rum, bum and the lash

There have been breathless reports here that O has given tacit approval to take-over bids for BP. Complete bollox. The UK Government would veto it on the grounds that BP is a strategic industry (they don’t come much more strategic) and the EU regulator would invoke anti-competition powers. The story probably emanates from BP’s apparent intention to sell its Alaska field, and it is reported that O has already tipped the wink at this. A letter in the press from Houston suggests that BP’s problem was not its own safety regime but its failure to bring Amoco up to speed after the merger. Of course, all this will come out in the wash once O appoints a public inquiry. Won’t it? For the time being it’s all a matter of ‘if the cap fits..........’ Also, I learn that BP’s Director of Communications was previously with Lehman Brothers; say no more!

And according to a Democrat politician it was BP that got Megrahi released. Is there any other major malfeasance that politicians would like to place at the door of BP? Here it is widely believed that Megrahi was released to prevent his appeal being heard, as this might have revealed that the whole inquiry was a stitch-up and that Megrahi was just the fall-guy.

A more solid piece of oil news is that the North Sea is taking off again, big time. This is partly due to decreased price volatility but mainly because the Government changed the rules a while back to make it possible for smaller companies to get a drilling licence. Previously it was prohibitively expensive for all but the big boys. Production has quietly increased considerably in the last year or so. On the downside, we hear that they have failed to find the black stuff in the Falklands, although they know it’s down there somewhere. Then perhaps Hilary will revise her stance on Argentina’s claims to ‘Los Malvinas’. Also on the downside the EU is contemplating a ban on oil exploration west of the Shetlands, so we had better stay pally with those nice Arabs for a while yet.

Do you have Fairtrade Fortnight in the US? It will be here shortly. Despite its ‘do-good’ presentation it is really a marketing exercise. Fair trade is anything but. It offers only a very small number of farmers a higher, fixed price for their goods. Simple economics will tell you that these higher prices come at the expense of the great majority of farmers who are left even worse off because the Fairtrade subsidy unbalances normal market forces. It stands to reason that if you subsidise an internationally traded commodity to some producers but not all, the subsidised growers will be able to undercut the non-subsidised. This in turn encourages over-production and is a disincentive to agricultural improvement. Many of the farmers helped by Fairtrade are in Mexico, Argentina, and other relatively developed countries, and not in places like Ethiopia.

We recently bought oranges that we later discovered were marked ‘Fairtrade’. They came from Argentina which has a higher GDP PPP than Poland, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece and Portugal in the top 40 richest nations. And it is blindingly obvious that oranges in European supermarkets don’t come from poor peasant farmers. They come from large commercial estates.

It doesn’t help economic development. It keeps the poor in their place, sustaining uncompetitive farmers on their land and holding back diversification, mechanization, and moves up the value chain. Just 10% of the premium consumers pay for Fairtrade actually goes to the producer. Retailers pocket the rest. It’s a racket. Fairtrade arose from the coffee crisis of the 1990s. This was not a free market failure. Governments tried to rig the market through the International Coffee Agreement and subsidized over-plantation with the encouragement of well-meaning but misguided aid agencies. The crash in prices was the inevitable result of this government intervention, but coffee prices have largely recovered since then.

However, it probably helps addle-pated numpties feel that they have done their bit to save mankind without actually exerting themselves. For ourselves, we refuse to buy anything marked ‘Fairtrade’, ‘organic’ or ‘GM free’.

And just to confirm my belief that we are now going through a re-run of the Decline and Fall, I recently picked upon a copy of ‘Soldier’, the official magazine of the British Army. The cover picture was of a gay trooper in one of the cavalry regiments (what do you expect if you kit them out in tight red riding breeches), the editorial was about the wonderful time that gays have in the army (you betcha), a main feature article was about individual soldiers who were happily openly gay, and another main article featured pictures of two lesbians in their lovely butch combat gear, and how well they were doing. I started wondering whether I had stumbled into ‘Gay News’.

Mind you, it was said by Winston that the real tradition of the Royal Navy was ‘rum, bum and the lash’.