[guilt of banks] teens sent into debt

There are many who puzzle at my constant attacks on the banks, particularly central banks. Many blogfriends humour me, most ignore these posts.

[I suggest you cover the children's eyes before reading on.]

When I suggest that "sub-prime lending" is simply a euphemism for an appallingly socially destructive phenomenon perpetrated on the weaker members of society by cynical, sardonic greedy vultures displaying utter indifference to the social collapse which is the only possible consequence of this unsustainable policy, I'm putting it mildly.

It is Sunday, after all so I shan't follow up with Andrew Johnson's "viper" epithet.

Just look at this:

Easy credit may leave thousands of teenagers unable to pay their bills, as new figures show that people who apply for credit in the lead-up to Christmas are most likely to default on repayments.

A cocktail of poor financial literacy and savvy marketing means that young people without assets or stable employment are racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debt, leaving them facing defaults or even bankruptcy.

In the past three years, the highest number of credit applications in any month has been November — 9.2% compared to the monthly average of 8.3%. Along with December, November leads to the highest number of defaults (3.1% of applications compared to an average of 2.7%), according to figures from credit reporting agency Veda Advantage.

One debt collector said he knew of a major bank that had extended thousands of dollars of credit to customers, knowing they would struggle to pay the debt. "There are people who get limits who quite clearly ought not, and my understanding is the banks have a policy of 'extend credit, get the money out' and just wear the default rate," he said.

"Some of the poor credit of the people was a bit frightening — people even given credit when they're unemployed."

This is simply wicked. Unscrupulous, power dressed men and women have been allowed to run riot in society and turn Christmas into a season of debt and delayed misery.

They should be rounded up and transported to Elba or similar, at their own expense. Whatever happened to decency, to the old Arthur Lowe type of bank manager who refused to lend if your collateral was not up to scratch?

Where did integrity go?

[christmas] the 2007 assault is blunted

Warning - blogger about to get decidedly caustic and frothing at the mouth

Despite this sort of Marxist, PC, humanistic, atheistic shameful behaviour from people who have simply taken leave of their senses:

A primary school has scrapped its Christmas carols concert in favour of scaled-back shows featuring nursery rhymes and Madonna's Papa Don't Preach. Disenchanted parents have written to Premier John Brumby - who called on schools to embrace the festive season last month - seeking his intervention.

The latest furore follows attempts to ban some shopping centre Santas from shouting "Ho Ho Ho", as fears grow that Christmas is under threat. Ringwood East's Tinternvale Primary prompted the anger after replacing the long-running concert with individual class productions.

Songs in the new-look mini-performances include a reworked version of Papa Don't Preach - a song about illegitimate pregnancy.

... and despite this being the season, in recent years, for the ridiculous winterval substitution, a remarkable number of MSM sites are carrying that dreaded word:

Christmas

... and not only that, they're calling the winter/new year tree the:

Christmas Tree

... again. Could Jesus of Nazareth be making a comeback? Yo and really cool things! [Don't want to be prevocative or anything now.]

[voting systems] which is the fairest

Just been glancing at the election results for Bennelong, in Australia:

Raw results

PETERS, Lindsay [The Greens 4,811 5.53]
HOWARD, John Winston [Liberal 39,551 45.49]
McKEW, Maxine [Labor 39,408 45.33]

Two party preferred

HOWARD, John Winston [Liberal 42,252 48.60]
McKEW, Maxine [Labor 44,684. 51.40]

Interesting what the results would have been under a few common voting systems:

Single Transferable Proportional Representation

Of course the vote was set up head to head so comparisons cannot really be made but assuming there were maybe seven Liberals and seven Labor on the card, along with a dozen others and assuming Bennelong was to return 9 members, with a quota of 10%, then Liberal and Labour would get their 4 each on the second ballot and the Greens would return one member.

First Past the Post

John Howard would be returned.

Preferential Voting

Maxine McKew has actually been returned.

In this blogger's view, FPTP is the least fair system and STPR the fairest. However, STPR needs a single constituency element in it to make members accountable locally and this complicates the issue.

[country quiz] five curlier ones

Can't attribute this Wiki photo because it is one of the countries in the quiz.

1. It is long and thin and near the coast. It actually elected a communist leader years ago and is next door to a country whose sporting colours are light blue and white. It might sound cold but in fact it crosses many climactic regions from warm to cool.

2. This country exports water and electricity, it can get down to minus 7, Celsius, during winter, is in the British Commonwealth, it is 2/5 Catholic and the currency is the loti.

3. This country is long and sprawls across many islands, as well as half of another big island it disputes with its large southern neighbour. Bombings there have tarnished its image of exotic South East Asia. The wife of its former corrupt President was known for her thousands of pairs of shoes.

4. This country is hot and has an aging leader whom half the world accepts and the other half thinks is a madman who sponsors terrorists. It was the scene of huge battles in the Second World War, mainly between the Australians and Germans. From its desert you could sail across the large sea to Europe.

5. This country also has an aging leader and is famous for its cigars and lovely beaches. It is a very poor country under its system of government and it was nearly place for the start of World War 3 in 1962.

Don't peep now!

Answers in reverse order: abuc, aybil, senippilihp, ohtosel, elihc

[blogfocus saturday] tales of day to day life

Day to day events in people's lives can often be eminently readable:

Firstly, Ubermouth, yes she of the four letter words, gives us a gentler picture of life here on her farm [above]:

This is in the entrance of the woods, where I often walk when I am stressed out. It is nice to be able to have ample room to walk about , knowing that you will never bump into another soul.

One day I tripped over a tree root and sprained my ankle. Mum had to fetch the wheelbarrow ( which I sat in) and cart me home that way. LOL

On the farm we have a variety of natural growing berries, chestnuts, holly as well as bluebells, honeysuckle bushes, hedgerows, snow drops etc.

Trees surround the property on all sides so, as you can see, I am totally cut off from civilization ( which I prefer). I can, and sometimes do , walk about in my knickers. I often blare my music and dance at midnight and have complete control of my privacy and surroundings.

Not that I am anti- social. :)

2. Shani tells the story of the blown fuse:

I very quietly and calmly started working back through the events... and then I asked him to check the fuse box.. which he declaimed angrily was of no use... but he would anyway....

Low and behold - it all started working again (except the blown light bulb!).

The lamp had blown first, everything else being a coincidence...

So we rang the book club and yelled at them, a combined effort - because obviously it was all their fault.. ended up with the books at a heavy discount and on cessation of the conversation ----- fell about laughing...

3. Oestrebunny tells the history of her schooldays as they really were:

Secondary school things get easier. They usually do. When all my friends were getting braces to fix their teeth I didn't need too. I filled out a bit and looked more like a person, less like a lanky baby deer. I made new friends and was put into the groups that best suited my intellect. I suppose I'm actually quite intelligent when I apply myself.

I didn't really have many problems in secondary school. One insult from a boy who had particularly large ears, particularly stands out. He called me 'thunder thighs', charming. Way to blow a teenage girls self esteem and imply that she is anything but stick thin.

Which coming from him was a bit rich really. Given the right wind conditions I have no doubt that if he'd flapped those enormous ears of his, he'd have soon taken off.

4. Betamum explains blogging epithets:

Ben was standing over my shoulder the other day, watching me as I caught up with all the postings from fellow bloggers.

He asked why I would want to have anything to do with someone called Potty Mummy, potties being a part of his long-forgotten past, and not a word which can mean two things. No-one says “potty” to mean slightly crazed, not around here anyhow.

So I explained that people use nick-names or made up names when they blog on the internet.
And in the course of explaining this, I mentioned my own blogging handle.

He was silent for a moment, in a deeply confused way.

And then he said,

“I thought you were called Better Mum!”

4. Finally, Sean Jeating is caught in one of those meme things:

fact 4: books. There are about 3,000 in the shelves around me, and - I did even read them. :)
Being asked which one I'd take "to the island", I could not decide and would therefore prefer lots of papers and pens, so that I could write the stories I want to read, myself. :)

Another day in the life ...

[scrooge] bah, it's all humbug

Selfishness

Matrimony has one thing going for it, apart from the joy of family - it keeps a man from indulging himself.

Though he might kick against it and grab his chances when he can, his kids keep drawing him back and he gets used to living with a bunch of other people in the house - he knows the word "compromise" and what it truly means, even down to bathroom availability.

That seems to me to be good ongoing training. It most certainly builds character and keeps him on the straight and narrow. It also has health benefits. Seems to me that, once having broken the matrimonial harness, we begin a downwards spiral towards self-centredness and self-gratification.

Pity the young hedonist who sees a woman and beds her, sees another and beds her and then tries to justify his position. Because what he's doing is killing part of himself as a person and slowly becoming more sociopathic and less tolerant of any but his own needs and desires, though he'll convince himself he's simply being altruistic to more people.

It's an illusion. He is on the way to becoming a satyr. After all, who was it said:

The body of a hedonist is the coffin of a dead soul.

Pity the old hedonist too who has broken free of wife and family and now can never get back into it.

He meets a lovely lady and they seem tailor made for each other. All her quirks seem unimportant at this point and he falls in love with her, the way she seems to have fallen for him.

Compromise

They enter the era of compromise but this can't go on forever. As ardour cools and little habits start to become annoying, thereafter it becomes a question of luck for the two of them.

Example - there was a girl sitting next to me yesterday [and as you know, I like a cooler room with some flow-through ventilation at all times]. I asked her if she wasn't cold and she said she liked it that way.

Uh-huh, just like me. She and I could do business.

Now, a different girl in the room whom I would give anything to marry, she was so lovely; however, she took the opposite point of view. She's a "seal all the doors and windows and seal in the coughing, spluttering sickness with it" type and she was feeling sick too.

Unfortunately, though she would have been my first choice, the other would have been a better bet.

I haven't explained myself well. All right, here's another example.

Basically, there are some things which can't be compromised on and the air we breathe is one of them. I have a lady client and it's a constant battle with her. We like each other immensely but she sits opposite me and asks me to close the door but I have to have it partially open because the room becomes so stuffy and the eyes start to water after ten minutes.

So I close it.

Ten minutes later, she starts coughing and her eyes start watering. I point this out, open the door - give her a towel to put over her feet, she wraps herself up against the cold but the sickness does disappear. The rest of the session is spent like this, trying to find a compromise position between her needs and mine.

Next girl is a different proposition. She likes the air as I do and the session goes smoothly.

So imagine this was a marriage situation. For example - she likes seafood and has a habit of leaving prawn shells everywhere. The fridge smells of it and it's awful. Or what about a girl who's crazy for cats and kisses them, then expects me to kiss her? No wonder I was always sick.

You can speak about compromise until you're blue in the face but what can one do here? Now I expect a married person reading this would think I was so self-centred and it's true - that's what escaping matrimony does to you, I'm sure.

When the two go in opposite directions

There was once a woman I was involved with who'd been married years earlier to my accountant. He'd remained the same, year in, year out. He had his circle and his cycle, he liked skiing [she didn't] and so on. She got into astrology, joined a group whom she began to bring into the family home for conferences and it sent the hubby round the bend.

What to do in that situation? Naturally, they divorced.

I do accept Dale O'Leary's view:

The "family" in all ages and in all corners of the globe can be defined as a man and a woman bonded together through a socially approved covenant of marriage to regulate sexuality, to bear, raise, and protect children, to provide mutual care and protection, to create a small home economy, and to maintain continuity between the generations, those going before and those coming after.

It is out of the reciprocal, naturally recreated relations of the family that the broader communities—such as tribes, villages, peoples, and nations—grow.

Yes, I really believe it's the only sustainable way to live [let's just agree to disagree here] but the barriers to making it work are awesome.

Christmas and New Year

I can't stand the commercialism of this season and am doing everything humanly possible to stop people buying me anything. But it's impossible.

For example, the Vice-Deans and Dean, I just know they're quietly expecting something and I know certain clients are going to feel duty bound to offer me something. I'd prefer just to have a coffee with them. Seriously.

Selfish? Maybe it is but I look at Sally in Norfolk's comment about being stressed out by the Christmas pressure and I ask:

"For what to do this each year?"

[grub street] fat cats at it again

The Grubby People are at it again:

Sainsbury's and Asda have admitted fixing the price of milk and cheese following an inquiry by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

The supermarkets, along with a number of dairy firms, have agreed to pay fines totalling at least £116m. Cases against Tesco and Morrisons will continue after no deal was struck.

The OFT said that its evidence found that while dairy product prices went up after the collusion, the price received by farmers did not increase.

Don't you just love that - the watchdog makes a deal with the firms who are being fined for making a deal. So who are the Grub Family here?

This is the downside of capitalism - cabals, trusts and price-fixing. Not a lot can be done really. At what point can a government step in and prevent mergers?

Their answer, of course - when it threatens to restrain free trade but what is free trade anyway other than cutting your rivals out of the market? The strongest survives and then it's irrelevant if the monopoly is state or private - the fat cat still pocket the dosh.

[regions] only within the national whole

We're going to keep blogging on this thing. It's as simple as this - there are democratically elected governments, yea, even the traitor Brown ... and then there are the euphemistically named qangos and NGOs. Behind them is the money.

Only a madman would speak out against this real power. Call me mad. Here is the latest, from the CEP:

So it would appear that Peter Davidson (who sits on the governing body of Unlock Democracy) sees the destruction of England as a nation - or indeed Britain - a desirable outcome.

I suspect that this is his website, on which he explains:

I would also endorse the proposal that the Committee of the Regions should be elevated in stature from the toothless body it currently represents to become the second legislative chamber of Europe.

Toque quotes author Frederick Forsyth:

[He] was once approached by the East Midlands Regional Assembly to become an ambassador for the region. His reply was a joy to read:

Regionalism, behind its mask of local democracy, enhanced prosperity for all, but in truth standing for millions more unaccountable gravy-slurping jobsworths, has got to fool enough of the people enough of the time…

But you run into a group of people far more numerous than yourself, just as committed to the retention of England as you are to its disappearance, just as smart and just as moneyed. Before the fight is over you and yours will have learned the hard way that this old country of ours is not yet prepared to be led into the knacker’s yard.

In the spirit of Frederick Forsyth I respond to the regionalists over at Our Kingdom:

Phil Davis in the Guardian signed off his Guardian article by informing us that he ‘chairs the Campaign for the English Regions’. [I was] shocked because I thought we’d buried that particular organisation when we were victorious in the North East referendum, so I emailed Phil who told me:

Nationalism is not an ideology, but a disease (of the soul)…Hope you recover...

[S]uch a statement shows contempt not just for the Scots and Welsh - who have recently voted for national government of their own - but also for the majority of the world’s population who elect their government along national lines.

Toque refers to the North-East in particular and here's an interesting thing. I myself have been extolling the virtues of Northumbria but there is one distinct difference. My Northumbria is under English control, it's part of a greater England, of which it is an earldom. Even that stout yeoman, Englisc Fyrd, remembers the true regionalism with affection.

The neo-regionalists, on the other hand, are under the control of the EU monster, an alien seed seeking to insinuate itself into someone else's country..

That distinction makes all the difference in the world. If you look at the flag above, which requires the Northumbrian colours somewhere in it, it is quartered with the English flag, not the EU's.

And yet the EU seeks to hijack this vague nationalism and somehow twist it into a version of itself. We need to be on our guard about quislings within our borders twisting the structure to suit themselves, an analogy yesterday being the cult leader who tries to redefine something which requires no redefinition, the ulterior motive being personal power and control.

He does it by appealing to vague innate feelings within each person, harnessing them, redirecting them and then carrying the person away on a tide of emotion. Pure 1930s all over again.

Interesting that I'm integrally involved in "the region as part of the nation" over here where I live and the notion of the region as part of and a major contributing factor to the national whole is a process which has very nearly been reachieved. We were discussing this only yesterday in the light of the different post-election political map.

In every nation, let it be the same but let artificial constructs like the CFR controlled SPPNA [which Bush, Martin and the Mexican allowed into being in March, 2005] and the EU monster go the way of all things.

[facebook] nice to see it confirmed

All that needs to be said about this has already been said. Do not join Facebook unless:

1. You would like your private details leaked and shared with government;

2. You plan never to leave Facebook [as it's near impossible].

Have a good day.

[omaha shootings] three ways to view them

Before we even start, the shootings were tragic and our hearts go out to the victims and their families.

After that comes the inevitable analysis and this falls into three camps:

1. Those who read no further than than news sources:

A man opened fire with a rifle at a busy department store Wednesday, killing eight people before taking his own life in an attack that made holiday shoppers run screaming through a mall and barricade themselves in dressing rooms. Five more people were wounded, two critically.

The gunman left a suicide note that was found at his home by his mother, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. TV station KETV reported that the note said he wanted to "go out in style."

... and conclude from that that America needs to revoke the gun laws in the light of yet another senseless citizen shooting.

2. Those who read no further than than news sources, patriots draped in the American flag, defending the constitutional rights of all citizens to bear arms. They will say that the Omaha shootings are not related to the gun laws issue. Already on this blog there's been a lively discussion about these laws here and here.

3. Those who are prepared to read far more widely than news sources and then filter the mass of material through the filter of past substantiation and logic. For such people as these, the name Omaha is quite well known in a number of contexts.

The Franklin Cover-up is well worth a look, particularly its being ruled as a hoax then that overturned nine years later, together with the MK Ultra cover-ups [see either orthodox sources like the Church hearings or read books like Trance Formation and Thanks for the Memories] which point to Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, as one ongoing source of human misery.

In the light of all that, it is scarcely surprising that Omaha hosted the latest in the attempts to disarm America. If your mind is so constructed that you can reject 100% of this material out of hand, then I have one question. O'Brian's and Taylor's books make quite detailed and specific allegations against, among others, Kissinger and Cheney.

Why, in a litigious society like America, did these two statesmen not act immediately to slap a libel action on the two authoresses for gross defamation and fabrication against the United States itself? After all, Bing Crosby and others labelled the Church hearings as treasonous [though the allegations were later substantiated].

Why has all this material not been debunked? And while we're at it, why hasn't the testimony of Paul Bonacci and Johnny Gosch been finally and irrevocably shown to be demonstrably false? Those who point to the 1990 grand jury judgement that it was a hoax and Bonacci's subsequent imprisonment fail to mention the 1999 Judge Urbon award of $1 million to this star witness who was supposed to have perpetrated the hoax.

So, coming back to the original question of gun laws, if I were an American and I'd seen all this testimony about my gallant leadership and how the organs of state are utilized [not a pun on Cheney], I'd feel the right of Americans to bear arms in that Most Dangerous Game - Life in America - is a most fundamental and necessary right indeed.

Interesting that these tragic shootings took place about the same time as this.