Why blame to Germans? And when does ‘exercising your agenda’ become straightforward looting?

I’ve been reading up on the BBC News website about the euro crisis and came across their correspondent Gavin Hewitt’s blog and subsequent comments by readers. And what struck me was a noticeable anti-German sentiment among many of the comments. This is grossly unfair and naïve to boot. The general tone of the anti-Germanism was that sooner or later the ‘Germans will take over’, that the future of Europe should not be in the hands of a country which ‘started two world wars’ and similar bullshit. This is nothing but barroom talk of the most ill-educated kind. And what has Germany done to attract such animosity? Well, nothing as far as I can see. What it has done is to run a tight ship, keep its state borrowing down and to make sure everything runs smoothly and efficiently. What exactly is wrong with that?
There is a useful phrase which cynically, but accurately, describes a curious aspect of human nature. You might know it: No good deed goes unpunished. It seems to me apt in the circumastances. It so happens that the German governments of the post-war years have been enthusiastic about the EU and its institutions and so far that enthusiasm has ensured that Germany is providing the lion’s share of the bailout cash for Greece, Portugal and Ireland. It’s true that it isn’t just goodwill which is behind their actions – if the eurozone goes up the swannee and Germany’s customers for its exports can’t afford them any more, that is bad news. So Germany is doing its best to ensure that crisis never happens. But that isn’t the full story. For better or worse Germany – or rather its government – still believes in the EU and that the peaceful future of Europe depends upon it. And that is another reason why it is taking a hit to bail out the feckless Greeks. (Incidentally, it is well-known that the better off you are in Greece, the less tax you pay.
Part of the problem has been that successive Greek governments have simply let that state of affairs continue.) But there could well come a point, and it might well come sooner than we expect – or some fear – that the Germans tell themselves ‘enough is enough’ and ask themselves ‘why are we putting up with this shit?’ And that thought might occur to the electorate sooner than it occurs to the government. The next federal elections in Germany are in just over two years, and that is not a long time in political terms. It might be about now that both the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats take the pulse of the country and decide a little less euro jubilation might be called for if they are to have any chance whatsoever of beating the opposition.

. . .

For the past two nights there has been rioting in London in mainly black areas. It has carried on all day today in different parts of London. Actually, what mainly went on in Tottenham on Sunday night was looting. It started after a man was shot dead by police in Tottenham, but that seems to me a poor excuse for a bout of overnight all-out thieving. On the radio this morning an community activist, or something like that, from the area, spoke of unemployed black people ‘exercising their agenda’, whatever the fuck that means – nothing, I think. I don’t doubt that unemployment has a lot to do with it, but I can’t see why that justifies all-out looting. It also becomes rather murky when the number of blacks rioting is equalled by the number of whites, which rather make me think that any talk of this being caused be racism – which it might well soon from those intent on convincing us that the looters were ‘exercising their agenda’ – is just so much bullshit. It would be useful to point out that there is a considerable number of unemployed blacks and whites who don’t choose to ‘exercise their agenda’ by indulging in a spot of looting.

Rioters exercise their agenda in Brixton, South London, on Monday

UPDATE: The rioters have now set fire to buildings in Croydon, which is to the south of London, and the rioting has now spread to Kilburn, West London and Birmingham. I've been watching the news live on TV, and it is pretty obvious that this is action by hooligans. There is nothing in it to do with racism.

Barroso fucks up big time, while those at the bottom of the pile are reminded that the best advice as far as hope is concerned is to forget it. Plus ca change . . . Oh, and I go for a walk

For these last few entries, I have been banging on about how doomed the euro is, how the eurozone is bound to collapse and how the EU will go the way of the dodo. I don’t know about you, but I have no stomach at all to bang away for another entry. What has been happening over the past few days in no ways persuades me that I am wrong and about the only sensible and useful comment that can be added is: what kind of total fuckwit is Jose Manuel Barroso (or Manolo Blahnik as he calls himself when he’s in London selling shoes). We have a saying (of which there is any number of variants, and of which the Australian variants are by far the most amusing): he’s a sandwich short of a picnic, or given the bureaucratic nature of his existence, he’s a reassurance short of a total fuck-up. If you

Shit! I think I've fucked it. Me and my big mouth
think I am being harsh, let me remind you of how he poured oil onto a smouldering fire rather than, as would have been wiser, onto troubled waters. (And if that doesn’t win Hollywood’s Most Convoluted Simile next year or even Most Contrived Addition To Most Pointless Blog next year, there’s no justice in the world.) Just to remind you of quite how assinine he proved to be, he sent a letter to the head of states of all the countries in the Eurozone which can easily be paraphrased: ‘Lads, we’re in deep, deep shit, but don’t panic. If we all pull together, some of us might still get out of this alive. Don’t count your chickens, but don’t give up quite yet.’ If there were anything which Brussels might hope would inspire a little confidence in ‘the money markets’ (in this context quote marks imply that if they are not yet crooks, they are just a deal or two away from gaining that hallowed status) Barroso letter of reassurance was not it. Not by a million miles. Stock markets throughout the world (and, by some accounts, in Alpha Centauri) took fright as investors sold up and took off for an early weekend. Can you blame them. With ‘presidents’ like Barroso, who needs nasty little Englander eurosceptics like David Farr-Wright?

. . .

What bothers me more than anything is that it will be the same folk who will carry the brunt of the coming bad times as it always is: those at the bottom of the pile. When economies contract, as they invariably will, ‘labour flexibility’ will once again come into vogue and firms will ‘lay off’ — that is sack — as many of their workforce as will allow the bosses to survive. They will undoubtedly do so with ‘a heavy heart’ but when they do and when they confess their sadness at what ‘economic forces’ ‘oblige’ them to do, remind yourself that in this world there is nothing cheaper than words. In the meantime, our politicians, esteemed these days by ever fewer of their electorate, will retire to whatever comfortable bolt hole they have arranged for themselves, to write their memoirs, pass on their wisdom, admit candidly — now that the danger has passed — that they made mistakes and generally reflect that, on balance, life isn’t quite as simple as it might be. No, it isn’t, and it is even less simple for all those who have absolutely no control over circumstance but who have to live by the stupid decisions you make.

. . .

I realise I am getting rather incoherent here, but I put that down to anger. For all my life I have been cursed by an ability to see much from both sides, and, on the one hand I could here and now write the apologia of those politicos who meant well, stuck to their principles and who were desolate at how it all turned out, as I hear the desperate cries of unemployed folk throughout history who have been comprehensively shat upon only because they are apparently of no consequence and who have no control whatsoever over their destiny. I fully understand what is meant by and what are the advantages of ‘labour flexibility’. In a certain context it makes complete sense. But I also feel nothing but contempt for those who regard ordinary folk as nothing but an economic factor. And there are plenty of those. All my life the right has regarded me as a leftie and the left has regarded me as of the right. To this day I don’t know where I belong. But I do know one thing: you cannot treat people like shit. Not now, not ever. And that is what will happen yet again over the coming years as the euro goes phut, as the world economy grinds to a halt, as economically Asia gets the upper hand over Europe and the world as we 61-year-olds have known it is transformed into something entirely different. It will happen again as those who, for whatever reason, find themselves cleaning their lavatories see their wages cut because that is what economic circumstance and ‘the market’ demand, while those who are already earning too much will be paid even bigger bonuses for coming up with suggestions as to how to get out of the economic mess their kind produced in the first place. Am I a Tory or a Leftie? I really don’t know.

...

For a guy who lives in the depths of North Cornwall on the edge of Bodmin Moor and in an area which for many others is a holiday destination where they can find fresh air and peace and quiet, I spend scandalously little time out-of-doors. Well, this afternoon I decided to do something about that. For these past three or four weeks I have been feeling curiously out-of-sorts. Nothing physical, it’s just that I can’t get enthusiastic about anything. So earlier today, I decided that what I needed was fresh air. My son is now 12, but six years ago, he used to enjoy taking me for a walk and showing be corners of the village he had discovered. Unfortunately, he is now far more in love with his Xbox and the PC, but, hoping against hope, I asked him whether he would like to go for a walk with me. His answer was inevitable. ‘Er, no, not really.’ So I took myself off and visited - well, it’s not even a hamlet. It’s called Bradford and there are about four cottages and a farm more or less near each other. There is a pretty little bridge over what are the beginnings of the Lank river, and I sat there doing absolutely bugger all for quite a while, just enjoying the breeze and the flow of the Lank. Here are three piccies. They were all taken on my, now exceptionally ancient, Samsung mobile phone.

Relief all round, the EU has found a solution: put Greece even further in debt

The newspapers are full this morning of how the fat was pulled out of the fire at the last minute and the euro has been saved. Greece will get another trillion billion of euros to help get it out of the shit, and this time, at the insistence of Germany's Kanzler Angela Merkel, those nasty moneymen, much distrusted by every right-thinking European, will also shoulder some of the burden. They won't acutally contribute any money, they will merely 'contribute' by not having the money they lent Greece repaid for another 30 years rather than after 10. Eveyone feared the worst and the 'markets rose' all over the world at the news that a soltuion had been found. Already, I'm sure, parades are being organised throughout the lands to celebrate this demonstration of unity. But hold on a minute.
Greece's problems will not be solved. The solution is merely that a country so in debt that it cannot afford even to pay the interest on money it had previously borrowed, is simply being lent even more money. In any other context the appropriate reaction would have

been a huge 'what?' and those coming up with the solution would have been hauled off by the men in white coats. The only excuse for putting forward what in any other circumstances (and a more rational society) would have been regarded as completely bonkers is that there was simply no other option. If Greece had gone down the pan, they say, then Portugal and Ireland would also have done so, and then it would have been the turn of Italy and Spain. This would have caused a severe economic depression in the rest of Europe and then the rest of the world. There would have been a global slump. So that's all right then: the world has been saved. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. The grand plan rests on the hope that Greece, Europe and the rest of the world will start growing their economies again, things will get back to normal and Greece will slowly come up out of the shit and start behaving like a good European. This seems to me rather like a bankrupt going to the races and betting his last sou on a sure thing: certainly his horse might romp home, but equally certainly it might not. The only abiding image of yesterday's meeting finance directors which is at all truthful is a lot of guys in expensive suits sitting around nervously and crossing their fingers.
What no one has been tactless enough to mention, so I'll mention it, is that we just shouldn't be in this mess in the first place (and I must now say we because even non-euro members are equally threatened). Twelve years ago when all those EU fuckwits were waving flags and setting off fireworks and treating the arrival of the new currency as the Second Coming, they all knew - all of them - that several of the member states signing up to join the euro had cooked the books to be able to do so. Never ming the figures, they said, feel the joy. This, they said, is the European dream.
Meanwhile, a great many economists were warning that the Europe-wide interest rate that would henceforth be applied to all those countries joining the euro was inappropriate given the disparate nature of so many EU economies. Well, here's a thing: why are Greece, Portugal and Ireland now in the shit? Why are Irish pensioners and those on benefits having their pensions and benefits cut? Why are the poor in those countries getting ever closer to penury? Why? Because when the economies of each of those three countries started to go awry, the one financiall measure they should have taken to cool down their economies - cutting interest rates - was no longer available to them. But no one has been honest enough to admit that, yes, they were wrong. In the real world, heads should have rolled. But you can bet they won't roll in Brussels.
My sister, who is a fan of the euro, thinks I'm some kind of Cassandra, only too keen to see the whole euro project collapse. She thinks that I'm talking pie in the sky when I claim that it can only get worse and that eventually those who have nothing to lose could even turn to violence in the streets. That has already happened in Greece, yet it is early days of the austerity measures. It is tactless to say so and given that the notion of 'democracy' began in Athens, quite ironic, but the tradition of democracy is still a little shaky in Greece which less than 45 years ago had a few years of dictatorship, and Salazar's 35-year dictator ship of Portugal only ended 45 years ago. How would Brussels react if in either or both countries a 'strong man' or a group of 'strong men' tried to grab power with the support of poor people who decided they had nothing to lose? Such a grab for power need not even be successful . It could well lead to civil war. And if that happened, how would Brussels react? The point I made to my sister was not that this is bound to happen, but that we would be foolish to think that such days are long gone. She said that 'government wouldn't allow it'. I pointed out that to stay in power, governments need the support of the majority of their people, and once they lose that support, they might well find themselves out of office, to be replaced by less salubrious types resorting to naked nationalism. It's not as though that hasn't happened in the past, and I can't understand why she and others insist it can't and would not happen again. When people are unemployed and have nothing to lose, they reckon they might as well try anything.

Some pix and news of three concerts. Finally a Screws, euro and Murdoch-free blog entry

Here are a couple of pics I took today, in no particular order and of no particular merit. I have also changed my blog pic for a while, just for the crac.

The picture below is one I saw a chap taking as I was driving home. 'What are you doing,' I asked him, and he told me he had been commissioned by Bradford City Council to compile a series of photographs taken in each EU member state which celebrated diversity in community which are intended to show solidarity with the European Union. Well, if it's good enought for him, it's good enough for me I thought, especially as he had a load of very expensive looking equipment whereas my pic was snapped on a GE C1033 on offer at E Leclerc in Lagon.

The table and chairs in the next picture were sitting next to me in the cafe in Bazas cathedral square and we fell into conversation (as you do when you are abroad) and the stories they had to tell! They were very good about having their picture taken and managed to keep quite still when I took it, keeping their natural Gallic exuberance in check.

There's a rather amusing story attached to my next picture. It seems that several years ago the Socialist mayor was defeated over some minor issue and never came to terms with his fate. Apparently, he began behaving in ever more odd ways daubing various buildings at night with Socialist slogans and symbols until finally the prefecture had to have him sectioned. He was a keen nuclear abolitionist in his youth and the people of Bazas, who were otherwise very fond of him decided the last symbol he painted before his arrest should be preserved in his honour.

Below is the pulpit in the parish church in Illats where I am staying. Last year, when the village got to hear that I keep a blog, they voted in (by a rather slim majority, but let's no go there) a district ordinance giving me squatter's rights whenever I am visiting (that is, I can preach from the pulpit whenever I like). I'm not too sure whether it is just a symbolic right or whether I could, in fact, exercise it, and so far I have decided to err on the side of caution.

Finally, no collection of holiday snaps would be complete without a pointless, though pretty, shot of a small river taken from a bridge. Here is mine, taken just a few minutes drive down the road.

. . .

Part of my stay was taken up going to concerts, although as I couldn't get away earlier in the month, we weren't able to go to any of those which are part of a Baroque music festival. However, we went to three, of which I enjoyed two and a half. Let me get the half out of the way I didn't enjoy. It was at the Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte in Martillac, about 25 minutes drive away, in which a Roger Muraro (I'm reading from the programme - I'd never heard of him, but then I've never heard of most of these people) played pieces by Liszt, Schuman and then Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique rearranged for the piano by Liszt, or bloody Liszt as I like to call him. I like Schuman (although he can get a little close to the mid-nineteenth century lush romanticism of which a little goes a very long way) but I don't like Liszt. Nor, for that matter, do I like Chopin. They spend far too long aimlessly noodling around on the keyboard, and the main impression I get is that they are rather keen to show us how clever and versatile they are. In addition, Liszt does bang about on the keyboard as though it were a tympany. I think I had only heard the Symphonie Fantastique once before and it wasn't a piece I was in a rush to hear again, so you can imagine just how much I enjoyed Liszt's interpretation of the piece. It went on for way over an hour and at one point I think I even stopped breathing.
However, the night before was a treat, as was the night after. Monday's concert was at the same chateau, although part of a different festival. It started at 5.30pm with a masterclass given by a chap called Maxim Vengero (and my aunt can't get over that I had never heard of him. Then, in the concert proper, he played Brahms sonatas for violin and piano, encoring with a piece by Ravel, which I have yet to identify, but which was joy.
Last night at the Chateau Gravas a Barsac was a much smaller concert of French Baroque music played on a harpsichord, viol de gamba flute accompanying a soprano. And the older I get, the more I like that kind of music. Stuff bloody Liszt and Chopin, crash, crash, crash bang, bang.
Also at the chateau was an exhibition of work by some chap called Paul Flickinger (he's not German but from Alsace). My aunt like his stuff, I didn't. It reminded me of what I've decided to call 'corporate art', the kind of stuff huge conglomertes like Shell, Pepsi, Ford and Transnational Acquisitions pay through the nose for to hang in their lobbies and corridors. As soon as I saw it, the word 'contrived' came to mind. But then what do I know (except, of course, that Liszt and Chopin, and for that matter Wagner, are a pain in the butt. One reason why Wagner goes on and on and on was that he was paid by the hour. That always brings the worst out in a composer.)

Those crafty lads at the FSB: now, apparently, they are running al-Qaeda. And the ‘hacking scandal’ – it gets even murkier, though one thing is clear: the Murdoch’s are on their way out

A rather contentious, not to say very odd, claim has come my way that the FSB, Russia’s successor to the KGB is, if not actually now running, at least in a good position to guide al-Qaeda. On the face of it, it would seem to be so much nonsense, but when you get into the detail, you have to agree that it can’t be dismissed out of hand.

At the moment, I am staying in the Bordeaux region for a week to attend a series of Baroque music concerts with my stepmother’s sister. She is a retired English teacher who most recently taught at the Bordeaux University and who regularly gets copies of The Spectator which are passed on to her by a friend. You might or might not be familiar with my opinion of The Spectator, but briefly although on occasion some of its writers can be quite amusing, I don’t much like it. I just get tired of the general pose of ‘isn’t modern life just awful. It’s counterpart The New Statesman is equally tedious with its neverending maudlin refrain of ‘God aren’t the right/Tories/middle class/Daily Mail readers such heartless bastards. Shooting is too good for them’. To sum up both are as bad as each other.

I happened upon a recent edition of The Spectator (the June 25, 2011, if you’re interested) and immediately turned to page whatever when I read on the cover the come-on ‘Are the KGB running al-Qaeda?’ In essence, a writer with a suitably Eastern European name claims that Bin Laden’s successor, an Egyptian called Ayman al-Zawahiri, was taken up by the then KGB and schooled for six months in an establishment it has in the North Caucasus. The course is is said to have been enrolled on dealt in all sorts from how to run an organisation so it does what you want it to – impeccably Leninist that – to clandestine operations. Interestingly, the KGB eventually did admit that al-Zawahiri was in the North Caucasus for six months but that he had been picked up as an illegal alien and held for the six months while it tried to establish his identity, and then expelled when it couldn’t. That’s plausible, of course, but not particularly convincing, although not being convincing doesn’t mean The Spectators claim is true. But to add a little to the claim’s credibility are comments made by the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko who was bumped off in London (most probably by the KGB using a radioactive material) that al-Zawahiri was indeed the KGB’s man. Again claiming as much doesn’t prove anything, but the balance of probability is that the chap did have some sort of connection with the KGB and now with its successor, the FSB.

The Spectator’s tame Eastern European goes on to claim that once he had graduated from the KGB place in the North Caucasus, al-Zawahiri was sent to Afghanistan and told to infiltrate al-Qaeda and get as close to the top of the organisation as he could. Well, succeeding Bin Laden more or less achieves that goal, and I’m sure that – if the claims are true – a case of vodka and several kilos of Beluga caviar were sent on their way to brighten the chap’s leisure time. Though, on reflection probably no vodka. The obvious question is: why would Russia want to control al-Qaeda? To that the reply is that as the country’s economy is a bloody mess and it depends on the export of oil and gas, instability in the Middle East is to its advantage. It is also keen to portray the troubles in Chechnya not as a country’s struggle for independence, but as part of the global islamist troublemaking. And it also wants to be seen as a player in the anti-islamist movement. Or something. Anyway, as they say: believe it or not. Me, I’ll leave the jury out there for a while pondering the pros and cons.

. . .

Well, the Hacking Scandal – I think that by now it deserves the honour of capital letters, although I’m not too sure whether ‘Hacking Scandal’ is the name agreed upon or whether it is known as something else, Hackgate or something – is evolving by leaps and bound. I must, thought, admit that it is no interest whatsoever to anyone outside Britain except a few excitable careerists in in the US Justice Department who see it as a chance to climb the greasy pole and assorted swivel-eyed lefties wherever they live who regard Rupert Murdoch as the Devil’s representative on Earth – a sort of anti-Pope, I imagine. But for those who are inexplicably interested – I had a rather plaintive email from a pensioner in Sarawak who has asked me to outline what is going on exactly – I shall do my best to summarise the main points. And the first main point is that everyone is in the shit and sinking increasingly deeper, except the saintly Guardian, which over the past few years and especially the past few weeks has garnered so many journalistic Brownie points that it will soon be able to hold its own jamboree.

And by everyone, I do mean everyone, from Rupert Murdoch, Prime Minister David Cameron, virtually everyone in the Metropolitan police to everyone in the Labour Party, who were more assiduous in lining up to suck Rupert’s dick than anyone else. What is interesting (although I am bound to admit that I must use the word ‘interesting’ loosely) is that all those involved are involved in a slightly different way. There is nothing straightforward about the matter and there is talk of calling in the BBC’s cricket commentator’s to interpret it all, given that with their intricate knowledge of cricket, they are the only ones who can be relied upon to find understand such arcane detail.

Rupert and his idiot son James are in very real danger of seeing Rupert’s life’s work, skilfully and intelligently built up over the past 50 years unceremoniously go down the pan. David Cameron is fighting off claims that by employing the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson he is ‘guilty of an error of judgment’ (and a more severe failing it is hard to imagine. It makes Pol Pot’s genocide look like a minor social gaffe). The Met rozzers stand accused of accepting backhanders from News International hacks on an industrial scale. Labour assiduously sucked Rupert’s dick as much if not even more than the Tories which is making all their attempts at scaling the high moral ground utterly pointless. Our noble MPs, who were not at all averse to almost universally faking the expense chitties and were hauled over the coal by the Press for doing so, are relishing getting their own back and there is loose talk of ‘regulating the Press’. Well, their motives are lost on no one and. Only the saintly Guardian looks like coming out of this at all well.

Then there is the whiff of conspiracy about it all. Rebekah Brooks, the ‘flame-haired’ former Screws editor and former News International chief executive who finally resigned at the end of last week, is due, with Rupert and James, to appear before a Parliamentary committee tomorrow (Tuesday) to be questioned by loads of MPs. She was expected to give a full grilling on all aspects of the matter, not least about who among the Met was accepting backhanders, how much they were getting and for how long was this going on. Then out of the blue she was yesterday arrested by the Met on suspicion of whatever – because it doesn’t really matter: now that she is arrested, the MPs are pretty much restricted in what they can ask her because they will be warned that they could prejudice any possible future court action. And Rebekah will now be entitled to refuse to answer any question which, she could claim, might lead her to incriminate herself. No one really knows whether her arrest was intended to stymie the MPs questioning or whether was just the unfortunate decision of some cack-handed plod. I suspect it was intentional but then I’m just a sad old cynic.

Another development yesterday was the resignation of the Met’s Commissioner. He had rather blotted his copybook by appointing a former deputy editor of the Screws as a special advisor at a time when the Met was investigating the phone hacking and by also accepting £12,000 worth of free accommodation and treatment at a health farm which also employed that former deputy editor as a PR advisor. The Commissioner, a Sir Paul Stephenson, was called in by Boris Johnson, London’t mayor, and resigned after the meeting. The question everyone is asking – OK, not everyone but every Westminster and media anorak – is did he jump or was he pushed. And in his resignation letter, Sir Paul made a few cryptic allusions to ‘not wanting to compromise’ Prime Minister David Cameron which sound rather ominous.

In America those Justice Department careerists are wondering whether any phone hacking by Nws International went on in the US, where it is a federal offence and could see the Murdoch’s hauled into court. It’s a long shot and their motives are transparent in that the Murdoch’s enemies aren’t just confined to the shores of Old Blighty, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do a hell of a lot of damage. To add to the Murdoch’s woes, the board of SkyB, is beginning to ask whether having James as its chairman might not be doing the company, of which the Murdoch’s crucially don’t have a majority shareholding, rather a lot of harm. This one will, as they say, run and run.

. . .

The pussycat which has stood in for me as my profile photo is being retired as I have finally come up with a picture which doesn’t necessarily make me look like a raddle old fool and with which I am content. All I ask is that you indulge me in this piece of innocent vanity.