stand on is only an extension of that process.
Savers between a rock and a hard place
The stock market is thoroughly corrupt; physical assets, especially those purchased with the assistance of debt, are overpriced; and the bond market looks like a mantrap. Yet even now there are economic commentators who are not in favour of protecting cash against inflation.
If sound money is not to be, then it seems to me that unless one is part of the elite battening on the financial system, sucking out wealth faster than it is diminished by inflation, impoverishment is certain.
If sound money is not to be, then it seems to me that unless one is part of the elite battening on the financial system, sucking out wealth faster than it is diminished by inflation, impoverishment is certain.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Drugs: just say no to antidepressants
"The cost to the NHS of treating depression [includes] £230m for antidepressant drugs" - Nigel Morris, The Independent, 30 December 2011
"The prime purpose of prescribing antidepressants is to enable doctors to avoid being blamed for patients' suicides." - Dr Robert Lefever, Daily Mail, 8 June 2012
Protecting savers from inflation - an email to my MP
Request for Parliamentary question re NS&I index-linked savings certificates
Dear Mr XxxxAs one of your constituents, I should be grateful if you would ask questions in Parliament re the Government's intentions in respect of preserving our life savings against the ravages of inflation. This is especially a matter of concern because of continuing enormous financial support for the banking system, here and in other countries (latterly Spain) that seems destined to burst out as high inflation at some future point.
I note that Mr Cameron's private secretary has written recently to all members of the Cabinet saying, among other things:
"The Prime Minister wants to ensure that the Government as a whole is giving the highest priority to addressing the cost of living."
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2157018/Cameron-summits-quads-secrets-save-EU.html)
If this is so, why did National Savings & Investments withdraw Index-Linked Savings Certificates from sale on 19 July 2010, when they had previously been continuously available since 1975, a year in which RPI was 24.2%? Is this an indication that the Government expects RPI to be even worse than that figure in the intermediate future?
And why were these Certificates, somewhat grudgingly reintroduced (5-year term only) on 12 May 2011, withdrawn again on 7 September? Why are they not available now?
It is also worrying that the Government's 2011 Budget Plan (as given in Red Book Annexe B, page 90 - http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/documents/digitalasset/dg_196165.pdf) says "National Savings and Investments (NS&I) is expected to make a contribution to net finance of £2 billion."
Is this a sign that the Government is purely concerned about targets for government borrowing and not at all exercised about the protection of HMG's subjects' money savings, which in many cases have been built up slowly and with difficulty over many years. Why should simple savers have to accept risks to the real value of their deferred spending, as though they were speculators?
Is the Prime Minister's leaked pronouncement a misleading dog-whistle to the electorate, or is he really willing to put our money where his mouth is?
Protecting savers from inflation - an email to my MP
Request for Parliamentary question re NS&I index-linked savings certificates
Dear Mr XxxxAs one of your constituents, I should be grateful if you would ask questions in Parliament re the Government's intentions in respect of preserving our life savings against the ravages of inflation. This is especially a matter of concern because of continuing enormous financial support for the banking system, here and in other countries (latterly Spain) that seems destined to burst out as high inflation at some future point.
I note that Mr Cameron's private secretary has written recently to all members of the Cabinet saying, among other things:
"The Prime Minister wants to ensure that the Government as a whole is giving the highest priority to addressing the cost of living."
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2157018/Cameron-summits-quads-secrets-save-EU.html)
If this is so, why did National Savings & Investments withdraw Index-Linked Savings Certificates from sale on 19 July 2010, when they had previously been continuously available since 1975, a year in which RPI was 24.2%? Is this an indication that the Government expects RPI to be even worse than that figure in the intermediate future?
And why were these Certificates, somewhat grudgingly reintroduced (5-year term only) on 12 May 2011, withdrawn again on 7 September? Why are they not available now?
It is also worrying that the Government's 2011 Budget Plan (as given in Red Book Annexe B, page 90 - http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/documents/digitalasset/dg_196165.pdf) says "National Savings and Investments (NS&I) is expected to make a contribution to net finance of £2 billion."
Is this a sign that the Government is purely concerned about targets for government borrowing and not at all exercised about the protection of HMG's subjects' money savings, which in many cases have been built up slowly and with difficulty over many years. Why should simple savers have to accept risks to the real value of their deferred spending, as though they were speculators?
Is the Prime Minister's leaked pronouncement a misleading dog-whistle to the electorate, or is he really willing to put our money where his mouth is?
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
Friday, June 08, 2012
Watch out! Phony mobile roaming charges can cost you THOUSANDS!
A bad experience recounted by Henry Curteis of The Tap blog: a bill of £4,000 for emails to a switched-off mobile phone.
I've had pay-as-you-go for years, not just because I'm a low user but as a protection against those telephone scams that instantly charge you hundreds when you hit "reply".
I've had pay-as-you-go for years, not just because I'm a low user but as a protection against those telephone scams that instantly charge you hundreds when you hit "reply".
"Basket of currencies" a solution for Zimbabwe
According to this blog, stocks in the shops have improved since they have started to accept currency from the USA, South Africa and Botswana. Though there is a problem with small change...
New Olympic sport: pole dancing
Drop the louche allure and put on the whites, and this'd challenge the men on the pommel horse:
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
China's foreign farmland acquisitions
Back in March (Broad Oak Blog), I argued that the USA's future is not so bleak, when you consider her natural resources, especially farmland:
You can see that China's ratio is very low, and what with an expanding population, an improving diet, the grabbing of rural land by corrupt regional officials for speculative building projects, growing air and water pollution etc the demand for farmland is intensifying.
And China is doing something about it. In January, its Hong-Kong based Phoenix Weekly publication announced that 8,000 square kilometers of foreign arable land have been acquired so far, some recently in Australia (where cattlemen are arguing that the latest 400 sq mile project won't work) and New Zealand. As with all tussles over limited resources, this is bound to be controversial, so the next step is attempts to avoid scrutiny of the process.
Food prices and shortages are moving up from a Third World to a First World issue - see farmlandgrab.org for ongoing coverage from around the world. And if China should begin eyeing Russia's fertile soil?
Then there's the world of professional investment - one of the longer running funds being the CF Eclectica Agriculture Fund. This is yet another area fraught with moral dilemma - making money for you and yours (or your clients), but at the price of soaring food costs and ultimately, starvation for many. If we make a fuss about "blood diamonds", how much more so should we raise objections to "blood farmland"?
Greed, and suffering. The sooner we move away from the over-financialised economy and back to sound money, making things and exchanging our surpluses, the better.
Sunday, June 03, 2012
The Bilderberg Jubilee
Today marks the end of the 60th Bilderberg Conference.
The Alternative Action blog lists the attendees. Usefully, you can copy and paste into a spreadsheet and re-order, so that you can see how each country is represented.
Here's the GB contingent (I've added an indication of current or former interests in the right-hand column) - the two in red were the appointed "rapporteurs"for this conference:
Bearing in mind that Bilderberg is about European-North American dialogue and cooperation, do you think these people are the best to represent British interests here? Is there any voice you think should (or should not) have been included?
Or do you get the uneasy feeling that it's a convocation of cats to decide what to do about mice?
The Alternative Action blog lists the attendees. Usefully, you can copy and paste into a spreadsheet and re-order, so that you can see how each country is represented.
Here's the GB contingent (I've added an indication of current or former interests in the right-hand column) - the two in red were the appointed "rapporteurs"for this conference:
Bearing in mind that Bilderberg is about European-North American dialogue and cooperation, do you think these people are the best to represent British interests here? Is there any voice you think should (or should not) have been included?
Or do you get the uneasy feeling that it's a convocation of cats to decide what to do about mice?
Fruity language from Balloon Head Cameron
"... a court sentenced Hosni Mubarak [...] to life in prison for his role in the killing of more than 800 protestors..." - ABC News
On radio news yesterday, it was alternatively "protestors" and "demonstrators". But if it had been "rioters"? The choice of terms can make such a difference.
Yet ex-spin doctor David Cameron, supposedly an expert on presentation, said yesterday that hostage-takers like those raided by the SAS in Afghanistan could "expect a swift and brutal end".
"Brutal"? That leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Well, English wasn't one of his A-level subjects, though presumably it was at 'O' level. Perhaps his judgment has been permanently clouded by his alleged school age cannabis consumption, for which he got 500 lines. Not white lines, obviously; though when I visited a friend in Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1970 he told me that the large Old Etonian contingent there was cliquey and very into cocaine, so one can only wonder where and when their predilection was allowed to develop.
Would you like to think like a Prime Minister? Play Fruit Ninja here!
On radio news yesterday, it was alternatively "protestors" and "demonstrators". But if it had been "rioters"? The choice of terms can make such a difference.
Yet ex-spin doctor David Cameron, supposedly an expert on presentation, said yesterday that hostage-takers like those raided by the SAS in Afghanistan could "expect a swift and brutal end".
"Brutal"? That leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Well, English wasn't one of his A-level subjects, though presumably it was at 'O' level. Perhaps his judgment has been permanently clouded by his alleged school age cannabis consumption, for which he got 500 lines. Not white lines, obviously; though when I visited a friend in Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1970 he told me that the large Old Etonian contingent there was cliquey and very into cocaine, so one can only wonder where and when their predilection was allowed to develop.
Would you like to think like a Prime Minister? Play Fruit Ninja here!
Means and ends
1941:
"A Hauptmann (captain) with the 73rd Infantry Division reflected that peace would come even to the Balkans with a New European Order ‘so that our children would experience no more war’."
- Quoted in Anthony Beevor's "The Second World War" (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2012)
There is always this regrettable thing to do, then the lasting good will come. But it can't:
"... our personal experience and the study of history make it abundantly clear that the means whereby we try to achieve something are at least as important as the end we wish to attain. Indeed, they are even more important. For the means employed inevitably determine the nature of the result achieved, whereas, however good the end aimed at may be, its goodness is powerless to counteract the effects of the bad means we use to reach it. Similarly, a reform may be in the highest degree desirable; but if the contexts in which that reform is effected are undesirable, the results will inevitably be disappointing. These are simple and obvious truths. Nevertheless they are almost universally neglected."
- Aldous Huxley, "Ends and Means" (Chatto & Windus, 1941)
The European Project, the wholesale reordering of the British constitution (Supreme Court, House of Lords, the coming sinister National Crime Agency and so on), the international assault on Iraq - all undertaken without truthfully informed democratic consent.
The alliance with Franco against Communism, the support of the Taliban against the Russians; all these clever, disastrous calculations balancing evils. Stalin teaming up with Hitler's National Socialists against the wicked West, then ten silent, shocked days in a forest cabin when Hitler turned on him.
Procedure matters, after all. We can't guarantee a successful end, but at least we can choose what means we employ.
"A Hauptmann (captain) with the 73rd Infantry Division reflected that peace would come even to the Balkans with a New European Order ‘so that our children would experience no more war’."
- Quoted in Anthony Beevor's "The Second World War" (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2012)
There is always this regrettable thing to do, then the lasting good will come. But it can't:
"... our personal experience and the study of history make it abundantly clear that the means whereby we try to achieve something are at least as important as the end we wish to attain. Indeed, they are even more important. For the means employed inevitably determine the nature of the result achieved, whereas, however good the end aimed at may be, its goodness is powerless to counteract the effects of the bad means we use to reach it. Similarly, a reform may be in the highest degree desirable; but if the contexts in which that reform is effected are undesirable, the results will inevitably be disappointing. These are simple and obvious truths. Nevertheless they are almost universally neglected."
- Aldous Huxley, "Ends and Means" (Chatto & Windus, 1941)
The European Project, the wholesale reordering of the British constitution (Supreme Court, House of Lords, the coming sinister National Crime Agency and so on), the international assault on Iraq - all undertaken without truthfully informed democratic consent.
The alliance with Franco against Communism, the support of the Taliban against the Russians; all these clever, disastrous calculations balancing evils. Stalin teaming up with Hitler's National Socialists against the wicked West, then ten silent, shocked days in a forest cabin when Hitler turned on him.
Procedure matters, after all. We can't guarantee a successful end, but at least we can choose what means we employ.
Saturday, June 02, 2012
Derby wager
The race is to start in five minutes. I'm rooting for Minimise Risk for a place; I think it's an appropriate name, like Party Politics in the 1992 Grand National.
Update: placed last, of course. Camelot wins - is this a favourable augur for the Conservative PM?
Update: placed last, of course. Camelot wins - is this a favourable augur for the Conservative PM?
Dow 1,000 or less? Quote of the week (or century)
"If I am correct, I expect the Dow to be trading well under 1,000 by 2016. I am nailing that to my mast – and computer screen."
John Burford, Financial Trading Strategies website
John Burford, Financial Trading Strategies website
Friday, June 01, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
UK debt far worse than USA's
Reading Richard Murphy's Tax Research website, I see that Paul Krugman has graphed UK public debt since 1900 and really, it's implied, we're not in that bad a situation right now.
But you have to look at the total weight of debt in the economy, not just the government part. McKinsey did this in January and as of Q2 last year, the UK's total debt-to-GDP exceeded 500%, putting us pretty much on a par with Japan and far above eight other major economies:
And we don't have an industrial - and industrious - base like Japan's.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities. DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
But you have to look at the total weight of debt in the economy, not just the government part. McKinsey did this in January and as of Q2 last year, the UK's total debt-to-GDP exceeded 500%, putting us pretty much on a par with Japan and far above eight other major economies:
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities. DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
UK debt far worse than USA's
Reading Richard Murphy's Tax Research website, I see that Paul Krugman has graphed UK public debt since 1900 and really, it's implied, we're not in that bad a situation right now.
But you have to look at the total weight of debt in the economy, not just the government part. McKinsey did this in January and as of Q2 last year, the UK's total debt-to-GDP exceeded 500%, putting us pretty much on a par with Japan and far above eight other major economies:
And we don't have an industrial - and industrious - base like Japan's.
But you have to look at the total weight of debt in the economy, not just the government part. McKinsey did this in January and as of Q2 last year, the UK's total debt-to-GDP exceeded 500%, putting us pretty much on a par with Japan and far above eight other major economies:
Monday, May 28, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
How the mainstream media kills stories
I wish I'd known of John Ward before.
In this reminiscence today, he has Andrew Marr effectively burying the Brown antidepressants story by asking him about it - carefully contexted within the eyesight discussion - in a way that Brown could deny, i.e. did he, like many people, take prescription painkillers (semi-muttered addition: "... and pills to help them get through").
br />
Ward continues:
I emailed Marr three times to ask why he had asked that particular question. I never received a reply. But I did get a phone call from my BBC contact saying, “I’m afraid you’ve learned a lesson today – the use of media aperture to kill a story you don’t like”.
Not to mention super-secret injunctions, when it suits you, Mr Marr; though as a prominent journalist it may also suit you at other times to argue strongly for the right to ask awkward personal questions and demand answers. As he wrote of the late Ruth Picardie back in the 1997 days when "things could only get better":
She was curious. She was rude. She asked awkward, embarrassing questions, including about herself, and didn't flinch from nasty answers. And embarrassing questions are good, the lifeblood of journalism. Without them, we are duller, stupider bipeds.
Perhaps I shouldn't be too severe. Life has a way of hitting us in the face with our own words.
In this reminiscence today, he has Andrew Marr effectively burying the Brown antidepressants story by asking him about it - carefully contexted within the eyesight discussion - in a way that Brown could deny, i.e. did he, like many people, take prescription painkillers (semi-muttered addition: "... and pills to help them get through").
br />
Ward continues:
I emailed Marr three times to ask why he had asked that particular question. I never received a reply. But I did get a phone call from my BBC contact saying, “I’m afraid you’ve learned a lesson today – the use of media aperture to kill a story you don’t like”.
Not to mention super-secret injunctions, when it suits you, Mr Marr; though as a prominent journalist it may also suit you at other times to argue strongly for the right to ask awkward personal questions and demand answers. As he wrote of the late Ruth Picardie back in the 1997 days when "things could only get better":
She was curious. She was rude. She asked awkward, embarrassing questions, including about herself, and didn't flinch from nasty answers. And embarrassing questions are good, the lifeblood of journalism. Without them, we are duller, stupider bipeds.
Perhaps I shouldn't be too severe. Life has a way of hitting us in the face with our own words.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
On Stamford Bridge
We stood on a little jetty at the end of a private garden. The caged fowl beside the public footpath were silent. Shaded by branches, midges circled above the eddying stream. Static caravans lay haphazardly on the other bank, like cast runes.
Near here, said the leaflet, stood the original Saxon bridge, where a Viking warrior held off Harold’s army, buying time for his countrymen to scramble into position on the rise behind us. Some say he slew up to 40 Englishmen, a Biblical number.
Was he a swordsman, like the name and sign on the local inn? Or was he a giant berserker, whirling a great two-handed war-axe, both weapon and shield?
And how was he killed? Legend has it that someone got into a half barrel and floated underneath the bridge, thrusting a spear up between the planks. One can imagine the Norseman jerking onto tiptoe and dropping his blade, others jumping forward to hack him down.
Battle-memory is sharp. Back home, survivors would relate his story, acting out the planted feet, each mighty movement, the raging face. His fame would live.
As would his family. A young son might become a king’s ward, then an honoured house-carl; a daughter would have suitors for the hero’s blood in her veins, and as was iron custom, his widow’s neighbour would plough her field before his own.
Almost a thousand years have passed, and all has changed. In 1066, there was no village here; now, there are buildings of brick and stone, metalled roads, other vegetation and a different climate. Even the river will have altered, in its shape and the composition and depth of its silt.
And so has the cosmos. The glittering bridge over which his soul would pass to the Hall of the Slain (Norway was then only part-Christianized), is now an arm of the Milky Way, around which the Earth, part of a solar system unimagined in his day, has since moved trillions of miles in its quarter-billion-year orbit. More of the outer reaches of the ever-expanding Universe are now receding faster than light, so that the glint of long-extinct stars, quasars and galaxies can never reach us. All that is, is moving away from what is observed to what is recorded, then to speculation, myth and oblivion. Yet his brave deed is still remembered.
So, why is he anonymous? The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes him simply as a Norwegian, and the early 13th century Norse account omits him entirely. No bard inscribed him on eternity’s roll. Yet we still know the name of Horatius Cocles, who held back the Etruscans while the bridge into Rome was demolished, 1,500 years ago. Perhaps this Viking is an invention by one who understood narrative, and how stories of vast conflict need intensifying moments of delay, and an interlude at the personal scale before returning to the broader historical vista. Besides, the heart always soars at the contemplation of those who scorn certain death.
He may have been real, nevertheless. The Chronicle’s reference is matter-of-fact, and makes his action merely a rearguard defence after the death of Hardraada. But was he really here, by this shallow, narrow, island-divided branch of the Derwent?
Or, as some say, did the battle occur a mile further downstream, at what is now Scoreby, a Roman settlement straddling a wider stretch of river spanned by a bridge? That would seem a more likely place for Hardraada and Harold Godwinson’s rebellious brother Tostig to wait complacently in the warm September sunshine for further hostages and supplies from York, following their victory at Fulford five days earlier. Their forces were resting on both sides of the water, and their body armour, presumed no longer necessary, lay 15 miles away with their ships, at Riccall.
It was in this condition that the English King surprised them, having marched 185 miles from London in only four days. The occupiers on the west bank were quickly slaughtered, the remainder of the army assembling their overlapping “board-wall” and, perhaps retreating to the 100-foot rise at High Catton, resisting the attack for hours, before fragmenting and being routed. King Harald’s throat was pierced by an arrow, as (according to tradition) King Harold’s eye would be, nineteen days later; Tostig also perished, along with the overwhelming majority of the invaders.
Stamford is overshadowed by Hastings, but it was one of those hinges on which history turns. What might have happened, had the Norwegians won? Would Hardraada have gambled for the whole country, fighting William of Normandy? Had Tostig planned to be the King’s vassal, or to divide the land diagonally into Danelaw for Hardraada and some sort of Anglund for himself? Would that have lasted? Or would England have faced a series of episodes of civil strife and invasion worse even than the merciless elite-decapitation and folk-oppression of the Normans?
Had the Scandinavians succeeded, what would our language, law, custom and culture be today? Impossible to imagine.
So, reflecting on a man who might never have been, a place where something may not have happened, and a landscape which scarcely resembles that of a millennium ago, we took our souvenir earthenware mug with its horned-helmeted axeman and our misleading printed guide, and joined the queue at the lights to cross a bridge that probably had nothing to do with events that made us what we are today.
Near here, said the leaflet, stood the original Saxon bridge, where a Viking warrior held off Harold’s army, buying time for his countrymen to scramble into position on the rise behind us. Some say he slew up to 40 Englishmen, a Biblical number.
And how was he killed? Legend has it that someone got into a half barrel and floated underneath the bridge, thrusting a spear up between the planks. One can imagine the Norseman jerking onto tiptoe and dropping his blade, others jumping forward to hack him down.
Battle-memory is sharp. Back home, survivors would relate his story, acting out the planted feet, each mighty movement, the raging face. His fame would live.
As would his family. A young son might become a king’s ward, then an honoured house-carl; a daughter would have suitors for the hero’s blood in her veins, and as was iron custom, his widow’s neighbour would plough her field before his own.
Almost a thousand years have passed, and all has changed. In 1066, there was no village here; now, there are buildings of brick and stone, metalled roads, other vegetation and a different climate. Even the river will have altered, in its shape and the composition and depth of its silt.
And so has the cosmos. The glittering bridge over which his soul would pass to the Hall of the Slain (Norway was then only part-Christianized), is now an arm of the Milky Way, around which the Earth, part of a solar system unimagined in his day, has since moved trillions of miles in its quarter-billion-year orbit. More of the outer reaches of the ever-expanding Universe are now receding faster than light, so that the glint of long-extinct stars, quasars and galaxies can never reach us. All that is, is moving away from what is observed to what is recorded, then to speculation, myth and oblivion. Yet his brave deed is still remembered.
So, why is he anonymous? The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes him simply as a Norwegian, and the early 13th century Norse account omits him entirely. No bard inscribed him on eternity’s roll. Yet we still know the name of Horatius Cocles, who held back the Etruscans while the bridge into Rome was demolished, 1,500 years ago. Perhaps this Viking is an invention by one who understood narrative, and how stories of vast conflict need intensifying moments of delay, and an interlude at the personal scale before returning to the broader historical vista. Besides, the heart always soars at the contemplation of those who scorn certain death.
He may have been real, nevertheless. The Chronicle’s reference is matter-of-fact, and makes his action merely a rearguard defence after the death of Hardraada. But was he really here, by this shallow, narrow, island-divided branch of the Derwent?
Or, as some say, did the battle occur a mile further downstream, at what is now Scoreby, a Roman settlement straddling a wider stretch of river spanned by a bridge? That would seem a more likely place for Hardraada and Harold Godwinson’s rebellious brother Tostig to wait complacently in the warm September sunshine for further hostages and supplies from York, following their victory at Fulford five days earlier. Their forces were resting on both sides of the water, and their body armour, presumed no longer necessary, lay 15 miles away with their ships, at Riccall.
It was in this condition that the English King surprised them, having marched 185 miles from London in only four days. The occupiers on the west bank were quickly slaughtered, the remainder of the army assembling their overlapping “board-wall” and, perhaps retreating to the 100-foot rise at High Catton, resisting the attack for hours, before fragmenting and being routed. King Harald’s throat was pierced by an arrow, as (according to tradition) King Harold’s eye would be, nineteen days later; Tostig also perished, along with the overwhelming majority of the invaders.
Stamford is overshadowed by Hastings, but it was one of those hinges on which history turns. What might have happened, had the Norwegians won? Would Hardraada have gambled for the whole country, fighting William of Normandy? Had Tostig planned to be the King’s vassal, or to divide the land diagonally into Danelaw for Hardraada and some sort of Anglund for himself? Would that have lasted? Or would England have faced a series of episodes of civil strife and invasion worse even than the merciless elite-decapitation and folk-oppression of the Normans?
Had the Scandinavians succeeded, what would our language, law, custom and culture be today? Impossible to imagine.
So, reflecting on a man who might never have been, a place where something may not have happened, and a landscape which scarcely resembles that of a millennium ago, we took our souvenir earthenware mug with its horned-helmeted axeman and our misleading printed guide, and joined the queue at the lights to cross a bridge that probably had nothing to do with events that made us what we are today.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Starve the beast
Labradors are just naturally greedy. Whatever you give them they'll eat, and if you don't restrict their diet, pretty soon you'll have a coffee table on furry legs. It's not good for them or kind to them.
Whereas bankers are capable of restraint: as recently as this January, RBS boss Stephen Hester turned down a bonus worth almost £1 million. He and Bob Diamond are good examples to set our much-loved but undisciplined pets.
Prisons: a reply to Peter Hitchens
Peter Hitchen's first item today is inspired by a touchy-feely recruitment poster for the prison service:
... Pasted up in an Oxfordshire byway, I found extraordinary proof of what most of us have long suspected and what politicians always try to deny (above). We are now so soft on wrong-doing that the wicked must be laughing at us.
It is a recruiting poster for prison officers. Beneath a picture of two smiling, kindly types in uniform sharing a jolly moment are the words: ‘Father figures. Agony Aunts. When you’re the closest to family anyone’s experienced in a long while, it becomes less of a job and more of a calling. Prison officers. People officers by nature.’
It continues: ‘Gaining the respect of offenders isn’t a skill you can learn. It’s something you need to have in you already: that ability to build rapport with a broad range of characters and ultimately make a breakthrough.’
The Ministry of Injustice, whose name and superscription are on the poster, have confirmed to me that it is really theirs. There you have it. For the worst people in the country, we hire ‘agony aunts’ and ‘father figures’ whose job is to ‘gain the respect’ of people who have repeatedly trampled on the rights and freedoms of their neighbours.
For the rest of us, death and taxes, indifference, inefficiency, scorn and an array of decrepit, slovenly ‘services’, which grow worse the more we pay for them.
Why, exactly, do you vote for the people who are responsible for this? I’d love to know.
To which I comment:
For once, I have to disagree with Peter, in relation to the first item. We should look to deal with what caused so many people to be imprisoned - so many prisoners have previously been "in care" and/or have lower levels of literacy and/or have mental health problems.
I'm sure there are many who would be dissuaded from crime by a realistic expectation of conviction (for a first offence, or at least an early one in their series) and punishment, and the traditional approach could work for them.
But there are many others who are in a spiral of self-loathing and destructive behaviour because of a lack of loving care, and I think a higher proportion of them end up in the prison system because they have despaired and the connection between behaviour and sanctions has broken.
The prison system needs reforming - when did prisoner-on-prisoner bullying and violence begin? Not in the days when they were strictly segregated even in chapel. And forcible buggery is not a judicial punishment, despite the leering threats made by officials to young offenders in all those police movies.
Jail is a punishment in terms of deprivation of personal liberty and loss of daily contact with loved ones; it is a deterrent for those considering similar offences; and it is a protection for society, during the time that offenders are kept inside.
But unless we're prepared to hang prisoners, or jail them for life, we need to do something about their addictions, their mental and emotional dysfunctions and their lack of employable skills.
And then we need to look at the dysfunctional society from which they come, and to which they will usually return: one that doesn't do much to support families and marriage, and employment (especially of men, because of how they are when they have nothing constructive to do).
... Pasted up in an Oxfordshire byway, I found extraordinary proof of what most of us have long suspected and what politicians always try to deny (above). We are now so soft on wrong-doing that the wicked must be laughing at us.
It is a recruiting poster for prison officers. Beneath a picture of two smiling, kindly types in uniform sharing a jolly moment are the words: ‘Father figures. Agony Aunts. When you’re the closest to family anyone’s experienced in a long while, it becomes less of a job and more of a calling. Prison officers. People officers by nature.’
It continues: ‘Gaining the respect of offenders isn’t a skill you can learn. It’s something you need to have in you already: that ability to build rapport with a broad range of characters and ultimately make a breakthrough.’
The Ministry of Injustice, whose name and superscription are on the poster, have confirmed to me that it is really theirs. There you have it. For the worst people in the country, we hire ‘agony aunts’ and ‘father figures’ whose job is to ‘gain the respect’ of people who have repeatedly trampled on the rights and freedoms of their neighbours.
For the rest of us, death and taxes, indifference, inefficiency, scorn and an array of decrepit, slovenly ‘services’, which grow worse the more we pay for them.
Why, exactly, do you vote for the people who are responsible for this? I’d love to know.
To which I comment:
For once, I have to disagree with Peter, in relation to the first item. We should look to deal with what caused so many people to be imprisoned - so many prisoners have previously been "in care" and/or have lower levels of literacy and/or have mental health problems.
I'm sure there are many who would be dissuaded from crime by a realistic expectation of conviction (for a first offence, or at least an early one in their series) and punishment, and the traditional approach could work for them.
But there are many others who are in a spiral of self-loathing and destructive behaviour because of a lack of loving care, and I think a higher proportion of them end up in the prison system because they have despaired and the connection between behaviour and sanctions has broken.
The prison system needs reforming - when did prisoner-on-prisoner bullying and violence begin? Not in the days when they were strictly segregated even in chapel. And forcible buggery is not a judicial punishment, despite the leering threats made by officials to young offenders in all those police movies.
Jail is a punishment in terms of deprivation of personal liberty and loss of daily contact with loved ones; it is a deterrent for those considering similar offences; and it is a protection for society, during the time that offenders are kept inside.
But unless we're prepared to hang prisoners, or jail them for life, we need to do something about their addictions, their mental and emotional dysfunctions and their lack of employable skills.
And then we need to look at the dysfunctional society from which they come, and to which they will usually return: one that doesn't do much to support families and marriage, and employment (especially of men, because of how they are when they have nothing constructive to do).
Monday, May 07, 2012
UK money supply growth hits historic low
Issued 2 May, the latest Bank of England quarterly M4 figures plumb new depths - remember, M4 had NEVER been negative from 1963 on, until the credit crunch in 2009.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
UK money supply growth hits historic low
Issued 2 May, the latest Bank of England quarterly M4 figures plumb new depths - remember, M4 had NEVER been negative from 1963 on, until the credit crunch in 2009.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
Silver as a protection against the powerful
Some days ago, the King World News blog posted an interview with the octogenarian Mexican billionaire, Hugo Salinas Price. He says "full-blown socialism" is on its way. Some might read the results of the recent French and Greek elections in that context.
There comes a time in a successful old man's life when he starts to ride a hobby-horse, whether it be philanthropy or politics. Sir James Goldsmith, dying of cancer, spent his last energies urging a British referendum on membership of the EU, having previously and presciently warned (in 1994) of the social instability inherent in the GATT agreement that set the labour forces of nations against one another. For all his faults, such as they may have been, I think that was a heroic finish.
Mr Price's horse is sound money, and he has worked long to reintroduce silver to Mexico as at least an alternative to fiat (paper, symbolic) money. In February he was interviewed by James Turk of GoldMoney and explained that this would be silver money with a twist: no face value expressed in currency terms. That is because when silver rises in price, it tends to be melted down for its scrap value; so the Libertad coin issuance is in various degrees of weight of silver content. He tells Turk that even if it is accepted as a partner with fiat, it won't necessarily be used in daily commercial exchange; instead, it will be held, as a store of value.
Why is this important? Because private property is a bastion against the powerful. In this latest interview, Price notes that Italy and Spain now ban cash purchases larger than 2,500 Euros, and refers to the US food stamp system as "ration cards": all part of a drift towards the State seizing control of commercial transactions.
The trouble is, States and big businesses become a threat when they join hands. As Marc Faber said (on King World News, again): "Near the end of a society or civilization, they typically become very corrupt. Either the government runs the businesses or the businesses run the government." Faber's hobby-horse is doom - perhaps this old man's conceit has persuaded him that the world will end shortly after he does; one can only hope that in this, unlike previously in other matters, he will be proved wrong.
What I find interesting about Price is that his is no simple redneck damn-Commie outlook: he sees socialism as merely a means used by an elite to continue in their position of power over the rest of us. They have made us dependent on a welfare state largesse based on corrupt money, and will move to a more naked form of control when the financial system breaks down. Since (he says) socialism is less efficient, this means declining resources (especially post Peak Oil) and therefore, ultimately, a dwindling world human population. That process of dwindling is easily referred to, but would be so hard to live through; perhaps we face a Spring and Autumn Period; I very much hope not.
But remember, this is not primarily about socialism; it is about power. From 2008 on we have seen businesses take over government, from the way Hank Paulson and his banker friends bullied Congress into re-voting to ensure that the first $700 billion of public money was paid via TARP, to the EU central bank installation of puppet financial regimes in proud independent States like Greece and Italy.
So, in a pseudo-capitalist phase, the businesses run the government; and then, in a faux-socialist aftermath, government will run business.
The people doing this will be essentially all of one class: I started saying to friends some years ago, that we are witnessing the reconstruction of a pan-European (perhaps I should have said, global) aristocracy. The bankers, politicians, journalists, advisers are dining and sleeping together, intermarrying, living in great houses and sailing fine yachts; and don't know the price of milk. They may ride bikes in public, forget to wear ties, slur their speech in demotic imitation; but it's all like Harold Wilson as PM, stubbing out his cigar and seizing his pipe as he strode from Number Ten to be photographed by the Press. The ones who lead the mob to supplant them are their brothers and sisters, under the skin. And the hereditary principle is stronger among socialists: look at peerage-renouncing Tony Benn and his constituency-inheriting son, look at Peter Mandelson and his vaunted descent from Herbert Morrison (possibly even the throne of Poland), look at North Korea. The sense of entitlement stinks to high heaven.
Yet, if only the mice could bell the cat, the solution could be so quick. Debt forgiveness (or repudiation); mutual debt cancellation (since a debtor to one is the creditor to another, in a great international web); or simply starving the beast, by shifting our deposits to more responsible banks.
But fundamentally, holding your own money means it is not the creature of a central bank (created out of debt), or a government's (created out of nothing, by printing). Despite the high price of silver and gold, I find myself leaning to their promise of a degree of wealth preservation in an increasingly unstable economic (and political) system.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
There comes a time in a successful old man's life when he starts to ride a hobby-horse, whether it be philanthropy or politics. Sir James Goldsmith, dying of cancer, spent his last energies urging a British referendum on membership of the EU, having previously and presciently warned (in 1994) of the social instability inherent in the GATT agreement that set the labour forces of nations against one another. For all his faults, such as they may have been, I think that was a heroic finish.
Mr Price's horse is sound money, and he has worked long to reintroduce silver to Mexico as at least an alternative to fiat (paper, symbolic) money. In February he was interviewed by James Turk of GoldMoney and explained that this would be silver money with a twist: no face value expressed in currency terms. That is because when silver rises in price, it tends to be melted down for its scrap value; so the Libertad coin issuance is in various degrees of weight of silver content. He tells Turk that even if it is accepted as a partner with fiat, it won't necessarily be used in daily commercial exchange; instead, it will be held, as a store of value.
Why is this important? Because private property is a bastion against the powerful. In this latest interview, Price notes that Italy and Spain now ban cash purchases larger than 2,500 Euros, and refers to the US food stamp system as "ration cards": all part of a drift towards the State seizing control of commercial transactions.
The trouble is, States and big businesses become a threat when they join hands. As Marc Faber said (on King World News, again): "Near the end of a society or civilization, they typically become very corrupt. Either the government runs the businesses or the businesses run the government." Faber's hobby-horse is doom - perhaps this old man's conceit has persuaded him that the world will end shortly after he does; one can only hope that in this, unlike previously in other matters, he will be proved wrong.
What I find interesting about Price is that his is no simple redneck damn-Commie outlook: he sees socialism as merely a means used by an elite to continue in their position of power over the rest of us. They have made us dependent on a welfare state largesse based on corrupt money, and will move to a more naked form of control when the financial system breaks down. Since (he says) socialism is less efficient, this means declining resources (especially post Peak Oil) and therefore, ultimately, a dwindling world human population. That process of dwindling is easily referred to, but would be so hard to live through; perhaps we face a Spring and Autumn Period; I very much hope not.
But remember, this is not primarily about socialism; it is about power. From 2008 on we have seen businesses take over government, from the way Hank Paulson and his banker friends bullied Congress into re-voting to ensure that the first $700 billion of public money was paid via TARP, to the EU central bank installation of puppet financial regimes in proud independent States like Greece and Italy.
So, in a pseudo-capitalist phase, the businesses run the government; and then, in a faux-socialist aftermath, government will run business.
The people doing this will be essentially all of one class: I started saying to friends some years ago, that we are witnessing the reconstruction of a pan-European (perhaps I should have said, global) aristocracy. The bankers, politicians, journalists, advisers are dining and sleeping together, intermarrying, living in great houses and sailing fine yachts; and don't know the price of milk. They may ride bikes in public, forget to wear ties, slur their speech in demotic imitation; but it's all like Harold Wilson as PM, stubbing out his cigar and seizing his pipe as he strode from Number Ten to be photographed by the Press. The ones who lead the mob to supplant them are their brothers and sisters, under the skin. And the hereditary principle is stronger among socialists: look at peerage-renouncing Tony Benn and his constituency-inheriting son, look at Peter Mandelson and his vaunted descent from Herbert Morrison (possibly even the throne of Poland), look at North Korea. The sense of entitlement stinks to high heaven.
Yet, if only the mice could bell the cat, the solution could be so quick. Debt forgiveness (or repudiation); mutual debt cancellation (since a debtor to one is the creditor to another, in a great international web); or simply starving the beast, by shifting our deposits to more responsible banks.
But fundamentally, holding your own money means it is not the creature of a central bank (created out of debt), or a government's (created out of nothing, by printing). Despite the high price of silver and gold, I find myself leaning to their promise of a degree of wealth preservation in an increasingly unstable economic (and political) system.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
Silver as a protection against the powerful
Some days ago, the King World News blog posted an interview with the octogenarian Mexican billionaire, Hugo Salinas Price. He says "full-blown socialism" is on its way. Some might read the results of the recent French and Greek elections in that context.
There comes a time in a successful old man's life when he starts to ride a hobby-horse, whether it be philanthropy or politics. Sir James Goldsmith, dying of cancer, spent his last energies urging a British referendum on membership of the EU, having previously and presciently warned (in 1994) of the social instability inherent in the GATT agreement that set the labour forces of nations against one another. For all his faults, such as they may have been, I think that was a heroic finish.
Mr Price's horse is sound money, and he has worked long to reintroduce silver to Mexico as at least an alternative to fiat (paper, symbolic) money. In February he was interviewed by James Turk of GoldMoney and explained that this would be silver money with a twist: no face value expressed in currency terms. That is because when silver rises in price, it tends to be melted down for its scrap value; so the Libertad coin issuance is in various degrees of weight of silver content. He tells Turk that even if it is accepted as a partner with fiat, it won't necessarily be used in daily commercial exchange; instead, it will be held, as a store of value.
Why is this important? Because private property is a bastion against the powerful. In this latest interview, Price notes that Italy and Spain now ban cash purchases larger than 2,500 Euros, and refers to the US food stamp system as "ration cards": all part of a drift towards the State seizing control of commercial transactions.
The trouble is, States and big businesses become a threat when they join hands. As Marc Faber said (on King World News, again): "Near the end of a society or civilization, they typically become very corrupt. Either the government runs the businesses or the businesses run the government." Faber's hobby-horse is doom - perhaps this old man's conceit has persuaded him that the world will end shortly after he does; one can only hope that in this, unlike previously in other matters, he will be proved wrong.
What I find interesting about Price is that his is no simple redneck damn-Commie outlook: he sees socialism as merely a means used by an elite to continue in their position of power over the rest of us. They have made us dependent on a welfare state largesse based on corrupt money, and will move to a more naked form of control when the financial system breaks down. Since (he says) socialism is less efficient, this means declining resources (especially post Peak Oil) and therefore, ultimately, a dwindling world human population. That process of dwindling is easily referred to, but would be so hard to live through; perhaps we face a Spring and Autumn Period; I very much hope not.
But remember, this is not primarily about socialism; it is about power. From 2008 on we have seen businesses take over government, from the way Hank Paulson and his banker friends bullied Congress into re-voting to ensure that the first $700 billion of public money was paid via TARP, to the EU central bank installation of puppet financial regimes in proud independent States like Greece and Italy.
So, in a pseudo-capitalist phase, the businesses run the government; and then, in a faux-socialist aftermath, government will run business.
The people doing this will be essentially all of one class: I started saying to friends some years ago, that we are witnessing the reconstruction of a pan-European (perhaps I should have said, global) aristocracy. The bankers, politicians, journalists, advisers are dining and sleeping together, intermarrying, living in great houses and sailing fine yachts; and don't know the price of milk. They may ride bikes in public, forget to wear ties, slur their speech in demotic imitation; but it's all like Harold Wilson as PM, stubbing out his cigar and seizing his pipe as he strode from Number Ten to be photographed by the Press. The ones who lead the mob to supplant them are their brothers and sisters, under the skin. And the hereditary principle is stronger among socialists: look at peerage-renouncing Tony Benn and his constituency-inheriting son, look at Peter Mandelson and his vaunted descent from Herbert Morrison (possibly even the throne of Poland), look at North Korea. The sense of entitlement stinks to high heaven.
Yet, if only the mice could bell the cat, the solution could be so quick. Debt forgiveness (or repudiation); mutual debt cancellation (since a debtor to one is the creditor to another, in a great international web); or simply starving the beast, by shifting our deposits to more responsible banks.
But fundamentally, holding your own money means it is not the creature of a central bank (created out of debt), or a government's (created out of nothing, by printing). Despite the high price of silver and gold, I find myself leaning to their promise of a degree of wealth preservation in an increasingly unstable economic (and political) system.
There comes a time in a successful old man's life when he starts to ride a hobby-horse, whether it be philanthropy or politics. Sir James Goldsmith, dying of cancer, spent his last energies urging a British referendum on membership of the EU, having previously and presciently warned (in 1994) of the social instability inherent in the GATT agreement that set the labour forces of nations against one another. For all his faults, such as they may have been, I think that was a heroic finish.
Mr Price's horse is sound money, and he has worked long to reintroduce silver to Mexico as at least an alternative to fiat (paper, symbolic) money. In February he was interviewed by James Turk of GoldMoney and explained that this would be silver money with a twist: no face value expressed in currency terms. That is because when silver rises in price, it tends to be melted down for its scrap value; so the Libertad coin issuance is in various degrees of weight of silver content. He tells Turk that even if it is accepted as a partner with fiat, it won't necessarily be used in daily commercial exchange; instead, it will be held, as a store of value.
Why is this important? Because private property is a bastion against the powerful. In this latest interview, Price notes that Italy and Spain now ban cash purchases larger than 2,500 Euros, and refers to the US food stamp system as "ration cards": all part of a drift towards the State seizing control of commercial transactions.
The trouble is, States and big businesses become a threat when they join hands. As Marc Faber said (on King World News, again): "Near the end of a society or civilization, they typically become very corrupt. Either the government runs the businesses or the businesses run the government." Faber's hobby-horse is doom - perhaps this old man's conceit has persuaded him that the world will end shortly after he does; one can only hope that in this, unlike previously in other matters, he will be proved wrong.
What I find interesting about Price is that his is no simple redneck damn-Commie outlook: he sees socialism as merely a means used by an elite to continue in their position of power over the rest of us. They have made us dependent on a welfare state largesse based on corrupt money, and will move to a more naked form of control when the financial system breaks down. Since (he says) socialism is less efficient, this means declining resources (especially post Peak Oil) and therefore, ultimately, a dwindling world human population. That process of dwindling is easily referred to, but would be so hard to live through; perhaps we face a Spring and Autumn Period; I very much hope not.
But remember, this is not primarily about socialism; it is about power. From 2008 on we have seen businesses take over government, from the way Hank Paulson and his banker friends bullied Congress into re-voting to ensure that the first $700 billion of public money was paid via TARP, to the EU central bank installation of puppet financial regimes in proud independent States like Greece and Italy.
So, in a pseudo-capitalist phase, the businesses run the government; and then, in a faux-socialist aftermath, government will run business.
The people doing this will be essentially all of one class: I started saying to friends some years ago, that we are witnessing the reconstruction of a pan-European (perhaps I should have said, global) aristocracy. The bankers, politicians, journalists, advisers are dining and sleeping together, intermarrying, living in great houses and sailing fine yachts; and don't know the price of milk. They may ride bikes in public, forget to wear ties, slur their speech in demotic imitation; but it's all like Harold Wilson as PM, stubbing out his cigar and seizing his pipe as he strode from Number Ten to be photographed by the Press. The ones who lead the mob to supplant them are their brothers and sisters, under the skin. And the hereditary principle is stronger among socialists: look at peerage-renouncing Tony Benn and his constituency-inheriting son, look at Peter Mandelson and his vaunted descent from Herbert Morrison (possibly even the throne of Poland), look at North Korea. The sense of entitlement stinks to high heaven.
Yet, if only the mice could bell the cat, the solution could be so quick. Debt forgiveness (or repudiation); mutual debt cancellation (since a debtor to one is the creditor to another, in a great international web); or simply starving the beast, by shifting our deposits to more responsible banks.
But fundamentally, holding your own money means it is not the creature of a central bank (created out of debt), or a government's (created out of nothing, by printing). Despite the high price of silver and gold, I find myself leaning to their promise of a degree of wealth preservation in an increasingly unstable economic (and political) system.
In for a penny, in for a pound
It seems that the British pound was originally based on a pound weight of silver, equivalent to 240 silver pennies (or "sterlings"). I remember the old pre-decimal penny (which was 12 to the shilling, and 20 shillings made a pound) - though it had long since ceased to be made of silver.
Currently, 99.9% pure silver is being bought at £0.53 per gram. A pound weight of silver (454 grams) would therefore fetch £240.62.
So an old silver penny is worth a new British pound.
But the increased efficiency of modern production and distribution has made things cheaper today:
- Petrol (currently c. £1.40 per litre) would, in silver terms, cost 6d/gallon - a third cheaper than in 1896! And that's despite the fact that, these days, 60% of the pump price of petrol is taxes.
Currently, 99.9% pure silver is being bought at £0.53 per gram. A pound weight of silver (454 grams) would therefore fetch £240.62.
So an old silver penny is worth a new British pound.
An 11th century (Edward the Confessor) penny
But the increased efficiency of modern production and distribution has made things cheaper today:
- Petrol (currently c. £1.40 per litre) would, in silver terms, cost 6d/gallon - a third cheaper than in 1896! And that's despite the fact that, these days, 60% of the pump price of petrol is taxes.
Sunday, May 06, 2012
Those gold-plated public sector pensions that are ruining us
The Office of National Statistics (htp: The Spectator's "Barometer" column) has calculated that pension obligations in the UK amount to £7.1 trillion, or nearly 5 times GDP.
Unfunded public sector pensions - the so-called "gold-plated" ones - account for a mere 11.90% of the total.
Unfunded public sector pensions - the so-called "gold-plated" ones - account for a mere 11.90% of the total.
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Simon Heffer has gone mad
From today's Daily Mail:
"Most people are quite content with things the way they are."
"I am delighted Tony Blair is re-engaging with British politics."
I rest my case. Careful with those straps, gentlemen; easy does it; now the syringe.
"Most people are quite content with things the way they are."
"I am delighted Tony Blair is re-engaging with British politics."
I rest my case. Careful with those straps, gentlemen; easy does it; now the syringe.
Why I voted UKIP
In our ward, it didn't make any difference, this time round, although the UKIP candidate did beat the Conservative into xth place.
But I take a wider view.
Withdrawing from the EU is essential: it's quite clear that the one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work. Yet even now the EU continues in that path.
Let's take one example: Mervyn King told the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee on 27 March:
"The current proposals that were put forward by the European Commission would have made it impossible for any regulator, say in Sweden or in the United Kingdom, to impose higher capital requirements on its own banks in order to protect domestic taxpayers. If you have a large banking sector and the consequences of its failure would be much more damaging to domestic taxpayers because they would feel compelled to bail the banks out, in that situation—as Switzerland has done, and indeed so far as Sweden has also done, and as Vickers recommends for banks behind the ring-fence—to have a higher level of capital than previously would simply make sure that you had a safer banking system, which would help to protect domestic taxpayers. Since there is no suggestion that European taxpayers are going to pick up the bill for a national banking system if it gets into trouble, it seems reasonable to allow national regulators to protect national taxpayers but the European Commission does not want to allow that."
If we keep voting for any of the three largest parties we'll never get past the first step.
But it's not enough. All that would do is to expose what rotters we have in Parliament. Peter Hitchens is good at noting how many of our laws arise from EU directives, yet the MPs pretend it's their decision. And at other times, they tell us that the EU insists on things where actually we have discretion. So a restoration of national sovereignty would mean no-one else for them to blame.
Then there's the voting system, so flawed that there's lots of people making very good money advising political parties how to exploit it. Funny how they all got together to keep out the Alternative Vote. Better Buggins' turn than all be thrown out in favour of some new political force; though as the origin of that phrase indicates (see link), the current corrupt system could be the reason for the catastrophic collapse.
And the weird boundary system, too. Until the boundary in my constituency was changed, you could vote for anything you liked but you'd get Labour. You'll still never get Conservative here.
Which brings me to the electorate. Thomas Jefferson advocated any political system that fully reflected the will of the people, even if that meant revising the Constitution from time to time. But the franchise in his day was nothing so widely extended as today. Democratic government throws itself on the mercy of the people, and that places a reliance on the people's intelligence, their level of education and access to information, and willingness to debate reasonably and abide by collective decisions.
Well, maybe we're sunk, then.
But it is better to be defeated in an honourable cause, than prosper in corruption.
And besides, if the people have more say, more often, in matters that affect them, this will educate them.
So, UKIP - and the feelings and as yet not fully defined principles behind it - is a start.
But I take a wider view.
Withdrawing from the EU is essential: it's quite clear that the one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work. Yet even now the EU continues in that path.
Let's take one example: Mervyn King told the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee on 27 March:
"The current proposals that were put forward by the European Commission would have made it impossible for any regulator, say in Sweden or in the United Kingdom, to impose higher capital requirements on its own banks in order to protect domestic taxpayers. If you have a large banking sector and the consequences of its failure would be much more damaging to domestic taxpayers because they would feel compelled to bail the banks out, in that situation—as Switzerland has done, and indeed so far as Sweden has also done, and as Vickers recommends for banks behind the ring-fence—to have a higher level of capital than previously would simply make sure that you had a safer banking system, which would help to protect domestic taxpayers. Since there is no suggestion that European taxpayers are going to pick up the bill for a national banking system if it gets into trouble, it seems reasonable to allow national regulators to protect national taxpayers but the European Commission does not want to allow that."
If we keep voting for any of the three largest parties we'll never get past the first step.
But it's not enough. All that would do is to expose what rotters we have in Parliament. Peter Hitchens is good at noting how many of our laws arise from EU directives, yet the MPs pretend it's their decision. And at other times, they tell us that the EU insists on things where actually we have discretion. So a restoration of national sovereignty would mean no-one else for them to blame.
Then there's the voting system, so flawed that there's lots of people making very good money advising political parties how to exploit it. Funny how they all got together to keep out the Alternative Vote. Better Buggins' turn than all be thrown out in favour of some new political force; though as the origin of that phrase indicates (see link), the current corrupt system could be the reason for the catastrophic collapse.
And the weird boundary system, too. Until the boundary in my constituency was changed, you could vote for anything you liked but you'd get Labour. You'll still never get Conservative here.
Which brings me to the electorate. Thomas Jefferson advocated any political system that fully reflected the will of the people, even if that meant revising the Constitution from time to time. But the franchise in his day was nothing so widely extended as today. Democratic government throws itself on the mercy of the people, and that places a reliance on the people's intelligence, their level of education and access to information, and willingness to debate reasonably and abide by collective decisions.
Well, maybe we're sunk, then.
But it is better to be defeated in an honourable cause, than prosper in corruption.
And besides, if the people have more say, more often, in matters that affect them, this will educate them.
So, UKIP - and the feelings and as yet not fully defined principles behind it - is a start.
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Foreign cinema news
Despite the success of "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen", which has also boosted tourist interest in that area, the Egyptian Film Board is reportedly "disappointed" at the reception of its own recent release, "Catching Crabs in Alexandria".
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Gun murders revisited
Yesterday, I grabbed some Wiki data to look at whether a higher rate of gun ownership means a lower chance of being killed with a gun. I divided one by the other and it didn't look like the argument stood up.
Today I'll do it a different way: I'll MULTIPLY one by the other, on the assumption that if the theory is correct, one figure gets lower and the other gets higher, so the line should be reasonably even, even if it might be angled (I'm sure a statistician can put me right, but at least I'm trying). Here's the data:
... and here's the graph (in block form):
The last 5 on the right leap out of the trend. My explanation is that higher rates of gun murders are more a function of lack of social cohesion and weak official control. What's yours?
Today I'll do it a different way: I'll MULTIPLY one by the other, on the assumption that if the theory is correct, one figure gets lower and the other gets higher, so the line should be reasonably even, even if it might be angled (I'm sure a statistician can put me right, but at least I'm trying). Here's the data:
... and here's the graph (in block form):
The last 5 on the right leap out of the trend. My explanation is that higher rates of gun murders are more a function of lack of social cohesion and weak official control. What's yours?
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Osborne: Bankers face payment by results
A startling recent report from the Daily Telegraph outlines a radical shakeup of the banking system by the Chancellor, George Osborne. I reproduce the text below (N.B. our spellchecker has identified and corrected a number of errors in the course of transcription).
“Results” would include not just profits but measures such as how much progress client businesses make, corporate governance and credit ratings.
Last night, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, disclosed that Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, had already asked the FSA, which analyses national remuneration packages, to set up a new Walker-style review and “make recommendations on introducing greater freedoms and flexibilities in bankers’ pay, including how to link it better to performance”.
Mr Osborne said the Government welcomed the MPs’ report “into this important area”. The review body is expected to deliver its recommendations by September.
In the report published today, the Treasury select committee says bankers should be rewarded for “adding the greatest value” to customers’ businesses and be given paid sabbaticals to further their skills.
MPs claim the reforms would address fears that poor bankers are having a “very significant” impact on businesses’ long-term prospects. The report quotes international research which shows that the worst bankers could cost business people and millions of employees their livelihoods and life savings.
Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University in America, has shown that an excellent banker can help local enterprises thrive and create employment, whereas a poor one will drive his customers into receivership.
The British Bankers’ Association is strongly opposed to any attempt to alter pay and conditions. However, the committee’s report says: “No longer should the weakest bankers be able to hide behind a rigid and unfair pay structure.
“We believe that performance management systems should support and reward the strongest bankers, as well as make no excuses — or, worse, incentives to remain — for the weaker. Given the profound positive and negative impacts which bankers have on national economic performance, we are concerned that the pay system continues to reward low performers at the same levels as their more successful peers.”
They want the Government to draw up proposals for a pay system that rewards those adding the greatest “value to the performance of enterprises”.
Marcus Agius, the chairman of the British Bankers’ Association, said: “Payment by results is total nonsense. Our customers are not tins of beans and banks are not factory production lines.
“Successful banks rely on a collegiate approach and team working. Performance-related pay is not only inappropriate but also divisive.
“Business people differ and startups differ from year to year, making it impossible to measure progress in simplistic terms.”
There are currently 5 major banking groups in the UK, and about 20 others. Although an element of performance-related pay already exists, ministers are now looking at enhancing rewards for the best.
Currently, bankers in London can earn up to £1.25 million. but see their pay rise to £8 million with other perks and bonuses. Earlier this year, Natalie Ceeney CBE, the chief executive of the Financial Ombudsman Service, said too many bankers – more than 90 per cent – were allowed to pass the test. “The thing that irritates good bankers, people who work hard and go the extra mile, is seeing the people that don’t do that being rewarded,” she said.
In December, it was reported that just no bankers judged to be incompetent over an 18-month period had been sacked.
In further recommendations, the report says a “sabbatical scholarship” programme should allow outstanding bankers to take time out to work in a different bank, undertake research or refresh their subject knowledge. It is also suggested fund managers and quantitative analysts be allowed to lead training sessions for university students as part of a system of “banking taster classes” to show them the benefit of a career in the profession.
__________________________________________________________
Poor bankers could
be paid less than competent colleagues under government plans to improve
standards of commercial banking.
Ministers want to link pay to performance in the boardroom as part of a new drive to improve results and attract the best graduates into the profession.
A cross-party group of MPs today
says that a new payment by results system is needed to stop the worst bankers
hiding behind a “rigid and unfair” national remuneration structure.Ministers want to link pay to performance in the boardroom as part of a new drive to improve results and attract the best graduates into the profession.
“Results” would include not just profits but measures such as how much progress client businesses make, corporate governance and credit ratings.
Last night, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, disclosed that Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, had already asked the FSA, which analyses national remuneration packages, to set up a new Walker-style review and “make recommendations on introducing greater freedoms and flexibilities in bankers’ pay, including how to link it better to performance”.
Mr Osborne said the Government welcomed the MPs’ report “into this important area”. The review body is expected to deliver its recommendations by September.
In the report published today, the Treasury select committee says bankers should be rewarded for “adding the greatest value” to customers’ businesses and be given paid sabbaticals to further their skills.
MPs claim the reforms would address fears that poor bankers are having a “very significant” impact on businesses’ long-term prospects. The report quotes international research which shows that the worst bankers could cost business people and millions of employees their livelihoods and life savings.
Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University in America, has shown that an excellent banker can help local enterprises thrive and create employment, whereas a poor one will drive his customers into receivership.
The British Bankers’ Association is strongly opposed to any attempt to alter pay and conditions. However, the committee’s report says: “No longer should the weakest bankers be able to hide behind a rigid and unfair pay structure.
“We believe that performance management systems should support and reward the strongest bankers, as well as make no excuses — or, worse, incentives to remain — for the weaker. Given the profound positive and negative impacts which bankers have on national economic performance, we are concerned that the pay system continues to reward low performers at the same levels as their more successful peers.”
They want the Government to draw up proposals for a pay system that rewards those adding the greatest “value to the performance of enterprises”.
Marcus Agius, the chairman of the British Bankers’ Association, said: “Payment by results is total nonsense. Our customers are not tins of beans and banks are not factory production lines.
“Successful banks rely on a collegiate approach and team working. Performance-related pay is not only inappropriate but also divisive.
“Business people differ and startups differ from year to year, making it impossible to measure progress in simplistic terms.”
There are currently 5 major banking groups in the UK, and about 20 others. Although an element of performance-related pay already exists, ministers are now looking at enhancing rewards for the best.
Currently, bankers in London can earn up to £1.25 million. but see their pay rise to £8 million with other perks and bonuses. Earlier this year, Natalie Ceeney CBE, the chief executive of the Financial Ombudsman Service, said too many bankers – more than 90 per cent – were allowed to pass the test. “The thing that irritates good bankers, people who work hard and go the extra mile, is seeing the people that don’t do that being rewarded,” she said.
In December, it was reported that just no bankers judged to be incompetent over an 18-month period had been sacked.
In further recommendations, the report says a “sabbatical scholarship” programme should allow outstanding bankers to take time out to work in a different bank, undertake research or refresh their subject knowledge. It is also suggested fund managers and quantitative analysts be allowed to lead training sessions for university students as part of a system of “banking taster classes” to show them the benefit of a career in the profession.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Gun ownership and murder
Sunday, April 29, 2012
My druggy wugs, my freedom-weedom - REVISED
Time for me to eat a little humble pie. I wrote the following before reading the transcript of evidence taken by the Parliamentary Home Affairs Committee on 24 April - click here for link.
So my account of Brand's views and comments is inaccurate. We bloggers like to call mainstream journalists to account when they are sloppy, so we should be prepared for the lash ourselves when (as in this case) we cop an attitude before getting all the facts.
To set the record straight, he is now off all legal and illegal drugs and advocates an abstinence-based approach, as least for people with addictive personalities like himself. He is against methadone because it is a lazy (and sometimes lethal, ultimately) way to treat addicts. But he does think more of the money spent on arrests for possession could be more productively used in helping drug-takers off their addiction; and when (gently) pressed, indicates that he favours decriminalisation - see his answer to Questions 259/260.
But do read the second part of the session also, in which, yes, Peter Hitchens (loathed by so many, especially the right-on) gives his well-known views - but so does Mary Brett, who has a background in education and also favours giving clearer, firmer guidance to youngsters on legality. It is not only Hitchens who sees prohibition as a valuable form of protection.
It is also interesting to see witnesses challenge the perception that drug-taking is so widespread that we may as well give up the fight - see Question 276, part of the answer to which reads:
Kathy Gyngell: ...At the moment, 2% of people sniff coke here. People, like Russell Brand, would like us to believe that this is common. It is still not common. It is common in certain circles.
Unfortunately, those circles include the broadcasting, journalism and entertainment industries, with their power to influence, persuade and mislead.
And, usefully, the Committee is challenged on whether it has a pro-drug use agenda (Question 281):
Kathy Gyngell: I was worried that you took your terms of reference, or apparently appeared to—and I indeed wrote to Mr Vaz about it—from the Global Commission on Drugs policy, which is basically a highly financed legalising lobby. That did disturb me because, equally, they had given out—and they were widely disseminated in the press—incorrect figures about drug use spiralling out of control globally when, indeed, the UNODC shows quite clearly that it has been stable. So, that did concern me that your direction of travel may have been influenced by lobbies who are very much in favour of decriminalisation, and if that is not the case I am very happy to hear it.
I've now started in on Mary Brett's drug report (2006, updated 2012) and already I'm getting some startling information, e.g. how very much stronger skunk is than herbal cannabis of the 60s and early 70s. Having lost a friend to skunk-related depression and suicide, I'm not in favour of making the stuff easier to get hold of. Her report is here.
Finally, my apologies to Elby and others for losing their comments in deleting, revising and re-posting this piece. I'm very grateful for their time in reading and responding and I promise to try harder on the technical side next time.
So, warts and all, here is what I said originally, this morning (and over at Orphans of Liberty also):
_______________________________________________________________
There is such a thing as society, Peter. In spite of what Margaret Thatcher said there is such a thing as society, we are responsible for one another. If we treat people compassionately and with love, then people will benefit. People of course are responsible for their actions, you’re responsible for writing for a bigoted newspaper [applause].
But if any full-on libertarians are reading this, maybe it's time they faced up to the fact that (as Sartre said) we ARE free, inescapably. Libertines and rake-hells just do it, they don't ask Authority to approve.
What semi-detached libertarians want is permission - but to ask that is to give power to another. The radical lover of freedom does what he wills and accepts the consequences - and doesn't whine for some social support safety net.
At 36, Brand is getting a little old for the role of bawling, illogical teenager, demanding autonomy and protection in the same breath. The infantile term "booky-wook" is the tell to his condition, isn't it?
So my account of Brand's views and comments is inaccurate. We bloggers like to call mainstream journalists to account when they are sloppy, so we should be prepared for the lash ourselves when (as in this case) we cop an attitude before getting all the facts.
To set the record straight, he is now off all legal and illegal drugs and advocates an abstinence-based approach, as least for people with addictive personalities like himself. He is against methadone because it is a lazy (and sometimes lethal, ultimately) way to treat addicts. But he does think more of the money spent on arrests for possession could be more productively used in helping drug-takers off their addiction; and when (gently) pressed, indicates that he favours decriminalisation - see his answer to Questions 259/260.
But do read the second part of the session also, in which, yes, Peter Hitchens (loathed by so many, especially the right-on) gives his well-known views - but so does Mary Brett, who has a background in education and also favours giving clearer, firmer guidance to youngsters on legality. It is not only Hitchens who sees prohibition as a valuable form of protection.
It is also interesting to see witnesses challenge the perception that drug-taking is so widespread that we may as well give up the fight - see Question 276, part of the answer to which reads:
Kathy Gyngell: ...At the moment, 2% of people sniff coke here. People, like Russell Brand, would like us to believe that this is common. It is still not common. It is common in certain circles.
Unfortunately, those circles include the broadcasting, journalism and entertainment industries, with their power to influence, persuade and mislead.
And, usefully, the Committee is challenged on whether it has a pro-drug use agenda (Question 281):
Lorraine Fullbrook: ...Are you making the assumption that the Committee are in favour of decriminalisation or legalisation?
Kathy Gyngell: I was worried that you took your terms of reference, or apparently appeared to—and I indeed wrote to Mr Vaz about it—from the Global Commission on Drugs policy, which is basically a highly financed legalising lobby. That did disturb me because, equally, they had given out—and they were widely disseminated in the press—incorrect figures about drug use spiralling out of control globally when, indeed, the UNODC shows quite clearly that it has been stable. So, that did concern me that your direction of travel may have been influenced by lobbies who are very much in favour of decriminalisation, and if that is not the case I am very happy to hear it.
I've now started in on Mary Brett's drug report (2006, updated 2012) and already I'm getting some startling information, e.g. how very much stronger skunk is than herbal cannabis of the 60s and early 70s. Having lost a friend to skunk-related depression and suicide, I'm not in favour of making the stuff easier to get hold of. Her report is here.
Finally, my apologies to Elby and others for losing their comments in deleting, revising and re-posting this piece. I'm very grateful for their time in reading and responding and I promise to try harder on the technical side next time.
So, warts and all, here is what I said originally, this morning (and over at Orphans of Liberty also):
_______________________________________________________________
I find it's easier to read than hear an argument, so I've transcribed as best I can what Russell Brand said in response to Peter Hitchens' accusation that drug-takers are spoiled rich Western kids who falsely claim that they are not responsible for their actions:
It’s nice to receive your bigotry from another medium other than the hate rag, The Mail on Sunday, from which you normally peddle hatred, insular thought, lack of love between human beings. What I’m saying, whether or not I’m selfish or wearing a hat is redundant and irrelevant. These are the kind of personal attacks, the aggressive styles that you continually adopt to vilify people needlessly. Hey what’s next, criminalise being a bit brown, is that your next policy from the Mail on Sunday? We can’t listen to people like you any more, it’s unevolved as a species.
It’s nice to receive your bigotry from another medium other than the hate rag, The Mail on Sunday, from which you normally peddle hatred, insular thought, lack of love between human beings. What I’m saying, whether or not I’m selfish or wearing a hat is redundant and irrelevant. These are the kind of personal attacks, the aggressive styles that you continually adopt to vilify people needlessly. Hey what’s next, criminalise being a bit brown, is that your next policy from the Mail on Sunday? We can’t listen to people like you any more, it’s unevolved as a species.
There is such a thing as society, Peter. In spite of what Margaret Thatcher said there is such a thing as society, we are responsible for one another. If we treat people compassionately and with love, then people will benefit. People of course are responsible for their actions, you’re responsible for writing for a bigoted newspaper [applause].
It would have been better if Hitchens hadn’t prefaced his question with an insult (“the alleged comedian in the hat”) as he then has to be held partly responsible for the damagingly ranting nature of the reply.But what’s clear is that Brand is confused on the issue – at one point we’re not responsible for ourselves, later we are and then we should be responsible for others as well. The Guardian’s report of his evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee is similarly equivocal and self-contradictory.
As to the so-called war on drugs, the Guardian's piece says:
He said he didn't think that drug addicts cared about the legal status of the drugs they were taking, or where they came from or the consequences for those involved in their production.
Not surprising, since there are usually no adverse legal consequences, in this country. As to the so-called war on drugs, the Guardian's piece says:
He said he didn't think that drug addicts cared about the legal status of the drugs they were taking, or where they came from or the consequences for those involved in their production.
But if any full-on libertarians are reading this, maybe it's time they faced up to the fact that (as Sartre said) we ARE free, inescapably. Libertines and rake-hells just do it, they don't ask Authority to approve.
What semi-detached libertarians want is permission - but to ask that is to give power to another. The radical lover of freedom does what he wills and accepts the consequences - and doesn't whine for some social support safety net.
At 36, Brand is getting a little old for the role of bawling, illogical teenager, demanding autonomy and protection in the same breath. The infantile term "booky-wook" is the tell to his condition, isn't it?
Headteacher to get pay cut
The headteacher of Canary Wharf Comprehensive is to have his bonus reduced, it was revealed today. Mr Garnet's pay package had soared to £17.7 million last year, despite the school failing its Ofsted inspection.
At a meeting with the Governing Body, Mr Garnet explained that his remuneration was strictly a contractual matter, the annual bonus being linked to the size of the school's budget. Since the DfEE had pumped in huge sums to turn around its dire performance, the Head's financial reward had broken all records. The Governors have decided to review the contract.
Speaking to Birmingham Teacher & TA by satphone from his chalet in Gstaad, Mr Garnet said, "It's only fair to point out that the tax on my income will cover my staff's wages for the next two years." Asked whether heads whose schools are failing, should be sacked, he said he was on a Black Run and would have to terminate the interview, but asked us to remind his teachers that pupil reports should be handed into heads of year by Thursday afternoon.
At a meeting with the Governing Body, Mr Garnet explained that his remuneration was strictly a contractual matter, the annual bonus being linked to the size of the school's budget. Since the DfEE had pumped in huge sums to turn around its dire performance, the Head's financial reward had broken all records. The Governors have decided to review the contract.
Speaking to Birmingham Teacher & TA by satphone from his chalet in Gstaad, Mr Garnet said, "It's only fair to point out that the tax on my income will cover my staff's wages for the next two years." Asked whether heads whose schools are failing, should be sacked, he said he was on a Black Run and would have to terminate the interview, but asked us to remind his teachers that pupil reports should be handed into heads of year by Thursday afternoon.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Hanging, flogging... and caning?
Nearly 3 years ago, I was having a whinge about education going to the bow-wows, and one part was about the end of corporal punishment in schools, which some would like to see reinstated. A leader in the campaign to abolish caning was a teacher in Tower Hamlets called Tom Scott, who later left teaching and is now a theatre director.
I often say that the people who make changes in teaching often choose not to stay at the sharp end (if they've ever been there at all), and I thought Scott had been away from the chalkface for so long he'd probably forgotten the details himself.
Not so. Here's a post by the man himself, put up on the 25th anniversary of abolition (July 22, 1986). Some of the examples of maltreatment he cites there should give any fair-minded reader pause for thought. I certainly couldn't defend those teachers.
The only caning I witnessed as a teacher was of a 15-year-old who'd told me to get lost when I was urging a group to work hard and complete their CSE English assignments (in two terms - the previous teacher had left under a cloud in the summer, with his pupils having only 2 acceptable pieces of coursework out of the required 15). A senior teacher gave him the cane once on each hand, and that was the last I saw of him in the classroom. Pour encourager les autres: almost all the others ultimately got passes in both English Language and English Literature - and these were C Band children.
The school was a very large urban comprehensive, but with a tightly-run and authoritarian management. It made a difference to the life chances of many children, I'm sure, even though I think discipline alone will get you no more than 90% of potential. It also allowed teachers to teach - not everyone is a tough guy or the inspirational type who could get children to push peanuts up mountainsides with their noses, as they say.
But yes, I'm sure there were also occasions when authority overstepped the mark. I remember one youngster who these days would be quickly recognized as autistic: he'd tried to flush a teacher's handbag down the lavatory and was consistently denying it to the head and deputy head in the office. The deputy, a slick and tricky type, leaned forward and said in a friendly way, "Look, Jason [as it might be], we all know you did it. Why don't you just admit it and then you can go?" "Okay, yeah, I did do it." With a sweep of the arm, the desk was cleared of papers, "Jason" was hauled over it and given six of the very best, then released - howling fit to bust - to charge out of the office and through reception, clutching his buttocks. Where the parents of a prospective entrant to the school were waiting. They saw the flaming-arsed meteor scud past, followed by the head and deputy strolling out, laughing and swishing their canes.
All most amusing, but "Jason" had to return to my classroom, red-faced and in shock at a turn of events he wasn't equipped to anticipate. On another occasion, he'd gone with a school group to Kingsbury Water Park and noticed a fishing float abandoned in a shallow lake. Without hesitation, he undressed (in front of a mixed group of boys and girls), waded out bollock-naked to retrieve it, and then dressed again. "Jason" was just different, and in the Pupil Referral Unit where I work part-time he would now be treated as such; thrashing would teach him nothing. Autistic children need social rules spelled out to them, like a tourist learning basic phrases in Greek.
There was also something of a bullying culture among the more macho teachers. A teenager came to remonstrate with one of these, who let him into the classroom to continue the discussion, locked the door and listened to a stream of foul-mouthed abuse. As the peroration continued, he quietly interjected "you're forgetting something" from time to time, until the lad put his cursing on hold and said "what?". "The door's locked". The boy's face went white, and he fell silent.
Another teacher - a Northerner - wouldn't tolerate cheek and chinned a member of his own form registration group, knocking him clear over the desk behind. The boy reminded him of it when Sir came to make his farewell ("Now then, scum...") before leaving to teach abroad - but the kid said it with a grin: he knew there hadn't actually been any malice, it was just what the alpha male does to the naughty pup.
A retired colleague did his teaching practice in a school in (I think) Reading, somewhere around the late 60s. His class was a mixed bunch, with the yobbos ensconced at the back. But one made the mistake of taking out a newspaper and reading it behind the upraised lid of his desk. A mistake, because my friend is of Irish descent and has fully inherited the wrathful warrior gene. Leaping forward with a roar of rage, the trainee teacher smashed down the lid, which broke in two pieces across the head of the boy, who fell back stunned in his chair. There was no trouble from that class again.
Pre-World War I, my great-grandfather was a schoolmaster in an East Prussian village (paid for his services partly in firewood etc). He taught the children of agricultural labourers, dairymen and so on - tough kids in a tough time, and unlikely to appreciate the value of literacy and general knowledge. But great-grandpapa was built like a brick shithouse - once, when a man had disagreed with him, he'd suspended his opponent one-handed by the collar outside an upper-storey window until there was a meeting of minds. My ancestor started each day giving all the kids a whack - girls as well as boys. They all learned to read and write, and this might well have saved the lives of a number of the boys when the call-up came, as they would have been given office jobs instead of being sent out to absorb the enemy's bullets.
Quite a different world, and no Professor Challenger will find his way back to it.
Is there any halfway house between the hard ways of the past and the barrack-room-lawyer children of today? Should a civil whack on the hands be allowed again? Or is it all too fraught with difficulty?
Meantime, I shall not be so quick to judge people like Mr Scott.
I often say that the people who make changes in teaching often choose not to stay at the sharp end (if they've ever been there at all), and I thought Scott had been away from the chalkface for so long he'd probably forgotten the details himself.
Not so. Here's a post by the man himself, put up on the 25th anniversary of abolition (July 22, 1986). Some of the examples of maltreatment he cites there should give any fair-minded reader pause for thought. I certainly couldn't defend those teachers.
The only caning I witnessed as a teacher was of a 15-year-old who'd told me to get lost when I was urging a group to work hard and complete their CSE English assignments (in two terms - the previous teacher had left under a cloud in the summer, with his pupils having only 2 acceptable pieces of coursework out of the required 15). A senior teacher gave him the cane once on each hand, and that was the last I saw of him in the classroom. Pour encourager les autres: almost all the others ultimately got passes in both English Language and English Literature - and these were C Band children.
The school was a very large urban comprehensive, but with a tightly-run and authoritarian management. It made a difference to the life chances of many children, I'm sure, even though I think discipline alone will get you no more than 90% of potential. It also allowed teachers to teach - not everyone is a tough guy or the inspirational type who could get children to push peanuts up mountainsides with their noses, as they say.
But yes, I'm sure there were also occasions when authority overstepped the mark. I remember one youngster who these days would be quickly recognized as autistic: he'd tried to flush a teacher's handbag down the lavatory and was consistently denying it to the head and deputy head in the office. The deputy, a slick and tricky type, leaned forward and said in a friendly way, "Look, Jason [as it might be], we all know you did it. Why don't you just admit it and then you can go?" "Okay, yeah, I did do it." With a sweep of the arm, the desk was cleared of papers, "Jason" was hauled over it and given six of the very best, then released - howling fit to bust - to charge out of the office and through reception, clutching his buttocks. Where the parents of a prospective entrant to the school were waiting. They saw the flaming-arsed meteor scud past, followed by the head and deputy strolling out, laughing and swishing their canes.
All most amusing, but "Jason" had to return to my classroom, red-faced and in shock at a turn of events he wasn't equipped to anticipate. On another occasion, he'd gone with a school group to Kingsbury Water Park and noticed a fishing float abandoned in a shallow lake. Without hesitation, he undressed (in front of a mixed group of boys and girls), waded out bollock-naked to retrieve it, and then dressed again. "Jason" was just different, and in the Pupil Referral Unit where I work part-time he would now be treated as such; thrashing would teach him nothing. Autistic children need social rules spelled out to them, like a tourist learning basic phrases in Greek.
There was also something of a bullying culture among the more macho teachers. A teenager came to remonstrate with one of these, who let him into the classroom to continue the discussion, locked the door and listened to a stream of foul-mouthed abuse. As the peroration continued, he quietly interjected "you're forgetting something" from time to time, until the lad put his cursing on hold and said "what?". "The door's locked". The boy's face went white, and he fell silent.
Another teacher - a Northerner - wouldn't tolerate cheek and chinned a member of his own form registration group, knocking him clear over the desk behind. The boy reminded him of it when Sir came to make his farewell ("Now then, scum...") before leaving to teach abroad - but the kid said it with a grin: he knew there hadn't actually been any malice, it was just what the alpha male does to the naughty pup.
A retired colleague did his teaching practice in a school in (I think) Reading, somewhere around the late 60s. His class was a mixed bunch, with the yobbos ensconced at the back. But one made the mistake of taking out a newspaper and reading it behind the upraised lid of his desk. A mistake, because my friend is of Irish descent and has fully inherited the wrathful warrior gene. Leaping forward with a roar of rage, the trainee teacher smashed down the lid, which broke in two pieces across the head of the boy, who fell back stunned in his chair. There was no trouble from that class again.
Pre-World War I, my great-grandfather was a schoolmaster in an East Prussian village (paid for his services partly in firewood etc). He taught the children of agricultural labourers, dairymen and so on - tough kids in a tough time, and unlikely to appreciate the value of literacy and general knowledge. But great-grandpapa was built like a brick shithouse - once, when a man had disagreed with him, he'd suspended his opponent one-handed by the collar outside an upper-storey window until there was a meeting of minds. My ancestor started each day giving all the kids a whack - girls as well as boys. They all learned to read and write, and this might well have saved the lives of a number of the boys when the call-up came, as they would have been given office jobs instead of being sent out to absorb the enemy's bullets.
Quite a different world, and no Professor Challenger will find his way back to it.
Is there any halfway house between the hard ways of the past and the barrack-room-lawyer children of today? Should a civil whack on the hands be allowed again? Or is it all too fraught with difficulty?
Meantime, I shall not be so quick to judge people like Mr Scott.
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