Cameron and Brown Share a Common Policy... But Neither Realise It

Cameron and Brown go on blasting away about the National Insurance increase without actually listening to each other.      If they did,  they might realise their supposedly opposite policies, are actually the same in effect.    Permit me to illustrate.

Cameron berates Brown for "wasting £6Bn" which he doesn't need to, and for planning an N.I increase next year which he calls a "jobs tax".     And Brown rips into Cameron,  claiming that to "take £6Bn out of the economy"  would be the worst thing to do before the recovery is sound. 

But Brown is mis-describing mercilessly  (innocently I think).    For, with regard to "taking money out of the economy",  that  is exactly what  taxing the populus with the extra 1% on National Insurance,  is.  Tax takes money from the economy to pay for government.    So he's describing the exact opposite of what would happen if a new Tory government cancelled his 1% tax rise:    rather than "taking £6Bn out",   that £6Bn would be left within the (commercial) economy.      

What he means to say of course, but fails to,  is it would take the £6Bn out of government funds  - which he wants to re-spend inside the economy.

Equally though,  Cameron is mis-describing :  he implies that cancelling the N.I. tax increase next year if he comes to power,  would somehow "ease" the load on businesses by not adding to 'jobs taxes'  -   but the difference is,  he  won't  spend that money back into the economy from government (because he is so adamant that we must cut the budget defecit more quickly),  while Gordon would.

This shows that both of these two policies would in fact have the same net effect.     Cameron wouldn't take the £6Bn in extra tax,  but wouldn't spend it back in the economy either;   and Brown would take the extra tax,  but would re-spend it all back on public services. 

So, despite their protestations that they are so different,  this particular sample of policy would produce results not a jot different from one another.   

One thing is sure - those spin-doctors of theirs obviously do think we're all stupid. 

AT LAST...... Someone Points the Finger at the Ratings Agencies

AT LAST.....   when the financial crisis bit us all in the backside, and the documentary programmes started to be made,  one massive truth seemed to emerge.   Among all the greed and double-dealing that doubtless went on in the banks, one big, unmentioned fact seemed to be lurking in the background, particularly in relation to how otherwise uninvolved financial institutions were dragged into buying these "repackaged" mortgage-debt instrument, CDOs.  

The Credit Ratings Agencies.    Standard & Poor and Moodys being the best known, these are the outfits whose job it was to "grade" the risk of all those obsure investment products.  But they seemed to have run out of labels - except for "AAA".   

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8639224.stm

Conservatives reveal their 'Big Stick' to beat Sun Readers with

This week the Conservatives revealed their 'Big Stick'  -  and with it, the truth about where they're going to cut all those needed billions from,  among Government spending.

First sign I saw of it, was seemingly a Conservative PR Tweet (Twitter is just a PR machine, after all).   At first I thought it was a spoof : surely the Cons were not being so crude ?   But yes - they were - and are -  and a few clicks over to their blue blog on the Conservative website, and there was their own press release for it - this is it verbatim:
"This new poster underlines our positive agenda for welfare reform - http://twitpic.com/1h3db6     10:54 AM Apr 20th  via Echofon"  

And there too was Theresa May banging on about all those terrible welfare dependents too : 
http://blog.conservatives.com/index.php/2010/04/20/we-need-to-tackle-welfare-dependency/

Well blow me down.   So the Tories are going to slash and burn in the welfare budget..  no big surprise really.  

It was always clear that all the parties would have some serious cost-cutting up their sleeve : and we're not surprised that no political party wanted to show their cards in that area before the election.    And with the Tories,  you just knew they wouldn't funk it: they would have some serious cuts in mind.

 
Now no-one would dispute that we do have some perfectly fit,  but yet work-shy people lolling around in this country..   just pop into the betting shop or a high street pub at ten to eleven on a Tuesday morning, and see who's propping up the bar.    Not retired folk, that's for sure.   And no-one would dispute that at a running cost - the UK welfare budget - of  £170,000,000,000 a year at the moment  - one-third of all government spending, or about  £500 million per day (yes, per day)  -  that there is doubtless some fat to be cut off.

But these are going to be sorely painful cuts,  and some of them will fall on people who thought the Tories were their natural political choice: all those Sun readers for example.   So why did the Tories admit it so openly before the election ?  

What makes me smile is that Boris Johnson made a joking reference at the start of the campaign to the Tories being misunderstood - saying in so many words that   "... after all [we're] not a load of boss-eyed maniacs  ...  seeking to grind the face of the poor into the dirt....".   

Only the Lib Dems give their figures... and even they are still £157,000,000,000 short

Yesterday the Liberal Democrats released their manifesto in the UK general election and were the first to put their figures in the back.

But, like the Conservatives and Labour,  the only actual contribution that they show,  to the cutting of our enormous Government spending defecit of £167Bn,  is around a flat £10Bn a year, from next year. 

They offer to raise the threshold of personal tax to £10,000  -  but that costs a staggering £17Bn in itself.  So, dutifully, they scrape up an odd £17Bn to pay for that from a mix of some cuts and from some tax increases.

Then over the page, they set out their "Savings".   But look all down this list, and you'll find about £10Bn saved - next year, not this - and then about the same for four more years ahead.   But this defecit of ours is an annual committment - we're not short £167Bn once, we're short that much every year.   So saving an odd ten off the top is good,  but barely a fifteenth of the pain we'll need to inflict to solve this problem eventually.

This is the problem with all three parties.   None of them can bear to show us the true horror of that much cash needing to be saved.   In truth, since the gap is around £170Bn now and annual government spending is around £700Bn,  we need to somehow reduce the cost of government by around 25%.   Yes 25%.  A quarter.   Or, to split it between taxes and expenditures,  we need to raise tax revenues by at least 10-12% and cut spending by at least 10-12%.   But that is still massive on both sides of the equation.   And none of them will explain any of this. 

Will we find out more in the third (economy-focussed) TV debate ?   I doubt it.

Google's Buzz Screw Up Reveals a 'Childlike' View of Society

Having only recently cleaned the merde off their shoes from the Google China embarrassment,  here they are stepping in it all over again with Buzz.

What exactly have they done ?    Keen to join the 'social networking' mainstream they launched Buzz - an easy-to-get started network, linked to Gmail (Googlemail) accounts.   Their mistake was to by default make up a "starting friends list" based on the most frequently mailed parties in your Gmail address book (stored on their servers, of course).  

This meant that new users trying it out,  found that lots of people they communicated with using Gmail were unexpectedly introduced to each other by appearing in the user's network.    A recent interviewer described reaction as ranging from "furious" to "extremely furious".  

This is no surprise,  as the gurus of social networking - across all the networks - fail to recognise a simple reality of grown-up relationships :  adults have networks of friends and contacts, yes, but we don't automatically "pool" them all as one - there are a host of reasons why we don't wish everyone in our circle to know everyone else.  

The simplest reason for this is business:  many of us associate and socialise at whatever level, with people we do business with:  but I certainly don't want all my suppliers,  to know who my customers are:  nor frankly do I want all my suppliers to know about each other - that changes my relationship with them radically.    

This is true of course in personal relations too - one alarming concern instantly raised with Google over Buzz, was the potential number of women with past abusive partners, who might now be provided with information about their new partners and friends and so cause new trouble or threats.  

The root cause of Google's pratfall over this is simple : social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and the like all started life in the innocent, simple society of students:  indeed Facebook takes its very name from the Harvard fresher's introduction book.   But students are at a time of life when they are happy developing a big pool of 'mates' :  they're early in life and so free of relationship baggage, and have few worries about what people read about them.    Those of us a few years further down the track know that revealing everything about  yourself online is very far from a wise route.   Perhaps over time these networks will 'grow up' enough to be useful to the adults. 

Accept it, Carbon Reduction is a Lost Cause: 2

Monday 7th December 2009:   "Copenhagen summit urged to take climate change action".

Yvo de Boer there tells us encouragingly that an unprecendented number of new countries are pitching in with positive action  -  like South Africa:  they've promised to  "reduce the rate of growth of carbon emissions by a third in the next decade".    

Did you you spot that ?   "reduce the rate of growth of  ... carbon emissions  ... by a third...".     Oh goody - so instead of their emissions increasing steeply as industry develops, they'll only now grow two-thirds as steeply.    Excellent.   Lots more toxic smog,  just two-thirds of the amount of extra smog toxic per annum, that was previously contemplated.  

It's this kind of double-talk  -  like China's new reductions in "carbon intensity"  -  i.e. increasing carbon emissions annually, but at a rate a bit less than industrial output grows   -  that devalues this whole enterprise.  

It's clear - and it's absolutely no surprise at all  -  that given every chance to look "green" while sidestepping the real, difficult action needed to actually reduce emissions from current or even 1990 levels,  every slippery politician on the planet will take the easy route.   From here on, expect to hear about a lot of  "...reduced rates [of growth].. of emissions.."  and "reduced carbon intensities".   All the way to the cosmic ashcan.  

Kyoto was meant to be committment to hard reductions targeted up to 2012.   The Americans trashed that by turning their back on it.   Now here they are again stitching up a deal to point onward to .... where ? 2020 ?   No doubt at that stage more brows will be furrowed, and more earnest calls to action made - in a scheme probably then targeting 2050. 

Obama has found a new way to insult the process, much more elegant in form that George Bush's  "we will do nothing that will damage the American economy".  He's going to pop in to Copenhagen...   but just for one day.   Then a little light shopping for gifts and off back home.     How more completely could he damage this event except by staying away altogether. 

Perhaps the subject will begin being taken seriously when Obama's and Hu Jin Tao's ankles start getting wet.   

Accept it, Carbon Reduction is a Lost Cause: 1

India today reveals their "carbon reduction" plans for the decade ahead and, big surprise, they've borrowed China's bright idea of "carbon intensity".    Never heard that term before last week, did we ?  the trick being to define "carbon intensity" as your carbon emission per unit of GDP : thus neatly allowing industry to claim earnest best efforts in eco-sensitivity while keeping on growing and belching smoke.

This neat ecological hip-swivel allows grimy economies to go boldly on growing, provided the new industries are just a little less stinky that the ones which grew in previous decades... not hard, really.

And overall ?  it is just another confirmation that carbon emission reduction, as a general premise for supposedly saving the planet, is just not going to happen.

That truly is the reality : the 'BRICs' economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China) - who together have half the population of earth within their borders - are going to enjoy their own industrial revolution this century : and there just will not be the political will to give anything more than lip-service to the idea of reducing carbon emission radically.

For those of us not just recently out of the nest, this is old news: it was plain in the 1970's that we were on the road to gently wrecking the atmosphere and the time to have started doing something about it was then : it's just too late now.   Modern economies hose carbon into the atmosphere like cash into a wall street [b]anker's wallet and they are not about to cease doing so.

And Joe Public doesn't have the will either : to really cut back on our emissions, would mean closing down most of our productive industry and reverting our mode of living back to the eighteenth century: it's just not going to happen.   There are six thousand million of us seething like locusts on this planet, everyone loving their modern appliances and cars and warm homes.  Want to save some energy ?  put on a thick sweater and turn the heat down.   Is that going to happen in middle America ?  No.   Is China going to stop building power stations ?   No.   Is Brazil going to stop industrialising ?   No.   Is India ?   No.



SO : if carbon truly is a lost cause, what then ?    Well we will have to adapt, that is all.

Adaptation is the real option (and one we could be getting on with now instead of the political time-wasting over carbon which will go on for the next decade or two).   Yes the temperatures will shift a bit (they do anyway).    Yes the water levels will rise a bit, and some island nations will have to move.    Yes some coastal regions of Europe and North America will flood a bit (stop press !  house price drama in southern England .... ).    JUST GET OVER IT.  

Later, when it is patently obvious our options for fixing the problem are nothing to do with dreaming hopelessly that the world will fall out of love with energy,  there will be some practical answers : some quiet scientists have already been looking at ways of altering the opacity of the upper atmosphere and actually reducing the amount of incident solar heat in a practial way.   Politicians will dismiss these ideas as crackpot for a few more decades - because they find it easier to waste a few hundred billion on pointless wars than on actually building the industries that really could do something useful toward fixing some of these problems.

And what is the most exasperating aspect of this collective governmental stupidity ?  If instead of wasting two or three hundred billion dollars on the illegal invasion of Iraq, America and the west had spent that money on fusion research,  we would by now have cracked that difficult but marvellous technology.    By now we would be beginning to deploy that final, clean electricity generation technology which will be the one which finally allows us to stop emitting carbon.