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December 18th.

Comments

1. At 10:53 AM on 18 Dec 2007, wrote:

   Gosh David, you are so clever! Two, most interesting photo's.

2. At 11:30 AM on 18 Dec 2007, Member of the public wrote:

   In an outrageous piece of demagoguery recently the Prime Minister promised to provide 鈥淏ritish jobs for British workers鈥�. Well at least Gordon Brown has delivered on half of that promise 鈥� the economy is creating plenty of jobs, but according to a Statistics Commission it reports four out of five are being filled by foreign workers.

   This isn鈥檛 necessarily a bad thing. In the right circumstances controlled immigration can benefit both the economy and society as a whole. Indeed some of the world鈥檚 most successful nations 鈥� Australia, Canada and the US 鈥� were built by immigrants. But where the UK differs from these nations during their pioneering days is that we already have an enormous reservoir of unproductive labour that acts as a drag anchor on national prosperity.

   According to some estimates there are five million 鈥渆conomically inactive鈥� Britons 鈥� one in seven of the working population - who are unable, or more likely, unwilling to work. The latest figures prompt the question; if millions of Poles and Lithuanians find it so easy to get jobs in the UK, why can鈥檛 unemployed Britons do the same?

   The answer, of course, is that they don鈥檛 want to and don鈥檛 have to. The original concept of the welfare state as a temporary safety net has been so thoroughly corrupted that millions see a life on benefits as a legitimate lifestyle choice and expect their fellow citizens to pay for it.

   It needn鈥檛 be like this. Just over a decade ago a number of Midwestern states in the US embarked on a radical series of welfare reforms. What became known as the Wisconsin Experiment had two defining aspects. Firstly, there was no longer an automatic entitlement to welfare payments. The unemployed were provided with intensive training and education, child care, health insurance and food stamps. But they were no longer paid to do nothing. If you didn鈥檛 turn up, you didn鈥檛 get paid.

   Secondly, there was an element of compulsion to the scheme in the form of a time limit placed on receiving benefits. The unemployed were helped into work, as a last resort into state subsidised jobs, but at some point, typically after about three years, all benefits to able-bodied adults were stopped. The result was astonishing. Welfare rolls in some states declined by more than 90 per cent. In Wisconsin for example the number of families dependent on benefits declined from 100,000 to little over 8,000 in a decade. Where did they go? Quite simply hundreds of thousands got jobs and started supporting themselves and their families.

   Even more remarkably the grim forecasts by welfare campaign groups that starving children would be dying barefoot in the snow failed to materialise. In fact average household incomes of the poorest people improved markedly. And the benefits of employment can be seen to cascade down through the generations. Families where at least one adult is working are less likely to experience marital breakdown and their children are less likely to suffer from poor educational attainment, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse and to be involved in crime.

   This doesn鈥檛 come cheap. Such ntensive 鈥渨elfare to work鈥� programmes are far more expensive than simply giving the work-shy cash handouts. But taxpayers are more likely to support the benefits system if they can see it has an element of fairness.

   Crucially, what the Americans grasped 鈥� and what seems to escape our politicians on this side of the pond 鈥� is that far from alleviating poverty, the welfare system perpetuates it by encouraging an enervated culture of dependency whereby the 鈥渃lients鈥� are persuaded that they are unable to help themselves. I don't think we鈥檒l never fight poverty effectively by giving ever more generous hand outs to an ever increasing number of people. This can only be done one way and it can be summed up in a single word 鈥� work.
   

3. At 12:25 PM on 18 Dec 2007, stewart M wrote:

   Is the tree just one piece of green a4?

4. At 12:34 PM on 18 Dec 2007, DI Wyman wrote:

   David, just one very minor point re the Nativity scene.....probably something you simply overlooked, but a bright red Skippy?

   fair enough the VW Beetle, but no way Skippy!

   DiY:)
   

5. At 12:51 PM on 18 Dec 2007, wrote:

   MOP (2),

   "In the right circumstances controlled immigration can benefit both the economy and society as a whole."

   NOT in the fourth most densely-peopled country on Earth (England).This is more a matter of lack of a coherent policy than anything else. An enlightened policy would encourage a falling population, both by condoning lower TFR (Total Fertility Rate) and encouraging net out-migration.

   Britain (UK) is seventeenth most densely peopled country on Earth, and has an ecological footprint some ten times it's land area.

   England is the fourth most densely peopled country on Earth, and has an ecological footprint some TWENTY times its total land area.

   Neither of these situations is sustainable in any imaginable sense of the word.

   Optimum Population Trust for numbers
   and giggle ecological footprint for estimates between 4.5 and 5.5 Ha percapita. Land areas from CIA factbook.
   Calculations via ubuntu calculator.
   Checked and double-checked, trust me.
   

   Salaam/Shalom/Shanthi/Dorood/Peace
   Namaste -ed

6. At 01:04 PM on 18 Dec 2007, David McNickle wrote:

   johhie,
   I'm another Damien Hirst.

7. At 01:37 PM on 18 Dec 2007, wrote:

   Where's Morph?

8. At 01:55 PM on 18 Dec 2007, David McNickle wrote:

   Jesus is the baby from the Simpsons.

9. At 02:15 PM on 18 Dec 2007, Big Sister wrote:

   David: Is this some profound truth you're uttering?

10. At 03:58 PM on 18 Dec 2007, mac wrote:

    MOP
    Opportunity cost, sweetie pie.
    The immigrant choice is: Work here or live on the bread line in Poland
    On account of the exchange rate.

    We denude central Europe of its most energetic young people and buy up huge tracts of good farming land lying fallow. Fallow 'cos the exchange rate makes food exports uneconomic.
    Ripe pickings for the Brits.
    All part of the service of wrecking post communist societies to give the impression that even rejecting communism isn't enough.

    'Cos these young people from Poland etc deserve better. They come from a communist society and skivvy for the English aristocracy and middle class lineages.
    They, MOP, the middle and upper classes are the intergenerationally idle, not fourth and fifth generation working class youngsters who see no reason why it shouldn't be the friends of Lady Di (much in the news at the moment) doing the real work in our society. For a change.
    Ask the immigrants whether its right that England should house these royal, aristocratic and upper middle class parasites, and whether a couple of generations of such lineages working in labour camps (we could call them the Land Army) wouldn't be a damned good thing.

11. At 04:09 PM on 18 Dec 2007, mac wrote:

    
    Did you ever hear the like of it?

    My mate Merve before the Select Committee.

    
    Again a real chance for PM.

    Let me point out the choicer bits of his apologia.

    
    One, he feels he should have said more publicly in August about the coming Debt Disaster.

    But at the same time he specifically denied that the performance of the Governor of the Bank of England (new readers begin here - HIM!!!) was itself something that affected markets.

    Eh???

    Two, he has dropped the stuff about him needing secret powers. That's to the good, but he now has an interesting position on what he did do with his existing powers
    1. He says he did not U turn on liquidity. Eh???
    2. He says the BoE record is brill, that liquidity is not the solution and that the BoE made more liquidity available than any other central bank. (In fact he SAID ONLY the BoE had provided liquidity but even on most favourable interpretation its another Eh????)
    3. He says most people don't understand CDOs and SIVs. This is the central scam.
    These instruments are used to borrow money when as assets they are already owed to the lenders who financed the underlying transactions, in this case the original mortgage providers.
    They are therefore just window dressing as assets.
    The borrowing these paper assets allow the financial institutions to undertake is matched by the assets they acquire, not by assets already owed elsewhere.

    Thus the loans can only be profitable to the LENDERS if the assets the borrowers acquire are profitable.

    And here we come back to the central points. The Debt Debacle started with the new fly by night asset strippers being told by banks, and beginning to say themselves, that the profitable cherry picking they had been doing in the markets (buying, stripping and selling firms) was coming to an end. There were huge sums of money floating about but few 'opportunities'.

    Since this borrowing by new finance companies was backed by the assets they acquired the collapse of sub - prime repayments in America CANT possibly be the cause of the credit crunch.

    It must be the quality of the assets they acquire from their CDO and SIV creations.

    
    But the stock markets (shares)are overvalued. Even Merve says that. By about 20 percent probably. So how can the new asset strippers make anything by buying such inflated assets.

    The answer is... they can't.

    The core of the problem then is, to put it in Kingly terms, that the markets are overvalued - through sheer pricing DISHONESTY, and an 'adjustment' is expected any time soon.

    
    King says that the problem is assets no one can value. Far from it the problem is assets everyone can value and everyone knows to be overvalued. And the hit may come any time so why lend (get out of cash) even overnight for commercial paper backed by assets whose value may crash.

    To repeat blaming sub prime defaults for this Debt Disaster is wicked. You mean poor people in America shouldn't have HOMES.

    The debt structure is how I've described it above not as these too clever by half accountants and assesssors account it.

    Merve says only a few clever people understand whats going on.

    (The usual elitist stuff from him incidently 'cos he thinks solutions - in fact regulation - though he then specifically denies that's what he wants - should be left to him)

    The truth however is that the slution is to invert the economic system and make the poor in America and elsewhere the benificaries of the system, not the downright dishonest 'experts' in financial institutions.

    For the ones who claim to understand the SIVs and claim they work as 'experts' say, are liars.

    And those who claim they dont understand them are dishonest too. Cos they should be shouting from the roof tops that these CDOs and SIVs are 25 percent overvalued!!!

    
    so lets get ahead and stay ahead on PM (Cf Liquid Lunch (the only explanation) on 麻豆官网首页入口2 yesterday with Shaw telling us there was no movement in markets that day. Witt the FTSE down 2 percent.

    So remember the rules. It's like reading a Bair speech.

    'Bankers do not know the value of...' equals They do but won't fess up.

    'These assets are backed by/secured by..' equals 'They aren't'

    'The problem at base is the initial sub prime debt' equals 'It isn't. The problem is that all assets available are hugely overvalued so no one will lend for foolish borrowers to buy.

    mac, who isn't sure wheter to send as many postcards as there are post ocdes between home and away.

    Or just say 'LE 1' and 'CV 22'.

    'till the Armaggedon

12. At 04:46 PM on 18 Dec 2007, Frances O wrote:

    David, I love the origami tree. And your sense of fun.

    But to keep the oriental theme, surely it should have been a bonsai.

    Less work to do.

    Just a thought.

    
    Are those the Three Wise Frogs, btw?

13. At 10:04 PM on 18 Dec 2007, Humph wrote:

    Frances (12) Frogs - maybe. Wise frogs - possible. three wise frogs - I think that you are really pushing the bounds of possibility.

    H.

14. At 08:59 AM on 19 Dec 2007, putting away (aka Frances O) wrote:

    I dunno, Humph. You, me and, um...

15. At 10:27 AM on 19 Dec 2007, David McNickle wrote:

    Stewart,
    The tree is telescoped, rolled-up newspapers (ala Tommy Cooper), spray painted green.

    DI,
    So, three alligator wise men are OK?

    Big Sister,
    Profound, yes. Truth, no.

    Frances,
    Thanks. Alligators.