The Bewilderness

Eurozone moves to preserve depression in aspic

The Liberal Democrat leader defended his party's position towards the European Union with a reference to the referendum lock during Deputy Prime Minister's question time in the House of Commons yesterday. This refers to an Act of Parliament passed during the early days of the coalition stating that any treaty change has to be put to the British people. It does not refer to an in/out referendum.

Now, it is clear that treaty change will form part of the European agenda in the next two years. M. Hollande, in his press conference today, clearly stated that the Eurozone elite: impervious to economic suffering, will integrate and preserve depression in aspic. The Eurozone will form the core of a political unit and, reflecting on his history, Hollande noted that Britain had not joined Europe at the beginning of the treaties.

When the Conservatives are unable to agree on a consensus towards Europe, and a new Treaty will promote Eurozone integration with negotiations commencing in June, the sirenic call of a referendum can only grow stronger.

A depressed, depopulated desert: the southern €zone?

I attended a lecture and book luanch this evening by Gavin Hewitt, BBC Editor for Europe, who has taken time oit to write a tome of contemporary history on the elite proceedings during the current crisis of the €. Hewitt set the stage with some thoughts on the emasculation of leaders, the gradual growth of fears over unemployment and the erosion of an adherence to austerity. 

Hewitt was honest in navigating between positions and showing how some criticisms are shared by both Europhiles and Eurosceptics. The problem is that their answers are different.

Yet, the talk omitted demographics. The depressed Mediterranean is suffering from a declining population with birthrates nowhere near replacement level. A crisis of economic growth was due to hit at some point. Yet, the crisis may have brought the effects of the demographic trap forward by encouraging emigration and creating a structural problem of youth unemployment. This would have crept up on the countries sometime within the next decade. Now that demographic death rattle can be heard within the Eurozone as a depressed depopulated desert becomes one outcome.  

Masking enhancement

As I am always on the lookout for news of potential technologies that enhance the sensorium, I was gratified of some recent work at the Royal College of Art in London. First was the gratifying surprise that such work has been undertaken outside of the expected environment: laboratories run under Big Science grants or via corporate investment. Not to decry these sources, but a greater diversity of institutional sources for these projects should lead to more competition and innovation. Good to see the arts involved.

The art students developed masks which could provide an ability to single out ambient sounds (such as a single performer in an orchestra) using a directional microphone or utilising video to enhance sight. Early but important steps!

  

In/Out Irony

Scotland may achieve what UKIP desire for the rest of us. If only they could accept membership on our behalf and let us leave. I have no hesitation in letting our good neighbours north of the border remain in the EU, whilst the remainder of the UK adjusts to life outside.

Salmond and the SNP government are unable to guarantee continued membership of the European Union. Despite a rhetorical flourish, this could prove to be the most contentious bar to a positive independence vote. Bad enough that Scotland leaves the UK, but removal from the EU could prove economically harmful for the first few years of independence.

The SNP has not explored the legal implications in any depth for fear of the political consequences. They are now being found out.

What a ghastly irony plays out if the Scottish vote for union on fears of leaving the EU, only to find themselves departing a few years later if the whole of the UK votes for an exit. 

 

Boston lockdown

There is an argument that once the majority are denied their liberties in the name of security that those who wished to provoke such a reaction have won. I suspect that this adds a layer too far of complexity to the thought processes of the radicalised Chechnyans that undertook this atrocity. Yet tonight, with Boston in lockdown over a manhunt, this question will be asked again.

My only experience of a lockdown during a terrorist atrocity was the tube bombings of 2005 in London. Workers were kept in their offices to remove pressure on a public transport system in crisis; whilst emergemcy services worked to normalise London as quickly as possible. Different cities will have different operational responses to these requirements. Whilst a reaction to a bombing appears appropriate, the use of a lockdown in order to apprehend the suspects should be reviewed.

The political pressure to apprehend the perpetrators is overwhelming. The school of "something must be done" leads to extreme measures and a dangerous precedent. For once the doors are opened to particular strategies of containment, these become a potentially useful tool for police forces. Once undertaken, the temptation to use this tool again becomes easier, even though one should assess the success or failure of this strategy.

As of now, house to house searches are undertaken. The name and photo of the suspect is splashed on the media. Law enforcement personnel and the private citizenry are jumpy. In similar circumstances, an innocent Brazilian was shot on the London tube by armed police. The suspect remains at large.

The final aspect of using a lockdown strategy is that the inconvenience to the citizenry starts to outweigh the intial reaction to the atrocity. The withdrawal of the freedom to live and act, if kept over a prolonged period of time, will turn minds away from the urge to find these killers and concentrate them upon these restrictions. Moral outrage and anger is dissipated by the mundane: "I can't go out to get milk".

One has to think very carefully before undertaking lockdowns; and, if the suspect is not apprehended, a difficult decision will probably be subjected to needless criticism, because the intended objective was not achieved. In such a febrile atmosphere as this, the possibility for tragic mistakes increases. 

  

Yesterday's slog on the South Downs

Today, as I drove down the roads through Storrington and the turn-off through Amberley to Arundel, I could see the ridge that I had walked the previous day. The rolling downs were beautiful in the spring sunshine. The views from the top must be spectacular. I never did get to see them as the clouds rolled in yesterday. My colleague and I were lashed with wind and rain; of the variety that comes from the side, so powerful that it stings the cheeks.

This was my third section of the South Downs. The path climbs up to the ridge from a small village south of Hassocks called Pyecombe. The track follows the ridge across downland with the famous Devil's Dyke on the right. Up to this point, the weather remained bearable: scudding clouds and the occasional spatter of water.

It is hard to say what the South Downs looks like after this as I saw very little of it. The track is easy to follow in the gloom of mist and rain. There were occasional trees. I remember those. The path does drop down to a village on the A24: Washington, which looked quite friendly in the sun, and bleak yesterday. The final stretch from Washington to Amberley is marked by agriculture: a piggery and long fields of tillage, already planted unlike their counterparts north of London. 

One sight remains with me: a hawk or crow hovering at the stretch of vision in the mist: a haunting silhouette. 

Eventually, after 23 miles: (including the trek from Hassocks to Pyecombe), one reaches Amberley and the dry shelter of The Bridge Inn. Thank God!

They just didn't know how to handle her

Out of curiosity I looked at some of the websites that would have proved ambivalent about Baroness Thatcher's death wavering between decency and juvenile outrage. The Morning Star was empty, apart from the burial of Maltby Colliery. The Socialist Worker, that Trotskyite bastion of loonies, is somewhat awed with their headline: "a brutal ruling-class warrior". They are still shell-shocked at the news.The obituary is the usual diatribe of class politics: 80s history is merely a clash between a revitalised ruling class and the working class fighting as a socialist movement.

Their most serious accusation is that Thatcher revelled in war. There is an almost hungry anticipation of what-if had the Argentinians won the "absurd colonial anomaly":

But she was lucky as well. If Argentine armourers had put the right fuses in their bombs, most of the British battle fleet would have ended up on the floor of the South Atlantic and Thatcher would have had to resign in ignominy.

So desperate for crimes to hang upon their departed hate-figure that she is even blamed for the bad diplomatic relations with Argentina (who appear only capable of reaction to us in this article).

Her legacy was continued British possession of the Malvinas that still poisons relations with Argentina.

I pity the author. They can't stand her and yet, like moths to a flame,they just cannot write away her influence by resorting to determinist explanations of superstructure or class relations. The late Margaret Thatcher transcended their theories. She was a "world-historical figure" and they are still unsure of how they were plotting revolution in the 70s and buying council houses in the 80s. 

If the blessed Hilda has one final testament it is that her obituary in the Socialist Worker naturally demonstrates the flaws of socialism (again). The Left are jealous: they just know that the first woman Prime Minister was their gift to bestow and Maggie just ruined it for them. A clear case of penis envy.

£53 a week on taxes that pick the pockets of the poor

Iain Duncan Smith has stated that he could live on £53 a week: a media stunt that will attract the raucous cries of the Left on heat; attracted lovingly to the pheromonal stink of Tory contempt for "scroungers" and the "undeserving idle". It is not my goal to join the crapsourcing of mediocrity; where a thousand voices join in error. But I do not wish to give this Minister the benefit of the doubt. He is wrong.

He is wrong because government policies and the monetary debasement they sponsor prevent anyone from living off this sum. Let us take the staples. There is no free market in food so the poor are forced to fork over far more than is affordable so that they can subsidise the agricultural sector. Petrol is needlessly expensive forcing many to pay more for public transport, for the goods that they buy and for the car that they would have been able to afford, except for the fuel escalator. And you need a car to get to a job. And in a lunatic dash for decarbonisation: consumers are forced to pay ever higher amounts forgas and electricity in order to subsidise renewable energies and destroy British industry. The choice between eating or heating is not a myth for many. This is all undertaken by the government.

So, remove the subsidies and the taxes on even sinful activities; prevent all monetary debasement and the inflation that erodes living standards: you could live on £53 per week. Destroy planning laws that afflict the housing sector and you could include rent too. 

But don't say that you can live on £x a week when you know that your own taxes penalise the poor in their pocket. 

The Brown Bust, 2010 and counting

The money ran out in 2010. So ran a note by a departing Labour Minister: one finale epitaph on that irresponsible administration. Some will call this a lost decade; but better to rename this: Brown's Bust. 

The Guardian sets out a series of welfare changes that come into effect in the next two months. These changes represent a reduction in the amount of benefits received and reduce the scope by which entitlements can be rewarded. This will not reduce the welfare bill; only its rate of increase. The article is entitled by Patrick Wintour, their political editor, as the day that the Coalition changed Britain. 

Rather OTT, as the alternatives are far less palatable. Reduce benefits in Irish or Greek terms and embrace destitution. That day may still come. Have Labour and its slavish press forgotten that the money to pay for their client state must be raised abroad and, if no money is raised, no benefits can be paid.

Labour opened the sluicegates of debt. All else is incidental detail designed to deal with the consequences.   

A vote to preserve their 1945

Whenever you read a social democratic article masquerading as a defence of Scottish independence, the whiff of sanctimonious superiority and dripping codewords of democracy (equals voting for the SNP and the Scottish welfare state). This is accompanied by some Whiggish complacency that naturally the Scottish electorate will recognise what is good for them by voting "Yes". 

Now I am as agnostic as most of the English about whether the Scottish opt for self-determination. But, they tax my patience when they take note of this gift, a consequence of our shared liberal polity, and choose to reinterpret that event as a token of their better qualities. It is not a view of all Scots; just that priggish minority that pursues constitutional forms of popular sovereignty: a written constitution that would cement the power of the Scottish public sector oligarchy in perpetuity. 

This is a democratic, not a liberal solution - in the sense of enduring checks and balances. It is a solution to mediate the elite consensus in token forms to stop the actual Scots getting uppity and doing something radical. Independence is a conservative step to preserve the postwar settlement in one nation.

To know how this nation will look like, one need see no further than policing: centralised under one Chief Constable, accountable to the executive and local control emasculated. If this is how Scotland will be governed in future, then the whole vote is a retrograde step.