Brexit and the Wall Street mob................

 

Almost coincidentally with the ‘Brexit’ campaign getting its act together (sort of; we have two competing sets of ‘Outers’) it has had an extraordinary piece of good luck which could be worth a swathe of ‘out’ votes.

 

The ‘In’ crowd is getting a large donation from Goldman Sachs.

 

First up, the British electorate does not take kindly to foreigners sticking their noses into UK politics. Especially something a sensitive and contested as Britain’s future in the EU. Obama has consistently failed to understand this. His various strictures about ‘Britain must stay’ have not gone down at all well.

 

We now have an enormously wealthy New York bank, Goldman Sachs, grub-staking the ‘In-crowd’. And a major part of the Out case is that the ‘Ins’ represent  only the interests of large corporations, banks, financiers of all stripes, and tax-dodgers.

 

And it gets better.

 

Golden Sacks has more form than a Derby winner.

 

It is perhaps most widely notorious for its role in the Greek debt crisis that brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy and almost did for the Euro. It helped the Greek government cover up the true state of its finances for 11 years through a raft of derivatives deals so that it could qualify for Euro membership. When the bubble burst Greece was on the verge of bankruptcy three times between 2010 and 2011.

 

The General Manager of the Debt Management Agency was ex-G-S. No surprise there, then; when it comes to revolving doors, G-S is the past-master.

 

Distinguished alumni include Mario Monti, the former Italian Prime Minister;  Omar Issing formerly of the Bundesbank and the European Bank; boss of the ECB, Mario Draghi; Antonio Borges,  head of the European Department of the EMF. Not forgetting Hank Paulson, the man who pulled the plug on Lehman Brothers, a major competitor of G-S, when he was Secretary to the US Treasury. He was later followed by Larry Summers.

 

Closer to home, our very own Mark Carney was with G-S for13 years.

 

The ducking and diving by ‘the Great Vampire Squid’ is difficult to grasp in its immense extent.

 

At the beginning of the ‘crunch’ in 2007, it made $4 billion betting on the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market. It made a profit of $350 million trading in funds deposited by the Libyan Investment Authority whilst managing to lose 98% of the $1.3 billion Libya had handed over. It is alleged to have taken part in insider-trading over a long period, maybe 1986 to 2012. It was accused of manipulating commodity prices including aluminium and oil futures, and of taking kick-backs relating to IPOs. In 2010 it coughed up $550 million to settle securities fraud charges; a Vice President was  found guilty on 6 out of 7 counts. It also settled charges of ‘predatory’ mortgage dealing by paying $60 million to the Massachusetts  state government.

 

But it was not all bad. In one year it reduced its tax liability from $6 billion to $14 million but then it does have 28 offshore ‘tax-efficient vehicles, 15 of them in the Cayman Islands.                                         

                           

Now we have JP Morgan (consultant: T Blair), Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley mulling over large donations to the ‘In’ crowd.

 

The strategy of the ‘in crowd appears to be to appeal almost solely to our cupidity; how much is membership worth to us? The big noise for the ‘In’ campaign is Sir Michael Rose, the less-than-impressive former boss of M&S. Today he tells us that we pay into the Brussels coffers £350 per annum per head, and we get back £3,500. Yeah, right. So where’s my cheque, Michael?

 

What bothers the great British public more than the cash nexus is that the Grand Design that they were conned into in the 1970s became the Great Illusion and is now the Great Delusion. Brussels is seen as an incubus that is obsessed with trifles such as vacuum cleaners, light bulbs, cucumber shapes and quotas for anglers. The immigration crisis has shown that it is totally incapable of handling important supra-national issues and is thus purposeless.

 

Nigel Farage should be doing hand-stands!

                                       

Gunslingers!

There is one American characteristic that baffles the British probably more than  any other. The obsession with firearms is inexplicable; many British would regard it as infantile, a cowboy fantasy, the belief that if you are packing a gun somehow you become Superman when the figures show that you are more likely to become dead.

 

There reckoned to be 300 million firearms in the US, one each for almost the whole population (nobody is really sure because there must be a large number of  ‘illegal’ guns). American heroes appear to consist heavily of gunslingers real and fictional; Wyatt Earp, Butch Cassidy, Dirty Harry, Jesse James; the list goes on.

The gun lobby insists that the Second Amendment sanctifies gun-ownership without let or hindrance. This reads:                                    

"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

It is not necessary to be a lawyer to understand that the meaning is plain. The right to bear arms relates only to membership of a militia. The rationale is simple to see. The US was just emerging from a Civil War, the War of Independence. It had no standing army so defence was the remit of militias, part-time soldiers who presumably had to supply their own weapons. And law and order was scarcely extant in large parts of America, so it was a ‘given’ that every able bodied man ought to own a gun.

 

But this was the 18^th Century, and it is surely naïve to think that the Founding Fathers would have would have drafted such a measure in the 21st Century.

 

According to District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court held that the Constitution protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defence within the home.

 

This judgment is at odds with the wording of the Second Amendment and is surely perverse.

 

The gun lobby clings to the notion that guns keep you safe. Its propaganda is often virulent. On one day there were no less than 17 posts on Facebook

Last year, there were 353 mass killings and  62 school shootings. There were 12.223 deaths from firearms; this would have been less than 2,000 if the rate had been similar to thee UK, which had 29 firearms-related fatalities

 

But before the British get too self-righteous about ‘gun law’, they might wish to reflect on the stark contrast.

 

Since Tony Blair’s kneejerk reaction to the Dunblane school killings, it has become almost impossible for an ordinary citizen to acquire any sort of firearm, especially a handgun (when the prohibition was brought in, the Essex police confiscated the starting cannon at the  Yacht Club at Burnham-on-Crouch as the barrel length was less than the permitted minimum).

 

There was a time when a boy’s most prized possession was his air-rifle. Not anymore. These need a licence and a minimum age limit of 18. Cross-bows are caught. The humble catapult needs no licence but it is probably categorised by the Bill as an offensive weapon.

 

 

There’s not much left that is not an object of suspicion for the police. Pepper spray? Forget about it. And be careful what you carry in your car. My old builder was cautioned by the police for ‘going equipped with house-breaking implements’. It was his tool-kit.

 

The upshot is that the only people carrying guns are the police and the villains, neither of whom is to be trusted with them.

The US is another country; they do things differently there......

 

No doubt about it; Britain and America exist in an amiable (mostly) state of misunderstanding, especially when it comes to the way we conduct our national affairs..

 

We do things differently. Politics is a rough trade, but at least Congress appears to conduct itself with a measure of outward decorum. How would the average Congressman cope in the bear garden that is the House of Commons? Well- we got quite a good idea of this when the effable George Galloway stitched up the Senate like a kipper in 2005 when it tried to interrogate him over breaches of Iraq oil sanctions . As for Obama at PMQs every Wednesday minus cue-cards and teleprompter, ‘bloodbath’ comes to mind.

 

We are bemused by election campaigning that is virtually continuous. We get fed up with it after 6 weeks. For Americans it seems interminable. And  there is still nearly a year to go before the new POTUS takes office.

 

Yes, it’s obvious that Hillary is a shoo-in to continue the long US tradition of dynasties, as if compensating for ditching George III all those years before. After all, if you don’t like her principles she has others. There is speculation that, based on recent polls, Bernie Sanders will give her a run for her plentiful money.

 

The real entertainment is watching the Republicans eat themselves.

 

The star of this grisly farce is, of course, The Donald. In the UK, Trump would have a problem getting himself elected unopposed for the Parish Council, but over there he has moved from being pure comedy to the frightening prospect of being the RP candidate.

 

At least his  policies are simple to understand; ban it, bomb it or lock it up!

 

It may be a mad world, my masters, but a Presidential contest between a buffoon and a superannuated socialist is unthinkable. Isn’t it?

 

American politics is nastier than British, especially when it comes to media comment. The bias and partiality of American cable news-networks would not be permitted in Britain, Adherence to impartiality is a requirement for TV news, even if the BBC is unaware of this.

 

A hugely popular radio commentator is Rush Limbaugh. Here are some of his gems:

‘Steinbrenner was a “Cracker Who Made African-Americans Millionaires”.

Obama & Oprah are only successful because they’re black

Gov. Paterson is a “Massa” and  Obama “Uppity”

And here’s one from Glenn Beck:

 "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out. Is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus -- band -- Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore,' and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, 'Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death.'

 

But surely the ultimate in outrageous bad taste is one Anne Coulter. These are some of her contributions to the gaiety of the nation:

 

I have never seen people enjoying their husband's deaths so much." -on 9/11 widows who have been critical of the Bush administration
"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee. That's just a joke, for you in the media."
"Liberals love America like O.J. loved Nicole."
"There are a lot of bad republicans; there are no good democrats."
We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals."
"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots."
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."
"Liberals are stalwart defenders of civil liberties -- provided we're only talking about criminals."

 

But here was an insult too far:

 

‘How many f*****g Jews do these people think there are in America?’

 

In Britain, these three would be assisting Inspector Knacker with his enquiries.

But the most interesting personality to emerge in the Republican campaign is Namrata Nikki Randhawa aka Nikki Haley, the two-term Governor of South Carolina. She is of a family of Sikh immigrants who made good in America, big-time. Father is an academic, but the family business is worth millions; a classic American success story.

 

She is being trailed as a possible Vice Presidential candidate, and her prospects improved considerably when she replied to Obamas State of the Nation valediction (in the course of which she skewered Trust with ‘There’s an important lesson in this. In many parts of society today, whether in popular culture, academia, the media, or politics, there’s a tendency to falsely equate noise with results. Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume. When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying. And that can make a world of difference’

 

She is also extremely attractive, something that can’t be said about the other hopefuls.

 

The dream ticket for the Republicans would surely be Rubio and Nikki Haley.

 

An Hispanic POTUS and Sikh Vice? Alas, too good to be true!

Sally, have a drink on me.............

Six bottles of plonque each day like Gerard Depardieu (but then he does own a vineyard) probably leads to a short life but a gay one. But now we have  our Chief Nanny, ‘Dame’ Sally Davies, making the front pages by instructing us not to drink more than a glass a day – if that.

                     

As she knew she would, of course. We are quite used to publicity-seeking politicians and  mandarins who are careless of the impact of their pontifications. But the hidden dimension is the harm that these people can do amongst the impressionable.

 

Her dire warnings that with alcohol we are all doomed are quite unsupported by scientific evidence as far as is known, (like so much of medical ‘findings’ these days, there is total reliance on statistics. Well, ‘it has long been recognised by public men of all kinds that statistics come under the head of lying and that no lie is so false or inconclusive as that based  on statistics!’).

 

Science tells a rather different story based on respectable research.

 

First, a declaration of interest; I have been diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of blindness of we oldies aged 50+ years, which is  caused by an overgrowth of blood vessels in the eye. It is incurable and inoperable, but it can be arrested by the active component in red wine, resveratrol, which is present in the grape skin plus some other fruits such as bilberries.

 

So I am not about to give up my daily medicine even though the Nanny might prefer me with a white stick.

 

Several Spanish Universities have researched the topic. One major project was to understand why the Spanish, despite, having a high cholesterol diet (lots of shellfish) had by European standards a low incidence of heart and circulatory diseases. The conclusion was the large consumption of red wine compared with elsewhere.

 

They have also published in the BMC Medicine journal the likelihood that it significantly reduces the risk of depression; I can vouch for that.

 

Scientists from the University of Leicester have  reported that regular, moderate red wine consumption can reduce the rate of bowel tumours by approximately 50%.

 

Since medieval times it has been believed that wine slows the aging process, partly because monks often lived to a ripe old age in the days when wine was seen as the only safe drink. This has since been endorsed by Harvard Medical School researchers  reporting that red wine, specifically the resveratrol content, has anti-aging properties.

 

Research at the University of London found that compounds commonly found in red wine, keep the blood vessels healthy and are one of the factors that contribute towards longer life spans enjoyed by the people in Sardinia and the southwest of France.

 

Studies in  Los Angles indicate that  chemicals in the skins and seeds of red grapes reduce oestrogen levels while raising testosterone in premenopausal women, reducing the risk of breast cancer.

 

There is a  significantly lower risk of dementia among regular, moderate red wine drinkers according to research in 14 countries because resveratrol reduces the stickiness of blood platelets, which helps keep the blood vessels open and flexible, maintaining a good blood supply to the brain. The Journal of Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment has reported that moderate red wine drinkers had a 23% lower risk of developing dementia compared to people who rarely or never red wine.

 

None of this would suit Nanny Sally’s position. Perhaps she needs to understand that life is more about enjoyment than  endurance. If she wants a crusade to help her into her peerage, perhaps she should concentrate mo the real drinking hazard; soft drinks that carry levels of sugar which are a  danger to the health not on adults who have life-style choices but on children who are the victims of blanket advertising by Coke, Pepsi and the others.

 

And to bear in mind the old adage.

 

‘An alcoholic is one who drinks more than his doctor’

 

“I know a lot more old drunks than old doctors.”
~ Joe E. Lewis

 

'Britain no longer Christian' ?

Lady Butler Sloss and her colleagues on the impressively-named ‘Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life: community, diversity and the common good’, had their fifteen minutes of fame shortly before Christmas when they published their report which asserted that Britain was no longer  Christian country so we should stop pretending otherwise.

Who appointed them to carry out this report?

Well, they did. This ‘commission’ has no official basis. As in so much of public life, it consists of self-appointed busybodies.

So  who are the members?

Apart from the expected collection of superannuated Anglican bishops, including old beardy himself, the Very Revd Rowan Williams, there are the chief executive of the British Humanist Association; Shaunaka Rishi Das, director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and Hindu chaplain at the University of Oxford; Dr Jagbir Jhutti-Johal, lecturer in Sikh Studies University of Birmingham; Professor Maleiha Malik; Professor Tariq Modood ; Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, community imam in Leicester; and assistant general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain; Professor Lord Parekh; Rabbi Dr Norman Solomon, former president of the British Association for Jewish Studies; with a Secretariat led by Mohammed Abdul Aziz.

We are not told what this disparate collection of atheists, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Jews can contribute to expanding our knowledge and understanding of Christianity in modern Britain.

Representation from non-conformist Christians seems to be absent – Methodists, Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, Wesleyans, Evangelicals, the Salvation Army, not to mention Buddhists and Jedi.

The conclusions are a curious rag-bag of rather disconnected issues.

Without actually calling for their abolition, the Commission clearly does not like ‘faith’ schools. We are not told whether this is confined to the Christian faith or whether it includes the many Jewish and Muslim faith schools. The conclusion must be that Christianity is on its way out and we must help it on its way by keeping young people ignorant.

Then it makes a curious diversion into the House of Lords. It wants to reduce the number of Lords Spiritual and replace them with members of other faiths.

There are only 26 Bishops in the Lords. There are more than 60 peers of Asian origin out of a total of active (sort-of) members around 790. Assuming that most are Muslims, representation already looks quite adequate for a group that forms 5% of the population.

The Commission totally fails to understand why bishops sit in the legislature. Simple: ‘We’re here because we’re here!’ The justification disappeared years ago, but nothing will change except in the highly unlikely event of democratisation of the Upper House. So the justification for admitting people of other faiths  is incomprehensible, merely perpetuating a constitutional anachronism .

Even more astounding is that it wants to alter the format of the Coronation Ceremony to accommodate ‘other faiths’. Why? The Monarch is head of the Church of England, the ‘established’ church. Anything other than an Anglican ceremony that reflects the position of the Crown would be an illogical travesty.

The simple truth is that whether or not the English are practising Christians or even believe in God we have been imbued with Christian culture over nearly 2000 years.

The latest census tells us that almost 60% of the population describe themselves as Christian, with 25% don’t knows .

Christopher Howse, the Telegraph’s chief religiosi, points out that 13 million people will go to Premier League football games over the year. There will be over 100 million church attendances by Anglicans and Catholics, a figure that will be quite heavily increased by non-conformists, evangelicals and the multiplicity of minor sects. And a pretty good measure of our inherent Christianity, whether we are church-goers or not, and of our adherence to Christian rites is that Church weddings remain the norm, many people have their children baptised and almost all of us will be buried according to Christian rites.

The response to the report by the Church of England was the usual flatulence, confining itself almost entirely to the issue of faith schools.

It could have made an almost unanswerable case for showing that this self-important Commission was ‘all hat and no cattle’, as the Americans say. It could have quoted Cromwell.

‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that thou mayest be mistaken’.

 

 

 

Rhodes, race and religion

A modern-day Cecil Rhodes would share at least one characteristic with his alter ego; he would be fabulously wealthy, controlling the world’s diamond supply through his company, De Beers. Almost certainly he would still have a large slice of South and West African gold mines. Back then, he accomplished everything in double-quick time, from a sickly 18-year old remittance man to his death at the age of only 48. Now he could probably have looked forward to a more normal life-span.

 

It is doubtful, though, whether he would be quite such a benefactor.

 

His core belief was based on patriotism that the British were a source of good in the world, which would be a better place if there were more ‘like us’. Instead, he might very well have become a home-grown ‘oligarch’ in its misused sense of one so rich that he can control events. He may have bought a Premier League football team or a failing newspaper were it not for the business acumen that would have deterred him from such unrewarding investments.

 

He is more likely to have become a key donor for universities, particularly by funding and encouraging more diversity. He was a Grammar School oik who kept only one term a year at Oriel so that he could spend the rest of the year on business. He would probably fall more into the Lord Nuffield or Bill Gates mould, not the swaggering vulgarity of the Russian  billionaires.

 

Racist?

 

Here is one definition: the ​belief that people's ​qualities are ​influenced by ​their ​race and that the ​members of other ​races are not as good as the ​members of ​your own, or the ​resulting ​unfair ​treatment of ​members of other ​races’.

 

The first part of that interpretation would probably apply to a significant proportion of the human race.

 

Rhodes would probably give little thought to this. He would be driven by whatever was the business advantage. He would have no compunction about bribing the Big Men of Africa or elsewhere. The only colour that really interested him was the colour of money.

 

The English went along with Rhodes when he said that they ‘had won first prize in God’s lottery. We casually used descriptions that would be totally unacceptable today. ‘Spades’ , wogs, coolies, and many others. But it was two-way; ‘honkey’, white trash, and a whole lexicon based on nationality rather than colour – Frog, kraut, dago, Jew-boy.

 

Well, it is certainly true that in today’s understanding the British in past years were ‘institutionally racist’ (dreadful phrase). It was not an issue. Outside the big conurbations few people had ever seen a ‘person of colour’. My first was in WW2 when a West Indian airman came cycling gaily through the village. We all gave him a big cheer and he gave us a smile like a row of piano keys. I never saw another for around 20 years.

 

The British have never been much concerned with colour. Black GIs were welcomed during WW2 and afterwards, sometimes a little too warmly by the local girls. When real tensions arose these tended to be more about culture than race. We are now nearly 70 years down the track since the Empire Windrush brought the first batch of West Indian immigrants, and nobody gives much thought to ‘black Britons’ these days except when they are Lenny Henry,  Louis Hamilton or winning Olympic medals.

 

One hundred years ago an Englishman would have been thought deranged if he suggested that an illiterate half-naked African tribesman was his equal. Rhodes was a man of his times, as he would be were he alive today. And yet our attitudes were ambivalent.

 

Indian elites have been attending English public schools and universities (and playing for English county cricket teams) since Victoria’s time, plus a smattering of West Africans.

 

In both World Wars men ‘of colour’ have been accepted as equals. The first West Indian officer in the British Army was Norman Manley in WW1; he was, incidentally, also a Rhodes Scholar. Jamaicans in  particular joined the RAF as aircrew in WW2. The walls of the  ex-servicemen’s club in Kingston are replete with photos of bomber pilots,  caps at the required rakish angle  and sporting an equally vital ’wacko’ moustache’

 

There is a great story in the biography of Giles the cartoonist. He was a fine jazz pianist and would play in his local pub in his small Suffolk village. One night newly-arrived Americans came into the bar. Solitary black guy was also there. They promptly proceeded to beat him up and throw him out. This had consequences.

 

The landlord henceforth banned all white Americans. Then black Americans took over; many of them were professional musicians and in no time Giles had one of the best jazz bands anywhere.

 

Unfortunately for the thugs, the black guy happened to be a Squadron Leader in Bomber Command, so courts martial beckoned. Tragically the Squadron Leader was killed in action before the case came to trial.

 

The liberal elites have a simple interpretation of ‘racism’. ‘Whites’ are inherently racist, and only ‘whites’ are racist!. Because of arrogance and dull-wittedness, the race relations industry  is quite unable to adopt historical relativity, the ability to see and interpret history through the eyes of people of the times. They constantly apply 21^st century attitudes to 18^th or 19^th or even 20^th century norms.

 

The RRI is totally confused as between ‘ethnicity’, ‘race; and ‘colour’. But their main – perhaps only – criterion is colour. And when they started to become a powerful lobby from the 1960s onwards, their obsession began to take on a lunatic tinge of its own. The golliwog on the marmalade jar was ‘racist’. Did complaints come from blacks, or from the usual suspects, the middle class middle aged women missing the fun of Greenham Common?

 

They constantly parade their own ignorance. ‘Baa, baa black sheep’  is about slavery. Not quite, dears. Slaves collected cotton wool, not sheep’s. How about ‘nitty-gritty? That was supposed to be the detritus at the bottom of a slave ship. The fact that the word was unknown until the 1930s is immaterial to the closed mind.

 

Then there’s ‘nig nog’. Nothing to do with race or colour. Years ago we new recruits in the army were called ‘nig nogs’ – raw and inexperienced, Yorkshire origin. But we mustn’t use it for fear of being done for ‘hate speech’.

 

The real problem  isn’t race. It is religion.

 

The RRI makes it worse. They are addicted to ‘multiculturalism’, the conceit that leads to Muslim ghettos  that refuse to integrate or even accept compliance with the norms of the host country, such as something as simple as appropriate dress for schoolgirls, or, indeed to learn English. Many British who live in proximity to these ghettos believe that the authorities turn a blind eye to unacceptable behaviour by these minorities; that they are exempt from the law for fear of them crying ‘racist’. How else is the long-standing and systematic abuse of under-age white girls to be explained?

 

How else does one explain a sentence of 3 years for defacing a mosque with red paint and  fine of £15 for burning poppies on Remembrance Day?

 

We seem to be creating a whole new concept of ‘Asian untouchables’ that has nothing to do with Dalits.

 

"I could never accept the position that we should disqualify a human being on account of his colour." ." CJ RHODES.