I am not a Conservative in the traditional sense, but I recognise that there is waste when you add unnecessary webs of transactions to our economic system. The proliferation of government bureaucracy and the sprawling banking system have acted as parasites that consume wealth by, in the first case, taxing it, and in the second case, bleeding it off through making profits on new loans. If we are to overcome the many economic challenges modern society faces, then we must inevitably innovate and invent, since modern technology is undeniably insufficient to solve the age old impossibility of continued exponential growth on a finite planet. In theory, there are solutions that we don't know of yet, but if we hold ourselves back by refusing to unleash the market, then we will trap ourselves. For example, perfect economic equality is going to result in a situation where no one person has enough to make the investments in green infrastructure and capital that we will need to adapt to the coming energy and resource crunches. The last crunch was in something that is actually artificial. The credit crunch was odd because it was explained as a shortage of money to lend. This excuse preys upon people's ignorance of what "credit" actually is. If you are a bank and you want to issue a loan, you just invent it digitally. We should not mistake the financial crisis, for the real underlying crisis. It is impossible to have a shortage of something that is infinite. Banks can actually create as much money as they like. Of course they don't, because they would send inflation too high, which would defeat the value of the repayments they receive. The economic crisis is simply a cover up for the peaking of several natural resources. I overheard some people talking about how "nothing was making any money at the moment", but I promise you, they are wrong, the one thing that is doing spectacularly well in the current economic climate is commodities. Take a look at the price data for commodities on the BBC News Website, under Business -- Market Data, and you'll see what I am on about.
The government's should recognise that the value of a unit of money is determined by the other money in circulation. If it takes people a third of their incomes, people will be a third poorer, but if they simply printed the money, there would be no need for the misery of taxation, and the effect on people's earnings would be the same, although it would be impossible to progressively discriminate between people on different income levels. Contrary to what some say, this would not cause hyper inflation. Hyper inflation is uncontrollable, rapidly rising inflation, but if government's simply created all the money they need, this would allow the to spend the necessary money needed to remodel our economy. It would not cause inflation, it would simply depreciate the currency. There is a slight difference. Inflation is how prices correct themselves upwards when there is too much effective demand for the goods the economy produces, but if government's expanded the money supply, they would not increase prices on the whole, and they would also boost the affordability of exports for foreign consumers. This would be very useful, because if we are to undertake a second, Green industrial revolution, then it would enable us to encourage the world to purchase the new inventions.
There is a fundamental difference between economic growth and economic development. The debate is similar to the quantity or quality debate, and like most people, I would opt for the later. Most of us live ridiculously busy lives, doing completely unnecessary things just to fill time, because of some sort of externally imposed obligation. At work, we are expected to spend our time being "productive", but what is accepted as "productive" is quite the contrary these days. The loose attitude to what constitutes worthwhile work has lead to the tick box culture, where people sit around doing office jobs that serve next to no benefit to the economy. In fact, it would be more profitable in some cases to pay people to do nothing, because you wouldn't be paying for all the paper, the pointless phone-calls, and so on. Perhaps Mr. Osborne would like to consider this when he makes cuts to public services. You could simply continue to pay people their salaries without actually requiring them to work, the savings being made from what the consume when they work. In the past people produced a financial benefit to the economy when they worked, and whilst this often holds true today, in some cases, we have "consumer-workers", who cost more on top of their salary to employ.
Whilst I have often written of how society will really struggle in the coming years, I accept that there seems no reason to sit back and let it fail. If we are going to fail anyway, then we might as well do so fighting. I would rather see the productive sector of the economy innovate our way out of the coming crisis, rather than sit back idly. However, a few words of caution are unnecessary, otherwise we may be sorely disappointed if we cannot buck the bad. Some analysts point to the meltdown of 2008 as the end of growth, triggered by the tipping point at which hydro-carbon energy extraction peaked, with led to rising extraction costs for the materials we use to conduct "economic activities". It is all very well however to understand recent history, but we should now ask whether there is any light at the end of the tunnel.
In this months issue of BBC Focus, the flagship science and technology magazine, Stephen Baxter speculates about what the future might look like, or rather "looks ahead 100 years to our high-tech future". We should probably take any long-shot view with a pinch of salt, as remarkably, many of his ideas are highly similar to what people thought the year 2000 would look like, back in the 1970s. Anyway, we should at least investigate whether any of the solutions he proposes are feasible. However, Stephen goes from one predictable rehash of current technology to another. One of the wackiest ideas he proposes is strip mining for water on the moon, which would obviously consume enormous amounts of energy that we simply do not have, but like many futurologists, he fails to make this link. However, in his piece on energy, he talks about solar and wind power- existing technologies. I can tell you now, there are only certain materials which would can manufacture solar cells or wind turbines from. These range from metals such as steel, which will run out within 30 years, to plastic manufactured from oil which will run out in 40, to various other ingenious substitutes for these resources, which will of course also run out. There are simply limits to the maximum amount of manufactured "stuff" you can have standing at any one time. The only long term solution is to hope that population shrinks naturally so that per capita GDP continues to increase, to bring people out of poverty, even whilst the economy overall stabilises or contracts.
Sadly, it is likely that population will not shrink naturally, but instead quite brutally. As oil and gas become too expensive (they won't actually run out- but it will feel like it) then we will have a death of intensive mechanised agriculture. Firstly ammonia is the basic feedstock for most farmed plants, but this is manufactured from natural gas. Crops are planted, sprayed with water, harvested, distributed, packaged, and so on, by machines that run on oil and sometimes "bio-fuels" (which are grown from the ground using oil anyway, and according to some studies actually give a lower energy return than that invested meaning that when you use 1 barrel of "bio-oil" you actually use more than 1 of normal oil anyway). However, we can adapt to lower food yields if we simply distribute what we have better. This is probably not going to happen with the current state of the world though. A recent article on the BBC news website celebrated £40m of UK aid as part of a package to poorer countries. To most people, something like £40m is a wonderfully large amount of money, but it is actually less than 1/100,000th of what the nation earns each year. Another factoid to ponder is that there are 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy in every calorie of real food we consume. We are going to have to adapt very quickly as oil production hits the downside of the mountain, otherwise food production would also collapse. Most people simply attach oil to consumer luxuries such as Sports Utility Vehicles, but when people see the empty shelves in the supermarket, the shortage will really hit home.
Monday, 27 December 2010
Sunday, 26 December 2010
Shortages (might) be on the way!!!
Most businesses and households can cope with one off financial pressures, so many economists, trained on the empirical truths of the good years do not fret too much at a 2.5% rise in the rate of VAT. I would suggest that this is because we usually dismiss such challenges since they have, in the past, not hit at the same time as other challenges, but today, things are different. The cost of oil is above 5.5% of GDP, floating at a dangerous 6.7%. From past evidence, it would seem that if the oil price ever drifts above 5.5%, we enter a recession within a year. In 2008, it hit 9%, the highest ever share of GDP. Obviously when you are spending so much of the national income on a fuel, you have less to spend on the things that actually use the fuel, so consumption becomes impractical, and the economy shrinks to correct the disequilibrium of the complementary demand between the fuel and the end product. With creeping inflation, above average earning rises, the incoming austerity measures such as the VAT hike and public spending cuts, this economy could be in for a very hard time.
It struck me today that we are so dependant on supermarkets for many everyday "essentials" that we would be in a lot of trouble if one of the big four were to go under, particularly the old stalwarts, Tesco's and Sainsbury's. I'm not suggesting that either will go bankrupt, to the contrary, I believe those particular chains are in a healthy financial state, but with the prospect of 1000 firms going under in the next month due to lacklustre consumer demand, we should realise that some stores, from some companies will close. Many people, particularly the elderly, depend on local convenience stores for their shopping, so if problems such as inflation got out of hand, we would be far less able to cope as a society than we would have been in the past. If we are entering an era of stagflation, it will be unlike the 70's episode, because back then, people bought their "supplies" from a much more diverse range of sources. Suburban culture was not so prevalent as it is today.
Some stores, especially the warehouse size out of town supermarkets than sprang up in the 80s and 90s, act as "bastions" for consumers nearby, so what would happen, for instance, if one was closed. Firstly, many have petrol stations attached, so we could presume that this would go as well, which would reduce petrol availability, further cementing regional monopolies, allowing filling operators to increase their prices. People would drive further to a different supermarket. Because they would drive further they would buy more petrol, so they would have less money for food anyway. An influx of shoppers from one "bastion" to another will lead to empty shelves in the short term. It takes months to undertake complete refurbishments or extensions of existing stores, which would be necessary if there were big changes in the market like store closures, so in the short term, we can be sure that there would be food shortages and higher prices if any of the big supermarket's had to shut any, let alone all of their stores.
In the last few days, I have heard worrying news of petrol shortages. Whilst reports such as this can be expected when there is heavy snow, most of it has now cleared. What is now causing the problem is that the country's cars started running low during the snow, and there is still a backlog of consumers who need to refill. This has been badly exacerbated by a Christmas rush, as people head away to their friends and relatives for the festive season. You can expect to pay £1.249 for unleaded right now. The problem is, the price too has shot up in recent weeks, in some places by 5 pence or more. This has for some reason increase demand- people are almost certainly being sensible and expecting the price to shoot further upwards, either that or they fear more snow. For most people, a penny or two more on the litre is far from a nightmare, but along with Osborne's austerity package, the fairness of which more and more people doubt, inflation and cuts may collude to create an economic nightmare.
Remember 2008, empty stores such as Zavvi, Borders, and Woolworths gave us an "entertainment drought", giving HMV an even stronger grip on the market. HMV itself is now struggling even more, as sales disappear to the internet, ground controlled by giants such as Amazon, and Play amongst others. You can only take things away from the high street for so long though, until you get a previously bustling shopping district spiralling into becoming a ghost town. This is a well recognised geographical and economic phenomenon. As shops close, consumers find it less appealing to go out, so sales drop further, and others go under, until the area becomes increasingly empty, or increasing dominated by very few brands, which is never healthy.
Trends suggest that the end of materialistic consumerism, typified by actually going out to buy products, is over, and we are seeing more and more virtual consumerism. It may be environmentally sound when people stop going out to buy SUVs, and instead opt for the video game, where they can drive a digital one, purchased as an internet download, but this shift will create challenges, most notably, in the way people are employed. It only takes a few web geeks to run a website, and a warehouse full of carefully designed robots, to sell people something in the new virtual world. A growing number of experts believe that "virtual consumerism" may be a solution to the negative environmental externalities of traditional capitalism, however, if this leads to less employment, we mustn't let those who are left out fall by the wayside by cutting benefits. We must recognise the full employment is no longer necessary or even efficient in a modern, more sustainable society, so we must react accordingly, by a more equitable distribution of income through higher taxes and benefits, that some elitists call "socialism". If innovation is socialism, then socialism must be good. Just because the old ways of doing things are profitable, this benefit is largely irrelevant if the profits remain controlled by the top 1%. According the Green Economics Institute, the top decile of the population earns 59% of GDP. This is an utterly unacceptable social failure that would not be accepted in any other system. If economists continue in their inability to accept and deal with the fact that things change, and sometimes new truths are not heresy but simply wisdom, then they are an undeniably discredited and morally bankrupt race.
It struck me today that we are so dependant on supermarkets for many everyday "essentials" that we would be in a lot of trouble if one of the big four were to go under, particularly the old stalwarts, Tesco's and Sainsbury's. I'm not suggesting that either will go bankrupt, to the contrary, I believe those particular chains are in a healthy financial state, but with the prospect of 1000 firms going under in the next month due to lacklustre consumer demand, we should realise that some stores, from some companies will close. Many people, particularly the elderly, depend on local convenience stores for their shopping, so if problems such as inflation got out of hand, we would be far less able to cope as a society than we would have been in the past. If we are entering an era of stagflation, it will be unlike the 70's episode, because back then, people bought their "supplies" from a much more diverse range of sources. Suburban culture was not so prevalent as it is today.
Some stores, especially the warehouse size out of town supermarkets than sprang up in the 80s and 90s, act as "bastions" for consumers nearby, so what would happen, for instance, if one was closed. Firstly, many have petrol stations attached, so we could presume that this would go as well, which would reduce petrol availability, further cementing regional monopolies, allowing filling operators to increase their prices. People would drive further to a different supermarket. Because they would drive further they would buy more petrol, so they would have less money for food anyway. An influx of shoppers from one "bastion" to another will lead to empty shelves in the short term. It takes months to undertake complete refurbishments or extensions of existing stores, which would be necessary if there were big changes in the market like store closures, so in the short term, we can be sure that there would be food shortages and higher prices if any of the big supermarket's had to shut any, let alone all of their stores.
In the last few days, I have heard worrying news of petrol shortages. Whilst reports such as this can be expected when there is heavy snow, most of it has now cleared. What is now causing the problem is that the country's cars started running low during the snow, and there is still a backlog of consumers who need to refill. This has been badly exacerbated by a Christmas rush, as people head away to their friends and relatives for the festive season. You can expect to pay £1.249 for unleaded right now. The problem is, the price too has shot up in recent weeks, in some places by 5 pence or more. This has for some reason increase demand- people are almost certainly being sensible and expecting the price to shoot further upwards, either that or they fear more snow. For most people, a penny or two more on the litre is far from a nightmare, but along with Osborne's austerity package, the fairness of which more and more people doubt, inflation and cuts may collude to create an economic nightmare.
Remember 2008, empty stores such as Zavvi, Borders, and Woolworths gave us an "entertainment drought", giving HMV an even stronger grip on the market. HMV itself is now struggling even more, as sales disappear to the internet, ground controlled by giants such as Amazon, and Play amongst others. You can only take things away from the high street for so long though, until you get a previously bustling shopping district spiralling into becoming a ghost town. This is a well recognised geographical and economic phenomenon. As shops close, consumers find it less appealing to go out, so sales drop further, and others go under, until the area becomes increasingly empty, or increasing dominated by very few brands, which is never healthy.
Trends suggest that the end of materialistic consumerism, typified by actually going out to buy products, is over, and we are seeing more and more virtual consumerism. It may be environmentally sound when people stop going out to buy SUVs, and instead opt for the video game, where they can drive a digital one, purchased as an internet download, but this shift will create challenges, most notably, in the way people are employed. It only takes a few web geeks to run a website, and a warehouse full of carefully designed robots, to sell people something in the new virtual world. A growing number of experts believe that "virtual consumerism" may be a solution to the negative environmental externalities of traditional capitalism, however, if this leads to less employment, we mustn't let those who are left out fall by the wayside by cutting benefits. We must recognise the full employment is no longer necessary or even efficient in a modern, more sustainable society, so we must react accordingly, by a more equitable distribution of income through higher taxes and benefits, that some elitists call "socialism". If innovation is socialism, then socialism must be good. Just because the old ways of doing things are profitable, this benefit is largely irrelevant if the profits remain controlled by the top 1%. According the Green Economics Institute, the top decile of the population earns 59% of GDP. This is an utterly unacceptable social failure that would not be accepted in any other system. If economists continue in their inability to accept and deal with the fact that things change, and sometimes new truths are not heresy but simply wisdom, then they are an undeniably discredited and morally bankrupt race.
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
What is an economy?
In Margaret Thatcher's day, Britain became a leader in the service industry. As we de-industrialized, instead of selling goods, we started to sell our skills and expertise to the world. We still have industry, mainly in high-tech sectors such as pharmaceuticals and computer parts. However, if we think about what services do- they simply serve the other part of the economy, the "physical economy". For example, a legal firm may add to gross domestic product, but it is only possible if there are businesses in the "real" part of the economy, or the global economy for it to serve. You can't have a world economy based on the service industries, because there comes a point where you would simply have one legal firm giving advice to another, and so on. It is widely accepted by economists that the world depends on the "real" economy, the manufacturing/agriculture sector. If you look at everything around you, it was built by the real economy, the fake sector of the economy, services, can only provide the veneer on the finished product. Even things like health care need resources- it depends on a ready supply of chemicals and equipment to treat the sick. Notwithstanding, the medical professionals - clinicians - still need to eat for example, so you see where it goes. In order to have an "economy" you must have manufacturing, even if some countries/regions of the world can specialize, rightfully so, in services, the world as a whole still depends on industrial breadbaskets. Today these are China and India, and as they develop, and employment shifts from tertiary to secondary and primary industries, we may come to depend more on other countries for industrial produce. This substitution effect can only work for a while, so ultimately, in order to grow an economy, you require industry.
Now that we have established that industry is essential, we only need to understand that resources are finite, and that physical laws, such as entropy (everything slowly breaks down), and the law of diminishing returns, to realize that we can also not forever recycle our way out of trouble. Given that it is illogical that this finite economy will suddenly stop, it is ridiculous that everything will run out and break down all at once, we should expect world wide GDP to follow a bell curve, or something similar. Actually, this seems to be happening. From the beginning of modern industrial civilization, world GDP (income) grew year on year, as did population. GDP stopped in 2008, and shrunk quite dramatically, but population keeps on growing at 70 million a year. It seems we a trapped, we need to grow the economy to sustain per capita wealth, otherwise a burgeoning population will fight for an ever smaller cake as resources run scarce. Some people, myself included, have started to realize that what happened in 2008 may not be unusual in years to come. The extraction of any natural resource grows until no matter how much money is invested, it is impossible to extract any more that at peak, after which production enters terminal decline. Take oil, in each rig, you get to a point where the investment is greater than return, so even some resource lies in the ground, you cannot carry on production, because you would be losing money and resources, and resulting in a lower net production. As we approach the point where more wells "dry out" than new ones can be profitably brought on stream, production will fall and prices will rise exponentially. Problematically, the quicker economies grow, the more the problem exacerbates.
We can see, this actually happened in 2008, oil production had flatlined for 3 years, and prices started to creep up, hitting $150 in August. This proved to be the spark that kicked off the global economic crisis- remember the sub-prime mortgage troubles were actually in 2007, so they had not, contrary to what "experts" claim, proved to be the actual cause of the economic crisis. In 2009 and 2010, governments tried to throw financial solutions; more stimulus (spending), more debt, and money printing to solve a problem that had nothing to do with pieces of paper but everything to do with real resources in the ground. Unfortunately their efforts delivered mediocre results, at best offsetting some of the crisis by borrowing at interest against our future- of course all debts must eventually be paid back.
I suspect that what is happening is that government's have started to come to terms with reality, and are now realizing that the economic expansion which they had predicated economic policy upon was unrealistic. Now the are desperately trying to reduce aggregate demand in the economy, so as to prevent another oil shock. They call this "austerity", and their excuse usually goes along the lines of "we have a huge deficit that needs correcting". Of course, here is where their first mistake lies, but most people fall for it. In a national economy, it is not so much about your "profit", (surplus or deficit), because this is paid for by borrowing- creating money that must be repaid by future generations, rather "revenue" is the main concern, so actually, the best way to grow an economy, if growth is possible, is to lend lots of money, because money is actually "permission" to consume. The world leaders have may realized that there are limits to consumption, but they are being horribly dishonest is their austerity/conservation program, by not distributing the remaining wealth more equitably. They are preying on people's fears about a mythical financial crisis to rob them of what the real crisis might do anyway. The real crisis is actually a resource crisis, and people deserve to know.
Now that we have established that industry is essential, we only need to understand that resources are finite, and that physical laws, such as entropy (everything slowly breaks down), and the law of diminishing returns, to realize that we can also not forever recycle our way out of trouble. Given that it is illogical that this finite economy will suddenly stop, it is ridiculous that everything will run out and break down all at once, we should expect world wide GDP to follow a bell curve, or something similar. Actually, this seems to be happening. From the beginning of modern industrial civilization, world GDP (income) grew year on year, as did population. GDP stopped in 2008, and shrunk quite dramatically, but population keeps on growing at 70 million a year. It seems we a trapped, we need to grow the economy to sustain per capita wealth, otherwise a burgeoning population will fight for an ever smaller cake as resources run scarce. Some people, myself included, have started to realize that what happened in 2008 may not be unusual in years to come. The extraction of any natural resource grows until no matter how much money is invested, it is impossible to extract any more that at peak, after which production enters terminal decline. Take oil, in each rig, you get to a point where the investment is greater than return, so even some resource lies in the ground, you cannot carry on production, because you would be losing money and resources, and resulting in a lower net production. As we approach the point where more wells "dry out" than new ones can be profitably brought on stream, production will fall and prices will rise exponentially. Problematically, the quicker economies grow, the more the problem exacerbates.
We can see, this actually happened in 2008, oil production had flatlined for 3 years, and prices started to creep up, hitting $150 in August. This proved to be the spark that kicked off the global economic crisis- remember the sub-prime mortgage troubles were actually in 2007, so they had not, contrary to what "experts" claim, proved to be the actual cause of the economic crisis. In 2009 and 2010, governments tried to throw financial solutions; more stimulus (spending), more debt, and money printing to solve a problem that had nothing to do with pieces of paper but everything to do with real resources in the ground. Unfortunately their efforts delivered mediocre results, at best offsetting some of the crisis by borrowing at interest against our future- of course all debts must eventually be paid back.
I suspect that what is happening is that government's have started to come to terms with reality, and are now realizing that the economic expansion which they had predicated economic policy upon was unrealistic. Now the are desperately trying to reduce aggregate demand in the economy, so as to prevent another oil shock. They call this "austerity", and their excuse usually goes along the lines of "we have a huge deficit that needs correcting". Of course, here is where their first mistake lies, but most people fall for it. In a national economy, it is not so much about your "profit", (surplus or deficit), because this is paid for by borrowing- creating money that must be repaid by future generations, rather "revenue" is the main concern, so actually, the best way to grow an economy, if growth is possible, is to lend lots of money, because money is actually "permission" to consume. The world leaders have may realized that there are limits to consumption, but they are being horribly dishonest is their austerity/conservation program, by not distributing the remaining wealth more equitably. They are preying on people's fears about a mythical financial crisis to rob them of what the real crisis might do anyway. The real crisis is actually a resource crisis, and people deserve to know.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
The irrelevance of the news
When you read the news these days, what you get is pointless drivel. What they should be doing is providing a service, informing us about the challenges of tomorrow, and investigating the events of today, trying to explain why they are happening and what we could do. However, if you take a glance at any newspaper, or mainstream news website, what you will see is more of what you already know. If there is snow where you live, you may find out that there is also snow where somebody else lives, and what a surprise, the airports are shut, because you can't take of in snow and ice. They can keep the useful bits about travel in, and ditch the rest, because quite frankly, telling people it's snowing when they already know is such a waste of money. The "Royal Wedding" story has also created a huge buzz in the news recently, but I highly doubt that most people actually give a damn. Of course, there are the royalists, and the patriots, who believe that it is right and proper that two otherwise irrelevant aristocrats should get an enormous amount of recognition for getting married, as if this was important to anybody else.
It is rather cruel that we are forced to pay huge license fees to the BBC if we want to watch their news, and then they spend the money on covering stuff that isn't even news. If we want entertaining, then we can chose to pay for it on a case by case basis by purchasing whatever magazine etc that suites our interests. If the BBC need to make efficiency savings, which they are going to have to, they can start off by ditching the bulls**t.
Most people hold this preconceived idea, a paradigm, that journalists are fascinated by what they report, and they go to every length to make sure that their coverage is as rigorous and as intellectually ruthless as possible. Yet the reality couldn't be further from this cosy, idealistic interpretation of how the news is produced. I can say with some confidence - I have met countless individuals from the media industry, who after a few drinks at the dinner party tend to open up about what really goes on in the workplace - that many of them are actively disinterested in what they report. This is why they find it obligatory to find extreme stereotypes to portray what they need to cover, because it is the easiest way they can do their job. I have been interviewed countless times, yet I have always noticed that journalists are highly selective with their shorthand. They will cease writing when you drift off into anything that is too truthful to be entertaining, and resume as soon as the buzzwords and soundbites resume.
The truth is that if people actually knew the truth about how the world works, they would be deeply depressed. This is why I can understand it when the media actively ignore anybody who seeks to break their veil of misinformation. It is not a conspiracy that the news media fails in its most fundamental responsibilities, it is simply that the truth is so bad, nobody would ever stay in the job to publish it- so it gets ignored. That is why independent blogs like this are so important. I believe that it is only right to tell people about something when you know it, even when the truth is so outta whack, so sad.
If you think about the main stories that have dominated the headlines of the last year of so, we have had the Financial Crisis, the BP oil spill, the Eurozone Debt crisis, the Government Deficit, and so the list continues; but really, all these stories are just branches of one big crisis. If you haven't realized by now, our economy, and thus our society, is slowly breaking down. The media help the politicians in their quest to peddle utterly ridiculous excuses for each new cock up that happens, and when you know the facts, it is easy to understand that everything that has been reported about the economy recently is absolute bunkum, it's just all nonsense.
Firstly, anything to do with debt is dishonest. This can be explained with a simple understanding of what debt is. In the modern banking system, debt is not, contrary to popular understand, money that is lent. It is actually invented money, that it lent. If you think about how money is lent, it is obvious that no real paper money is required- at least hardly any. Nearly all newly created money (credit) is used digitally, think credit cards, cheques, overdrafts, not very much of this is ever turned back into paper. This is called fractional reserve banking. In the past, banks would actually lend out a fraction of there reserves, which had the effect of inflating the money supply. Therefore by regulating interest rates government's could control the affordability of new money (in fact REALLOCATED MONEY). Banks new that it was unlikely that everyone would want to withdraw cash at any one time, so they could lend out most of the money to generate a profit- interest (money that doesn't actually exist, so the rate of circulation must speed up to pay the banks- which is why credit drives growth). These days, since most money is virtual, banks just create it on top of existing cash reserves. There is no limit on how much banks can create. (In the UK the "reserve requirement" is 0%), although there are guidelines. So when you know that banks can simply create money, their is no such thing as a shortage of money to lend, because they don't actually lend money at all, they just generate virtual credits, which must be repayed with real money. This is where the problem arises, because eventually there will be demand for physical cash to pay off the debt. However, this is solved by extending more credit to pay of old debts, meaning that real money is never needed. The rampant expansion of credit is OK as long as the economy can keep growing so that all the new money has purchasing power. Obviously infinite economic growth is not possible, because resources are finite, so eventually it is inevitable that debtors will default on repayments- or the banks will simply have to keep lending even more money to pay of existing debt (a PONZI SCHEME in effect), even when the economy contracts, which leads to hyper inflation.
Now once you understand this, you begin to realize that the recent economic turmoil fits nicely into the predictions I have just made. Firstly, the Eurozone Crisis, and the sub prime mortgage crisis in the US are evidence of the "default" stage. In the Eurozone, we have not let credit collapse, we have opted for bailouts, which means more new money has been created. Notice that economic growth has also slowed, plus we are seeing a repeat of 2008 with the oil price- it is quickly shooting up again, and inflation is rising. A quick Google search will deliver countless stories to demonstrate any of the claims I have just made. The "growth in money supply" figure in the Eurozone is about 12%- which gives an indication of where inflation is headed in economic growth does not pick up. Inflation actually measures the relationship between effective demand and supply in the economy, so if demand falls as the economy contracts, the situation may not be so bad, but we may be trapped, because if growth does pick up, aggregate demand will rise, so we are likely to see higher inflation. Since inflation erodes the purchasing power of money, we are likely to become poorer.
Don't you think it is wrong that the news media didn't tell you about all of that? Get you letter paper out and start complaining.
It is rather cruel that we are forced to pay huge license fees to the BBC if we want to watch their news, and then they spend the money on covering stuff that isn't even news. If we want entertaining, then we can chose to pay for it on a case by case basis by purchasing whatever magazine etc that suites our interests. If the BBC need to make efficiency savings, which they are going to have to, they can start off by ditching the bulls**t.
Most people hold this preconceived idea, a paradigm, that journalists are fascinated by what they report, and they go to every length to make sure that their coverage is as rigorous and as intellectually ruthless as possible. Yet the reality couldn't be further from this cosy, idealistic interpretation of how the news is produced. I can say with some confidence - I have met countless individuals from the media industry, who after a few drinks at the dinner party tend to open up about what really goes on in the workplace - that many of them are actively disinterested in what they report. This is why they find it obligatory to find extreme stereotypes to portray what they need to cover, because it is the easiest way they can do their job. I have been interviewed countless times, yet I have always noticed that journalists are highly selective with their shorthand. They will cease writing when you drift off into anything that is too truthful to be entertaining, and resume as soon as the buzzwords and soundbites resume.
The truth is that if people actually knew the truth about how the world works, they would be deeply depressed. This is why I can understand it when the media actively ignore anybody who seeks to break their veil of misinformation. It is not a conspiracy that the news media fails in its most fundamental responsibilities, it is simply that the truth is so bad, nobody would ever stay in the job to publish it- so it gets ignored. That is why independent blogs like this are so important. I believe that it is only right to tell people about something when you know it, even when the truth is so outta whack, so sad.
If you think about the main stories that have dominated the headlines of the last year of so, we have had the Financial Crisis, the BP oil spill, the Eurozone Debt crisis, the Government Deficit, and so the list continues; but really, all these stories are just branches of one big crisis. If you haven't realized by now, our economy, and thus our society, is slowly breaking down. The media help the politicians in their quest to peddle utterly ridiculous excuses for each new cock up that happens, and when you know the facts, it is easy to understand that everything that has been reported about the economy recently is absolute bunkum, it's just all nonsense.
Firstly, anything to do with debt is dishonest. This can be explained with a simple understanding of what debt is. In the modern banking system, debt is not, contrary to popular understand, money that is lent. It is actually invented money, that it lent. If you think about how money is lent, it is obvious that no real paper money is required- at least hardly any. Nearly all newly created money (credit) is used digitally, think credit cards, cheques, overdrafts, not very much of this is ever turned back into paper. This is called fractional reserve banking. In the past, banks would actually lend out a fraction of there reserves, which had the effect of inflating the money supply. Therefore by regulating interest rates government's could control the affordability of new money (in fact REALLOCATED MONEY). Banks new that it was unlikely that everyone would want to withdraw cash at any one time, so they could lend out most of the money to generate a profit- interest (money that doesn't actually exist, so the rate of circulation must speed up to pay the banks- which is why credit drives growth). These days, since most money is virtual, banks just create it on top of existing cash reserves. There is no limit on how much banks can create. (In the UK the "reserve requirement" is 0%), although there are guidelines. So when you know that banks can simply create money, their is no such thing as a shortage of money to lend, because they don't actually lend money at all, they just generate virtual credits, which must be repayed with real money. This is where the problem arises, because eventually there will be demand for physical cash to pay off the debt. However, this is solved by extending more credit to pay of old debts, meaning that real money is never needed. The rampant expansion of credit is OK as long as the economy can keep growing so that all the new money has purchasing power. Obviously infinite economic growth is not possible, because resources are finite, so eventually it is inevitable that debtors will default on repayments- or the banks will simply have to keep lending even more money to pay of existing debt (a PONZI SCHEME in effect), even when the economy contracts, which leads to hyper inflation.
Now once you understand this, you begin to realize that the recent economic turmoil fits nicely into the predictions I have just made. Firstly, the Eurozone Crisis, and the sub prime mortgage crisis in the US are evidence of the "default" stage. In the Eurozone, we have not let credit collapse, we have opted for bailouts, which means more new money has been created. Notice that economic growth has also slowed, plus we are seeing a repeat of 2008 with the oil price- it is quickly shooting up again, and inflation is rising. A quick Google search will deliver countless stories to demonstrate any of the claims I have just made. The "growth in money supply" figure in the Eurozone is about 12%- which gives an indication of where inflation is headed in economic growth does not pick up. Inflation actually measures the relationship between effective demand and supply in the economy, so if demand falls as the economy contracts, the situation may not be so bad, but we may be trapped, because if growth does pick up, aggregate demand will rise, so we are likely to see higher inflation. Since inflation erodes the purchasing power of money, we are likely to become poorer.
Don't you think it is wrong that the news media didn't tell you about all of that? Get you letter paper out and start complaining.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
Brown's dire predictions are too conservative
6 days ago former British PM Gordon Brown warned that unless swift action is taken, the Eurozone crisis will exacerbate in the new year. Another untold story is the oil price, which has recently been creeping up and up. A London based research team recently warned that oil production is about to peak. The phenomenon of "peak oil" is not unheard of, but it has had little coverage in the mainstream media, even though it has been known for decades. Essentially, there comes a point with any natural resource where production enters terminal decline as it become impossible to profitably keep expanding/ sustaining supply. Industry experts and insiders have described an important symptom of peak oil as "the bumpy plateau". This describes a climbing oil price, which when it reaches a certain point causes an economic crash, which destroys demand, and sinks the economy. The cycle repeats itself, over and over, until the economy has restructured itself so that it is not so dependent on the resource. Strikingly, the worldwide economic crash in the fall of 2008 occurred shortly after the oil price reached an all time high of $150 a barrel after climbing quickly in the previous months and years from more like $30 a barrel.
A debt crisis is caused when debtors struggle to repay, and in the case of European governments, this is due to a lack of growth in the economy, which has dampened tax revenues in the recession, leaving a deficit. The current monetary system works on an infinite growth paradigm, because debt (money) is created on the assumption that it will be invested in a profitable venture (housing, business, etc), but since all money is loaned into existence with interest, banks must expand the money supply to keep the economy liquid. This is easy in the good years, but in a recession, savers will draw on their existing bank reserves to get by, which has meant recently that there is not enough lending, which has driven up bond yields (interest rates on government debt). The concern is that there is no end in sight. Governments seem trapped because they must maintain economic growth, but cut the deficit at the same time, and there doesn't seem to be away to have austerity without taking the demand out the economy. The hope is that quantitative easing and low interest rates will stimulate a private sector led recovery to fill the gap, but this ignores the oil price. Oil plays such a fundamental part in our whole economy, it is used in transport, agriculture, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, in the manufacture of plastics, resins, hardware, you name it. So a high wholesale price of oil can be very damaging to business. Consumers in the UK are insulated because most of the petrol/diesel price we pay at the pumps is tax, so we do not feel the pain so badly, but recently high food price inflation is probably due to the rising oil price because there is a lot of derived demand for oil from food. After the 2008 crash, the oil price also shot down, but now it is climbing again. It recently reached a high of $90 a barrel, and if it continues at its current rate we could end up in the same worrying situation in a year or so. Remarkably, everything that is happening in the markets today is exactly as the sustainability community has predicted. When the media claims that nobody could have predicted the 2008 crisis, they were wrong. When governments claim that growth is the solution to the current debt mess, they are also wrong, because in the short term, growth will only add to demand for oil, jack up the price, and crash the economy again. In the short term, what we need is a transition, but a transition to a less hydro-carbon intensive economy is going to take a long time, so we might well face another world economic crisis in the next two years.
In fact, I need to make a correction, of course, it was the Wall Street crash that occurred in autumn 2008, whereas the financial crisis itself had started long before, with the collapse of Northern Rock in 2007. What we have seen recently is other big banks needing bailouts, for example, Anglo Irish bank recently gave the Irish Government such a fiscal headache, they later needed a bailout from the EU and the IMF totally nearly E90billion. This could be the financial crisis of 07/08 starting to repeat itself. As for the oil price again, the world simply cannot cope with a price that is too high, because nearly every product and service that gives a value to the economy is dependent on oil. All projections for oil demand are misleading, for example, the International Energy Agency forecasts a roughly 30% increasing in demand over the next decade, mainly fueled by growth in developing nations. However, demand is not what we should be looking at. Of more relevance is supply. Whilst we may be able to buck the downward trend in crude production from more conventional reserves for a few years by exploiting tar sands and deep water reserves, these sources have a high investment/return ratio, so even if we can utilize them somewhat, they will only add to the price of oil. Currently, there remains a small gap (about 3 billion barrels above demand- which is 84 million a day) between supply and demand, but this will only erode quicker as economies grow, because the price would suggest that we can no longer expand supply whilst maintaining the same cost. Industry experts tend to agree that new types of oil can only offset the decline in old sources for six years at most. The next six years look to be economically turbulent as a result, so we should take Brown's advice and brace ourselves for another crisis in the new future. The difference is, it may be far worse than even he imagines.
A debt crisis is caused when debtors struggle to repay, and in the case of European governments, this is due to a lack of growth in the economy, which has dampened tax revenues in the recession, leaving a deficit. The current monetary system works on an infinite growth paradigm, because debt (money) is created on the assumption that it will be invested in a profitable venture (housing, business, etc), but since all money is loaned into existence with interest, banks must expand the money supply to keep the economy liquid. This is easy in the good years, but in a recession, savers will draw on their existing bank reserves to get by, which has meant recently that there is not enough lending, which has driven up bond yields (interest rates on government debt). The concern is that there is no end in sight. Governments seem trapped because they must maintain economic growth, but cut the deficit at the same time, and there doesn't seem to be away to have austerity without taking the demand out the economy. The hope is that quantitative easing and low interest rates will stimulate a private sector led recovery to fill the gap, but this ignores the oil price. Oil plays such a fundamental part in our whole economy, it is used in transport, agriculture, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, in the manufacture of plastics, resins, hardware, you name it. So a high wholesale price of oil can be very damaging to business. Consumers in the UK are insulated because most of the petrol/diesel price we pay at the pumps is tax, so we do not feel the pain so badly, but recently high food price inflation is probably due to the rising oil price because there is a lot of derived demand for oil from food. After the 2008 crash, the oil price also shot down, but now it is climbing again. It recently reached a high of $90 a barrel, and if it continues at its current rate we could end up in the same worrying situation in a year or so. Remarkably, everything that is happening in the markets today is exactly as the sustainability community has predicted. When the media claims that nobody could have predicted the 2008 crisis, they were wrong. When governments claim that growth is the solution to the current debt mess, they are also wrong, because in the short term, growth will only add to demand for oil, jack up the price, and crash the economy again. In the short term, what we need is a transition, but a transition to a less hydro-carbon intensive economy is going to take a long time, so we might well face another world economic crisis in the next two years.
In fact, I need to make a correction, of course, it was the Wall Street crash that occurred in autumn 2008, whereas the financial crisis itself had started long before, with the collapse of Northern Rock in 2007. What we have seen recently is other big banks needing bailouts, for example, Anglo Irish bank recently gave the Irish Government such a fiscal headache, they later needed a bailout from the EU and the IMF totally nearly E90billion. This could be the financial crisis of 07/08 starting to repeat itself. As for the oil price again, the world simply cannot cope with a price that is too high, because nearly every product and service that gives a value to the economy is dependent on oil. All projections for oil demand are misleading, for example, the International Energy Agency forecasts a roughly 30% increasing in demand over the next decade, mainly fueled by growth in developing nations. However, demand is not what we should be looking at. Of more relevance is supply. Whilst we may be able to buck the downward trend in crude production from more conventional reserves for a few years by exploiting tar sands and deep water reserves, these sources have a high investment/return ratio, so even if we can utilize them somewhat, they will only add to the price of oil. Currently, there remains a small gap (about 3 billion barrels above demand- which is 84 million a day) between supply and demand, but this will only erode quicker as economies grow, because the price would suggest that we can no longer expand supply whilst maintaining the same cost. Industry experts tend to agree that new types of oil can only offset the decline in old sources for six years at most. The next six years look to be economically turbulent as a result, so we should take Brown's advice and brace ourselves for another crisis in the new future. The difference is, it may be far worse than even he imagines.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Why both left and right are wrong...
Most people, when asked what they seek in life, would be more likely to answer "happiness" than "money". Ultimately, those who seek money do so because they believe it will make them happy, but if you aim for happiness anyway, what is the need to pursue it in such a narrow fashion. Strangely, politicians seem less concerned about "happiness" than growing the economy, and making us richer, whatever the consequences. Refreshingly the government promises to invest £2 million in a "happiness index" to measure people's happiness. However, they are sadly unlikely to improve happiness by driving up the very kind of inequalities that tear apart community, with their brutal, ruthless austerity package.
Economic growth essentially refers to a quicker rate of wealth consumption. Real wealth being the resources in our environment that we extract and manufacture into material goods. Those who aim for economic growth seek higher rates of consumption, but when you consider that per capita GDP in the UK is a perfectly comfortable $35,000 per year, we should ask ourselves, why grow? Why compete with poorer countries who are trying to develop, but cannot do so, because they cannot win against richer, more efficient economies, in the quest for material wealth.
The reason why our political elite is so keen on economic growth, is because it gives them an excuse not to improve equality, even though equality is necessary for a happy society. Instead of redistributing surplus wealth to those who are in need, the capitalist class seeks to provide for the poor only by growing the economy, even though this worsens our lack of resources. Economic growth has long been used as if it were an excuse for not tackling other social and economic problems. Growth will inevitably stop, as we will simply run out of the fossil-fuels and the resources which we depend on to drive consumption, but this will happen only after everything that the have nots once sought has disappeared for good, and inequality is firmly cemented as what you earn becomes less important than what you already own.
Economic growth essentially refers to a quicker rate of wealth consumption. Real wealth being the resources in our environment that we extract and manufacture into material goods. Those who aim for economic growth seek higher rates of consumption, but when you consider that per capita GDP in the UK is a perfectly comfortable $35,000 per year, we should ask ourselves, why grow? Why compete with poorer countries who are trying to develop, but cannot do so, because they cannot win against richer, more efficient economies, in the quest for material wealth.
The reason why our political elite is so keen on economic growth, is because it gives them an excuse not to improve equality, even though equality is necessary for a happy society. Instead of redistributing surplus wealth to those who are in need, the capitalist class seeks to provide for the poor only by growing the economy, even though this worsens our lack of resources. Economic growth has long been used as if it were an excuse for not tackling other social and economic problems. Growth will inevitably stop, as we will simply run out of the fossil-fuels and the resources which we depend on to drive consumption, but this will happen only after everything that the have nots once sought has disappeared for good, and inequality is firmly cemented as what you earn becomes less important than what you already own.
Friday, 26 November 2010
Mounted police charge at children in crowd
The controversy over the Met Police's illegal imprisonment of children in freezing cold open air conditions as they were kettled (trapped) for hours during a peaceful protest on Tuesday is growing. Police have claimed that they stopped the protest after some violent elements started to attack a police van, but this is questionable, since many in the crowd have subsequently said that they were already blocked off at this point, so the police must have decided to shut off the protest for some other reason. Also, if you saw the news footage from the Helicopter, it was clear that the police could not have kettled the protesters in reaction to the attack on the van, since they blocked them off only a few hundred meters up the road, and already had a line of riot vans blocking off the road. Footage has also emerged which shows horseback police charging spontaneously at the crowd.
Click here to see the video on You Tube
Click here to see the video on You Tube
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Lest we forget
As the police state continues it's witch hunt of student protesters, there are growing calls to re-muster and continue the fight against the vile reforms to higher education. Lest we forget that we are being ruled by a government with no mandate, elected on less than 20% of the population, elected without the votes of those who they are punishing the most. How cruel it is to complain about the direct action of the students, when those who will be affected had no say at the election (they were too young to vote), and who have been so sorely betrayed by the democratic system we once so loved. Lest we forget that we are being dictated to by a cabinet of millionaires, individuals with little experience of the real world, and no kind heart at the center of their cold forms. Lest we forget that it was not Labour, but the banks, who bankrupted Britain. Lest we forget that the Eurozone crumbles because the banks are collapsing. Lest we forget that it is the poor, the vulnerable, and the disenfranchised, who are being punished, whilst the wealth donors of bankrolled the intellectual anesthetization of the electorate are doing very comfortable thank you very much. Lest we forget that private debt dwarfs public debt by more than £4 to £1, even though the government is now bigger than the private sector. Lest we forget 1929, when the Great Depression in America was aggravated as the government tried to cut their way out of trouble. I'm sure it strains them to dangle so perilously off the cliff, but cutting the rope now will only provide temporary relief, and spark contagion in the long term. Lest we forget that the government is cutting corporation tax, writing off Vodafone's entire £6bn tax bill, and paying off their wealthy supporters, whilst they are jacking up regressive taxes to hit the poor, the students (future wealth creators), and the disabled.
It is really time that people stood up to this oppressive regime and kicked it out of office. Because if they damage our futures, we'll damage their economy. It is also time that people woke up to the fact that as long as we keep voting for frauds, all you will get is dishonesty in return. The average person remains clueless to what is really going on. They assume, logically, that paying off debt is good. But what about the fact that if we paid off all our debts their would be no money, since it is all lent at interest (money that doesn't exist) by the banks. What we are seeing in Europe is the big "call in", with the Markets seeking to bleed off money that they lent/created into existence. So lest we forget where our money really comes from. Also, lest we forget that money, and wealth, are not the same thing. Wealth can only be achieved by the sustainable use, and re-use of the materials and fuels that drive our economy, but lest we forget that for too long have governments plundered wealth in pursuit of money. When we think about this analysis, it becomes evident that in actuality, we are really witnessing a conflict between wealth and money. The problem is is that there is not much "wealth" left. Natural resources, and fuels such as oil, are quickly passing the point of maximum production, they are, in other words, "peaking". So what is going on, is governments, and the banking system, are colluding to drive down demand with tough austerity packages, in order to capture all the remaining wealth for themselves.
We must fight to stop this emerging conspiracy in favour of a more equitable distribution of what we have left, and a more sensible program of conservation and efficiency to replace current market forces, which depend upon economic inefficiencies to expand the economy and create jobs to pay of excessive levels debt which the banks created to trap us into the cycle. You see, it's not government debt we need to worry about. The ticking time bomb is really debt in the private sector, and the widely misunderstood idea of "ecological debt". Look it up...
It is really time that people stood up to this oppressive regime and kicked it out of office. Because if they damage our futures, we'll damage their economy. It is also time that people woke up to the fact that as long as we keep voting for frauds, all you will get is dishonesty in return. The average person remains clueless to what is really going on. They assume, logically, that paying off debt is good. But what about the fact that if we paid off all our debts their would be no money, since it is all lent at interest (money that doesn't exist) by the banks. What we are seeing in Europe is the big "call in", with the Markets seeking to bleed off money that they lent/created into existence. So lest we forget where our money really comes from. Also, lest we forget that money, and wealth, are not the same thing. Wealth can only be achieved by the sustainable use, and re-use of the materials and fuels that drive our economy, but lest we forget that for too long have governments plundered wealth in pursuit of money. When we think about this analysis, it becomes evident that in actuality, we are really witnessing a conflict between wealth and money. The problem is is that there is not much "wealth" left. Natural resources, and fuels such as oil, are quickly passing the point of maximum production, they are, in other words, "peaking". So what is going on, is governments, and the banking system, are colluding to drive down demand with tough austerity packages, in order to capture all the remaining wealth for themselves.
We must fight to stop this emerging conspiracy in favour of a more equitable distribution of what we have left, and a more sensible program of conservation and efficiency to replace current market forces, which depend upon economic inefficiencies to expand the economy and create jobs to pay of excessive levels debt which the banks created to trap us into the cycle. You see, it's not government debt we need to worry about. The ticking time bomb is really debt in the private sector, and the widely misunderstood idea of "ecological debt". Look it up...
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Today, we saw the latest round of the vile media witch hunt against the resistance, as reporters stooped so low as to claim that spraying anarchist symbols on a police van is an "act of violence". Poor van, I'm sure diddums is feeling rather sore right now. No, obviously not, it's a police van, not a human being or an animal, so it does not have what we might call a "central nervous system". As a matter of fact, there has been next to no actually violence at any of the student protests over the last 2 weeks. There have been scuffles with the police, which did leave some injured, but since the protesters never intended to hurt the police, there is a lack of good old "mens rea" (intention) when it comes to the term "violence". No, perhaps there was the odd bit of "vandalism", fair enough, but claiming that a protest is violence, just because 1% of the group choose to do some graffiti, is a bit over the top.
Plus, it's not the just Daily Mail who are doing this any more. The BBC have equally been detracting from the whole point by talking about tiny minorities and excusing it away by saying "we only report what goes on" (sic). Now don't get me wrong, the guy who threw a fire extinguisher at riot police from the roof of the Millbank complex was wrong in what he did, but you can't ignore the thousands of protesters who a peacefully demonstrated against the planned cuts to higher education, and the ensuing increase in tuition fees.
You see, when Osborne talks of the need to tackle the debt, he is being so ignorant to the fact that he is not actually getting rid of any debt at all. He is just shifting it to those who are less able to pay. Why Mr. Osborne, will you be charging us a "market interest rate", when what this really means is a "consumer interest rate", pegged 3 or so percentage points above inflation, when the government will actually make a profit on this, since they only pay 1.5% to borrow the money, or less if they just print it. Is this policy, by any chance, a favour to your private banking chums who paid for the election? Now just in case your lawyers are taking a peek at this blog, this is not an accusation, only a theory. The thing that bugs me is that if "Britain was on the brink of bankruptcy" (sic) Mr. Osborne, due to a crippling government debt burden, then why did the private sector not take us down the drain years ago? To understand this question, we need the statistics part.
Whilst the Tories talk of the monstrously big "state" that gobbles up 53% of our GDP, and has debt of around 70% of GDP, they forget to mention that debt in the other 47% of the economy accounts is a whopping 400% of GDP. Osborne is also keen to remind us that if we don't cut spending quickly, we will end up in the same situation as Ireland. So let's examine the lies, damned lies and statistics for this claim. Firstly, the Ireland case study is not new in Mr. Osborne's miscellany of excuses. He wheeled it out 3 years ago, when Ireland started cutting spending in the recession. When he wanted to give the Labour government advice, he simply said "look across the Irish sea". As for the result of this, all I can do is to repeat his grand old saying. "Look across the Irish sea George, and learn this time..., look and learn..."
Oh and when he boasts that our interest rates have come down, I would suggest that this isn't so much that the market has more confidence in the government for cutting spending (it hasn't yet), but that the market has run out of countries to go to who haven't already bankrupted themselves with pointless austerity.
As for student fees, since university education provides a benefit to the whole of society, why does he want to shift the burden of payment away from the taxpayer to the student? You don't even need a progressive system of student debt repayment, you've got one anyway, and it works even if people don't earn £21,000. It's progressive, and it's called, da da da, the TAX SYSTEM! Remember who pays the poor man's benefit; yeah, it's the rich, well trained man who WENT TO UNIVERSITY *in most cases. Oxford university announced recently that it costs them £16,000 to educate one student per year. So sending every 18 year old in the country off to an Oxford quality education would cost less than thirty billion. Now how would we get that money? Simples. Print it. The bank of England is already printing hundreds of billions of pounds in their "quantitative easing" money printing programme, so why not just grease up your money machines and start "quantitatively easing students, not bankers" Mervin King?
As for Osborne, all I can say is "Look at the facts George, and learn."
Plus, it's not the just Daily Mail who are doing this any more. The BBC have equally been detracting from the whole point by talking about tiny minorities and excusing it away by saying "we only report what goes on" (sic). Now don't get me wrong, the guy who threw a fire extinguisher at riot police from the roof of the Millbank complex was wrong in what he did, but you can't ignore the thousands of protesters who a peacefully demonstrated against the planned cuts to higher education, and the ensuing increase in tuition fees.
You see, when Osborne talks of the need to tackle the debt, he is being so ignorant to the fact that he is not actually getting rid of any debt at all. He is just shifting it to those who are less able to pay. Why Mr. Osborne, will you be charging us a "market interest rate", when what this really means is a "consumer interest rate", pegged 3 or so percentage points above inflation, when the government will actually make a profit on this, since they only pay 1.5% to borrow the money, or less if they just print it. Is this policy, by any chance, a favour to your private banking chums who paid for the election? Now just in case your lawyers are taking a peek at this blog, this is not an accusation, only a theory. The thing that bugs me is that if "Britain was on the brink of bankruptcy" (sic) Mr. Osborne, due to a crippling government debt burden, then why did the private sector not take us down the drain years ago? To understand this question, we need the statistics part.
Whilst the Tories talk of the monstrously big "state" that gobbles up 53% of our GDP, and has debt of around 70% of GDP, they forget to mention that debt in the other 47% of the economy accounts is a whopping 400% of GDP. Osborne is also keen to remind us that if we don't cut spending quickly, we will end up in the same situation as Ireland. So let's examine the lies, damned lies and statistics for this claim. Firstly, the Ireland case study is not new in Mr. Osborne's miscellany of excuses. He wheeled it out 3 years ago, when Ireland started cutting spending in the recession. When he wanted to give the Labour government advice, he simply said "look across the Irish sea". As for the result of this, all I can do is to repeat his grand old saying. "Look across the Irish sea George, and learn this time..., look and learn..."
Oh and when he boasts that our interest rates have come down, I would suggest that this isn't so much that the market has more confidence in the government for cutting spending (it hasn't yet), but that the market has run out of countries to go to who haven't already bankrupted themselves with pointless austerity.
As for student fees, since university education provides a benefit to the whole of society, why does he want to shift the burden of payment away from the taxpayer to the student? You don't even need a progressive system of student debt repayment, you've got one anyway, and it works even if people don't earn £21,000. It's progressive, and it's called, da da da, the TAX SYSTEM! Remember who pays the poor man's benefit; yeah, it's the rich, well trained man who WENT TO UNIVERSITY *in most cases. Oxford university announced recently that it costs them £16,000 to educate one student per year. So sending every 18 year old in the country off to an Oxford quality education would cost less than thirty billion. Now how would we get that money? Simples. Print it. The bank of England is already printing hundreds of billions of pounds in their "quantitative easing" money printing programme, so why not just grease up your money machines and start "quantitatively easing students, not bankers" Mervin King?
As for Osborne, all I can say is "Look at the facts George, and learn."
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
They stoop low, very low... (repost from 31/10/10)
The coalition government wreckless slash-and-burn economics has reached crisis point today, with the news that a nuclear weapons base will possibly be privatised, and sold off to foreign corporations. Yesterday, Harriet Harman (Labour) reffered to the Cheif Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander (Lib Dem) as a "ginger rodent". Forget giner rodent, any government that allows nuclear weapons to be controlled by private corporations for profit deserves much harsher criticism. It is simply impossible to express the utter ludicrosity of a government that thinks it needs to privatise our nuclear weapons, whilst letting companies like Vodafone off an incredible £6billion in tax, according to a recent investigation by Private Eye. No wonder the exchequer is short of money. Osborne must be pretty desperate if we are seriously considering privating nuclear weapons. He insits that making cuts is the only option, although it is obviously neccessary to point out the alternatives that he is obviously reluctant to spew forth.
1) -Cut down on the £12 bn pounds British Companies fail to pay in tax each year, saving £48 billion over the 5 year parliament, making more than half of the £83 billion cuts unneccessary.
2) -Start selling the £850 bn pounds worth of bank assets we own from the bailout. Use this money to fund defecit spending, thus reducing the debt burden, reducing interest payments, freeing up more public money to be spent on services, not debt.
3) - Cut VAT to 12% (the treasuries own economic forecasting software shows this would be the optimal level for growth and low inflation), instead of increasing it to 20% simply for the sake of avoiding tax rises for the wealthy. VAT is a regressive tax, which means that the poorest in society will pay more of it as a percentage of their incomes, because poorer people spend more of their incomes on purchasing things, rather than making investments, or saving, as the rich can afford to do.
4) - Instead of privatizing our Nuclear Missile bases to US companies, actually sell the missiles themselves to the US. The US government grows keener and keener, year on year to throw more and more money over to the Pentagon, so why not supply what they want when the demand (and thus price) is high. By 2013 they are expected to have a "defence" budget of over $1 trillion, that's 1 thousand thousand thousand thousand. The yanks could do with a few more nukes ;).
5) - The government has to stop allowing the Bank of England to print money under the guise of the "quantitative easing" program. Simply printing money only redistributes value from those who have money to those who print it. By inflating the money supply, the government is artificially confiscating value from our money in order to prop up the banks.
Whilst Cameron keeps to the shadows, wheeling out his cronies to do the nasty work, it is the Liberal Democrats who are rightly picking up the brunt of voter fury. Whilst Alan Johnson will claim that the government is cutting for "ideological reasons", that is only what the government should be doing. We can't complain that the conservatives are doing what they promised. Unsatisfied voters should blame the Liberals. They have broken nearly every election pledge they made, most notably the "no rise in tuition fees" scam. If our economic system recognized "effort" in the same way it did money, then the electorate, consumers of political services, could ask for their votes back. The idea of recall was backed by Clegg and Co at election time, but as soon as he get's power, we haven't heard another whisper about the idea. Sadly some voters have short memories and even shorter minds. Whilst the politicians deserve some of the blame for tricking people into believe that we were "on the brink of bankruptcy", the voters have swallowed this nonsense with the trust that a 5 year old has in their schoolteacher.
Osbourne's fantasy about the "brink of bankruptcy" is really the brink of b******t, and he knows it. Perhaps if Labour were sharper than resorting to the same old adversarial, fact lacking debate that plagued the chambers of parliament when they were in power, then voters might begin to see past the myriad of propaganda that the Tory machine churns out. According to a recent press release, the first meeting after Cameron got to Downing St was with the publishing tycoon Rupert Murdoch. What this says about his priorities is simply disgraceful. If we were on "the brink of bankruptcy", the why, Mr Cameron was it Murdoch, not Mervin (the governor of the Bank of England) who got the first meeting at number 10? Since Cameron, Clegg and chums do not comprehend the complexities of bankruptcy, I will point out that to be bankrupt is to be insolvent, and to be insolvent is to be inable to pay your debts. Since the budget that Osborne inherited had less than 10% allocated to debt repayment, far from the over 100% that would qualify the country for liquidation procedures, and since Osborne obviously read the Darling budget he inherited in depth, there is evidently something fishy going on.
Economic bankruptcy is the least of our worries. It is the inability of governments present and past to quantify the perilous approach towards social, environmental and now moral bankruptcy that epitomizes the corrupt back room politics that brought the current lot into power. It is neither Liberal, Democratic, nor Conservative to rush through a fiscally regressive, barnstorm budget, like the one we witnessed back in June. Nor is it Liberal, Democratic, nor Conservative to shut off the freedom of opportunity that is afforded by having a home. The government's planned £400 per week cap on Housing benefit, the £26,000 a year family cap on benefits overall, no exceptions (what about the single mum in Manchester with 15 children...), oh and the fat new tution fees of £9,000, and the petty, meagre, £1 billion pound "Green Investment Bank" that will only be funded in 2013, and no years other than that, that will drive the oxymoron of "sustainable growth" (on a finite planet), let alone the countless other morally, socially, and envionrmentally bankrupt policies that the Clegg, Camermon, Cable, cohort subscribe to.
Sadly, voters will probably switch back to Labour at the next election. Whilst they didn't get us "into this mess", no, the US subprime mortage crisis did, they could have opted out of the costly wars in Iraq, Afganistan and Sierra Leone, instead putting the money aside in some sort crisis funded to deal with future crises'. The thing is, every one with the slightest knowledge of economics knows well that we move from boom to bust. History shows that the bigger the boom the bigger the bust, but when Brown had is boom, he boasted that he "had abolished the economic cycle". How can you abolish something that is driven by human instinct? People invest, make money, run out of money, and then cut back, and the economy goes bang. That's what happens. If Osbornes medicine is to dig us out the ditch, the more successful he is, the greater we will fall next time. By that time, it will be the next government's job to jumpstart the engine. If that government is only going to repeat the mistakes of the past, then it is time for a different type of government. Currently, we have a situation where each is worse than the one before, so voters get fed up quicker, vote for a new one, which is even worse, and then after getting fed up with that one, switch back the lot that seemed so bad before. At least, this is what the media would like you to believe.
Instead, it is only the small number of swing voters to decide the path of the country. Since it is these "floating voters", no matter how they come to their decision, that really choose governments, isn't it time for every party loyalist; left, right and center, to really reconsider their allegiances. Only with a wholesale awakening of these die-hards, can we remove the oligopoly of these "floating" few who sit at the steering wheel in our democratic bus. If people were allowed to make a negative vote, as well as their positive one, then elections would better reflect how humans really think, rather than arrogantly assuming that support is not matched by opposition. Responsiblity now lies with the news media to bring about the reboot.
1) -Cut down on the £12 bn pounds British Companies fail to pay in tax each year, saving £48 billion over the 5 year parliament, making more than half of the £83 billion cuts unneccessary.
2) -Start selling the £850 bn pounds worth of bank assets we own from the bailout. Use this money to fund defecit spending, thus reducing the debt burden, reducing interest payments, freeing up more public money to be spent on services, not debt.
3) - Cut VAT to 12% (the treasuries own economic forecasting software shows this would be the optimal level for growth and low inflation), instead of increasing it to 20% simply for the sake of avoiding tax rises for the wealthy. VAT is a regressive tax, which means that the poorest in society will pay more of it as a percentage of their incomes, because poorer people spend more of their incomes on purchasing things, rather than making investments, or saving, as the rich can afford to do.
4) - Instead of privatizing our Nuclear Missile bases to US companies, actually sell the missiles themselves to the US. The US government grows keener and keener, year on year to throw more and more money over to the Pentagon, so why not supply what they want when the demand (and thus price) is high. By 2013 they are expected to have a "defence" budget of over $1 trillion, that's 1 thousand thousand thousand thousand. The yanks could do with a few more nukes ;).
5) - The government has to stop allowing the Bank of England to print money under the guise of the "quantitative easing" program. Simply printing money only redistributes value from those who have money to those who print it. By inflating the money supply, the government is artificially confiscating value from our money in order to prop up the banks.
Whilst Cameron keeps to the shadows, wheeling out his cronies to do the nasty work, it is the Liberal Democrats who are rightly picking up the brunt of voter fury. Whilst Alan Johnson will claim that the government is cutting for "ideological reasons", that is only what the government should be doing. We can't complain that the conservatives are doing what they promised. Unsatisfied voters should blame the Liberals. They have broken nearly every election pledge they made, most notably the "no rise in tuition fees" scam. If our economic system recognized "effort" in the same way it did money, then the electorate, consumers of political services, could ask for their votes back. The idea of recall was backed by Clegg and Co at election time, but as soon as he get's power, we haven't heard another whisper about the idea. Sadly some voters have short memories and even shorter minds. Whilst the politicians deserve some of the blame for tricking people into believe that we were "on the brink of bankruptcy", the voters have swallowed this nonsense with the trust that a 5 year old has in their schoolteacher.
Osbourne's fantasy about the "brink of bankruptcy" is really the brink of b******t, and he knows it. Perhaps if Labour were sharper than resorting to the same old adversarial, fact lacking debate that plagued the chambers of parliament when they were in power, then voters might begin to see past the myriad of propaganda that the Tory machine churns out. According to a recent press release, the first meeting after Cameron got to Downing St was with the publishing tycoon Rupert Murdoch. What this says about his priorities is simply disgraceful. If we were on "the brink of bankruptcy", the why, Mr Cameron was it Murdoch, not Mervin (the governor of the Bank of England) who got the first meeting at number 10? Since Cameron, Clegg and chums do not comprehend the complexities of bankruptcy, I will point out that to be bankrupt is to be insolvent, and to be insolvent is to be inable to pay your debts. Since the budget that Osborne inherited had less than 10% allocated to debt repayment, far from the over 100% that would qualify the country for liquidation procedures, and since Osborne obviously read the Darling budget he inherited in depth, there is evidently something fishy going on.
Economic bankruptcy is the least of our worries. It is the inability of governments present and past to quantify the perilous approach towards social, environmental and now moral bankruptcy that epitomizes the corrupt back room politics that brought the current lot into power. It is neither Liberal, Democratic, nor Conservative to rush through a fiscally regressive, barnstorm budget, like the one we witnessed back in June. Nor is it Liberal, Democratic, nor Conservative to shut off the freedom of opportunity that is afforded by having a home. The government's planned £400 per week cap on Housing benefit, the £26,000 a year family cap on benefits overall, no exceptions (what about the single mum in Manchester with 15 children...), oh and the fat new tution fees of £9,000, and the petty, meagre, £1 billion pound "Green Investment Bank" that will only be funded in 2013, and no years other than that, that will drive the oxymoron of "sustainable growth" (on a finite planet), let alone the countless other morally, socially, and envionrmentally bankrupt policies that the Clegg, Camermon, Cable, cohort subscribe to.
Sadly, voters will probably switch back to Labour at the next election. Whilst they didn't get us "into this mess", no, the US subprime mortage crisis did, they could have opted out of the costly wars in Iraq, Afganistan and Sierra Leone, instead putting the money aside in some sort crisis funded to deal with future crises'. The thing is, every one with the slightest knowledge of economics knows well that we move from boom to bust. History shows that the bigger the boom the bigger the bust, but when Brown had is boom, he boasted that he "had abolished the economic cycle". How can you abolish something that is driven by human instinct? People invest, make money, run out of money, and then cut back, and the economy goes bang. That's what happens. If Osbornes medicine is to dig us out the ditch, the more successful he is, the greater we will fall next time. By that time, it will be the next government's job to jumpstart the engine. If that government is only going to repeat the mistakes of the past, then it is time for a different type of government. Currently, we have a situation where each is worse than the one before, so voters get fed up quicker, vote for a new one, which is even worse, and then after getting fed up with that one, switch back the lot that seemed so bad before. At least, this is what the media would like you to believe.
Instead, it is only the small number of swing voters to decide the path of the country. Since it is these "floating voters", no matter how they come to their decision, that really choose governments, isn't it time for every party loyalist; left, right and center, to really reconsider their allegiances. Only with a wholesale awakening of these die-hards, can we remove the oligopoly of these "floating" few who sit at the steering wheel in our democratic bus. If people were allowed to make a negative vote, as well as their positive one, then elections would better reflect how humans really think, rather than arrogantly assuming that support is not matched by opposition. Responsiblity now lies with the news media to bring about the reboot.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Clegg is wrong on cuts "perspective" (repost from 30/09/10)
On his visit to Cardiff today, the deputy PM, Nick Clegg spoke about the cuts, urging people to keep them "in perspective". Whilst there are some economic grounds for cuts, he should be more honest about the "perspective" side of things. The government is expected to reduce public spending by around 25% over the next five years. This is not only going to cause huge economic pressures, we will have the largest employment upheaval since the war. Yes, the economy as a whole might cope, but we have to be honest, when put in perspective the cuts hard, very hard. We're going to have a very different kind of country in five years time.
Our public services, some of the very institutions that give our nation uniqueness in this ever more homogenous world, will lose their status. And with the inevitable increase in protests, violent crime, and disorder as people lose their jobs, should we really be cutting spending for the judiciary and the police? I think we need to keep increasing NHS funding, instead of just not cutting. NHS trusts have enormous (and rising) PFI debts to pay, and if we don't keep up the flow of money, patient care will be hit. The redevelopment of the JR site would have cost £170-180 million, but with PFI we will pay over £830 million. We are already seeing job losses in Oxford's front line services. Whilst we shouldn't make Clegg a scapegoat, he could have more humility when it comes to people losing their jobs, otherwise he could be next in the firing line, if the current opinion poll trend continues.
Our public services, some of the very institutions that give our nation uniqueness in this ever more homogenous world, will lose their status. And with the inevitable increase in protests, violent crime, and disorder as people lose their jobs, should we really be cutting spending for the judiciary and the police? I think we need to keep increasing NHS funding, instead of just not cutting. NHS trusts have enormous (and rising) PFI debts to pay, and if we don't keep up the flow of money, patient care will be hit. The redevelopment of the JR site would have cost £170-180 million, but with PFI we will pay over £830 million. We are already seeing job losses in Oxford's front line services. Whilst we shouldn't make Clegg a scapegoat, he could have more humility when it comes to people losing their jobs, otherwise he could be next in the firing line, if the current opinion poll trend continues.
Sunday, 9 May 2010
A stitch up and a con
The Liberal Democrats cosying up to the Tories is a sign that tactical voting does not work. Where I live, thousands of principled progressive voters voted Lib Dem to "keep the Tories out", as the Lib Dems insisted that voting Labour / Green was a waste of a vote. This, like in many other constituency was a dirty and wicked tactic, and shows the lack of logic behind their campaign strategy. No vote is a waste, it is a strong message that that voter was not satisfied with the other parties and they need to do better.
So much for the "vote Lib Dem here to keep the Tories out" slogan. This is complete rubbish as we can now see. The two parties do, by their own admission, share ground on some "key policy issues". The Tories won in my constituency, and the Liberal Democrat party looks set to form a coalition with the frankly rotten, out of touch and selfish Tories who's principles do not stretch beyond the interests of the wealthy and big corporations. This stitch up of a fake "good party" and the "wannabee good party" is a sickeningly vile form of anti-democracy. A majority of voters voted for progressive parties with competent manifestos favouring electoral form of our rotten and corrupt system. Now one of these parties has betrayed millions who may have otherwise voted for Labour, SNP, Plaid or The Green Party.
I say to the Lib Dems, "shame on you", this is a morally decrepit move that shows what you really are. Any alliance with the Tories is only a way of illegitimately bolstering their power, thus delivering more wealth for the few and less services and action for the many. The Lib Dems came into this election as a thoughroughly anti-Tory party, now we know that this was completely dishonest and they are undeserving of tactical anti Tory support in the future. The Tories/Lib Dems will slash spending on public services and raise our taxes, when they should be locking up greedy bankers. The Lib Dem leadership can be likened to the Sheriff of Nottinghams' henchman- the infamous character- Guy of Guisbourne, stopping Robin Hood from doing his good work.
Perhaps one day the people will learn that tactical voting doesn't work, and democracy only works if you truly vote for what you believe in. The Labour Party have had their time and have well and truly let us down. UKIP and the BNP are conspiracy theorists, xenophobes, and in the BNPs case NAZIs. The only party with a FULLY costed, well thought out, manifesto built on fairness and justice is the Green Party. For goodness sake, in the next election (when they tell you to get it right and have another go), get it right, vote Green!
In a year or so, having failed to form a proper government, the old parties will come back to us and ask us to "get it right", even when they failed so spectacularly to "get it right" themselves. We need to tell them this by voting for a positive, different party. Don't fear radical change. Fear years more of the old ruling class dominating the way we live. Take pack power, let the Green Party sort things out, and then we can all be satisfied with our votes.
So much for the "vote Lib Dem here to keep the Tories out" slogan. This is complete rubbish as we can now see. The two parties do, by their own admission, share ground on some "key policy issues". The Tories won in my constituency, and the Liberal Democrat party looks set to form a coalition with the frankly rotten, out of touch and selfish Tories who's principles do not stretch beyond the interests of the wealthy and big corporations. This stitch up of a fake "good party" and the "wannabee good party" is a sickeningly vile form of anti-democracy. A majority of voters voted for progressive parties with competent manifestos favouring electoral form of our rotten and corrupt system. Now one of these parties has betrayed millions who may have otherwise voted for Labour, SNP, Plaid or The Green Party.
I say to the Lib Dems, "shame on you", this is a morally decrepit move that shows what you really are. Any alliance with the Tories is only a way of illegitimately bolstering their power, thus delivering more wealth for the few and less services and action for the many. The Lib Dems came into this election as a thoughroughly anti-Tory party, now we know that this was completely dishonest and they are undeserving of tactical anti Tory support in the future. The Tories/Lib Dems will slash spending on public services and raise our taxes, when they should be locking up greedy bankers. The Lib Dem leadership can be likened to the Sheriff of Nottinghams' henchman- the infamous character- Guy of Guisbourne, stopping Robin Hood from doing his good work.
Perhaps one day the people will learn that tactical voting doesn't work, and democracy only works if you truly vote for what you believe in. The Labour Party have had their time and have well and truly let us down. UKIP and the BNP are conspiracy theorists, xenophobes, and in the BNPs case NAZIs. The only party with a FULLY costed, well thought out, manifesto built on fairness and justice is the Green Party. For goodness sake, in the next election (when they tell you to get it right and have another go), get it right, vote Green!
In a year or so, having failed to form a proper government, the old parties will come back to us and ask us to "get it right", even when they failed so spectacularly to "get it right" themselves. We need to tell them this by voting for a positive, different party. Don't fear radical change. Fear years more of the old ruling class dominating the way we live. Take pack power, let the Green Party sort things out, and then we can all be satisfied with our votes.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Media sensorship will kill off good ideas.
Whilst complaints about the electoral system being unfair may be commonly associated to the Liberal Democrats and their age old plans for more proportional representation, the effects of our voting system don't just go as far as who ends up sitting in parliament. The news networks are pretty much required to give parties coverage according to their seats in parliament, instead of their actual support. I'm not suggesting this is the correct alternative, but the rules need changing because minorities are squeezed out of any significant representation in the "first past the post system" they are also prevented from getting a look in on TV. Since it is the media that shape people's opinions, with broadcasts such as the news and the upcoming debates between the leaders of the three biggest parties, the three party system is likely to remain.
Sadly it would seem that many take the term "minority" to mean bad. Such rash dismissals of anything other than the status quo are shameful malapropisms, but these are not the fault of the average couch potato- they have instead routinely and deliberately been forced upon the common individual by the media with the overuse of language such as "extreme" in a subtle to and orderly strategy to frighten the viewers into conforming with the presenters own views. The media routinely neglect variety in the desire to dumb down their content and foster their much loved simplifications of the world we live in.
Since there is little or no coverage of parties such as The Greens, UKIP, Respect, and The BNP, the general public is left in the dark as to their policies, leaving their chances of picking up support less likely. It also means that people fail to understand these parties. Most would agree that the BNP are an extreme right wing party with some racist or discriminatory policies, but since they are scarcely exposed on the TV many clueless voters looking to protest will stick their cross in a box such as this.
On the other hand, more moderate smaller parties such as The UK Independence Party, The Green Party, and Respect (who have one MP) are not given the coverage they deserve. In the european parliamentary elections in May 2009, UKIP received the second largest number of votes, and the Greens and BNP both polled highly- 10% and 8% respectively, both gaining 2 MEPs. This was largely thought to be because people realized that their vote would count, even if it were for a party that would be traditionally withheld from representation through unfair vote counting systems (like the one we have for the Westminster parliament).
When taken on issues alone, the powers that be are mainly not first place. In fact data from polling websites shows that the Green Party is by far the most popular on policies alone. A website which takes visitors through a series of categories (the economy, the NHS, crime, immigration, the environment, and so on) and presents them with a set of six policies (without revealing party names), shows that people do not suppor the old political norms when it comes to policies on anything like the level they are represented in parliament. When you look at the data we have on of the most disgusting perversions of democracy you can get. With close to 100,000 responses, this website (voteforpolicies.com) found that over 28% people would be best matched to supporting the Green Party, with the Conservatives and Labour party far behind on around 17%.
It's not as though there as been a sea change in public opinion though. It's just that our political system is designed to maintain the status quo and censor alternative ideas. The Labour Party and Conservative party normally hold over 80% of seats in parliament, but now we can see that only 33% of those who vote actually suppor there policies over the over parties. What's more, only half of the electorate vote, and even less are allowed to vote- for example, there no votes at sixteen even though you can marry e.t.c. What we are left with is a parliament where 80% of the elected members have the ideas of just 10% of the people. They might as well rigg the ballot.
Sadly it would seem that many take the term "minority" to mean bad. Such rash dismissals of anything other than the status quo are shameful malapropisms, but these are not the fault of the average couch potato- they have instead routinely and deliberately been forced upon the common individual by the media with the overuse of language such as "extreme" in a subtle to and orderly strategy to frighten the viewers into conforming with the presenters own views. The media routinely neglect variety in the desire to dumb down their content and foster their much loved simplifications of the world we live in.
Since there is little or no coverage of parties such as The Greens, UKIP, Respect, and The BNP, the general public is left in the dark as to their policies, leaving their chances of picking up support less likely. It also means that people fail to understand these parties. Most would agree that the BNP are an extreme right wing party with some racist or discriminatory policies, but since they are scarcely exposed on the TV many clueless voters looking to protest will stick their cross in a box such as this.
On the other hand, more moderate smaller parties such as The UK Independence Party, The Green Party, and Respect (who have one MP) are not given the coverage they deserve. In the european parliamentary elections in May 2009, UKIP received the second largest number of votes, and the Greens and BNP both polled highly- 10% and 8% respectively, both gaining 2 MEPs. This was largely thought to be because people realized that their vote would count, even if it were for a party that would be traditionally withheld from representation through unfair vote counting systems (like the one we have for the Westminster parliament).
When taken on issues alone, the powers that be are mainly not first place. In fact data from polling websites shows that the Green Party is by far the most popular on policies alone. A website which takes visitors through a series of categories (the economy, the NHS, crime, immigration, the environment, and so on) and presents them with a set of six policies (without revealing party names), shows that people do not suppor the old political norms when it comes to policies on anything like the level they are represented in parliament. When you look at the data we have on of the most disgusting perversions of democracy you can get. With close to 100,000 responses, this website (voteforpolicies.com) found that over 28% people would be best matched to supporting the Green Party, with the Conservatives and Labour party far behind on around 17%.
It's not as though there as been a sea change in public opinion though. It's just that our political system is designed to maintain the status quo and censor alternative ideas. The Labour Party and Conservative party normally hold over 80% of seats in parliament, but now we can see that only 33% of those who vote actually suppor there policies over the over parties. What's more, only half of the electorate vote, and even less are allowed to vote- for example, there no votes at sixteen even though you can marry e.t.c. What we are left with is a parliament where 80% of the elected members have the ideas of just 10% of the people. They might as well rigg the ballot.
Conservatives plan "National Citzens Service"
Finally the Conservative party have explained how they will pay for keeping up a high standard of public services whilst cutting the budget! The solution is a cunning and exploitative scheme to force young people to ancillary/low paid jobs for no pay at all- all under the nice sounding "voluntary" banner.
The plan is essential to put all 16 year olds on a 2 month summer camp, the kind of thing that brings up images of the Nazi youth in my mind; and send them off to work for things like looking after old people.
This plan is both flawed and evil. If 16 year olds were forced to work (which is of course slavery), probably because the old Tories think that all young people are yobs who need a bit of social enlightenment then; firstly these people couldn't be working in an alternative (paid) job of there choice; secondly they could be doing something more enlightening the looking after old people- like socialising with each other instead of watching TV / playing computer games / listening to music all day; and lastly (allthough there is more to be said) the people being cared for by these slaves would be saving money and getting richer whilst they should be paying for their care.
We have got to a point in this society where people expect something for nothing. Young people are saddled with rising debt / costs, as they are increasingly heavily marketed too, forcing each individual to buy more and more things to keep up there image and compete with there peers. On the other hand, as you move higher up the age groups people typically become richer, and often have savings to draw upon. Why then should we force impoverished young people to work for them without pay?
Some people will read this and react in anger, claiming that young people are loaded and that they always spend lavishly. This is a shocking misconseption. In reality the average 16 year old has a £800 disposable each year- which is around 35 times less than the typical working adult. Admittedly they may not have to account for utility bills or mortgage payment (although in many cases they will only inherit these debts when there parents die).
It's time we ended the inequality gap by fairer policies on government investment and taxation. The tories need to wake up and stop treating youngsters like puppets just becuase they can't vote to stop it.
The plan is essential to put all 16 year olds on a 2 month summer camp, the kind of thing that brings up images of the Nazi youth in my mind; and send them off to work for things like looking after old people.
This plan is both flawed and evil. If 16 year olds were forced to work (which is of course slavery), probably because the old Tories think that all young people are yobs who need a bit of social enlightenment then; firstly these people couldn't be working in an alternative (paid) job of there choice; secondly they could be doing something more enlightening the looking after old people- like socialising with each other instead of watching TV / playing computer games / listening to music all day; and lastly (allthough there is more to be said) the people being cared for by these slaves would be saving money and getting richer whilst they should be paying for their care.
We have got to a point in this society where people expect something for nothing. Young people are saddled with rising debt / costs, as they are increasingly heavily marketed too, forcing each individual to buy more and more things to keep up there image and compete with there peers. On the other hand, as you move higher up the age groups people typically become richer, and often have savings to draw upon. Why then should we force impoverished young people to work for them without pay?
Some people will read this and react in anger, claiming that young people are loaded and that they always spend lavishly. This is a shocking misconseption. In reality the average 16 year old has a £800 disposable each year- which is around 35 times less than the typical working adult. Admittedly they may not have to account for utility bills or mortgage payment (although in many cases they will only inherit these debts when there parents die).
It's time we ended the inequality gap by fairer policies on government investment and taxation. The tories need to wake up and stop treating youngsters like puppets just becuase they can't vote to stop it.
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