Recently in pol·i·tics Category

There’s been a few interesting posts recently (see bottom of post) about how one of the issues we have currently is we have companies that are considered “too big to fail”. That we have to bail out banks, because if they fail, the economy breaks down totally, and it’s not a far jump from that to rats gnawing on your cold lifeless body in the street.

I was at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig last week, and between the support act and my second favourite half Korean coming onto stage, the solution dawned on me, as blindingly obvious.

Every time (not this year but the last 10) a company (Oil/Banking/etc) makes ludicrous profits (Billion dollars a second yadda yadda) everyone’s up in arms, as it’s immoral and wrong and we should impose a windfall tax.

I’m against windfall taxes. They sound like a good idea, but I think they’re mostly desired out of misplaced moral outrage (under the false assumption no one should make that much money) and not any decent economic reasons. If companies are making money be being anti-competitive, then competition authorities should come down on them. If it’s just a result of running a successful business then well done to them and we should move on.

I do however have a massive issue with bailing out these companies after they spent year after year declaring ludicrous profits. Yo banks, I’m looking in your direction.

The solution of course is not a ‘windfall tax’ but a bailout tax. When companies reach a certain size such that their failure would have impacts beyond their market and into the general populace, they have a choice. They can spin off sections of themselves into independent companies and slim down such that the failure of any single part would not have severe economic consequences.

Or they have to pay a bailout tax. This tax money would go into a government reserve (some fiscally stable system) and not general taxation. And when companies fail this money is drawn on to bail them out. This saves us printing new money (cough sorry quantitative easing) or borrowing such that my friends’ children will grow up in debt having to bail the lot of us out.

Now of course if a business doesn’t fail, the money goes to bail out businesses that do. That’s how insurance companies work and well let’s be honest, we need a few more insurances. And businesses don’t have to pay the tax. They can avoid the tax, by avoiding being too big to fail; otherwise when you’re declaring £10 billion a quarter in profit, you can pay a hefty chunk of that to make sure it’s not frigging me that’s bailing you out.

I want my tax money to go to something useful. And bailouts are not useful, but needed when things have gone too far wrong. I shouldn’t be the one paying for your mistakes.

This image is doing the rounds of most major newspapers today, I assume because it has the makings of an 'iconic image'.

Capitalism has failed, the people rise up, yadda yadda yadda.

Except it seems rather stage managed to me.

I don't mean that it's set up deliberately, but I do think it's engineered by a collective group think that wanted it to happen.

Look their are more press in the picture than protesters.

When you take a balaclava to protest, clearly you are not thinking about singing John Lennon songs.

Clearly there is no sane person in this picture standing up and saying, "Um like guys, this isn't a political statement, this is just vandalism, why don't we go plant some trees instead".

Everyone wanted this picture to happen. The Press (clearly), the protesters, possibly even the police, although I suspect they'd rather everyone sang John Lennon songs. And hence the situation unfolded where a group in balaclavas lands up holding a monitor outside the RBS, and the press are all ready for the iconic picture.

It's stage managed by some sort of group think.

I have no issue with protesting, although generally I would like it to have a point. I have no idea what they protesters were protesting. You can't protest an concept (like capitalism). Sure the banks all fucked up, but are are they protesting that the G20 trying to stabilise the economy? And how is throwing shit though windows helping?

The May Day (riots), the G20 protests ... it all seems to me that protesting is no longer showing peaceful political decent between elections, but an event to be part of, something to ay you were there, and an excuse to cause violence and vandalism.

Sure the police are going to fuck up. When people take balaclavas with to hide and goad the police, it's going to descend into chaos.

Take John Lennon songs, not balaclavas.

There is a war going on and I'm getting pretty tired of it. No, not the actual fighting in Gaza, but the internet war for your hearts and minds in the propaganda around it.

I see one friend donating his facebook status to say how many rockets have landed in Israel. Then I see a twitter on how a Palestinian child died hungry. Then my cousin twitters on how Israel's actions are lawful. Then Ev gets taken to task for following @ajgaza. An so on. And so on.

I'm bored of it. I'm uninterested. And I really don't care.

Here is why.

I was going to blog about the Drobo. I in fact wrote the blog last night to publish today. But this mornings headline in the metro annoyed me so that will have to wait till Monday.

"Cancer Patient saved by judge" the Metro headline reads. The article then goes on to detail how Colin Ross sued his local NHS to put him on the drug and won, because the judge ruled that it being refused because it was not cost effective was unlawful.

Are you fricking crazy?

The case is likely to increase pressure on NHS trusts to fund cancer drugs, even before their cost effectiveness has been assessed. - The Independant

Now I get Colin Ross, no one wants to die. I would do everything I could to get the drug (although curious to know the legal costs of the case). However I vehemently disagree with the judge and really hate the way the papers blow up these "treatment refused because not cost effect stories". They were all over the place about a year ago with this breast cancer treatment drug.

It simple maths. There is one pot of money and it can't treat everybody for everything. So what happens is the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has to work out what's best for everyone.

So lets take two drugs. One cures cancer 10% of the time and costs £40k. One prevents heart disease 80% of the time and costs £4k. So for £400k you can save 1 cancer patient or prevent heart disease in 80 patients. Which drug are you going to recommend?

I understand people are uneasy with the idea that human live has value, and a specific monetary value. Sure it sucks. Sure we would like to treat everyone, all the time. But it's just simply not possible. One pot of money remember.

Now you might disagree with specific decisions or specific cases, but it's the way the press generally reflects NICE as evil, or bad, killing people. But for every treatment that someone gets, it's a treatment that someone else is not getting. And this never is reflected in the press. And even this postcode lottery, whilst their are obvious problems in the system that need to be worked on, some areas of the country might have different priorities to others. So it makes sense for different NHS trusts to allocate resources differently.

I would have titled that article "Non medical judge kills several people with ruling"

Note to self: Watch out for misspelling racist as raciest to not loosing losing impact of letter.

In response to these letters. Lets see if they print it ....

TO: Mail at UKMETRO

I love the way racists always defend their arguments by calling the opposing argument PC and the opposing arguers do gooders. I’m sure the letter today must have known his arguments were raciest, otherwise why withhold your name instead of standing by your statement.

Of course the arguments are totally false. All racial profiling does it make it easier for the terrorist. In fact if I was a terrorist mastermind I would be rubbing my hands at glee at the panic and knee jerk idiotic reactions going on. Racial profiling does two things. (1) It makes reciting recruiting new terrorists much easier, as who likes being singled out when innocent. Easier then to recruit terrorists by pointing towards the obvious oppression. (2) It makes it easier to bomb planes. I mean if you know they are singling out Muslim looking Asians, you use a non Asian looking Muslim. The more you tighten down one aspect of security the easier it is to avoid. The only profiling that will protect us at airports is fully random checks that distinguishes no one by anything more than a random number.

Of course once you make airports too secure, it’s easier to bomb busses, or trains, or buildings or anything else you haven’t devoted money to. Solve the problem at source not at target. You could start by not singling out a group of people and treating them worse.