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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Very nice. Elegiac but not mawkish. Sob. I shall miss you all.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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But that's the way the Fürherprinzip works. One day you're in your office, Eames chair, everybody calling you 'Sir'. Someone you thought was your friend sticks the shiv in and you're kicking a stone down that long lonely road they call Retirement.
But plotting, always plotting.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Future President of the AEL: Do you want to have sex?
Exotic Dancer: Yeah, all right.
F P: How much will you want to keep quiet about it?
E D: Oh, I dunno ... a hundred and thirty thousand should cover it.
F P: Sounds fair. Get your kit off.
E D: Actually I don't think I will after all.
F P: How come?
E D: Well, a month before the AEL elections I'll say we did even though we didn't and you'll still have to pay the 130 thou.
F P: Damn.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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So, it's Election Day in Venezuela. Although the outcome has presumably been rigged, it is difficult to see how. There appears not to be a single citizen of Venezuela who has benefited from the Leftist government's term in office and yet, I suppose, there will be the twenty-five per cent or so voting that will be sufficient to return the government for six more quasi-legitimate years. But who are these people? Surely a quarter of Venezuela's population cannot be Islington intellectuals.
Apparently you get a food hamper if you vote but that cannot explain it. You'd have to actually have your ribs showing through to take up the offer. That's a good point actually. Maybe 25% of the population is in such a state. The way Venezuela's going the government could get 51% next time. A whole new praxis.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Browsing recent posts for housekeeping reasons I came across this prescient one from M J Harper
| Since Amber Rudd is pencilled in as next PM, Pritti would have been a good bet. Now there is no chance. She might work her way back in eventually at a level junior even than Development Sec. Rudd, by the way, is a scion of a family specialising in offshore company-promotion (fairly shady ones at that) so she might get outed and blighted in the near future. |
How right and wrong I was. It is often said, eg last night on the news, that Amber Rudd was a 'casualty of the Windrush Affair'. If she had been this would have been an excellent example of both rough justice and sound accounting, but she wasn't. She said a dumb thing to a Commons Committee and didn't deal with the subsequent brouhaha with sufficient deftness. Nobody ever loses their job over policy.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I am not a Trumpet but.....
If starting a trade war, include subsidizing your own guys (inside the wall) and sticking up barriers, and tariffs to those unfortunates (outside the wall). Then it occurs that those ancient empires....China and the EU have been pretty warlike themselves.
Of course we have got a more subtle approach (we don't actually produce the raw materials...no it's a case of wrong climate.....or much too much like hard work) so Europeans are cunningly reducing tariffs on (primaries) things like imported cocoa..... but on processed cocoa, we wack on tariffs of about 30%-60% dependent on the type of good (hey that's worse than Trump).
Net result, we Europeans have a protected market in the production of chocolate bars..... so no fairtrade or free trade there......actually it is where the real profits are......
Still nobody other than Trump appears to have noticed.....
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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What everyone always misses about free trade is, as usual, the paradigms:
1. Free trade benefits advanced economies.
2. Free trade harms backward economies that are trying to become advanced economies.
3. Despite (2) free trade does benefit everyone eventually.
The USA is discovering that it is no longer the most advanced economy and is now being harmed by free trade. The EU discovered this long ago (it was based originally on the Coal & Steel Community, a 1952 cartel for protecting uncompetitive coal mines and steel plants). It is always pragmatic and hardnosed in these matters as Britain is about to find out. It's harder for the USA because it has stayed in the primary producer game (agriculture, raw materials) longer than it should have. Trump is being hardnosed but not pragmatic.
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Grant
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Free trade is the biggest con the dismal science has ever foisted on us.
If it works why is it that every leading industrial country grew into a leading position by following the exact opposite. The counter-example always used is Hong Kong, but that was never a proper country, just the commercial arm of Red China.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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That is just what I said. If you are backward but want to be forward, you impose tariffs until you are forward and then demand everyone else removes their tariffs.
Where everyone goes wrong, as per usual and as per usual Grant (we await Ishmael), is to assume that free trade is either good or bad. In fact most people elevate this to a religion (just as they do private enterprise vs state control) -- it doesn't matter which side they choose in either debate, it's still a religion. AE-ists say, 'Sometimes you do one thing, sometimes you do the other.' WTF Rules.
The key is having the ability to choose. Since it has been mentioned, Hong Kong did not wax on being China's way into the world, it waxed by being Britain's way into China. But either way it had the backing from a Top Banana to be able to choose what was best by way of free trade. Actually, being an entrepot, it had nothing to protect so was always free trade. Other parts of the British Empire couldn't choose -- they had to buy British.
The EU is exceptionally clever in recognising that it is best to be both free trade and protectionist at the same time, depending on the sector, and has the muscle to make it stick. To do it some credit, also whether it wanted to support primary producers in the old British and French empires. Yes, we had no bananas, we had to buy Fyffes. Though United Fruit's were half the price, twice the size, not to mention yellower and straighter. We were glad to do it -- that's something else people forget, economics is not always about economics.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Shocking news!
There's a shortage of free-trade CO2. This may affect the pint in your pub.
On Friday, Helen Munday (Chief Scientific Officer, Food and Drink Federation ) said
| “FDF and its members are concerned about CO2 supplies and the lack of clarity regarding how long a shortage might last and the scale of such a shortage. Despite the focus in the media on certain sectors, this is an issue that will affect much of the UK's £112bn farm-to-fork supply chain. Government must act with urgency to assess the issue as quickly as possible and support the industry through any period of restricted supply.†|
https://www.fdf.org.uk/news.aspx?article=8009&newsindexpage=1
Wos'appnin?
CO2 supply crisis hits Europe!
| In what has been described as the “worst supply situation to hit the European carbon dioxide (CO2) business in decadesâ€, many consumers of CO2 - especially the carbonated drinks producers - are desperate for supplies of the product. While the supply position tightened in April, driven by the “usual†turnaround of maintenance procedures in ammonia plants, the position started to become critical when other plants associated with bio-ethanol and chemical production were also shut down for maintenance or for technical issues. All major suppliers of liquid CO2 have been affected by the raw gas sourcing issues – including Praxair, Messer, Linde and Air Liquide. Even ACP (recently acquired by Air Products) has been impacted by the downturn in CO2 output. It appears that most of Northern and Continental Europe are struggling for product at this time – the position becoming worse just this weekend when two large and important plants went offline. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It is either an unintended consequence of some change in government policy or it is a cartel in the making.
| were also shut down for maintenance or for technical issues. |
The latter suggests the former, the former suggests the latter.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Hungary cancels Billy Elliot show after gay slurs |
Guardian headline. Well, not quite. The Hungarian State Opera has performed the musical ninety times since 2016 to audiences of 100,000 and as it was coming to its planned end, and the audiences were dropping off, the last fifteen performances were being offered at half price. Pretty standard practice.
Except in Guardianworld. They claimed that an article in a newspaper complaining that the play "could turn children gay" has resulted in cataclysmic drop offs in attendance. The first time in theatrical history that all publicity was not good publicity. Although, in Guardian terms, theirs was the bigger splash.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Some of the lessons of history appear to be lost on Facebook. You can now get banned by Facebook administrators for "hate speech" for posting quotes from famous historial documents.
| The Liberty County Vindicator, a newspaper serving Liberty, Texas, posted “small bites†from the Declaration on its Facebook page in the leadup to the USA’s July 4th Independence Day, “To make it a little easier to digest that short but formidable historic documentâ€. |
They posted the following paragraphs. They may be more familliar to Ishmael than us Brits.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. |
It might have been the term “Indian Savages†that was the problem. Perhaps "Native Americans at a challenging stage of cultural development' would have been better?
Unless it was "fake news" and they think the Declaration was a forgery?
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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The BBC is saying as much as it can, without saying anything.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Yes, it has been obvious from Day One, that HMG has been breaking the fundamental Applied Epistemological Law: one input, one output. Clearly there is no reason why Skripal would choose to live down the road from Porton, the centre of nerve gas production in Britain, hence no reason for the Russkies to nerve gas him down the road from Porton. Unless this new poisoning really is just a bywash of the original event, we now have one input, three outputs.
The really fascinating thing is What Comes Next, assuming it is allowed to be played out. I will paint both scenarios shortly.
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