HOME ENERGY Monday, Nov 5 2007

According to a recent report, energy savings in British homes are going to fall short by 30%, threatening government CO2 targets. Well, us naughty British – always sinners, just like Christianity tells us.
Of course, the government has craftily ‘forgotten’ the only reason that they even came close to previous targets. That reason was the previous decimation of the coal industry following the 1984 miner’s strike. Without it, our levels would be astronomic.
So that’s it, then. Britain will fail miserably to reach CO2 targets, just like everyone else. And guess what? We always will. Targets will never be met until a simple reality hits home.
This is the role of big business in raising the levels in the first place. Until big business begins buying local, we’ll fail. Until big business invests massively in alternative fuels, we’ll fail. Until big business gets rid of ridiculous packaging, we’ll fail.
It’s as simple as that.

© Anthony North, November 2007

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ECONOMICS - THE TRUTH Sunday, Sep 16 2007

So there has been a run on Northern Rock. After going to the Bank of England for help, customers have become fearful of their money, and they want it back. Should this get out of hand, it could have dire effects for the economy.
It is so easy to bring about this situation. This is because economics is only a partial discipline. It exists for a perfect world. In the real world, the thing that decides whether an economy is strong or weak is psychology.
A strong economy is dependent upon investors having confidence in it. If ever a time comes when this is not so, then financial hardship is on the way. As such, the supposed strong western economies are nothing more than a house of cards.
This has been the case for some time. Initially, economies were backed up by hard gold. This is no more, and an economy runs totally on confidence. We used to have a word for this sort of thing. The con trick.

© Anthony North, September 2007

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SHAME IN THE CITY? Monday, Sep 3 2007

City workers have rewarded themselves this year with bonuses worth £14billion, leading to many UK politicians, trade unions and charities criticizing the sheer greed of our financial institutions.
Following soaring stock markets and many takeovers, it seems our new brand of super-capitalism is doing so well that traders can pay themselves so far over the odds that non-millionaires are being viewed as paupers.
Of course, the reality of the success of today’s capitalism lies elsewhere. It lies in the ability of big business to con the ordinary person that he needs inflated pensions funds and high mortgages.
For rather than trade fuelling the success of today’s capitalism, it is the average man in the street, his hard earned salary propping up a system that would collapse over night without him.
There should be shame in the city. Not inflated bonuses. And, of course, an admission that the entire system is a con.

© Anthony North, September 2007

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CHINA TOYS Thursday, Aug 16 2007

There’s been another scare over China’s exports. In the UK toys by their million are being withdrawn because they contain toxic materials. The latest in a long line of inferior quality goods, blame is being placed squarely on Chinese practices.
Of course, if China wants to continue exporting goods to the rest of the world, they will have to get their act together. But I’m afraid the reasons go much deeper than this.

CHINESE PROBLEMS

China is at the beginning of its capitalist experiment, and it has a long way to go before it will live up to the expectations we have of it in the west. First of all, there is the problem of capitalism being a by-product of democracy.
With no democracy in China, capitalism thus becomes an anomaly. And the natural consequences of this are, first, shoddy workmanship, and, second, the eventual outbreak of mass protest when the poor don’t seem to rise out of poverty.

WESTERN PROBLEMS

These factors are obvious, and suggest that the future of China will not be as ‘rosy’ as people believe. Yet knowing this, western multi-nationals have ignored it and are moving into China in a big way.
The reason for this is short term profit. At this moment in time, products from China are cheap, and that is all that counts. And the consumer is happy to buy, knowing how rotten this system is.
So, no, the reason for toxic toys goes further than China. It goes to heart of the present capitalist systems we employ.

© Anthony North, August 2007

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THE MYTHICAL AIRCRAFT CARRIERS Wednesday, Jul 25 2007

The building of two new Royal Navy aircraft carriers is about to be announced – perhaps. These super-duper ships were first authorized ten years ago, and should have been in service by 2015.
Sorry, that’s not true. THREE carriers were authorised, so that the UK would still have a fleet even with one in for refit. It was cut to two by saying they should be as simple as possible so that refit would be quick.
The carriers were supposed to be British, fly British planes, and be simple. Then the wrangling began … and the stalling. As I now understand it, they will be a French design with American aircraft … and very, very hi-tech.
It might be American aircraft, for the last I heard is that the planes being designed are too heavy for the carrier. The carriers may even be built … but don’t expect them for a couple of decades.
What is the moral of this story? What the military want, they never get – and they get what they don’t want far later than they wanted what they didn’t want. And why? Because it’s all about the defence INDUSTRY and profit. Military needs come a second best.

© Anthony North, July 2007

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SEND IN THE CLONES Thursday, Jul 19 2007

Professor Keith Campbell, creator of Dolly the cloned sheep, has said that farmers should take up cloning as a source of cheap food. The US is already taking steps in this direction.
People who want cloned food production are immediately going on the attack by saying the food produced will be identical to what we eat now, so we have absolutely nothing to worry about.
I beg your pardon? Will the food be the same?
Absolutely! No difference at all. However, by immediately putting our attention on this point, they cleverly side step the real issue, which is this.
One of the greatest dangers facing mankind today is the way industry is reducing diversity. Nature and evolution require diversity to thrive, allowing all possible alternatives and directions to explore.
Without this simple rule, we would not be here. But now, it is being proposed to clone our meat products. One standard cow. One standard pig. One standard sheep.
Yes, it would work well, producing cheap food – until it met the one standard killer germ. Then there’d be no food at all.
If you don’t believe me, ask the Irish about the potato.

© Anthony North, July 2007

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NO SUPER CASINO, THAT’S SUPER Sunday, Jul 15 2007

It is hard to explain my relief that Brownski has decided against the Super Casino. So many conflicting thoughts sweep through my head. My relief has nothing to do with gambling – there are plenty of gambling opportunities in the UK as it is – but with the obvious implications of such huge casinos in Britain.
Of course, let’s not give Brownski the credit for this. First of all, we must worry about his sheer power to decide such a thing by himself. Then we must also remember that he was a major player in the government that agreed it in the first place. It strikes me like a simple goodwill gesture to con us he’s a nice bloke. Don’t believe it.

BIG VERSES SMALL

So why am I against the Super Casino? First of all, there is my reluctance to go for anything big, and the government’s increasing need to get rid of the small. This view is fuelled by big business, who claim the ‘big’ option leads to the most cost effective efficiency.
This may be true – to a point – but the obvious spin-off is that obligation to the customer declines. In a sensible world, a good business is one where a consumer has real power and influence over the business.
Only in this way does a business feel the need to look after the customer. But if they’re big enough, an individual customer can do them no harm, and the bosses are too remote for the customer to have an input. The ‘small’ requires observance to the customer; the ‘big’ means they don’t have to give a damn.

ORGANISED CRIME

A further problem with the ‘big’ is that it becomes more attractive to organized global crime. And this is particularly so in a business that is traditionally associated with such crime in the first place.
One of the great successes of the British Police is their ability to keep out of the country the worst effects of organized crime. Here, such a practice is on the small scale and ad hoc. But as soon as big casinos are thought of, Mafia is straight there to take over. Just look at Las Vegas to see how it works.
This relationship between Mafia and big business can be seen at work in every country where capitalism takes off in a big way. For always, before super-capitalism breaks out, you have a crimewave as Mafia organizes itself before disappearing into the capitalist woodwork.

© Anthony North, July 2007

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THE TAKE-OVER TAKE OVER Thursday, Jul 12 2007

At last, even some people in business are beginning to understand that big-business stinks. Richard Lambert, DG of the CBI, has warned that UK businesses are being taken over by an elite band of financiers.
Interested in nothing but profit, and building huge business empires, foreign ownership of UK firms has risen from 30% to 50% in the past decade. And there is no sign of a let up.

FORGET THE BOND

Essential to capitalism is a network of bonds that hold business to ethical conduct, and to society through service to the consumer and loyalty to the employee. All these bonds are being stripped away, in the same way as unprofitable assets.
Throughout industry and commerce, relationships are breaking down between owners and managers, companies and investment institutions, and employers and employees. And they are so big now that they have contempt for the customer.
Once upon a time industry and commerce was a different thing, with an endemic understanding of its place in society. Yes, there were some interested only in the fast buck, but in the main, profit went alongside service.

SUPER-CAPITALISM

This is no longer the case. The danger of new super-capitalism to the planet is well documented in the news today. But rarely is big-business blamed for the growing sense of insecurity among the workforce.
Neither does the consumer complain enough about the way this mega-control freakery rides over the sentiments of the customer. Companies used to rely on their reputation in dealing with the customer, but now they don’t give a damn.
And why should they? If a customer is unhappy and goes elsewhere, chances are he has gone to another company which is nonetheless part owned by the same financiers. Company names, you see, mean nothing today. It is the same greedy fingers in so many pies.

© Anthony North, July 2007

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CAPITALIST SERFS Tuesday, Jul 10 2007

Mortgages are well out of control in the UK, with the news that interest payments have hit a ten year high, topping £100billion. This adds up to £1 in every £8 spent by British households on goods and services.
These debt levels are the highest in the developed world, and there is a definite connection with this appalling capitalist serfdom and the position of the UK as 4th or 5th biggest world economy.

MODERN ECONOMY

The UK simply does not have a population big enough to support a thriving economy in the way required to be a world class trading nation. Hence, big business and the banks have slowly devised a simple way of achieving it.
Basically, this involves starving the country of housing, forcing house prices to hit the roof, and thus claiming inflated investment from the average British householder. The massive mortgage the Brit now pays keeps big business afloat.
To a lesser extent, the system works throughout the developed world, but is more obvious in the UK. Mortgages, along with insurance and private pensions, are, in reality, the foundations of big business, rather than business acumen on their part.

THE NEW STOODGE

Capitalism wasn’t supposed to be like this. The ethic behind the ideology was for people to have ideas, borrow money from investors, turn those ideas into business, and fuel a thriving economy through wages and taxation.
But that was before capitalism turned into empire building masquerading as business practice. Today, globalization has produced the multi-nationals, gobbling up any sensible ideas others have, and feeding off the incomes of the worker.
I am, by nature, a capitalist. Enterprise is good, and the best way for a vibrant economy to rise and survive. But the supposed economy of today is a confidence trick, with empires of businesses that only survive by being propped up by the wage packet.

© Anthony North, July 2007

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BIASED TV NEWS Sunday, Jul 8 2007

Ofcom has advised that people think TV news in the UK is biased. Only 54% of people believe the BBC is impartial, whilst only 41% believe this of ITV. Rather, broadcasters self-censor subjects they think to be unpalatable.
To a certain extent, this is inevitable. News is gathered by people, and all people hold biases. But a point comes when bias in general becomes more than a natural inclination, and turns into a serious problem.

BBC
Is this really the case with UK news? Let’s begin with the BBC, the public broadcaster that was created to be impartial. Unfortunately, you don’t have to view it for long to realize this is not the case.
Liberal values have impregnated British culture over the last 30 years to the point that, to many, it is as natural as life itself. This is rubbish. Liberal values are a definite ideology which moved on from allowing correct freedoms for minorities years ago.
Liberal values have now become a ‘globalisation inspired’ form of social engineering, hating tradition and the past. The BBC is at the forefront of this form of control. The problem is, employees see this way of life as a self-evident truth, so cannot even conceive of it as ideology – and an ideology based on the individual.

ITV

In such a way, ideology becomes hidden, making it even more difficult to identify and rectify. And ITV news is suffering from another form of ‘globalisation inspired’ control mechanism that is equally dangerous.
Over recent years ‘emotion’ has crept into ITV news. Whole news stories can now be devoted to the ‘feelings’ of victims. Emotive words now appear in headlines, such as this ‘evil act,’ etc.
The problem with emotion is that it should form no part of law-making or balanced news, for indoctrination of emotion in the media leads to people demanding laws that include the emotive element.

IN CONCLUSION

The similarity between these two approaches to news is that they move news, and, by implication, future law, away from the community they are supposed to serve, and on to the individual, who is faddish and only interested in what benefits him or her.
Both these stances pander to a globalised world, in that the powerhouse of globalization is big business, which requires the consumer to move away from long-lasting traditional values, and into a faddish mind-set which continually requires new products to buy.
Both BBC and ITV news moved away from pure news years ago. They are now vessels of a globalised world. And they have been at it so long that they don’t even realize they are doing it.
© Anthony North, July 2007

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