Trump’s Wall

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn New articlesLeave a comment

President Trump realises that his base do not follow logic, they follow their feelings of displacement. It is a world-class con to represent his values as anything but “elite”, his wall does not keep out criminals but it creates a barrier that makes him and other people who do not consider that it really does little to protect America or its neighbors.

Real protection comes from being smart and maintaining a strong relationship with your allies. Walls and barriers do not celebrate the American spirit of freedom.

Stupid People

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn New articlesLeave a comment

“Stupid People” muttered Jeremy Corbyn. The Stupid People in the ranks of the Conservative Government rounded on him claimed he muttered “Stupid woman” directed at the Prime Minister Theresa May. You can read his lips, he said “Stupid People”. Yet many very convinced Right Wing believers were adamant that he said something he did not apologise for, that he pointed out that he would also have objected to, he is not a misogynist, and he said “Stupid People”. It was a moment of political clarity.

And the media frenzy was about the question of what he said rather than why he said it. Shortly after this indicative event, Gatwick Airport was closed down due to the use of drones allegedly. How were these two events related?

This Tory Government has been so focused on their core policy of austerity, and implementing an invalid referendum to break the UK away from the EU. Their negotiations have been lamentably awful. The Prime Minister took charge of the negotiations and got a deal with the EU, but will not let Parliament vote on it because it will lose. Now she is using the threat of reaching no-deal and causing economic and political collapse as a lever to ensure her deal gets approved. Under the conditions of austerity, the UK has seen a terrible catastrophe when Grenfell Tower caught fire and due to ridiculous regulations the building was clad unsafely, and 72 people died. There were no sprinklers, there was one fire exit and the fire brigade could not control the blaze. Under conditions of austerity, the Crossrail project has gone ahead, the largest most significant project but it has overrun its completion date by a year and several billion pounds. Under austerity, local councils have been decimated and local services have suffered. Under the guidance of the Transport Minister, a smug and awful Chris Grayling, there has been chaos on the railways, including strikes and an timetable train that was not planned correctly, causing billions wasted in business. Under this Government, retail has gone to the wall. There is simply no actual intelligence in the Government’s planning. China, in the meantime, has a thriving economy, so it can be done.

Jeremy Corbyn was right, this Government is comprised of Stupid People. Worse than fiddling while Rome burns, this Government is plotting with PR to actually make conditions for its citizens worse and appeasing the ultra Right Wing who gathered terrible momentum, starting with the murder of MP Jo Cox.

And now Gatwick has been buzzed by drones, so this stupid government send in the Army! Over 4 days, they have demonstrated how a lack of Government planning and spending cripples them. They can not find the person controlling these drones! They can not even shoot them down.

150,000 citizens with a ruined holiday and countless business losses is the cost. This Government has wasted billions and cost the UK many thousands of lives by their negligence to pursue a policy to turn the UK into a subsidiary of Trump’s America with ultra low-taxes. All so the UK is not subject to tax haven regulations to be brought in by the EU just after the date that Britain is set to crash out of the EU.

Stupid People in Government. Stupid People who voted for them.

see also https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/20/national-emergency-brexit-vote-westminster?CMP=fb_gu&fbclid=IwAR1YlOmaflNZQRqc6RhAnf-7rJ-N2RXae-McziksnysZFrnRo7nDrQl311E

The Arms Trade

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn New articlesLeave a comment

The arms trade is responsible for the deaths of millions of people.  The world’s leading arms dealers are therefore responsible for the arming of those who have money to spend, authoritarian oil countries are there to be drained of cash.

War is a tragic error in values.  It used to be the armies that would draw up and one would be defeated and the victors return home or invade the other’s lands.  

These modern days, the billions spent to defend or attack end up destroying one or several civilisations.   Is this a result of the world’s globalised economy, or the sudden breakout of nationalism: the funding of the the gross waste of the economically fixated old-style economics dominant in the right-wing governments of the UK and USA at this time.  Two very indebted nations.  They rely on the income from nation building after the arms trade has destroyed an enemy.

The consumption of humanity for economic reasons or other abstracts has resulted in more death, destruction and rebuilding.  Does this offer wealth investment opportunities gaining access to contracts that would not exist without the convincing gravity of a war.  Such spending in peace time is rejected but when funds are denied to local councils, education and health, when the government is hostile to immigrant labour, the structure that builds tomorrow’s growth is undermined.  We become a nation of tax dodging owners of apparent wealth. 

Now we can even fight wars remotely.  If this suffering is the engine of economic success, there is something very wrong with our fundamental philiosophy.  We claim capitalism is brilliant, and yet the governments of two of the most capitalistic countries in the world are so severely in debt.  In Trump’s America, end days are upon us, we may as well go out with a bang than wimpering on.  

The Fiendish and Evil destruction of democratic process

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn Brexit, New articles, PoliticsLeave a comment

The Government minister for Brexit has asked for a rule change to democratic process such that Parliament can’t amend the deal that Theresa May has cobbled together, but could reject it (and thus enforce a no deal condition). 

This is another significant day that the Government tries to destroy our democratic framework and remove scrutiny for its imbalanced approach.  Of course Parliament can change the process if it is a choice between damaging our economic and political clout in the world and complete dismal failure.

There is another choice.  Put the final decision parliament can come up with and compare it with the status quo.  Only then will a proper referendum without any propaganda establish any democratic legitimacy for this shallow attempt to highjack process and destroy the ability of the Parliament to correct the course of a government that is dead set on ruining the lives of millions.

They are so riveted to their negotiating strategy which is unfortunate as they have little skill in creating a negotiable position.  The Government has failed to notice that theirs is the act of democratic destruction that will take decades or even wars to amend?

No, full power to Parliament to review, amend or reject the terms the Government propose to exit the EU or do not exit the EU.  No deal is not an option and should not be considered.  

We run a trade deficit with the EU because we import more because they make things our society depends upon, like healthy vegetables and very well made cars.  We export more to the rest of the world because of our weapon sales to Saudi Arabia (now that we have sold our chip making powerhouse, we protect our weapons industry?  Is that the plan?  Our exports are mainly services, will that be affected by leaving the EU?

The End of Empire

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn New articlesLeave a comment

It seems inevitable that a once too proud empire would shed its client states like old skin. The UK is the rump of a spent empire that is trying to protect its old-money rather than using it to make new wealth. What it is not noticing is that its fear of the other will continue to extend to whatever it at its event horizon or boundary of its awareness. It seems that Brexit is designed to continue this process of self-destruction.

The reason it has to be like this is the drives inherent in the conservation of wealth and domination.  The lesson of literature is that leaders with too much power corrupt into wraiths frail and afraid as the anyone that they are.  The media writes “how history will remember” a world leader as a future judgement, the last word, the dying insult.  Which side of history will a leader end up on?  Will it be to have their likeness carved into a mountain, or to be forgotten or reviled?

Not that history matters.  Except if we can learn from it.  And if the riches of the powerful may fuel corruption, the ravages of poverty do not grant inherent grace.  The person at the centre of a myth is not necessary the main protagonist but the one with the best story.  

Brazil – the film by Terry Gilliam should have been the salutary lesson. As a fiefdom of the great consumer America, we will become their administration, their slaves in civic obscurity as they enforce a red tape emporium of wonder upon our hapless souls.

Big mistake, Mrs May.  Big mistake.  

The EU is more liberal than the States. Exporting our souls may make us the cheapest source of quality labour to an overheating economy, but there are other things to consider.

We would have been wise to allow more generations of integration with our brilliant neighbours, instead we do not know the thousand year headache of administrative compliance that awaits us!

Or, we could do the wise thing, and let the people decide their fate.  

Continued Brexit – the EU accept whatever deal the Government can agree on with a 100% risk of the firestorm that would be hard Brexit if the EU will not agree to it.

or

Continued EU Membership: Cancel the Article 50 letter and agree to remain in the EU being at the top table in actively demanding new rules to benefit all, so that while people’s rights are more universally respected an emphasis on building the wealth of each region by shared efficiencies of the whole commercial effort.  

12 years to avert catastrophe

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn Climate Change, Environment, Global Warming, New articlesLeave a comment 
The IPCC has said that the planning to limit global temperatures rises to below 2C by 2100 is not now a goal that will be achieved, instead advising we must stop warming before it exceeds 1.5C by 2030.  

That is twelve years of accelerating and increasing decline in stability before we are well and truly cooked.  

Blame this directly on Donald Trump and his apocalyptic economics.  This time he can not just bankrupt the enterprise as the economy adjusts to unsustainable tax cuts with an infrastructure that no longer looks after its people.

World in shock

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn America, New articlesLeave a comment

An unsubtle change overtook the world recently.  The president of the USA lost any sign of trust his electorate and the rest of the world had, which was already thin.  

There appears to be a peculiar silence.  The incredulity that followed Trump’s declared love for a dictator who starves his people, the position he has taken on climate instability and the environment, his behaviour regarding the investigation of foreign meddling in their democratic institutions, these were all accepted by his country.  

There is a sense that the swearing in of person who has no real respect for the truth and the way Trump bullied the witnesses who testified before the senate, under oath, and supported his SCOTUS nominee who was lying obviously with a thin investigation worthy of a banana republic.  

The world is in shock that this man should fool everyone for far too much of the time and is now removing any vestige of fair play in American Democracy.  

The world realises that the uncertain future he creates is not in anyone’s interest.  The world has realised what is happening to America.  

China’s economy

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn China, New articlesLeave a comment

It occurred to me that China’s economic growth success followed after several things.  One of those is population control.

Economics is the driver of human destruction of nature. There has to be a better way to protect our environment. Green capitalism? If we can do it for energy by the provision of free alternatives, we can reduce the human footprint only if we can change our economic model.

China’s attempt at population control preceded its unusually strong run of economic growth.  Conventional “wisdom” is that huge populations are the engine of economic growth.  This is the logic of slavery and feudalism.  The logic of Capitalism follows: the pressure of population growth provides the engine that demands economic growth.  And when we have too much wealth, Socialism can follow.  According to Marx.

Another idea is that population decline could provide an energy which results in more wealth for sharing with everybody.  The domination of a single species eventually would make life impossible as resources are burned out.

China’s single child policy and lurch into capitalism has altered its destiny from one of extreme poverty and environmental destruction to it having a conscience that the world is under threat and rapidly becoming an economic threat to American domination.

America is failing to look after its environment and Trump has accelerated this process.  American economics seem to be doing well as people go back to work in polluting industries, shoot their guns and eat themselves to death.

There must be a better way – and economic motivators such as tariffs and sanctions are not going to stop the progress toward mass extinction.

A proposed answer is Green Capitalism.  Instead of a culture that creates too many children, how about one that cares for its children.  People who contribute to society that do not have children still may need full lives, perhaps they can help fund families that have too many children.  Tax religions that encourage population growth as a recruitment tactic.

If we take a very different approach to ecology, perhaps we can reverse the direction.  If we do not, our grandchildren will inherit a hell on Earth.  And we are to blame.

Brexit is just the beginning

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn New articlesLeave a comment

The Government, led by a woman who really can not dance, is making sure that Brexit goes ahead, come what may.  Why?

It is not good for the EU, it is bound to break the United part of the UK.  

Meantime, Trump lies to his power-base.  He belittles women and there they are in the audience applauding him.  He could be saying anything and they would support him, in fact, the more outrageous he is, the more they applaud.

And it is the same in the ranks of the Conservative party.  Theresa May throws scraps to the power hungry and they lap it up while plotting to take power.  Her razor thin grasp of power perversely protects her grip.  But her deal with the DUP threatens to undo it, so watch out for more compromised positioning that can only mean a united Ireland in the EU.  And the DUP are beginning to realise this is the result of May’s terrible negotiations.

What the UK really faces is becoming a branch of Trump-land.  After Brexit, the UK will have to replace the international trade agreements of the EU with the rest of the world, with their own.  This will logically cause a recession as businesses relocate to the EU.  Japan has already said that they see the UK as their gateway to Europe.  No more.  Notwithstanding the fact that the UK has proven itself an unreliable business partner, it has demonstrated how awful they are at negotiating.

Brexit is the start of something far worse.  It will enable the Tories to indulge themselves in their awful, rotten and detrimental “solutions” like their treatment of the Windrush generation, the Grenfell tower calamity, the hostile environment policy May invented, the weak and ridiculous environmental policies of culling badgers and increasing the price of plastic bags instead of removing plastic (there is far more in food packaging than bags). 

This is nothing short of a Right Wing revolution.  People, it is time to rise up!