fahrenheit451:087

It is axiomatic that an increase in the supply of labour decreases the price thereof. 
Obvious? 
Not to the British Trades Union Congress; who dare not even contemplate a  debate on unrestricted competition in the UK labour market. 
The TUC along with their ideological confreres in the Labour Party subscribe to the shibboleth extolled by the European Union, that of  " the free movement of labour within the EU ". 
For example, gleaned from official Polish government statistics,the official rate of unemployment in Poland in 2003 ( a year before accession to the EU ) was at over 20%,  in 2016 it stands at just over 8%. 
Poland in keeping with the other largely bankrupt, economically moribund, rustbelt former Warsaw Pact states has been a major beneficiary of the very EU dictum so enthusiastically embraced and propagated by our own TUC. 
The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania have not somehow been magically transformed into vibrant,growth-orientated economies by their membership of the EU.They have however been able to export their vast numbers of unemployed to those regions of the EU able to absorb them. The UK, Germany, Sweden and France chief amongst them.

Not that the necessary infrastructure was in place nor put into place to assist this process.
No additional housing provision, no additional schools provision, no additional health service beds or GP surgeries; because no national government could reasonably estimate how many would suddenly turn up on their respective doorsteps at any time. 

Capitalism at its heart is anarchic and therefore unpredictable, despite all protestations to the contrary by leading capitalist spokesmen. Actions have forseeable consequences. 
 Trades Unions are universally predicated on the principle of defending, maintaining and seeking to improve the pay and working conditions of their members. 

They are not in existence to prioritise policies other than those aforementioned.
 And yet..so it goes.  

fahrenheit451:086

#Brexit like any genuinely historic sea change within the British Polity ( The Reformation,The English Civil War of the 1640's, the Bloodless Revolution of 1688 etc. ) will take a good long while to resolve itself into something that becomes a feature of an established societal landscape,the seismic convulsions of which are already underway. All the requisite conventions of open public political discourse will be on display as sides inveigh against one another with all the gravitas of Old Testament prophets. And that is how it should be, how in fact it ought to be continually, but alas tends not to be in practice. #LabourIn,the official grouping of some 200 MPs woefully out of touch on the issue with their own constituents, are the heart and lungs of the defeated Remain Campaign, much more so than the peripheral regionalist parties and the truncated Liberals added together. Ab initio my take on the European Union and all of its works has been unequivocally hostile; let death come to it and soon. I append a copy of my latest poisonous dart which I emailed out to my local and regional newspapers today.

Sir -As any experienced competent negotiator knows, the process of negotiating tends to resemble a game of Poker.Bluff ,counter bluff and raising the stakes are intrinsic to the process itself. How skilled any side is, determines the likelihood of them getting most of what they want

A grasp of these rudimentary principles seem to be eluding our government as they near the time for invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and so begin the  process of " Brexit "from the EU. Apart from the disillusioned euro-fanatics of the defeated Remain campaign, the consensus is that we want to maximise the advantages and benefits for the UK predicated on what are basic objectives - reasserting our sovereign control of our borders which entails ending the EU imposed diktat of free movement of labour.

it does not bode well that,even before substantive talks begin, our future negotiating position is compromised by specious and ill formed public concessions to the defeatist agenda of the likes of LabourIn,most of whose 200 MPs are wildly out of step with their own constituents. Brexit need not be a long complicated process,nor does it have to be dragged out over the prescribed two years. It is axiomatic that in any given negotiation the side that is most determined wins.

Rather than capitulate before  a card is dealt, let's declare a moratorium on  the moribund and no longer fit for purpose freedom of movement for labour. Given the 40+ years of economic and social depradations inflicted upon us by the EU, let's have a general reset on what are " guest workers " from the EU,whose rights have as of 23 June de facto been rescinded. A strong negotiating position would be that only citizens of EU member states prior to January 2004 ,might be eligible to apply for extended residency permits.This measure would provide a substantial corrective to the indiscriminate and unprecedented imbalances and disadvantages foisted on the UK  who in 1975 only previously consented to be part of a 6 member states group and nothing more.

Louis Kasatkin

fahrenheit451:085

I did originally think it a spoof. Some sort of meta-modernist work of installation art.But I guess on reflection, Black Lives Matter were being serious. They staged a sit-down protest on the runway at London City Airport.The following gleaned from The Sun online :-

They ( BLM ) wrote: “Climate crisis is a racist crisis. 7/10 of the countries most affected by climate change are in sub-Saharan Africa.”

“The UK is the biggest per-capita contributor to temperature change & among the least vulnerable to its affects.

“At London City airport a small elite is able to fly, in 2016 alone 3,176 migrants have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean #Shutdown.

“By 2050 there will be 200 million climate refugees. Black people are the first to die, not the first to fly, in this racist climate crisis.”

Ultra-left diehards will find this very much to their particular ideological tastes. Reductionism, I believe its called. Everything in life and society in general,every kind of social phenomena can be subjected to a quasi-forensic analysis using a Marxist-Leninist ideological frame of reference. Political Correctness (PC) was incubated in the pseudo-Marxian womb and we all know what utterly devastating consequences that has wreaked on an unsuspecting and naive world. Branding the contentious notion of ” Climate change ” with an equally contentious notion of ” racism ” really is ideological alchemy. Marxism as thaumaturgy.

fahrenheit451:084

Saturday 2nd.September 2016, deliberately on the 77th anniversary of the expiration of the UK's ultimatum to Nazi Germany; the brazenly antidemocratic demagogues of #LabourIn and their squalid Petainist co-conspirators of the discredited EURemain campaign under the fascistic slogan of "Let's take back control" of #marchforeurope have laid siege to the sovereign,democratic will and legitimacy of the British electorate as expressed in the Vote for #brexit on June 23.

fahrenheit451:083

A flurry of social and mainstream corporate media activity accompanied Jeremy Corbyn's  recent launch of his " Digital Manifesto ". One paragraph in particular struck me as more than just a little sinister in its implications.

 

" We will develop a voluntary scheme that provides British citizens with a secure and portable
identity for their on-line activities. The Digital Citizen Passport will be used when interacting
with public services like health, welfare, education and housing. "

 

Clearly we're deep inside Humpty-Dumpty territory where words mean precisely what those who use them want them to mean, no more and no less. " We will develop a voluntary scheme.." The use of the royal " we " in this particular context refers to a notionally future Labour Government where Corbyn, presumably is Prime Minister. Repeat apres moi develop a voluntary scheme.Presumably participation in the development of the scheme itself will be voluntary, as will the actual participation once this scheme is implemented. This scheme, " The Digital Citizen Passport " will be used when interacting with various public services. Where does that place the,currently estimated, 6 ,000,000 digitally excluded citizens? Surely the customary face to face interpersonal, over the counter transactions will be allowed to continue, won't they? In which case why introduce a digital citizens passportat all? Is the current blight of mass digital exclusion to be tackled first and every household and every citizen included via a government backed programme?

There will have to be either a very steep learning curve or a very long lead time ahead of implementation. Then again virtually all politicians of all persuasions adopt that insufferably haughty manner whenever trumpeting the next big thing that they'll be involved in bringing to pass.

Can't wait for the, what was it again? oh yeah, digital citizen passport..

 

fahrenheit451:082

In spite of the British Electorate's continuing, unambiguous, disdain of mass immigration, all major political parties ( as well as the plethora of non-parliamentary Leftist parties ) support and promote mass immigration. Quite why this should be so remains at best, somewhat of a mystery and at worst a systematic,conscious betrayal of the fundamental economic interests of the Electorate as a whole. Immigration is the Great Shibboleth of British political discourse. Even in the aftermath of the groundbreaking historic vote for Brexit, idiots such as Jeremy Corbyn argue, ad nauseam, that it's incumbent upon the British people to get used to the idea of large numbers of immigrants permanently altering the British way of life.Why? because in his view ( and that of the rest of the Labour Party ), immigration is a good thing which brings with it benefits to wider society. An ageing workforce is one threadbare unsubstantiated claim they make, as is NHS staffing levels and how dependent the NHS is on immigrant workers. As if by some inexplicable act of thaumaturgy workers with the prefix " immigrant " are somehow intrinsically morally superior or have an innate noble quality about them that are simply absent in the bog standard british worker. It is, surprisingly, politicians of the Centre Right to whom it has fallen to be the ones to explain the basic laws that govern the operation and functioning of capitalist economics. Immigration increases and intensifies competition within national labour markets and depresses wages. And as we have seen in the UK economy as a whole, since even before the onset of the Recession in 2007/08, labour market competition galvanised by unrestricted EU migration has been at its most intense at the unskilled, entry level industrial end of the economy. Official data such as it is, puts the current aggregate figure of unemployment amongst the EU's 28 member states at around 30,000,000.It has always been the case that the EU's " freedom of movement " for labour, has simply been a mechanism for allowing and facilitating the transferring of jobless from one country to those countries where the national economies have fared better; generally from south to north and since 2004 from east to west. The bankrupt, rustbelt economies of the former Warsaw Pact, Poland chief amongst them, have been major beneficiaries:-

Poland's unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent in July 2016 from an all time high of 20.70 percent in February of 2003.Unemployment Rate in Poland is reported by the Central Statistical Office of Poland (GUS).  It was in 2004 that Poland along with Hungary,Czech Republic, Slovakia,Estonia,Latvia and Lithuania became full members of the EU. Britain was only one of three existing member states that allowed these new member states immediate access to its national labour market. 

The recent accession of the even more economically sclerotic and dysfunctional Bulgaria and Romania has exacerbated beyond measure the chaos and turmoil engendered by inner-EU migration. Quite where the benefits to the host nation state are supposed to accrue from in all of this, is the question the Left and most other political parties refuse steadfastly to answer let alone engage with in a rational and meaningful discourse. And yet, despite all the specious and convoluted posturing, attempted manipulation and snake oil salesmanship of the Pro-mass Immigration lobby, the vast majority of British People have never actually believed one goddamn single word told them by the establishment or by their political representatives on this issue.

 

fahrenheit451:081

NATO is when all's said and done, merely a convenient instrument by which the United States carries out its foreign policy objectives. These imperial policy goals are enacted through a flexible combination of of political sophistry, economic intimidation and military acts of aggression. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,Iraq,Libya,Syria,Iran,Ukraine are amongst the most recent targets. Each " intervention " with or without any additional  legitimising UN authorisation, has brought about far wider and longer lasting  geopolitical ructions than perhaps even the most hawkish Washington neocon warmonger could possibly have contemplated. A direct Turkish military invasion of Syria was, most likely, not on the neocons list of what could possibly go wrong list when they set about engineering the destruction of what is now disparagingly in the West called , " The Assad Regime ". Likewise Russia being granted operational capabilities on Iranian airfields was another scenario Washington couldn't see coming. The emergence of ISIS/Daesh, the rise of ethnic Kurdish militias inside Syria. Flashpoint upon flashpoint until what the underlying neocon policy objectives were to begin with are now enmeshed in an ungovernable vortex. Despite all its proselytising Commentators and Experts intellectual /quasi-philosophical pretensions about " order " and predictability, the capitalist system is itself predicated on continuing chaos and greater or lesser degrees of innate instability. The Ruling Elites and their fervent, obedient acolytes of the political class believe as an article of faith, in the efficacy of " market forces ". Profit and loss. Thaumaturgy for the 21st,century.The neocon global military strategists and thinkers are there to formulate policies that are intended to reinforce the economic doctrines and practices of neoliberalism. Which in essence equate precisely with the defined policy objectives of the western industrialised liberal democracies under the hegemony of the  United States.  It's a good thing therefore that this depraved and dysfunctional nostalgia for a western dominated unipolar world is being successfully,albeit incrementally challenged by the likes of China; of whom it was widely reported the other week:-

China’s official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary that recent visit by Guan Youfei, the Chinese military official charged with overseeing international cooperation, signaled Beijing’s willingness to boost military cooperation with the Damascus government.

And I bet that wasn't on the US State Department's Top 10 list of what could possibly go wrong in Syria either.