Monday - January 05, 2009

Mutiny?  In the 20th century English Navy?  Not possible.  Oh yeah?  Some interesting history.

I forgot I had this among all the things here. Better late then never I guess because this is some interesting history both naval and economic.

You might like reading this. Well try anyway. Ya never know.

Six vital lessons of the 1931 depression
As we enter a second year of slump, history has some key pointers to the best way forward
William Rees-Mogg

Those of us who were alive at the time, or who have seen the film, have vivid memories of the sinking of HMS Hood in 1941, and of the pursuit and subsequent sinking of the German battleship Bismarck. Ten years earlier the Hood had been involved in another episode of naval history, which had a significant influence on British economic history.

On September 19, 1931, Captain J.F.C. Patterson, the acting Senior Officer, Atlantic Fleet, sent a signal to the Admiralty: “For two days, the ships at Invergordon of the Atlantic Fleet were in a state of open mutiny... large numbers of men were massed on the forecastles of Hood, Rodney and Dorsetshire. Men on the forecastle of Hood had refused to allow any work to be done to commence on unmooring, and it became evident that neither Hood nor Rodney could go to sea.”

Patterson had some sympathy with the underlying grievance. He informed the Admiralty: “The use of force was in my opinion quite out of the question,” and that “with regard to the causes of the outbreak, there is no doubt that first and foremost was the disproportionate reduction (in pay) of the lower ratings who entered before 1925”.

On the same day that Patterson sent his report of the Invergordon mutiny, a small conference was held at 10 Downing Street; the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, reported that he had had a discussion with Stanley Baldwin, the leader of the Conservative Party, and Sir Herbert Samuel, the leader of the Coalition Liberals.

* October 3, 1931: The ‘Daily Worker’ articles - incitement to mutiny over navy pay cuts

The result had been an agreement that it was essential to get legislation that would release the Bank of England from the obligation to pay out gold. E.R. Peacock, a director of the Bank of England, commented: “A sudden blizzard has struck the world. People have got anxious about their bank, that is to say, Great Britain, and they are gravely anxious about themselves.” The Downing Street meeting agreed to take Britain out of the gold standard.

The sailors at Invergordon were loyal and patriotic - many were to die for their country in the Second World War. But they were not prepared to have their pay docked - unfairly as they thought - to defend the convertibility into gold. In this, they were good Keynesians. In September 1931 the gold pound lost the confidence of British sailors, Cambridge economists and French bankers. That combination was irresistible.

September 19, 1931, was approximately the second anniversary of the start of the Great Depression in 1929. The mutiny and the decision to leave the gold standard proved to be the recovery point for Great Britain. From that point on, recovery became possible.

Two lessons were taught by Invergordon and the withdrawal from the gold commitment: governments should not try to balance the budget by cutting the pay of essential public servants; and they should not defend at all costs an overvalued fixed exchange rate. Britain does not now have a fixed exchange rate, although some people still want to join the euro. If we were in the euro, we would probably be arguing about when to leave.

The year 2009 can be paired with 1931. Both are the second year after the start of a big recession: 1931 was, beyond question, a year of depression. In the US the Federal Reserve Board kept statistics of the profits of 500 companies. In 1929 the index had been 998; in 1930 it had fallen to 760; in 1931 it was 370, and went as low as 267 in the final quarter.

Between 1929 and 1931 US employment fell by a third. If we based a forecast for 2009 on 1931 we would produce ghastly figures. The American recovery really began only in March 1933, after the inauguration of President Roosevelt. Britain had a lighter and shorter recession.

However, we can follow, and perhaps guard against, the acceleration of “the vicious spiral” of depression in 1931 itself. The turning of the screw actually began in June 1930, with the disastrous Hawley-Smoot tariff. Intended to protect US industry from excessive imports, it aroused international resentment and retaliation against US exports. If British experience offers the first two lessons, this would be the third: do not raise tariffs in a recession.

In May 1931, the Credit Anstalt, the leading bank in Austria, became insolvent and had to close. As the American economist, Irving Fisher, observed: “It was a great bank, and its collapse embarrassed both Germany and England.” Lesson four: do not allow systemic banks to fail. This was not applied to Lehmann Brothers, which may be regarded as the Credit Anstalt of the Wall Street panic of 2008. In June 1931 after runs on other Austrian banks, its Government belatedly guaranteed the liabilities of the Credit Anstalt.

In July 1931, the Bank of England rescued the German Reichsbank, which had been embarrassed by the failure of the Credit Anstalt. The French withdrew gold from Germany and the Bank of England for having taken the risk of supporting Germany. Lesson five: do not depend on central bankers in a panic.

On September 21 Britain left the gold standard, followed by 23 other nations. The US and France maintained gold convertibility.

In October 1931 President Hoover proposed the creation of the Home Mortgage Corporation, the ancestor of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage banks that did not become insolvent until 77 years later.

In December Hoover announced his relief programme. Fisher commented: “To meet the rapidly developing emergency, each step was too small and by the time it was enacted into law, it was too late.”

Lesson six: in a depression, too much and too early is safer than too little and too late.

TIMES

   Sunday - January 04, 2009

For Peiper…

How ‘judgemental’ of you Peiper. Don’t you know that Gypsies are a vital part of the economy?

But every night all the men would come around and lay their money down

Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

Amazing. Even Cher had to tell the truth about Gypsies.

   Wednesday - December 17, 2008

Dick Morris - 2009: A Prediction

From Dick Morris’ Play-by-Play (subscription only)

The politics of 2009 will be dominated by a continuation and deepening of the global Depression. Under the guise of stimulating the economy, look for Obama to pursue a radical, socialist agenda that will bring America into conformity with the government domination of health care and the economy that prevails in the European Union. When the dust clears, the economy will still be in the tank. The new president’s stimulation packages will do little or nothing to abate the depression, but they will transform American life and politics. For his part, Obama will take advantage of his built-in majorities in Congress to pass his agenda, but will suffer rapidly dropping ratings. By the end of the year, he will be as radioactive as Bush is today.

Well, at least Obama comes by this honestly. How many times were you reminded of his affinity for radical left wing groups during his college years? Don’t tell me you haven’t read “Faith from my Father” wherein Barack Obama detailed his affinity for Marxist professors and student groups.

Obama, bless his heart, is a man who only sees a government solution to almost any problem. He is not programmed to look to the private sector for solutions to any problem past labeling a can of beans. As such, Obama is the ideal president for our times. Generations of our children have been educated (by the government) to also believe that the government is the solution to all significant problems. Now think about it: If you went to a Catholic school you were surely taught that Catholicism was the way to go. A Jewish school? Judaism is the proper path. Government school? Connect the dots. It will take at least a generation - a generation without government schools - to once again bring about an appreciation for freedom and free markets.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.  It’s one of the (many) reasons we homeschool.

I have abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system

Yes, this is an actual quote by President Bush.

He’s talking about the probable bailout of U.S. automakers, using money authorized earlier this year and given to Hank Paulson to hand out to whomever he wants.  Paulson said that all he is thinking about right now is the automakers.

I believe him.  I know no one there is thinking about the Constitution.  No one there is thinking of Adam Smith.  No one there is thinking of Milton Friedman.  No one there is thinking of the future generations of Americans who will be burdened by this.

Re-read that headline.  Try to wrap your brain around that.  I’m still trying to figure it out.  So is Jimmie from The Sundries Shack:

I seriously have no idea how that works. You do not burn a village to save it. You do not kill a patient to cure them. And you do not throw free-market principles into the dumpster to save the free-market.

How does this work?  Do we try a little socialism until we can get back to being capitalists?  A little bit of Marxism makes the medicine go down?

Another question is:  How do you plan on fixing a problem using the same thinking that created it? 

If you have not read “Atlas Shrugged,” there is no better time to do so than now.  Or, you can watch the nightly news for the television version. 

Sooner or later, companies are just going to close and heads of industry are going to start disappearing.  People will wonder where they went, shrug and say, “Who is John Galt?”

   Saturday - December 13, 2008

Pay £500,000? God help us, say couple forced by a medieval law to foot the bill for church repa

This is a very long but a MUST read!  So I won’t add to this and besides, there isn’t anything I could add.
Learn something new every day.

INTERESTING!

Gail and Andrew Wallbank inherited their beautiful home. But it came with a hidden timebomb...

By Victoria Moore
Last updated at 1:03 AM on 13th December 2008

This is a beautiful spot. The church of St John the Baptist stands in the Warwickshire village of Aston Cantlow, in a small churchyard scattered with gravestones and dotted with neatly trimmed yew and holly.

It’s here that Shakespeare’s parents are thought to have married, and if the walls look a little crumbly and uneven… well, perhaps that’s only to be expected of a building that dates back to the 13th century.

To Gail and Andrew Wallbank, however, the flaking masonry that surrounds the church’s stained-glass windows - and the suspiciously leaky-looking patches inside - are less a source of picturesque charm than one of stomach-gnawing anxiety.

This is because, due to a peculiar ancient law that goes back to the reign of Henry VIII, the Wallbanks, who own a nearby farmhouse, have found themselves saddled with the repair bill for the chancel - the eastern end of a church, in which the pulpit and choristers’ stalls are normally found. And it isn’t small.

At the last count, the sum owed was £186,989. Plus VAT. (They must, I think, be the only people in England feeling a real sense of relief about the 2.5per cent cut in VAT.) Oh, and then there’s the interest, which they say they are paying at 8per cent and which began accumulating in February 2007.

Add to that the £200,000 they have spent in legal fees fighting their case over the years, and the Wallbanks are looking at a figure close to half a million. ‘And it’s not as if that’s the end of it,’ says Gail, 60, fastening up a bobbly jacket that looks as if it has seen better days.

‘This could go on and on. We have to finance any repairs the chancel needs, which effectively means we’re in the position of providing an open cheque-book. We now have until February 16 to find the money and I just don’t know how we’re going to do it. We’re at our wits’ end.’

The Wallbanks are a warm, calm and attractively dishevelled couple who, as well as raising a family of seven, have been fighting the case for 18 stressful years.

So far, it has been to the High Court, the Court of Appeal and all the way to the House of Lords, which found in favour of the Parochial Church Councils (PCCs) in 2003, and in 2007 set the amount that the Wallbanks now have two months to pay.

A plague on unwitting homeowners

Having exhausted all their legal options, the couple understandably feel some degree of despair as the deadline approaches. Soon they may not be the only ones - indeed, there may be many thousands of other Britons who are unknowingly in the same position.

For the implications of what is effectively a test case could be wide-reaching: a blessing for the cash-strapped Church of England, which has many dilapidated buildings in urgent need of repair, but a plague on homeowners who may unwittingly own land - a garden, field, allotment or even the plot on which their house is built - that carries a chancel repair liability.

This, as Andrew Wallbank drily puts it, can be ‘a bit like winning the Lottery in reverse’. In other words, it can suck hundreds of thousands of pounds from the unfortunate loser’s bank account.

Such chancel repair liabilities are thought to apply to some 5,200 pre-Reformation parishes in England and Wales - though nobody knows for sure how many properties might be affected, as the legal documents are, in some cases, both ancient and in poor condition. That’s if they can be traced at all. The law in question dates back to medieval times, when the parishioners had a duty to repair the nave - the part of a church in which the congregation sits to worship - while the rector had a responsibility to repair the chancel end. A rector would pay for his share of the repairs using income from land attached to his rectory - ‘glebe land’ - as well as from tithes.

After the dissolution of the monasteries, that land was dispersed but never separated from the obligation to pay for chancel repairs, making the new landowners ‘lay rectors’.

In successive years, some of this land has been sold and re-sold, divided up, developed on and changed hands many times so that its history of liability has sometimes been forgotten. Nor is it always found in rural parishes: one case is known of in Fulham, South-West London.

Fast-forward to recent times, and the cash-strapped Church has been busy encouraging its PCCs to seek out any lay rectors it can find - and quickly, because chancel repair liabilities will become unenforceable unless they are registered at HM Land Registry by 2013. For some people, their happy ignorance may be about to come to a halt, as it did for the Wallbanks.

‘I inherited Glebe Farm, which is about half a mile away from the church, from my father,’ explains Gail. ‘We were actually married in the church, in September 1973, but moved away from Aston Cantlow a few years later to live on a sheep farm in Wales.

‘After my father died, rather than sell the farmhouse or move back, we rented it out. At first, my mother and brother lived here; afterwards we had other tenants.’

And then, out of the blue one day at the beginning of 1990, a letter arrived from the church wardens of St John the Baptist.

‘We hope that you are well and are enjoying your life in that beautiful part of Wales in which you now live,’ it began with ominous good cheer. But it then continued: ‘As the owner of Glebe Farm, you know that there is a charge. . . for the maintenance and the repair of the Chancel of St John the Baptist.’

It went on to detail the outcome of an architect’s report, which suggested that a large amount of expensive work needed to be done to the Grade I listed church - among which were three windows that needed repairing at a cost of £2,000 each - and concluded that, ‘if a large job is necessary, we are obliged to ask for your financial support’.

The ever-increasing demands for cash

To Gail and her husband Andrew, far more alarming than this polite request for money was its open-ended nature. As Mrs Wallbank puts it: ‘We didn’t mind making a voluntary donation to its upkeep - someone, after all, has to pay for these beautiful old buildings and we’d got married in this church - but the fear was that this would go on and on. If we paid one year, how much the next, and the next? How much would it end up costing us?’

The answer to that we now know to be about £200,000. But back then the Wallbanks were merely at the start of a protracted legal odyssey that has consumed their lives for almost two decades since.

They have had to become experts in tithe law, and spend days poring over the minutes of PCC committee meetings. They have even commissioned experts to transcribe an 18th-century Enclosures Award document written on vellum - fine parchment made from calfskin - so fragile it can be handled only by someone wearing gloves and whose script is so faint it must be examined under ultraviolet light.

Mrs Wallbank’s father bought Glebe Farm at auction in 1970 (a year when the average house price was £4,950) for the sum of £41,500. The sale documents do include a clear reference to the chancel repair liability, which it notes ‘is still subsisting and capable of being enforced’.

Gail, however, says her father had made inquiries, including with the vicar at the time, and was confident this clause was a mere anachronism with no legal force. Thus, on inheriting the farm, she too felt reassured that this amounted to nothing more than a gentleman’s agreement.

With the benefit of hindsight, this assumption sounds naive. But the Wallbanks point to the handwritten minutes of an extraordinary meeting of the PCC in July 1968 which was concerned with raising funds for work on the chancel roof. In these, it is noted: ‘Vicar said that while he would approach Mr Terry [the then owner of Glebe farm] he had been informed by Diocesean lawyers that this [obligation] had no weight in law.’

The Wallbanks also say they have been unable to find any case in which any owner of Glebe Farm has, over the centuries, been required to foot any bill for the chancel, though some have done so voluntarily.

‘My father had also made a contribution to the church repairs,’ says Gail. ‘He paid for some of the ornamentation on the church tower to be replaced, and that wasn’t connected at all to the chancel.’

The church fights back

SEE CHURCH FIGHTS BACK for all the photos and the rest of the story. Yes, there’s more.

   Thursday - December 11, 2008

AMERICA TO BLAME FOR BRIT FINANCIAL CRISIS?  NOT ACCORDING TO THIS MAN.

Tis indeed good to see at least one person defending us against the left here.
Funny how subjects that put me to sleep when I was much younger, like say,30, 40, 50, 60 hold my interest now.
Though to be really open and honest on this blog I should confess it’s mostly the wife who keeps up.  She reads the financial page and sort of like Uncle Jay explains the news, but minus the humor, tells me what it all means.

Gordon Brown must blame himself, not the USA
The Prime Minister’s finger-pointing is an attempt to disguise his own culpability.

Irwin Stelzer
Last Updated: 8:08AM GMT 11 Dec 2008

Enough! It’s time to put an end to Gordon Brown’s ridiculous blame game. As the Prime Minister tells it, Britain’s woes started in America. Like some strain of flu, America’s problems found their way across the ocean to London, and from there to the rest of the British economy. Cheers from the Left, eager to rubbish America and to resurrect their leader’s reputation.

Unfortunately for Mr Brown, neither his claim – he told Parliament yesterday, “Not only have we saved the world”, modestly eschewing the “I” word – nor his Macavity act can survive scrutiny. It is beyond question that Britain’s problems stem in part from its fractured regulatory system, with responsibility split between the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority, and the Treasury. A close study of the relevant documents fails to reveal that this system was forced upon Brown by the US authorities. No, it sprang full blown from the brains of Chancellor Gordon Brown and his sidekick, Ed Balls.

Then there is the first manifestation of Britain’s problem, the run on Northern Rock. A further search of the archives fails to produce any proof that malevolent Americans slipped into the Northern Rock boardroom and forced the directors to write mortgages in excess of the value of the underlying properties, or persuaded them not to check the ability of potential borrowers to repay their loans. It was British, not American, regulators who found Northern Rock’s business model perfectly acceptable.

Nor is there any record of American advisers whispering into the Prime Minister’s ear: “Dither, dither, something might turn up.” The indecision in the face of the Northern Rock and subsequent crises seems to have been a purely Scottish disease that afflicted Nos 10 and 11, rather than a virus imported from America.

Then there is the question of all those subprime mortgages that originated in the United States – they did – and were combined into securities that were sold to financial institutions eager to boost profits. If there is proof that US bankers jetted to London and forced British banks to buy these asset-backed securities, I have been unable to find it. Without that, we have to assume that Britain’s banks saw an opportunity for profit, guessed wrong, and were never pressed by the regulatory authorities appointed by Brown to tighten their risk-management procedures.

Which brings us to what perhaps is the more important point: Brown’s insistence that Britain is the best situated of all countries to face the economic headwinds, and to recover once they have abated. One reason offered is that before the downturn, the Government created three million jobs.

Unfortunately, masses of those were in the public sector, where productivity is far below the private sector, where unreformed work practices are the norm, and where non-jobs are often mere substitutes for the dole. Then there is the uncomfortable fact that the UK labour market attracted millions of foreigners, but not the millions of British nationals who find themselves too stressed, too back-achy, or too tempted by generous benefits to accept low-paid work. This is not to say that everyone receiving benefits is able to work; but no one, including Secretary of State for Work and Pensions James Purnell, doubts that millions are. This crushing weight on the productive sector will make it very difficult for Britain to return to long-term sustainable economic growth.

Britain’s recovery will also be slowed because its potential entrepreneurs, the economy’s real job creators, must cut through miles of red tape, face the risk of retroactive increases in taxes, and somehow market products to heavily indebted consumers who have to get their balance sheets in reasonable shape before returning to the high streets.

Finally, there is Britain’s fiscal condition. Instead of using the good years to pile up surpluses to spend in the lean years, Brown decided that he had conquered the business cycle – no more boom and bust. There is no minute of any meeting to suggest that the American economists and businessmen with whom the Prime Minister was so fond of being photographed tried to persuade him that he had indeed discovered the magic formula that could end business cycles. The hubris was home-grown. Which leaves Brown in the position of being forced to make clear that tax increases are in Britain’s future – not a prospect that will encourage spending. Franklin Roosevelt promised to attack the Great Depression with a policy of tax and tax, and spend and spend. Brown is promising the reverse: to spend and spend, and then tax and tax. Economists agree that when consumers know measures to induce spending are temporary, that higher taxes are in their future, they do not respond by spending their windfalls.

None of this is to deny that developments in an economy as large as America’s have an impact on its trading partners and other countries. Or that America’s bankers mismanaged risk. But it remains an incontestable fact that the Prime Minister is pointing a finger at America to conceal his mishandling of the British economy and, lately, the futility of some portions of the stimulus package he has crafted. Gordon Brown’s search for a villain might better take him to the nearest mirror than to Washington, DC.

DON’T BLAME AMERICA

   Sunday - December 07, 2008

FRED THOMPSON ON THE CURRENT ECONOMY

Nothing from me except this video.

Goodnight all ...

   Wednesday - December 03, 2008

Economics

E-Day In Detroit

More bad news for the auto industry. As the Big Three execs take their little hybrid cars to DC to beg for money, auto sales plummet around the world. Saab will close their whole factory for a month, with Volvo probably to follow. BMW and VW are also cutting back production. And just to twist the knife in a bit harder, to help enjoy the schadenfruede as much as possible, Time Magazine online runs a nasty little piece on the “50 Worst Cars of All Time”, written by

Dan Neil, Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive critic and syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times

which tells you just about everything you need to know before even following the link. Several of the vehicles written about made the list because he didn’t like the way they looked, even though he had to admit that they were well made, sold well, and did the job they were supposed to do. Many of the rest of them made the list because they were years ahead of their time in design and technology. What else would you expect from some car hating hippy? An appreciation of forward looking design and risk taking? Hell no.

E-Day: Ford Edsel is 50 years old today
signs and portents folks, signs and portents

• SAAB Story: Scania to close factory for a month

  Swedish heavy truck maker Scania will stop production in Europe for a month because of a slowdown in demand, a spokesman for the company said on Wednesday.

  “We will stop production for a month. We will extend the vacation period from December 22 until January 16,” spokesman Hans-Aake Danielsson told AFP.

  “We can’t produce the same as we did when demand was higher. We have to adjust our production,” he said.



• Bad News in the Black Forest: Berlin under fire as German car sales collapse
  

  German car sales have plunged to the lowest level since reunification almost twenty years ago, increasing pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel to abandon budget restraint and back plans for an EU-wide rescue package.
  ...
  Volkswagen is to suspend production at its Wolfsburg headquarters this month. BMW has cut output in Leipsig to one day a week and Porsche is shuttering its Stuttgart plant for a week. It is just as bad in France where PSA Peugeot Citroen is halting production for a month at Sochaux, the country’s biggest industrial site.



• Auto Sales Plummet Industry crisis worsens

  With sales tumbling to levels last seen back in the 1950s, General Motor Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LCC updated plans for restructuring and justifying requests for billions in federal aid.

  In their newly released plans GM is asking for $18 billion in loans, including $4 billion, this month and another $4 billion in January, to head off a default by the company.
  ...
  Overall industry sales dropped 35% in November. Ford actually beat the industry, reporting a sales drop of 30% but GM reported a 41% drop and Chrysler’s fell 42%. Nissan’s sales dropped 44%, Toyota fell 35% and Honda fell a similar amount.



• Bailout Stalemate?

  What we have here is a standoff worthy of a spaghetti western.

  The players in this high-stakes confrontation are the domestic auto companies, their creditors, their unions, their dealers and elected officials in Washington. Each party seeks advantage by pointing the equivalent of loaded guns at the other parties. But none really wants to pull the trigger, knowing nobody is likely to emerge a winner in the ensuing financial and political shootout

My little Saturn is 12 years old now, with over 186,000 miles on it. Sure, it’s getting to be tired looking, and it has that old car rank smell inside, but it runs just fine, and I’m not even thinking of buying another car right now. I’m sorry the car makers are in such a bind, but I don’t have much sympathy for them. The market has demanded higher and higher automotive metrics for the past decade or so, and that may be a big factor in this situation. Cars are much better made than ever, they don’t break down, they don’t wear out, they don’t rust, they get so much more power from a given size engine than ever before, they’re all much safer than ever before, etc. Plus consumers have much better access to much more information, so the odds of picking a lemon are also lower. So now that we’re entering into a deep recession/depression, most people are realizing that they don’t need a new car. At all. And now that the gas crunch is over, and fuel selling for nearly the same price it was at 6 years ago, even the lower mpg vehicles are once again affordable to run. As much as I’d love to have a new Matrix or Maxima, I can do without it. Spending tens of thousands of dollars just for the sake of “newness” seems a bit silly right now.

However, if you are in the market for a new car, this is just about the greatest time ever to buy one! Combine a bad economy and flagging auto sales with the standard December car buying slump and the large inventory of year-end stock on hand, and you can probably cut a deal for 30% off sticker price. Maybe even more for the more expensive models. So get out there and shop, be a prick, and make a disgustingly low offer; you might just have it taken!

   Monday - December 01, 2008

Welcome to Soviet Britain:where figures reveal that half the population relies on the state for jobs

I had wondered for awhile, why so many people seem to be voting Labor while also complaining about the turn England has taken.  Wife told me about this a very long time ago, but I didn’t really take it all in until I saw this in today’s Daily Mail.

Anyone know what the stats are for the USA?

I didn’t post the entire story here, don’t know how much interest you have in this. BUT ... I guess it answers the question some of you have asked, and I know LyndonB made mention as well, when asked how the Labor Party stays in office so long.  This could be a reason. But as Lyndon has also pointed out, it doesn’t let the conservatives off the hook because they haven’t been very encouraging either. 

Welcome to Soviet Britain: The Labour heartlands where figures reveal that half the population relies on the state for a job

By Andy Dolan
Last updated at 7:39 AM on 01st December 2008

Labour’s public sector spending has created a wave of ‘Soviet’ boroughs where around half the population depends on the state for work, figures revealed yesterday.

An analysis of council statistics showed that in ten areas more than 40 per cent of the workforce is employed in the public sector.

Many are deprived areas where the true dependency on the state will be far greater once benefit payments to those out of work are taken into account.
Castle Morpeth

All but two have Labour MPs - the others are Liberal Democrat.

Top of the list compiled by the Centre for Economics and Business Research is Castle Morpeth, Northumberland, where - in an echo of the Soviet system where everyone was employed by the state and therefore owed their loyalty to the communist party - 57.1 per cent of jobs are in the public sector.

Morpeth, a medieval market town in the heart of the borough, is one of the most desirable places to live in the North East, with surrounding villages home to Premier League footballers.

But the town is also the administrative centre of the borough council and Northumberland county council, which accounts for much of its state sector employment.

Even accounting for this, the public sector dominance in Morpeth is actually understated.

STATS AND MORE HERE

   Sunday - November 30, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama proposes economic suicide for US.

Viewpoint from a Brit Conservative.  Odds are he’s right on target.
There a lot to worry about America but there’s a line here that is particularly worrisome.  This line.

They will see a video of Mr Obama, in only his second major policy commitment, pledging that America is now about to play the leading role in the fight to “save the planet” from global warming.

What’s most worrisome aside from everything else is, I fear “co-operation” with and closer ties of a political nature, to Europe’s left.
I hope I’m wrong.

President-elect Barack Obama proposes economic suicide for US

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 11:01pm GMT 29/11/2008

If the holder of the most powerful office in the world proposed a policy guaranteed to inflict untold damage on his own country and many others, on the basis of claims so demonstrably fallacious that they amount to a string of self-deluding lies, we might well be concerned. The relevance of this is not to President Bush, as some might imagine, but to a recent policy statement by President-elect Obama.

Tomorrow, delegates from 190 countries will meet in Poznan, Poland, to pave the way for next year’s UN conference in Copenhagen at which the world will agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. They will see a video of Mr Obama, in only his second major policy commitment, pledging that America is now about to play the leading role in the fight to “save the planet” from global warming.

Mr Obama begins by saying that “the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear”. “Sea levels,” he claims, “are rising, coastlines are shrinking, we’ve seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.”

Far from the science being “beyond dispute”, we can only deduce from this that Mr Obama has believed all he was told by Al Gore’s wondrously batty film An Inconvenient Truth without bothering to check the facts. Each of these four statements is so wildly at odds with the truth that on this score alone we should be seriously worried.

It is true that average sea levels are modestly rising, but no faster than they have been doing for three centuries. Gore’s film may predict a rise this century of 20 feet, but even the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change only predicts a rise of between four and 17 inches. The main focus of alarm here has been the fate of low-lying coral islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu.

Around each of these tiny countries, according to the international Commission on Sea Level Changes and other studies, sea levels in recent decades have actually fallen. The Indian Ocean was higher between 1900 and 1970 than it has been since. Satellite measurements show that since 1993 the sea level around Tuvalu has gone down by four inches.

Coastlines are not “shrinking” except where land is subsiding, as on the east coast of England, where it has been doing so for thousands of years. Gore became particularly muddled by this, pointing to how many times the Thames Barrier has had to be closed in recent years, unaware that this was more often to keep river water in during droughts than to stop the sea coming in.

Far from global warming having increased the number of droughts, the very opposite is the case. The most comprehensive study (Narisma et al, 2007) showed that, of the 20th century’s 30 major drought episodes, 22 were in the first six decades, with only five between 1961 and 1980. The most recent two decades produced just three.

Mr Obama has again been taken in over hurricanes. Despite a recent press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming that 2008’s North Atlantic hurricane season “set records”, even its own release later admits that it only tied as “the fifth most active” since 1944. NOAA’s own graphs show hurricane activity higher in the 1950s than recently. A recent Florida State University study of tropical cyclone activity across the world (see the Watts Up With That? website) shows a steady reduction over the past four years.

Alarming though it may be that the next US President should have fallen for all this claptrap, much more worrying is what he proposes to do on the basis of such grotesque misinformation. For a start he plans to introduce a “federal cap and trade system”, a massive “carbon tax”, designed to reduce America’s CO2 emissions “to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 per cent by 2050”. Such a target, which would put America ahead of any other country in the world, could only be achieved by closing down a large part of the US economy.

Mr Obama floats off still further from reality when he proposes spending $15 billion a year to encourage “clean energy” sources, such as thousands more wind turbines. He is clearly unaware that wind energy is so hopelessly ineffective that the 10,000 turbines America already has, representing “18 gigawatts of installed capacity”, only generate 4.5GW of power, less than that supplied by a single giant coal-fired power station.

He talks blithely of allowing only “clean” coal-fired power plants, using “carbon capture” - burying the CO2 in holes in the ground - which would double the price of electricity, but the technology for which hasn’t even yet been developed. He then babbles on about “generating five million new green jobs”. This will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by running around on treadmills, to replace all those “dirty” coal-fired power stations which currently supply the US with half its electricity.

If this sounds like an elaborate economic suicide note, for what is still the earth’s richest nation, it is still not enough for many environmentalists. Positively foaming at the mouth in The Guardian last week, George Monbiot claimed that the plight of the planet is now so grave that even “sensible programmes of the kind Obama proposes are now irrelevant”. The only way to avert the “collapse of human civilisation”, according to the Great Moonbat, would be “the complete decarbonisation of the global economy soon after 2050”.

For 300 years science helped to turn Western civilisation into the richest and most comfortable the world has ever seen. Now it seems we have suddenly been plunged into a new age of superstition, where scientific evidence no longer counts for anything. The fact that America will soon be ruled by a man wholly under the spell of this post-scientific hysteria may leave us in wondering despair.

Obama proposes economic suicide for US

   Wednesday - November 19, 2008

100,000 citizens resist Obama

this post is dedicated to Turtler

An email from Grassfire.org:

+ + Obama Resistance Update
Grassfire.org

Christopher,

Thank you so much for taking part in Grassfire’s “Join The Resistance” campaign. I’m thrilled to report that in just one week, more than 100,000 citizens have joined the Resistance!

This is great news, especially with more and more reports about the very aggressive agenda President-elect Obama has set for the first days of his administration.

Obama’s promised executive orders alone will shut down oil and gas exploration, push radical global warming policies and force taxpayer funded abortions. And now Obama is promising more massive bailouts that will further expand government power.

+ + Our Goal: 200,000 Resisters This Week!

In order to reach our goal of 1 million Resisters by Inauguration Day, we must cross 200,000 this week.

We have already begun aggressive efforts to get the word out through conservative radio, Drudge Report and other means. But I need your help to spread the word TODAY:

Please forward this message to your conservative friends
right now and ask them to Join The Resistance. Your
friends can go here to sign:

http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?u=13283&PID=18705395

+ + Update on the Obama Booklet

Also, my staff is finalizing Grassfire’s booklet “Living In An Obama Nation” which outlines the 21 greatest threats the Obama Administration poses to your family and our nation. I expect to have this 48-page booklet to the printer tomorrow and shipping on time before the end of the month.

To request your copies or for a sneak peek inside the booklet, go here:

http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?U=13279&CID=111&RID=18705395

Thank you so much for taking a stand with Grassfire! Together, we can mount a patriotic, resilient, conservative Resistance to Barack Obama and the socialist Left.

Steve Elliott, President
Grassfire.org

Ah yeah. Consider I’ve forwarded this message to all of BMEWS.

   Sunday - November 16, 2008

Our Long Conservative Nightmare is Over

From my buddy flapjawman (I sure wish he’d change his handle!)

First, flapjawman’s observations:

I highly recommend his/her own observations of the high levels of indoctrination going on in the public schools - first hand, no less.  Keep in mind that students learning about the facts, America, etc, is also a form of indoctrination but the amount of “do what ever you want, go ahead, you have no responsibility anymore for anything” sort of indoctrination is the antithesis of what America stands for - unless I am mistaken…

This might explain Turtler’s recent attacks on me. Might. Or did he just jump to conclusions based on a sentence or two?

Back to Our long conservative nightmare is over:

Years of low taxes for everyone will finally come to an end, and others can now be taxed more. Years of low regulation and incredible innovation will come to an end, and predictable controlled low growth can be again the norm. Years of low unemployment will end, but even though it will go higher, it will be unemployment for productive people too, which is what people want. Years of no terrorist attacks will finally end, and we can go back to reacting to terrorist attacks, and reclaim the moral high ground of being killed and being upset by it. Years of terrorists on the run, killed in foreign countries, will be over, and we can go back to arresting bad guys when we convict them in a court of law or give them back to their own country for more fair justice than they’d get here. Yes, the long conservative nightmare is finally over.

The nation can begin to finally shake itself out of sleep, out of the dream it has been having of a world where we are the good guy, where god watches over us, where prosperity comes to all, where many voices are heard in the media, and where education is about teaching real knowledge- yes, this nightmare can end, and we can return the real world, of China, and Russia, and Kenya, and Iran, and North Korea.

The long conservative nightmare ends, and we wake to join our bothers and sisters of the world in union and equality.

Gods Yes!!. Get rid of all that sh*t! I feel better. . . not!

   Wednesday - November 12, 2008

NO NO and NO !!!!

Has ANYONE in DC ever even looked up a few quotes from Marx, let alone read him? Do they have the smallest understanding of what “government control of the means of production” really means? (that’s my qoute, not old Karl’s. It’s a poetic paraphrase, so don’t get your panties in a twist). What if it’s only government control of ONE means of production? Or part of one?

This bailout bullshit is getting out of control. Next up, the failing US auto industry. It doesn’t matter if they can’t make a car that Americans will buy. It doesn’t matter that they’ve had more than 35 years to figure out how to do this. It doesn’t even matter that one of the Big 3 has been bailed out before, with all the nonsense that entailed. Did Chrysler ever get around to being American owned again? Last time I bothered to pay attention, albeit that was a year or so ago, they have Herr Gear Schifft telling us what wonderful cars Chrysler made because of all that Mercedes-Benz engineering in them. So now they need a multi zillion dollar bailout too. Hey, the steel industry could use a few bill. And you know what? Let’s bring the shoe industry back from the dead; how about a few billion for them? I heard Burger King’s profits were down for a couple days last week. That ought to be worth at least a few hundred million. And hey, Uncle Sugar!! My window washing business sort of peters out once winter sets in. How about a couple hundred thousand for me? After all, as far as my owner’s (me) are concerned, I’m too important to my local economy (again me) to fail!!

What a cartload of poo. Knock it the hell off already. No bailouts for nobody. Even if the money you give them is fresh off the printer and nearly worthless to begin with. Idiots.

Democratic Proposal Includes Federal Stake in Car Companies

Congressional Democrats are pushing legislation to send $25 billion in emergency loans to the beleaguered auto industry in exchange for a government ownership stake in the Big Three car companies.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., hope for quick passage of the auto bailout during a postelection session that begins Monday.

Legislation being drafted by Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would dip into the $700 billion Wall Street rescue money, approved by Congress last month, for the auto aid.

I’m sick of the whole thing. Any business in America is free to fail. Look at the airlines, they do it left and right. And somehow they keep right on flying!! If the car companies can’t cut it, then they deserve to go under. GM stock is selling at what, $2.11 per share today? Anybody with a brain dumped that faster than yesterday’s burritos from Taco Bell, ages ago. No company, no brokerage, no union has a right to perpetual life.

And that’s all I got today. I’m having a sick day. Let’s just say that the Taco Bell reference was ... very easy to come by today.

---

---

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2008 Domain Owner