I'd like to talk about immigration. Did a chill just pass through cyberspace? Did you look over your shoulder worried that this blog might not be work safe? Are you fearful that the next sentence begins 'I'm not a racist but...' Relax, this is a safe place. There will be no references to England being swamped or seaside towns being overrun; nonetheless even mentioning the word 'immigration' can be enough to shut down debate.
This strikes me as odd; no subject should be taboo apart from Morris dancing which is in my opinion nothing short of witchcraft. I've seen 'The Wicker Man'; one day you're skipping round the village green in a costume with bells on, next day you're sacrificing Edward Woodward to the pagan gods. My attitude to folk traditions may be influenced by a traumatic late night viewing of said film, aged twelve, when I had no idea of the ending. However I digress, back to the tricky subject of immigration.
Let me set out a simple principle: very few things are inherently good or bad, apart from Morris dancing which I've mentioned, patio heaters are another, as are leaf blowers (they are all bad just in case you were wondering). Inherently good things might include a small child laughing, Michael Palin and freshly baked bread (unless you are gluten intolerant). My point is that you cannot discuss immigration in simplistic binary terms, namely you are either for it or against it with no shades of opinion in between. The idea is self evidently nonsense, which these two hypotheticals will hopefully demonstrate.
Imagine that the only immigrants wishing to settle in the UK were highly educated, tolerant and hard-working people, with no dependents, who wished to work in areas where there was a chronic shortage of candidates such as physics teachers. Their numbers were modest and could easily be absorbed by the country without pressure on housing or social services. Ask anyone what they thought of immigration in this scenario and the overwhelming majority would be in favour.
An alternative scenario might be one where the only immigrants wished to settle in the UK were members of organised crime families, with convictions forserious offences, who intended to devote their time in their new homeland to furthering their criminal works. They too would arrive in small numbers, but in this situation nearly everyone would be against immigration. So it's a a meaningless question to ask is immigration good or bad, without context.
Think of it another way, I invite you to a fantasy time-travel dinner party, except you have no idea of the guest list. Do you say yes or no? Hard to decide. What if I tell you it's composed of the most famous individuals of the last 100 years? You would be intrigued yet the crucial question is the people attending. It might be Hitler or Gandhi, Stalin or Martin Luther King. The example is deliberately absurd to illustrate the futile nature of debating a concept without context. The devil is in the detail as the saying goes and it was probably said by Satan's lawyer.
Talking about immigration is a very touchy subject for mainstream politicians. Ed Milliband forgot to mention it during his conference speech, funny that. David Cameron looks like he's regurgitating a fur ball every time he's forced to discuss the subject. I think the reason it's become so toxic is one of the new axioms of modernity that we are all supposed to endorse, yet most know is ridiculous. The free movement of peoples is one of the stated principles of the EU, which on the surface sounds like a lovely idea. Except when you think about it, it's profoundly unfair. There are close to 500 million people in the EU, what would happen if they all decided overnight to settle in Bruges. It's a charming city, I've never been, but I've seen the film 'In Bruges' and it's nothing if not photogenic; there's no way it could accommodate half a billion people.
So logically, we can't all just settle where please, not least because it impacts the people already living there. If you need further proof, ask a Palestinian about their feelings on the matter. Okay cheap comment, but the concept is sound. The world is host to over seven billion people, some live in poor countries, others in middle income ones, a minority in prosperous lands. There is no conceivable scenario, where anyone would suggest total freedom movement of peoples as the most likely outcome would be huge migrations from the poor to the rich states which in turn would cause chaos and ultimately make everyone worse off than they were before. The Economist magazine, normally a perceptive and wise publication, holds to this dogma, irrespective of the practicalities. They also back free movement of capital and look how well that's worked out - a subject for another blog
You cannot discuss immigration without talking about who those people might be, however delicate our collective sensibilities. The question is not one of pure economics and in any event, economists cannot agree whether mass immigration is a net positive or negative for the host countries. Britain is a liberal society, under the rule of law, which does a reasonable job of protecting individual liberties. It's not perfect, nowhere is, something that the likes of Liberty seem to forget; it's a work in progress. Maybe there is heaven on earth somewhere, Sweden perhaps or Denmark? But they've seen a surge in far right votes recently, so there's trouble even in paradise. And it seems that immigration is the flashpoint, especially if newcomers reject liberal values, such equality for women or not stoning gay people to death, for example.
Of course there's xenophobia and racism towards new arrivals and none of this excuses that, but I wonder if the flowering of far right groups across Europe is the poison fruit of this creed about free movement. It undermines one of the fundamental attributes of a nation state, which is the control of its borders and the granting of rights to work and settle. If the aims of unrestricted movement of peoples in the EU was to bring people together, it seems to be having exactly the opposite outcome. That's not whant any of us want, whatever party we vote for.
Showing posts with label EU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EU. Show all posts
Tuesday, 30 September 2014
Thursday, 17 January 2013
Madrid Airport
Madrid Airport Terminal 4, in this recent visitor's opinion, is the simplest way to understand the failure of the grand EU project.
I formed this view at 7am a few days ago, having drunk two overpriced beers in an overcrowded, overlit cafe in said T4. That makes me sound like an alcoholic, which I am not. Technically I was on Mexico time, midnight according to my body's booze clock, and a brace of beers by the witching hour is virtually temperance. Also there were several Russians drinking neat spirits, whilst I stuck to €5 cans of lager. And I had just emerged from a twelve hour long haul flight with Iberia.
The Spanish flag carrier Iberia, in case you have never had the pleasure, is one of the reasons people are afraid of flying. For the first ten minutes of its inflight movie, displayed on a handful of ancient, tiny cathode ray tubes borrowed from the Science Museum, I thought I was watching a 4th Matrix movie, until I realised the TV was turning everything green. Apparently it was a film about a writer, featuring that bloke out of The Hangover. But even though the in-seat sound channels only stretched to four distorted, tinny feeds, I couldn't locate the English soundtrack. My Spanish skills did not stretch to following the plot - especially when everything was turquoise. The second offering was worse: a Spanish language cartoon about a treasure hunter that made Transformers 3 seem like Citizen Kane.
Anyhoo, it was in this sleep-deprived, poorly nourished, under-refreshed state, that I found myself in Madrid T4 (after a great holiday in Mexico, so no need for sympathy). But I worried that if wrote a blog there and then, it might appear to be the ravings of a man drinking beer in the morning, rather than a considered appraisal of the weaknesses of the European Union. With the benefit of sober reflection, I believe my first impression, as first impressions nearly always are, to be entirely accurate.
Picture the scene, if you haven't been there and don't want to use Google Images. Madrid T4 is a vast building, so huge that you think your mind is playing tricks on you, as row upon row of identical chairs stretch away in the distance - like an artist's impression, a CGI virtual tour, only real. Imagine then: hundreds of transit passengers, desperate for food, a coffee, a tea or perhaps a neck massage (such things are available in Singapore airport 24/7 FYI). In this gargantuan Soviet-scale expanse of nothingness, there was but one restaurant outlet open, staffed by three men in their sixties. The queue for bad food and expensive drinks tailed off into the endless expanse of chairs. Plates and trays piled up, uncollected on tables.
As each successive wave of zombified transit passengers converged on this lone oasis, it resembled a well-heeled refugee camp rather than a high-tech airport lounge.
Take a moment to absorb the absolute and total disgrace of this scene. Then remember that Spain has a youth unemployment rate of 60%. This pointlessly over-engineered, over-sized, under-used building must have cost their taxpayers billions of Euros. I say cost the taxpayers; what that means in reality is the Spanish government will have borrowed the money with little if any chance of paying it all back. At some point, the good citizens of Germany will be footing the bill for this monstrosity.
Billions spent on this terminal, 60% youth unemployment, and the only people collecting salaries there were a trio of portly pensioners, whilst hundreds of people waited for service.
Work that needs doing. Young people without jobs. Massive empty building.
That's why Madrid T4 is the perfect summary of the failure of the European Project.
I formed this view at 7am a few days ago, having drunk two overpriced beers in an overcrowded, overlit cafe in said T4. That makes me sound like an alcoholic, which I am not. Technically I was on Mexico time, midnight according to my body's booze clock, and a brace of beers by the witching hour is virtually temperance. Also there were several Russians drinking neat spirits, whilst I stuck to €5 cans of lager. And I had just emerged from a twelve hour long haul flight with Iberia.
The Spanish flag carrier Iberia, in case you have never had the pleasure, is one of the reasons people are afraid of flying. For the first ten minutes of its inflight movie, displayed on a handful of ancient, tiny cathode ray tubes borrowed from the Science Museum, I thought I was watching a 4th Matrix movie, until I realised the TV was turning everything green. Apparently it was a film about a writer, featuring that bloke out of The Hangover. But even though the in-seat sound channels only stretched to four distorted, tinny feeds, I couldn't locate the English soundtrack. My Spanish skills did not stretch to following the plot - especially when everything was turquoise. The second offering was worse: a Spanish language cartoon about a treasure hunter that made Transformers 3 seem like Citizen Kane.
Anyhoo, it was in this sleep-deprived, poorly nourished, under-refreshed state, that I found myself in Madrid T4 (after a great holiday in Mexico, so no need for sympathy). But I worried that if wrote a blog there and then, it might appear to be the ravings of a man drinking beer in the morning, rather than a considered appraisal of the weaknesses of the European Union. With the benefit of sober reflection, I believe my first impression, as first impressions nearly always are, to be entirely accurate.
Picture the scene, if you haven't been there and don't want to use Google Images. Madrid T4 is a vast building, so huge that you think your mind is playing tricks on you, as row upon row of identical chairs stretch away in the distance - like an artist's impression, a CGI virtual tour, only real. Imagine then: hundreds of transit passengers, desperate for food, a coffee, a tea or perhaps a neck massage (such things are available in Singapore airport 24/7 FYI). In this gargantuan Soviet-scale expanse of nothingness, there was but one restaurant outlet open, staffed by three men in their sixties. The queue for bad food and expensive drinks tailed off into the endless expanse of chairs. Plates and trays piled up, uncollected on tables.
As each successive wave of zombified transit passengers converged on this lone oasis, it resembled a well-heeled refugee camp rather than a high-tech airport lounge.
Take a moment to absorb the absolute and total disgrace of this scene. Then remember that Spain has a youth unemployment rate of 60%. This pointlessly over-engineered, over-sized, under-used building must have cost their taxpayers billions of Euros. I say cost the taxpayers; what that means in reality is the Spanish government will have borrowed the money with little if any chance of paying it all back. At some point, the good citizens of Germany will be footing the bill for this monstrosity.
Billions spent on this terminal, 60% youth unemployment, and the only people collecting salaries there were a trio of portly pensioners, whilst hundreds of people waited for service.
Work that needs doing. Young people without jobs. Massive empty building.
That's why Madrid T4 is the perfect summary of the failure of the European Project.
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Irish Times
I'm back from a blogging absence, with a little story told to me by a British actor, which gives an insight into the Irish economy and its government. Every month he travels from London to Galway with two other British actors, also based in London to record four episodes of a children's cartoon series. Except the Irish government can't afford to keep Galway airport open, so they all have to fly to Shannon and then take a taxi ride that lasts 90 mins.
These three British actors then voice the cartoon, which is shown on Irish TV, as well as Australia and other countries. No Irish actors are employed in the production, so the voice over sessions could be recorded in a London location. As indeed they were originally, at a studio in the West End, neatly avoiding the five hour journey from London to Galway.
Now the funding came with conditions, that the production had to take place in Ireland, even though as you note, no Irish actors were used (couldn't do American accents apparently). True, an Irish sound engineer gets a day's work and the Holiday Inn Galway gets three new bookings, so that's probably worth it for the £1,000s in extra expenses, flying the actors over once a month for the last few years. Not.
This money, of course, doesn't originate from the Irish government, who are apparently closing down parts of Ireland in order to save cash. It was an EU grant, which given that every country save Germany is running a deficit, means the money was borrowed, which is another way of saying they took it off you, me and everyone else in the European Union.
Maybe this is a special case and Ireland reformed its ways. Although Shane Filan's Westlife has been declared bankrupt with debts of £18 million, following a failed property venture for 90 houses. No I can't work out how you can lose so much money, especially as they only built half the houses. Perhaps they burned it in braziers to keep the builders warm.
And this cartoon, which involves the scenic tour of West Ireland for three actors, it's not even that good.
These three British actors then voice the cartoon, which is shown on Irish TV, as well as Australia and other countries. No Irish actors are employed in the production, so the voice over sessions could be recorded in a London location. As indeed they were originally, at a studio in the West End, neatly avoiding the five hour journey from London to Galway.
Now the funding came with conditions, that the production had to take place in Ireland, even though as you note, no Irish actors were used (couldn't do American accents apparently). True, an Irish sound engineer gets a day's work and the Holiday Inn Galway gets three new bookings, so that's probably worth it for the £1,000s in extra expenses, flying the actors over once a month for the last few years. Not.
This money, of course, doesn't originate from the Irish government, who are apparently closing down parts of Ireland in order to save cash. It was an EU grant, which given that every country save Germany is running a deficit, means the money was borrowed, which is another way of saying they took it off you, me and everyone else in the European Union.
Maybe this is a special case and Ireland reformed its ways. Although Shane Filan's Westlife has been declared bankrupt with debts of £18 million, following a failed property venture for 90 houses. No I can't work out how you can lose so much money, especially as they only built half the houses. Perhaps they burned it in braziers to keep the builders warm.
And this cartoon, which involves the scenic tour of West Ireland for three actors, it's not even that good.
Saturday, 17 September 2011
Euro Trash
The past few weeks have not been happy ones for that rare creature in the UK, the Europhile, a breed that will soon be put on the endangered species list alongside the corncrake and the greater horseshoe bat. If not endangered, anyone expressing pro-European sentiments in most pubs in England will definitely be a threatened species; indeed the Europhile may need police protection like that other type of 'phile' who is not allowed near schools. In Scotland, Wales and any part of Britain where more people work for the state than private business, together with selected enclaves of London where the doors are all the same shadow of Farrow and Ball (mouse back) and everyone reads The New Statesman, there are a few pro-Europeans left; but otherwise support for the European Union has collapsed to an all time low. How is it is that the Euro dream has turned to trash?
Born of the very reasonable desire to stop Germany trampling over national sovereignty and insisting that everywhere be run like the Reich, the European Project seems to have come full circle to a point where Germany ignores national parliaments and keeps telling everyone what to do, in this instance imposing self-defeating austerity measures. The Euro, the currency union without a state, has proved to be a catastrophic mistake on a par with the Captain of the Titanic's decision to steer his ship right next to the iceberg to restock his ice-bucket: it's just not worth the grief. Instead of promoting prosperity , shackling the turbo-charged Teutons to the work-allergic Greeks has created an infernal wealth destruction machine about as sensible as burning €100 notes for fuel. Mind you, if the crisis continues much longer, any Euro notes issued in Athens will be being going up in flames.
Back when the Euro was created, some of us, including yours truly, knew it was a stupid idea to pretend that the Portugese or Greek economy should have the same currency and interest rates as Germany. I arrived at this brilliant insight by not being a massively overpaid bond trader and taking a package deal to Crete. My conclusion was that Greece was a lovely place to take a holiday, but given that its citizens struggled to run a pedalo business on a crowded beach in high season and the country had a political class which made FIFA officials seem models of probity, it was not the wisest call to lend them billions. Or if you did, make sure you charged a sufficient premium for the risk or NBAARGCF rate (not being an anally retentive German control freak). Naturally, those clever bankers and bond traders decided to buy Greek debt at only a small fraction above German bonds. Yes, the more stories you hear like that, the more you feel a Lenin-style banking reform is in order: shoot a few 'pour encourager les autres'.
Unfortunately executing bankers, no matter how much fun it might be (especially if broadcast live as Who Wants to Shoot a Millionaire?) is illegal and against the European Convention on Human Rights. Those bloody Europeans again! There is, however, much more to the Euro crisis than just money. It is really about who we want in charge and no one, not even the pro-Europeans, voted for the current situation where the European Central Bank is committing vast sums of money on behalf of member states whilst being accountable to no one.
The Greek government has taken huge loans at absurdly low rates, with no prospect of paying back the money, yet its people cannot chose the rational course of default and exiting the Euro. The Germans, were it not for war guilt, would have called time on this madness long ago; they too did not vote to work and save so that the Greek elite pay no tax and its civil servants retire at 55. Regardless if they get all the sun loungers in the Med, another €8 billon bailout is a bridge too far.
UBS has just published a report claiming the break up of the Euro would cost both Germany and Greece 40% of their GDP in the first year and 15% each subsequent year. This is the same bank whose trader just lost them €2billion in unauthorised deals, was fined $780 millon for helping US citizens avoid tax and lost the most of any Euro bank in the subprime debacle, a cool £14.4 billion to be precise. Maybe we can do without this kind of expert advice? The truth is that many countries including Iceland, Argentina, Mexico and Russia have bounced back after default and devaluation. It's the dirty secret that must not get out, sometimes not paying back what you owe works out fine.
Bizarrely even anti-Europeans are now suggesting the only way to save the Euro is full political union, which is an extreme version of the sunk money fallacy. A good example of this faulty logic is paying for expensive theatre tickets and sitting to the end of the show even though you hate it, because...well you want to get your money's worth. This seems to me explain why many of the audience remain to the bitter end of Lloyd-Webber's musical atrocities (and if even they wanted to leave, the coach won't be setting off to Birmingham until 10.30 p.m. anyway).
The truth is the money lent to Greece is gone, as is a percentage of the money lent to Ireland, Spain and Portugal, so why not accept it and move on? With capital controls and tight regulation of the financial markets, breaking up the Euro may end up saving us a fortune. And forgetting the numbers for a moment, none of us voted for Angela Merkel, not even a majority of the German electorate. We're Brits, let's stick to our own home grown bunch of useless politicians.
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| The Europhile - a rare species |
Back when the Euro was created, some of us, including yours truly, knew it was a stupid idea to pretend that the Portugese or Greek economy should have the same currency and interest rates as Germany. I arrived at this brilliant insight by not being a massively overpaid bond trader and taking a package deal to Crete. My conclusion was that Greece was a lovely place to take a holiday, but given that its citizens struggled to run a pedalo business on a crowded beach in high season and the country had a political class which made FIFA officials seem models of probity, it was not the wisest call to lend them billions. Or if you did, make sure you charged a sufficient premium for the risk or NBAARGCF rate (not being an anally retentive German control freak). Naturally, those clever bankers and bond traders decided to buy Greek debt at only a small fraction above German bonds. Yes, the more stories you hear like that, the more you feel a Lenin-style banking reform is in order: shoot a few 'pour encourager les autres'.
Unfortunately executing bankers, no matter how much fun it might be (especially if broadcast live as Who Wants to Shoot a Millionaire?) is illegal and against the European Convention on Human Rights. Those bloody Europeans again! There is, however, much more to the Euro crisis than just money. It is really about who we want in charge and no one, not even the pro-Europeans, voted for the current situation where the European Central Bank is committing vast sums of money on behalf of member states whilst being accountable to no one.
 |
| The Hellenic Handshake |
UBS has just published a report claiming the break up of the Euro would cost both Germany and Greece 40% of their GDP in the first year and 15% each subsequent year. This is the same bank whose trader just lost them €2billion in unauthorised deals, was fined $780 millon for helping US citizens avoid tax and lost the most of any Euro bank in the subprime debacle, a cool £14.4 billion to be precise. Maybe we can do without this kind of expert advice? The truth is that many countries including Iceland, Argentina, Mexico and Russia have bounced back after default and devaluation. It's the dirty secret that must not get out, sometimes not paying back what you owe works out fine.
Bizarrely even anti-Europeans are now suggesting the only way to save the Euro is full political union, which is an extreme version of the sunk money fallacy. A good example of this faulty logic is paying for expensive theatre tickets and sitting to the end of the show even though you hate it, because...well you want to get your money's worth. This seems to me explain why many of the audience remain to the bitter end of Lloyd-Webber's musical atrocities (and if even they wanted to leave, the coach won't be setting off to Birmingham until 10.30 p.m. anyway).
The truth is the money lent to Greece is gone, as is a percentage of the money lent to Ireland, Spain and Portugal, so why not accept it and move on? With capital controls and tight regulation of the financial markets, breaking up the Euro may end up saving us a fortune. And forgetting the numbers for a moment, none of us voted for Angela Merkel, not even a majority of the German electorate. We're Brits, let's stick to our own home grown bunch of useless politicians.
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