I have watched the protest outside St. Paul’s with interest and am disappointed with the reaction of the establishment. If the protesters have done nothing else, they have drawn attention to The City of London and it’s questionable regulations which appear to give large corporations excessive power over The Square Mile. (More on this later with luck).
However, thus far, no British politician has revealed themselves to be quite as moronic as Peter King, the U.S. Representative for New York’s 3rd congressional district. On Bloomberg TV Mr. King stated that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are “living in dirt” and ”involved with drugs” and then went on to say that “there was violence”, “there was rape” and accused the protesters of being “losers”. Of course Mr. King is partly right. Certainly many of the potesters have lost their jobs, their homes or their pensions.
Mr. King’s words are astonishing. Americans should be shocked that this contemptible man can dismiss fellow Americans who suffer from the policies instigated by politicians, such as himself, as losers. By his words he betrays the people who voted for him.
As usual with the anti-protest lobby he accused the protesters of not having a plan for what should be done. This is a red herring. The protesters are not the people who destroyed the economies of the western world. Mainly, they are not economists or bankers and therefore do not even understand what happened. No, the protesters are the people who suffered the consequences of the actions of economists and bankers.
Let me state something which should be obvious to anyone who claims to believe in democracy and, incidentally, The American way.
PROTEST IS LEGITIMATE.
To protest you do not have to set up a complete set of alternative policies. The point of protest is a cry for help and Mr. King is ignoring these cries.
In the Bloomberg TV excerpt Mr. King appeared obsessed with cleanliness and repeated the phrase “living in dirt” numerous times. Let me suggest to this simplistic and monumentally arrogant man that, when push comes to shove, people ARE proud to live in dirt. I have absolutely no doubt that when this charlatan speaks of World War 2 or Vietnam he will eulogized the G.I.’s who lived in dirt while on active service.
We, the people who have been ripped off by our leadership, should acclaim the people who “live in dirt” in the Occupy protests because they make physical the utter repugnance and outrage that ordinary people feel for the scum who ruined our economies and then claimed that they had to be well paid or they would leave. The short answer to this is to tell them straight. Just Go. Go. And take Peter King with you.
I saw a cartoon in The Independent yesterday which implied that The Tory/Lib Dem coalition are using scare tactics to introduce spending cuts. I’ve also heard the Labour cabinet condemning all the cuts but giving no guide as to how the deficit (and the debt) which New Labour ran up should be brought under control. For those not steeped in financial jargon the debt is how much we owe and the deficit is the shortfall in our annual spending. So by running a deficit we increase the national debt. The talk by the new coalition government so far has concentrated on getting the deficit under control but bare in mind that Gordon Brown ran a deficit even during the boom years as the UK was spending more than the government gained in taxes!
Depressingly but, perhaps predictably, all we hear from everyone who has been asked to make cuts is justification for why their particular budget should not be cut. There was an education official on the radio recently “explaining” that the national debt is not like a credit card and that we can simply roll over the debt. Easy! We’re in debt, no problem, borrow more. It is this daft logic that has lead to the UK national debt of nearly 70% of GDP in 2009.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the United Kingdom became wealthy through empire and the industrial revolution and used that wealth to provide comfy lives for the British elite. Note that the majority of the British people had lives worse than many of those in India or elsewhere in the Empire mainly because of the cold British climate and the appalling working conditions during the industrial revolution. The British elite, however, did very well.
During the two world wars the European powers smashed each other to bits and America and the USSR stepped in as world leaders. The U.S. had ensured that the UK paid for aid during the war but the Marshall Plan got the UK and Western Europe back on their feat. The UK then hung on to it’s place in the world for a while. Our industry and trained workforce gave us “comparative advantage” compared to “developing countries” and so the UK and other European countries remained fairly wealthy and fairly secure. Sure Japan, Taiwan and others developed their own industry but most of the world remained pre-industrial.
Post World War 2 a Labour government came to power and, dazzled by the apparent success of Socialism in the USSR, started looking after the working class. For the first time ordinary people gained access to clean water, health care and pensions.
We developed a world view roughly as follows: The West leads the world, developing technology and operating industry, the far east copies the West and and performs some production and the “third world” supplies the raw materials but remains poor and dependent on aid.
But the UK was complacent., we became convinced that all our wealth was a natural state of affairs and that it could all be paid for by creative accounting. While we were naval gazing the Soviet Union collapsed, open markets became the vogue, China joined the World Trade Organisation and the rest of the world adopted capitalism and found that they were pretty good at it. Not only were they good at it they were unencumbered by a mature democracy or legislation to protect workers.
Global leadership, industry and power is now shifting from the democratic Western nations to nations who are either dictatorships or corrupt token democracies. As a quick preamble to my next bit of ranting I should explain, for the uninitiated, that the a common measure of a countries wealth is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is a measure of the total value of goods and services produced by a country. Because countries vary in populations another common measure is to divide GDP by the population and derive a figure known as GDP per capita. This gives a measure of how much each person, on average, produces.
Time for some figures.
UK GDP is sixth in the world, just above Brazil at 8 and India at 11 and below China at 3.
National debt is at 68% of GDP, higher than Ghana at 67.5% or Uganda at 19.3%
The UK’s budget deficit (how much more we spend than we earn) is at 14.2% of GDP, above Sierra Leone at 12.35% and Vietnam at 9.3%
And yet
The UK’s defence budget is 2.5% of GDP, that’s more than above China at 2% and Germany at 1.3%.
The UK’s Education spending is the same as South Africa and Mexico at 5.3% of GDP. That’s above Bhutan at 5.2% but below Fiji at 5.6% and Bolivia at 6.3% and Yemen at 9.5%!
It’s also worth considering that other countries do not have debt, they have surplus! They have saved money and built up substantial wealth in Sovereign Wealth Funds. For example:
United Arab Emirates 627 $Billion
Norway 443 $Billion
China 288.8 $Billion
The UK still has some cards up it sleeve. In 2008 we were the sixth biggest manufacturer after Italy but Russia was at 7 and Brazil at 8.
In recent history the UK has relied on North Sea oil to top up our income. I cannot find any figures on what percentage of our GDP is made up from Oil and Gas but I recall reading that the tax take on Oil and Gas was the largest contributor to the British exchequer followed by Finance. I believe that was before the financial crisis.
All this is not to say that the United Kingdom is doomed, just that the world is changing and we can’t rely on the UK remaining wealthy by default. British policies today dictate the future of this country and if we continue to run up a debt our nation will decline. It not rocket science. There are younger and fitter countries in the world.
Just today I heard a British politician talking about maintaining British leadership. Our political elite have not yet caught up with the 21st century. Why should Brazil, Taiwan or China be interested in being lead by a mid size debtor nation on the other side of the world?
No nation or empire lasts for ever. Nations and Empires rise and fall. The British Empire has fallen and one day the UK will fall and I suggest that, if we are not careful, people will look back and see that the obvious start was the 21st century due to complacency, vested interests and the inability of a people to make tough decisions..
We are no longer one of the few great industrialised powers in a world populated by uneducated and illiterate farmers. The UK is now just one of many educated and industrialised countries. It is true that we have a more mature system of law and democracy but undemocratic and corrupt governments around the world see this as an encumbrance and not as something to emulate.
We are in massive debt, the oil money is running out. New Labour’s policies of spend and hope have failed. I support the current government’s prescription of large scale cuts but this should be supplemented by informed strategic planning.
We should also reconsider our commitment to allowing foreign entities to buy British assets and industry. Sovereign Wealth Funds referred to above often buy industry and assets from the developed world and this is acceptable if everyone plays by the same rules. However some of the largest of these funds are owned by nations who play by very few rules. Specifically we should be wary of allowing SWFs of single party dictatorships or corrupt regimes owning large stakes in the UK.
Globalisation is all very well while the foreign money is pouring in and funding industry and jobs but once these foreign owners have their feet under the table they often find that it is more efficient to centralise production and transfer the industry abroad. This would be fair enough were it possible for British companies to buy up industry in China, Germany or Japan in the same way but other countries are not as open as the UK.
Last Sunday night there was a TV program enthusing about one industry in the UK which remains cutting edge and world leading. This was British Aerospace and it’s production of Rolls Royce Trent aircraft engines in Derby.
The company was very impressive. What is less impressive are rumours that in order to gain access to the larger and more lucrative U.S. military business British Aerospace is trying to morph into a United States company. Once this is achieved how long will it be able to justify dispersing it’s business over two continents?
How many need to die to save the face of Wen Jinbao?
The British media is reporting that China has gone ahead with the execution of Kmal Shaikh, a 53 year old father-of-three from London who was convicted of drug smuggling in China. His family have claimed that he was mentally ill and requested a medical examination. The examination was refused by the Chinese and Mr. Shaikh was executed by lethal injection.
The British government had made representation to the Chinese but I suspect that there was some fall out from the recent Copenhagen summit where the authoritarian Chinese leadership “lost face”. The Chinese regime has a reputation for throwing tantrums whenever anyone tries to interfere in it’s “internal affairs” and this time was no exception. As far as the Chinese were concerned Mr. Shaikh had to die for China to save face.
So, the British government is now angry, but one has to ask why? Why did anyone believe that a regime that maintains it’s grip on power at the point of a gun would worry about killing one man? Why does the West kowtow to China?
The answer we are given, by our supposedly informed elite, is that we need to “engage” with China and this will bring reform. Engagement usually boils down to allowing western companies to employ Chinese workers in order to lower costs.
This engagement is taken as an article of faith but I wonder if anyone can site an example where it has worked. I know of no instance where an authoritarian regime has liberalised because outside influences have traded with it and thereby increased that regime’s power. In fact, if assisting a regime to grow richer and more powerful is a recipe for improved human rights, liberalisation and greater democracy then surely this tactic should be tried with Iran.
Our elite are of course TALKING BOLLOCKS! Supporting authoritarian regimes makes them stronger and entrenches their totalitarian instincts. The key to this is that our elites are not interested in greater democracy, they are interested in greater profits.
Our leaders frequently use the terms democracy and capitalism interchangeably but they are not the same. Since the second world war western countries have, in general, been both capitalist and democratic but prior to the war democracy was not so prevalent.
In the UK, prior to 1832 only male landowners could vote. This gradually changed until it included most males by 1918 but women did not get complete voting rights until 1928. So the UK’s claims to be an ancient democracy is complete poppy cock! The UK was, and remains, a capitalist country while democracy is a recent add-on brought about by two world wars and the rise of an alternative to capitalism in the Soviet Union.
During the Cold War, with the threat (and implied alternative), of the Soviet Union, western countries became more liberal. Pensions, health care and workers rights blossomed. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the inferred failure of socialism, these hard won gains are being eroded. In the UK, one hears constantly of companies closing pension schemes along with exhortations that we must “compete” with China. By “compete” our elite mean that we must accept lower standards in the work place and lower wages.
Our leaders claim that “engagement” with an authoritarian regime will raise their standard of democracy and human rights but the truth is that the Chinese regime has no interest or need to improve human rights and rather than their standards rising we are being forced to lower ours.
We are told that we must compete or we will lose out, but hold on, the implication of this is that if China did not exist we would suffer some terrible fate as we would not be able to take advantage of their cheap labour. This is bollocks! The west went from strength to strength when the Soviet Union and China were both outside the World Trade Organisation. We may choose to trade with China but we do not “need” China.
It is true that the west has benefitted from all sorts of cheap goods from China. One only has to go onto ebay to wonder that it’s possible to buy a USB flash memory radio transmitter for £ 4.61 (yes , I did this!!). This is amazing value but do I need it? No. Would I sacrifice democracy, human rights and our children’s future for the ability to treat all goods as throw away items? NO! Do I want a world where goods are cheap but freedom is limited to an elite? NO!
The truth is that elites are always greedy – socialist or capitalist. Our leaders want engagement to increase profits but at the cost of democracy, civil rights and human rights. The protection from powerful elites is democracy. China is not a democracy and has shown no interest in democratizing.
We should be extremely cautious about becoming reliant on China for any key product or service. We should also be more robust when dealing with the Chinese. As a start there should be major repercussions from the Chinese leaders reckless behaviour at Copenhagen and execution of Kmal Shaikh.
Which do we value more, democracy and human rights or a Chinese USB stick?
On the BBC, Radio 4’s Any Questions program on Friday evening Lord Hattersley advocated a windfall tax on the oil companies.
The British government is already receiving a windfall from the increase in oil prices. Firstly through the increased prices at the pump and secondly through the sale of North Sea oil. I think it was the BBC who reported recently that oil is the biggest contributor to the British exchequer.
It’s worth noting that Gordon Brown has been hectoring the oil companies to invest more money in extracting oil from the North Sea.
When demand for a resource or commodity is greater than supply the price goes up. This enables companies to invest more and new companies find it worthwhile to get into the market. This helps adjust the disparity between supply and demand and bring prices down. By double taxing profits the government will restrict the ability of oil companies to invest. This is basic economics.
New Labour portray themselves as business literate but clearly they don’t really understand how free market capitalism works.
It’s also interesting that Lord Hattersley raised the question of pensions in regard to oil tax. I have Shell shares in an ISA which I intend to be my pension. Most people will have Shell or BP in their pensions funds. Double taxing oil companies will reduce the value of the pensions of millions of people.
The government are already receiving far too much money from oil and a windfall tax will only do harm to millions of people’s pensions.
If they are really concerned about pensioners why don’t they take some of the extra money they are already receiving from oil and give it back.
The acceptable argument for immigration seems to be that immigrants should only be allowed into the UK if our economy requires their skills.
Immigration restriction based on skills should be regarded equally sceptically as restrictions according to race.
Restrictions based on skills assume that The UK is no more than a large company importing skills and exporting goods and services. This triumph of unrestricted capitalism objectifies us all and values nothing but profit.
I have several friends who lose out to new immigrants when looking for work due to their age.
Capital and labour markets are now global but laws to protect workers and provide basic healthcare operate only at national level. This is why our governments constantly snip away at pensions and healthcare to reduce the UK government’s operational expenditure to that of our “competitors”.
While this keeps industry in the UK and value on Gordon Brown’s spreadsheet it gradually erodes our standards to those of undemocratic dictatorships like China.
The acceptable argument for immigration seems to be that immigrants should only be allowed into the UK if our economy requires their skills.
Art Photography
