More good news: Spain's
unemployment fell in November, taking the current rate down to a mere
23.7%. Some, at least, of this is down to foreigners (for which read
South Americans) going home because they can't get the work they got
easily back in the boom years.
I cited yesterday a
couple of examples of the Spanish government coming to the aid of
companies that feel they're facing 'unfair' competition. A third is
the newspaper industry, needed as an ally ahead of the 2015
elections. As of January, news aggregators such as Google will be
heavily charged for publishing on the net articles from said
newspapers. Google's reaction to this 'Google tax' has been to end their service as of Dec. 16. This, they say, will deny the papers
the advertising revenue generated by readers sent by them to the
original articles. As of now, I believe I
won't be fined for citing articles in this blog but who knows?
Toying with taking out
a Mercadona credit card, I took a look at the application form.
Needless to say, it sought for a lot of personal information,
including my ID number. It also asked what occupation category I fell into but I was disappointed to find these included Housewife but not
Househusband. Best of all, it asked for the cause of any pension I
might have. Which left me rather dumbfounded. So I decided to give it
a miss.
I've read a couple of
articles recently on the more-imminent-than-ever demise of the EU, at
least in its current form. One of these is pasted below, from Peter
Oborne. Search 'Ambrose' for one or two more.
Finally . . . Looking
through an old notebook, I found these plays on the words Google. I
don't think I've listed them here before, possibly for good reason.
They relate to very specific searches:-
For adhesives: Gloogle
For nuts and bolts:
Scroogle
For boat personnel:
Croogle
For depression: Bloogle
For sample bottles:
Stoolgle
For cow stuff: Moogle
For Magic Roundabout
stuff: Doogle
For financial advice:
Froogle
For animals: Zoogle.
Doubtless you can come
up with a few yourself.
The EU
The euro is heading for
disaster - what luck for David Cameron
By Peter Oborne
As Karl Marx was one of
the earliest to point out, economics (though so much less
interesting) is far more important than politics.
Marx considered all
political events as epiphenomena. He viewed great men as blind
instruments of irresistible forces which they themselves could hardly
comprehend.
The Marxist vision of
society has been disproved many times, always at epic human cost.
However, his doctrine that productive forces propel history has stood
the test of time – and is invaluable for an understanding of the
current predicament of the European Union.
It elegantly explains
why European Monetary Union was destined to fail. The state
socialists and former communists who invented the euro never got to
grips with this aspect of Marxist thought. Only Conservatives with an
intelligent appreciation of economics and history – an enlightened
congregation that included Margaret Thatcher, Oliver Letwin, Peter
Lilley, Tim Congdon, John Redwood, Nicholas Ridley and Alan Walters –
grasped that the EMU would collapse under the weight of its own
contradictions, and that it was folly to construct a single currency
before the political conditions were in place.
Meanwhile the European
elite who advocated the euro (British representatives included
Michael Heseltine, Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair, Ken Clarke, Nick
Clegg and Danny Alexander, at the time only a cadet member of the
European political class, so perhaps the chief secretary can be
forgiven) ignored all warnings. Indeed, Lord Mandelson is still
advocating British membership!
It is impossible to
exaggerate the arrogance, the bone-headed stupidity and above all the
brutality and callousness of these Europhiles. Their demented attempt
to impose a new economic model on an unworkable political structure
has already caused untold suffering. At the heart of their project is
an audacious attempt to prove the primacy of politics over economics.
Bear in mind that it is an experiment for which the European elite
personally do not have to pay a price.
Their experiment has
caused depression (not recession as inaccurately reported by
pro-European journalists at the BBC and elsewhere) across much of
Europe.
This is getting worse.
The Italian economy is moribund, social cohesion has vanished and
Italians are starting to turn venomously on immigrants. The Greek
economy has shrunk by 30 per cent, and one quarter of the population
is out of work. Youth unemployment in Spain stands at an unspeakable
50 per cent.
We are talking about
tens of millions of ruined lives, and busted dreams. This reality has
already brought about a convulsion in Europe. Entirely new political
parties have emerged, from the far-Left and far-Right, brought into
existence by a common scream of despair against a broken system.
For the time being, the
former political class remains in charge. It has as much legitimacy
as the ancien regime in pre-revolutionary France, with the same moral
bankruptcy, calculating venality and profound sense of entitlement.
This elite has the same distaste for democracy as 18th-century lords,
and over the long term the same chances of survival. In its dying
convulsions, Jean-Claude Juncker’s political class has abolished
democracy. Italy has had three consecutive unelected prime ministers
since Silvio Berlusconi’s scepticism about the euro caused the EU
elite to recruit an unscrupulous cabal of bankers to remove him
(former US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gives a gripping account
of this unwholesome manoeuvre in his recent memoir).
That it has survived so
far is thanks to a series of financial confidence tricks, of which
the latest example is Juncker’s implausible scheme to convert €21
billion of equity into a €315 billion slush fund to relaunch the
European economy. This amounts to no more than wishful ravings,
though it would be financially disastrous if by some malign chance it
were put into effect.
Things cannot go on
like this, and this month we have witnessed a series of telling signs
that the eurozone has turned back into a danger zone. On Monday, we
learnt that France and Italy will soon breach their fiscal limits.
There are signs of disharmony at the European Central Bank – yet
more proof that no central bank can exert real authority without a
state behind it.
The ECB is racking up
worthless sovereign debt and bank loans in its doomed battle to save
the eurozone: in due course there will be an almighty row about who
will pay up for the black hole.
Hopes that economic
growth will float the eurozone off the rocks have been extinguished
by forecasts of stagnation from the cruelly realistic ECB.
Meanwhile the eurozone
has been plunged into deflation, meaning that in real terms the value
of debt will rise, a chilling repeat of the European experience of
the Thirties.
Most deadly of all is
the resurrection of the Greek debt horror. The country is
ungovernable and on Tuesday the president was (quite rightly) sacked,
opening up the possibility of a spring general election, and thus
causing the biggest collapse on the Athens stock market in 27 years.
We are very close now
to Karl Marx’s moment of alignment. The political structure must be
made to fit the economic reality, or vice versa. Bear in mind that
the single currency will only work with a single economic policy, a
single treasury, a single system of taxation and spending, a single
national parliament and single political identity.
Europe’s incapable
leadership have been trying to avoid this inevitable outcome. But the
looming financial catastrophe will force them to confront it. It will
be very frightening indeed for tens of millions of families, all the
more so because Europe’s self-imposed economic disaster has
destroyed the authority of mainstream parties, politicians and
democratic institutions.
I guess that two things
will emerge, along with a new social order, out of the chaos. Many
countries – Greece and Italy among them – will abandon the lunacy
of the euro.
Consolidation will take
place at the centre. France, Belgium and a few others will realise
Jean Monnet’s dream and come together to form a new state, which
will have Germany at its centre.
I admit that it is
parochial and self-regarding to consider the consequences for
Britain, but they are promising. So far, David Cameron’s campaign
for a treaty negotiation to accommodate British sensibilities has
seemed selfish and hopeless. But the outlook would change with a new
European architecture based around a greater Germany. Expect a
two-tier Europe (of the kind advocated by Jacques Delors in 2005)
with a second group of countries enjoying looser trading, foreign
policy, defence and other arrangements with the centre.
This kind of European
Union would be consistent with promises made to the British people in
the 1975 referendum. It would be acceptable to all barring a handful
of Ukip supporters and hardened Lib Dem voters.
It is exactly the
Europe of nation states advocated by Margaret Thatcher – that
far-sighted and dangerously acute student of Karl Marx – in her
famous Bruges Group speech in 1988. She understood the connection
between politics and economics, which is why she tried to prevent
monetary union.
I have noted before
that Cameron is a very lucky Prime Minister. The looming eurozone
crisis will have terrible consequences for countless ordinary people,
but will help to get the PM out of a tight spot, and better still,
may help realise Margaret Thatcher’s eternal vision of a Europe of
nations.
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