Hindsight Shows that Monet was Wrong Even in His Premis

We hear a lot now about how the attempt to achieve European Union has ended up being more likely to cause another European war rather than prevent one as it was designed to do, but surely the very idea that the nations of Europe are intrinsically likely to go to war unless they unite is itself completely without foundation.  It might have looked that way to Jean Monet and co in the immediate aftermath of WWII, but what they failed to take account of was the fact that WWI and WWII were basically the result of imperialism: of European nations each determined to have their share of the global imperial cake.  European imperialism is now stone dead, and nothing is going to bring it back.  The Cold War could of course have become another hot European war, but Soviet communism is also now stone dead and it was NATO, not European Union, that killed it (indeed, given that the Cold War was always at its heart Russian imperialist ambition with a communist mask, its end too was the spluttering out of the last ember of European imperialism).

The threat in Europe now is not of general war but of localised ethnic conflict caused by cross-boarder racial and cultural admixtures resulting from earlier imperial episodes going all the way back to ancient times, the Balkan wars being the latest and nastiest examples.  European Union does nothing at all to reduce that threat - indeed, by opening boarders and making the admixtures even more widespread, it ramps it up considerably.  Yes, it can be argued that ambition to board the EU gravy train might persuade some states with ethnic-bashing tendencies to behave themselves and improve their democratic and human rights credentials to gain admission, but events in Greece suggest that in the absence of German willingness to keep pouring them vast amounts of free gravy for eternity the lid is likely to be blown off the pot with even greater violence and should never have been put on in the first place.

In short, the very idea of an intrinsic European tendency to war requiring elaborate supra-national structures to suppress it is itself surely plain wrong.  Had Monet lived to see the end of the Cold War he might well have come to recognise that himself and abandon his crazy idea of European Union.

Can somebody please explain to me why Angela Merkel

..... thinks German taxpayers will suddenly become happy to fund the PIIGS eternally AFTER Eurozone fiscal and political union? Like, it's not OK if their own elected politicians decide to give their cash to the Greeks, but it will be OK if an unelected Eurozone quasi-government decides to do it?  Am I missing something here?

Bank Bonus Culture the most God-Awful Corruption on a Massive Scale

It’s a pity that Ed Miliband is seen as the leader of the campaign against the bankers’ bonus culture, because that gets it presented in the media as a battle between left and right, with David Cameron portrayed as just indulging in a bit of tactical banker bashing to avoid losing too many  votes to Labour or the LibDems rather than as having any genuine problem with the bonus culture.

But he should have a problem with it shouldn’t he?  A big problem.  And so should we all.  There is something profoundly troubling about it, regardless of your politics.

Just look at the facts.  The top brass of any big bank are paid huge basic salaries at the end of every year regardless of how well or badly the bank has performed in that year.  Those salaries are so great that after just a few short years they could easily retire with pension pots big enough to allow them to live in total luxury wanting for nothing that any normal person in their wildest dreams would crave for for the rest of their lives.  Jobs paying salaries like that should surely be something that their occupants hug themselves in disbelief at their good fortune in having been able to land, and in which they work like crazy to demonstrate that they are worth every penny of the money and should most definitely never be sacked for less than first-rate performance.

But is that what they do?  No, what they do is persuade their boards to write them quite staggeringly large bonus cheques on top of those mammoth salaries because, it seems, it should not be they who should be worrying about being sacked and losing their huge salaries if they don’t perform, but their boards and shareholders who should be worrying that if they don’t give them surreal bonuses as well they will walk, and the bank will immediately implode for lack of anyone with the right skills to run it.  The board members are only too ready to approve the bonuses because they are all on the same bonus gravy trains and look forward to ever-more obscene amounts of bonus money themselves as they climb up the ladder.  God knows why the shareholders don’t put a stop to it.  Maybe a lot of them, being big institutions, are controlled by people on similar huge bonuses themselves.  And maybe the rest either just can’t get organised about it or have been brainwashed into believing that their investments really are best served by the bonus culture.

The whole thing just stinks of the most God-awful corruption on a massive scale.  What is truly scary about it is the implication that the ability to run big banks successfully is only to be found in people who will not do it unless they are allowed regularly to stuff their fists in their multi-million pound tills and pretty much take from them as much as they like, on top of what are already quite staggeringly generous basic salaries.  In other words, if that is true, it means that our financial services sector on which we have allowed the health of our economy to depend so critically is in the grip of people of extremely dubious morality. 

But of course it cannot be true.  It is a self-evident con.  The people can only carry out their threat and ‘walk’ to other banks if there are out there banks willing to give in to their threats and pay them.  It should be a relatively simple matter for shareholders of the world’s top banks to get organised and call their bluff, leading either to their backing down or to there being one hell of a lot of unemployed former bank top brass forming queues outside head-hunter offices.  In truth, there must surely be no shortage of first-rate people who are both fully competent and prepared to work their socks of as big bank top brass for an extremely generous salary alone, standing ready to be sacked if they do not deliver value for money.  If there aren’t, we are all in deep trouble, for it means we cannot survive without tugging the forelock to a bunch of amoral, ruthless bastards.

If the shareholders can’t or won’t get organised to do anything about it, then governments will have to do the job for them.  Sooner or later, if things go on as they are, the Tory party’s resistance to attempts by Merkel, Sarkozy and others in the EU to do battle with the financial services sector is going to be seen not as defending the UK’s interests but as conspiring to help a bunch of spivs to keep shafting us all.

Today's Sunday Times Leader on HS2 is total bollocks:

Could not agree more with this on-line comment below today's Sunday Times leader on HS2:
The Sunday Times should be ashamed of writing such drivel as a leader. The argument that it only saves 23 minutes to Birmingham is facile; the line has to go through the Midlands to get to the North, where the savings will be far greater. You can't seriously believe the government intends going only to Birmingham.  You say trains are better than cars because you can work on them, then argue that the money should be spent on improving motorways not railways.  You say the money should be spent on a new Thames airport not on HS2, when the two serve utterly different needs for our economy - BOTH essential.  You completely ignore the government's argument that it is IMPOSSIBLE to meet future rail capacity needs by improvements to the existing lines; that only a new line can achieve that.  Does the writer of this tosh possibly live in the Chilterns and is he or she a member of the anti HS2 campaign?

In Terms of Bollocks 9

A BBC World News presenter interviewing someone about the death of Joe Frazier: 

"A lot of people talk about the difficulty in terms of beating him".

It really does defy belief.

In Terms of Bollocks 8

The judge to the jury in the Michael Jackson trial: You have been remarkable throughout this trial in terms of your patience and dedication  =  You have been remarkably patient and dedicated throughout this trial  or Your patience and dedication throughout this trial have been remarkable.  

Why are even the greatest among us so determined to make their sentences unnecessarily complex in order to find ways of using the words "In terms of"?

Merkozy Greek Euro Bollocks

Don't you just love all the total euro bollocks coming out of Greece and Merkozyland?  Papandreou announces a referendum to ask the Greek people if thay are willing to accept the deal struck with Merkozy.  Merkozy jump up and down and, we are told, 'summon' Papandreou to Cannes. (Who the hell do they think they are 'summoning' the head of government of a sovereign state?  Papandreou should have told them to get lost). Then Merkozy announce that the Greek referendum question will be 'in or out of the euro'?   (Who the hell do they think they are telling another sovereign state what its referendum question will be?). The Greek media then scream the message that the Greek people just love the euro and are determined to stay in it so there is no need for a referendum, and every Greek vox pop face the TV broadcasters can find confirms that this is the case.  They love the euro they say for all the wonderful economic benefits it has brought to Greece.  Then they go back to rioting in the streets in protest at all the austerity measures they have to accept as a result of the massive destruction the euro has inflicted on them - massive destruction that all resulted from the Greeks falsifying their national accounts on a mega scale in order to qualify for entry to the euro, then spending billions they didn't have when the banks were conned by those falsified accounts into lending them the money to do it.  So they want to be in the euro but don't want to have to stop spending billions they don't have or to repay even half of the money they've borrowed let alone all of it.  They don't want to leave the euro because they know it will be financial ruin for them, and they don't want to stay in the euro becasue they know it will be financial ruin for them.  So they want someone to wave a magic wand so they can stay in the euro and carry on spending bllions they don't have for evermore.  Simple, as the meerkats say.

Only the French could have dug europe into such a deep pit of shit as this.