Brexit and the lessons from history

In what remains a delicious essay, the eminent (and dead) Economic Historian Carlo Cippola, a man who earned his spurs contributing to our understanding of change over looooong periods of time, postulated there were 5 basic laws of human stupidity. Brexit makes his case perfectly.

Go read the essay, seriously, it’s great and when you do think about law 1 “Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.”. Yep, a majority of sensible adults didn’t actually think England and Wales would be stupid enough to vote for Brexit.

Law 2 is kinda dull, but law 3 states  “A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.”

Yep in spades. In the UK, Wales probably benefits the most from EU grants and funding than any other part of the not going to be United for much longer Kingdom; and yet a majority of failed Englishmen voted for Brexit, a thing that will cost us all plenty over the next few years.

Or there are the rural areas that proved disproportionately likely to vote for Brexit; do farmers actually think the UK will subsidise them to the extent the EU does or that France, that nation of sheep burning road blockaders, will let them have the same access to European markets they currently enjoy? Face facts farmer barleymo it ain’t just Welsh hill farmers hopped up on sheep dip that’ll be blowing their brains out over the next few years.

Law 4 says “Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.”

See above, see kinda anything to do with Brexit basically or read some fool tweeting in his best I read the Daily Express voice, about how this means his vacuum cleaner will no longer be subject to EU laws and think does this plammff not realise yes it will otherwise it won’t be acceptable in any EU markets?

Then there’s law 5 “A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.” – Yep. Brexit proves that in spades the way it’s taken us back to death of Princess Diana territory, that other time in living memory when a cretinous mob drunk on it’s own self-rightous bile, ignorant indignation and fury at its limp impotence sought to remake our nation in it’s own, ghastly image. Except, this time they actually have.

S’funny. In the run up to the FIRST Scottish referendum, lots of Northern English people chatted about wanting Scotland to take them in. Well, here’s one, updated, Scottish response, nah, fuck off ya nasty wee xenophobic pricks. Don’t want your sort in here, cos we’re better than that (and you).

Andy Hornby vs The Great British Public (2- Nil)

Andy Hornby is famous for a couple of things, one – thank you an obviously aggressively policed Wikipedia entry – is graduating first out of 800 students when he got his Harvard Business School MBA. Woooooooo, nice. 

The other is being the CEO who fucked HBoS so hard the taxpayer had to eventually step in with billions of bailout pounds. So that was Andy Hornby one, the British public nil. But wait, there’s more. …

A recent Guardian expose lifts the lid on Boots the chemist and how it’s hard driving staff in ways that put the health of people getting prescriptions at risk and also milks the taxpayer by effectively setting sales targets for medicine use reviews (or MURs), which the taxpayer pays for.

The article dates the start of this back to Boots being acquired by a private equity house. And who did the private equity bod in charge appoint as CEO? Yup, Andy Hornby, so two nil Andy, but it’s OK, cos he left in 2011 and is now CEO of Coral, the bookies.

But, lets pause for a second and reflect on the great service Andy Hornby has given us, the British public, given taxpayer money has been so integral to the Andy Hornby 'business model'  ... (when doing so forget about all the big company directorships and chairmanships this moral titan will soon be vying for).

There, have you had a pause and some thoughts? So whaddya think  about this scion of industry and his apparent immunity to the very real, very material consequences of his decision-making and leadership have had and say about today’s ruling class, how they get to be there and what they’re willing to do to employees, the public and taxpayers to make a quick buck.

Anyhoo, that he’s currently the Coral CEO , a big wheel in an industry that fuels as it profits from  the flames of however many tens of thousands of gambling addicts is by the by I guess, because Andy Hornby is a true leader and an utter  ____  (you fill in the blanks).  

And the way things work in today’s Britain, that’s just dandy it appears.

Guess the business fail

Picture the scene, a long established British business that’s seen better days gets taken over by a  new management team that’s bought it for a derisory sum and even received some multi-million pound sweeteners in the process from it’s former owner.

The new team doesn’t have a business plan worth a damn or access to the funding needed to finance it or basically anything remotely credible. But, as proud owners of this long established concern, they do have the authority to extract millions of pounds for themselves in management fees before things go ‘kerphut’.

Even better, having been politically expedient when they bought the company, the new folks can be blamed when it all goes wrong and 1,000s of people start losing their jobs, leaving the state i.e. us, to pick up the tab, give or take some MPs huffing and puffing.

So, you decide, what company am I talking about, Rover, subject to a multi-million pound state enquiry from which lessons should presumably have been learned, or BHS?

Panama (c)anal

Making a prediction is a great way to be wrong about something, but what the heck; the Panama Papers will produce widespread revulsion, but limited, widespread reform because the ruling class doesn’t want there to be any*.

Remember, we’ve already been here with the leak of HSBC Swiss bank account details. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) got the data in 2010, identified 1,100 dodgy people out of the c. 7,000 listed who hadn’t paid their taxes and yet 5 years later, only one tax evader had been prosecuted. EVentually, MPs huffed and they puffed, as they do, did some grandstanding and then ...... no much really, which was as unsurprising as it was disgraceful.

HSBC’s name, it being the money launderer’s bank of choice, looms large in the Panama Papers. But, then so do those of other banks including the majority state owned RBS (via it’s Coutts business). This is not a surprise. As HSBC’s own post-Swiss leak statement made clear -  "We acknowledge that the compliance culture and standards of due diligence in HSBC's Swiss private bank, as well as the industry in general, were significantly lower than they are today," - tax evasion was (is?) an industry-wide problem conducted on an industrial scale.

The Panama Papers provide detailed evidence of this if anyone wants to investigate further or even demand other banks release the details of thousands of other tax dodgers with the threat of losing their UK, French, German and/or US banking licences as an incentive.

Similarly,  Mossack Fonseca is (soon to be was) only the world's fourth-biggest provide of offshore services, so what about numbers 1, 2 and 3 or even 5? If Mossack Fonseca was at it, then what were/are they up to?

Except, we know this won’t happen. Rather than demand banks identified as being dodgy in the Panama Papers release any account details, here it’s already getting boiled down to a politicised debate about the Prime Minister’s father. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine the US going internationally hardcore after any other offshore service provider the way it went after FIFA (??) or say Gary MacKinnon because too many rich and powerful people simply don’t want them to.

The lesson is simple and backed up by the biggest leak in history, there is one set of laws and institutions for them, the rich and the powerful, and another for the rest of us. And they are not the same. 

One more wee thing, if the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, then how does trickle-down economics, that great justification of rampant inequality, work? We appear to live in an era of wealth hoarders, wealth hiders and tax dodgers, not wealth creators.

* Would be lovely to be wrong, but I doubt it

theses on feuerbach .... ahem, or the SNP vote in the 2015 General election

I)                 The chief defect of all hitherto existing analysis of the Scottish Nationalist vote in the general election is that the thing, the reality, the sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of negativity, not as a sensuous human activity or practice, not in terms of context, organisational development or even a burgeoning political consciousness. Hence, in contradistinction to real analysis, the active side was developed abstractly by negativity – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

II)                The Nationalist vote needs placed in its proper European context; the growing rejection of established mainstream politics seen across Europe. But the Nationalist vote was also, of course, distinctively Scottish.

III)              It follows on from the credibility the SNP has established as Scotland’s party of government or at least the lack of any major feck ups since they’ve been in power.

IV)             The independence referendum was also a big factor. Positively, it converted a lot of people to nationalism, generating a step change increase in political engagement and debate in the process.

V)               It also prompted a significant increase in political activism with this seeing the SNP become the 3^rd largest political party in the UK as measured by party membership – this in turn gave the SNP the practical resources needed to campaign across Scotland.

VI)             Negatively, voting SNP in the general election gave people embarressed and ashamed about voting no in the referendum a safe means of casting a Scottish vote

VII)           Voting SNP was also a response to how Westminster responded to the Scottish referendum result and the bullshit that’s so far entailed.

VIII)         Nicola Sturgeon! John Swinney’s time as SNP leader maintained the notion that the SNP was a one trick pony called Alex Salmond. Nicola Sturgeon’s emergence on to the British political stage made clear the SNP was more than one man.

IX)              Nicola Sturgeon times 2!! My personal experience of Scottish Nationalism is that it offered and offers a vision that women connect with passionately, put simply folks cheered on Nicola and shouted at Jim Murphy to get tae "f". And with 20 of the 56 SNP MPs female, this has already translated into a new, more representative politics.

X)                Speaking of which, the SNP campaigned positively; whereas the Tories offered the chance for us all to put on an even dirtier great big hairshirt. By contrast, the SNP said end austerity now (thank god)

XI)             Speaking of positive vision, Scotland is more Social Democratic than England. The SNP has for years positioned itself as being to the left of Labour. By contrast Labour’s UK message was that they were marginally to the left of the Tories – this did not work in Scotland because it was not far enough

XII)            This was also because of the mediocrity that was and is Scottish Labour and the complete failure of their leadership to be anything other than time served jokes queuing up to fill out their next expenses claim – Johann Lamont anybody?

XIII)         And then there was Labour’s approach to the independence referendum; their focus on a wholly negative campaign and the fact that by doing so they actively  alienated themselves from their electoral heartlands, which actually voted for independence (or as Nick Clegg learned – voters have memories).

XIV)           To be continued

XV)             Also to be continued, ideally with mate chat and debate

The Greek Getty reversal

"If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." (J. Paul Getty)

As the Greek tragedy rumbles on, the brutal realpolitick of the situation keeps falling between the lines of all the articles being written about the subject. This reality is straightforward; in 2009 and 2010 a Grexit would have been a very bad thing, now it’s apparently very much less so. 

Greece’s tax dodging elites have already shifted as much of their assets overseas as they can. And as Greece’s current finance minister noted, 90% of Greece’s original $260bn bailout was used to repay French, German and Greek banks; since then, European banks have been extricating themselves from as much of their remaining Greek debts as they possible can.

Alongside this detailed plans for managing the mechanical consequences of a Grexit i.e. what about cash machines and currency transfers etc., were written (and tested) so long ago they’re already gathering dust in cupboards across Europe.

So with the rich ok, the (non-Greek) banks ok and arrangements for managing things well established, our lords and masters don’t especially give a damn about Greece defaulting. Yes it would be a pain, but then the resultant devaluation would create lots of investment opportunities, so its swings and roundabouts and the troika negotiating with Greece knows this.

 One wee caveat presumably concerns Greek politics; given mainstream politics has already failed, if Syrzia doesn't work what's left?

16/6/15 - P.S. Chat from a mate helped me clarify a further point; the "that Greek lot are amateurish and  immature" line being taken is destructive bollocks. When the EU elite say this they conveniently forget the Greeks they were willing to negotitate with and lend big muneh too where the ones who tolerated industrial scale tax avoidance, ran up the massive debts in the first place and were actively criminal in the pursuit of their own interests i.e. the EU blame them its no us line appears to be better a bunch of incompetent crooks than folks actually willing to speak a lot (but not all, the WWII repatriations chat was daft, if desperate) of sense........ ahhh, perhaps that's why, given the EU's blinkered and dogmatic approach, Syrzia is getting called amateurish.