大象传媒

3:30 am ''British Kebab time''

It is that grass roots understanding and natural unforced humorous empathy with the real people in a nation (any nation)that sets you apart from other journalists.

Long may it continue.

In one's Leigh subjects, comes as standard

I can't help thinking of the similarities between Wales and Gary whilst watching that.

Steel-works, post-industrial landscape, state-funding, a minority people dependent upon benefits and seemingly unable to grasp the concept of a free-market.

Paul,

A bit of an aside but I was in the post office this morning collecting my refund from N-Powers systematic overcharging which was in the news recently and commenting (as you do) about how nice it is to get something back for a change (I picked up 拢27).

Anyhow, the lady mentioned that a disabled guy was in there earlier collecting his refund, even though he owed the gas supplier 拢4,000, they had made a mistake and not charged it against his arrears.

''拢4,000'' !! I said.

''Yes'' she said and shrugged her shoulders.

''It is quite common, it is against the law for the provider to cut his gas off because he is disabled, so he never pays the bill''.

And he still had the cheek to cash in his refund!!!

Just how common is this I wonder?

#4 Jericoa

Whilst we could question the morality of this disabled individual, an analysis of society requires we look at the bigger picture.

What is/are the driving forces of history?
Why do we live in the kind of society we do?
How does it reproduce itself?

There's no harm in knowing these facts about individual behaviour.
It's just that they get used in a divide & rule way (see how the Daily Express & Mail scapegoats immigrants & other 'cheats' & 'scroungers').

We won't get a better world by preaching individual morality.
We need to understand how society reproduces itself & how we can collectively change the world.

This is actually a response to your comments at the bookfair yesterday:

I'm not a very good public speaker so I didn't do the best
by what I wanted to say yesterday at the Anarchist's Bookfair.

Had my thoughts been better organised, I would have said something like
this:

I work in the voluntary sector which is supposed to be taking up the
slack on the one hand and is also being severely cut back itself. I've
been to several meetings held by the two councils I work across and
their voluntary agencies about the impending cuts. The sensation is that
of being in a pack of lemmings herded off the cliff, and whether it
makes any difference or not I always stand up to say that what we seem
to be accepting is that it's ok for the banks to steal our taxes. What
this crisis is finally made me realise is that cuts in public services
are theft, pure and simple. People have been hearing about cuts and how
they should fight them for 30 years; this only really exercises a
handful of trade unionists, but most people do respond when the
discussion is framed around theft.

I was disappointed in your recent US reports which spent a long time
focussing on the Tea Party, without much insight into what is actually
going on with it - most of the TP candidates are
backed by the Koch Brothers and other right-wing money men, who have
twisted things round to their agenda, played on people's fears, and
promoted magical thinking on a range of issues. And posing it as some kind of congenital problem that Americans don't seem to know what to do with public money. Worse, there was no coverage of the positive developments in the US. Like the public banking movement I mentioned (which is about more than just credit unions) and the growing interest in local currencies which I didn't, or the developments in Detroit which someone else mentioned.

Then there is the exposure of rampant title fraud during foreclosure
proceedings in the US, something which I've been following for over
three years now in the business pages of the NYT. Incredible that you
were there as the story finally got to US television as 'Foreclosuregate' and said nothing about it. If the titles can't be found for a large
proportion of properties sold after 2006, and upon which much of the
securitisation ponzi scheme was built, will this not have a huge impact
on the banking system there, and everywhere? And wouldn't it be
helpful for people here in the UK who face foreclosure to know that the
bank which supposedly holds their mortgage may not know where the title
is any more? It's given the word 'squatting' in the States a whole new
twist.

Establishment economists on both the left and right have failed utterly
in both predicting this crisis and continue to fail when analysing it.
GDP is now an extremely hollow way of measuring economic activity, since
it counts as growth anything exchanged for money. The physical
infrastructure can fall apart, public services can go by the way,
welfare can be slashed, the environment can be dessicrated - but as long
as the arms, financial and security industries 'grow', which add no
value to the economy in the way most people understand the term, the
economy is deemed to be 'growing'. Why are alternative ways of measuring
growth not given more time, especially by people like yourself? What we
also need is a clearer discussion of what money is, and how it is
created and controlled by the banks. It is after all a man-made system,
and I'm getting heartily tired of the attitude taken by most experts
that it is more mysterious than the weather. I'm no gold-bug, but a
wider debate about currency and credit creation would be useful.

(What did you mean by saying the question should be about 'capital'?
Capital as in means of production, which the banks themselves have
abandoned in favour of speculation on debt, or the 'capital' banks are
supposed to keep as a ratio of their loans, but which has meant little
since the spread of credit cards and sub-prime mortgages?)

What we're facing is only what most Third World countries have been
facing for over thirty years themselves: the banks threw loans around
thinking only of the interest and fees, and then when some of their bets
went bad decided to call everything in, no matter how much damage that
did to the actual economy. Governments are always in debt, and the
banks' power to whimsically decide when and how this should be paid down
is the tyranny which lies behind the cuts.

With the head of Goldman Sachs' claim that he is doing 'God's work' we
know that our money (or capital if you will) is being controlled
primarily by delusional sociopaths. The TUC missed an open goal when
they refused to engage with Mervyn King, one of the few bankers who does
not seem delusional or sociopathic, and his challenge to come up with
alternatives. I find hope in the fact there are people doing just that,
but they are almost all entirely outside the old leftist and union
structures, and are often condemned by the same as crackpots, or
suspected of having a right wing agenda, which the great majority do not.

The question is no longer about whether some form of 'working class' movement will rise up or not but survival of the human species.

Jericoa @4

It's the first I've heard of it. I suppose in all walks of life you have people taking the piss. Don't they have key meters like the electricity suppliers have? Sounds like they should.

MORE ON THE PUBLIC - PRIVATE 'SCAM'


UK WORK FORCE
PUBLIC SECTOR PRIVATE SECTOR TOTAL
year million % million % million
1999 5.2 19 22 9 80.7 27.1
2000 5.2 19 22 2 80.7 27 5
2001 5.4 20 22 3 80.5 27 7
2002 5.5 20 22 4 80.3 27 9
2003 5.7 20 22 5 79.9 28 2
2004 5.8 20 22 6 79.6 28 4
2005 5.9 20 22 9 79.6 28 8
2006 5.9 20 23 2 79.9 29 0
2007 5.8 20 23 4 80.1 29 2
2008 5.8 20 23 7 80.4 29 5
2009 6.0 21 22 8 79.0 28 9


Now, bear in mind that nearly half the Public Sector employees work for the NHS and Education which are 'protected from cuts'.

Now, who will have been responsible for most of the borrowing/debt do you think? The 20% comprising the Public Sector, or the 80% comprising the Private Sector?

Source, same ONS source as earlier post.

#6 cityeyrie

What a great post! It succinctly captures much of what has been posted (by thousands of others) on many of these 大象传媒 blogsites over the past two/three years, since the crash occured.

#9

"It is after all a man-made system, and I'm getting heartily tired of the attitude taken by most experts that it is more mysterious than the weather."

"I promise to pay the bearer" says it all really, doesn't it?

#5

Thanks for the response, I was not really judging the morality of the disabled person (although I think that is an issue worthy of debate in itself), I was more simply wondering how common this is.

How many people on 'incapacity benefit' simply never pay any utility bills. Is it the western world's equivalent of the illegal connections to power lines they have all over India for instance..is it in effect an undisclosed social benefit 'by stealth' instigated by the law that they can not be disconnected and paid for by higher gas bills or electricity bills for everyone else.

The morality of it has to be wound up into amuch larger debate, but as astarting point I was curious as to just how prevalent this is and how much does it cost.

There is aside issue here of course i.e. the rank incompetence of N-power, not only do they 'rip off' millions (?) of customers and are forced to pay them back by the regulator, then they mess that 'pay back' by sending out cash refunds via the post office even to those who are massively in arrears.

Worthy of a bit of investigation in itself??

I think I will change my power provider anyway.


#7 re 'key meters'... no idea, just seemed like a potential interesting avenue of research for one of Pauls researchers for an hour or two, it may come to nothing. It could be very rare, alternatively it could be quite a large but as yet unreported ( because nobody wants to point fingers at the 'disadvantaged'). I dont know.. it just peaked my interest. It does not take that many people to be 4k in arrears for sums to become quite large.. who picks up the bill?

Not entirely unrelated to Gary etc either, it kind of marks a potential growth of an underclass in the west who avoid energy poverty by playing the system. In that sense all power to them, because if we got our act together nobody would need to be energy poor anyway.

"9. At 11:52am on 24 Oct 2010, DebtJuggler wrote:
#6 cityeyrie

What a great post! It succinctly captures much of what has been posted (by thousands of others) on many of these 大象传媒 blogsites over the past two/three years, since the crash occured."

Agreed.

It's odd that it doesn't catch on a bit more though isn't it? It's almost as if most people are in a dogmatic slumber, drugged up, in a haze, alienated etc..

Anyone feel they're being distracted yet?

The consequences of nationalising private sector losses January 15, 2010 5:42pmby FT | Share By Michael Pomerleano

A .... more subtle explanation focuses on the massive transfer of private debt onto government balance sheets. The message is fairly simple. The nationalisation of private debt injects considerable inefficiency into the economic system, inhibiting Schumpeter鈥檚 process of Creative Destruction that is essential in a market economy and needed to maintain the private sector. In short, the recent massive bailouts by national authorities of their financial systems in some countries amount to nationalising private sector debt with fiscal resources. In countries without fiscal headroom and lacking reserve currencies, such as Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, the IMF jumped to the rescue with sovereign lending that has basically nationalised the losses of the private sector - what Joe Stiglitz calls 鈥楨rsatz Capitalism鈥�: the privatising of gains and the socialising of losses..............

........In the US the verdict on saving 鈥渘ational champions鈥� in the auto industry - Chrysler, GM - is not yet in, but the process of nationalising private debt was used in Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, and more recently in Hungary, Romania and Ukraine...

...Another example of a massive transfer of private debt to the national balance sheet without nationalising the private sector was of course in Japan in the aftermath of the asset bubble. For the better part of the 90鈥檚 the Japanese government extended forbearance to a banking system that in turn extended forbearance to the corporate sector through the infamous 鈥渆vergreens鈥�. Japan鈥檚 financial system struggled with non-performing loans. The forbearance and continuing partial recapitalisation of the banks, without decisive measures to attack the core problem - a distressed private sector - ended transferring the debt to the national balance sheet. The outcome is well known. Japan has one of the highest public debts in the world, and the corporate and banking restructuring process was partial. Japanese banks are some of the most undercapitalised banks in the world."



Why do you think people like Vince Cable etc are being so coy? It's because they're spinning having used Public assets to bail out over leveraged Private Sector companies (and the banks which were eager to make money out of that), by sacrificing the assets and jobs of the innocent. Free market capitalism - libertarianism didn't work, or did it? If they DO get away with what they're up to, they will have asset-stripped once again, just as they did before. It's all done by mining state assets..

#12 tn02

Agreed, it's all been a complete fraud (shell game!).

It seems that there's nothing that can be done to stop this.

Maybe when the cuts really begin to bite, the great and the good in this country will start to rise up.

(PS - one of them is called 'writingsonthewall' on RP's blog)

"13. At 6:19pm on 24 Oct 2010, DebtJuggler wrote:

"Agreed, it's all been a complete fraud (shell game!).

It seems that there's nothing that can be done to stop this."

Except try to spell it out more clearly perhaps, and asking more to join in?

Given that most (80%) of the economy is in the Private Sector, and that that's where nearly all the debt is, it seems that 'financial services' effectively said to the (British) government that if they (didn't mater if it was red, blue or yellow) didn't bail them out, there would be carnage (bankruptcies, foreclosures, and mass unemployment - aka a Depression) for the population (i.e essentially the Private Sector which would massively impact upon the Public Sector anyway). It was blackmail. Government can only control the Public Sector assets anyway, so they rolled over. That's the way to read threats from 'the banks' to go and run their business from foreign shores.

That is how Private capital controls governance under Libertarianism.
That's 'the freedom' which troops went to fight for in Iraq and Afghanistan (and half a century ago, against Germany and Japan which were trying to stop this!).

like the classic horror movie just when you thought the monster was dead are bank losses are just beginning?



if the usa banks start melting down dragging the taxpayers that backed them with them then the whole financial system including ours will lock up again? 80 billion in 'cuts' might be just the beginning?

..a gentleman named Wing Chau went from making $140k a year to $25 million in just a few years, putting together CDOs from Merrill, some of which were completely bankrupt in just six months...

do you think you could get an interview with Mr Chau?

#15 jaunty

as the fella said...
"can't understand how noone has served any prison time for this lot so far".
Bernie Madoff must be feeling pretty peeved not to have some Hamptons neighbours on the block with him inside.(maybe they're all hiding in downtown Gary, but I doubt it)
Surprised there is no website out there called "Naming Names"...
Suggest there are fewer names responsible for this mess than dodgy CDO's, CDS's and other synthetic instruments out there. It must be possible to map the chain of guilt.

Do they have buses in Gary and, if so, if the people of Gary were to get on a bus where would they go to get a job? Merthyr?

Did the US version of Capitalism work ? On what financial traders want and why they got it :



( I disagree with assertion opposing price/value when discussing gold for all the reasons elucidated by Soddy etc.)

PAY US MORE, OR THE ECONOMY GETS IT!



(Hang on a minute!...Didn't a certain 'much loved' footballer pull off a similar wheeze last week?)

"17. At 09:59am on 25 Oct 2010, tawse57 wrote:
Do they have buses in Gary and, if so, if the people of Gary were to get on a bus where would they go to get a job? Merthyr?"

Take this on board. It is not obvious. It may seem so, but it isn't.

Politicians, like economists and teachers think and talk as if people are black boxes,. input-output machines which are all much of a muchness, varying only in terms of the environments they operate within.

It's how they were taught to think and write at university and elsewhere. They don't know it but it's a Marxist, almost exclusively environmental world-view.

It's a false world-view too. It neglects the fact that the gubbins between the I and the O (brains) varies between individuals and groups (areas and nations) much as CPUs and RAM capacity varies, and has varied dramatically over the decades. Unfortunately, we can't just upgrade the RAM or CPU, hard disk etc in the field. It's a major factory re-assembly job. If one has a retrogressive production line, one is in big trouble, as the stimuli just aren't picked up by the product. Their sensors are not turned to the stimuli. Their capacity is absent etc. Get the picture?

That's Gary, and Merthyr. Privatising much of the economy has disempowerd liberal-democratic governments as they've next to no say over the economy (means of production, communication and exchange) anymore, as it was largely sold off to the Private Sector which then asset stripped before either closing areas of the economy down in the name of efficiency or running them for a while with the aid of cheaper labour, or just setting up shop abroad where it was more cost effective.

The shareholders were not the public so many people and their kids got left high and dry. That's the demographic problem which has to be peered into. It's very scary because it's genetic. :-(



"!18. At 11:14am on 25 Oct 2010, supersnapshot wrote:
Did the US version of Capitalism work ? On what financial traders want and why they got it :"

The article is meaningless rhetoric - it's a classic example of modern 'narrative'. It's this sort of guff that causes all the trouble. I bet many doing it, like many involved in flogging 'designer' spectacle frames and lenses for 拢600 a pair, are just doing their job.

Because they get rewarded for what they do, it must be 'right' they think. Thinking is a propositional attitude. Some here don't understand the magnitude of this problem. See Quine and Skinner on the problem, it will take you back to the 60s and 70s. Academia was over run by Wall Street shaping business-persons in the 70s and later. Many are so lost inside the lie that they can't see how they contribute.

Paul, enjoyed your Gary stuff, very enlightening and depressing, years ago my business was involved with factory clearance and numerous sites in the north that were closed down had the same sense of despair and defunct machinery lying around where once had been a thriving factory and a skilled workforce, but in the sixties and seventies there was a sense that we could turn things around and to some extent we did and yet the American experience is one of gloom as I cannot for the life of me see where the regeneration is going to come from. America has exported all it's manufactoring base to the east, they are sacking skilled people in their hundreds of thousands, the nation that could launch a liberty ship every thirty six hours will now forclose a property rather than wait twenty four hours to see if a new finance arrangement can be worked out. These are the economics of the madhouse and I predict further down the line in this country something similar will emerge as against all the clever advice the government has no hope of real growth and it is all slash and burn....we have lost the liberty ship spirit....

60's and 70's .Now you and I have been through that - it's not our fate. Cyberspace never forgets !

/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2009/06/a_journey_through_chinas_econo.html

Those who refuse to learn the lesson of history are doomed to relive it.

""Britain's ability to attract investment has plunged over the past 10 years due to rising taxes and onerous regulations, according to a CBI survey of the country's top bosses."

Question: How did they derive that as the cause from their survey?

Answer: they didn't.

It might just be that the country doesn't produce much of value anymore.

Why? Because it's been shunted elsewhere.

Some more sobering figures. The high earners are not where most of the income tax revenue comes from. There just aren't enough of them to make much difference. Furthermore, they won't use the welfare state (education and health) much either. The problem is all the people in middle and lower income bands. That's where MOST of the working population is. The problem, I'm suggesting, is that vast numbers of them just are not smart enough to do anything useful anymore, and this can't be helped a it would require a change in the birth rate. There are many smarter, cheaper, people available elsewhere, in China etc, and moving factories there, or just buying parts made there, is what the Private Sector businesses have been doing at the cost of most people living here, who continue to get less and less 'competitive' because of how they are made.

2007/8 Tax Data (ONS)

Income 1000s Millions Tax Av. Tax per Yr
拢5,225鈥撀�7,499 2,460 263 107
拢7,500鈥撀�9,999 3,630 1,330 365
拢10,000鈥撀�14,999 6,380 7,000 1,100
拢15,000鈥撀�19,999 4,890 10,500 2,150
拢20,000鈥撀�29,999 6,670 24,400 3,660
拢30,000鈥撀�49,999 5,220 33,700 6,460
拢50,000鈥撀�99,999 1,750 28,200 16,200
拢100,000鈥撀�199,999 418 17,200 41,200
拢200,000鈥撀�499,999 123 12,000 98,200
拢500,000鈥撀�999,999 22 5,230 241,000
拢1,000,000 and over 8 6,370 782,000

All incomes 31,600 146,000 4,630

I am sure I listened to Cameron talking this morning about setting up IT centres of excellence but can find no mention of it on the 大象传媒 website now - did I dream this or did it really happen?

If this is happening the spend on IT is welcome and needed. It is high time that IT stopped being Vince Cable's punch-dummy.

But as I listened to Cameron I could not help thinking about last month's report into the Welsh Assembly's spending of several hundred million on 'Techniums' - centres of IT excellence in Wales. There are 4 that I know of within 10 miles of myself.

Basically, the Assembly built very trendy and expensive modern buildings, often in or near to university campuses, and then hoped that IT companies would rush to set up in them. Some Uni departments were, allegedly, given big bags of Public money, semi-privatised and became Technium pioneers - nice work if you can get handed the money.

I recall, a few months after these buildings were completed, that there were frantic attempts to shoe-horn just about any business into them. Expensive half-empty buildings are not good for PR.

Rumours exist that the 'Green-energy' Technium in Baglan Bay, hoped to be a centre of innovative Green technologies, only has ever had people going in and out to switch the lights on and off. The green lighting does look lovely at dusk as you drive past on the M4. Very pretty.

Suffice to say, if anyone is bothered to look on Google, that the report pointed out that the Techniums were a waste of money, well-intentioned but poorly put into practice. Or something like that.

I hope I did not dream Cameron's speech this morning. If money is pumped into such ventures I hope that the Coalition takes a look at what happened with the Techniums in Wales - and then does something that will actually work.

How is Macaroon going to get the private sector to replace the 'retreating State'? The only way I can see this happening is by the rapid and indefensible increase in PFI schemes. Experience of previous PFI's have shown them to be more expensive, less efficient, and less accountable. How can you justify getting someone else to do, for example DVLA stuff, for more money and for a poorer service at the expense of cutting welfare for the poorest 10% of society?

No wonder the Tories and CBI have a smug look on their Chevy Chase's!

26. At 5:46pm on 25 Oct 2010, dceilar wrote:

"The only way I can see this happening is by the rapid and indefensible increase in PFI schemes. Experience of previous PFI's have shown them to be more expensive, less efficient, and less accountable.
How can you justify getting someone else to do, for example DVLA stuff, for more money and for a poorer service at the expense of cutting welfare for the poorest 10% of society?"

Because PFI projects in the 'Public Sector' have a guaranteed market, and a sure source of income (taxes) too. True Private Sector ventures are at the mercy of fickle consumers as well as competitors from here and overseas etc. Not in Education, Health, Justice, Police, etc. There the 'favoured bidder' has a ready made cash cow. See RM in education (ask teachers), and there are lots of other examples. Remember, all that public money may go into a PFI/SPV trust, and who knows how that may be 'invested' in the public's interest....

Will we ever see NN looking into this line of analysis?

Any business person who has ever investigated the Public Sector tendering process will know what a time-consuming, expensive and frustrating experience it is.

Some will tell you that, in their opinion, it is a closed shop with a wink and a nudge and a knowing glance. Of course, I would not dare suggest a thing.

None of this is new.

"For if one has a hundred thousand acres of land and as many pounds in money, and as many cattle, without a labourer, what would the rich man be, but a labourer? And as the labourers make men rich, so the more labourers, there will be the more rich men...the labour of the poor being the mines of the rich"

John Bellers 1696

"29. At 8:07pm on 25 Oct 2010, SeanBroseley wrote:
None of this is new."

What's new is that the population is now about 60 million not 6 million (there are more people living in London today than there were in the entire UK in 1690) and it's probably shifted in how it's cognitive ability distributed too, not to mention the proportion now voting. See Pakistan and Nigeria for the consequences of massive population changes in just 50 years.

Furthermore, take London,now 40% non White (some boroughs getting on for 75% non white at some ages). Next assume that the mean (average) cognitive ability of each group may be different, say a mean of 85 for non whites and 100 for whites. Next assume that cognitive ability is another term for mental age and the lower the mean ability, the more child like and impulsive the collective behaviour is likely to be.
Child-like behaviour is good for the retail business isn't it? Anyone with kids knows this. What if they don't grow up.

This has nothing to do with colour really, just behaviour. A lot has changed, and it is still changing. Back in the C17th very few had the vote. before that, many were tied to the land where they lived. It was called serfdom. Those tied to the land were not easily educable. They were child like. The landowners often looked after their serfs. The same is true today, it's just that they now import their serfs because of a falling birth rate here.

If you don't believe this true, you should visit London some time. It isn't just London either. 拢600 for a pair of 'designer' spectacles at some places. Who is the designer? They could be any 'celebrity' lending their name to frames costing 拢1 or so to bulk buy, but sell as 拢250. The lenses, machine made for next to nothing.

Plus ca change..........


In response to business pressure (for consumers), the right-wing libertarians soften their stance on the immigration cap:

"Plans for a stringent cap on numbers of immigrant workers are to be softened in the face of warnings from business leaders that it could prevent them from bringing the brightest foreign talent to Britain."



This will take us closer to Karachi, Lagos etc. What is anti-racism?
It's pro-libertarianism, i.e pro consumerism - pro taking candy from babies.

Be wary of sanctimonious 'anti-racists' they have nothing to lose
but their profits.

That's what PC was really all about :-(