Really rocking in Boston

Initial digression - for those who think that sport and politics don't mix, you're reading the wrong article. End of digression.

First six lines of the opening stanza of the classic rock hit from Chuck Berry "Sweet Little Sixteen" from 1957 (if I remember rightly):

They're really rocking in Boston

In Pittsburgh, P. A.

Deep in the heart of Texas

And 'round the Frisco Bay

All over St. Louis

Way down in New Orleans

Baseball meets rock 'n' roll. The Red Sox have beyond all expectations won the World Series. I am delighted, needless to say - not ecstatic, just delighted.

The baseball teams in Pittsburgh and St Louis had great seasons if not quite winning the top prize, the Texas Rangers made the playoffs. New Orleans of course does not have a baseball team (given the climate there, they would probably have to play inside in a dome - not really .....), while the Giants did a bit of Boston in reverse. They will be back though. Two World Series victories in recent years indicate their importance to the game.

From the excellent writer, Richard Justice, on mlb.mlb.com today I would like to quote the following (sorry for any copyright infringements usw) with my underling and blocking:

"To love these Red Sox, you have to appreciate other things - for instance, such old-fashioned values as teamwork and unselfishness. You have to believe that those things really do matter.

If you can wrap your mind around a professional sports team that prides itself on its closeness and work ethic, you can fall in love with the Red Sox".

I agree with Mr Justice's sentiments. But why are "teamwork" and "unselfishness" "old-fashioned"? As someone who tends to be at his best being a person who will take individual responsibility in a team concept, the first is maybe open to interpretation - that I can see.

But "unselfishness"? There are loads of unselfish people and organisations on this planet, true. But how many of them are responsible for how the world economy runs? In fact they are more likely to be working in situations helping people on the receiving end of the cynical, selfish, greed and speculation economy. And as for "work ethic" .... the theory that you can get anywhere with work ethic and productivity in this world is one of the biggest myths out there. I personally have always committed myself to both work ethic and productivity - they seem to the best road to the dole queue going, the quicker you get things finished, the sooner they can fire you.

In fact some people can get richer in 20 minutes gambling on the phone than most people can manage in a lifetime of hard work.

So the lessons of the Red Sox win might well apply in a sporting context. You can put the past behind you, you can through skill and hard work and concern and involvement with/for others achieve the epitome of success.

Try it though in a business, commercial, professional usw context? Well there will be exceptions that prove the rule, but what I have seen of the world in the past 30 years that is simply not how things work any more. The concepts are seen as "old-fashioned", even if the myths to the contrary are maintained for public consumption. That is sad, but unfortunately true.

 

American spying or knowing your enemy

I watched a bit of the discussion tonight between the NSA's top guy and Congress about what's going on with the American spying and what seems to be going wrong as a result.

Fine, the USA and its representatives haven't been attacked on American soil since 2001 and this is a large part the result of intelligence and so on.

Fine, fine, fine .....

And as there are quite a few Muslims living in Spain and France, that maybe explains that they had to listen to 1000s of  'phone calls in those countries as they might pick up the odd lead. After all not every conversation would be about having couscous for dinner.

Which brings me to Germany.

Since the Second World War most of Germany (that is all of it except the DDR from 1949 to 1989) has been a major ally of the USA. Their security services cooperate a lot in their different ways. If they want some information, they will probably get round to sharing it. It isn't 1944 any more, when you would like to have known what Hitler had planned.

So we get to the crucial question - why in the first place would they want to spy on Angela Merkel's mobile 'phone? If it were business since she became the German Chancellor, she would no doubt have been willing to share information with the US. And if what I gather from CNN last night is correct, they have been doing this since before she became Chancellor.

All the weirder. That was before 2006 (please name the US President at the time. He later became famous for massaging Angie's shoulders at international meetings after she came to power, if you want a further clue).

She is a conservative. A Euro-conservative, but a conservative nonetheless. She probably regrets arguing the case now, but back in 2003 she was pushing for German troops to support the Americans in the Iraq War. Unlike 90% of people in Germany this struck her as the right thing to do.

Obviously a staunch ally. So what could be interesting in any mobile 'phone calls that she would not air through official channels. Sauerkraut and Bratwurst tonight maybe? I doubt that that would be so important!

So why would you be so dumb as to do summat really stupid like that? It makes no sense and has caused a diplomatic spat that could have been avoided.

And as a leading member of her (conservative) party was tonight indicating that whichever member of the American diplomatic corps in Germany was found to be responsible for passing on the information regarding her mobile 'phone would be prosecuted in a German court ....

These are allied countries, in case anyone hasn't noticed. If you want to pursue your enemies, do so by all means. But ruffling the feathers of people who are supposed to be your friends? Well it doesn't augur well for the future relationship, does it?

Only one life and only a game

As regular readers will know I am certain that we have this one life to live and that is it.

So when it ends - well, bye and thanks for trying. Not that I will be aware of owt, all will have gone, recognition, speech, sight, hearing, intelligence (the world should feel sad to lose my 157 IQ and my vast (successful) experience in IT, but as the commercial world seems to regard that as unimportant and is happy to leave me to starve, why should the rest of the world worry?).

Meanwhile back to this life. Towards the end of the last football (North American = soccer) season I got tired of the big clubs acting like business monopolies - actually Microsoft and company think more like democracies than the top European football clubs these days. If anyone challenges your monopoly, buy their best players .....

After years of being overly concerned about some megarich dumboes kicking a ball around, I decided enuff was enuff, and kicked any interest into the proverbial touch. The last remaining interest in sport is baseball - when the World Series ends this week, whether the Red Sox win or lose, I shall think about letting that go as well.

One point to be made here - if your team loses, it is not the end of the world. Losing your job, not being able to exercise your talents (OK, kicking a ball around for money if you are good enough), getting into debt, not having a permanent roof over your head, being obsessed that Margaret Thatcher really knew what she was doing - these are serious problems. They matter, they are important. As are being stuck in a war situation, suffering severe health or addiction problems usw.

But your team lost? Ho-hum. The world will continue to turn, and if you have a job that you enjoy and money coming in from somewhere honest (yes, I know that line is getting thinner by the day) - why the **** are you getting upset over some silly vastly overpaid idiot who cannot shoot straight or hit the ball over the wall, or walked in a run?

It is 38 years ago now, but I still remember one of the strangest stories that I ever heard. There are and were two large soccer teams in the city of Sheffield in the North of England. I taught in a school there for a year. In 1974 I left. I loved Sheffield but hated the job, and as my father had health problems, moving closer to home made some sense.

The following year one of Sheffield's soccer teams, Sheffield Wednesday, was relegated to the third tier of the English game for the first (but ultimately not the last) time in history. I picked up a snippet from the national press about a 17-year-old supporter of that team who became so depressed as a result, he committed suicide.

Nowt about his job, family, whether he had a girlfriend, school maybe? Or difficulties with his parents or .... No, merely because he was a fanatical supporter of a lousy team, his life became intolerable.

It takes some believing, but there are many people who have a similar fanaticism. Whether they would go to that extreme in a bad year, though?

Sad, and weird, and definitely not worth it. Perspective? Sorry, but I will not even try to understand. Eventually you have to learn to switch off and switch out.

Anyway there will be other days and other seasons if you are that keen. How many Red Sox supporters have lived through the 2012 and 2013 seasons with contrasting emotions? So even if you do experience a bad year, it is not forever.

Not like losing your job and being stuck in permanent poverty. Not like losing a limb and having to live without it. Not like become addicted to heroin and wanting to live without it!

So come on. Remember that they are grotesquely overpaid and it is only a game! Eventually! You have this one life, there must be other ways to get through it - at least if the politicians, the megarich, the greedy business community and the neo-Fascists in our midst will let us!

Everything that's fit to see

Let me take you back into history - ancient history, in fact all of 50 years ago.

I was 14, my cousin and closest friend, Paul, was 15. We had reached that age when we were tentatively getting interested in girls.

Very tentatively, I would add, and mainly from a distance. We shouldn't really have been that interested (according to common myth - we weren't 18 yet!) in finding out what a girl might look like fully (whisper the word) naked. But when certain aspects of your body start awakening, sometimes your mind follows.

After some tentative missions in trying to discover all the amazing facts involved with this, we finally discovered a second-hand magazine store in a grotty street in a run-down area of town (the whole neighbourhood has since been knocked down and rebuilt incidentally). There amidst all the imported American "Captain Marvel" and "Spiderman" comics were 3 small rectangular magazines staring back out through the shop window - with names like "QT" ("Cutie" - get it?). 3 totally naked young women - estimated age 22 - on the covers. Shaved where it mattered. Not the fetish prevalent these days for doing it as young women do (and I will never come to terms with this, but that is me), but because the publisher's way of getting past summat called "The Obscene Publications Act" was that this was "art", not "pornography".

If you know the story how the painter, Manet, upset the authorities in 19th century France by painting a nude model alongside fully-clothed men - the human form is artistic in context, when you change the context though ....

So you stand there for 3-4 minutes ogling at these pictures, discussing what was missing, and go home. What was missing could not be seen in magazines until I was 19, incidentally.

I do not think that Paul or I turned into dangerous perverts as a result of this incidentally. He became a very solid citizen and when he sadly died last year he was described in his obituary as a "a great friend to everybody". He was and it was a fitting obituary - pity there aren't more like him.

Since then we have the mass growth in glamour magazines since the 1970s, hard-core stuff across many European countries, and finally the Internet. And even daily newspapers producing photos of topless models - and do not try and persuade me that children in the UK do not see the "Sun" or German kids never see "Bild" for example.

So when I hear that Facebook will not even allow a naked female breast to be seen on its site ..... Even with aboriginal cultures in South America, Africa and the South Pacific where nobody has trained women to think that there is summat wrong with such.

I understand that there is a problem with "sexting" - vulnerable young women taking naked photos of themselves and those later appearing on the Internet. And I can understand that you would not want that sort of thing on Facebook (along with the cyber bullying and the insulting threats which turn young people suicidal usw). But the blanket ban is ridiculous.

As it is, unless you live in somewhere like Saudi Arabia or China, the Internet is awash with accessible pornography, and attempts to limit access have proved futile. Parental control on the computer is all well and good, but a lot of 14-year-old kids are computer savvy and know how to change such controls.

The equivalents of Paul and myself these days could easily come home, switch on the computer, change the parental controls when nobody else is around, go off to watch "Sexy Susan does everything and more" for 15 minutes, leave the Internet, turn the parental control back to where it was, clean out the cache so nobody will find out what they were up to when nobody else was around, and only blanch for a few seconds about that strange message that flashed up while they were watching what they were watching and hope it wasn't a virus .....

Digression - should you come back and catch them, do not throw the proverbial wobbler. Rather tick them off, advise them them that that nice girl, Susan, down the street, does not do "everything and more" and it is not like that in reality. Ask cousin Susan's husband who is always complaining that she is better in the kitchen than in the bedroom. And if all else fails guide them to the comments of former French porn star, Raffaella Andersen, on the industry - they are not too complimentary. End of digression.

So back to Facebook. Having established that while there are plenty of naked female breasts (and not just breasts) to be seen elsewhere on the Web, let us consider what can be seen on Facebook that is nice and friendly and not insulting and all about great camaraderie and not insulting or bullying people.

Like people beheading their wives for being unfaithful. Or at least beheading their wives (or a female of their acquaintance).

So it is always possible that the video that appeared this week came from Mexico means that it could actually be a drug gang-related incident (not the first time that Mexican gangs have issued videos of executions of rival gang leaders on Facebook incidentally). Rather than a marital dispute.

It raises the question whether it was an "honour" killing (a dubious phrase if ever there was one - there is nowt "honourable" involved with any such killing). And even if it was, it was also nowt short of COLD-BLOODED MURDER!

Rather than sticking such an abomination on Facebook for all to see, their management should help the authorities trace the killer involved and where it took place. And have him brought to justice for his misdeeds.

It is a strange sense of priorities that some people have that is not acceptable for a woman to expose a naked breast, but it is OK for her head to be cut off! It does not change the fact that this vile atrocity took place, but presenting it whether to shock or excite or even cry for justice is frankly unacceptable, in any way, shape or form. And no pre-announcement about what is to follow will improve the situation one iota.

As for what your average 14-year-old boy is supposed to think when he sees summat like this?

It is surely time for some consistency here. Even if what some regard as "immoral" needs stepping on under certain circumstances, there can be no grounds whatsoever for openly advertising grotesque criminal activity, wharrever its root cause!

On happiness and then having a bank account in the Cayman Islands

Regular readers may think that I am getting repetitive but anyway.

A quick definition of happiness (from a personal perspective):

1. Having a job that you enjoy, that challenges you intellectually but always allows you the possibility to find solutions and is not too dependent upon other people.

2. Earning enough money to provide the basic needs, buy one or two items that are of interest (I want a new PC - and stress PC, not laptop nor tablet - for example), allows you to travel occasionally and, needless to say, lets you save something for the future.

3.  Staying out of debt.

4. Having a number of reliable friends (family can fit into the same category, blood ties do not, however, necessarily improve the quality of friendship).

5. Staying healthy.

6. Enjoying the pleasures of the flesh occasionally (too late for regularly, so .....).

That is it for the moment. There is no need for massive material pleasure. All the material goods, the sort of house with 15 bedrooms that Scott Sullivan of Worldcom was building (that was replaced by one small room out of which it was difficult to emerge for the best part of 3-4 years) - not really, in fact not at all. No car (I can live with a decent train service, see Germany, maybe France, but definitely not the UK). Children/grandchildren? I spent six years teaching other people's kids. I learned even then that I find it difficult communicating with them and their company only improves when they become young adults, so not really.

Pretty undemanding and seemingly unachievable. Which is a ridiculous conclusion but nonetheless true.

So what would I do with a bank account in the Cayman Islands meanwhile? In fact what would anyone do with summat like that?

The pragmatist in me raises the question - what is the use of having that much money and not spending it? Just leaving it accumulating interest? Real fun, eh?

From a pragmatic point of view having so much money that you cannot spend it usefully strikes me as ridiculous. Go and spend it in profligate mode then? Not my style either, but there are many uses it could be put to.

There are loads of things that need doing on this planet, if you look around. There are millions of people currently unemployed who would love to be given the sense of purpose, the dignity and self-respect that comes from working for a living.

So why not put the two together?

Just a thought.

The glories of war and learning from history

Last month our television was put to rest. I was in favour of having it repaired, my wife decided that it needed replacing and consequently we now have a monstrosity that takes up most of the space on one side of the room. Despite our financial difficulties the 440 Euro needed to pay for this was translated into 24 monthly payments of 18 Euro plus a few cents and will disappear accordingly from her bank account.

Not sure whether Americans still use the "instalment plan" (see the Phil Spector produced Crystals' song "He's sure the boy I love" from the early 1960s - when the boy of her dreams has no money as could be seen by him buying on "the instalment plan"), or whether they simply stash the bill on their ever-increasing credit card debt. Buying by instalments seems more sensible, but anyway ....

Anyway this is now her new toy. Whether there is owt interesting on or not, it gets switched on and left on. Apart from wasting electricity, it is also an annoying source of noise when you are working on a translation. And particularly annoying when she heads off to the kitchen for half an hour and is obviously not watching it.

As was the case yesterday morning. Sunday. Germany. Mainstream channel ZDF. Summat that I had completely forgotten - religious broadcasts. There was this Lutheran pastor going on about his church's Catholic "Geschwister" - brothers and sisters. Nice word, nice thought.

So flip your mind back, as you are seditiously prone to do (particularly as a tolerant atheist), nearly 400 years to the start of the 30 Years War.

The 30 Years War was actually a series of wars rather than a continuous unbroken event. Its results were devastating. To quote the ever reliable Wikipedia (irony):

"A major consequence of the Thirty Years' War was the devastation of entire regions, denuded by the foraging armies. Famine and disease significantly decreased the population of the German states, Bohemia, the Low Countries and Italy; most of the combatant powers were bankrupted".

Great stuff, eh? Isn't war wonderful (extreme irony)? States getting bankrupted for the old political reasons rather than the new economic-political reasons. And no 17th century version of the Marshall Plan to bail out those involved either!

One of the fascinating things about this is that, if you bother to check out what historians inform you were the causes of the war, there is no one single reason for 30 years of wanton destruction. Events regarding the succession to the throne in Bohemia (today a significant part of the Czech Republic) eventually kick-started the whole series of events but the plot and counterplot elsewhere were far more significant than that.

That Protestants and Catholics chose to revive their rivalries upon a large scale should not be so surprising, given the times, but the relationships between the Catholic Bourbon dynasty in France and the Catholic Hapsburg dynasty in the Austrian dominated Holy Roman Empire and in Spain and in the "Southern Netherlands" (now Belgium) complicated the issue. Add to the fact that a bit of "Swedish imperialism" (yes, folks - Swedish imperialism!) was also a driving force.

By the end of the war Catholic France was the dominant power on the "Protestant" side, while Protestant Denmark was for some years fighting on the "Catholic"side, having previously fought for the "Protestant" side.

And eventually nobody really won. The towns of Munster and Osnabrück in Westfalen gained historical notoriety as the places where negotiations took place and eventually brought the whole sordid business to an end. After which Europe did not improve a great deal for several generations.

To bear in mind that at the time there was not even a semblance of anything democratic going on. The powers that existed were invested in not so benign monarchies - in many cases primitive dictatorships. The role of the common people was to serve their rulers and otherwise do as they were told. If you died in a war, if you died in a famine - same difference. Religion had a way of rearing its very ugly head, and may the proverbial non-existent Heaven save you if you embraced a Protestant (be it Lutheran or Calvinist) belief and the ruler of the state was a Catholic.

 To sit back and look at this now and think about Catholic "Geschwister" - we have come a long way. To think that continental Europe (outside of the Balkans) has managed nearly 70 years without a significant war ..... We have definitely come a long way.

To a point we have learned from history. Where economics are concerned we are backsliding considerably (and the return of rampant poverty, particularly among the elderly, must not be ignored), but the lot of the common people, which improved massively in the first 25 years following the Second World War, still is not as bad as in the 17th century.

Not that the craving for war has disappeared among small elements of the populations at large. And the need for extravagant "defence" ("offence"????) spending for such remains part of the platform of many principally (but not exclusively) conservative parties across the continent. If the UKIP/EXP ever gains power in the UK, they want four more nuclear weapons (check their manifesto - it is in there!). You wonder quite why. If the idea of a nuclear weapon is to frighten off potential attacks, why is one not enough, what do you need with all the others - unless your purpose is aggressive???? "We hate the EU, so let's nuke Brussels! And Berlin and Paris and Vienna and Warsaw and Riga and Ljubljana and Tallinn and ..... " (starts to salivate madly at the thought). Potentially dangerous people.

So maybe another war on the European continent is not so unlikely? Probably not - the old powers have moved on, merged, democratised, or simply faded into non-belligerent successful economic states (check Austria). It is a bit harder though for some than others (see France as well as the UK).

And who knows? The spirit of Gustavus Adolphus may suddenly re-emerge (check out some time the obscure town of Lützen in Saxony where he died in battle in 1632) and we may see a rise in Swedish imperialism again. Well I wouldn't bet your mortgage on it .....

If it's good for business, it's good for me ....

OK, I keep hearing this ....

So please inform me:

1. How is this supposed to work?

2. As one of your representatives told me on LinkedIn last week that you can neither guarantee me a job nor create jobs out of thin air (or using your imagination or planning for the future - same thing as he was concerned), how is this in my interest?

3. You can fire me at a moment's notice, not because I am not productive or competent, but because you arbitrarily think that I am "too old" or "too expensive" (that incidentally in the UK can equal making 15,000 pounds a year, in Germany the figure is somewhat higher and in a more trustworthy currency). Again, can you please tell me how this is in my interest?

4. You help the economy grow. Fine, but if over 90% of economic growth goes into the pockets, bank accounts, investments etc of 7-8% of the population, how does this benefit me?

And while we are here can you tell me how you keep unemployment low, how you stop underemployment, how you help fight poverty, how you create the possibilities where people like me who do not want to be dependent on government handouts need not be, and how those, like me, who believe in work ethic (and are not born salesmen and/or gamblers) can live satisfactorily as a result of their work ethic, and those like me who want to live without being in debt can do so?

I am not a polemicist, I am a pragmatist. I want results not theories. And I do not want to hear excuses or owt concerning "luck" or "winners and losers".

Robots that can read

Readers who visit my blog on a regular or occasional basis may not realise the fact that the writer receives a list of daily stats telling him/her what posts have been read, the country of origin of the readers, which sites are being used to access the blog usw.

Some days you note that your readership is really low - often when your muse has been asleep for days and you have produced few or no new items.

And then there are the days when you get a far higher number of readers than usual.

It isn't usually though that you have aroused the interest of extra new people in various locations around the world. It is rather that you have awoken a robot.


There are several interesting locations for these robots, mainly in parts of Eastern Europe, but also increasingly in the USA.

The intention is to get the blogger to access the site related to the robot by pressing the link on your stats page.

In the past 24 hours I have had 41 visits from an American based robot from a site called vampirestat.com. As a trained IT professional I am not inclined, ever, to press the links to sites like this - there is always the possibility that I may well be unleashing summat rather nasty. I have had to clear viruses off here before and I have better things to do with my time.

My response, rather, is to copy the name of the site and stick it in a google search. Which is how I came to find out that a robot is accessing my material.

Anyway I hope the robots are enjoying the content of the blog and learning summat - including a few bits of Northern English vocabulary. If nowt else I try to get people to think and react and not just acquiesce.

A thinking robot - what a quaint concept. Maybe they should run for politics, I am sure that a number of political parties, particularly conservative political parties, would be only too glad to have them!

Should the Chinese be allowed to dictate world economic policy?

Firstly reread the item that I wrote on August 1st, 2012 called: "Trading issues with the Chinese".

I raised a bit of a furore with a comment that I wrote on LinkedIn a few weeks ago. I made two suggestions what China should do in the foreseeable future. My two simple suggestions were:

1. Hold democratic elections.
2. Float its currency the same as every other country does.

The first of these drew fire from different non-Chinese critics who told me that democracy does not work - one from Scotland pointing out that the UK Conservative government receives very little support in Scotland (true enough) and that the government was taking action of which most Scots disapprove (again reasonable enough). The same could, incidentally, be said of my native North of England.

And there is no doubt that we are prone to see an increasingly corrupted version of democracy with the first past the post system in many countries. The Republican majority in the US House of Representatives has been playing a game of brinkmanship recently - closing down parts of the government, threatening a debt default. They are only in a position to do so as they gerrymandered the districts in the first place. At the 2012 elections they received overall over million votes fewer nationally than the Democrats for the House seats and have a majority in the region of 30.

Meanwhile the current UK coalition is a rare example of a government where more than 50% of voters in the UK voted for the parties in question. The abominable Margaret Thatcher, for example, never gained more than 43% of the vote and wreaked havoc - mainly upon the people who did not vote for her!

OK. But remember that democracy is more than just a political procedure - it is the ability to involve yourself in all sorts of actions that are not possible under a dictatorship. The Chinese equivalent of the Occupy movement would have been crushed far more brutally under its dictatorship for example. And the chances are that blog writers like myself would have been imprisoned in many different countries (and maybe even tortured) for publishing some of the views that are expressed in them. See what would happen to atheist bloggers in Iran or Saudi Arabia for example!

And think of Germany and dictatorship - even for one second - without blanching at the thought of what happened last time. "Antifa und stolz darauf" - that I can say and think in a democracy!

The point with democracy is to improve it - rather as I have said about the EU. The way to deal with the EU's many faults is to improve it (and democratise it fully).

Meanwhile we have the point about the Chinese currency. A Chinese writer complained about my suggestion that the currency markets are too liberal and that would be harmful to Chinese interests.

All well and good.

They are also for the record too liberal for a lot of other countries round the world. See what happened to the Rouble in Russia in the 1990s or the Baht in Thailand in 1998.

The point that writer missed though is obvious. We have a global economy - an often nasty animal that stands up and bites the people who can least afford it, while rewarding those who are already so well-off they wouldn't notice how much money they made in the last 60 seconds.

We are all signed up to the rules of this, like it or not. So if you want to take part, you should play by the same rules as everyone else.

If all the countries signed up to the various trading agreements started making noises about how it was not in their interest, most of these agreements would collapse. I personally need some persuading myself that Europe should not impose some sort of protectionism, with allowances made for African countries as the only exception, but general principle says that would be a "bad thing" (exports would be badly affected in the short term at least).

But the fact remains that the ludicrously cheap fixed exchange rate for the Chinese currency is killing industry and jobs everywhere else in the world (see also the article above). There is only one argument against obliging the Chinese to float their currency - THE SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE DOES! - and that would be the inflationary impact. That item at my local electronic store costing 5 Euro may well now cost 14 Euro?

Perhaps, but then I might be able to find an article of the same kind made in Spain or Greece (or even the UK) for 10 Euro. In other words it would provide the possibility for booting up the European manufacturing base, and create jobs here.

So what is fair to everyone else might not be in China's interest - but why should the rules be skewed to work for them and nobody else? It makes no sense and we are shooting ourselves in the foot by letting the situation continue to exist!

The chances though of getting Europe's politicians (individually or as a collective body) to act on this? Yes, well .... In the week that the news appeared that according to the latest opinion poll in France the neo-Fascist Front National are ahead of the rest, you begin to despair of any intelligent or reasoned solutions ever being adopted. Sadly for us all.

Just not getting it

I suppose that LinkedIn has become my last real social media outlet.

The last post that I wrote on this blog "On the job market and job security" which I first wrote on there produced a number of comments.

The American readers of the piece seemed to support the implications of what I was saying -  encouraging (love that word) company loyalty and flexibility within the organisation and returning to a time when all the people working for the organisation were in it together, and looking to long-term objectives rather than short-term gain (so riding the curve in any downturn, which should probably be temporary in the long-scale view, 12 months over 12 years is not actually a long time).

One British correspondent though (theoretically an entrepreneur or a company director or both) took umbrage at what I had to say, accused me of misrepresenting Thatcher (no I didn't - he just did not look deeply enough into what I was saying, I suppose that I should not be surprised) and then went onto endorse her position. Detect summat of an inconsistency here? She didn't actually say that, but I agree with it anyway? Huh?

His view on job creation though was simplistic, and static, not intelligently thought-through and dynamic. Success was simply job creation, not job creation along with job security.

Fine. Consider an absurd but possible version of this thinking.

Let us say that you create 5 million jobs. All of which are due to last three months and finish with no hope of renewal. Great idea? It gives the economy a quick boost. And then?

And then?

Well it was job creation. No security.

We live in the "consumer society", so much of the economy is built on what people purchase and can afford to purchase.

Would you take out a 25-year mortgage on that principle? Would you buy a new car, a new refrigerator, a new wardrobe or outfit on that basis?

A new outfit may be affordable, for the rest you would probably do what I would do. Pay off the outstanding bills, and put the rest in the bank to cover what happens when the three month period has run its course.

Profligate, frivolous spending? Well if you have no sense or a ridiculous propensity for unreal optimism, then you might indulge yourself. Don't ask me to pay your accommodation for you in three months time though!

Americans have this annoying habit of producing generalised tags for different generations (well, you know what I think of stereotypes by now). So now we have the "Millennials". Interestingly generally absurd generalisations aside, I noted an article upon this group on LinkedIn the other day. One thing that I noted was a sane and sensible attitude to debt. You do not take out a mortgage and just hope that you can pay it off. You do not load yourself down with debt that you cannot pay. You complain about the ridiculous level of debt needed to get you through college.

Brilliant! Sounds like I am an ageing Millennial!

Common-sense attitudes. As a lot of these young people have experienced 2008 and learned its lessons (you wish their parents and grandparents would!), these attitudes are also not surprising.

And they also value job security!

Common-sense again prevails.

But you cannot have an economy that, blah, blah, blah .....

Blah, blah, blah, Wahnsinn!!!!

We have a mess. We have people like Thatcher and Bush who caused it. The approach worked only for the top few percent, the rest of us got stuck with debt, unemployment, insecurity and the ever imminent threat of poverty.

The model did not work, we need to find summat where more sense prevails and common and lasting prosperity can be created. Yes we need to slash government debt, of course, and we need to cut the dependency upon government handouts. And for that matter we need to slash private debt burdens as well!

Which means that we need to take a new approach or adapt an old one. We need a dynamic, comprehensive, inclusive approach to building an economy and the job creation that is attached to it. Not the old static, monetary-based solutions.

And for those who accuse me of proposing Marx and Engels style solutions, let me correct you. There is a model out there that could be used and adapted for the current era. A model that created a dynamic, vibrant economy that raised living standards across the board long-term, kept debt low and provided good-paying jobs and low unemployment. German names again, but not Marx and Engels - but rather Adenauer and Erhard! Check out what they achieved in the 1950s and 60s. Check out the model, adapt and apply!

On the job market and job security

Lou Adler is one of the more interesting writers on LinkedIn.com.

His articles tend towards the American job market and he tends to sound optimistic at the moment (this is a week before the GOP radicals cause a default on the US debt of course, then the floor on the job market will almost certainly collapse unless they see sense).

Anyway first read his article:

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131010025706-15454-hire-economics-don-t-read-everything-you-believe?trk=tod-posts-art-

And my comments on the same article:

Interesting article at least for the American job market even if there is hardly a country in Europe where it applies. I would pick up though upon the point about job security and compensation. I recall Margaret Thatcher boasting in the UK in the 1980s about "getting rid of the job for life". Personally I have never seen this as something about which people should boast. Strengthening the job market means providing greater job security and making sure that talented people receive adequate rewards for their services. No matter how talented and dedicated to the task you are, the prospect of losing your job through no fault of your own is definitely a negative where motivation, incentive and productivity are concerned. Over the past 30 years companies have been far too prone to look at short-term gain rather than the good of the company in the long haul, and employees have become as dispensable as machinery. Creating an atmosphere where people are encouraged to stay and be productive should be the objective - upgrading their skills where necessary, even if that costs something in the short-term. New opportunities will come along, new businesses will arise? Yes, but there will also be a new generation of talented people to move into the slots.

Keeping out desirables and other nonsense continued - how to win an argument by default

Read yesterday's piece first, please, if you have not already done so.

There are wonderful days in your life. The days someone who tells you all the time how much she loves you finally listens to what you are saying.

So when I was continuing the discussion on completing the online visa form today for her so that she can get into the UK, adding in the process (three times) that she was the one that wanted to go not me, the quiet comment emerged from my wife's mouth:"I don't think we're going to England".

Maybe my hostility to the idea has finally got through - I am not that acerbic or prone to getting angry (having an old voodoo doll of Margaret Thatcher that you can stick pins in occasionally also keeps you calm - pity there's no Hell for her to rot in!), so you have to get the point over quietly and repetitively - but there is the other factor hitting home. Cost!

Before even looking at the cost of a plane ticket and hotels, we would have to shovel out 246 Euro minimum (for American readers that is, at today's conversion rate, $333.95) for the cost of the visa and the cheapest return for two people to Düsseldorf and back (she won't travel on her own unless forced) for the statutory humiliation required to get it. The prospect of paying out that much in advance strikes even her as outrageous.

Anyway this afternoon after she had gone to work, I proceeded down the interesting path of completing all the required documentation online. Changing her mind is always a possibility. Unfortunately in this case it could still happen.

Get past like all the questions like "are you a terrorist?", "are you a supporter of a terrorist group?", do you advocate terrorism?" (I wonder if anyone actually answers "yes" to these questions), you get to the interestingly funny bit at the end - paying for the appointment.

First thing to bear in mind is that you have to pay for the appointment before being given one. If you decide you do not want to go eventually .... Well they have you neatly scammed, right?

This though turned out to be third most enjoyable moment of the day - numbers one and two for reference:

1. Finding out that overnight European time that the Red Sox had won the ALDS in Tampa last night Eastern (American) time.
2. Completing a translation this morning that was the second quality piece of work I have produced in two days - at least I hope the customer thinks so.

Anyway - number 3. Funny joke almost. Name the two most common ways of paying for something in Germany. Answers of course being cash and using Bank Giro Direct Credit with your bank card (with a PIN live, but also available on the Internet occasionally).

Name the methods with which you can pay for a visa online at the contractor site used by the UK Embassy in Germany - Visa, Mastercard and Paypal.

I don't know many people here who have Visa or Mastercard, given the rip-off charges involved with such cards I wouldn't advise their use anywhere anyway. Paypal - my wife does not have. I do, but it would take several days to get money into the account, and I'm not the one who wants to get the visa. I am not the one who wishes, either, to torture him/herself by making this ludicrous journey, so why should I fit my own thumbscrews?

Cash? You cannot go to Düsseldorf with cash - they will not accept it! They also will not accept bank card payments. Does it get more ridiculous? It is almost as if they have planned to keep people out!

So it looks like I win the argument by default. Of course being what the Germans call "schlau" I could be accused of deliberately manoeuvring the Paypal possibility to my advantage.

Anyway Bern in November sounds interesting. Much more interesting than the UK, let's face it, and it would be her friend that we would be visiting ..... 

Keeping out desirables and other nonsense

As regular readers will know I am still a UK passport holder.

As people reading my stuff last year will realise it is no big deal for me, and nobody will turn me into a raving patriot.

At the same time as readers of this blog will know, I have moved beyond the restrictions of patriotism - I am a citizen of the world, certainly of Europe, and take some pride in my lack of blinkers when it comes to such matters.

There are no tribes in Europe any more - thankfully - though nationalist parties across the continent are only too willing to have you believe otherwise.

I also have some very strange commitments as a British national - in favour of the UK abolishing the monarchy and becoming a republic, pro-EU (but they should get round to abandoning their support for neo-liberal economics), pro-Euro (the pound should go before it falls any further!). I am not sure being an atheist is so strange these days (see Richard Dawkins for example), but that too makes me part of a minority.

And I dislike conservatism and nationalism and the UK is a notoriously conservative country with a pronounced nationalist fringe.

This all could change in a few years if I live that long and the UK compounds its normal stupidity by leaving the EU - in that case I shall definitely be applying for German nationality. This blog will have to change its name (Ein Deutscher in Frankfurt? Well the majority of Frankfurters are, even with the 170 nationalities we have in our wonderful cosmopolitan city - Nigel Farage, please note!).

Anyway I am now stuck with my usual annoyance about yet more stupidity emanating from the UK - though of a permanent nature, rather than the occasional temporary glitch.

My wife has her annual holiday in November. This is normally planned for November because it is the best month to visit her native Thailand. As we do not have any spare money to go there and she does not fancy three weeks sitting round our wonderful cosmopolitan city, we were looking at alternatives. I fancied visiting our friends who live in Northern Germany, close to Bremen, maybe the friend that she has near Bern in Switzerland (I have never met the girl, but I am sure it would be an interesting trip), maybe visit my friends in the Netherlands, or the friends that my wife has in Ålesund in Norway (yes, it would be a bit dark and cold this time of year, but I loved my time in Oslo, so ....).

None of these will happen.

My wife has decided that we are going to England to visit my family! My aunt is 87 years old and may not live much longer and my wife is very fond of her. OK. For the rest my parents have been dead since 1988 and 2000 respectively, my cousin, Paul, who was a great guy, died last year. Most anyone else I have lost contact with. We talk to my aunt on the phone a lot anyway, so going there in person ....

Hardly essential.

Particularly when you think of the cost involved.

Curiously my wife is a lot more concerned about MY family than I am. I was always a friends person rather than a family person. I have lost touch though with many of the friends that I had there - two of the most important ones have died. And the ones left tend to live in geographically awkward places. And given the lousy rail service (and the ridiculous cost of living even with the plummeting pound!) .....

The most stupid side of this follows though (no, not the bit about my wife being a staunch royalist - come on, what else would you expect from a Thai national?). I can take her to Holland (an EU country) or Norway or Switzerland (non-EU countries) without a visa. I can take her to at least 22 others without a visa. It would not cost us a cent to stay with our friends in Bremen. It would also not cost us a cent for a visa to go to Holland.

The UK?

I am a British national. I am a British passport holder. I have a European skin colour (if that is important), I spent 40 years of my life living there.

She is my wife. She has been to the UK twice before (in 2005 and 2008). She is a pacifist Buddhist and the least dangerous person on this planet.

Every time that she goes to the f***ing UK, she needs a f***ing visa. This is as insulting as it gets - and note if some British sleazeballs want to go and hang round the tawdry bars of Pattaya or Patpong for four weeks, they do not need a visa to get into Thailand.

TIME FOR SOME RECIPROCATION????

Then let us get round to the cost! The visa for 6 months costs a cool 100 Euro. She would like a 10-year visa (no point, we do not go often enough). That would cost, get this, 900 Euro! That is approximately 70% of two economy return class tickets to Bangkok. We cannot afford to go to Thailand? Then we certainly cannot afford 900 Euro for a visa!

This is though not the end of this ridiculous story. I have remarked upon this before in this blog, but it is worth repeating - every time you want a visa you have to go and be finger-printed and have your photo taken. You have to go to Düsseldorf (and now possibly also Munich or Berlin) in person. That is a return train fare. That is another 100 Euro approximately.

Imagine the Thais imposing similar conditions on British sleazeballs who want to visit Pattaya or Patpong! But anyway -

TIME FOR SOME RECIPROCATION????

When she has paid the airfare, the 4-7 days in a hotel (my aunt cannot accommodate us), the train fare from Manchester to Humberside and back, meals for several days ..... And, of course having 12% of your money ripped off at exchange bureaux!

Is it worth it?

They probably have more reason to keep me out than her (not that I am physically dangerous), as you are not supposed to criticise the wonderful disaster that Thatcher and Blair created. She will be her usual, pleasant, affable, likable, personable, kind, understanding self. No chance of her hanging round sleazy bars either.

So why they need to strip her of so much money (never mind the insults to her pride and dignity) for all this rigmarole so she can get into their confounded country for as many days it takes before I am overtaken by the need to get back to civilisation (well one thing to be said, if I must be tribal, at least I shall be in the North which for all its deficiencies is not London or the EXP heartlands ....)  .... Words fail me!