Monthly Archives: May 2015

THE BEADY EYE: TAKES ANOTHER LOOK AT CAPITALISM.

31 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Politics., The Future, Uncategorized

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An organization is only as strong as the humans within it.

The Current Capitalist global political economy which you can see all around you is on the point of no return.

Our world Organisations creak with overburden demands, lack of funds, and self -control, and taciturnity of action.

Capitalism  cannot expand as it did in the past as it has consolidated wealth into the hands of a tiny global elite. It is losing its hold on the imagination of large numbers of people who are not benefiting from this global system. The system is seizing up.

Yet the global capitalist system that I condemn has also produced incredible advances in life expectancy, raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and showered the world in technology innovation.

In all directions, the stage is set for a great planetary debate that will define the dawning Age of Technology – one that will inevitably be focused on how to implement the principle of sharing into world affairs.

If we truly believe in equality, we need to organise ourselves with a clear sense of equality.

The secrets of sustainability and well-being in society lies not in the Technology but in the imbalance in living standards and life opportunities between the global North and South – and between rich and poor within every country to varying degrees – is a crisis that lies at the heart of all world tensions.

Nothing will change unless our collective cognition’s change.1652331

Sustainability cannot be achieved by simply switching technologies. The future will happen anyway but just look at the tragic cost of human life, injury and exploitation we are witness to every day. Also, the cost to the planet from pollution and water use.

How can we keep ourselves and our organizations in tune with the exponentially expanding needs, problems, and opportunities posed by the world around us?

Business practices have worsened. Consumerism has reached a cruel momentum speed.

However if we collectively decide that we don’t accept what we and they are doing we can have a future for all.

It seems to me that Capitalism with its ideology of the trickle down effect has lost the plot and is being exposed as a lie.

With the Elite corrupted, the ordinary Joe soap doesn’t  seem to come into the equation until after it’s produced, if you get what I mean.

The Imbalances in our Capitalist Societies are forcing people to live with chronic debt a form of social and political control.

No one or any Organisation on its own can handle, Aging, diversity, intellectual capital, technology, generations, education, personalization, human ingenuity, continuous improvement, ethics, planetary security, polarization, interdependence, personal meaning, poverty, and careers, just to mention a few.

Our smartphones have become Swiss army knife–like appliances that include a dictionary, calculator, web browser, email, Game Boy, appointment calendar, voice recorder, guitar tuner, weather forecaster, GPS, texter, tweeter, Facebook updater, and flashlight. They’re more powerful and do more things than the most advanced computer at IBM corporate headquarters 30 years ago.

Clearly, our prevailing socio-economic structures in no way reflect the inner connectedness and equality of human beings across the world.

If we take Climate change; it might turnout to be our Savior.

It can only be tackled by an equitable “global” climate deal that can tackle the climate crisis effectively; a deal that clearly spells out the commitments of each and every player.

The possibilities of this happening  in a world where it is seldom mentioned that around 40,000 people are still dying in poverty each day from largely preventable causes – mainly due to lack of access to sufficient food, clean water, adequate shelter and health care, are Zero.

Although we live in a bounteous world that has more than enough wealth and resources available for everyone to meet their essential needs (a fact that can no longer be taken for granted), this wealth divided reality makes a mockery of ageless teachings on right human relations and our innate spiritual unity.

We’re assaulted with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour, all posing as information. Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting. This is the very reason that our World Organisations are far from embodying the spiritual impulse toward planetary synthesis, wholeness and union.

So let me state one hard fact; There will be no solution without Money.

Economic relationships between rich and poor countries remain predicated on the opposing objects of national self-interest, aggressive competition and materialistic acquisition.

International travel, trade and telecommunications may have led to a growing understanding that we are part of a global community, yet economic globalisation in its present form is failing to promote and safeguard the needs of humanity as a whole.

It does not seem realistic to think that certain specifics issues, such as environment and labour standards, should be considered as negotiating positions which are defended exclusively by developed countries. This reality is so out of touch with basic moral values, let alone spiritual law or divine principles.

Drastic changes are now needed to prevent increased turmoil and catastrophe in the years ahead.

The implications for our competitive, profit-driven institutions and outmoded ideologies are all-encompassing, yet nothing less will suffice to guarantee an end to poverty and the inauguration of a viably spiritual mode of global economic organisation.

The environmental crisis is waking us up to a new ethic based on the sacredness of nature and all living beings, and the need for simpler lifestyles that respect planetary boundaries and the rights of future generations.

These issues should be of common concern, protecting global interests, however difficult it has been to realise this obvious truth in our structures of international relationship: That a more equitable sharing of wealth, technology, skills and knowledge is the fundamental basis of a just and peaceful world order.

What have we got instead is a world full of many organizations that exist to make
 a profit.

Each organization exists for a purpose: to bring something to the world, make it available to people, and enable those people to capitalize upon it. Whether for profit or not, all organizations seek to sustain themselves, so they can continue bringing their things to the world.

Change is inevitable. Progress is optional.

The lavish lifestyles of the affluent nations are effectively financed by the poverty of the majority world, while a wholly inadequate overseas aid system and philanthropic activity masks the systemic injustices of the global economy. After centuries of colonialism and the exploitation of weaker populations by the more powerful, wealth and resources continue to be extracted from developing countries through illicit financial flows, profit repatriation, corporate tax abuses, unjust debt servicing and other means.

Governments have to acknowledge that the natural resources and produce of the world belongs to no one nation but must be shared by all, as embodied in the wise pooling and distribution of essential resources for the benefit of everybody.

Rich nations in particular have to understand that they cannot remain islands of prosperity in a sea of deprivation, and that a more equitable sharing of wealth, technology, skills and knowledge is the fundamental basis of a just and peaceful world order.

The major spiritual lesson for humanity in the twenty-first century could not be simpler or more urgent in this regard, however the difficult has been to realise this obvious truth in our structures of international relationship.

In an era of email, text messages, Facebook and Twitter, we’re all required to do several things at once. But this constant multitasking is taking its toll we are all become increasingly out of touch with our fast-changing world.

Many injustices have been spawned, from large-scale atrocities, to out-of-touch campaigns and services, no longer serving those they began operating in the names of.

Ensuring that all of those involved have an equal voice in shaping what we do is not just working as it ignored  the needs and demands of society to navigate through the one accelerating constant–change.

Organizations change directions repeatedly in order to sustain themselves.

One way to clarify what the intentions of man is to go back in history to the beginning of your existence.  What was written then about the purpose being pursued?  With long-lived organizations, this original purpose surely shifts.

Here is the wish of most of us.

I wish that we lived in a functioning democracy where real electoral and social reform is possible.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "free pictures of capitalism"

As long as corporate power has a stranglehold on our institutions and our government, including our mass media, it will do what it’s designed to do and that is to exploit until exhaustion or collapse.

In all my reading, one of the most simple, yet profound ideas I discovered was that principles (or certain natural laws or rules) govern how and why things happen in all of life.  This truth is well accepted in the fields of physical science, but unfortunately less so in other areas of study.

In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths or first principles upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend.

It boils down, in its essence, to the basic idea that all men are free to choose liberty and life, or captivity and death. Sadly, too many of us have been trained and conditioned to wait – perpetually – for someone else to rescue us.  We are being acted upon by the pressure of expectations outside ourselves. Too often, we fail to question our day-to-day assumptions.

We live at a time when the dominant social paradigm actually undermines the philosophical revolution that enabled us to become the most free, prosperous, and generous people in modern times.

dollarmembership

Right I can hear you saying. We have heard it all before. What is the solution. It’s not Communism, it’s not Socialism, it’s a mix of all three with God is a Capitalist.

So why does this matter to you or anyone else? Answer.  In a nutshell, it means everything if we as a planet of humans are to remain so.

There is only one solution we must make Capitalism contribute by placing a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Acquisitions and on all Foreign Exchange Transactions ( Over $20,000).

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE. Let’s look at the “ C-word”.

28 Thursday May 2015

Posted by in Corruption.

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Until recently corruption was an acknowledged fact of life,“Corruption is one of the few disasters which is wholly man-made” and is to be found wherever there are human beings.

Corruption and economic turmoil often go hand-in-hand.

In western nations like the United States and many European countries, we often see corruption come to light as the result of whistle blowers or journalist efforts. But in many other areas of the world, however, corruption plays a major role in fostering staggering poverty and broken economic systems in a much more blatant way.

Why is this?  Because;

Many governments have their roots in constitutions from generations ago, and have outgrown their current systems. Many other countries are ruled by a variety of independent tribal leaders and often lack a centralized power structure with any meaningful sway.

Now it is beginning to be accepted that corruption is not a private matter between corrupted and corruptor, but something that may distort and degrade whole economies and cultures, not to mention sport.

Seven members of FIFA were arrested for corruption in their hotel in Zurich on Wednesday morning, UEFA requested the postponement of the proceeding Congress and the presidential election. They have only being rigging the World Cup for the last decade or so.

Corruption has spread its branches in almost each and every sector of our Existence.

It comes in a variety of forms, so getting a precise gauge is difficult.

Corruption is profoundly inegalitarian in its effects – it has a ‘Robin Hood-in-reverse’ character.

Corruption infringes the fundamental human right to fair treatment.

It is the poor who are most dependent on good public services, for they have few alternatives (they cannot afford private health care or schools, for example). The problem with pragmatic acceptance, seeing bribery as little more than a different way of doing business, a way to bypass red tape and to outdo business rivals.

Generally speaking the governments in poor countries are also the most corrupt.

If you were asked to give a definition to describe Corruption you would be hard press to formulate a definition that encompasses all its aspects.

You might say Corruption is;  “The act by which ‘insiders’ profit at the expense of ‘outsiders’ ” (conveying the ideas of abuse of position, offending against relationships, and under handedness).

You might say;  that the mingling of business with politics (particularly ethnic politics) is a sure recipe for corruption.

You might say;  the culprits are secrecy (in government) and poverty.

You might say;  it is the abuse of public office in exchange for private benefits.

The definition of corruption consequently ranges from the broad terms of “misuse of public power” and “moral decay” to strict legal definitions of corruption as an act of bribery involving a public servant and a transfer of tangible resources.

If corruption is to be seriously addressed its causes must be clearly identified. It is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with multiple causes and effects, as it takes on various forms and functions in different contexts.

Can it be eradicated ?  Not a hope in hell  – Third World dictators of the Cold War era, the crash in East Asia (which had seemed both corrupt and prosperous), and the growing cost of corruption to business have all helped to focus minds.

The rankings in the table below and the color of the country on the map indicate the country score on a scale of 0 to 100 where 0 means that the country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 as very clean.

Can it be curtailed?  Yes –  It may flourish both in over regulated and deregulated economies, under democracy or dictatorship.

Transparency is the secret.  Access to information, must be prerequisites for any Aid program or Privatizations or Acquisitions of Resources by Sovereign Wealth Funds. (Corruption significantly raises the likelihood of macroeconomic instability, in addition to reducing economic growth. This is particularly true in a globalizing world economy. The gap is widening between those countries that can manage to control corruption and those that cannot.)

Here are a few specific example of what happened in the UK. You may have noted the privatization program taking place in the UK.

Making particular reference to the 1996 sell-off of British Rail. A 1998 report submitted by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons found that rolling stock sold for £1.8 billion was resold only ten months later for £2.7 billion. Taxpayers thus lost nearly £1 billion and former British Rail managers became multi-millionaires.

One of the biggest scams which India faced in the last decade was the Commonwealth Games scam.

Called the CWG scam in which many politicians were found guilty of making crores of money in the games illegally. The Commonwealth Games in India were held in 2010.

Then there is the Indian Coal Allocation Scam or Coalgate; it was the mother of all the scams, total scam was of Rs 10600 billion.

Or the 2G Spectrum Scam This scam led to the distribution of 2G licences to the private telecoms at through way prices in 2008, the prices were actually of 2001. It led to increment of the mobile subscribers from 4 million in 2001 to 350 million in 2008. These three scams are drop in an ocean.

It begs the question is a Scam Corruption or is it “Narrowly legalistic”

Doing no more than trying not to fall foul of the legislation is not enough.

Back to Europe.

To date, the list of corrupt Greek politicians Siemens is kept secret by Germany, only German Chancellor Angela Merkel is aware of the whole process of corruption, names and amounts received by each Greek politician.

Mr. Akis was accused of receiving 20 million euros for corruption signing arms contracts with foreign companies, especially German, which he received EUR 8 million for the country on the path of a heavy debt commander in 2000, four German submarines to 1.6 billion Euros in the MAN group was sentenced to 160 million tickets a German court for making corruption (60 million euros paid in one year) a new marketing technique to sell submarines to other countries in financial crisis as Portugal.

On 15 December 2011, is the successor of Grevy, Jacques Chirac, 78, who will scoop 2 years suspended imprisonment by the Court of Paris for embezzling public funds and abuse of power, of what happened between 1977 and 1995, thanks to a magic potion used in Europe called IMUNITE.

The issue of corruption will never be resolved if it is treated as a problem solely, or mainly, of the Third World. It is rampant at all levels of Society.

If we take a close look at the European Union although the nature and scope of corruption may differ from one EU State to another, it harms the EU as a whole by lowering investment levels, hampering the fair operation of the Internal Market and reducing public finances.

The economic costs incurred by corruption in the EU possibly amount to EUR 120 billion per year. This is one percent of the EU GDP, representing only a little less than the annual budget of the EU. This estimate could well be a conservative one. One way or the other it is “breathtaking”.

http://www.euractiv.com/video/commission-corruption-costs-eu-eu120-billion-yearly-307440

It cannot be tackled in isolation, but only in the context of efforts to reduce world poverty. The burden of Third World debt and the imbalance of power in world trade need to be addressed at the same time as tackling corruption.

The problem of corruption has been seen either as a structural problem of politics or economics, or as a cultural and individual moral problem.

Corrupt individuals and companies may be exposed and punished, but of itself this will only redirect the corruption.

Action aimed specifically against corruption will have to go hand in hand with action to secure freedom of information.

The major concern for international aid policy through the last five decades is to improve the living conditions for the poor in the poorest countries of the world.

In fact, as the world economy becomes increasingly globalized, the IMF’s anti-corruption efforts are becoming more important. The roles played by international organisations and multinational companies, and the Internet in fostering as well as combating corruption is evident for all to see.

The negative impact of corruption on development, and the consequences for the poor.

Corruption in poor countries should also look beyond the formal structures of the central state to the informal networks of patronage and social domination that often determine how political power actually is wielded, including the local community or district level. Aid has achieved so little it has drawn attention to corruption as possibly a principal cause of failure.

The IMF, the World Bank, and other international development organizations can play a valuable role in fighting corruption.

There is no point in spreading funds across twenty cities, or twenty country, they are unlikely to make enough of a dent in any one place to be effective. They should focus their resources on one or two special governance zones in a particular country. Once reform is under way there, the increased investment and tax revenue will be the “anti-corruption dividend. A win-win strategy.

Governments are all too often not looking out for the everyday needs of their population and are instead enriching a privileged elite.

In 200 years, nothing has changed. When we look at the history of political scandals, we can easily conclude that political corruption is as old as politics itself.

Money is Corruption.

“Politicians are all corrupt,” that is what emerges when you ignore the vulnerable.  

There is only one place for Corruption:

Here are the most corrupt nations in the world, as ranked by Transparency International.

Eritrea. Libya. Uzbekistan. Turkmenistan. Iraq. South Sudan. 

Afghanistan. Sudan. North Korea. Somalia. Haiti. Venezuela. Myanmar.

Honorable Mention: The United States Corruption score: 74

No surprises!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Beady Eye: Over 2 billion jobs will disappear by 2030.

27 Wednesday May 2015

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Roughly 50% of all the jobs on the planet that is how quickly things are about to change.

You might think that this is bull shit, but the Technological revolution is only beginning.

It will have a per found effects on Five Industries.

So its important that beady eye lets academia know that much of the battle ahead will be taking place at their doorstep.

The Power or Energy Industry will change from the inside out.

Technologies will shift utilities around the world from national grids to micro grids that can be scaled from a single home to entire cities.

The industry will go through a long-term shrinking trend and the immediate shift will cause many new jobs to be created.

After that Power generation plants will begin to close down. All remaining Coal plants will begin to close down.

Many railroad and transportation workers will no longer be needed.

Even wind farms, natural gas, and bio-fuel generators will begin to close down.

Ethanol plants will be phased out or re purposed.

Utility company engineers, gone.

Line repairmen, gone.

Next is the Automobile and Transportation Industry.

The first wave of autonomous vehicles will be hitting the roads.

Going Driver less will be with us in the next 10 years.

We will see some of the first inroads made by vehicles/drones that deliver packages, groceries, and fast-mail envelopes.

With over 2 million people involved in-car accidents every year in the U.S. and god only knows how many more around the world it won’t take long for legislators to be convinced that driver less cars are a substantially safer and more effective option.

The privilege of driving is about to be redefined.

Taxi and limo drivers, gone.
Bus drivers, gone.
Truck drivers, gone.
Gas stations, parking lots, traffic cops, traffic courts, gone.
Fewer doctors and nurses will be needed to treat injuries.
Pizza (and other food) delivery drivers, gone.
Mail delivery drivers, gone.
FedEx and UPS delivery jobs, gone.
As people shift from owning their own vehicles to a transportation-on-demand system, the total number of vehicles manufactured will also begin to decline.

Then we have Education.

In 2004 the Khan Academy was started with a clear and concise way of teaching science and math. Today they offer over 2,400 courses that have been downloaded 116 million times.

Now we have the 8,000 pound gorilla in the Open Course ware space is Apple’s iTunes U.

This platform offers over 500,000 courses from 1,000 universities that have been downloaded over 700 million times. Recently they also started moving into the K-12 space.All of these courses are free for anyone to take.

So how do colleges, that charge steep tuitions, compete with “free”?

As the Open Course ware Movement has shown us, courses are becoming a commodity. Teachers only need to teach once, record it, and then move on to another topic or something else.Teaching requires experts.

Learning only requires coaches. So jobs of Teachers – Trainers- Professors will more than half.

Manufacturing.

3D Printers an object creation technology where the shape of the objects are formed through a process of building up layers of material until all of the details are in place.

Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands of items and thus undermines economies of scale.

It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did during the Henry Ford era.

If we can print our own clothes and they fit perfectly, clothing manufacturers and clothing retailers will quickly go away.

Similarly, if we can print our own shoes, shoe manufacturers and shoe retailers will cease to be relevant.

If we can print construction material, the lumber, rock, drywall, shingle, concrete, and various other construction industries will go away.

Robots:

Nearly every physical task can conceivably be done by a robot at some point in the future.

  • Fishing bots will replace fishermen.
  • Mining bots will replace miners.
  • Ag bots will replace farmers.
  • Inspection bots will replace human inspectors.
  • Warrior drones will replace soldiers.
  • Robots can pick up building material coming out of the 3D printer and begin building a house.

In these five industries alone there will be hundreds of millions of jobs disappearing.  But many other sectors will also be affected.

Certainly there’s a downside to all this. The more technology we rely on, the more breaking points we’ll have in our lives.

For instance driver less drones can deliver people. These people can deliver bombs or illicit drugs as easily as pizza.

Robots that can build building can also destroy buildings.

All of this technology could make us fat, dumb, and lazy, and the problems we thought we were solving become far more complicated.

We are not well-equipped culturally and emotionally to have this much technology entering into our lives. There will be backlashes, “destroy the robots” or “damn the driver less car” campaigns with proposed legislation attempting to limit its influence.

At the same time, most of the jobs getting displaced are the low-level, low-skilled labor positions.

Our challenge will be to upgrade our workforce to match the labor demand of the coming era. Although it won’t be an easy road ahead it will be one filled with amazing technology and huge potentials as the industries shift.

The underbelly of all of this will be that there will be huge opportunities but no pensions or retirement.

It wont be too long before an individual will have the power to destroy the world.

So we will need a new awareness on the consequences of Inequality, Migration, Climate Change, and technological desert in the World.

The Beady Eye. Let’s looks at the faceless future of banking

25 Monday May 2015

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The banking system was saved from collapse by billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, which in turn led to anger that the public was having to bail out bankers, who were perceived as risk-taking and “greedy”.

We were told back then that they were to big to fail.

To day there are far bigger. Today, the top banks are larger than they were before the crisis and are engaged in many of the same behaviors that led to the financial meltdown, including using large amounts of short-term borrowing to fund purchases of speculative securities.

One would expect a stark public assessment of what went wrong with the post-crisis reform of our financial system but the largest banks have used their political muscle to shield their enterprises and individual bankers from criminal prosecution and to resist the toughest reforms.

While global banks have reportedly paid $100 billion in legal settlements with the U.S. the data is indisputable: The top six bank holding companies in the US—JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—are larger than they were before the 2008 crisis.

Together they hold 37 percent more assets than they did five years ago.

These six bank holding companies have two-thirds of the total assets in the entire banking system, which includes nearly 7,000 banks.

While most of us worry about making ends meet they enjoy the comfort of an expanded government safety net. These giant firms and their executives can continue to create and benefit from boom-and-bust cycles, privatizing profits in the bountiful years and socializing their losses when they fall.

The question now is:

How big do the biggest banks have to get before we consider breaking them up? . . . Do they have to double in size? Triple in size? Quadruple in size?”

The banking industry is more than likely to undergo significant changes over the next few decades.

The majority of transactions are now processed electronically, reducing the need for physical branches. No more paper money by 2043? From 3-D banking to digital currency, within 10 years.

The economic payments system will begin to ‘know us,’ either through bio metrics, optical sensor or facial recognition. That’s already happening to some extent with smartphones – the new iPhone 5S, for example, uses fingerprint scanning to unlock the phone.

So why not break them up. The big ones are always going to be the most dangerous.

They have recently exhibited “breathtaking flagrancy” setting up a group they called “the cartel” to manipulate a market valued at $5trn a day.(Each day, £3.5tn changes hands in the foreign exchange markets. Each week, the equivalent of a year’s global trade in physical goods takes place.)

Resulting in new fines for fixing the forex markets. Six major banks were fined £2.6bn in November 2014. This takes the total penalties to date to£6.3bn.

Considering the gigantic profits (more than double their average over the seventy years ending in 1999) they have all taken these fines as a drop in the ocean with little or no effect on how they operate.  Instead, the banks and their shareholders have picked up the check whether it’s for the interest rate rigging scandal or fiddling the Foreign Exchange Markets.  They had more than likely already made provision on their balance sheets for the lost, which by the way would reduce their profits saving corporation tax.

Rarely have we seen any of the Directors been held personally responsible.

Only prison sentences will deter future abuses.

The agenda for change within the global corporate and investment banking (CIB) industry remains significant.

So where are we?

It’s agreed that the Banking Industry needs profound structural changes.

The Global debt is now in the region of a staggering $ 200 trillion almost three times the size of the global economy. It is long past the time for policymakers to right the global economy, is impossible. We that is the World have amassed mountains of new unplayable debts expanding 25% in the last six years. Post recession growth has never been so anaemic in recent history despite the unprecedented wave of money printing intended to boost the economy.

The world of economics is ill-equipped to deal with the next crisis.

We now have an equity bubble which will bust as demand for increased wages cuts into corporate profits.

Pension Funds and insurers will not have the cash to meet future obligations causing them to liquidate assets.

China could devalue the Yuan, making it impossible to export and there are no policy tools left to deal with such event, dragging the world into another recession.

If interest rates rise the cost of serving debts will be beyond the world economy.

Gold will be back in fashion.

Where do the Big banks come into all of this.

” If you ain’t cheating,” said one of the traders involved in the recent currency exchange scandal, ” you ain’t trying.”

What I say is “If we’re not addressing the financial sector’s systemic threat to the world economy, or its affronts to our system of justice, then we ain’t trying either”.

Our banks have a rotten core.

In what other sector would we tolerate the frequency and severity of such damaging behavior? All are repeat offenders with long records of serial fraud. The banking industry’s incentive system, combined with our governments refusal to prosecute has taught them that the old saying is wrong: crime does pay. They are immune from real punishment.  

Royal Bank of Scotland RBS which is 79% owned by taxpayers, was fined £430m – on top of the £400m of penalties announced in November has dismissed three employees, and suspended two more, following its role in the manipulation of the foreign exchange markets.

Barclay’s. fined £1.5bn by five regulators, including a record £284m by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority fire eight people, as part of a deal with regulators. Yet Barclays’ stock market value rose by £1.5bn as a result of a 3% rise in its share price amid relief the fine was not even larger.

Barclay’s also became the first bank to be fined for fixing another benchmark, known as the ISDA fix. It is paying £74m to the US regulator the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Barclay’s paid a “lone wolf” star trader £170m in the five years following the financial crisis, a payout which dwarfed those of Bob Diamond, the bank’s former boss he was at the center of a row over his £2.7m bonus for 2012 in the months before he quit.

Citigroup was fined £770m,

PJ Morgan the biggest bank in the US – which has paid fines totalling more than £26bn since 2009 – was fined another £572m.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch fined $205m.

However there is hope.

Crowdfunding/ Kickstarter, created in 2009 has funded a wide range of projects(over 60 000 in July 2012).

Kickstarter is financed by taking 5% of the funds raised; Amazon captures an additional share of between 3 and 5% of the amount.

A recent report from the Financial Stability Board put assets for non bank lending institutions at $75 trillion after growing more than 7 percent in 2013.

Lending Club staged a highly successful initial public offering earlier in December, raising $870 million in its debut, and others are expected to follow in 2016.

Despite pronouncements and promises of sweeping reform, many of the conditions that caused the financial crisis of 2008 persist six years after the multi-trillion-dollar bank bailouts began.

There time is almost up.

But we should also not be naïve:

You can rest assured that before the clock chimes they will have reinvented themselves. ( See What will Money look like in the Future. 6/12/2014)

It is therefore time to make clear to the Industry how the future regulatory landscape will look before Google/ Apple/Amazon are all Bankers.

Perhaps returning to where Insurance companies were Insurance companies, where Supermarkets were Supermarkets not selling insurance and Banking Facilities, and stop cross contamination of different Service Industries.

EU Agricultural Subsidies – The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)

22 Friday May 2015

Posted by in Environment, European Union., Politics., Sustaniability

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Its going to be a turbulent year for the EU with Greece going broke, the UK looking to opt out and immigrants arriving by the thousands.

The economic down turn of recent years exposed fundamental problems and unsustainable trends in many European countries. It also made clear just how interdependent the EU’s economies are.

Over the past decade, Member States have experienced divergent economic trends, which have, exacerbated competitiveness gaps and led to macro-economic imbalances within the EU.

The question now is are we looking at stronger political union or a repatriation of powers to National Sovereign Nations within the EU.  

One way or the other the EU needs to look beyond the current crisis.

The EU is already under pressure from competitors and demographic change.

Any reforms within the Members seems to take for ever to implement.

Take for instance the reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which was one of the original pillars of the European Community, comprising France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. In negotiations on the creation of a Common Market, France insisted on a system of agricultural subsidies as its price for agreeing to free trade in industrial goods.

The treaty of Rome set out its basic principle and objectives:

  1. To increase productivity, by promoting technical progress and ensuring the optimum use of the factors of production, in particular labour.
  2. To ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural Community.
  3. To stabilise markets.
  4. To secure availability of supplies.
  5. To provide consumers with food at reasonable prices.

Those objectives were written in 1958 and have never been amended.

The main purposes of EU agriculture should be:

• Provision of a safe, healthy choice of food, at transparent and affordable prices.

• Ensuring sustainable use of the land.

• Activities that sustain rural communities and the countryside.

So what is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)?

For more than twenty years, starting in 1992, the CAP has been through successive reforms. In June 2013 ministers reached a deal with Euro MPs and the European Commission, though the reform package has not yet been agreed in full.

The CAP began operating in 1962, with the Community intervening to buy farm output when the market price fell below an agreed target level. In 1970, when food production was heavily subsidised, it accounted for 87% of the budget.

The CAP has been steadily falling as a proportion of the total EU budget for many years.

The plan then was that total spending should peak in 2008/9 and then decline until 2013, when the next major revision was due. In 2013 the budget for direct farm payments (subsidies) and rural development – the twin “pillars” of the CAP – was 57.5bn euros (£49bn), out of a total EU budget of 132.8bn euros (that is 43% of the total).

Owing to the way in which the common agricultural policy has developed and to the use of ‘historical references’, the level of aid may vary considerably from one farm to another, from one member country to another or from one region to another.

Today’s CAP is more market-oriented.

Under the new CAP, farmers still receive direct income payments to maintain income stability, but the link to production has been severed. In addition, farmers have to respect environmental, food safety, phytosanitary and animal welfare standards.

For the EU’s new member states, in Central and Eastern Europe, direct payments to farmers are being phased in gradually.

France is – and always has been – the largest recipient of CAP funds (20% of the total in 2006), with Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK all also receiving significant amounts (two-thirds of the total between these five countries). Although getting smaller absolute amounts, Greece and Ireland receive the largest per capita payments.

France is the biggest agricultural producer, accounting for some 18% of EU farm output.

France receives around €11 billion each year from the EU in agricultural support, but very little of it actually goes to those who do the farming.

With over 500,000 recipients of EU farming subsidies in France, over 80% of the funds actually goes to large industrial food processing businesses and charitable organisations. The largest recipient is the chicken production conglomerate Doux, who received a whopping €62.8 million in aid between October 2007 and October 2008. In the year 2008 the group had a turnover of nearly €2 billion.

The average annual subsidy per farm is about 12,200 euros (£10,374). About 80% of farm aid goes to about a quarter of EU farmers – those with the largest holdings. Major beneficiaries include rich landowners such as the British royal family and European aristocrats with big inherited estates.

The CAP does not cover commercial forestry.

The Commission proposed to cap at 300,000 euros the total subsidy a large farm could receive – but that appears unlikely to get into the final deal.

Across the whole EU, it is the bigger farmers who are the greatest beneficiaries, with 20% of farmers estimated to receive 74% of funding.

The idea was to combat large payments going to aristocratic landowners and wealthy agri-businesses, but it ran up against powerful lobby groups.

To day the CAP costs each EU citizen around 30 euro cents a day. CAP expenditure actually makes up less than 1% of all public expenditure in all the EU’s member countries. In addition to the direct cost, it is estimated that European consumers pay approximately €50 bn more in higher food costs.

Over 77% of the EU’s territory is classified as rural (47% is farm land and 30% forest) and is home to around half its population (farming communities and other residents). Europe has 12 million farmers and an average farm size of about 15 hectares (by way of comparison, the US has 2 million farmers and an average farm size of 180 hectares). The eastward enlargement increased the EU’s agricultural land by 40% and added seven million farmers to the existing six million.

Agriculture is a sector which is supported almost exclusively at European level, unlike most other sectors, which are governed by national policies.

Supporting farmers’ incomes ensures that food continues to be produced throughout the EU and pays for the provision of public benefits which have no market value: environmental protection, animal welfare, safe, high-quality food, etc.

The EU already funds numerous programmes that can be channeled towards these goals. For example, between 2007 and 2013, over €50bn is available for R&D projects, over €3bn for competitiveness and innovation and nearly €7bn for lifelong learning. This is all in addition to €277bn worth of regional funding for the same period through the Structural Funds.

As climate change makes itself ever more felt, the cost of sustainable farming can only continue to rise.

The EU budget is in turn mainly financed out of its ‘own resources’: customs duties, levies, VAT and resources based on member countries’ gross national income (GNI). The CAP represents over 40% of EU budget expenditure and is the most expensive of EU policies.

Regional aid – known as “cohesion” funds – is the next biggest item in the EU budget, getting 47bn euros.

The CAP budget for Rural Development (which seeks to safeguard the vitality of the countryside) 2014-20 for all 28 member countries will total €95 billion (at current prices).

The last reform was implemented in 1994

Today, the Budget amounts to €150bn (£117bn), which is paid for by the 28 members of the EU, and is also used to pay administration costs incurred by Brussels, such as salaries.

Farm subsidies are expected to account for around 38pc of the EU budget between 2014 and 2020, or around €363bn of the €960bn total.

A total of €8.7bn was spent last year in administration costs alone, although the European Commission highlights in its Myths and Facts FAQ, that this amounts to less than 6pc of the total budget.

However, the CAP continues to face a number of challenges, particularly in addressing biodiversity decline, water pollution, soil degradation, accelerating climate change and the steady growth in demand for food, fuel and energy.

Here are the Challenges:

  • How to make the Single Payment Scheme more effective, efficient and simple by continuing the move to full decoupling..
  • How to adapt market support instruments originally designed for six, to a larger system of twenty-seven states in a more globalised world.
  • How to master challenges in areas such as climate change, biodiversity and water management and adapt to new risks and opportunities.

The questions are:

  • Why do we need a European Common Agricultural Policy?
  • What are society’s objectives for agriculture in all its diversity?
  • Why should we reform the CAP and how can we make it meet society’s expectations?
  • What tools do we need for tomorrow’s CAP?

The answers are:

The European Union needs a common EU policy to ensure a level playing field within the EU, guaranteeing fair competition conditions. To maintain diversified farming systems across Europe.

  • To insure that no GMOs or pesticides are used. To ensure EU agriculture respect the environment. Give greater importance to non-market items, such as environment, quality and health standards, sustainability.

•  To Respond to the effects of climate change. To Protect the environment and biodiversity, conserve the countryside, sustain the rural economy and preserve/create rural jobs, mitigate climate change. To decrease its impact on global warming and maintain biodiversity, water resources etc.

•  To take into account the various higher expectations from consumers, for example with regard to the origin of foodstuffs, guarantees of quality etc.

•  To Strengthen the competitiveness of European agriculture. To Transform market intervention into a modern risk- and crisis-management tool. To Recognize that the market cannot (or will not) pay for the provision of public goods and benefits. This is where public action has to offset market failure.

•  To Ensure better coordination with other EU policies applying to rural areas.To Bear in mind that the correct payment to farmers for the delivery of public goods and services will be a key element in a reformed CAP. To Rethink the structure of the two support pillars and clarify the relationship between them; make adequate resources available for successful rural development. To Create fair competition conditions between domestic and imported products.

  • To Provide employment in rural areas. To Implement a fairer CAP – fairer to small farmers, to less-favoured regions, to new member states.
  • To Avoid damaging the economies or food production capacities of developing countries; help in the fight against world hunger.
  •  To giving more importance to innovation and dissemination of research.
  •  To link agricultural production, and farmers’ compensation, more closely to the delivery of public goods such as environmental services.
    • To Introduce transparency along the food chain, with a greater say for producers.

Industrial agriculture should have little place in the CAP, its support being more appropriately directed to more deserving recipients.

Serious questions are being raised about the reasons for the current levels of spending, the efficiency and the extent to which it provides genuine EU added-value. In recent years, farms’ energy bills have increased by 223% and the price of fertilisers by 163%. Agricultural prices have increased by 50% on average.

It must take a strategic approach to CAP reform. Go for total, not partial, solutions taking account of CAP challenges on the one hand and the interplay between the CAP and other internal and external EU policies on the other hand.

Can any of this be done?

The EU has no shortage of crises on its borders and beyond.

It is hard to see that EU will succeed in galvanizing European governments into a more coherent policy. EU states will certainly not be willing to increase the overall size of the budget, it is clear that it will have to dedicate a much smaller share of the budget to the CAP. The budget cannot keep increasing in the midst of an economic crisis.

Keeping EU farm spending level until 2020 is impossible and there are suggesting that EU funding for issues such as research and development provide better EU added-value.

Believe it or not, the thing that could change farming isn’t the climate or a new piece of equipment. A microbe in the soil could be the key to helping farmers grow more crops.

Only 5.4% of EU’s population works on farms, and the farming sector is responsible for 1.6% of the GDP of the EU (2005). The number of European farmers is decreasing every year by 2%. Additionally, most Europeans live in cities, towns, and suburbs, not rural areas. However, their opponents argue that the subsidies are crucial to preserve the rural environment, and that some EU member states would have aided their farmers, anyway.

When many people saw the first stunning photos of the fragile Blue Marbel of Earth from space, it changed their outlook of humanity. It was a singular moment in time when people around the world were watching and looking toward the future.

When it comes to people like all of us the EU has a long way to go before we all see a common future.

There is no security on this earth: there is only opportunity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just building a clean tech innovation economy is not enough.

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Politics., Sustaniability, The Future

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A society that holds out for the younger generation prospects that are worse than those held out to their parents and grandparents is a society that has ceased to progress and begun to regress—one that has lost any claim to historical legitimacy even if it is technologically advanced.

The common experience for millions of young people is permanent economic insecurity.

Youth unemployment in the European Union stands at more than 23 percent, while in Spain it is 56.1 percent and in Greece 62.9 percent. There are 26 million young people in the “developed world” who are classified as not in employment, education or training (NEETS). Poverty and homelessness have become mass phenomena.

While the world may not be one big village in terms of lifestyle, it shares an image of “the good life” that’s proffered in movies, TV, and the Internet. That’s what teenagers in Afghanistan have in common with teenagers in England; they’ve been fed the same image of success in the global community and they know it’s inaccessible. They are angry and, ultimately, their anger has the same target — multinational corporations (and the governments that support them).

The political implications of these social transformations are far-reaching – ISIS.

Capitalism as we know it today—is an amoral culture of short-term self-interest, profit maximization, emphasis on shareholder value, isolationist thinking, and profligate disregard of long-term consequences—is an unsustainable system. Only today five of the biggest banks are fined Billions for fixing the Foreign Exchange Market.

Capitalism must change itself, from the inside. This kind of change will require a radically new leadership ethic, one driven by a new set of motivations and a broader understanding of wealth.

With global population rapidly marching toward 11 billion and with it the demand for food, health services, energy and security, we need to reexamine the models that have gotten us to this point.

There are far better men than I to undertake this reexamination.

The word “capitalism” was coined by the socialists and has historically described a system of state-granted privilege and plutocracy.“

Free market capitalism may be viewed as a system in which individuals make voluntary arrangements involving the exchange of capital.

Free market” implies voluntary arrangements, whereas “capitalism” has become (rightly so)  known as a system in which business and coercive state forces collude to serve whatever arbitrary interests may be lobbied for by the businesses or championed for reasons of power by the politicians.

If it’s a free market, it’s not capitalism. And if it’s capitalism, it’s not a free market.

So why bother trying to apologize for “capitalism” when “free markets” are what you (and I) really wish to obtain?  That is, if you really do believe in “free markets”, then you should probably distance yourself from the word “capitalism”.

The modern world is ruled by multinational corporations and governed by a capitalistic ideology that believes:

Corporations are a special breed of people, motivated solely by self-interest.

Corporations seek: to maximize return on capital by leveraging productivity and paying the least possible amount for taxes and labor. Corporate executives pledge allegiance to their directors and shareholders. The dominant corporate perspective is short-term, the current financial quarter, and the dominant corporate ethic is greed, doing whatever it takes to maximize profit.

Capitalist society is guided by the play of the market mechanism.

There is no better evidence of this than- The “recovery” of 2009-10 ensured that “too big to fail” institutions would survive and the rich would continue to be rich. Meanwhile millions of good jobs were either eliminated or replaced by low-wage jobs with poor or no benefits.

We’re living in the age of corporate dinosaurs that take the path of least resistance to profit; they’ve swallowed up their competitors and created monopolies, which have produced humongous bureaucracies.

There achievements are far to numerous to list here, but here are a few in no particular order.

Climate Change. Inequality of Opportunity, Stock Exchanges, Poverty, Wars, Lack of Fresh Water, Sovereignty Wealth Funds plundering the finite Natural Resources for short-term profit, Corruption, Privatization, People Trafficking, Drugs, ect  You could say without fear of contradiction that conditions are far worse today than at any time since the 1930s.

The nearly universal opinion expressed these days is that the economic crisis of recent years marks the end of capitalism. Capitalism allegedly has failed, has proven itself incapable of solving economic problems, and so mankind has no alternative, if it is to survive, then to make the transition to a planned economy, to socialism.

Corporate executives don’t care about the success or failure of any particular country, only the growth and profitability of their global corporation.

Global corporations are ruining our natural capital.  Four of the top 10 multinational corporations are energy companies, with Exxon Mobil leading the list. Global corporations have ravished the world and citizens of every nation live with the consequences: dirty air, foul water, and pollution of every sort. The world GDP is $63 Trillion but multinational corporations garner a disproportionate share — with banks accounting for an estimated $4 trillion (bank assets are $100 trillion). Global black markets make $2 trillion — illegal drugs account for at least $300 billion.

The past five years have demonstrated the impossibility of changing anything within the existing political system. Inequality has grown enormously. The stock market is booming, the Forbes 400 are richer than ever, yet the conditions for youth and workers are disastrous. War continues without end.

However the historical bankruptcy of capitalism does not bring about its automatic collapse as it will if not already doing so turn Climate Change into profits.

 It is from the market that the capitalist economy receives its sense.

So what if anything is to be done.

At the start of this post I said that Capitalism must change itself, from the inside.

Is this possible. Yes but only by making it pay for our values. By putting humanity back into human.

We needed to make the private enterprise economy work better in a redistribution of wealth and income toward greater equality.

This can only be done by placing:

A World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Transactions, on all Foreign Exchange transactions (over$20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. 

A capitalist economy is inherently unstable” It is one thing to recognize the instability of capitalism, but another to show that an alternative to it is possible.

Clearly no one has got a clue” about what might replace it.

What ever it is we can not going on tolerating a world … in which the needs of the many come before the greed of the few. It is time to recognize that “ Like what, exactly?” is an honest and profound question that demands straight and worked-out answers. And it is time to start working out those answers. I am not advocating abstract revolutionism here.

When questions about the future are bound up so intimately with day-to-day struggles, a new human society surely cannot emerge through spontaneous action alone. To transcend this impasse, people need to know not just what to be against, but what to be for, not just “ what is to be done,” but what is to be undone— what is it exactly that must be changed in order to have a viable and emancipatory socialism?

Unfortunately, this issue received almost no attention throughout most of the last century.

So it is only in recent years that any significant attention has been paid to whether another world is possible. But now, when the future of capitalism is a live issue, it seems to me that this issue needs to be understood as the central problem of revolutionary thought today.

The younger generation is “lost” not just in the sense that it has no future under capitalism, but also in the sense that it is increasingly “lost” to the ruling class and its political establishment. The forms through which the bourgeoisie seeks to maintain political control are losing their hold. Their conscious political experience has been dominated by unending economic crisis, war, the dismantling of democratic rights, political gangsterism and corruption.

And if that not bad enough The global economy is splintering with new and devastating trade agreements like the TTP.

If the function of the market as regulator of production is always thwarted by economic policies in so far as the latter try to determine prices, wages, and interest rates instead of letting the market determine them, then a crisis will surely develop.

It would be disastrous merely to call for socialism while ignoring the problems of mass unemployment. This brings me to the notion of developing socialism within capitalism, enlarging the space of the commons or whatever. Unfortunately, it cannot be done. It has been tried (for instance, in the Israeli kibbutzim ) and it does not succeed. The economic laws of the larger system will not allow it. If you buy from the capitalist world “ outside,” you also have to sell to it in order to get the money you need to buy from it, and you will not sell anything if your prices are high because your costs of production are high. And if you have debts, you have to repay them.

So it appears there is only the one option as I suggest : Make Global Capitalism contribute by a World Aid Commission.

We live in interesting times. The stakes are high. The time has come to face the future with sober senses. The good news is we’re witnessing the failure of global corporate capitalism. The bad news is we don’t know what will replace it.

Financial inequality in the 21st century is on the rise, and accelerating at a very dangerous pace turning into a conflict between billionaires.

Complete change will not happen overnight. It will not be built on the back of one investor or one innovative entrepreneur. It will be something that business owners, investors, political leaders, consumers and entrepreneurs must all work together toward.

Neither of these categories (Investor-Innovator) makes or produces anything but their wealth, which is really a super-wealth that has broken away from the everyday reality of the market, which determines how most ordinary people live.

Worse still, they are competing with each other to increase their wealth, and the worst of all case scenarios is how super-managers, whose income is based effectively on greed, keep driving up their salaries regardless of the reality of the market. This is what happened to the banks in 2008, for example.

So when you look at Climate change what you see is that it is true that it will take time to roll out the infrastructure and technologies to get off fossil fuels, and we will burn a lot of fossil fuel in the process.

What explains our collective failure on climate change? Why is it that instead of dealing with the problem, all we seem to do is make it worse?

Here’s is the inconvenient truth: when you tell people what it would actually take to radically reduce carbon emissions, they turn away.

What would it take to radically reduce global carbon emissions and to do so in a way that would alleviate inequality and poverty? The World Aid Commission.

Just building a clean tech innovation economy is not enough. We have to reinvent our economy from the ground up if we are to successfully address these challenges.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS GOING TO CHALLENGE EVERYTHING THAT CAPITALISM OR ANY SOCIAL SYSTEM STAND FOR.

What we need is “ethical capitalism,” Business leaders must become servant leaders, leaders who serve not just themselves and share holders, but leaders who serve employees, customers, the community, the planet, humanity, future generations, and life itself.

Science has made huge steps, society has not.

The sooner we fix Capitalism the sooner we move to the future we imagine.

If anyone has a better idea, I would be all ears. 

 

Britain is soon to face an invidious choice: In or Out of the EU.

19 Tuesday May 2015

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The Conservative party has promised a referendum in 2017 on the UK’s membership of the EU.

A newly-released poll shows over four in ten British voters are in favor of their country leaving the European Union (EU), amid growing eurosceptic sentiments across the UK.

Between now and then there will be a lot of disinformation.

Here is the invidious choice:

Access to the single market, but less influence on the rules that govern it;

or

Freedom from the rules, but loss of access to the single market.

So here are some undeniable facts apart from the obvious – like Britain is an Small Island not an Empire. 

If it leaves the EU, the UK will have to negotiate terms.

It  is true that if the UK left it would be free to negotiate trade agreements with countries outside the EU.  But it would not inherit the EU’s existing bilateral trade agreements that are already in existence:  It would have to negotiate new ones.

So, upon exit, it would have less access to markets outside the EU, not more. And it is hard to believe that Britain would find it easy to forge new deals.

More than 4,000 UK institutions received EU funding last year, including engineering powerhouse Rolls-Royce, which received a number of grants. This included a €2.5m payment for research related to cleaner and quieter aviation technology. The Confederation of British Industry, a business lobby group, received €184,000 in EU funding last year.

The Confederation of British Industry, a business lobby group, received €184,000 in EU funding last year.

UK infrastructure projects have also benefited from EU funding, including the West Coast mainline.

At €29bn, Germany, the Europe’s largest and most powerful economy, put the most money into the EU pot last year. Poland was the biggest recipient. It received €16.2bn in EU funds in 2013.

Overall, Britain’s contribution to the EU pot amounted to €17bn in 2013, behind Germany, France, and Italy. However, on a net basis, Britain was the second largest contributor to the EU budget last year.

It put €10.8bn more into the EU pot last year than it took out. Only Germany paid more on a net basis.

Is Britain the only EU country that enjoys a rebate? No. Due to corrections and “rebates on the rebate” enjoyed by Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden, these countries pay less than their normal share. Denmark recently joined this club, and will receive a rebate of around €130m from next year.

The rebate is now equivalent to 66pc of the UK’s net contribution in the previous year. Such rebates are paid for by the other 27 EU members. The rebate for 2013 was €4.3bn.

This means France and Italy have been left to pick up the biggest share of the tab.

Last year, France contributed €1.2bn to Britain’s rebate, while Italy contributed €900m.

Most of the money Britain receives from the EU is used to subsidise farming (€3.1bn)

Here is another option.

Stay in the EU and abolish or put the Monarchy on a self financing tourist heritage standing.

At the moment you as a Taxpayers pay 56p each for upkeep of monarchy.

This is six per cent rise on last year – more than double the rate of inflation.

The Queen’s official expenditure from the Sovereign Grant, the amount released from the public purse each year to finance the monarch, increased to £35.7m – a rise of £1.9m on the previous year.

There was a 45 per cent increase in the amount spent on the upkeep of royal residences, including Buckingham Palace and the Kensington Palace apartments of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Public spending on refurbishing the 20-room central London living quarters of Prince George of Cambridge (George Alexander Louis; born 22 July 2013) is the oldest child and only son of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. He is third in line to succeed his great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth 11, after his paternal grandfather and father.

The couple and Prince George has totalled £4.5m over the last two years. It is estimated that the total bill to secure the buildings stands at £50m. Last year, spending on property maintenance rose by £4.2m to £13.3m, including 133 projects costing £3,500 or more.

This is all at a time when Government departments were slashing budgets by up to a third, and millions of Britons have yet to feel the benefits of any economic recovery.

The Queen, personal wealth is estimated at £330m,

The Prince of Wales from the Duchy of Cornwall, which in 2012-13 stood at £19.1m. The Duchy, a sprawling collection of property, farmland and investments sectioned off to finance the heir to the throne 700 years ago, is classified as privately owned but campaigners have long argued its serves a public purpose by sustaining the monarchy.

Travel costs incurred by the Prince of Wales,included a £434,000 visit to India with the Duchess of Cornwall, and a charter flight to attend the funeral of Nelson Mandela which cost £246,160.

Other maintenance costs met from the Sovereign Grant included £800,000 to remove asbestos in the basement of Buckingham Palace and £900,000 to renew lead roofing the Royal Library at Windsor Castle,

There is no doubt that the time for Britain to unshackle its self from a hereditary Monarchy that is costing a fortune is not far off.

While membership of the EU is as much about broader, political questions as economics, the economic case for staying in the Union is strong. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“The Beady-Eye” : Francois Hollande

16 Saturday May 2015

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This is the first post under the heading  ” THE BEADY- EYE”

The Beady eye will take a look over the course of the year at the track record in presa form of the Worlds most Powerful. ( People/ Corporations/ Organisations.)

Where best to start than France where I reside.

So Let’s turn the Beady Eye on President François Hollande who celebrated on May 6 the third anniversary of his election to the highest office in France. He was the first candidate in 31 years to unseat an incumbent president after a single term.

This invites us to look at the record of the man and his policies.

In May 2012, François Holland became the seventh president of the Fifth Republic. Born August 12, 1954 in Rouen. François Hollande received a Catholic religious education which he considers “a good experience” but defines itself as “non-believer” with “no religious practice” and having his “own philosophy of life”

He was discharged from military service because of his myopia.

As President he is;

  • Grand Master  of the National Order of the Legion of Honour.
  • Grand Master of the Order of Merit.
  • Canon of honor of the Basilica of St John Lateran, the Cathedral Saint-Jean-de Maurinne, St Julian of Le Mans,and Saint-Etienne Chalons, churches of ST. Hilary of Poitiers, of Saint-Martin Tours and Saint-Martin d’Angers.
  • Proto canon of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Embrun and Our Lady of Clery .

and Official decorations.

Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit of law as grand master of the Order (15 May 2012).

Knight of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland) on 16 November 2012.

Knight Grand Cross with Grand Cordon of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic on 21 November 2012 .

Order of Wissam Mohammad El, exceptional class ( Morocco) on 3 April 2013 .

Grand Cross of the National Order of Mali (15 July 2013) .

Order of the White Double Cross, First Class (Slovakia) on 29 October 2013 .

Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Charles (Monaco ) on  14 November 2013 .

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion ( 20 January 2014).

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Bath (UK) 0n the (5 June 2014.

Mr Hollande UNICEF’s Felix Houphouet-Boigny Prize for his contribution to peace and stability in Mali.

François Hollande, was elected in 2012 to bring an end to austerity and to tax the rich, has turned into a liberal. Or at least a social-liberal.

The image of the President three years provided a much darker than the picture the candidate wanted to sell back in 2012. “Mister Little Jokes” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17675980, he seems to have strayed into the dark side of farce.

At the age of 59 years in true French style he was engulfed in a sex scandal just like the kind of private-public muddle that had damaged the early months of Nicolas Sarkozy’s term of office. He left his common law politician wife, Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children. Royal had political aspirations of her own and, in 2007, ran for the presidency against Hollande’s wishes.

For six years he lived with his girlfriend Valérie Trierweiler.

Valérie Trierweiler, had enjoyed the high-life luxuries of a presidential wife – costing taxpayers a fortune. The perks of her life as first lady include five staff, multiple homes across France, a stunning wardrobe, private jets and cars.

In Trierweiler’s former life, she was also a mistress to the president.

He progressed to another affair with a sex kitten actress Julie Gayet, 41 divorced with two children. The apartment where Hollande and Gayet had met was said to have connections to the Corsican mafia.French President Francois Hollande (L) s

He went from the President of Kisses’ to ‘President of Hisses.’

Politically Mr Hollande claimed that unemployment would drop by the end of 2013. When this looked absurdly unrealistic, he vowed instead to “invert the trend”, a semantic contortion by which he meant stopping the total rising, something that has yet to happen either.

A little less denial and a healthy dose of realism may thus be welcome.

At over 45% of GDP, France’s tax take stands with Belgium’s as the highest in the euro zone. Fewer than 20% of voters believe in his ability to turn the economy around. Frances largest export is Capital.

Mr Hollande famously promised during his election campaign to slap a 75% top income-tax rate on the rich—yet his government vowed that nine out of ten households would not be touched by tax increases. The 75% tax was thrown out by the Constitutional Council.  Not before the French actor Gerard Deparieu did a runner and is granted Russian citizenship by President Valdimir Putin. However most ordinary people have seen their tax bills rise.

The December Euro Plus Monitor from the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think-tank, notes that France is the only big European economy beset by serious problems not to have taken bold steps towards reform.

Beneath his bon homme exterior, he displays few declared convictions, always ready to compromise, Francois Hollande is now ideologue.

While French industry is waning, both by lack of demand, lack of competitiveness, and lack of funding.

He is imposing on France unending budgetary rigor, growing unemployment, rolling back the French political and social model, and introducing rules that deprive citizens of their sovereignty and freedom, and he does it all without qualms.

Even though France recently showed a 0.06% rise in it economy it is collapsing under the blows of foreign competition and non-economic pressures.

If he is serious about lowering charges on business, he also needs to make serious spending cuts. These are always harder than tax rises.

Therefore the inexorable rise in unemployment should come as no surprise.

Add to that an unthinking and largely unfair tax policies, and we can understand why demand is stagnating, but also the wrath of the middle and working classes, resulting in truly disastrous poll ratings for François Hollande.

Hollande has refused to acknowledge the structural dimension of unemployment in France, which he says is largely due to membership of the euro zone. It is the fact that today there are about 600 000 people suffering burnout while at the same time we have almost 4 million unemployed people without counting the severely underemployed.

He has buried his promise of tax reform. What’s more, Piketty said last year, the degree of improvisation in Hollande’s fiscal and economic policy “is actually quite appalling.” He is edging away from traditional Socialist policies and is chipping away at the generosity of the welfare state.

To employ anyone in France remains a nightmare to this very day.

Hollande is President, but of which country?

On January 8, 2015, he decreed a day of national mourning following the attack against Charlie Hebdo. In the wake of Charlie Hebdo attack the French government has approved new Surveillance laws giving massive and limitless surveillance of the population.

Francois Hollande likes to don the clothes of the defender of freedom and human rights, but one is forced to question his position in light of the new Surveillance laws recently passed.

Hollande’s campaign promises, to legalize same-sex marriage and adoption for same -sex couples it is now a matter of freedom of conscience for mayors of each city/town/village.

Over the last five years Islamic State is thought to have earned £75million ransoming more than 50 captives. Four French and three Spanish hostages have been released this year after money was delivered through an intermediary.

There is growing international anger that France is funding IS jihadists by paying ransoms to free hostages.

In the mean time he is selling arms.

Francois Hollande was the first foreign head of state to attend a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Here he signed a contract under which Qatar has agreed to buy 24 Dassault Aviation-built Rafale fighter jets in a deal worth $7 billion. The deal comes as most of the Gulf states look to boost their firepower amid regional instability.

The case of the two Mistral helicopter carriers is another prime example.

As a result of the Ukrainian crisis, Hollande took the decision to suspend delivery to Russia. But he travels in person for the signature of “Rafale” combat aircraft contracts with Qatar and probably with the United Arab Emirates.

It looks like that China will purchase two amphibious assault ships that were originally intended for Russia.

So where is the red line? Certainly not on the issue of democracy.

The attitude of Francois Hollande, and more precisely its different attitudes with respect to Russia and these countries could therefore translate well latent Eurocentrism, at best, and at worst a form of racism, hidden under the mask of condescending smile.

The question of the presence, or absence, of Francois Hollande at the May 9 victory day parade in Moscow, something that has nothing to do with disagreements he may have with Putin, but which is rich in the symbolism of these same principles, may confirm this.

Unless this cynicism hides something much more serious.

Last week Cuba unveiled new data it said confirmed there were billions of barrels of oil beneath its Gulf of Mexico waters.

On Monday Hollande said France “will be a faithful ally” to Cuba as the country reforms it’s centrally planned economy and tries to re-enter the global economic system. La visite de François Hollande à Fidel Castro, le 11 mai, à Cuba, est la première d'un chef d'État français au leader politique cubain.

Speaking at the University of Havana, Hollande said: “France will do everything it can to aid the process of opening Cuba and help get rid of measures that have so seriously damaged Cuba’s development.”

Hollande also met with Cardinal Jaime Ortega to award him the Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor, and inaugurate a new building for the Alliance Française cultural center.

In Cuba he was accompanied by five of his ministers and nearly two dozen French executives, including representatives of Pernod Ricard beverages, hotel company Accor, Air France, supermarket Carrefour and the telecommunications company Orange.

Cuba announced an oil exploration deal with France in the Gulf of Mexico.

French oil major Total signed an agreement on Monday to explore for offshore oil with Cuban state oil monopoly Cuba Petroleo (Cupet). Cuban state-run television reported the exploration agreement without giving further details.

France s bow to the dictator for oil.

This man ‘who made ​​history’ – as says François Hollande – seized power in 1959, shot, trapped, turned his tropical gulag island, hunted homosexuals and, in fifty-six, found neither the time nor the inclination to hold free elections. ”

( Picasso painting has sold a little over $ 142 million on Monday night in New York ” This sale reflects the fact that some in this world, do not know what to do with their money, preferring to inflate the bubble of the art market rather than invest in creative activities of wealth and employment. In this sense, the fate of the Women of Algiers demonstrates the disturbances of the world today. Fortunately, this has not much to do with art itself. There will always be men and women to take a sheet of paper and a pencil.)

To be fair top diplomats from Japan, the European Union, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia have visited the island in recent months in bids to stake out or maintain ties with an island that suddenly looks like a brighter economic prospect amid warming US-Cuba relations.

Other examples of Mr Hollands hyperventilation hand shakes.

France – an ally of the Rwandan government that ruled before the genocide – stayed away from last year’s 20-year commemoration after rebel-turned-President Paul Kagame renewed accusations of a direct French role in the killings.

To his credit Hollande seems to have taken on the role of regional gendarme in the enormous Sahel region.

The EU has no shortage of crises on its borders and beyond, it is hard to see that she will succeed in galvanizing European governments into a more coherent foreign policy.

During his tenure as President of the French Republic François Hollande is ex officio one of the two Heads of State of the Principality of Andorra , neighboring independent micro-state of France.

His recent reception in Haiti leaves a lot to desire.

http://www.ultimedia.com/deliver/generic/iframe/mdtk/01688638/src/smklkq/zone/4/showtitle/1

On Thursday he said he would not seek a second mandate if he fails to deliver on his pledges to expand national wealth and lower a long-running rise in joblessness.

“We have to go further with reforms concerning youth employment, integration of long-term unemployed people, improve the performance of our businesses, facilitate the financing of our economy,” he added.

What are his prospects for success in 2017? Zero.

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership.

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Privatization, Sustaniability, WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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A new word in the English language has recently been coined: investor-state.

The term refers to corporations who have the power to sue nations before a jurisdictional tribunal for infringements on their commercial interest.

Phillip Morris, for example, has sued Australia over that country’s rules requiring hazardous warning labels on cigarette packaging.

Now they say that there is nothing so useful to man in general, nor so beneficial to particular societies and individuals, as trade.

This however is a step to far by Capitalism. The notion that an agreement is clothed with a public interest and has been devoted to the public use is little than fiction intended to beautify what is disagreeable to the sufferers. US

The TPP is a far-reaching proposed multinational agreement among a dozen Pacific Rim countries (but not including China) designed to lower or eliminate tariff and trade barriers among the subscribing nations.

The pact deals with monetary tariffs, intellectual property rights, trade regulations and quotas imposed by the signatory nations with a goal of reducing those to a minimum to allow trade to flow freely among countries.

The countries involved include Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, the U.S., Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, Canada and Japan.

Advocates note that domestic markets alone aren’t sufficient to create the sales, the return on investment and the innovation needed to advance the production of goods and services efficiently among Pacific Rim nations.

The trade agreement has been characterized as “NAFTA on steroids,”

A deal that will easily allow foreign competitors in low-wage nations or multinational companies with overseas operations to pay extremely low wages to workers and to ignore pollution and worker and consumer safety rules that prevail in the more developed countries when producing goods in less-regulated environments.

What particularly alarms ( in the USA)  is that TPP critics on both sides of the political aisle is that the  TTP partnership’s advocates are pushing for Congress to give the president fast-track authority to finish negotiating the deal, to limit debate on the pact’s provisions and prohibit Congress from amending the deal, giving elected representatives the power only to reject or approve the deal as a package.

The TPP is a back-room secret trade deal that will have a huge negative impact on FOOD SAFETY, internet freedom, environmental protection, national sovereignty, intellectual property and more. It is basically a permanent power grab by corporations and financial companies that will make it impossible for the citizens of countries joining the TPP to choose what laws and rules they want to live under.

The TPP is a massive giveaway to multi-national corporations like Chevron and Monsanto and Phillip Morris.

If TPP is signed it’s here forever.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/02/22/3648823_the-trans-pacific-partnership.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

So who are these investor-states?

Well, besides , Monsanto, the Bank of America, Chevron and Exxon Mobil are among them and they’ve been granted their power though a negotiated agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Ironically, only 5 of the 29 measures in this agreement speak directly to trade issues. The other 24 reach into areas previously unthinkable.

It restricts, for example, a sovereign nation’s ability to support local produce within its borders and proposes sweeping changes with regard to the internet. The United States government rejected SOPA, the bill that would have instituted rigid copyright laws on intellectual property, but those same rules are proposed under TPP.

To say that the negotiations underway lack transparency is an understatement. So far, the measures have been kept under lock and key. Even members of Congress are beginning to complain about the lack of information.

All signatory countries will be required to conform their domestic laws and policies to the provisions of the Agreement.

Why should you be concerned?

Because the,

TPP raises significant concerns about citizens’ freedom of expression, due process, innovation, the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities.

Because the,

TPP will affect countries beyond the 11 that are currently involved in negotiations. Like ACTA, the TPP Agreement is a plurilateral agreement that will be used to create new heightened global IP enforcement norms. Countries that are not parties to the negotiation will likely be asked to accede to the TPP as a condition of bilateral trade agreements with the US and other TPP members.

Because we must,

truly address the secrecy or the private-industry-dominated process.

In sum, the TPP puts at risk some of the most fundamental rights that enable access to knowledge for the world’s citizens.

Below is a 10 minute clip from Democracy Now which speaks to the issue:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/4/a_corporate_trojan_horse_obama_pushes

In the World we have seen the consequences of giving corporations the same right to free speech as individuals.

Giving them nation status is an idea that should keep everyone awake at night.

Don’t just read this. Wake up and do something, even a comment might help or pass it on.

Congratulations to The Conservatives A fair Won Election.

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Politics.

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The United Kingdom is just shy of a population of 64 million 2015.

65.8%  Voted in England
65.7% Voted in Wales
71.1% Voted in Scotland
58.1% Voted in N. Ireland

66.1% UK of the population Voted.  Leaving 42.3% that did not vote either because they were to young or not registered to vote or could not be bothered. 

The election in 2015 had an 86% probability of producing the least proportional outcome in more than 70 years.

This is what happened: With First Past the Post AND what should have happened under Proportional Representation (PR)

UK vote share after 650 of 650 seats

Party SEATS     %                                    SEATS    Difference
CON 325        36.9                    CON           240           -90  
LAB 232        30.4                    LAB            213           -19
UKIP 1            12.6                    UKIP            83           +82 
LD 12          7.9                       LD              53            +41
SNP 56          4.7                      SNP            37             – 19 
GRN 1           3.8                       GRN            24.             +23

– there would be 27 seats between Labour and the Tories, not 83

– Ukip would have 83 MPs not 1

– the Greens would have 24 MPs, not 1

Voting under proportional representation WOULD take the Tories out of control, but they would still be the biggest party.

There is a huge discrepancy between the SNP’s 56 seats and Ukip’s 1 seat.

Yet Ukip have received 3.7 million votes, and the SNP 1.4 million.

First-past-the-post means you can get a lot of MPs with not much of a share of the vote.So England currently has an electoral system that can’t even allocate the MPs in the same order as the popular vote, let alone in proportion…
The difference is even starker when you look at the DUP. They have recorded less than 200,000 votes, but have 8 seats.
The Tory government would NOT have got a majority under proportional representation.

First-past-the-post is and should be groaning and swaying under the strain for change.

The present voting system is designed for two blocs: a government and an opposition.

You can see it in the layout of the Commons chamber.

But over the past five years England has moved from a two-and-a-quarter party system to a five or six party system. The old argument for first-past-the-post – that it boosts the larger party and so provides stable government – no longer applies.

There are further peculiarities with the English voting system.

There are six types of elections in the United Kingdom: United Kingdom general elections, elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, elections to the European Parliament, local elections, mayoral elections and Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

First-past-the-post is used to elect MPs to the House of Commons and for local elections in England and Wales.

The Queen's Christmas Broadcast 2014

The Alternative Vote is used to elect the majority of chairs of select committees in the House of Commons. The AV is also used for the election of the Lord Speaker and by-elections for hereditary peers.

The Supplementary Vote system is used to elect the Mayor of London and other elected mayors in England and Wales.

The SV system is very similar to the AV system.

Under SV, voters are limited to a first and second preference choice. A voter marks a cross in one column for their first preference candidate and another cross in a second column for their second preference (if they wish to do so).

The Single Transferable Vote system is used to elect the Deputy Speakers in the House of Commons. STV is also used for electing the Northern Ireland Assembly, local elections in Scotland and Northern Ireland and European Parliament elections in Northern Ireland.

The Additional Member System is used to elect the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the London Assembly.

The Closed Party List system is used to elect Members of the European Parliament, with the exception of Northern Ireland which uses Single Transferable Vote.

Furthermore.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 provides for general elections to be held on the first Thursday in May every five years.

Can I vote for a new Prime Minister?

No.

You can only vote to elect your local MP in a general election. The Prime Minister is appointed by the Queen, who is guided by constitutional conventions.

The Queen has a special relationship with the Prime Minister, the senior political figure in the British Government, regardless of their political party.
Although she is a constitutional monarch who remains politically neutral, The Queen retains the ability to give a regular audience to a Prime Minister during his or her term of office.

The Queen gives a weekly audience to the Prime Minister at which she has a right and a duty to express her views on Government matters. If either The Queen or the Prime Minister are not available to meet, then they will speak by telephone.

However, there are two provisions that trigger an election other than at five-year intervals:

A motion of no confidence is passed in Her Majesty’s Government by a simple majority and 14 days elapses without the House passing a confidence motion in any new Government formed.

A motion for a general election is agreed by two-thirds of the total number of seats in the Commons including vacant seats (currently 434 out of 650)
Previous to this Act, the Prime Minister could call a general election at any time within the five-year period and not all Parliaments lasted the full five years.

The Sovereign’s assent is required to all bills passed by Parliament in order for them to become law. Royal Assent (consenting to a measure becoming law) has not been refused since 1707.

Archbishops and bishops are appointed by The Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister, who considers the names selected by a Church Commission. They take an oath of allegiance to The Queen on appointment and may not resign without Royal authority.

The Queen is Sovereign is Head of the Armed Forces.

She is also the wife, mother and grandmother of individuals either having served, or are currently serving, in the Armed Forces. The Queen holds the position of Colonel-in-Chief of numerous regiments in the United Kingdom and throughout the Commonwealth.

There is only one occasion on which Parliament meets without a Royal summons, and that is when the Sovereign has died.

Civil and criminal proceedings cannot be taken against the Sovereign as a person under UK law.

There you have it.

I predicted in a previous post prior to the election that this election would be the last using First Past the Post and the result would see the end of the United Kingdom as it is known.

No system is perfect.

The disadvantage of PR is that it can produce very uncertain results as recently in Belgium, and the whole thing is stitched up behind closed doors without the public being involved.

There is no doubt that the opportunity for a new Youth Party is now presenting itself. Let’s hope there is some Britain with Talent to take up the mantel before 3000.

There are five years of turbulent political territory to negotiate in or out the the EU.

Politics is supposed to be for everyone so you might not have known that;

Concurrent with the general election is a poll to decide Britain’s national bird. Tens of thousands have voted in the online poll for their favorite from a list of 10, including the barn owl, blackbird, blue tit, hen harrier, kingfisher, mute swan, puffin, red kite, robin and wren.

The winner of the pecking order is expected to be named Friday, around the time results from the parliamentary election appear.

Pub Landlord Al Murray Says it all;