[economics 101] the reason why it must

Found myself in a position today where I had to explain my perspective to a financier whose English level was reasonable but not fabulous. His question was simple – why I thought the western economy was going to collapse.

Seems to me that there are two ways to come at this question – politically, in terms of what the ECB and Fed are up to and in terms of Economics 101, which is as much as I can lay claim to.

In 1989, a teacher's salary was J11 000 and a two bedroom semi-detached was J55 000 in the north. Seems to me today that in Britain, the salary is about J22K and the house about J120-180K. In Russia, the ratio has gone from 1:15 in 1999 to 1:26 today.

Income, in real terms, has gone down and continues to, to the point that the only way to have a house and one car is to go into deep hock. This is fundamentally wrong and has been fuelled by the availability of credit which is not even cheap.

An inevitable consequence of this is that the middle half of society moves from a position of relative equity to a position of debt and slowly drops into sub-prime status, which was most certainly not the situation in 1969.

It's further fuelled by unrealistic aspirations, the gratification of which has moved into the area of the unaffordable and whose spin-off is that people nurtured on the credit economy inevitably see credit as smart money instead of the debt it is.

The great terminological inexactitude the banks persist with is that most people can make ends meet and therefore will not exceed credit limits or seek further credit. The banks know very well that people's aspirations, fuelled by a “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality will lead them to seek “solutions” from their friendly cooperative or other provider.

Another cynical “given” is that a proportion of people will default, be it an overdraft or true default. Insurance will carry them for a while but not forever. That proportion is most certainly increasing in all western countries – I have U.S. and Australian stats on this.

Now the most unforgivable of all. In a sub-prime position, people go for finance to cover their lack of finance and are given it but at rates which are exorbitant. It should be the other way. Sound borrowers can carry higher rates but sub-primes can both ill afford to nor do they usually have the least clue how to handle money.

So the credit economy becomes the debt economy [$18, 700 per household in the U.S. In 2004, inc all debt] and as the luxuries are pared back to the bone, even basic mortgage and car repayments assume mammoth proportions.

Solution – refinancing and second mortgages.

The pressure on the housing market is enormous, the market stalls, rates go up partly due to the parallel sub-prime loan defaulting, when they should be doing the opposite, the banks themselves find themselves in an overextended position partly due to quite unsound speculative investment, the CB bails them out.

Prime borrowers are also finding themselves in trouble, as Henry Paulson recently noted:

"Yet, the problem today is not limited to subprime mortgages as the number of homeowners having trouble making payments on prime mortgages is also increasing."

Meanwhile, the banks have been quietly divesting themselves of gold and are increasingly relying on unbacked scribble in a ledger to balance the books [or not bothering, in the case of the EU – admittedly not a bank but still – see the auditor's report for 2004. for example].

While this is happening, the herd mentality has created "gold thinking" and elsewhere, Asian sovereign funds are looming mighty large, which is interesting, given today's warning [below] re the Nikkei.

This has followed on from clear warnings that U.S. financial markets reeled from a growing credit crunch, centered not in the subprime area, but in the leveraged corporate debt market. Private equity funds have become a dodo and hedge funds and derivatives have become two dirty words. Lack of transparency has also led to unease - just what is the overall strategy of the b-g--rs?

Take away property and that leaves commodities.

So, back to the mundane, the average punter is in big hock to the finance provider who, through unwise speculation on the strength of CB noises about soundness, is in hock to the CB, who in turn has been divesting itself of real money and the only ones with money are the Old Money who've been buying up for the inevitable rainy day.

Is this a healthy economy?

Now where the economists and I part company is that they say, just as they explain away the '29 crash, that 2007 is due to cloudy foresight or even incompetence. I maintain that it is due to selective blindness and that there is an agenda to destabilize, certainly from the Round Table and ECB, where my information is sounder.

The purpose? Here we get political again but a glance at the decades pre-1914 and pre-1939 show some parallels. Also, answer one question – can you afford gold anymore? You could have in 2005. So who can afford gold now? OK, it's coming down, so how much is available for the average punter to buy?

Back to the global economy and this little statement earlier today from the BBC, whose link I lost in my haste, I'm sorry:

"I'm afraid factors from overseas, such as sub-prime problems, are coming over to Japan," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura. "We'll closely monitor the situation," he added.

"Its getting to the point where everything seems scary and that its hard to trust what financial institutions are saying."

Why would the U.S. housing crisis affect the Nikkei?

Economists will snort but I don't mean the nuts and bolts - Sackerson's report that Karl Denninger (Market Ticker, yesterday) explained it as a relativistic effect:

Our problems are bad. The problems that will be faced overseas are FAR WORSE. Overseas economies are dependant on us, not the other way around. When this sinks in the other currencies against which the DX is measured will collapse; this will appear to raise the dollar, but in fact it is the sinking of other currencies.

No, I mean, in very non-economist terms, why would the market operate in such a way anyway that this could happen in the first place? What sort of a market fails to be gear itself to prevent this? I'm not talking cause and effect here – I'm asking this question in the way Guthrum asks why we even need government at all. Fundamental structural principle.

I say there are only two explanations for the crisis in the U.S. which the FOMC was meant to prevent:

1. Incompetence – not foreseeing logical consequences – in which case it's very worrying that the world economy is at their beck and call;

2. Design – selective failure to act, allowing sub-prime lending to the point where the sheer volume creates crisis nd tweaking interest rates to exacerbate the situation - in which case it's very worrying that the world economy is at their beck and call.

For example, they were well aware of the likely housing outcome in October, 2006:

Residential construction activity remained weak. Single-family starts ticked up in September, but new permit issuance slid further to its lowest level in nearly five years.

Now, look at one further aspect. Ben Bernanke explained the Fed's recent actions by saying a central bank has to do things that will prevent sales of assets that "will drive the prices of those assets well below their longer-term fundamental values, raising the risk of widespread insolvency and intensifying the crisis."

And what if the fundamental value is far less than supposed? Then the Fed would be fuelling a bubble. And we all know what happened last time. Now is this incompetence or design? We could argue this one till the cows come home.

So where does that leave the average punter? It leaves him paying out, selling off and buying up commodities, which themselves are being selectively released onto the market, with the pittance he's left with.

[personal pet parade] enter your darling today

Pet velociraptor? Make sure you submit your entry by midnight today, Sunday. This is the final call, dear reader. Send your name as you'd like it diplayed, along with attached photo of your giant squid or tyrannosaurus or whatever to:

nourishingobscurity@gmail.com

The cunning plan is to present the parade tomorrow afternoon or evening. And yes – you may submit pics of your spouse or concubine.

Thanks for all the entries so far.

[breast pocket] essential gentlemen's apparel

Ladies, please go to sleep for the nonce – this is for the gentlemen. Manolo has pointed out a crisis in the dressing department:

The news that sales of shirts with breast pockets have collapsed - from 90 per cent of all shirts sold a decade ago to 25 per cent today - doesn’t surprise me. The clothes snobs have been fighting them for years, and tragically - for a breast pocket fan like me - they’ve won.

Izzy continues:

It is true that, for both men and women, the more functional the piece of clothing, the less formal it is. Think of how you cannot roll back the sleeves on a french-cuff shirt, or how the pockets on a (slimly cut) tuxedo jacket can barely fit anything beyond a money-clip. When it comes to breast pockets on shirts, the issue is to what extent you are willing to trade formality for functionality, a question that each gentleman must determine for himself.

Personally, I like the breast pocket [the box pleat flap is my favourite] - far from distorting the shirt, it helps retain its shape whilst remaining soft to the touch. Otherwise one would need starch. Of course it's not meant to have anything more than a notepaper in it.

I have a designer shirt with a zipped breast pocket which is sewn to the inside and it's wonderful. Also, I wear a thicker, softer shirt than the traditional and ubiquitous nasty business shirt.

My shirts are cotton or linen and my ties silk. And yours?

[nourishing obscurity] just a pretty flower

Click on pic - original instigator is Tom Paine

[technorati] don't fix what ain't broke

Ordovicius is quite rightly seriously annoyed about Technorati's act of ritual suicide:

Earlier this year Technorati adopted a new system, whereby a blog's authority would no longer reflect how many all time links it has, but only those of the last six months. The overwhelming response to this from bloggers has been a "Screw you, technorati", and the removal of links to technorati itself.

Completely agree. Bloggers took a long time to patiently build up those links and links are a blog's lifeline because only through these can a blog be visited. Imagine the chagrin when a blogger suddenly sees his "authority" slump!

Technorati don't give a toss for what blogs are trying to do and I hope they [Technorati] either see the light and amend their ways or else go down in a screamng heap with Facebook.

Not everyone agrees. Ian Kallen says:

Technorati authority is not a monotonically ascending value, it has a time component. Since Summer of 2006 Technorati authority has been based on a rolling 180 day window counting unique blogs linking to a blog. That hasn't changed. Authority drops when links age out and new ones aren't coming in to replace them or when there are data corrections (for instance, spam blogs or data duplication removals). There was a post on the Technorati blog about the various count metrics last year, see Making Sense of Link Counts.

I have other gripes with Technorati. My profile is all wrong, they persist in saying I am hugh jensen or might be so, when I am neither and I've written e-mail after e-mail about it, all ignored. This blogger, vis a vis Technorati, is not a happy chappy.

[monday, november 11th, 1918] pray for humanity

Armistice Day, Veteran's Day, Remembrance Day

Hawks, backed and abetted by the finance, have always prearranged wars long before the opening salvos.

Nowhere was this more glaringly obvious than in The Great War, a term which already had currency in the corridors of power long before the due date. Even Buchan admitted as much in The Thirty Nine Steps [available online].

The Schieffen Plan

For complicated reasons you can read yourselves, the Germans were long harbouring a desire to punish France and for what? Because France had punished them for a wrong which they had perpetrated on France and so on.

This is the eternal cycle of war so beloved of two classes – the aristocracy and the old money of Europe.

Some speculate that if Helmuth von Moltke the Younger has not lost his nerve, Germany might have shortened the war but I think not. Historians almost always fail to take into account the invisible factor in all public life – the Old Finance.

So the long drawn out and extremely lucrative conflict and devastation of the common man was very much anticipated.

Helmuth von Moltke the Younger

French Plan XVII

It is erroneous to suppose that the French were the poor victims in this.

Almost immediately following her defeat by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, together with the humiliating annexation by the newly unified Germany of the coal-rich territories of Alsace and Lorraine, the French government and military alike were united in thirsting for revenge.

To this end the French devised a strategy for a vengeful war upon Germany, Plan XVII, whose chief aim was the defeat of Germany and the restoration of Alsace and Lorraine. The plan was fatally flawed, and relied to an untenable extent upon the "élan" which was believed to form an integral part of the French army - an irresistible force that would sweep over its enemies.

Like Caesar's Soothsayer

It wasn't that no one spoke out:

A few dissident intellectuals in Europe had been trying to warn their nations about how different a war among the great industrial powers of Europe would be from wars of the previous century.

This has always been the way and even now the kudos of this very blog has suffered and jokes are made about the “conspiracy theorist” proprietor - why? Because this blog tries to warn the sphere of the impending war - Merkel's War – but that's another story.

And so to Compiègne

This photograph was taken in the forest of Compiègne after reaching an agreement for the armistice that ended World War I. This railcar was given to Ferdinand Foch for military use by the manufacturer, Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Foch is second from the right.

I sometimes imagine that meeting in the forest of Compiegne after all the trench warfare, the slaughter and massive dislocation imposed on a bewildered and yet highly patriotic people.

It was 4.30 in the morning of Monday, November 11th in France and perhaps they'd travelled from Paris via Foch's special train, rugged up for the occasion.

Think for a moment what it would have looked like and felt like that morning.


The German delegation crossed the front line in five cars and was escorted for ten hours across the devastated warzone of Northern France (perhaps, they speculated, to focus their minds on the lack of sympathy they could expect[citation needed]). They were then entrained and taken to the secret destination, Foch's railway siding in the forest of Compiègne.

Telegrams were passed to and from the German team:

Matthias Erzberger, a civilian politician;
Count Alfred von Oberndorff, from the Foreign Ministry;
Major General Detlev von Winterfeldt, the army; and
Captain Ernst Vanselow, the navy.

[General Weygand and General von Gruennel are not mentioned in the French document]

... to both the German Army Chief of Staff Paul von Hindenburg in Spa and the hastily assembled civilian government of Friedrich Ebert in Berlin.

Erzberger apparently attempted to take negotiations to the limit of the 72 hours Foch had offered Hindenburg, but an open telegram from Berlin imploring him to sign immediately somewhat undermined his team's credibility.

Ebert was desperate, facing imminent insurrection in many large German cities. Signatures were made between 5:12 AM and 5:20 AM, Paris time.

How it affected some people

Colonel Percy Dobson wrote:

It was hard to believe the war was over. Everything was just the same, tired troops everywhere and cold drizzly winter weather- just the same as if the war were still on.

Stephen Longstreet, in the Canvas Falcons (1970), wrote:

On that November 11, 1918, morning, another flier, Capitaine Jacques Leps, commander of the French 18th Squadron, sat in his Spad. He was about to take off with his fliers and their planes, all marked with the insignia of a leaping hare chased by a greyhound. The engines were turning over, the props spinning silver.

It was time to get into the air, to escort a major bombing raid on Metz. As Leps raised his arm to signal the take-off, someone came running from the airdrome's communication room, running agitatedly, arms waving.

"La guerre!! C'est finie, la guerre!"

Jaques Leps took in the heart-bursting news. He switched off the Spad's engine. The engines of the rest of his fliers went silent, one by one, as the cry "C'est finie, la guerre!" spread throughout the field. Capitaine Leps unfastened his safety belt and slowly got out of his cockpit.

Penultimate

At 11:00 a.m. this day, we put down whatever we're doing and remember long-suffering humanity who have had to endure these things and especially the brave men and women who gave their lives to defend their homes and families from totally unnecessary and indefensible aggression.

Lovely piece on the issue from the Domestik Goddess who writes of singer-songwriter Terry Kelly, who witnessed an act of philistinism:

On the stroke of 11:00, all the store fell silent.

All, that is, except for one man, who was accompanied by his little daughter. Oblivious of the example he was setting for the child, the man continued to try to talk to the sales clerk all through the respectful silence.

Terry Kelly did what artists have always done, in the grip of the strongest emotions — he channelled his anger into his music.

I have a copy of the Last Post and will play it during that time. What I love about this day is that it brings all of us together - American, Canadian, Britain, Commonwealth and many others.

Finally

Do not forget the modern German either - he is as much against this madness as any of us. He is not to be excluded from this remembrance day. Many of the British recognize this new reality and it seems to me to be a good step towards the ultimate exclusion of war as a means of resolving disputes.

Late update - check Juliet's post - it really brings it home. Also, a series from Jams, of which this is the last.

[armistice day] the story behind it

We all know about poppies, the day is celebrated around the world and yet do you know the actual story? The aim of this post, a collation of about ten articles, is to bring together the story in one package.

It was prepared for Russian students and thus repeats many things you yourselves know full well so please forgive that. It is also one of the primary reasons I see no justification for wars being declared. This is not to say we shouldn't be prepared - we should and with the best equipment.

I'm referring to the ruling donkeys deciding that a jolly good war is in order and to hell with the lives of countless young people. Sorry if this makes me hot under the collar.

June 28th, 1914

The events of July and early August 1914 are a classic case of "one thing led to another".

The explosive which was World War One had been long in the stockpiling; the spark was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, at Sarajevo's Town Hall on 28 June 1914.

Ferdinand's death at the hands of the Black Hand, a Serbian nationalist secret society, set in train a mindlessly mechanical series of events that culminated in the world's first global war.

One Thing Led to Another

So then, we have the following remarkable sequence of events that led inexorably to the 'Great War' - a name that had been touted even before the coming of the conflict.

Austria-Hungary, dissatisfied with Serbia's placatory response to her ultimatum declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914.

Russia, bound by treaty to Serbia, announced mobilisation of its vast army in her defence, a slow process that would take around six weeks to complete.

Germany, allied to Austria-Hungary by treaty, viewed the Russian mobilisation as an act of war against Austria-Hungary, and after scant warning declared war on Russia on 1 August.

France, bound by treaty to Russia, responded by announcing war against Germany and, by extension, on Austria-Hungary on 3 August.

Germany promptly responded by invading neutral Belgium so as to reach Paris by the shortest possible route.

Britain, allied to France by a more loosely worded treaty which placed a "moral obligation" upon her to defend France, declared war against Germany on 4 August.

Her reason for entering the conflict lay in another direction: she was obligated to defend neutral Belgium by the terms of a 75-year old treaty.

With Germany's invasion of Belgium on 4 August, and the Belgian King's appeal to Britain for assistance, Britain committed herself to Belgium's defence later that day. Like France, she was by extension also at war with Austria-Hungary.

With Britain's entry into the war, her colonies and dominions abroad variously offered military and financial assistance, and included Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the Union of South Africa.

United States President Woodrow Wilson declared a U.S. policy of absolute neutrality, until 1917 when Germany's submarine warfare seriously threatened America's shipping and forced the U.S. to finally enter the war on 6 April 1917.

Japan, honouring a military agreement with Britain, declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914. Two days later Austria-Hungary responded by declaring war on Japan.

Italy, although allied to both Germany and Austria-Hungary, was able to avoid entering the fray by citing a clause enabling it to evade its obligations to both.

In short, Italy was committed to defend Germany and Austria-Hungary only in the event of a 'defensive' war; arguing that their actions were 'offensive' she declared instead a policy of neutrality.

The following year, in May 1915, she finally joined the conflict by siding with the Allies against her two former allies.

The Tangle of Alliances

Such were the mechanics that brought the world's major nations into the war at one time or another.

What was a strictly limited and brief war - between Austria-Hungary and Serbia - rapidly escalated into something that was beyond the expectations of even the most warlike ministers in Berlin and Vienna.

Four years later, with the dead bodies of millions of young people lying in the earth and the royal houses of Europe and the generals thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all, the war ended.

November 11th, 1918, at 11 a.m.

The term "armistice" means a cessation of hostilities as a prelude to peace negotiations and is always remembered in the context of the end of the First World War – the armistice was signed at 5 a.m. on November 11th, 1918, and came into effect six hours later at 11 a.m. (hence the 'eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month').

Rethondes

On 8 November a German delegation met with Allied Supreme Commander Ferdinand Foch - who was to lead the military negotiations - in the forest of Compiegne, some 65 km north-east of Paris. The armistice was formally signed in Foch's railway carriage on 11 November.

The armistice initially ran for 30 days but was regularly renewed until the formal peace treaty was signed at Versailles the following year. Should the Germans have deviated in any way from the terms of the armistice the Allies would have started fighting again within 48 hours.

The French saw the terms of the Armistice and the Versailles peace treaty that followed in 1919 as too soft and tried to take everything they could from Germany. The Germans saw the terms as ‘vindictive’ and ‘humiliating’. The country however was in no condition to fight again and so reluctantly accepted these conditions.

In 1940, Hitler exacted the German revenge by forcing the French to sign an armistice - on German terms - in that exact same railway carriage.

World War 2

What is Remembrance Day?

Remembrance Day is a special day, November 11th, set aside to remember all those men and women who were killed during the two World Wars and in all other conflicts around the world.

At one time the day was known as Armistice Day and was renamed Remembrance Day after the Second World War.

In America and in Britain, Remembrance Sunday is held on the second Sunday in November. Special services are held at war memorials and churches all over the world. Americans celebrate the day as Veterans Day.

Rupert Brooke - famous for his war sonnets

But why a poppy?

Throughout the world the poppy is associated with the remembrance of those who died in order that mankind may be free, but how many of us are aware of the real reason for it?

Flanders is the name of the whole western part of Belgium. It saw some of the most concentrated and bloodiest fighting of the First World War. There was complete devastation.

Buildings, roads, trees and natural life simply disappeared. Where once there were homes and farms there was now a sea of mud - a grave for the dead where men still lived and fought.

Only one other living thing survived the million or so bodies lying dead on those fields. The poppy flowered in 1918 and kept flowering each year with the coming of the warm weather. It brought life, hope, colour and reassurance to those still fighting.

Poppies only flower in turned over soil. Their seeds can lie in the ground for years without germinating, and only grow after the ground has been disturbed.

World War 2

John McCrae, a doctor serving with the Canadian Armed Forces, was so deeply moved by what he saw that he scribbled down the poem "In Flanders Fields".

Excerpt from In Flanders Fields

We are the Dead.
Short days ago we lived, felt the dawn,
Saw sunset glow, loved, and were loved
And now we lie in Flanders fields.
If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep,
Though poppies grow in Flanders Fields.

The day before he wrote "In Flanders Fields", one of his closest friends was killed and wild poppies were already blooming between the graves where he was buried.

Here is a fragment of another poem by Englishman Laurence Binyon, from 1914, which is read out at most of today’s services around the world:

‘They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.’

Poppy Day

The first actual Poppy Day was held in Britain on November 11th, 1921, was a national success and so has continued every November since.

Two Minutes Silence

The first Two Minutes Silence was held in London in 1919. The Manchester Guardian reported:

'The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect. The tram cars glided into stillness, motors stopped dead, and the mighty horses stopped also. Someone took off his hat, and the rest of the people bowed their heads also.

An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city. It was a silence which was almost pain ... and the spirit of memory brooded over it all.'

This two minutes silence still continues today and though not everyone stops, most do and it is still a very impressive sight.

World War 2

Last Post

The army has always played a ‘bugle call’ at Reveille in the morning and at Last Post in the evening. This latter signal traditionally ends the two minute silence and is a moving experience for most people.

Today

As the old soldiers die and the young people grow up who never knew of these things, surely this ceremony has lost it’s personal meaning?

Here we come to a moot point, especially poignant in Russia. Here so many of the young have let May 9th slip away and yet more than a few of the new generation fiercely hold onto the memories of those sad individuals and families who were slaughtered.

Not with hatred for the enemy of bygone years but with determination, as distinct from lip service, that the people themselves can prevent it happening again.

Would that it could be so.

[blogfocus saturday] top blogging

Who is this man?

1. How's this for classic blogging:

Why?!

2. Or this:

2007 Prophecies

Remember this post?

3. Or this:

Rubbish plans are "flawed", apparently.

Aren't policies which are rubbish usually flawed as well?

Bye.

[snow falls] and all is at peace - except for skidding cars crashing

Coming home earlier today, some Russian folk music was being played in the car and the snow started falling lightly outside - a very Russian scene indeed.

There's no doubt that the slightest amount of snow transforms not only the viewable scene but the atmosphere becomes hushed too and a surreal effect replaces the usual city noises - people appear silently through the whiteness and pass, one's feet can't be heard and it's a strange feeling.

Unfortunately, birds become disoriented and hit windows as well, there is general mayhem on the roads and it's best to be either on foot or on the tram.

I could spend hours gazing down on it all from this warm flat but alas, there isn't time. I have to blog about it to you.

[education today] pistol for the teacher

It used to be "apple for the teacher". Of course this story below was a one-off, of course it couldn't become the norm:

An Oregon high school English teacher will not be allowed to carry her gun to school, a state circuit court ruled on Friday in a decision closely watched by both sides of the gun debate.

Shirley Katz, who has a legal permit to carry a concealed handgun, argued she needed the Glock semi-automatic pistol to protect herself from her ex-husband.

The teacher had support from pro-gun rights groups. In light of multiple school shootings, some gun advocates have argued that teachers, and maybe even students, should be armed to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Of course it couldn't become the norm. Could it?

[birthdays] double whammy

Belated birthday wishes to two lovely lasses - one in Canada and one in Wales.

To JMB and to Liz - hope it was everything you could have hoped for. Come and blow out your candles, girls!

[pet parade] please send your entries

Readers, readers, I need your pets! Please send photos to:

nourishingobscurity@gmail.com

The event is:

The Personal Pet Parade

Yes, I know the name's changed - I just thought I'd be able to cajole you into playing a bit more if we made it PC non-competitive. Pets can be anything from your hedgehog [above] to your spouse or even your children.

Go to it rightly and may scallops rock yer tadger.

[arnie] how to sue america

So much going down in these few lines.

Two years ago, California passed legislation requiring car-makers to cut vehicle emissions by 30% by 2016. But for the measure to take effect, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must give its approval.

An EPA spokeswoman said the agency is planning to make a decision on the legislation by the end of December. In April, the US Supreme Court ruled that the EPA, which had challenged the California law, was wrong to say that it did not have the power to regulate exhaust gases from new cars and trucks.

So, to simplify this, Arnie wants enviro-regulations in place, a traditional Democratic policy area. The White House doesn't want and the EPA is stalling, claiming it has not the power to approve, which it quite clearly has, as it says it will at least countenance the approval in December.

Question – why would Arnie, a Republican, pressurize the Federal Government, which is also Republican, in such a public way? Possible answer – he's looking beyond Bush.

But what if the Republicans don't get back? Then Arnie will be dealing with Hillary from a traditionally Democrat state. Arnie wishes to keep his job.

But what if the Republicans do get back? Then Arnie's going to need his own state to back him to survive and the only way to do this is to cut deals with the Democrats.

How do you read the move?

[2007 weblog awards] look back bewildered

From our more narrow UK perspective, these awards were of particular interest.

For a start, these were the ones which kick-started Blogpower into being and that particular group has gone onto bigger and better things.

Then there was Iain Dale's own comment, which was probably accurate:

The American Weblog Awards are, apparently, a big deal. This year they have a Best UK Blog category, in which this blog features.

One year ago, I complained that they weren't transparent in the nominations phase, although the voting itself utilized an excellent engine. That they have included UK and other country sections this year is commendable for a start.

By contrast, the Annual Blogpower Awards for 2007 were quite transparent in the nominations but the poor voting engine caused them to become, as Mr. Eugenides put it, in his usual inimitable fashion, “a p-s-ing contest” - to see who could p-s- the furthest.

I fear that that's also what happened with the Weblogs although having now been part of the process, I can see more clearly where Kevin Aylward is coming from and perhaps it's not the fault of the administrators themselves but a basic flaw in the whole nature of awards.

Nominations Phase

There was clearly no small resentment that some of the bigger UK blogging names like Mr Eugenides and Ellee Seymour, for example, weren't there and yet the Pub Philosopher, Baggage Reclaim and yours truly were. These two bloggers themselves, I hasten to add, said not one word.

Though eternally grateful for the nomination but refusing to concede I was unworthy, yet it does seem a bit puzzling to be ranked alongside Guido, Iain, EU Referendum and yes – the inevitable Neil Clark.

Possibly this was because the awards are American and I do cater for American topics of interest more so than many of those on the list. Possibly it was the Americans' opinion of who is a top UK blog. At least that's one explanation.

Voting Phase

This is where the problem lay and continues to lie, suggesting that for next July's BP Awards, we have to find a solution to the flaws in this phase.

Keving Aylward touched on it himself when he wrote:

This is a viral event, and sites that do a better job of turning out readers to vote tend to do better. We've seen all sorts of campaigning tactics over the years and based on what I've heard many of the same tactics are being employed again this year by various sites.

The process was particularly noticeable in the Funniest Blog Award [in which certain of us were going for Jon Swift], where the leader, Sadly No, quoted this explanation, by Freep, as to what was going on:

The DUmmie FUnnies are under a bigtime attack by an organized campaign by the Leftwing Blogosphere to keep us from winning as FUnniest Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards. Late yesterday afternoon the DUmmie FUnnies, thanx for the most part to Freeper Power, was leading in that poll by almost 700 votes. Then the Left got desperate. They just can’t tolerate a blog, dedicated to mocking and satirizing their many foibles to win that award. Therefore, led by Sadly No! and the Democrat Underground, a host of leftwing websites is now targetting us by urging their readers to vote for Sadly No! in the FUnniest Blog category.

By the way, 134 comments alone on this post shows the strike power of the Americans, something only Fawkes and Dale can really match over in the UK, [maybe EU Referendum but don't quote me].

Now I'm going to come clean here. I could have used multiple IPs and had the use of another computer altogether, which I didn't have at the time of the BP Awards.

What I did have then and now was a pool of people to draw on. If I'd put the url to all my girls plus my clients, each of whom would have brought their offices into play, my friend and I estimated, conservatively, that it would have come to a shade under 300 people, if we'd put our hearts into it.

Assuming 6 votes in that time, I could have called on about 1700 votes under these rules, plus the 130 odd genuine votes, plus about 12 from me.

That might have “won” me the award. Why not to do it? The truth now? Three reasons:

1.We were on a four day holiday during the awards period and it would have been pushing it uphill to utilize all those people and I just didn't want to;

2.Iain Dale stood above it, I noticed and didn't actually canvass for votes, even though he admitted the prestige these awards enjoyed. It seemed a higher thing to do, particularly in light of N3 below;

3.People like Neil Clark and their devotees who came over here and told me this about my vote:

I look forward to reading your excuses for this pathetic perfomance. Neil is now on almost 750 votes. Just wait until Latin America kicks in tonight - you only have about three hours to wait.

then go on to say, in answer to some folk who sprang to my rescue:

That's why he's [referring to me, of course] got less than 120 is it? I have decided to toss a few votes Bright Meadow's way. That Pub Philosopher bloke needs to come in last for having too much gob.

“Toss a few votes”? Don't think this requires much further comment, except to wonder if they really think this is what blogging is all about.

Some readers were puzzled by my singling out of the egregious Clark so to learn more about him, see Stephen Pollard's old site and maybe Mr. Eugenides for dessert, then for an update, go to the Devil's Kitchen and you'll get the general idea.

Next stop is Prodicus, who also draws in the mysterious footballer loving chick Kickette and with this girl, I just don't know what to think.

She really does add piquancy to this next section.

What is a good blog?

If we 10 are the best the UK has to offer, then the question of what constitutes a “good” blog is particularly relevant.

Must it be political? Perhaps DK and Prodicus are judging in terms of political comment, perhaps not. Perhaps there's a case for saying that a blog by a girl who loves footballers and is read by a Kickette Army of girls who love reading about footballers is every bit as “good” as the more visible DK.

To be “good”, need that mean high traffic alone or must there be some sort of product of a more “elevated' nature? I confess I don't know the answers to these questions.

Pointers for the Future

Looking at the next BP Awards, perhaps we should only have a nominations phase, with no voting phase whatsoever. It would be administratively easier, wouldn't drag these things out so long and provided they were adequately advertised beforehand, seem to be the best solution to the problem.

Finally

Thank you to the mystery people who nominated me in the first place and to those who clicked away in my defence throughout. I hope I didn't disgrace you, despite Exile's scathing remark and it was a certainly a useful experience for the next Blogpower Awards, although I'll not take an active part in their administration.

[prosecution] p is for poor taste

In response to this:

this:

Sam has been in the computer business for 25 years and is finally sick of the stress. He quits his job and buys 50 acres of land in Alabama to be as far away from humanity as possible.

Sam sees the mailman once a week and gets groceries once a month. Otherwise, it’s total peace and quiet.

After 6 months or so of almost total isolation, he’s finishing dinner one day when someone knocks on his door. He opens it and there is a big, bearded man standing there. “Name’s Enoch… Your neighbor from four miles over the ridge… Having a party Saturday… Thought you’d like to come.”

“Great,” says Sam, “after 6 months of this I’m ready to meet some local folks. Thank you.”

As Enoch is leaving he stops, “Gotta warn you there’s gonna be some drinking.” “Not a problem… After 25 years in the computer business, I can drink with the best of ‘em.”

Again, as he starts to leave, Enoch stops. “More ‘n’ likely gonna be some fightin’ too.” Damn, Sam thinks… Tough crowd. “Well, I get along with people. I’ll be there. Thanks again.”

Once again Enoch turns from the door. “I’ve seen some wild sex at these parties, too.” “Now that’s not a problem,” says Sam, “Remember I’ve been alone for 6 months! I’ll definitely be there… By the way, what should I wear?”

Enoch stops in the door again and says, “Whatever you want, just gonna be the two of us.”

[personality legs] p is for pics of them

The idea is to match the legs with the names at the foot of the post. There are also clues in the wrong order, just to help. Good luck!

1. She was better at turning heads than winning matches.












2. She's currently the front runner.












3. Those legs weren't so coy in her video.












4. She doesn't bounce on celebrity couches.










5. He couldn't keep her by his side.










Answers - 1. Katy Holmes 2. Nicolas Sarkozy 3. Hillary Clinton 4. Anna Kournikova 5. Paris Hilton

[petting] p is for pet time again

Ladies and gentlemen, the address is:

nourishingobscurity@gmail.com

The event is:

The Personal Pet Contest

You have until Sunday evening to get your photo [around 40kb] of your personal pet to the above address, from which the best ten will be drawn by an independent, non-higham panel of three non-pet owners and then the voting starts Monday morning.

Make sure you include the name in the form you'd like to see displayed beside your pet's photo. [You may include spouses as pets.]

[prince] p is for prat

Where do these prima donnas get off?

Fan sites dedicated to Prince say they have been served legal notice to remove all images of the singer, his lyrics and "anything linked to Prince's likeness".

However they have vowed to fight what they say is censorship.

The move, two months after Prince threatened to sue YouTube and other major internet sites for unauthorised use of his music, came as a shock to his followers.

By focusing on fan sites directly, Prince risks a backlash. The sites have vowed to unite under the banner "Prince Fans United" and take the matter to court if necessary.

The man's a prat, his music is not worth the effort and nor is he. Find a good artist to be a fan of.

[new mac 6] eureka, cables's in

Very quick one with a client coming but I'm now on cable. Theo, Jeremy, Liz and all the difficult sites to access - here we come.

Update at 14:00, my time. Next client coming but just reporting that it is so fast now and sites are coming up I just couldn't get to before. No excuses now for not visiting you daily or every two days minimum.

At least, that's the theory. More this evening - busy afternoon, like yours.

[racism 2] sexism, ageism, every -ism under the sun

I'd like to thrash this thing out once and for all, if you don't mind because there is some very woolly-headed thinking going about.

1. There's a certain type of political thinking which likes everything to be nice and luvvy-duvvy and everyone tolerant of everyone else until someone differs from them and then they turn nasty and want that person banned, excluded, legislated against, prosecuted and incarcerated, on the grounds of breaking some new law they've managed to get in place in the past few years.

If they've had any success in doing this, they become emboldened and it becomes like a narcotic until finally they set up regular weekly meetings to look for someone else to legislate against this week. Education is infested with such as these.

These people can get knotted.

2. There's a certain type of thinking which is hyper-sensitive to buzz words so that if I attack someone for his stupid comments, this is fine as long as he's a heterosexual, male WASP but the instant the person attacked turns out to be feminist, homosexual, black or Muslim, the attack is automatically labelled sexist, anti-gay, racist or anti-Muslim, when it had zero to do with that and everything to do with the shoddy argument or behaviour in the first place.

This person hides behind and invokes the group association and says anything he damn well likes, knowing he can thereby vilify and label the detractor and send him to Coventry [sorry to those from that fine city].

These people in N2 can also get knotted.

3. There's a certain type of thinking which makes no distinction between the individual and the group. One Romani kills an Italian woman so all Romanis are labelled and by association – all Romanians too.

Works the other way as well. Evil nutters like Al Qaeda and Deobanda spread their poison and all Muslims get labelled. Most Muslims I know are not like that.

But the religion itself is most certainly open to that interpretation and nasty groups, generally male but not exclusively, operate under the Muslim banner and these are people whom most Muslims would disown, e.g. at Beslan.

To answer that Christians kill each other in Ireland is transferring the argument from what the text condones to what the perpetrator does.

The woolly-headed thinking which equates faith with its devotees makes no distinction between the hard working immigrant who comes over to improve his lot and work hard to get there – and a clear nutter who is using a scriptural text as a pretext for violence.

Harder to do that with Christianity – can you find a New Testament text which exhorts violence? This is completely different to a group calling itself something and carrying out violence in its name.

This latter type can get knotted.

4. There is also a mealy-mouthed, malcontented, ne'er-do-well group-think among many groups of many orientations and causes which is forever playing the martyr and trying to either push an alien culture and alien ways of treating everyday affairs onto the majority.

A spin-off of this behaviour is that they form ghettos and then proceed to dictate to the indigenous population. They set up their own schools which preach values opposite to those of the host country.

In my book, this behaviour is right out. The standard reply that Christian schools should also be banned in Britain is total bunkum because Christianity is the religion of tradition in Britain and the Commonwealth and providing the teaching doesn't incite either violence or sexual exploitation [both punishable in any country in which the government is secular], then it is not out of line with the country's antecedents.

And that's the test. A secular test with no -isms attached and here it is in summary:

a. violence;
b. sexual exploitation;
c. values contrary to those embraced on the statute books over the last century, [before that are some pretty draconian ones] ...

So if the person who entered Italy and killed that woman made it into the country already because of the lax immigration laws, then he should get due process in regular courts, as an individual and if found guilty – sent to St Helena or similar. Elba perhaps.

Or a new one. Australia already has such an island – it's in Westernport Bay but I've forgotten its name.

Plus one more thing:

d. this applies to immigrants or visitors. Natives would follow standard due process, as laid down pre-Blair.

Now of course this deportation to an island has historical horror attached to it. Transportation to Australia in the 1780s and 90s springs to mind plus Guantanamo and similar. We're actually trying to stop the government building these internment camps, not shifting them offshore but there is a difference.

We want no internment camps for any British nationals on any grounds other than a-c above and even for immigrants and visitors there should be due process, not summary arrest. We're between a rock and a hard place here.

Do nothing and put a blanket ban on the government arresting anyone at all and crims run free. Allow it for some and it's the thin edge of the wedge. But on the grounds quoted above and no others, it might work if a non-treasonable government were in power.

As long as we have a traitor to Britain currently in power in Westminster, well, nothing can really be achieved.

[backpacking] when you're too old

Outside Vienna State Opera [Wiki]

Interesting article about when you're too old to backpack any more:

*you start dreading the act of travelling.
*it's taking you longer and longer to get ready in the mornings.
*you become obsessed with making sure there's a decent place to go to the toilet.
*there are kids.
*you start to hate the pub scene.
*priorities change, especially comfort wise.I was reflecting on this and the days of not only backpacking but car trips where we slept in the car by the roadside or in some little sideroad.

I only ever stayed in three hostels, the last in Finland and they were appalling – insecure, unfriendly management and you couldn't get in until 4 p.m.

One comment was interesting, mentioning that when the fellow guests are young and raucous and you want the light out at 11 and then proceed to snore them to death, it's time to give it away.

Now we're into this, the 'tourist destination' is equally as dire. Tenerife is a case in point where all the tourist hotels are grouped in a sort of ghetto in one area and if you don't hire a car, you only get to see hotels.

Either way, with this carbon footprint thing and iris scans, the incentive seems to have dropped away, in my case, to less than zero.

The backpacking thing is really a young persons thing [with some older exceptions] but methinks a law of natural attrition will cause most to fall away soon after 30.

The timetable at the Zurich Hauptbahnhof

[facebook] trapped members to become viral marketers

I wrote a piece on Facebook, then followed it up recently. The majority of the comments were negative towards this organization and now there's more:

The Facebook free ride is over as the social network now seeks to turn its 50-million-strong user base into an army of viral marketers.

It comes as the company is under intense pressure to cash in on the wealth of personal data it has collected, following a $US250 million ($268 million) investment from Microsoft, which valued the company at $US15 billion.

But time will tell whether Facebook has overstepped the line by revealing an ambitious plan to transform each user into a salesman for its advertisers.

Does this raise or lower Facebook in your eyes?

[racism] hastilow's resignation is all wrong

Rob, at Broadsheet Rag, says, about Hastilow's resignation:

Now I might disagree with certain parts of Hatilow’s article. Also mindless racism is sickening — I don’t believe his article falls into this category. But if you are going to debate an issue, varied opinions are required.

I'd go further. There are clearly sickening things like the BNP and Irving being given a platform by the Oxford Union to spew their ideas out but even here, why not?

I wouldn't have invited them and the Oxford Union top guns have rocks in their collective heads but to bow to pressure not to represent a point of view is just plain wrong.

It's wrong at anytime but especially when the lights are going out all over the "free" world and the next five years or so will see only the party line able to be supported openly.

Don't forget Courtney's article about this very principle:

My defense of free speech means that we should have the right to ridicule or hammer our opponents in open debate - indeed, this is the whole point. It now appears that the greatest threat to our right to free speech comes not from the misogynists of the BNP, or Holocaust deniers like the discredited historian David Irving, the fiercest critics of free speech come instead from those on the left.

Not sure that Left and Right are applicable tags any more - it's more Statist & Despotic versus Free and Democratic and no prizes for guessing where I am on this scale. It was Lenin who cynicaly observed: "Freedom is precious, so precious it needs to be rationed." That sums up the Statist's position:

We believe in freedom but only as long as someone doesn't ... a ... b ... c and so on.

Courtney again:

... it's about our liberty to be able to listen to a debate and all the arguments, whether they are dumb arguments or not, we need this liberty in order to judge for ourselves - it is this freedom that the left seem to fear the most ...

We not only need this freedom, we absolutely must fight for it, as our gallant and caring leadership slowly but inexorably and surreptitiously tightens the noose around our societal neck and every fresh piece of legislation is another blow to our hopes, as human beings, of enjoying the dignity of actually being human.

Finally, to come back to Hastilow himself - what was he doing if not representing the Black Country point of view? Isn't that precisely what he should have been doing? To say that Enoch Powell was right and that we'd see rivers of blood is precisely what we are going to see if the Deobandi have their way.

Hastilow wasn't even saying this. He was speaking of "uncontrolled" immigration. Well who could argue against that? Look at the Romi in Italy now, riding in on the backs of the ordinary Romanians. Why should the Italians put up with that? For what altruistic reason?

Introduce me to an individual Romi or Jamaican. Fine, we've met and he might become my friend. If I decide I don't like him, it could well be that I don't like that individual. Good and bad people in any grouping. Why is that racist? If she's female, does this become sexist? If she's gay, does that make me anti-gay now?

For goodness sake, pro-active groups get so tied up in their own rights and are so sensitive to the slightest criticism that all members of that group have to be blanket-accepted? Give me a break.

But wholesale immigration of one group or other cannot be good, especially if they bring with them a history of criminality and non-assimilation, non-integration. In other words, a ghetto mentality. That is completely wrong.

If there was a strong British sub-community over here where I am living, I'd not join it. I'd have friends from there as I do from among the native population but for what to cut oneself off from the locals? Why bother coming here if that's one's attitude?

There needs to be some rationale in this debate but first we must ensure that we can continue to actually have the debate in the first place.

UPDATE: Wolfie mentions the Heffer piece in the Telegraph - it should be read.

[ron paul] could he be the modern lazarus

The Boston Herald says:

Bay State experts are divided over whether the record cyberspace fund-raising that catapulted Ron Paul into the media spotlight will be enough to propel him into the ranks of mainstream Republican presidential candidates.

The 72-year-old grabbed headlines when a massive online movement raised a head-snapping $4.2 million in one day, more than any other Republican candidate ever.

“If you are on that third tier of candidates, attention is the biggest part of the game. He now has two months to try and transform this little bit of impetus into something more substantial, but my sense is that he won’t get the traction,” said Thomas Patterson, of Harvard’s JFK School of Government.

Ron Paul is the thinking person's candidate, a man of intelligence and principle and not backed by the CFR and other traitorous bodies.

He could only get in if the people themselves wanted someone representing their interests but seemingly the American people are still under the illusion that someone like the Lizard Queen, who sold out decades ago and is now reaping her reward, will represent them. The CFR do not have Ron Paul on their approved list.

Perhaps a miracle can occur and the only candidate truly representing America itself can secure both the nomination and the presidency.