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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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WASHINGTON – Assistant United States Trade Representative Adam Hodge today released a statement in response to the final public reports in United States – Certain Measures on Steel and Aluminum Products (DS544, 552, 556, and 564).
“The United States strongly rejects the flawed interpretation and conclusions in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Panel reports released today regarding challenges to the United States’ Section 232 measures on steel and aluminum brought by China and others. The United States has held the clear and unequivocal position, for over 70 years, that issues of national security cannot be reviewed in WTO dispute settlement and the WTO has no authority to second-guess the ability of a WTO Member to respond to a wide-range of threats to its security.
“These WTO panel reports only reinforce the need to fundamentally reform the WTO dispute settlement system. The WTO has proven ineffective at stopping severe and persistent non-market excess capacity from the PRC and others that is an existential threat to market-oriented steel and aluminum sectors and a threat to U.S. national security. The WTO now suggests that the United States too must stand idly by. The United States will not cede decision-making over its essential security to WTO panels.
“The Biden Administration is committed to preserving U.S. national security by ensuring the long-term viability of our steel and aluminum industries, and we do not intend to remove the Section 232 duties as a result of these disputes.†|
Is the Trump trade war with China still going?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It's difficult to judge the judgement because the Americans always go ape-shit whenever world bodies they set up turn against them. Everyone else just quietly shuffles around adverse rulings as best they can. The WTO is clearly saying the 'national security' angle is baloney (as it often is).
| Is the Trump trade war with China still going? |
Some say Biden has tightened it. This is another American habit: trumpet free trade unless it's biting them in the arse.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Turkey has been a genuine, if flawed, democracy for a very long time. It is the only Islamic country that can claim this distinction. Whether it will remain so is looking increasingly unlikely.
| A Turkish court has sentenced Istanbul’s mayor to prison and banned him from politics. Guardian |
Who he?
| Ekrem Ä°mamoÄŸlu rode to power on a wave of support in 2019. President Erdogan came to power after being elected Mayor of Istanbul. |
How did President Erdogan react?
| The result was annulled by the election council after Erdogan's party complained. The re-run election was an even bigger victory for ImamoÄŸlu. |
How did his opponent react?
| In a press release afterwards, İmamoğlu said: “The people who cancelled the first election are fools.†|
The sentence?
| Two years, seven months and 15 days in prison for calling members of Turkey’s supreme election council “foolsâ€. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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British railways are a weird mix of private and public. The Thatcherite model of total privatisation was handicapped by the infrastructure being already in place and heavily unionised with all the usual Spanish practices in place too. The trains, though operated by private companies, were not subject to competition, other than at the initial franchising stage. Has it worked?
Maybe... kinda... Despite the protests of the buffs (railway and political) it has to be said that services are much better, reflected in the doubling of use over quite a short period and against the historic trend. It still cost a great deal of public money in subsidies but, again, it was hard to judge because the British have a system of mulcting the peak period passenger rather than the taxpayer, so comparisons with elsewhere are difficult.
But the model seems to have run into terminal problems mainly because, it turned out, franchisees don't have enough time to do other than sweat the assets (often because they had to overpay to get the franchise in the first place) and the privately run infrasture was put an end to -- perhaps prematurely -- after a series of accidents. So, overall, neither a good test case nor a shining example of either public or private enterprise.
Italy is offering quite a different model...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| The rail liberalisation process that occurred on the Italian high-speed network is considered by many a successful example of competition in the rail market. The 28th of April marks the tenth anniversary of the introduction of new high-speed services by Italo, the competitor of the national incumbent Trenitalia. What are the outcomes so far and what are the possible future developments in Italy and in Europe? |
I cannot speak for the prejudices of the commentator but it seems fair enough
| Italo has shown not to be a threat to the national incumbent, but instead a stimulus to improve and become more productive. Trenitalia did not reduce its services, but instead increased them, and many secondary stations and new lines started to be served by high-speed rail. From the initial nine destinations served on the Milan – Naples corridor, now Italo trains can be boarded in forty stations in thirty-five different cities around Italy. Frequencies have been increased, prices have been lowered and a broad range of high-quality services are now available. |
Somewhat reminiscent of what happened when ITV was introduced to compete with the BBC in the 1950's. Does this sound familiar?
| The need to open up the market could mainly be attributed to the low productivity rates of the rail sector and the high subsidies given by the government. |
Or this?
| Inspired by the structure of “low cost†airlines, fixed costs are minimised and every process is digitalised as much as possible, while many tasks are outsourced, such as rolling stock maintenance, catering, and security |
It had one other beneficial side effect. Alitalia, the national airline and a byword for incompetence and enormous subsidisation, was finally given the chop. The trains could now take the strains. But what of this?
| Will the Italian success be replicated? |
Not a chance in countries where public and private advocates sit in their little hutches.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Should we have a 'truth law'? Sam Fowles, Guardian
Today's politicians mislead parliament with impunity and democracy pays the price.
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Okey doke, Sam, tell us why it is so necessary at this time. This time of troubles.
| In recent years politicians have repeatedly based the case for historic changes on lies. |
Come on, Sam, lying to Parliament is a already a big no-no. Don't they have to resign or something? Hardly needs a new law, does it?
| These have ranged from the infamous “Brexit busâ€, which promised £350m a week for the NHS |
That was a political stunt, Sam, that blew up in their faces five minutes after the bus was unveiled. Though insofar as it was true (we were paying the EU £350 million a week) it was effective enough. You want a law outlawing this kind of thing? Really?
| to government framing of recent rail strikes as “selfish†|
Oh come on, strikers aren't doing it for someone else's benefit, are they? Are you saying some minister came out and intoned, "Rail strikers are selfish," and we need a law to stop them doing it. The ministers, I mean, not the strikers. Apparently we do because...
| because, as Boris Johnson told one interviewer: “Train drivers are on £59,000 and some are on £70,000.†|
Now hold on, Sam. Hold on just one cotton picking minute. Boris has been nowhere to be seen during these current strikes. And as an ex-railwayman myself, I can assure you it is perfectly true. Train driver really do get paid in the £59-70,000 range. The rest of us were pretty brassed off about it, I can tell you, which is why the drivers have a union all to themselves. You surely are not advocating a law that suppresses politicians saying true things, are you?
| (The average wage of a striker is below £36,000.) |
Ah, I see what you've done there. Juxtaposed two facts in such a way as to make it seem that a prime minister is branding poor strikers as selfish when that's not what he did at all. I'm going to have to write to your editor about that, I'm afraid. It's tantamount to lying.
| Politicians consistently mislead about issues of national importance. I know this first-hand – I was part of the legal team that proved Johnson’s prorogation of parliament in 2019 was unlawful. |
If you were, you would surely know that lying was not involved. The government followed a policy that most people thought was lawful but the Supreme Court found, to most people's surprise, was in fact unlawful. Now come on, Sam, buckle down. Tell us about some politicians lying. Oh, that was it, was it? Oh well, never mind, better luck next time.
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Grant
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Sam Fowles as a leftist is indeed “advocating a law which suppresses politicians saying true things.â€
When I were a lad, leftists supported anti-war campaigns and promoted free speech. Now they are in charge they have no time for these things, hence the stigmatisation of Donald Trump and the promotion of war.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Nice use of the word 'hence', Grant, I'm sending your name to the Guardian in case they've got some openings for bright young shavers like yourself.
This week's homework for the political situationism class is to (a) work out where on the spectrum Grant is by his use of the phrase 'now the leftists are in charge' (b) compose a questionnaire for him which asks, without drawing attention to it, when this happened and (c) make sure your essays on "Why AE-ists may not occupy a position on the political spectrum" are in on time for the end-of-year review.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The last time news bulletins led with multivariate strikes day after day was in the seventies. One might say throughout the seventies. It promoted a fin-de- siècle atmosphere of doom and gloom that presaged Britain taking a completely different course, which it did in the eighties. None of this seems present this time around. It has more the air of -- and the imagery is used constantly in news bulletins -- an advent calendar counting off the days until Christmas when, as it were, we all go on strike.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Almost the only time left-wingers are faced personally with the consequences of their ideological assumptions is when junior (or juniorette) is coming up to eleven and the question of which secondary school they are to attend looms.
For reasons I've never quite understood there is no difficulty over primary schools which are all-but-perfect models of comprehensives. They take everyone in a given neighbourhood, they do not separate pupils into streams, and they churn out mini-adults fluent in the three R's with a smattering of other stuff. The pupils seem to rather enjoy their time there. At eleven, everything changes. For Mr & Mrs Lefty this means
(a) sending their offspring to the nearest comprehensive where they will be beaten up for being posh, be bored to tears and learn next-to-nothing.
(b) start the finagling necessary to get them into the local grammar-lite. This changes over time but typically will be a foundation school or a faith school or a comprehensive with a charismatic headmaster or one with a catchment area that is overwhelmingly middle class. If the finagling is successful -- competition is intense -- and if the school retains its artificially enhanced status for the next seven years, junior will proceed seamlessly on to university.
(c) go private.
Since left-wingers are not permitted to 'go private' this can be finessed by opting for a (private) Montessori school or a Steiner school or something similar, in which case no awkward questions will be asked about their commitment to the comprehensive principle. ("Oh, they take pupils of every ability, they pride themselves on it, there's no question of selection.") On the other hand the parents will have a weirdo on their hands for life.
So, many parents bite the bullet and just go private -- basically pay a great deal of money to ensure a grammar school education for little Johnny or Janey that used to be free. Actually parent since a good dodge is to explain that "Their mother insisted, she can be a bit unreconstructed about these things, what could I do?" or "Their father is a bit old-fashioned, so for the sake of domestic harmony..."
But going private is not straightforward either...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| A prestigious private school in London has faced multiple investigations into the way it awarded exam grades in 2021, when all its A-level entries received A* or A, the Guardian has learned. |
Would you choose a school that is daft enough to take advantage of Covid-induced teacher assessments to give A-grades to every pupil when its last pre-Covid externally-monitored exam record was
| 34% achieved the grade in 2019 |
and pay £22,000 a year for the privilege? Actually you probably would, I know your sort. Personally I wouldn't want any child of mine mixing with such a bunch of thickoes, you get a higher rate of A's in the local creamed comprehensive. I would, like every responsible parent, carry on voting Labour
| “Labour would end private schools’ tax breaks and use the money to invest in a brilliant state education for everyone.†|
Like they've been doing since 1945. I have every confidence they will hit on the right formula one day. They only have to ask.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The Dambusters (1955 film)
This was on Sky Cinema over Christmas and I recorded it and fast-forwarded it (I deal with it at ordinary speed in An Unreliable History of the Second World War) just to see how they deal with the fact that Wing-Commander Guy Gibson's dog is called -- repeatedly -- Nigger. He is now 'Trigger' and you can't tell the join! Only someone of my generation would remember that Trigger was Roy Rogers' horse.
A triumph of electronic editing and a tiny contribution to the annals of bogus history. (And one I do not strenuously oppose.)
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The contretemps between London and Edinburgh over the Scottish legislation re gender-change is more important than -- or at any rate different from -- the usual media treatment of nations-at-verbal-war. Let us be clear on two things
1) the legislation itself is mind-bogglingly trivial. Sixteen rather than eighteen, that sort of thing.
2) gender-change is the latest badge of political correctness. Nobody is against it, everybody differs about how much the state should be involved in what is, or ought to be, a strictly private choice. (Including, it should be pointed out, a large minority of the Scottish National Party.)
But the 'British' government's position is correct. If you pass legislation based on being resident in one country or the other and if you live on an island where being resident in one is as easy as being resident in the other (whether they are formally independent from one another or not) then you can't have, as Stalin put it, legislation in one country. This question is going to bedevil everything until and unless we have, as the Irish put it, a hard border.
And, dear Scotland, are you prepared to live on the other side of that? It won't make a ha'pence worth of difference to us.
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Grant
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My Nan’s sister - born about 1900 - used to have a wooden page boy which held her ashtray. Whenever she wanted a fag she would say without a trace of irony or racism, “Where’s my nigger?â€
Even as a child in the 70s I wondered if Auntie should say that
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Some interesting problems have been encountered with our newest arrivals, Ukrainians. We take you to Brum. "They were awfully nice but they've decided to leave us to go elsewhere." "Oh, weren't they happy?" "No, they said there were too many Muslims."
| "Their son was enrolled into the local school where the majority of children happened to be black and Asian. Could more be done to help the refugees who've settled here to integrate?" Channel 4 reporter |
If they come from a country which is pretty much a hundred per cent white and a hundred per cent Christian, maybe start them off in Tunbridge Wells. They'll soon learn our little ways.
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