NZ Herald disgraces itself

As if to prove my long held view that finding proper journalists in New Zealand is quite difficult, Graham Baker of the NZ Herald comes along and spins absolute nonsense about the criminal violence that beset England since Saturday, and which has thankfully largely dissipated. It has dissipated in part because of the enormous increase in Police presence, but also the rain. You see people who “can’t be arsed” turning up for a job interview, or getting out of bed before 11am, or working are incredibly resistant to getting wet and cold. For that reason alone I hope it rains every night through the next few days and especially the weekend.

Baker is the NZ Herald’s news editor and is from the UK. Maybe he left because he couldn’t earn a living writing for the Morning Star, for I suspect the Guardian is not left wing enough for him, nor is Ed Miliband.

A journalist is meant to report on events, investigate and provide insights into the news. Baker didn’t do that, he interviewed his laptop. In this age when anyone can read for free most major UK serious papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, the Independent and the Guardian, as well as the numerous tabloids, why would one even bother reading the NZ Herald for news about the UK, when it puts out an article that could have come from the Marxist-Leninist (pro-USSR) Morning Star. The NZ Herald may a well have reprinted this, to help keep the ailing Morning Star from collapsing.

So what did he say? Consider it a rant worthy of Matt McCarten, and indeed it was embraced by my good buddy Russel Norman.

Baker claimed:

British politicians have espoused neo-liberal dogma for the best part of 30 years. A dogma based on consumerism and selfish individualism over shared responsibility.

Really Graham? Find a single speech by the current PM, Deputy PM, or indeed the past four PMs which has exemplified what you have claimed. Did the welfare state get dismantled, because I’ve watched it grow to the point where people on above average incomes get benefits for breeding, where people get up to £400 a week in housing benefit to have a four bedroom home (after the cuts!), and where pregnant teenagers are handed a free flat by councils. Yes, I’ve noticed health spending go through the roof in the world’s most centrally planned health service. I’ve noticed a top marginal tax rate of effectively 42% (now 52%). Most tax collected is on people in the top third of income earnings, but don’t let facts get in the way of your neo-Marxist dogma.

He goes on, expecting that a one year old government might have worked wonders...

Cameron's nebulous ideal of "Big Society" - that communities are stronger than the government in sorting problems out - has yetto prove of worth. (sic)

So government is the solution Graham. No shared responsibility in that, and funnily enough I thought the large numbers of people who turned out to clean up the town centres that had been vandalised might actually prove communities ARE stronger, but you ignored that, doesn’t fit your neo-Marxist love of “government can sort problems out”. 

Then he makes the riots a cause and effect of the recession...

in a time of austerity and a global recession lasting years, when people see their opportunities narrowing, services cut and the disappearance of the things they have for decades been told to expect, this is what happens

Most people have seen opportunities narrow for now, but spending cuts are largely just a reduction in the growth of spending. The government is spending more this year than last year. However, what’s this “things they have for decades been told to expect”? How many decades do teenagers expect things? Yet so what? Shared responsibility which Graham embraces doesn’t mean not having any of your own? This actually isn’t what happens Graham – all of Eastern Europe had its economies turned upside down, with mass layoffs and expectations of free social services and guaranteed jobs abolished when the mass of the population overthrew the dictatorships the Morning Star had lauded as examples. 

He asks plaintively (of a place he left to find a future)...

Where does one find a future? There are 400-odd unemployed people for every job advertised in Tottenham, many of those part-time shop or cleaning work for minimum wage.

Funnily enough Graham, London is bigger than Tottenham and one can catch a bus anywhere for £1.20 each way. How about the tens of thousands of immigrants from far poorer countries who come with next to nothing and set up small businesses, working seven days a week to scratch out a living? Of course they are displaying “selfish individualism” and so are part of the problem, right Graham? Is concern about your future a reason to mow down three young men on a footpath, or beat up a young man till his jaw is broken, or indeed just set fire to a store to watch it burn?

Then comes a mistake or a deliberate misrepresentation...

It now costs about $24,000 a year just to study at university in England.

No Graham. That’s complete nonsense. You have misrepresented it in three ways. First, the figure you quote is false. The MAXIMUM a university can charge is £9,000. That’s NZ$17,900 at today’s exchange rates, but far better to put it over NZ$20k, good for your “story” right? Secondly, it is a maximum. Quite a few charge less than that. Most importantly, nobody has to cough up that amount upfront. Student loans are available to cover the entire tuition fee that do not have to be repaid until the graduate starts earning above the average wage, and then only in increments. Guess the full story doesn’t fit your agenda does it Graham?

He then refers to someone the Guardian talked to who said:

“University fees have gone up, education costs money. And there's no jobs. This is them sending out a message."

One point ably made by Allister Heath of City AM is that a significant number of those rioting probably could never have got into university because they would have performed so badly at school. The three reasons this happens tend to be negligent parents, poor quality schools and the corrosive culture of criminality that pervades many areas. Free university education doesn’t address this issues in Scotland, so why would it in England?

However, then he talks about circumstances as if they are all about luck. 

My generation was lucky. University was affordable, social mobility was a reality, and just over a decade ago I entered an economy that worked. The situation young people find themselves in today is the very antithesis of the word "lucky".

Well actually many young people are “lucky”, many work damned hard to do well at school, go to university, or find employment and make a life for themselves. Most of them don’t vandalise and steal. Graham might have reflected that decades of overspending by governments and promising unaffordable pensions for older generations have proven to be unsustainable, but we don't get anything about solutions from him.

Does he have a solution? No, of course not, in fact almost none of the leftwing commentators do, all they do is blame past politicians. He says:

It is no irony that a country which has pursued consumerism and social nihilism has been blighted by people who - when it all goes wrong - believe in and respect nothing except consumer goods.

Did it suddenly go wrong? No. The social nihilism Graham damns is actually because of the breakdown of families, and the embrace of moral relativism and post-modern theories of power and identity politics that teach and disseminate the view that nothing is ever your fault. They claim everything is stacked against Afro-Caribbean youth because of “racism”, and everything is stacked against those on low incomes because of the view that wealthier people are just “lucky”, and that it has nothing to do with hard work and discipline. In fact the word discipline has been eschewed as “self expression” has been embraced. It is an embrace of a perverse individualism that demands the right to do whatever they like, whatever they consequences, and demand what they want, and to complain if you don’t give it to them. This corrosive culture has been catalysed by a subculture of gangsterism, embracing the “music” and attitudes that celebrate violence, misogyny and expectations that education and hard work are for fools, and that easy money is what matters. This isn’t about capitalism or even individualism, it is parasitism.

What really happened Graham is that a handful of people decided to take on the Police in Tottenham Hale, and the Police were overwhelmed and outnumbered. This was seen by criminal gangsters and the underclass of feral youth (the ones that parents and teachers are scared to discipline for fear the kids will call Social Services, and who will complain about their rights whenever anyone tells them off for breaking laws or being obnoxious) as a weakness, and so they networked loosely and went out on a spree. They were laughing, joking and boasting about what they did. They weren’t on a political demonstration, they weren’t complaining about racism (most of the rioters up North were white), they weren’t looting for food or essentials, indeed many times they didn’t even loot, but just destroyed. Not that far removed from the Sex Pistol’s in “Anarchy in the UK”, which was written in the 1970s, before Graham’s “neo liberal” revolution.

Graham doesn’t have an answer. Maybe because he doesn’t know it, or because if he said he wanted taxes to go up, and more to be spent on welfare, education and state subsidised jobs, his economic illiteracy should show.

So I urge those who think this sort of journalism is not worthy for New Zealand to give up buying or subscribing to the NZ Herald.  If this is what passes as professional journalism in that newspaper, then it's worthless.  A mixture of half truths, complete falsehoods, and agit-prop dressed up as analysis, without any answers.  You'll get more sense from the centre-left Independent.

UPDATE:  Seems the Greens have swallowed it all hook, line and sinker, and continue to be barren in their answers.

Russel Norman shows the mindlessness of the far-left (UPDATED)

I'm not a fan of Russel Norman.  He's a prick.

He might be a co-leader of the Green Party, but he quickly resorts to personal abuse and name calling when debating.  He plays the man, not the ball.  I've engaged with a few Green MPs and most are more dignified than he is.

See we have a history...

I questioned his view on cellphone towers, based on some knowledge about EMR issues, and he aligned me with ACT and called me CaptivityScott and DungeonScott.

Then he says I am "far right" for saying it was offensive on the day that dead bodies were being found in Brisbane after severe floods to say that Queensland is a major contributor to climate change, as if they were reaping what they sowed.   Because you see, Norman can't actually believe people who want less government aren't somehow Nazis.

His latest effort is to copy Ken Livingstone (not copied by UK Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband) in saying on Twitter:

London riots show costs of inequality and poverty can present with more immediacy than slowly increasing public health bills

Bullshit.  Especially vile since you wont see Russel Norman coming to London to talk to those who wrecked havoc and stole, you especially wont see him talking to the owners of businesses whose lives and families are ruined.  One couple came from Sri Lanka with nothing, and now have their livelihood destroyed.  What's poverty Russel? How can hundreds of thousands of migrants from far poorer backgrounds who come with nothing create livings for themselves, whereas thousands of kids who have been handed education and homes on a plate, who in some cases are given a basic living for doing nothing, be seen as underprivileged?

The gangs who roamed around London used Blackberries, that great symbol of poverty, to organise.  Many had cars to drive around in, which given nearly half of Londoners don't have cars (given the density of public transport) means they are hardly in poverty.  Most weren't seeking food, they went for designer clothes, widescreen TVs, or in many cases just wanted to vandalise.  How else does it explain the breaking in to a baby clothing shop (in Ealing), and just strewing the contents of the shop around?  These aren't mothers desperately needing stuff for their kids, they are thugs who just want to destroy.

However, Russel Norman can't understand that.  He is as out of touch with the underclasses as he is with the laws of physics and economics (think he lives in a housing estate?).  He can't believe people can be evil and destructive for no reason.  He can't believe that people can be given the full blame for their actions, because his "world view" is coloured by Marxist structuralist identity politics that automatically labels people as either empowered or oppressed according to race or class background.  The Sri Lankan couple with a shop are petty bourgeois, the black youth gang are "disadvantaged", the young (Malaysian student) boy robbed while he was injured might have more "power" because of his background. 

It is collectivist groupthink - it categorises people as winners or losers by stereotypes.  It is racism of the left, which is more sophisticated if not less insidious and destructive than racism of the right.

A more sophisticated view has come from the Editor of the Independent, not my favourite newspaper as it tends to be the mouthpiece of the Liberal Democrat left, but still take this:

We know enough about these riots and those perpetrating them to know what they are not. This is not a political protest. The rioters have no agenda. It is not centrally directed. The goal is acquisitive looting or brainless destruction. The original riot in Tottenham on Saturday seems to have been sparked by a community's sense of grievance against the police. But what happened in Woolwich, Toxteth and Bristol on Monday night is clearly not an anti-police protest. Much of it is copycat rioting. Criminal gangs and antisocial youths have seized on an opportunity to run amok, knowing that the police cannot be everywhere at once.

Nor is this a response to public-sector austerity. Reports of the Government's cuts might have added to the air of desperation in many poor communities. But the fact is that most cuts have not been implemented yet. This is not a riot driven by new media either. BlackBerrys and Twitter – neither of which existed during the inner-city civil disturbances of the 1980s – have doubtless played a role in fanning the flames. But new media is hardly a sufficient explanation for this antisocial spasm. This is also not a race riot, in the manner of Brixton, Toxteth, Handsworth or Broadwater Farm in the 1980s, either. The rioters of 2011 are racially mixed. And there is no overwhelming collective grievance against the police for racial harassment as there was three decades ago.

So the mindless claims, parroted by other leftwing bloggers like Tumeke and Kiwipolitico, are just that:

-  It isn't politically driven;

-  It isn't anti-Police per se;

-  It isn't a response to spending cuts;

-  It can't be blamed on social media;

-  It isn't racially driven.

It is "acquisitive looting and brainless destruction", it isn't desperation from poverty, it isn't a desire to "express themselves" (has it ever been less difficult to publish, record or broadcast?).

It is more disturbing:

many of these jobless and under-educated youths simply do not feel that they belong to a community. They have formed parallel groupings instead, defined by a shocking lack of morality and an immunity from shame. It is this criminal, marginalised and sometimes mentally disturbed underclass that Britain has seen in action in recent days.

They are, in part, a result of absent parents, especially fathers, who have been allowed for decades to breed and flee, with little financial consequences, leaving hoards of boys being raised without male role models, until they find the next best thing. The get recruited by tough gangsters who demand obedience, who deal in violence, theft and the black economy, but in the lawless environment of housing estates offer some security, the easy spoils of thieving, status and as a result access to the girls who cling on for their father figures, trading the one currency girls always have in.

It has been the damning failure of a massive social experiment, a belief that only with more money, more "youf centas", council workers, housing benefits, dumbed-down education that treats them as incapable of achieving, a softly softly approach to law and order for those who don't bother and infest these communities with their poisonous embrace of violence, but most of all the constant excuses from the illiberal left that "it isn't your fault" that you did things you shouldn't, that somehow these lost people can be saved.  It would be quasi-Christian, except Christians believe in punishment.  This philosophy, interwoven with the envy-ridden simplicity of Marxist belief that claim people succeed only through "luck" or by inheriting from people who are considered to have "stolen" from society, is now both philosophically and empirically bankrupt.

It is time to break up the housing estates that condemn kids from poor families to live in high density housing (good for public transport and the environment!) surrounded by gang culture.  It is time to cease paying people to breed.  It is time to cease handing out welfare to convicted violent criminals.  It is time to set education free of the state mass production system that claims one size fits all and which condemns kids of poor families to no choice.  It is time to promote a culture of celebrating entrepreneurship, hard work and trading, whilst not state subsidising a culture of violence, attitude laden demands for "respect" and unalloyed misogyny. 

Meanwhile, Russel Norman thinks he is qualified to point finger at a foreign country, score political points that are at the expense of hundreds of victims, and proclaim effectively that if only taxes took more money for these rioters, they wouldn't riot. He ignores the small business owners whose livelihoods are ruined, and those of the people they employed.  People who despite poverty, make a go of their lives, even with the taxes and regulation Russel thinks makes what they do "good for society", for let's not forget that if any such businesses do very well, he will want to smash them down to size or pillage more for the people who would destroy them.  Always second, third, fourth chances to those who demand it all for nothing, always more and more taxes and demands for those who ask for nothing, but build for themselves.

He isn't interested in poverty, he is interested in point scoring, in state control and intervention and in using state power to take from some to give to others.   For if he cared about poverty, he'd worry about the businesses that keep these communities alive, that provide goods and services, and hire people and create wealth for them.  No, he cares about those who if left to their own devices, would turn everyone to dust, and after taking all they could, would starve to death because nobody productive would be left.

In fact, his philosophy of not letting the perpetrator take responsibility for his or her actions and ignoring the victim of their crimes has been a resounding failure.  It is not a time to bribe the uncivilised and destructive with money taken from the civilised and creating.

UPDATE: You'll do worse than read Allister Heath's editorial today..read it all but for part of what he says:

The cause of the riots is the looters; opportunistic, greedy, arrogant and amoral young criminals who believe that they have the right to steal, burn and destroy other people’s property. There were no extenuating circumstances, no excuses. The context was two-fold: first, decades of failed social, educational, family and microeconomic policies, which means that a large chunk of the UK has become alienated from mainstream society, culturally impoverished, bereft of role models, permanently workless and trapped and dependent on welfare or the shadow economy. For this the establishment and the dominant politically correct ideology are to blame: they deemed it acceptable to permanently chuck welfare money at sink estates, claiming victory over material poverty, regardless of the wider consequences, in return for acquiring a clean conscience. The second was a failure of policing and criminal justice, exacerbated by an ultra-soft reaction to riots over the past year involving attacks on banks, shops, the Tory party HQ and so on, as well as an official policy to shut prisons and reduce sentences. Criminals need to fear the possibility and consequence of arrest; if they do not, they suddenly realise that the emperor has no clothes.

he disposes of the arguments around it being political

the state will spend 50.1 per cent of GDP this year; state spending has still been rising by 2 per cent year on year in cash terms. It has never been as high as it is today – in fact, it is squeezing out private sector growth and hence reducing opportunities and jobs. Many of the vandals were school children not yet in the labour market; unemployment is a tragedy that must be fought but 9, 10 or 14 year olds can’t be pillaging because of it. Equally tragically, most of the older rioters would never have any hope of going to university, regardless of cost, such is their educational poverty.

London's Day of Reckoning, or who is in charge?

After three nights of looting, arson, vandalism, home invasions and assaults, one must start to wonder as the "thin blue line" between law and order, and anarchical violence and destruction, has been broken.

If I hadn’t been watching TV or being online, I would have noticed no difference in London, except that the two men who hand out the free papers at the entrance to my local underground station were absent – the papers still in plastic wrapped piles unopened. A sign that perhaps they had something more important to do, like protect their families. I can afford to live in a part of London where the local population has few who are feral, but even then middle class areas like Ealing have been ransacked. Indeed, there are now dozens upon dozens of people who are now homeless and jobless, because of those who celebrated destruction. Those that if they were let loose would send us all back into the stone age, for they take and destroy, but produce and create absolutely nothing.

Only the wilfully blind, or geographically remote, will think these riots have anything to do with the death of a man in the weekend. They have nothing to do with so-called “spending cuts” or being “disenfranchised”.

The enormous live TV coverage seen here in the UK has shown pretty much what has been going on:

- Criminal gangs have been organising themselves to steal electrical goods, clothes, shoes, watches and the like. They have been using the net and mobile phones to identify where there are no police and going around in groups by car, to ransack;

- Teenagers (and younger) are roaming their local streets, and some are deciding to copycat the criminal gangs. Either to throw items at Police, break windows, start fires, steal or generally cause mayhem. It’s the school holidays, so many see it as a lot fun;

- A significant number (if not proportion) of the young people involved in this are largely amoral about the property of others, so much coverage has shown boys and girls laughing, giggling, saying “let’s get us some watches man” or the like. Shamelessly taking off with the property of others;

- The extensive and ubiquitous nature of modern communications means that it is easy for groups to identify where they can go and get away with it all. The TV coverage of looting, rioting and arson, without any police in sight tells many that they can get away with whatever they like.

In short, law and order is not being kept on the streets of London. The London Metropolitan (and City of London) Police forces are more than overstretched, having called upon forces from outside London to try to control, but they have largely failed.

The core function of the state is to protect citizens from the violence of criminals, but this Conservative led coalition government has preferred to increase its foreign aid budget and keep Labour’s NHS profligacy intact, to keep giving free bus passes and cheap energy to wealthy pensioners, and then cut police spending. It wont be a surprise that morale in the police is not high.

So if the state can’t protect citizens and their businesses, the responses from citizens are going to be mixed, such as Turkish and Kurdish shop owners and their formidable sons wielding baseball bats to chase feral youths away. Far too many online forums are now full of nasty racist remarks about the fact that many of the youths seen as black. These events are perfect recruiting occasions for the BNP and National Front. Muslim business owners in the East End are being protected by their own families wielding weapons. In short, it becomes vigilante justice.

However, why should anyone be surprised? If law abiding citizens had the right to bear arms it might make for a very different scene, because property owners could fight back. Of course there would be the risk that more of the thugs would also have weapons, given that firearms have only been implicated in one incident the last few nights.

Today both the PM and Mayor of London have returned from their summer vacations, to rescue their respective political careers. If a Conservative PM and a Conservative Mayor cannot be tough on law and order, then they are finished. The PM must ensure the Police have all the necessary resources to lock down the looted areas tonight, and the option of a curfew must be considered. For if London is NOT brought under some order tonight, it will get much much worse. If this is blamed on spending cuts in the Police (which is unfair as there has been virtually no impact from that as of yet), then the government will have handed Labour an issue on a plate. Ed Milliband will be chasing the ambulances with glee at this news, even though his political philosophy has contributed to this problem.

There must be an organised effort to establish order on the streets by the Police. A curfew for young people between certain hours should be considered, with the simple point that anyone on the streets at those times under a certain age face being arrested and spending a night in a cell. Shopkeepers and others who are protecting themselves should be supported by the Police, not treated like criminals.

Yet what we have witnessed overnight, the past three nights, has been the result of what happens when solipsistic whim worshippers discover there is anarchy and they can get away with taking what they like and destroying, like the culture they embrace celebrates. That is the vacuum that has been created by cultural relativism, the empty void of amorality presented by so-called liberals who threw away the religious based morality of past generations, and instead of replacing it with a humanist secular commitment to individual rights and property rights, embraced “group rights”, “victimology” and structural theories of power and rights.

The young people who have rioted have been told that if they don’t have what they want, it isn’t “their fault”. That if they haven’t got a job they want and like, then it is someone else’s responsibility to fix that. That if someone has something they want, then they have a “right” to that as well. That the reason their parent or family do not have the wealth of others is because of racism, or because they aren’t part of some special inner circle, not because they didn’t pay attention at school, didn’t read books and preferred the parasitical culture of gangsters and crime.

The failed social engineers, like chardonnay socialist Polly Toynbee of the Guardian are still claiming the riots are because of “benefit cuts” (see removing child benefit from people earning over £38,000 a year will do that). However, their time is past. They have celebrated pouring money into ghettoised state housing schemes that have hothoused criminal gangs and the poverty of aspiration that does promote this. Most of all, they have embraced the philosophy of cultural and moral relativism that says “anything is ok as long as you express yourself”, the idea that “everyone is the same” regardless of whether you actually work hard, achieve and become a success, or if you laze about, barely articulate yourself and resist any advice or attempts to help you change. They will call for more money to be taken from the law abiding and productive, to bribe the feckless, breeding, whim worshipping thugs into being submissive. They will say they aren’t excusing it “but”, which of course means they are explaining the crimes as not the actions of people wishing to do evil, but as reactions to government policies.  They would be the first to complain about business owners taking justice into their own hands, after paying their taxes and finding it subsidises those who steal from them.

Today the state has to focus on the single thing it must do and do well – re-establish law and order in London. If it fails, then David Cameron’s much touted promotion of volunteering, called (appallingly) the “Big Society” will come to pass, in the form of vigilantes and localised justice. People will enforce the law as they see fit, because if the state wont protect them, what else can they do?

Tonight either London is secured, or it is anarchy – in either case, most Londoners will be at home, concerned, some frightened. My concern is that I’ve seen little evidence that this government has any real idea of how important this really is. 

Want some free stuff?

That's what's driving the hoards of youths rioting in various parts of London the last few nights (and today as I write).  

It is not because of the protest of the shooting of Mark Duggan, in a case that is now under investigation.   One can't remotely claim that those rioting in Tottenham, Hackney, Wood Green, Enfield and now Lewisham are some response to the Police.  Petrol bombing shops, flats and buses, is not about some sort of protest.  There was a peaceful protest on Saturday about it, and Duggan's family long called for an end to any violence.

Even less credible is the opportunistic claim by Marxist dictatorship-felching ex. Mayor (and Labour candidate for Mayor) Ken Livingstone that it is a response to the coalition government's spending cuts (which despite the Labour propaganda, have seen a net increase in state spending).  It is a stark contrast from local Labour MP, David Lammy who said:

This is an attack on Tottenham, on people, ordinary people, shopkeepers, women, children who are now standing on the streets homeless as a consequence..

These are looters, they are amoral, impulsive young men and women who have no conception of the rights of others, who have no respect for the property of others, who couldn't care less if people lose their livelihoods, businesses or homes.   They are the output of a culture of entitlement that says if you want something you should have it, you don't need to work or save for it, for either the state will pay for it, or someone will give it to you - or you just take it when you can.  A culture of hedonistic whim worshipping, that says if it feels good it's ok and it doesn't matter who or what you destroy or harm in the process - might is right.

They are, of course, engaging in socialism - without the middle man of the state.   The likes of Ken Livingstone,  residing in pleasantly middle class Cricklewood, would steal from the businesses and the residents and the employees, just with the gloved fist of the state doing it in a far more ordered and determined way, to give a living, homes, food, clothes, TVs, mobile phones, transport and healthcare to those who steal.  Indeed, the state has been doing that for decades, and the moral vacuousness is obvious.

Note that the Metropolitan Police cannot use tear gas to deal to these thugs, it cannot even contemplate rubber bullets, because you see to protect people with more force would be against the rights of the criminals.  Neither could those whose businesses and homes were attacked could ever have a firearm to respond.

However, just wait to see who politically around the word spreads the empty nonsense that the riots are about the death of Mark Duggan (who did not exactly appear to be unfamiliar with the gang culture that infests Tottenham), or about the cruel Tory government that has cut government spending to a heartless 51% of GDP, or that its about racism (given the majority of rioters have appeared to be Afro-Caribbean), and how the way to fix it is to borrow more money we don't have to spend money on more regeneration, state housing ghettos, welfare and pseudo "jobs" with local authorities.

Whilst, of course, the people whose businesses are wrecked, who are unemployed as a result of their employers' businesses being wrecked, who are now without homes, are ignored - for they are the "collateral damage" of "disenchantment", rather than a victim of decades of failed welfarism and state housing ghettoisation, producing hot houses of feckless dependency and criminal cultures of violence, misogyny, gangster worship and aspiration less traps for the children raised in that culture.

UPDATE:  Oh and remember more than a few of the parents and relatives of these thugs DO want better.  Read Katherine Birbalsingh's column about how SHE talked to an event about young black men in London, she's an inner city teacher, who has riled more than a few because she spoke at a Conservative Party conference.

End of cloud cuckoo land economics

So says City AM editor, Allister Heath.  In an extended editorial this morning he wrote an elegant piece that summarises where we all are at:

The post-Bretton Woods era is coming to an end. Asia and the emerging nations are on the rise – and the world’s increasingly vocal creditors. As economic power shifts, so will geopolitical and cultural influence. The US, which for decades enjoyed massive inflows of cheap financing, and huge benefits from owning the world’s reserve currency, needs to start to live within its means. The same is true of Europe, which faces two additional challenges: the Eurozone, which cannot survive in its present form and which has become the most urgent threat to global prosperity; and (even more than America) bloated welfare states and a generalised failure to grasp that weak education systems, high taxes and crippling regulations are a no-no in a globalised world.

He has no time for the endless budget deficits and the abuse of fiat currencies as ways to evade reason...

“stimulus” packages of the fiscal or monetary variety have become counter-productive, with every extra pound in economic output created coming at a much greater cost. Ultimately, one needs real, sustainable growth – and that must mean deferring consumption to allow the savings required to finance productive investment; a sound, non-manipulated currency; interest rates that reflect reality; and lots of hard work, creativity, skill and innovation, suitably incentivised. The pseudo-Keynesian micro-management that dominates policy-making is not only intellectually bankrupt but has been proved to fail in practice. Politics and wishful thinking has been defeated by economic reality. In a world of scarce resources, we need to produce before we can consume – all the borrowing and money-printing in the world cannot refute this simple truth. 

His big predictions are that the US can prevaricate for some time, and be in long term relative decline as it does, but the European Union has an immediate crisis, that now threatens to spread beyond the CPIIGS (Cyprus, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) into Belgium and France.  

But while the US’s decline could run for decades, and will involve further downgrades, the Eurozone’s crisis is urgent. The only question is how much debt the authorities will want or be able to federalise – how many toxic government bonds will the European Central Bank and the European Financial Stability Facility buy, in exchange for creating money or issuing Eurobonds backed by all Eurozone countries. Prudent taxpayers in Germany and elsewhere will pick up the bill left by profligate nations; but given its huge, multi-trillion euro size, this could destroy yet more credit ratings. France could be next for a downgrade. Even more importantly, a sovereign bailout will destroy any remaining popular support for the euro project, especially in Germany, understandably so given that the population was lied to when it was told that countries would retain their fiscal independence despite giving up monetary sovereignty.

 

The implications of this for Europe, could be positive if it unshackled itself from the socialist part of the EU project, and helped set its economies free, but it is unlikely that will happen.

 

The more serious concern ought to be about the decline of the United States, what is means not so much for the global economy, but for the international order.  For decades many in the West have rallied against Pax Americana, more than a few will cheer a New World Order that does not resemble what George Bush (Sr.) declared at the end of the Cold War.   

However, bear in mind what it represents.  It means Asia being dominated militarily as well as economically by China, and India, both nuclear powers.  It means the Middle East being dominated by Saudi Arabia and Israel, it means Europe being dominated by NATO and Russia, and it means the United States doing what Obama has royally done, opting out of the world by withdrawing.

The so-called "peace movement" will proclaim the world is a safer place as a result, although if it is a place where the United States no longer carries a banner, and sword, for freedom, one wonders how true that will be (not that the "peace movement" ever believed in freedom).   Some US libertarians welcome this, not wanting the US to be "World Police" (not that it ever really was), but what it leaves is a philosophical vacuum - one that is increasingly filled with "make money wherever you can regardless of individual or property rights" as the Russia and Middle Eastern kleptocracies move forward and China seeks a 21st century imperialism over African natural resources to replicate the 19th century Western equivalent.   Islam may fill part of it, corporatist state capitalism will fill some more, as will knuckle-dragging nationalism based on ethnicity. 

However, consider this.  If you were in Poland, with a relatively chilly authoritarian neighbour to the east, and you saw the US withdraw its presence in Europe - given the past 70 years of history - would you be feeler safer as a result?