'Nice little motor, Arthur? How about a Golf TDI?'

What  a farce!  Sturm und drang in Wolfsburg. The boss ousted (there’s an upcoming vacancy at FIFA that might suit him). Billions wiped off the stock market value. Germany’s reputation for engineering integrity trampled in the dust.

 

‘At scenes so tragic I could scarce forbear to laugh’.

 

At the heart of the VW fiasco are the conflicting aims of two groups of busybodies.

 

In the Red corner we have – surprise, surprise – the Brussels nomenklatura. They are leaders in the climate change-global warming racket that generates enormous profits for ‘green power’ companies and manufacturers of  wind turbines subsidised by the taxpayers of Europe and damaging Europe’s competitiveness through energy prices  treble those of competitors.

 

Twenty or more years ago they exhorted us to switch to diesel power in our vehicles because its CO2 emissions were lower than petrol power. Of course, LPG would have been more effective but the UK government ratcheted up the excise duty on it so that it became uneconomical.

 

The EU motivation for throwing all this grit into the economic machine was to meet the ludicrous emission targets in international agreements which the major polluters – the US, China et al refused to sign (the fact that this made the whole exercise pointless and worthless was not, and never has been, a deterrent to the men in suits in the Berlaymont).

 

In the Blue corner we have various US enforcers (motto: ‘go forth and multiply’) which had little interest in carbon emissions, but plenty in nitrous oxide  which does not contribute to climate change but does create public health problems.

 

Now the scheissen hits the air conditioning.

 

The Yanks discovered that VW had been gaming the emission tests all along (and the fuel consumption monitoring).

 

And it is tempting to say ‘So what?’. Although over 50 % of vehicles in Europe are diesel-powered, only about 1% of US cars are oilers. In any case, most nitrous oxide pollution must come from the heaviest users; heavy trucks, locomotives, construction machinery, ships, oil-fired central heating.

 

Will all these now be subject to emissions regulation? Don’t be silly!

 

What we are left with is a contest between two utterly conflicting targets. In the Red corner we have climate change; in the Blue we have public health concerns.

 

It is a reasonable certainty that there is not a single diesel engine in the world that meets the US emission limits; if the VW TDI puffs out 40 times the limit this only proves one thing. The limits are fiction; they are clearly unobtainable. And we don’t know who fixed them or on what criteria or scientific proof or health concern.

 

The last time VW got so much publicity was over their way of keeping the union bosses happy with lavish parties, prostitutes and Viagra.

 

Much more fun than ‘defeat devices’!

The EU, Juncker & tax-dodgers..........

Tax havens – the Caribbean, Panama, Singapore, and other dodgy places in Asia and the Americas like Nevada and Delaware, right?

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Three of the largest are in the EU; Austria, and the Netherlands are tainted, but the largest of all, not just in Europe but in the world, is Luxembourg, a mini-state with a smaller  population than Bristol. It is the second largest banking centre in Europe. It houses most world banking institutions. It has no less than 150 banks from 27 countries .

It has the largest population off expats in the EU, presumably staffing PWC and other financial advisors. There are dozens of mail boxes, empty and unlocked because there are so many foreign companies that are no more than brass plates. There are almost no employees in these off-shore ‘tax efficient vehicles’. There are 140 international companies including multi-billion dollar conglomerates which save billions of dollars on their tax bills by having tax-residency in Luxembourg. There are 40,000 registered companies, one for every eight people.

Its economy is almost totally dependent on tax dodgers who eagerly snatch up the  deep discounts on the country’s corporate tax rate offered by the Government.

Mutual funds in Luxembourg exceed $3 trillion, and household-names such as Pepsi, Ikea, Accenture, Burberry, Procter & Gamble, Heinz, JP Morgan, FedEx, drugs group Abbott Laboratories, Shire, Amazon, Deutsche Bank, Dyson and Australian financial group Macquarie are tax-resident.

So who was the mastermind behind the creation of this financial titan which has made a tiny enclave one of the richest places in the world?

Step forward, Jean-Claude ‘thirsty’ Juncker, mighty President of the European Commission.                                    

 

Between 1989 and  2013, he was successively Finance Minister and Prime Minister when it was all put together.

 

He has form.

 

Part of his responsibility was SREL, the security outfit. During his tenure, there was a major scandal that revolved around the illegal bugging of politicians, purchase of cars for private use and allegations of taking payments and favours in exchange for access to officials.

 

There was an  inquiry, which  heard from witnesses who alleged that SREL had conducted six or seven illegal wiretapping operations between 2007 and 2009, as well as covert operations in Iraq, Cuba and Libya.

 

The report of the inquiry concluded that Juncker held political responsibility for SREL's activities, that he had been deficient in his control over the service and that he had failed to report all of the service's irregularities to the inquiry commission.

 

His main line of defence appears to have been that he ‘didn’t know’ ! Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he, but here it was a case of ‘with one bound Jacques was free!’

Now there is an EU Parliamentary Inquiry into the tax scams.

It is not getting very far. Juncker is back on his favourite line of defence; once again he ‘didn’t know’. He has been ducking and diving during the inquiry’s sessions, filibustering when called upon to speak, and being extremely reluctant to release key documents

Juncker pretends to have been at the forefront of the fight for tax justice in Europe. This is absolutely ridiculous given his 20 years at the helm of one of Europe's most prominent tax havens and an utter mockery of every honest taxpayer on the continent.

"His principle today was that he did not take any decisions on tax matters in Luxembourg in the past, and does not take decisions in the Commission at the moment either. His assertions of never having met a single tax advisory firm during his tenure or never having talked about tax during, as he admits, regular meetings with Luxembourg bankers sound like they are from another planet," said MEP Fabio De Masi.

 Quite so. But nothing will happen!

Crisis? What crisis?

Whatever happened to the phlegmatic British?  We are accustomed to having a bit of fun at the expense of excitable Latins who wave their arms around yelling ‘Eet is  a disaaaster!’

 

If the social media and blogs are any guide, the British are in a blind panic about the prospect of a  handful of Syrians arriving in the UK with the specific objective of poncing off our ‘welfare’.

 

So let’s get it in perspective.

 

Dave has promised to take 20,000 refugees over five years. That is 4,000 a year out of the half-million immigrants who arrive every year. One might describe that as ‘statistically insignificant’. Or as a piece of cynical PR.

 

This ‘crisis’ is nowhere near historical levels.

 

WW22 created 14 million. Six years after the war there were still 400,000 in camps; displaced persons, ‘DPs’ to us or more likely ‘bloody Poles’ although they were mostly Ukrainians, Latvian, Lithuanians and the like.

 

We coped pretty well even though UK was to all intents and purposes stony-broke (we still had food rationing in 1953). And there were 200,000 from Hungary in 1956, a fact that they have now conveniently forgotten. There were 1.4 million Vietnamese who were mostly settled in the US where they have usually done well.

 

Now we have the Syria problem where half the population are either refugees or displaced. Of the 4 million refugees, Turkey has about 1.6 million, tiny Lebanon has c.1.2 million, Jordan 425,000, Iraq 235,000, Egypt 238,000, and there are about 160,000 in other MENA countries. This rather spoils the justification of complaints from serial whingers who say Why are no Muslim countries taking them?’

 

Then there are those who question why the parents of the toddler drowned off the coast of Turkey didn’t stay in Turkey. Well, it’s because Turkey only deals with asylum applications from Europeans.

 

The real problem is that the EU is in disarray. It has shown that it is incapable of dealing with  real and serious issues, as it demonstrated beyond peradventure in the complete mess that it made of the Greek crisis – an economy so small that it never was a proper crisis, but manufactured in Brussels out of its customary arrogance and meddling.

 

The current ‘crisis’ will only be settled when the EU gets its act together.

 

Don’t hold your breath!

 

 

Three down.........Jihadi John next?

Was the liquidation of a couple of traitorous barbarians legal? Not according to the mouthy minorities who get disproportionate media coverage.

 

The human rights watchers are asking the wrong question; they seem not to understand that there is no requirement to prove that an action is legal. Everything is legal until shown to be illegal.

 

In fact the only ‘law’ – and a very vague and elderly one devised before terrorism became the modern style of making war – is UN Article 51, which requires that an attack is occurring or imminent. It is not necessary to wait for a terrorist to strike before retaliating so long as it is ‘proportionate and necessary’. Taking out a pair of fanatical killers before they had caused maybe 100 or more casualties as at 7/7 could not be more ‘proportionate’.

 

And who gives a toss, other than the usual defenders of everybody’s human rights except ours, including the next Leader of the Labour Party who described the termination of the biggest mass-killer of modern times as ‘a tragedy’? And attended a Conference in Cairo that advocated ‘military struggle’ against British forces in Iraq, possibly accompanied by ‘friends’ from Hamas and Hezbollah.

 

This brings to ten the number of ‘British’ killed by US and UK drones. One got his comeuppance in Pakistan; he was involved in 7/7. It seems that five more jihadis are on the UK hit-list, chief of which is Jihadi John. Will the human rights tendency mourn his termination and accuse the UK of extra-judicial killings?

 

The position that they appear to be taking is that if the intelligence services get wind of a planned attack, they should wait until the atrocity has been committed before acting. Imagine the reception if Cameron got up in the Commons and said that we knew that attack was coming but waited until it had been carried out before doing anything about it. His political career would be measured in milliseconds.

 

But this begs another question. Why did Cameron make an announcement at all? Why was there no DA Notice that would have prevented disclosure that the SIS was infiltrating the jihadis? The objective of the DA-Notice System is ‘to prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations and methods, or put at risk the safety of those involved in such operations, or lead to attacks that would damage the critical national infrastructure and/or endanger lives’. This case would seem to be a perfect fit.

 

The chaterrati appear not to understand is that Jihadism is war by other means. It is the 21^st Century’s world war and will last for decades.

 

Get used to it!

 

 

Booze, drugs and the status quo........

‘History repeats itself’  we are told, ‘The first time as tragedy the second time as farce’.

 

Not always. In the case of prohibition and criminalisation of alcohol and drugs the second time is also tragedy, and yet when considering the massive problem of drugs in the US and Europe, our leaders seem incapable of applying the lessons of the first to the debate on the second.

 

The notion that alcohol should be prohibited seems absurd today. But prohibition in the US lasted for 13 years and did untold damage to the fabric of society the consequences of which remain with us today.

 

Peter Mc Williams in ‘Ain’t nobody’s business if you do’ sets out the damaging effects of this crackpot measure.

 

First up, it created widespread disrespect for the law by making a crime out of something that was not a crime. Almost every broke the law, bringing the law itself into contempt.

 

It diminished respect for organised religion on account of the fact that religiosi were the driving force behind prohibition, believing that alcohol was a source of society’s ills and God would bless America if booze was banned.

 

Instead, prohibition led to more drinking, not less. It created organised crime that is with us today, exemplified by the Mafia. It caused political corruption on a massive scale, from which the polity of the US has never fully recovered.

 

Bootlegging massive quantities of the alcohol demanded created its own industry, requiring significant organisational and managerial skills. The gang boss became a figure of folklore. People like Lucky Luciano, the head of Cosa Nostra, became almost Robin Hood-style folk heroes and created a front of respectability by investing massively in legitimate business, as do the drugs gangs today. They followed the simple business principle of that where there is demand there must be supply.

 

They also used their money to buy influence. Politicians and the police were routinely bribed and then blackmailed. If a person in a powerful position refused  to be corrupted, h was either ‘wiped out’ or was opposed at the next election by a gang ‘plant’ with a bottomless campaign fund. They stuffed ballot-boxes and smeared the incumbent.

 

It had the effect of criminalising just about everybody who drank alcohol. Vast amounts of police and courts time was taken up with prohibition cases. Even prosecuting a tiny minority of offenders overburdened the whole system of law enforcement.

 

Hundreds of thousands of people whose work was alcohol-related lost their jobs. Often they had no option but to stay in the business i.e to become a criminal. And because alcohol was no longer regulated there were serious public health consequences. Over 10,000 people died from drinking ‘moonshine’ – wood alcohol, while others went blind.

 

And at the end of the day not only was prohibition an all-round disaster but a complete failure;  by the end of prohibition alcohol consumption was actually higher, mainly because of a switch to hard liquor which was  easier to conceal and transport.

 

The lesson that has not been learned is that Governments have no business legislating for morality, and if they try they will fail.

 

Now we have gone down the same path with the war on drugs. Except that Prohibition is a mere footnote in history compared with the calamity that this ‘war on drugs’ has created. This was initiated by President Nixon about 45 years ago. It is a war without end because it is unwinnable.

 

The Global Commission on Drug Policy declared: "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and years after President Nixon launched the US government's war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed."^[

 

The Mafia gangs of Prohibition have metamorphosed into major enterprises on an international scale. Their obscene profits are easily laundered into conventional investments. The world value of the drugs trade is estimated at around $300 billion.

 

The hard economic fact is that governments cannot eliminate a market by legislation when there  is a constant demand. Prohibition and criminalization simply raises costs and thus price. The trade is driven underground into a black market that has baleful effects.

 

They cause violence  because disputes have to be resolved with guns instead of courts. Corruption is inherent because the trade generates such vast amounts of money that bribery becomes a normal business practice.

 

There is little quality control – who would police it? So there is no inhibition on contaminated products that cause poisoning and accidental overdoses.

 

The absurdity of the whole ‘war on drugs’ concept is illustrated by the way cannabis is treated.

 

It was not included in the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920. It slipped into the 1928 Act without any scientific evidence, debate or discussion, apparently being conflated with cocaine leaves. It was pretty well unknown in the UK, but it was something used by fuzzy-wuzzies so must be bad! Years passed before there was the slightest attempt at scientific justification for the ban.

 

It has probably about the same risk-level as tobacco. Walking through Kingston Jamaica one morning I lit up a cigarette and coughed. A loafer squatting on   the sidewalk with an enormous spliff called out ‘Yo stick to de weed. Dat bacca kill yo’. He had a point. Tobacco, long term, is likely to result in lung cancer; with ganga you just go bonkers. It is the most used recreational drug

 

Criminalization creates its own health risks; it raises prices which in turn encourages  drugs with dangerous impurities, heroin users are encouraged to inject because this gives a bigger buzz. Users often share  needles which can transmit HIV, hepatitis C and other blood-borne diseases. It leads to racial profiling that jails many more blacks than whites although the pattern of usage is similar. It leads to violence and corruption in entire countries from which drugs originate – Mexico and Colombia. The Taliban is reckoned to be heavily financed through the poppy trade.

 

Now no less than the WHO is calling for decriminalization.

 

The solution would seem to be regulation rather than prohibition. The US states that have decriminalized cannabis have collected a vast sum in taxes, eliminated pushers, and ceased jailing (mostly) blacks for possession.

 

An extraordinary amount of crime is drugs-related. In the US, about a quarter of prisoners committed their crimes to get drugs money. Drugs also feature in murder, rape and violent crimes. The amount of time and resources used by the police and courts is disproportionate; most of the ‘stop and search’  operations are for suspected possession.

 

‘Decriminalization’ does not mean ‘legalization’.  It might consist of  such elements as labels with dosage and medical warnings like prescription drugs, no advertising, age limitations as with tobacco and alcohol, restrictions on amount purchased at any one time, special user licenses to purchase particular drugs.

 

Dealing would continue to be a serious offence and sales would be permitted only at licensed premises or on prescription on particular cases.

 

When arrested for another offence, such as drunken driving, which reveals drug-taking the person detained would be subject to  drugs testing and if found positive required to attend clinics and counselling.

 

Portugal has gone down a similar road since 2001. Then it had an epidemic of HIV from contaminated needles. Now the health hazards have been greatly reduced, as indeed, has drug consumption. Crime has dropped and there have been large benefits to the public purse in no longer having to spend so much time on law enforcement.

 

But such radical change is certain to cause an outcry from the ‘if it’s not compulsory it should be forbidden’  tendency, so our politicians would have to exercise considerable leadership, stamina and moral courage.

 

So nothing will be done.

'Illegals': time to face the truth............

Injecting some sanity into the  illegal immigration crisis is well-overdue. The overriding fact to be faced is that this is much more than an immigration problem.

 

Around 7,000 unaccompanied refugee children have been picked up by the authorities in Europe. A six-year old boy, whose parents had drowned, was found trying to walk to Germany. The number of refugees drowned in the Mediterranean will probably never be known, but must run into thousands. Only last week100 bodies were washed ashore in Libya and many more are unaccounted for. There were 2,500 known deaths so far this year. Thousands have been rescued from the sea, 4.000 on one day last month.

 

It is a humanitarian catastrophe of Biblical proportions.

 

We have been here before.

 

The UK accepted thousands of refugees from Europe from 1945. Most eventually returned to their native countries. France took in  100,000 after the end of the war in  Vietnam. There was a big hoo-hah about Asians fleeing Idi Amin in the 1970s, but they have been quietly absorbed into Britain. There was similar disquiet in the UK – no more than that – over the Vietnamese ‘boat people’, another group of hard-workers that integrated quickly.

 

The response of much of Europe has been niggardly. Poland, which was a major source of refugees in the 1930s and after WW2. Hungary, which sent us thousands of refugees in the 1950s, has a negative and racist stance. It is building a 100-mile wall to keep immigrants from crossing via Serbia, maybe taking East Berlin as their precedent. The Baltic states have agreed to take 725 refugees.

 

Meanwhile Germany is facing an influx of 800,000 in addition to thousands of economic migrants from Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia (almost all of whom are sent back but have to be fed and housed during processing).

 

What is to be done? Our leaders have little idea and certainly no measure of agreement.

 

The EU proposed farming out the refugees  according to quotas based on such factors as GDP, unemployment and numbers already accepted. The UK has an opt-out and Spain and the Eastern Europeans sabotaged the plan

 

Common sense says that asylum seekers should be allowed to work. Currently in the UK that is not allowed, so they are kept in enforced idleness at the taxpayers’ expense.

 

But at the end of the day Europe is going to have to bite the bullet and accept large numbers of  immigrants, mostly Syrians and Eritreans, who classify as war refugees, however politically unpopular this will be at home.

 

This whole wretched episode has once again exposed the fiction of the EU. ‘Schengen’ is now totally discredited, with even Germany calling for the reinstatement of border controls. The truth s beginning to dawn that giving up control over borders is giving up a large measure of sovereignty. Brussels is completely at a loss as to how to deal with an influx into  a wealthy and peaceful region with a population of 500 million people.

 

The issue is not going away any time soon. It will be a major and perhaps deciding factor in the upcoming EU referendum. Already politicians, unsurprisingly led by UKIP, are formulating their strategies.

 

But what is most needed is statesmanship and leadership, not squalid political posturing.

 

Don’t hold your breath!