The Government has no money (and never has)
Not in the sense that it has run up huge debts the size of which it’s almost impossible to get your head around.
The Government has no money because it never has had. It’s the tax-payers’ money. Yours and mine.
It’s important to bear this in mind because when someone comes on the news and says the Government should pay for this or that, they’re not really saying that.
They are saying they want to take the money out of your pocket. They are saying you should dig deeper. You should make more sacrifices. You should go without. So should your family.
Their demands are more important and valuable than whatever you strive for. That’s what thay’re saying.
We were outraged by the looting on our streets during the riots, as we may well be if a total stranger insisted we pick up their tab in a restaurant.
Not when it’s ‘news’ though. Then ‘the Government’ can pay.
Vive la France (and Germany)
France and Germany are now insisting that Greece should stay in the Euro for their debt restructuring to hold.
The gun to the head is that a free-standing Drachma would be worth so little that it would be impossible for the Greeks to meet their immediate debt burden.
Hence, the ‘solution’, appears to be for the Greeks to stick with a hopelessly over-valued currency (for them) which will make it nigh on impossible for them to rebuild their economy.
So the risks to balance are a disorderly breakup of the Euro, which could trigger another credit crunch while the rest of us prop up the hopelessly over-exposed French banks, or the Greek economy gives up the prospect of getting back on its feet.
No question though of an orderly breakup of the Euro? Of course not. Vive la France (and Germany).
Is the Drachma really such a dirty word?
It’s been difficult at times to follow the unfolding Greek tragedy. Partly, it doesn’t make very easy reading. Mostly, it’s just hard to fathom what’s going on.
The latest twist, to call a referendum on whether to accept the bail out, seems extraordinary.
It’s hard to imagine how the question could be anything other than a variation on: “do we (a) accept the handout and keep our economy vaguely going or (b) go to hell in a handcart?”.
More thoughtful commentators have characterised that second choice as going it alone outside the Euro which may well be what it means.
Current crisis apart, is that such a bad question?
One of the consequences of the recent Euro crisis is that the currency appears to be over valued. In other words, holidays in Europe are not cheap. More specifically, cheap and cheerful holidays in Greece, paid for with the Euro seem prohibitively expensive.
Say what you like about the Drachma but it is hard to imagine that under the old currency many of Greece’s economic problems would not have been self-correcting with an exchange rate left to find its own value. In doing so, it would also see us all topping up our tans in the islands before returning home arms laden with cheap booze, tabs and olive oil.
That may sound simplistic, but isn’t that exactly how economics works: people sell what they are good at or have in abundance at prices which others can afford and are willing to pay.
The Euro’s apparently inflated value has priced Greece out of the tourism market, so upsetting the balance of the rest its economy and without showing any alternative routes back.
Current crisis apart then isn’t George Papandreou, the currrent Greek PM, at last proving that someone can behave responsibly and take a long-term view.
For sure, the timing was never going to be perfect (and French and German criticism of Greece for being self serving seems comically un-self aware) but surely if the Euro is in a hole it is better to stop digging.
Health lobby losing the plot
We learned today from the health lobby that smoking in films is not essential to the plot. Well, they should know, for surely they are as well qualified to be art critics as they are to determine so many other aspects of how we should live our lives.
This apparently well-researched fact came with the call to certify all films which depict smoking as unsuitable for anyone under 18. Images of smoking encourage youngsters to take it up we’re told, for it seems today’s youth is unable to understand, contextualise or make informed decisions.
For comparison, films portraying illegal drugs are currently categorised as suitable for 15s and over.
Yet our impressionable youth should be shielded until they’re old enough to vote, even if that would guard them from some of life’s realities that might help inform their decisions in the polling booth, and qualify them to be there.
For the sake of argument, shall we assume it is true that under 18s will do what they see on the screen? If that were the case, should we really start by worrying about smoking?
Well, there’s hard-core drug taking for a start, and boozing, if we’re to stick to the health theme. There’s also anti-social behaviour, crime and corruption. Then there’s any number of the rest of society’s ills all regularly, and often graphically, shown on the screen.
Come to think of it, this story was on a news show which also showed the summer’s riots. Should we stop under-18s from following current affairs too, lest those kick off again?
The health lobby may well have a point but, if they do, they would serve themselves well to stick to the plot and try not to sound so absurd.
60 watts but how many whys?
I’ve been muttering darkly to myself about the demise of the 60 watt light bulb, which today became illegal.
The economy is tottering precariously on the edge of a W-shaped dip.
Much of Europe’s on the brink of bankruptcy, just reward for years of profligate vanity spending, the bail out of which our children will be paying for long into the following generation.
Just about every day we hear about the demise or dilution of what many consider essential services.
The Middle East is in turmoil, taking tentitative steps towads democracy. Yet we can’t help as much as we might because we’re cutting back on the might of our own armed focus.
Elsewhere we hear that the spread of HIV is still a rising spectre, 25 years after we were first implored not to die of ignorance.
Yet, despite all this, we still employ people to legislate on how we light our homes.
It doesn’t seem to matter that the alternative that’s being imposed is rubbish, more expensive, doesn’t work as well and most normal people don’t want them.
The invisible mandarins have spoken. We will pay.
Solutions to a big, fat problem
The Lancet tells us that by 2030 obesity will be out of control and we’ll all be too fat to live. That’s the science. Roughly.
It calls for action now or £2bn a year more for health care then. One answer it seeks is to tax unhealthy food into oblivion, or there abouts.
Granted, the food producers might feel penalised for giving their customers what they want, but that’s a small price to pay.
Let’s put aside for a minute that using fiscal policy for social engineering is morally pretty shoddy.
Let’s also put aside whether it works. Despite punitive taxation, smoking rates are holding up and maybe even rising a bit.
Let’s not ask if it’s fair to hit all consumers in the pocket when only a minority of them (albeit a large, 40% minority by 2030) are unable to walk past the fridge.
Instead, let’s look at some of the lessons we can learn from the anti-smoking crusades and see if we can use them to help the one in four Brits currently classified as obese.
One of the first anti-smoking measures was to ban smoking on public transport. So let’s start with a girth restriction on the busses and trains. Making the fatties walk might help them shed a few pounds and improve the journey for any commuters averse to being sweated on in crowded spaces.
Fatties? Yes, that’s the next lesson. Somewhere between the first and last Marlborough Man, smoking went from cool to near-criminal. A significant step along the way was when it became acceptable for just about anyone to abuse smokers for their “revolting” habits, even if they were total strangers minding their business in the open air.
So let’s shift the perceptions around eating, drop the euphemisms, and start calling the lardies what they are.
Morally dubious though it is for governments to use tax as part of social policy, we shouldn’t forget that penalising smokers is now a national pastime which goes almost unremarked. So that’s another lesson.
Taxing food would penalise everyone though, so let’s make sure we target this tax accurately. Applying a fat tax on large clothes would do the trick. The bigger the outfit, the more tax you pay. Let’s tax the fatties back to the dark ages.
The final steps from there should be pretty simple. Stop them getting on planes. Segregate them in restaurants and pubs (in ever smaller and less comfortable spaces). Bar them from shops and public buildings. If they visit you at home, confine them to the garden or doorstep.
If all that doesn’t work, then just stop them going indoors. All the walking around they’ll do instead, particularly in cold and bitter winters, will burn the blubber off them in no time.
Sounds an outrageous way to treat people doesn’t it? Well, we did it to the smokers.
Shocking riots
Yep, the rioters were evil. No excuses for the wilful destruction of what others have spent their lives building up.
Meanwhile, in a few short years before the riots:
Our political leaders had been caught with their hands in the till. For good reasons, perhaps, they’d been tucking into their expenses, but good reasons or not, that’s what they’d been doing.
Many tabloid abuses had just became clearer with the downfall of the News of the World. Does anyone seriously think the NOTW was the only paper playing up, or that pinching voice mails was as bad as it got? After all, before celebrity mobile phones became ripe for hacking, didn’t everyone just rummage through dust bins. Is there a difference?
Amid all that, an easily overlooked part of the NOTW scandal was that the police have been systemically on the take, trading back handers for tabloid favours for years. That sort of passed without comment. Even the cops that resigned only did so because they’d been chummy with News International, not because they were presiding over a corrupt force.
The politicians, the police and the press. We should be cross about their abuses. They’re meant not just to set the example but to uphold the standards we live up and aspire to.
In that context, that big business and happy bankers choked on their own gluttony, spriralling us all into world-wide recession, is hardly here nor there in the long run. There’s nothing wrong with business lining its pockets, so that’s fine.
Nevertheless, isn’t there just a trace of hypocrisy in our outrage when we condemn youngsters and hoodies for lifting what they can in the few mad summer days that the riots ruled the streets?
After all, those vandals haven’t earned or asked for our trust to abuse, have they? They’d just been brought up watching the pillars of society burying their noses in the trough and thought they’d have some of that too.
Examples should be made.
