The Bewilderness

Total wreck for the government

First financial, then economic, finally political. The government finds itself screwed as reaction against freedom of movement rallies and finds its focus in European targets. The Times reports that the wildcat strikes and disturbance at Lindsey is being fanned by a militant shop stewards movement, leaving the trade union leaders in a bind. Either they support their radicalised members or they fall in behind a government that is increasingly hated for its ineptitude.

Among the plans which will alarm Downing Street are a national march against foreign workers in London, a national boycott of filling stations owned by Total, the French oil company, and a blockade at a Kent power station.

There was mounting confusion at No 10 about how to deal with the crisis amid fears that a failure to strike the right tone could backfire and fuel public anger over the recession.

This development can only spur the rise of an incipient Euroscepticism within this country, as the unions understand the implications of this liberal aspect of the European Union. With such a large number of immigrants entering Britain over a short period of time, and watching contracts awarded to floating hotels of strangers, the strikers will not be amused at Mandelson's tin ear defending foreign companies right to undercut British workers. Mandelson is, of course, correct, but will win few plaudits for saying so.

The greatest concern for the government is that the strikers are predominantly working in the energy sectors. they must be fervently hoping that this is not the equivalent of the fuel protests.

The sleaze of party political advantage

The Sunday Telegraph reports that the Labour Party will use the issue of sleaze as a tool to target the Tories rather than remove its taint from Parliament. The first 'reform' that the Labour party will implement is a ban or a ceiling on outside jobs, a move that will hit the Conservative Party far harder than any other. The second is to ensure that non-domiciled Lords are removed from the Chamber, a supercilious gesture designed to attack Lord Ashcroft. 

These reforms may have some merit, if they were placed within a programme whose primary objective was to curb influence and sleaze within Parliament. Such a programme would have been carried out by consultation and consensus. This is not the way of New Labour, who prefer to conceal advantage behind a mendacious mask of reform.

The package of reforms has been agreed by Gordon Brown, the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, the Chief Whip: Nick Brown and Harriet Harman. The more radical wing would prefer a complete ban on outside jobs, though positions within trade unions and financial support would naturally be exempted from this measure.

If Labour wish to institute such a blatant privilege over other parties, then let them place this in their manifesto, where the chances of legislation are minimal, on the latest poll ratings. But we know that Labour has no difficulty in trying to obtain an advantage over the Tories before the election. If they can use the smokescreen of parliamentary reform to cripple the finances of the opposition, they will drive this through.   

'Spring of discontent' powers France

"We refuse to be the children of the financial crisis". It is not surprising for the Grauniad to report that the French are planning a general strike to protest at the financial crisis. Public-sector and private-sector workers are due to participate in the general strike, called Black Thursday, later this week. The mood of discontent is reaching one of Europe's more bolshy countries where the strike is popular amongst all members of the community and places social protection above companies.

Being France, the action has a radical tinge, with hard-left parties playing up the general strike and using its popularity to bolster their line. If 2009 is a torrid year, one silver lining may be that Sarkozy is heard less here and more in France, and the more they hear, the less they will like.

New technique may double IVF success

All technologies advance. A good example is a new technique employed during in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to check chromosomal abnormalities in female eggs. This increases the success rate by filtering out 'bad' eggs and reducing the probability of failure or miscarriage. The technique, real time polar body array Comparative Genomic Hybridization (CGH), has been used on one woman and a child will hopefully be born this Spring. Good news all round.

"We're just urinating on the ashes of the fire"

The French love English so much that they have established a prize to celebrate the encroachment of a global language, tying humanity together and promoting virtues of their revolution: liberty, fraternity and equality. Some have won this prize for demonstrating solidarity with their fellow European citizens and sacrificing the chance to speak in their most honourable and ancient tongue in order to facilitate communication:

But topping the poll for grave disservices to the mother tongue is France's higher education minister, Valerie Pecresse. 

Her crime: proclaiming to the press that she had no intention of speaking French when attending European meetings in Brussels, because, she said, it was quite obvious that English was now the easiest mode of communication.

The name of the prize is the Prix de la Carpette Anglaise, a mouthful that appears to indicate talking English is equivalent to lying back and receiving the droit de seigneur. If you are rewarded with this honour, it means that you have displayed fawning servility towards the Anglosphere. So if you politely speak English in a meeting when everyone else does, this is enslavement by an imperialistic tongue, rather than politely accepting the majority language of your colleagues.

However, as the rest of the article continues, English is a second language and stripped down to the bare essentials for aiding communication: a development that is called Globish. A rather unhealthy term as I would not wish to call the speakers of this stripped down argot, Globs. There then arises the doubtful anecdote that the native speaker cannot follow anyone else, since he is used to nuances, humour, wordplay and so on. And a chap wrote a wholebook about this, setting out grammar and rules such as avoid jokes, metaphor and anything else that may serve to confuse (or add life to the proceedings)

In a meeting with colleagues from around the world, including an Englishman, a Korean and a Brazilian, he noticed that he and the other non-native English speakers were communicating in a form of English that was completely comprehensible to them, but which left the Englishman nonplussed.

He, Jean-Paul Nerriere, could talk to the Korean and the Brazilian in this neo-language, and they could understand each other perfectly.

But the Englishman was left out because his language was too subtle, too full of meaning that could not be grasped by the others....

Globish has only 1,500 words and users must avoid humour, metaphor, abbreviation and anything else that can cause cross-cultural confusion.

They must speak slowly and in short sentences. Funnily enough, he holds up the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as an excellent exponent.

If this story is true, which I doubt, then all of the group were sitting with Tim nice but dim. But when sees the object of the book: set rules, curb growth, plant boundaries, one begins to wonder. Is this just another dastardly French plot to curb the spread of English by attempting to create a simple, unfunny version? Rather similar to the new brain that the mice would have given to Arthur Dent with useful phrases and the ability to enjoy a nice cup of tea.  .

Darling spends today what you save tomorrow

The Guardian headlines with a plan by Darling to splurge more of our cash in a vain attempt to mitigate the downturn and 'reshape' the economy. This marvellous plan will pick winners, support companies, shore up marginals and try to win Labour the next election. The details of the article show that a chink of light is beginning to enter the Treasury. They now accept that their laughable predictions may have been wrong, and that any further government spending is constrained by what the markets will accept.

Weaker growth will result in public borrowing exceeding the £118bn pencilled in for the 2009-10 financial year in the PBR and the fresh fiscal boost in the budget will be accompanied by plans to raise taxes or trim expenditure once the crisis is past. "If we do more there has to be a sensible plan for fiscal consolidation," one source said.

Drawing on his time as industry secretary, Darling has told officials he is attracted by the idea of using the budget to help reshape the economy, which in the run-up to the recession was heavily dependent on two sectors - finance and housing.

This year's budget will be the first to contain a UK carbon budget and the chancellor wants to support green jobs through capital programmes, spending on better home insulation and the encouragement of low carbon technologies.

The Treasury is also working on proposals to help the car industry. Measures under consideration include an expansion of the asset-backed guarantee scheme for mortgages to car loans and the purchase of corporate bonds to help boost cash flow.

The Treasury need to place a medium term plan on the table now for fiscal discipline, given the level of liabilities they have taken on. But, to repeat Labour's immorality, they are trading short-term political advantage, saving jobs whilst in power for economic growth after the Depression. Is this New Labour's mott: spend today what you saved tomorrow.

The spin cycle

Not a surprise. The Lords Communications Committee calls upon the government to respect the authority of Parliament and announce policies within its walls first.

Ministers should make policy announcements to Parliament rather than the media, a committee of peers will recommend today.

The morning lobby briefing should be televised and ministers should stop “trailing” announcements to “friendly media” ahead of statements to Parliament, according to the Lords Communications Committee.

The group says in a report: “One of the most important tasks of government is to provide clear, truthful and factual information to citizens. The accurate and impartial communication of information about government policies, activities and services is critical to the democratic process.”

A response will appear in the Daily Mail.

Communists wish to set 'house' churches within their order

The Times has a report that the Chinese authorities have begun to talk to the underground 'house' churches whose attendees hold more members than the Communist party. No doubt there is some overlap between the two movements.

He added that the Government wanted to discuss the position of house churches and to evaluate whether they posed a threat to the regime. They also wanted to know why the house churches could not accept the leadership of the official body.

Even more surprisingly, they appeared to want advice. “They wanted to know our requirements when it comes to setting future policy,” Pastor Jin said, without elaborating.

In a report on the meeting, another house church pastor wrote that one of the main topics was the difficulty of keeping the unofficial church under the Government’s heel. Pastors say that raids, fines and even punishments such as re-education through labour are no longer effective; if one church is broken up new ones are started.

A senior economist, who openly declares his faith, said: “The closer understanding may have come in meetings between jailed pastors and the police, and those changes in attitude meant this day could come.”

Reports on religion in China demonstrate how far the authorities have lost their ability to set an ideological monopoly and their capability to enforce their power over wider social trends. The 'house' churches in China are indicative fo a wider pluralism within the society. As the economy enters choppy waters, it is noteworthy that the Communist party wishes to co-opt and co-operate with independent movements within the middle class.

Do we face the first world crisis of the 21st century?

Winston Churchill used the term, "world crisis" to describe the end of the liberal age between 1911 and 1918, when militarism and barbarism destroyed the first age of globalisation. The words have also been used to set an explanatory framework for the instabilities and extremes caused by the Great Depression. Although one may dislike the politics of Eric Hobsbawm, his history of the twentieth century was correctly titled: the Age of Extremes: where the downfall of the liberal order ended in horrific wars, genocides and terror.

The twentieth century proved to be one of radical change. As George Friedman of Stratfor writes in his forecast for the twenty-first century, a snapshot of the world every twenty years leads to a bewildering kaleidoscope of regime change, to which I would add technological progress. From this context arises the question of how further and faster change may collide with existing political and social structures.

The reaction of our existing leaders and parties to the 'credit crunch' has been to invoke the language of crisis; since their perception of an emergency warrants and justifies action and, in Britain, provides an initial advantage to the incumbent administration. There is a wider question that may prove their political discourse premature. Will the economic downturn trigger political changes, electoral or violent, resulting in the reverse of democratisation and ensuring a new lease of life for dormant ideologies?

Will commentators look back in five or ten years time on a vastly changed political and economic landscape, pinpointing the credit crunch as the beginning of a 'world crisis' that fundamentally changed our perceptions of countries, companies and cultures? The question is fundamentally unknowable, but the rapid onrush of a crisis exposes the fragility of many institutions and many countries. Political change comes to the fore, and political risk becomes a primary tool for governments and companies. If this deep recession/potential depression did not result in a revolution or two at the very least, then it would be a first for the planet.

Such uncertainty allows us to treat the sterile intelligentsia who try to shoehorn their out of date ideas upon what they hope will be receptive sheep. I doubt that they will have much luck. The use of the emergency to increase notions of state dependency and higher taxes promises to pile further pressure on uncompetitive economies that have refused to grapple with their bankrupt promises in the good times. This is an ideological thrust to maintain the status quo of welfare states just as the recession threatens to undermine the fiscal base on which they parasitise.   

SInce Marxists and the New Left are unable to abide contradictions in their teleology, they seem blind to the contradictions of their addiction to state expenditure, stimulus and debt, since the liabilities are now so great that they threaten default soon in sceptical markets. Their retreat to policies that some have termed vulgar Keynesianism (which is surely an insult for Keynes who would have withered Brown's nads with a frosty polemic), spell the high point for social democracy, and its shift to a radically different model.

To sum up, it is too early to tell if we have entered what historians in the past have called a world crisis. If we have, then this may foreshadow systematic change in Europe.
 

A conspiracy of riots

"There are concerns. The EU shares them. It is one of the major challenges for the Spring European Council," said a senior EU official, referring to the quarterly gathering of EU leaders.

EU ambassadors in Brussels are discussing the issue and receiving "regular updates", according to another official, although he added that more intelligence on the situation is needed to see whether the riots are "part of a social trend" or manipulation by opposition elements.

This small quote from an article on Euobserver about the Commission monitoring the rise in social unrest provides an unsettling insight into the mindset of Brussels. Note how the unrest could be part of a reaction to the worst economic experience since 1930 or, more disturbingly, becomes the consequence of an opposition.

There is little indication from this article why a civil servant should view nihilistic riots by the disappointed and unemployed as the political result of a conspiracy opposed to the European Union. Evidence for the emergence of this mindset does not bode well for a rational response to a rising "social trend". I would like to know who the opposition is as I would be glad to support them.