For many people, 9/11 remade their political world. Excluding 9/11 itself, has continuing Islamist terrorism in the years since 2001, such as last night’s attack at London Bridge, changed your beliefs?
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Yesterday the BBC’s Andrew Neil interviewed Jeremy Corbyn. A link to the interview is here. Starting at 21:52 the discussion goes as follows: -*- Neil: And as part of the investing in the future you plan to borrow a lot to do that. How much will you borrow? Corbyn: What we will do, is for the public ownership elements there’ll be an exchange for, erm, bonds for shares in it. Neil: But what is a bond? Corbyn: A government – a government bond. Neil: Yes, it’s a debt instrument. It’s borrowing. Corbyn: Well, it’s a bond – it’s a government bond which would be serviced by the income from that service, but in addition we would have control of it. Take – Neil: But you would still have to borrow. Bonds are borrowing. You would borrow. Corbyn: Take the water industry, for example, which has been a method of siphoning off profits out of this country to offshore companies that made a lot of money at the same time leaving us with expensive water and in some cases very bad levels of pollution. Neil: You would need to borrow – I understand the case but you would need to borrow to buy the utilities. Corbyn: No, it’s not a – it’s a swap of the shares for a government bond. Neil: But if you’re issuing bonds, Mr Corbyn, you’re issuing government debt. You are borrowing. Corbyn: Issuing bonds that we own which would be paid for by the profits from the industries, so instead of the profits – Neil: But you’ve said you would cut the water utilities’ profits. That means you wouldn’t have the money to pay for the bonds. Corbyn: Andrew, instead of the profits being siphoned off they would remain here. That’s an advantage, surely? Neil: National debt is already an incredible 1.7 trillion. If you borrow to invest on top of the 50 we do, another 25 you say, you need to borrow to nationalise, you may have to borrow – if the IFS is right – for day to day spending. Corbyn: No, we’re absolutely clear we will not borrow for day to day spending. Neil: But you might have to, if the IFS is right. Our national debt, which has already soared under the current government would soar even more under Labour, wouldn’t it? Corbyn: No, because the – we have the rule that we would only borrow to invest for the future. We would not borrow for revenue expenditure. I mean that’s sort of a sensible rule which has not always been followed. Neil: A technical rise. Corbyn: And what we’d get in return is investment in better services. That in turn would encourage economic growth. Listen, we have a huge imbalance of investment. Far too much goes to London and the south east in transport infrastructure. Far too little goes to the north east, north west and Yorkshire. Those issues have to be addressed. Hence the National Investment Bank, which will be regionally based all across the UK. -*- According to the polls it is looking more likely, though still unlikely, that Mr Corbyn will be our next prime minister. So I would like to know what he means by the above. My base assumption is that he has very little idea what he is talking about. But I must confess that if Andrew Neil were to ask me what a bond is, my answer would be scarcely less waffly than Mr Corbyn’s. Can Samizdata readers explain it all for me and readers like me? What exactly is wrong with his proposals, if anything? May 27th, 2017 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Shot 1: An office, somewhere in Europe. Well-dressed yet approachable EUROPEAN PEOPLE of diverse race and gender TALK SERIOUSLY. Back in 2015 the organisation Européens Sans Frontières (Europeans Without Borders) sponsored a competition to make a short film to raise public awareness of the issue of migration in Europe. The European Commission was involved in financing it somehow, though I am not clear whether it was funding just this film or the Européens Sans Frontières organization as a whole. Shot 2: A studio full of keen, passionate young EUROPEAN FILM STUDENTS, hipster but not too hipster, you know what I mean, are doing FILM THINGS. The film that won the competition was called “Eurodame, Help!” It’s the weirdest thing since Captain Euro, not the new ironic Captain Euro, the original “yes, they actually did think this was a good idea” Captain Euro. Anyway, back to Eurodame. On April 26th the film appeared on YouTube. Shot 3: a EUROPEAN TECHNOLOGICAL PERSON clicks a mouse and sits back with a SIGH of SATISFACTION, conscious of a job well done. Then the plot goes off the rails. Jack Montgomery of Breitbart London found the film on YouTube and posted about it today: Fairy Godmother’ Brings Migrants to Europe on a Flying Carpet in EU-Backed Cartoon. Oh dear. This is not going to end well. Here it is direct from the creators: EURODAME, HELP! As well as the French original, they also made versions in several languages, including Arabic. Questions abound. Why is the entrance to Europe guarded by one rude man in short sleeves and a baseball cap? Why does the Euro-fairy need glasses? Who is the Obi-wan Kenobi bloke with the flying carpet? How is he different from the evil people-smuggler? How does the portrayal of Eastern Europeans contribute to intra-EU solidarity? That really is an issue, you know. Here is an excerpt from the official script:
Why are the comments still on? Who was the audience meant to be? What on earth were they trying to achieve? May 15th, 2017 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
Paul Joseph Watson, who sent that tweet, is editor-at-large for Alex Jones’s conspiracy website Infowars. I doubt he and I have much in common. Nonetheless, I urge you to do what he says. Look at the brief film clip to which he links in that tweet and let what you see sink in. Apparently it relates to events reported in the Hackney Citizen as follows: “VIDEO: Anti-fascists clash with lone counter-protester at LD50 Gallery”.
For what it’s worth, I cannot tell what the targets of the protest, the LD50 Gallery, are playing at, but it does seem as if more than just the Antifa might regard them with disquiet:
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Actual neo-Nazis? Artists having one last scrape at the exhausted mine of art designed to épater la bourgeoisie? Who knows, perhaps actual believers in freedom of speech? It does not matter. As D.C. Miller, the man with the sign, said, “the right to openly discuss ideas must be defended.” May 13th, 2017 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
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May 6th, 2017 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
I do not know enough to assess the views of Paul Romer, the chief economist for the World Bank, when it comes to his specialism. I need no special knowledge to assess his views as reported in the Times on restoring the standing of his profession. He gets it.
And if any smartarse wants to bring up Michael Gove’s remark about the British people having “had enough of experts”, tell them to listen to his actual words before he was shouted down. He wasn’t talking about any expert on any subject; he was referring specifically to those who said their predictions of Brexit disaster should be believed on grounds of their business and economic expertise, yet who had egregiously got their predictions wrong on the Euro and failed to predict the 2008 crisis at all. May 1st, 2017 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Great is the rejoicing among most of the Guardian commentariat at the news that the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, has said that if it wins the election the Labour party will outlaw all zero-hours contracts. However there is a steady stream of comments from those not thrilled by their coming liberation from the capitalist exploiter, such as this comment by “fivemack”:
The Guardian‘s own business section ran a story that said in large type that “McDonald’s offers fixed contracts to 115,000 UK zero-hours workers” and in small type that
April 29th, 2017 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
EU mulls legislation in the fight against online hate speech, reports Reuters. Glad we’re leaving. But do not expect our current prime minister to fight for free speech. That would violate her programming. Added later: Posterity, and one or two bewildered humans, demanded that I explain the foregoing. Our revered Foreign Secretary, Boris de Pfeffel Johnson in a recent column for the Sun called Jeremy Corbyn “that mutton-headed old mugwump”. The Sun helpfully provided a glossary for its readers, defining the terms “mugwump” and “revanchist”, though not “glossary”. Mind you, it got the Harry Potter reference wrong; it’s International Confederation of Wizards, not Internal. What do they teach them in these schools? Soon the whole country was googling “mugwump”. When all they really had to do was ask Theresa May. She has the answer to all our questions. Added still later, but less late at night: I cannot now remember how I ended up with two links to the same, possibly spliced, audio clip of Theresa May’s definition of a mugwump. Let it be. Never mind her. If you want to know the up-and-coming political candidate whose name you should look out for, take a look at this leaflet. April 27th, 2017 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
When we were little my siblings and I would accompany my mother as she went from greengrocer to butcher to grocer in those pre-supermarket days. Often the first place she visited in the daily round would be the local bank, National Westminster as I recall, where she would queue to write a cheque “to cash”. (For thus it was, my children, when cash machines and internet payments were as yet unknown.) Boring though it was listening to all those grown-up conversations, at least I was learning about how the world worked. One day my parents were moaning about lack of money. I was tired of their obtuseness in the face of the obvious. I stamped my little foot and said, “If you haven’t got enough money, go to the bank and get some more.” What are you laughing at? I’ll have you know that my youthful economic ideas have been taken up by our government in waiting:
April 26th, 2017 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
With the Tories overtaking Labour to provide the main opposition in Scotland to the dominant Scottish National Party, disability activist Fiona Robertson has decided to embark on some swing voter outreach:
April 21st, 2017 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ah, stop pretending to be above it all. If you are on the UK electoral roll, who will you vote for? If you are not, who would you vote for? Who will win is scarcely worth discussing. But, as the post from politicalbetting.com I linked to says, there are a few questions to which the answer is not so certain:
April 18th, 2017 | 61 comments - (Comments are closed)
That is, if French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon wins the coming election. I would still call that unlikely, but he is rising in the polls. In case you’re wondering, Our France would qualify as part of Our America because of its overseas departments French Guiana and the French Antilles. Although I am not sure that the present members of ALBA – principally Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Ecuador – will greet these parts of France Overseas with unmixed joy. Quoting the article from Le Figaro linked to above:
There is more on this story from Libération: What is the Bolivarian Alliance that Mélenchon wants to join? That story links to a video showing a TV studio discussion in which an interviewer brought up Mr Mélenchon’s proposed change of direction for France with his spokesperson, Clémentine Autain, who “was obviously unaware of this point of her candidate’s program” – and could hardly keep a straight face when told about it. As ever, the translations are a joint project between my French O-Level and Messieurs Google et Bing. Corrections are welcome. April 13th, 2017 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
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