He Gives - He Gave – He Gove…

It’s the technocrats – those who scorned public opinion and asked us to trust their expertise – who have brought us the disaster of the euro, and a failure to prevent the financial crisis of 2008. (Michael Gove, Times - quoted in i 22.10.16)

          ‘Ah yes,’ said Dr Fritz von Heldenleben with a wicked glint from his pebble lenses, ‘the late Führer Adolf Hitler despised all expert technocrats (with the exception of Albert Speer) and especially those  military experts of the Wehrmacht General Staff who would have sought to dispute his judgment as the greatest war leader of all time!’

          I’m not thinking about education, said Jack Blanchard, impatiently. I mean the euro: what about the euro?

          ‘The success of the euro will depend upon the political unity established by Europe’s politicians. However devised by experts, the euro cannot function optimally without closer political union, which is not in the experts’ domain, nor did we ever assume it was. We experts and technocrats devise plans and outline detailed objectives (since this the politicians cannot do) but we would expect fully the politicians to order the fundamental priorities. When they – as like Hitler, really – do not know what to do, they blame the experts advising them, and when we all do not know what to do we must of course all blame the media.

          ‘- And it was speculators who caused the financial crisis of 2008, not economists as such.’

          Hardly any of the economists predicted it, countered our reporter.

          ‘Experts do not access crystal balls amongst their sources,’ said the good Doctor. ‘We are not astrologicians.’

          Astrologers?

          ‘Just so. We draw up simply the blueprints as directed by our political and business masters.’

          Speaking of education, said Jack, Mr Gove was at one time in charge of it, in our country.

          ‘I know nothing of education,’ replied Dr von Heldenleben, ‘but again I would suggest that it, too, is a field whose priorities are best set by elected representatives in response to perceived needs. The experts can only implement (and of course attempt to influence) a policy determined by a vision of what should be done, an objective. What do your people want and need from education? And the children? Experts can help to find out but it is not for them to lay down the fundamentals.

          ‘It is like directing a lawyer in proceeding on your business. The lawyer needs first to know what you want. He or she can propose alternatives but whether it is a matter of disinheriting certain relatives or removing pensions or of pleading guilty or not guilty, any lawyer must know your mind before taking action on your behalf. How clear were Herr Gove’s own educational priorities? How close was he towards balancing priorities against practicalities?’

          Nobody knows what Gove thought he was up to, said Jack. He certainly roused the whole Blob against him.

          ‘Blob? What is this – Blob?’

          It would take too long to explain, sighed Jack. It’s beyond satire to try.

* * * *

     With the bonfire of expertise that spread across Britain in the wake of Mr Gove’s remarks, technocrats were purged from positions in education, atomic energy, the Prison Service, operating theatres in the NHS, food and drug administration, sanitation, town planning, agronomy, National Parks and nature conservancy and veterinary services, and a whole host of other elitist enclaves, while educational training in these spheres of so-called expertise was gradually and economically dismantled (or privatised, which amounted to the same thing). The nation experienced a robust return to the 16^th century – the age of Good Queen Bess, Shakespeare and Sir Francis Drake – and became amongst other things a great Time Capsule and obvious magnate for time-travelling tourists from all over the world. After four hundred years people actually or vicariously could revel again in the poverty, ignorance, disease and bloodshed of our glorious ancestors…

         

Moments in History

Or

History in ‘Moments’ (1)

(WARNING: This history may be a little out of order.)

          As she rode (rowed?) to Tilbury Theresa pondered on the words she was so famously to utter as she bade farewell and bon voyage to her EU negotiators:

          ‘I may have the political skills of a local councillor and the heart of a Chief Whip, but I have the stomach of a male Prime Minister,’ she said to cheers on the deck of the sinking ship HMS LastoneLeft.

          How far they had all come as a result of her late father’s drastic solving of the King’s Great Matter and now This Realm, This England, stood alone. As did Theresa, steering her way through the labyrinth of a treacherous Court that might so easily have had her long since ‘remaindered’ like an unread old book of political memoirs. It was more vital than ever that she trust no one and keep her own counsel.

          Then there was Nicola of the Scots chafing behind Theresa’s northern border while seeking behind Theresa’s back to resurrect the ‘Auld Alliance’ with Theresa’s great continental enemy. But she was a problem that would have to wait, and meanwhile both Nicola and the EU were issues too delicate to be left in the clumsy hands of her bumptious First Minister, Blundering Boris, Earl of Weshallsea and notorious jester-turncoat….

DR VON HELDENLEBEN AND HIS LIEBLING

          Dr Fritz von Heldenleben, EU Commissioner for Deregulation, began his interview with our European correspondent Jack Blanchard with an observation on his country’s linguistic practices. ‘We Germans who are short speak High German, while we Germans who are tall speak Low German. In that way do we achieve mutual audibility.’ (A little warm-up joke?) We sat, writes Jack, sipping chilled Moselle in Dr von Heldenleben’s  magnificent high-vaulted panelled study in the family schloss which offers a panoramic view of the Reichstag Valley across which spreads the medievally picturesque old town of Knappertsbusch, ancestral home of the Heldenlebens.  The houses have that charming cuckoo-clock look about them, as indeed we hear all the cuckoos cook-cooing on the hour every hour. ‘Yes, it is wunderschön,’ said Dr von Heldenleben, ‘with the highest suicide rate in the world, which is only natural, of course - our traditional Weltschmerz.’

          Von Heldenleben is currently implementing a Greek Rescue Plan to save the German economy in the event of the fall of the Deutsche Bank but the subject of the discussion was Brexit Britain. The Commissioner was sanguine about future prospects:

          ‘We and the Dutch and the French own nearly all your railways and energy companies, so I do not see too much of a problem with any so-called separation. And as your banks gradually re-locate to Frankfurt (and New York also) and we buy up your Stock Exchange as originally planned, I view the future with optimism. One problem remains: you are not sufficiently privatised to prepare the ground for further acquisitions of your assets by our government-owned companies, but no doubt that tag will come.

          ‘But ach, Joachim, such opportunities going to waste! As that charming freulein of yours, Juliet Samuel, in your Daily Telegraf for 14.10.16 asks [‘If the government won’t build new infrastructure let others have a go’], how to unlock private capital for more fracking, new coal plants, a third airport runway and more autobahns , not to speak of unaffordable housing? I think she realises all too well that time is of the essence if you are to push back further the natural environment to achieve all these things before the world comes to an end – a race for profit against time, schnell!, schnell!

'As she notes also, and as you see I have here the newspaper in front of me’ (Dr von Heldenleben wiped and adjusted his pebble glasses) ‘“Yesterday, Simon Wolfson launched his annual economics prize. The task was centred on Britain’s infrastructure problem: find a way of improving our clogged road network.”’

          To have less cars? ventured Jack Blanchard.

          ‘But nein! nein! More autobahns with first- and second-class lane tolls, supplemented by a north-south, high-speed business-class railway! Infrastructure, Joachim! Infrastructure! All that green but useless countryside… And, as Freulein Samuel says: “If the government isn’t prepared to build, it could at least let private companies do so.” As she says also, housebuilders and airport owners and shale drillers cry out to invest but are held up at every turn “while the police gently talk protesting hippies out of the bushes.” How very English!  Ha! Ha! A good expression!’

          I’m not sure all the protesters are hippies, protested Jack of Marxist Moments.

          ‘It does not matter: they act as hippies, whoever they are!’

          Dr von Heldenleben goes on to say that enormous private pension funds lie idle as the government stalls on infrastructure, as Juliet Samuel writes. ‘”Set the people free” as our former enemy Churchill once said to you austere-rationing English (betrunken alter Dummkopf); and then that charming Gallic expression of Guizot: “Enrichissez-vous!” Privatise all your infrastructure! But here is once more from the newspaper meine kleine liebling:

‘“Toll roads are lambasted as unfair. Train companies are accused of price gouging…new nuclear plants have been regulated to death, new windfarms are banned, coal plants are being shut down and shale drilling permits take years…The Government has lost the courage to level with voters and admit that from each development, there might be losers in the local area, but that this is the price Britain must pay to stay a competitive modern economy that can pay for its own defence and decent services.”

‘Do you not see, Joachim, that we keep telling this to the Greeks, the Portuguese, the southern Italians? Until they learn that each country has a price to pay, and that there are inevitable losers, such as them, Europe too will never be competitive!’

          It proved too much for our reporter, unable as a conscientious interviewer to argue back point by point, so Jack has instead turned to editorialising in print:

          So, Monty – I like the way Juliet Samuel writes about ‘losers’, but since potential fracking sites are dotted all over the country, including choice bits of Southeast England, who is to pick the fracking locations for the losers while leaving the ‘winners’ alone? Why not start all this in the North, for example? They don’t vote Tory up there anyhow. And so we have. And at what point will all the loser areas join up, one way or another?

          ‘Britain paying for its own defence.’ Does this include Trident renewal, by the way, said by military critics to be entirely – and dangerously – obsolete in the cyber age? Perhaps cutting out dozens of billions of that might make ‘paying for our own defence’ a little less prohibitive?

          If nuclear plants are ‘regulated to death’ does Juliet Samuel mean they shouldn’t be regulated at all, or perhaps only a little bit regulated – like Chernobyl?

          And don’t the problems of our existing infrastructure stem from its privatisation in the first place? Vast sums are creamed off services to pour into shareholders’ and hedge-funders’ pockets, as well as into the coffers of foreign state-owned enterprises that subsidise cheaper rail fares and energy-bills for their own citizens at our expense (we pay just about the highest rail fares in Europe). And with yet more privatisation will yet more private building and owning not lead to yet more ‘price-gouging’ - on a huge, larcenous scale?

          And where do renewables come into the picture – something Juliet Samuel leaves unmentioned?  We can have off-shore wind-farms without invading the land. Carbon-capture can be developed for coal production (she doesn’t mention that perhaps because she wants to keep the argument confrontational, tough and gritty); there is solar power, wave and water power, even power out of the methane from excrement! But of course as all these apart from carbon-captured coal are relatively cheap they won’t yield the big profits both of coal itself and of the other non-renewables.

          Ultimately there was something unclear about her argument. On the one hand, shale drillers and so on are crying out to invest but are held back by Government hesitation. On the other hand, infrastructural building is apparently held back by timidity over releasing privately invested funds, not to speak of unleashing private building companies. But I thought fracking and coalmining and so on were already invested in and run by private companies? And in any case the Government is fully committed to fracking, so where’s the hesitation? What this argument turns out to be is a pitch for yet more private profitmaking, on a vast scale and as soon as possible to bring ‘recovery’ to capitalists. Though we’ve seen what privatisation has done to our ‘decent services’ so far. With the Government’s stance on fracking, it’s only the ‘hippies’ who need neutralising now. And it looks as though what Samuel is insinuating is that all protest against non-renewables must be forbidden by law so that Britain remains ‘competitive’.  Perhaps this can be extended to banning protests in favour of renewables.

We shall see in due course (almost no doubt about it) what Nature has to say on the matter…

Fortunately for Dr von Heldenleben, he can enjoy the luxury of a beautiful view and pristine air, whatever the cuckoo-clock noise-pollution plus the suicides, because he’s sat in the middle of the mountains, which one can do little with except climb, riddle with pistes and yodel across.

That [says Jack, veering from conviction to unhingement] is what Britain needs: mountains!  Not piddling Pennines and Ben Nevises but the real deal: Alps, Rockies, Himalayas! Maybe after all the frackings could induce greater earthquakes, leading to mountainous upheavals! Volcanos never did Iceland any harm: it’s the most prosperous post-Crisis country in or near Europe!

Think about it, Monty. Think about it.

We thought about it and advised Jack to take a short holiday, preferably in the Fens.

           

         

At It Again

         

Lucifer Satan now appears to have been a prime mover behind a concerted attempt to pressurise the Swedish Academy into awarding Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize as a consolation should he fail to rally Middle America for peace and unity as a presidential candidate.

There is considerable support around the globe for such a face-saving move. The main grounds for it are that Trump would be a major force for world peace if he failed to gain the US presidency.  ‘People and politicians all over the world will be so relieved that they will fall into each other’s arms in a spirit of universal harmony, united at least on one thing,’ said Mr Satan at a hellish press conference in Las Vegas, where he is appearing nightly as himself at The Sands. ‘And you know how much I like universal harmony! It may be a con but while it lasts it’s good for business!’

Mr Satan’s last success was as long ago as 1974 when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, an event that forced Tom Lehrer to give up satire. This was Mr Satan’s prime object at the time. He has always hated satirists. Because they show no respect.

The Mexican government declined to comment. Mexicans, hoping their security would be guaranteed forever if a great wall was erected across their entire border with the United States, will now have to re-consider their options.

You Couldn’t Make It up

          Lucifer Satan has decided to seek a return to full-time religion after a number of decades in retirement building up his portfolio.

          Mr Satan, who spoke to your reporter Jack Blanchard at his extensive centrally-heated basement in Belgravia, London SW 1, said ‘With the revival of war, famine, pestilence and environmental catastrophe in recent years it seems only right for me to re-assume some sort of co-ordinating role. I was always regarded as a pretty straightforward kind of guy, after all, unremitting over years, centuries actually, in finessing the onward march of evil.’

          In Mr Satan’s view evil has taken a back seat and needs to reclaim ‘the centre ground’ in the shaping of events. Once regarded as all-powerful, ‘Old Nick’, as he is still affectionately called by members of the secretive 666 Club, refused to be drawn out on specific strategies and tactics. ‘One doesn’t want to show one’s hand too early in this game, but I still have scads of believers in the States, for one thing,’ he said, and he hoped ‘the so-called 1%’ would in time rally to his leadership more openly. Mr Satan faces a phalanx of big rivals on the world political scene, however. ‘I’ve always been a formidable double-crossing tempter but the field’s a bit overcrowded these days.’ He also admitted that there would be considerable popular resistance to his new bid for a public role once more.

          Fear may prove to be his strongest suit: ‘You don’t have to be popular to scare the hell out of people,’ Mr Satan said, ‘and I was always good at that. People like being scared and I’m certainly the one to put the wind up.’ It’s fear that makes the world go round – as he said recently in an expensive (‘expansive’? – ED) speech to the Brimstone circle thinktank – but today’s leaders aren’t up to the challenge because they lack the courage of their non-convictions: ‘We must never forget that evil forever triumphs in an atmosphere of constant and totally unreasoning fear, so something along these lines will form my plan of attack. Be steadfast, Brimstoners! Always remember that a week is a long time in global mastery. I should know, I’ve been at it ten thousand years! And’ (with a wink and cheeky whisk of his tail) ’I’m still comparatively young, really.’

NEWS FLASH

          Daily Telegraph for 6.10.16 (Tim Wallace):

          ‘Global debt record risks economic stagnation.

          ‘IMF report issues chilling prospect of populist politics sending world economy into reverse.

          ‘Global debt has hit a record high of $152 trillion, weighing down economic growth and adding to risks that the economic recovery could turn into stagnation or even recession, the International Monetary Fund has warned.’

          There is also the fear expressed in this report that ‘populist politics’ would reverse globalisation, ‘with protectionist politics hitting international trade, investment and immigration, sending the world plunging into a prolonged period of economic torpor.’

          ‘Recovery’, as always in these financial reports, means the ‘recovery’ of capital profits. There is no way of defining what ‘recovery’ under capitalism would be otherwise. It can’t mean the general well-being of people in a permanent high-wage, high-spend economy since wages are drawn from employers’ profits, and higher profits must invariably come from lowering wages. Low wages mean either no-spend or high personal debt in order to spend.

          If this dependence on labour for profit were not so, why the IMF’s concern for the consequences to business of controls on immigration? The source of profit is the value accruing from unpaid labour time and into which wages make inroads the higher they become. This necessitates drops in wage levels as a given period passes its economic peak. So the cheapest possible labour is needed at this time to get the economy ‘on the move’ again. And that means immigration as a necessary component of the labour market. Meanwhile a problem arises when employers skimp on both investment in more modern and efficient machinery and on labour costs: a decline in the level of productivity. This is happening all over the world and is of major concern to economists. Lower productivity is not mentioned in the IMF report, but it should be, although it is not very clear what can be done in practical, realistic terms to raise it.

‘Recovery’ to the capitalist means the recovery of profits through the lowering of wages, ‘flexibility’ in the labour market (i.e. no secure  jobs), the undercutting of wages through the mass employment of immigrants: hence immigration controls pose a threat to the free movement of labour and thus to globalisation  and the maximising of profit. (And high profiting must be maintained to offset the steady lowering of the overall rate of profit.) The IMF here urges governments to push ‘to keep borders as open as possible’. Unfortunately this invites the wrath of workers fearing that their wages will be undercut by the influx of cheap labour. And with this that it will lower their buying-power even further, not to speak of their job security.

          Capitalism can only come out on top if the world buys back all that it has produced, in capital goods as in direct consumption. But if demand is threatened by the erosion in the real value of wages, then debt will ensue. Debt works its way from individual consumers into businesses that have invested through borrowing and into banks that have loaned. IMF: ‘At 225pc of world GDP, the global debt…is currently at an all-time high. Two-thirds consists of liabilities of the private sector, which can carry great risks when they reach excessive levels.’ Meanwhile:

          ‘The political climate is unsettled in many countries. A lack of income growth and a rise in inequality have opened the door for populist, inward-looking policies’ which make the job of preventing ‘a gradual slide into economic and financial stagnation’ very problematical, to say the least.

          What the IMF doesn’t openly admit, although it more or less states it, is that ‘populist politics’ are not a contributory factor but are the effect of the very globalisation, free-market system that the IMF seeks to save. The political response to ’a rise in inequality’ and to wages deterioration in the restoration of profit is the very reason for the ‘unsettled political climate’ in the first place. Which the urged measures will only intensify. Capitalism is its own worst enemy. There is a disconnect in this latest report between cause and effect. You have this factor here and you have that factor there, but meanwhile you turn a blind eye to how these factors interrelate and create each other. And that is because you are trying to save a system in which the chief barrier to capital realisation and accumulation is capital itself. It is a contradiction. And so only an argument on behalf of a contradiction must be blind to its own logic, or lack of expressing it. Economic and financial commentary from the fundits is not notable for the logic of its analysis because the system is so illogical and irrational that any kind of logic applied to it will take on the mantle of a critique of it.

          Capitalism superseded feudalism because feudalism came to stifle possibilities of economic growth through over-regulation of one sort or another in the maintenance of the feudal order. Over the centuries we have come full circle: capital itself is stifling its own continuing expansion, which is what capital is required to achieve in order to be. Time for a change?