The Krauts Have Had Enough

It looks like the Germans have had enough and are set at the very least to let Greece leave the project.

Its probably too much to ask that common sense breaks out, the Euro gets consigned to the bin and all the EU member states go back to looking after their own affairs.

No thought not. I'm sure the whole hugely expensive, artificial construct will continue.

John Denham: Fucktard of the Year?

John Denham, supposedly Labour's Shadow Business Secretary actually shows himself to actually be Labour's Shadow Chief Fucktard.

Apparently he thinks that the Con-Lib coalition has no mandate after the local elections. Apparently this supposed MP has lost his brain and has forgotten a few things:

First, that local elections are not national elections: all the Liberal losses prove if anything is that people don't like the Libs throwing away their principles in order to get into power and should have held out for more say in government.

Second, does he think the drubbing Labour got in Scotland means they have no mandate there? Will he enthuse Scottish Labour members to gather enthusiastically round SNP policies.

Finally, isn't he being a bit hypocritical? After all, Labour were the party that went to court and successfully argued that political parties should not be bound legally to fulfil manifesto promises. That one legal manoeuvre gave all the current political parties the opportunity post-election to back out of promises made pre-election. Thus in essence none of the political parties in power have a mandate, until the link between promises and action is restored because they can quite legally promise the earth, but then not deliver.

John Denham, stuck in his little political bubble. Possibly the Fucktard of the Year, although I'm sure the year might bring along a more qualified candidate. Yes, I'm watching you Vince....

More Osama Questions than Answers.

I received a joke by text today: "Ten years of searching, trillions of dollars spent and thousands of soldiers lives later, finally Osama Bin Laden has been captured and killed......

In his own house.

Although making light of the situation, it reinforces a set of serious questions: why was a man wanted one of the most powerful nations in the world in a house at all? Why had he settled down there? Why wasn't his whereabouts known earlier? Is settling in one place the actions of a serious fugitive?

Talk about hiding in plain sight.... Well, as much in plain sight as can be behind huge screening walls and opaque windows.

Of course there are questions about how he could have stayed in one place for years without support in Pakistan. Not necessarily from the national government, but more than likely from someone locally.

What is plain however, is that the obfuscation of the American government is so confusing the issue so as to feed the hundreds of conspiracy theories already being put forward. Right now, thanks to the various versions of events, no-one knows what to believe and everyone believes nothing.

You could almost believe that the American government is deliberately causing confusion. But the reality is the problems are caused by the Mainstream media, who readily grab for easy tidbits and exagerate minutiae of news far beyond the point of credibility. The 24hr rolling news monster needs constant feeding and every iota of information is examined and stretched beyond credulity and common sense.

Thus is the way mass media becomes unreliable: in the scramble to best the opposition, uncorroborated news is protrayed as gospel and reporters refuse to scratch deeper than the superficial face value at which they currently operate. Nothing is questioned, everything is reported, true or not. Just to vary the narrative of the latest 15 minute news segment.

Again the mainstream lets us down.

Obamas killing of Osama

Well, the 21st century's biggest bogeyman is dead. Already conspiracy theorists are hard at work in the net and in the media, picking holes in the accounts and evidence presented today.

The question not being asked by the media and not being asked by much of the online community is why now? With all the money and resources available to the west, why has it taken 10 years to pin him down and take him out. Surely we should have found him earlier? Is seems that the whereabouts of Osama has been known for a few months and everything in politics has meaning. So why now? What's the significance?

Has Bin Laden outlived his usefulness as a bogeyman?

Who or what will be the next bogeymen we will be presented with? Is the resurgence of Russia set to repeat old emnities, or is the unstoppable rise of China set to create a new target for western animosity?

Is there a need for a bogeyman to scare us with any more, has the military/industrial complex now got the public so tightly controlled there's no need for one?

As always with great news events, there is more to this than meets the eye.

How Mad is Our Energy Policy?

When windfarms are paid not to generate electricity, its sheer madness.

Our energy policy is truely beyond a joke now.

Immigrants Add to GDP?? I Think I Need a Huge Pinch of Salt With That.

The BBC has a cosy report that Eastern Eruropean EU migrants have added £5bn to the GDP of the UK.

However, reading on, the rpeort says that at the same time as we were receiving those immigrants from the EU, GDP went up. But there is no direct correlation, only an assumption that because GDP went up while they were arriving, they made a net contribution to GDP. Its a lot like the man made global warming argument, based on a loose correlation between statistics. The fact that there are two sets of statistics in the same time frame does not prove a link. In the same vein I could say the increase in summer temperatures is caused by increased ice cream sales. I know thats a lie, but the statistics can be used to tell any story you want, especially if you aren't held to prove the actual link.

Besides, there's no mention of whether we would have had a higher rise in GDP had we had immigration restrictions in place. No mention of the net drain to the economy of the influx from the EU of benefit scroungers, the alcoholics and career criminals that see the UK as a cushy number.

No mention either of the effect the supression of wages has on the economy overall, where low wages means that people on benefits have a better standard of living than if they took a job and the drain of keeping those people on the dole. No mention of the drain of providing benefit for children of EU immigrants that are not even in this country. No mention of the effect of EU immigrants migrating back to their countries of origin once they'd saved up enough to live comfortably back home, or the effect of exporting money back to their families.

Even if you take it at face value and agree the influx of cheap labour was good for the economy. Ok, but who really benefits from that?
Business owners? Shareholders?
Certainly not the man in the street, the ordinary worker. I'm sure they don't see the benefit as any increased tax take is gobbled up by the inefficiencies of government.

Nope, not even this report can convince me that unfettered immigration is ever a good thing.