Saturday, December 20, 2014

Good news on oil - or is it?

Cheaper petrol –what’s not to like?
 
It will put more money in our pockets, reduce transport costs, make business and industry more competitive, and give the economy a further boost.
 
Brent crude is now down to around $60 a barrel with West Texas hovering at $53. Some pundits reckon on a fall to $40 before recovering to $80-ish next year.
 
The conspiracy theorists reckon this is a conspiracy between the US and Saudi Arabia to persuade Putin to drop his support for Assad.
 
Others say the Saudis are trying to undermine the American fracking industry, which has enabled the US to cut its imports by over 8 million barrels per day, equivalent to the entire output of Nigeria and Saudi combined. It will become a net exporter within the next four years and be independent of Gulf oil.
 
So the Saudi strategy just won’t work. Most of the shale output has been hedged for 2015, in addition to which  some producers can survive with prices as low as $50 per barrel and in some cases much lower. Costs will continue to fall as start-up costs are amortised.
 
It will weaken Putin’s grip as the energy-dependent economy of Russia begins to seize-up; prices are now well below production costs and it might be impossible to balance the budget or to fund his lavish rearmament programme. He may – just may – rethink his policy on the Ukraine (although it is just as likely that he will lash out in some way if he is cornered).
 
It will undermine Iran’s Middle East meddling.
 
It will encourage the current bull market in equities.
 
Only it’s not all good news
 
It’s not just oil. Other commodity prices are going south rapidly –iron ore, gold, copper, platinum, sugar, cotton, soybean and most others. This is not such good news.
 
It is a pretty good indication that the world economy is slowing down; the falls are in real money, not just relative to other price levels.. Demand has fallen for energy, minerals and food products as economies have contracted. GDP forecasts have been revised downwards in most countries, including  the big player, China. This is particularly bad news for China’s main commodity suppliers, such as Australia.
 
There are other reasons.
 
QE has pushed-up commodity prices. The Fed is on the brink of ending QE and tightening monetary policy. This signals an increase in the $ interest rate, in which world commodities are priced. High interest rates are an incentive to pump or drill now because it is not good practice to hold large inventories.
 
Rising interest rates encourage portfolios to shift into other asset classes. This is good news for people who depend on bank deposits for a slice of their income and who have been badly hit over the last few years. It is not so good for people with heavy mortgages.
 
And we must not overlook Britain’s own oil industry. Tax revenues will fall even further. As many as 15,000 jobs may be lost. Further investment in North Sea oil will dry up.
 
On the broader front, it may cause further instability in countries already beset with Islamist threats – Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, Algeria and the Sahel. Cash-strapped Oil Sheiks might no longer be able to buy-off the Islamists. In addition, Venezuela is imploding and Brazil, heavily dependent on energy exports, is groaning under a mountain of debt accumulated during the good times.
 
The oil producing countries are bleeding money. To break-even, Russia needs  $105 pb, Venezuela $161, Nigeria $126, and even Saudi requires $98.
 
All this may threaten already fragile world security, when even Saudi is under threat. Northern Nigeria is highly likely to become a Boko Haram stronghold, spreading terrorism further across West Arica. Saudi is betting that that this regional economic shock can be contained for another two years. It would be unwise to take the bet.
 
So the plunge in oil prices is more of a curate’s egg than a total blessing.

 

 

 

Friday, December 19, 2014

Simple torture...........

The ‘perfect storm’ over CIA torture is showing no signs of abating.
 
The NYT carries both comment and a raft of letters, a surprising number of them attempting to justify torture on the spurious grounds that ‘if it saves one American from being beheaded….’ Which it won’t.
 
One English correspondent who claims to have been ‘born in 1944 when V1 rockets were falling on London’ says that enemy prisoners were tortured by the British, as if being a small baby at the time adds credence to his view.
 
Well, I was brought up during WW2. I had some personal experience of POWs. Every day for about two years truck-loads of first Italian then German POWs were delivered to my village to build new housing estates as ‘homes fit for heros’. There were no guards. They fraternised openly with the locals. They made toys for us small boys. In the evening the trucks took them back to their camp.
 
In later life I met a fomer POW in Germany. He had been taken prisoner by the 8th Army in the Desert Campaign. He told me that the next three years were the happiest of his life. He had been sent to work on a farm in Essex, lived there, and was treated as one of the family.
 
A while back there was a TV documentary about a Yorkshire village at Christmas 1945. There was a strict ‘no fraternisation’ rule. The villagers ignored this and invited all the POWs to their Christmas dinners, albeit somewhat meagre because of food rationing.
 
In the past 70 years there has not been a single recorded complaint, claim or allegation of torture, although there were hundreds of thousands of Axis POWs in Britain.
 
British intelligence does not do torture. They get their information by more effective methods – guile, deceit and cunning.
 
Senior German officers were not imprisoned at all. They were lodged in comfortable houses where Intelligence was happy to listen to their bugged conversations. The prison camps were also bugged and a vast amount of intelligence was gained. POWs were quite happy to discuss their roles in the Holocaust with their fellow Germans, not appreciating that the intelligence service contained a substantial number of German-speaking Jewish refugees.
 
There is no justification for torture at any time under any circumstances.
 
For starters, it is illegal under both domestic and iternational law. No exceptions, no excuses.
 
For the ‘Land of the free home of the brave’ to condone torture diminishes it morally and brings it into hatred, ridicule and comtempt. The US loses its respectability and standing in the world, and makes its claims to be the defender of democracy seem absurd and hypocritical.
 
And if this is not good enough for the defenders of torture, here is another good reason not to be tempted to use it.
 
It doesn’t work.
 
The victim of torture will tell his tormenters whatever they wish to hear, regardlessof whether it is true or false, simply to get the pain to stop.
 
Even the head of the Spanish Inquisition recognised this when he said that some would say almost anything to get mercy and others would say nothing and die.

 

 

 

 

Monday, December 15, 2014

Alex 'Wee Eck' Salmond: the mummy returns!

‘It is never difficult to tell the difference between a Scotsman with grievance and a ray of sunshine!’
 
Not to put too fine a point on it, the English are pig-sick of the whining, whinging Caledonian oat-crunchers, with their never-ending catalogue of grievances, constantly complaining about how badly they are treated by the Sassenachs and at the same time stuffing their sporrans with English money.
 
The SNP has flatly refused to accept their hammering  in the nauseating referendum. Brussels-style, they want to keep having referenda until they get their demanded result.
 
Nor are we to have a welcome period of silence from Wee Eck. Stepping down from leadership of the SNP was not an act of contrition, far less an admission of defeat. It was tactical.
 
He is calculating with good reason that the SNP will end up with 52 seats, wipe out Labour and hold the balance of power in the next Parliament, doing dirty deals to help secure a Labour Government which has been soundly rejected by the English. His price will not be merely a vast extension of powers to the Scottish Assembly that has so far proved incapable of effectively exercising the ones it already has.
 
It will be Labour support for yet another Bill to authorise yet another referendum.
 
So we have the bizarre paradox of Dave needing a victory by Labour in Scotland, which may well be achieved via the obnoxious personality of the new SNP leader. His alternative strategy to defuse the Scottish question by creating an English-only polity  is addle-pated. It will not answer the West Lothian question because banning Scots MPs from voting on English issues would result in the Government having a majority on some issues and not others. His ideas would need a federal state and the destruction of the British constitution; that is just not going to happen.
 
And yet he goes on believing that defanging SNP in Parliament after they have decimated Scottish Labour will result in a permanent Tory majority in the Commons. He is delusional.
 
So here’s how Salmond can win referendum Mk 2. Open it to the whole of the UK. There is perfect justice and logic in allowing the nation at large to decide whether to be broken up for the simple reason that it affects this and all future generations of the entire British people. There will be a massive ‘yes’ vote from England, saving all that Barnett-formula money and leaving the Scots to wax fat on ‘their’ oil $50 a barrel.
 
Scots wha hae wi Alex fled!

Saturday, December 13, 2014

The BBC and Brand: what's it all about?


What is it with the Beeb and Russell Brand?
 
Two interviews in fairly quick succession on the flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight. What had he to contribute? Reports suggest that both sessions could only be described as pathetic.
 
Then Question  Time, which the BBC had trailed as being Brand vs. Farage (the other panellists must have been well-pleased with that billing!)
 
Presumably, QT is aimed at a serious and intelligent audience. On neither count does Brand qualify. He has the political nous of a thick 12-year old.
 
Now we hear that he is producing a BBC documentary on drug-rehab (for which he may indeed be well-qualified).
 
And just who is this guy? There is a totally false rumour that he is a comedian. A long time ago I had the misfortune to watch him, but only for a few minutes before nausea took over. About as funny as herpes and worse than his contemporary, the wepellent Wossy.
 
And what are his qualifications for making informed and meaningful contributions to a debate on the state of the nation?
 
He has recently inflicted a book (by a vanity publisher?) upon the long-suffering literati that was rubbished by the critics as being silly beyond words. It seems that his knowledge of economics is slightly short of zero. His political stance is 1960’s agitprop. His beliefs can be summed up in six words – ‘bash the banks, screw the rich’. This is perhaps rather hypocritical coming from someone who is not exactly short of a few drinking-vouchers and who pays an enormous rent to a tax exile.
 
The received view is that he has a lot of political capital amongst the chattering classes in the Westminster village. However much he tries to portray himself a  radical hippie he is a thoroughly Establishment figure. He is against elites, but he is one of them. He claims to speak for ‘ordinary’ people, but, with his New Age nonsense, hairiness, and charity-shop dress style  his real constituency is students at the University of Stretchford, the Green blob, and dystopic liberals.
 
A period of silence would be welcome.
 
 

 

Saturday, December 6, 2014

‘Send Newsnight to the knackers yard’

This is the title of Stephen Glover’s splendid hatchet job in this months ‘Oldie’ magazine. It is a curtain-raiser for the storm currently engulfing the BBC over lefty-bias. ‘Hurricane’ more like. The Telegraph goes for the jugular. The Sun has ripped apart the Beeb’s finances, exposing amongst other bad practices, the use of licence payers’ money to fill the multi-million hole in the pension fund instead of increasing employees’ contributions. The Commentator baldly states that the BBC is beyond redemption and should be humanely put down.
 
Glover reminds us of the Lord McAlpine scandal when Newsnight wrongly outed him as a paedophile. A new editor was appointed, one Ian Katz. His previous was deputy editor of – guess what? – yes, The Guardian. He is in good company. The political editor Allegra Stratton and the investigations editor Nick Hopkins are of the same provenance.
 
The audience is going south at an alarming rate.
 
In 2001, it was over one million nightly. By last April it had fallen by nearly half. Paxo himself has described it as ‘made by thirteen-year olds’.
 
And why was the attention-seeking loony-lefty Russell Brand interviewed twice in fairly quick succession? Could it be that the editor thought that he represented the young metropolitan lefties who need to provide the future audience when he is in the forefront of the lunatic fringe?

Monday, December 1, 2014

Plebgate panto........

‘Never go to law’, was the advice of my old law tutor, ‘The winner is out-of-pocket and the loser is irretrievably ruined!’ And nowhere does this apply with greater force than to defamation actions. They are a licence to transfer large quantities of wonga to m’ learned friends.
 
Few will now remember the vastly entertaining case of Jani Allan, the Johannesburg Sunday Times journalist, who was alleged by Channel 4 to have had an affair with Eugene Terre’Blanche, leader of the extremist AWB party.
 
There was much titillating evidence about her having had a bit of extracurricular with him at the Voortrekker Monument (actually it was the Paardekraal Monument in Krugersdorp, far less fun than discussing Africa on the steps of the Afrikaner holy of holies with a ‘pig in a safari suit’ as the fragrant Ms Allan called him). There was detailed evidence about the holes in Terre’Blanche’s underpants which added to the gaiety of several nations.
 
With George Carmon on one side and Peter Carter-Ruck on the other this was going to be the clash of the titans and very, very expensive. Jani had made lots of money from her journalistic notoriety. She lost the case and all the money.
 
When Botham and Lamb left the cricket field to sue Iran Khan for libel they were bowled out for £500,000, and had to join the rubber-chicken circuit to pay the costs.
 
So whatever possessed Andrew Mitchell to go after The Sun for libel?
 
Up to that point he had effectively won the Battle of Plebgate. One copper had been jailed, four were sacked, and two resigned. There was common acceptance that he had been stitched-up by the Met.
 
Having been our best Minister for Foreign Embezzlement, he has now ruled himself out of any political resurrection.
 
The real winner was Political Correctness. The offending word was not ‘f*****g, but ‘pleb’. It is absolutely not done to use belittling language to sensitive souls like the Old Bill, even if true. Foul language? No worries, just like the case of the footballer who was done for calling another player ‘a f*****g black c**t’, not because of the foul language but because of ‘black’ – which happened to be the only true word in his rant.
 
But as is well-known, footballers are anti-racist Guardianistas who will stamp on any expression of racism unless made about a white player, as when they threatened to refuse to pay the fee of the entertainer at their annual bash for using the word ‘n**ger. The offender was Reginald D Hunter, the brilliant American who is very black.
 
Now we have the David Mellor panto. Well might the public say ‘who he?’  He was chiefly famous for toe-sucking but not much else besides.
 
Being somewhat tired and emotional he used a bit of colourful language to express his disapproval of his taxi driver’s performance. As we know the Black Cab fraternity are shrinking violets unaccustomed to even the occasional ‘oh bother’, never mind a bit of effing and blinding. The meeja, which also thoroughly disapproves of anything remotely resembling profanity, has been squeezing the last drop of juice out of this non-story for days.
 
As a bonus, Mellor was with his titled squeeze, Lady Chobham, so Grub Street could add ‘toff’ to ‘snob’!
 
As for Lady Thornbird and the white van man, she richly deserved her fate. For using the idiot’s current plaything, Twitter.