Obama has lost it!

I find, these days, that events are transpiring so rapidly and with so many of them that I cannot keep up with the day to day changes, alerts, breaking news, speculation and the like.

 

One stable factor is that O is decidedly losing it. Perhaps he cannot keep up either.

 

His silly trip to Africa brings little to the table other than rampant  criticism that he and his family and his entourage are undoubtedly the most traveled lot in American history. Of course, the associated costs are astronomic; a fact to which he seems to be totally oblivious.

 

The major news carriers are going bonkers playing the game 'Where in the World is Edward Snowden'. They are pretty sure he has departed Hong Kong. Opinion clusters around the speculation that both HK and their Mainland Chinese mentors were delighted to see the back of him and thereby minimize what could have been a monumental diplomatic rift.

 

The Russians claim Snowden is in travelers limbo being neither in nor out of Russia but somewhere in between. I dare say the speculators are correct that he is at the airport in some Kafkaesque hotel being squeezed by the succors to the KGB until he regurgitates all he knows.

 

Putin disagrees saying the man is outside of their control and therefor untouchable since Russia has no jurisdiction over him. What a load of bollocks that is. If Putin can reach all the way to London to off one of his own, he certainly can walk over to the airport and knock on Snowden's door.

 

One thing is very clear. The USA looks a complete ninny in its lame efforts to get a bead on Snowden's whereabouts. We look and indeed are weak and everyone knows it. It is time to put O's policy of engagement aside and look for a big stick. Frankly, nobody thinks O has got the balls.

 

His efforts to divert attention by suddenly coming up with a major speech on the environment, global warming and the need to curtail coal fueled industries caught everyone off guard. We expected something about the IRS capers, the NSA hacking, Snowden's legal status, or phone tapping our journalists. Instead, we get a speech on global warming.

 

Typical of a second, lame duck, presidential term, the incumbent's political chickens are coming home to roost.

 

And roosting they are, big time.

 

Public and media attention has already begun to morph into items on possible candidates for the next presidential election. Hillary is high on the democratic list as is, can you believe it, Joe Biden.

 

 

Realpolitik in Syria?

‘So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent’.

 

Churchill’s words sum up perfectly the West’s attitude to the shambles in Syria.

 Obama is set upon masterly inactivity; no boots on the ground, no ‘no fly zone’; no military assistance to the rebels apart from ‘soft aid’ such as flak jackets and bandages in case the flak jackets don’t work.

 Cameron comes all gung-ho about supplying arms, knowing full well  that he has zero chance of getting this past the Commons.

 The EU muddles and mutters; no change there, then.

 Or is there a more Machiavellian plan?

 In this conflict there are no goodies and baddies; only baddies and baddies. If Assad comes out on top, there will be massive reprisals and repression, and probably an on-going insurgency.

 

 If the rebels win, about the last thing we are likely to see is a peaceful, democratic  regime. There will be struggles amongst the various groups for dominance; Sunni against Shia, tribe against tribe, territory carved up between competing warlords.

 

 The only advantage will fall to Al Qaeda, which will be able to conceal itself amongst the chaos in a rich recruiting ground.

 And so it may suit the West to have neither winner or loser, but to let the conflict drag on until it burns itself out.

 Hezbollah has sent sizeable forces into Syria. It is pretty certain that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is there in force. There are reports that Iran is planning to send in 4000 more troops.

 There are very clear advantages for the West. Hezbollah forces tied down in Syria lessens the direct threat to Israel as long as they are preoccupied with endless fighting  a guerrilla war. Iran bogged down in neighbouring territory might limit its freedom to meddle elsewhere and distract it from making mischief in the Middle East.

 It is now fairly common knowledge that the rebels are being supplied with plane-loads of serious hardware from the Ukraine, but no heavy weapons; enough to keep the pot boiling but not enough to have a decisive effect. This is surely under the sponsorship of the CIA, whatever Obama might say about not arming to the rebels.

 It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that, far from vacillation and inaction, the West is reverting to realpolitik.

 

 

 

A real Liberal Party?

What we need is a new Liberal Party.

 

I don’t mean the rabble of middle-class lefties who call themselves the Lib Dems (or Dums, as some would more accurately put it), the party of tofu, muesli, sandals and no principles, distinguished only by their taste for bizarre sexual practices and alcohol.

 

I mean the Liberal Party of the 19^th Century, the party of William Gladstone and John Bright whose philosophy was driven by Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham and others of the times.

 

It was first and foremost the party of free trade. With globalization its hour has come. FTAs are springing up all over. The US/EU talks are beginning, and there seems to be a strong consensus in Europe to get an agreement quickly despite French attempts to bugger it up right at the beginning – how typical!

 

It is globalization, not foreign aid, that has lifted more than 200 million out of poverty and is creating a whole new consumer-class. We need to be out front.

 

It was the party of both social and economic liberalism.

 

It was the party of small government; what JS Mill called ‘the night-watchman state’. Bizarrely, in America ‘liberalism’ is synonymous with ‘big government’ when in fact it is the opposite.

 

It believed in letting business get on with business without over-regulation that is a curse and fetter on today’s economy, especially when emanating from Brussels. What is it about Eurocrats that makes them micro-meddle, as with the short lived proposal to ban olive oil bottled on restaurant tables?

 

Do you wonder why Switzerland is prosperous, peaceful and hugely wealthy? It is not because of government. It is because of the lack of it. Central government is miniscule compared with the bloated states of the EU27. Governance is mostly in the hands of subordinate bodies, and decisions are taken at the lowest appropriate level, always a good management principle.

 

All this would fit nicely with the attitudes of the younger generation, according to a recent survey that has had a lot of traction in the  serious press.

 

It tells us that the young are socially liberal when it comes to sexual attitudes (no surprise there, then) and race, and rather wish that politicians wouldn’t keep banging on about immigration. They don’t think much of the Welfare State, and have little sympathy with benefits scroungers and those who won’t stand on their own two feet. The subject of homosexual marriage only induces yawns.

 

The Labour Party represents the opposite of all these attitudes. The Tory Party is too busy trying to emulate UKIP to notice the trend.

 

A Real Liberal Party could be the future.

 

As for a leader, who ticks all the boxes?

 

Step forward Boffo Johnson!

Big snit..........

We Americans are in a big snit just now.

 

 Wherever we turn, we witness deception, trickery, corruption, poor judgement, irresponsibility and cowardice among our politicians and leading civil servants. It is a sad time for America when we are embroiled in the filth of politics and seemingly without recourse to justice through lethargy, lack of a voice or perhaps just ignorance. We are being robbed blind by the powers that be, or at least enough of them, to warrant large-scale contempt for those who pretend to carry our cause and lead us forward.

 

The glowing aura of Obama that prevailed during much of his first term has faded into a sea of doubt over his true intentions. His disregard for the suffering of the people, especially the middle class, will be his undoing. At the same time, he has done precious little for his and other minorities and is losing followers at an accelerating rate.

 

Some argue that O is oblivious to the havoc he has created in almost all aspects of political, economic and social life. Others claim he, like an ill-bred upstart, is trying to extract as much from the system and for himself as he possibly can before retiring from office.

 

In either case, the verdict is negative on his performance and on the prospects for a favorable legacy.

 

 

Leveson, the NHS, and the BBC...........

Being a retired rustic expat, I sometimes have difficulty in what is happening in the Great Wen across the Irish Sea.

 

At this time there is a clutch of ex-editors, hacks, coppers, civil servants and whatnot facing trial and the prospect of a diet of porridge as the haul from the Leveson Inquiry.

 

The alleged offences revolve around the giving or receiving of money or favours in return for revealing information about the goings-on amongst the great and good (or not, as the case may be).

 

At the same time we are getting almost daily revelations of money being paid to public servants for concealing information that might otherwise be in the public interest. The NHS is a serial offender (and also has an appalling record of sacking whistle-blowers).

 

Now it seems that the BBC is up to its neck in the same scam.

 

Now, here is what I can’t quite understand.

 

If it is a crime to pay or receive money to reveal information, is it not also a crime to pay or receive far greater sums to conceal it?

 

I think we should be told.

'Bitches in britches'!

What fun! Two great catfights have broken out in the sisterhood.

 

One is over the public assertion by a woman that female doctors are a source of ‘unintended consequences in the NHS’. A junior Health Minister, Anne Soubry, said, quite reasonably, that there should be more GPs to take account of the fact that female doctors take timeout and reduce their hours to take care of their families.

 

Sep forward Dr Sharon Bennett. Whizzing off a letter to the Telegraph, she said that she was ‘shocked’ by Ms Soubry’s sexism and that she was promoting ‘outdated sexist attitudes’.

 

Dr Bennett is married to Andrew ‘Plebgate’ Mitchell MP.

 

Dr Hannah Mitchell joined the fray, saying that it was a display of sexism.

 

Dr Mitchell is Andrew Mitchell’s daughter.

 

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t counter the argument that, with 70% of medical students being female, it followed logically that more GPs would be needed to take account of the female’s shorter working life.

 

But this is not unique to medicine. We frequently read feminist hacks going on about the ’glass ceiling’, the low proportion of woman as directors of FTSE 100 companies, about women’s earnings being lower than men’s, as if there was a widespread male-chauvinist conspiracy to keep women down. But it’s just not true, and it’s absurd to suggest that employers twin-track their staff remuneration to discriminate against women; jobs are usually advertised with a salary range that is part of the deal.

 

The main reason why women’s lifetime earnings are lower is that they have a shorter working life; they withdraw from work to create a family; they retire earlier; they often take part-time employment so that they can juggle the demands of work and home. They are wise enough o understand that you can’t ‘have it all’, whatever the female columnists might tell them.

 

For similar reasons, they tend to be absent from the workplace between the ages of 30 and 40, which is the make-or-break part of a career.

 

The other ruckus is over the feminist magazine ‘Spare Rib’.

 

The founder, Rosie Boycott who is now travel editor of the Oldie magazine after a stellar career in journalism, is opposed to the new publication taking the name. M’ learned friends are hovering.

 

The feisty Julie Burchill helpfully suggests that it should be called ‘Bitches in Britches’.

 

 

 

What fun! Two great catfights have broken out in the sisterhood.

 

One is over the public assertion by a woman that female doctors are a source of ‘unintended consequences in the NHS’. A junior Health Minister, Anne Soubry, said, quite reasonably, that there should be more GPs to take account of the fact that female doctors take timeout and reduce their hours to take care of their families.

 

Sep forward Dr Sharon Bennett. Whizzing off a letter to the Telegraph, she said that she was ‘shocked’ by Ms Soubry’s sexism and that she was promoting ‘outdated sexist attitudes’.

 

Dr Bennett is married to Andrew ‘Plebgate’ Mitchell MP.

 

Dr Hannah Mitchell joined the fray, saying that it was a display of sexism.

 

Dr Mitchell is Andrew Mitchell’s daughter.

 

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t counter the argument that, with 70% of medical students being female, it followed logically that more GPs would be needed to take account of the female’s shorter working life.

 

But this is not unique to medicine. We frequently read feminist hacks going on about the ’glass ceiling’, the low proportion of woman as directors of FTSE 100 companies, about women’s earnings being lower than men’s, as if there was a widespread male-chauvinist conspiracy to keep women down. But it’s just not true, and it’s absurd to suggest that employers twin-track their staff remuneration to discriminate against women; jobs are usually advertised with a salary range that is part of the deal.

 

The main reason why women’s lifetime earnings are lower is that they have a shorter working life; they withdraw from work to create a family; they retire earlier; they often take part-time employment so that they can juggle the demands of work and home. They are wise enough o understand that you can’t ‘have it all’, whatever the female columnists might tell them.

 

For similar reasons, they tend to be absent from the workplace between the ages of 30 and 40, which is the make-or-break part of a career.

 

The other ruckus is over the feminist magazine ‘Spare Rib’.

 

The founder, Rosie Boycott who is now travel editor of the Oldie magazine after a stellar career in journalism, is opposed to the new publication taking the name. M’ learned friends are hovering.

 

The feisty Julie Burchill helpfully suggests that it should be called ‘Bitches in Britches’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tax dodgers, the G8 and Dave.......

At the G8, Dave will be pushing for ‘transparency’, the current buzzword, to curb tax avoidance and money-laundering through off-shore vehicles. I wish him luck.

 

The main victims of the offshore tax avoidance industry are probably developing countries rather than Western tax-payers.

 

Capital outflow from Africa and other poor regions is colossal, much of it from siphoning off the loot from corruption or just plain theft. Some African leaders would be in the Guinness Book of Records for the sheer size of their thieving. Mobutu, for example, is reckoned to have purloined  every cent of American aid sent to the Congo on his watch. They are kleptocrats on an industrial scale.

 

But much of it is legitimate through transfer pricing. This is the shifting of money from one tax jurisdiction to another. Profits are moved from high tax regimes to low tax and vice versa for losses. There is little difficulty in posting losses due to massaged pricing of goods and services. Starbucks achieve this by charging a licence fee to its subsidiaries; Macquarie by hitting its M6 toll road subsidiary with interest no less than 16% on the money loaned to build the motorway.

 

It is estimated  that $1.35 trillion has been leached from Africa. It is about the equivalent of the whole of foreign aid.

 

So will Dave’s efforts bear fruit?

 

They will demand a huge data collection exercise in which countries will have to process information about company ownerships, and they will need to uncover the beneficial owners, as well as ‘legal’ ownership. This is not yet done in the UK, and the US Federal Government is hamstrung because jurisdiction belongs to the states, and there is no way that Delaware and Nevada are going to buy it.

 

Then the data will have to be shared with all the countries involved.

 

The law of unintended consequences may kick in here. The effect of cracking down on territories that rely almost entirely on off-shore banking may turn them into economic basket cases, leaving Britain to rescue the Caymans, BVI and others with UK taxpayers’ money. The banks themselves are likely to relocate to Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Panama and similar jurisdictions that already have well-established facilities and which will not play ball.

 

Of course, Dave might well lower his sights and start at home in the epicentre of tax-avoidance, the City of London. Floating a company with bearer shares is a simple way of hiding the stash. He could make these illegal, as is the case in that well-known tax-shelter, the Isle of Man. He could take a long hard look at limited liability partnerships which are a vehicle for abuse.

 

But then Dave never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

'We are degenerate'.........so they tell us.

Britain is degenerate and depraved. The crime rate is appalling. We are a nation of alcoholics and drug-abusers. In particular, there is an epidemic of binge-drinking amongst the younger generations. We gamble to excess. We have the sexual morals of the farmyard.

 

At least this is what the puritans, social engineers, and general killjoys would have us believe.

 

None of it is true.

 

Recorded crime has been falling for 20 years. It has halved since it peaked in 1995. Serious offences such as murder, crimes of violence, and burglary are down significantly.

 

David Cameron has an addle-pated notion that excessive drinking must be curbed by  jacking up the prices. Other worthies pontificate about debauched all-night drinking with drunks littering the streets as in the 18^th Century.

 

The facts tell a very different story.

 

Alcohol consumption has been falling consistently for the past 15 years. Total consumption is 16% less than it was only 8 years ago. The average annual consumption per head is less than 8 litres, the lowest for many years.

 

As for booze-raddled youth, a recent survey reveals that less than 50% of the 16 – 24 age-group had a drink in the previous week as against 70% ten years ago. The number of children between 11 and 15 has fallen by nearly a third in the past 5 years.

 

Overall, convictions for drunken behavior of all kinds have halved in this century.

 

Now drugs-abuse.

 

Its rise is a threat to the very fabric of society, according to the wowsers.

 

And yet drug use is now at its lowest rate in nearly 20 years. Every kind of drug is declining in popularity, especially heroin and crack. Despite the commonly-held myth that just about everybody thinks it cool to smoke a spliff, even cannabis consumption has fallen dramatically in recent years despite the ‘personal use’ blind eye turned by the authorities these days.

 

Gambling is also on the decline, despite the growth of on-line betting. Total takings in the gambling sector have been falling year-on-year. Racing is in dire straits financially. Bingo halls are closing by the week. In the 1960s there were 16,000 betting shops; now there are just over 9,000. The gambling urge seems to have been largely subsumed into the National Lottery.

 

As for sex, we may be entering a new era of puritanism. Teen-age pregnancies are at their lowest level for more than 40 years despite the incentives for ‘benefit mums’. And hookers are having to reduce their prices drastically. Even Hollywood is having to clean up its act as audiences tire of sex scenes.

 

So what are the reasons for this ‘new morality’?

 

My take is that at last we are seeing an overdue backlash against the extremes of the Swinging Sixties, that most promiscuous and squalid of decades. Drug use, drunkenness, gambling debts also have severe consequences on getting a mortgage, credit, car insurance – and a job. Hippies are no longer seen as ‘cool’ but as losers, and drink-driving has become socially unacceptable as well as criminal.

 

Might the time have now arrived for politicians and do-gooders of every stripe to get off our backs and allow us whatever legitimate enjoyment there is still to be had?

 

Polish immigrants & the NHS

Health care being a hot topic in both the UK and the US, I was intrigued by a lead in the Economist about private medical treatment for Polish immigrants, especially in the context of the endless moans that incomers are swamping the NHS.

 

So I did some research – not easy because the web-sites are in Polish!

 

The Poles are not too impressed with the NHS. They want better treatment than they get form NHS GPs – short consultations, long waits to get appointments, no after-hours service-  -  so they have set up their own private medical facilities. As far as I can discover’ there are 3 clinics in London and 2 in Manchester.

 

The My Medyk in west London has 30,000 patients. Its services include GP, gynaecology (the Poles out-breed all other foreigners in the UK), paediatrics, dermatology, and dentistry/orthodontics. The tariffs seem very affordable. A consultation with a specialist is £70 (against £125 for the briefest consultation with a NHS private consultant, as I know to my cost) , and a dental examination is free (£45 here). A 3-D pregnancy scan is £95. It has a clean bill-of-health from the Quality Care Commission.

 

The clinics have the latest in imaging and diagnostic equipment. Some are open 7 days a week until 9 or 10p.m. And unlike the NHS procedure, patients can make appointments directly with a specialist without a GP’s referral.

 

And they don’t just cater for the well-heeled. Many of the patients work in the building industry or as cleaners.

 

Will this generate a demand for reasonably-priced medical facilities for the natives?

 

Or even stimulate the NHS bosses to start putting patients first?

 

Snowden: hero or traitor?

I fail to understand how our leaders continue merrily along without giving any serious regard to the backgrounds of people they employ in sensitive positions. The latest example of this is Edward Snowden. His handlers surely must have known he reads the Guardian and that alone should have been grounds for refusing employment. We are overwhelmed with men of conscience who feel duty bound to download every accessible piece of secret information into the public domain. In the process, these agents of righteousness act as judge and jury by rendering and acting upon their own interpretation of American law, public policy, ethics and standard operating practices.

I always believed the Patriot Act was an abomination that gave government far too much power without sufficient oversight. Employing the Act is legal and I therefore conclude that collecting and analyzing data from our big communications brokers, search engines and social networks is okay. Not for a minute do I trust the government to keep its sticky paws off the content of the information they subpoenaed. Counting calls, their origin and frequency is one thing, but listening in on the conversation is decidedly illegal.

I am forced to admit that electronic data resources are not confidential. To those people who rely on such confidentiality, a tremendous resource has been lost.  In a period of just a few short years, an information technology has mushroomed, prospered and will now die as far as data security is concerned. The sad truth is that whatever firewall somebody can invent to keep information secure, someone else can either subvert or circumvent it. As of now, one might say that by circumventing firewalls through the use of its power to subpoena information, the US Government is the greatest hacker in the world.

Snowdon will get lost in all of this mess, just as Julian Assange did, but we the public will be left with damaged, broken and unreliable data systems. Perhaps we will all have to resort to simply writing letters to be delivered by special runners bearing notes on a forked stick.

Havens of hypocrisy.......

I have flagged up the political humbug spouted about ‘tax havens’ several times, but it seems that scarcely a week goes past without Cameron, Cable, Osborne et alia doing their ‘dog returning to its vomit’ performance.

 

So let me now turn to the Private Finance Initiative so beloved by Gordon Brown.

 

This is a device whereby the Government gets a private outfit to fund new buildings in return for a hefty annual payment.

 

This has two outcomes.

 

The first is that all the debt is off-balance sheet. If it were to be added to the national debt figure the UK would resemble Greece with knobs on.

 

The second is that the taxpayer coughs up far more than would have been the cost otherwise.

 

These PFI deals are tradable, and this is where tax havens come into the mix.

 

The offices of HMRC (would you believe) are owned by a company domiciled in Bermuda; the Home office in Guernsey; Defence HQ, some hospitals and around 200 school buildings partly by interests in the Channel Islands.

                                                                                                                                                                                  

These companies, of course, pay no tax on the hefty interest.

 

And another thing.

 

I have been talking to a couple of old Brummie bikers. It seems that there is a local boycott of the M6 toll road because  of excessive charges. The road is owned by a company that is making a massive loss, which is its reason for high charges, and so pays no tax, of course. And the reason for the loss in what should be a captive market is that it pays interest at no less a rate of 16% to its parent company that just happens to be registered in the Cayman Islands.

 

As they say, everything’s a racket unless you’re in it!

EU & China: it's WAR!

The sky is blue, the sun is warm, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world………………and now the EU adds to the gaiety of nations by starting a trade war with China.

 

Perfick!

 

The story so far.

 

The Brussels suits suspected that Mr Chin was subsidising solar panels to be dumped in Europe, which cost about 25% less than EU-made.. So they decided to impose a protectionist tariff.

 

But China knew that the EU subsidised agricultural products big-time via the CAP. In particular, wine receives no less than €2.8 billion a year. France alone receives €1.47 billion. And it exports over 200 million bottles a year to China – that’s right, 200 million!

 

So they are going to retaliate by imposing a protectionist tariff on Club Med wines (but not German, as the sensible Frau Merckel has made it clear that she wants none of this solar panel tariff lark, so she is excused. A bit of ‘divide and rule’ going on here!).

 

The EU is now wriggling, saying that  its move is open to negotiation; not so, says Mr Chin. There’s nothing to negotiate.

 

No bets on who will win; Ladbrokes will not open a book on racing certainties.