No matter how potty and fantastic the real facts of life get, there is always a neoliberal political bumboy there to either explain away the obvious, or obfuscate the truth.
I offer tonight three cast-iron examples of this.
The first comes from Greece, where I’m informed that outstanding citizen tax debt to the Greek state has hit a new high of €69.24bn in August, compared to €68bn in July.
Austerity measures and the resultant unemployment – as well as cuts in wages and pensions – are rendering Greek citizens unable to pay the tax debts derived from rate increases more vicious than anything the cake-recommending Bourbons ever imagined. So the idea that Greeks might consume more goods in order to lift the economy is, let’s face it, a final stupidity bolted on to four years of economic insanity.
But Homo Kalamatinikis – a one-man species cloned from the prehistoric Mani olive stone today averred that his country will not need a third bailout from its international creditors. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, talking to Sunday’s ironically titled Realnews newspaper, said he was “confident that the country’s debt will soon be deemed viable”. And he added this absolute belter:
“Greece does not need new loans and could not sign a new bailout for money it does not need. We are exiting the bailout for good, and our goal is to never again need to go into such a (bailout) programme, asking for loans to make it through the year.”
We do need to bear in mind here that this is the same Antonikis who told us there was no funding gap in 2014 (there were two) that the Greek economy would grow in 2014 (it hasn’t) and that it would exit the aid programme in the Spring (it didn’t). With every day, Greece is bisecting the distance between the rising debt and the retreating exit, which means of course that, as Einstein correctly remarked, it will never reach the exit….as the maths of the last Troika deal proved conclusively.
The minute budget surplus achieved last year doesn’t recognise or include the citizen tax debt….and is a spit in the Mediterranean compared to the 177% debt to gdp ratio Greece has….a slightly missed target given the 122% described 18 months ago by Fifi Lagarde of the IMF as “the absolute maximum allowable”.
Let us now motor West to the newly (but historically) strengthened UKOFESWANI, and re-examine the parlous state of RBS Bank. Serial Downing Street dickheads Alistair Darling and George Osborne have devoted many columns, soundbites, Marr interviews and Budget statements to telling us what a bargain RBS would one day represent for the taxpayer.
But it hasn’t quite worked out like that: still facing over 1800 class action suits for fraudulently confiscating SME assets while receiving billions in taxpayer bailout, this weekend brought forth data showing that, in fact, RBS has irretrievably lost all the £46bn we invested in it…but is putting aside £576m to pay 2013 bonuses for those MoUs who’ve been doing such a fine job in mislaying all that investment. Thus does rewarding failure become revealing farce. And we are the folks who have been farcie bigtime by this utterly unpardonable case of treason.
I’ve been on RBS’s case for longer than Mayor Boris Johnson has been saying that we must learn to love bankers. Mark my words, this is the beginning of the end…..we are still miles from the final descent into Hester’s hastily covered up cracks at RBS. Those suffering from tertiary frontal-lobe syndrome – while existing in A Cloud many miles above the law and beyond the gravitational pull of any known constabulary – must be laughing til they wet their designer boxers. Is this what Friedman meant by trickle-down wealth?
Last but not least, the speed with which the Westminster Establishment has begun to wrap the Scottish enigma in a fibreglass roll of confusion – while packaging the whole in a thick coating of concrete Untruth – pauperises even my longstanding belief that some things might be real.
More convenient research from the twin Sarkistas yesterday showed that ‘Almost six out of 10 voters back David Cameron’s proposal to ban Scottish MPs from voting on English laws, according to an exclusive poll for The Sunday Telegraph. Across the UK, 58 per cent approve of reforming the rules on voting rights for MPs in the House of Commons to ensure that English politicians have the final say over measures affecting England. Only 22 per cent are opposed to the plan’.
Er, am I the only one to note a distinct change in tone here from King McCameron the Tearful of last week?
I wonder how many no-voters and abstainers are already regretting their stance? I’d like to know, but in the meantime there is far more upon which to chew. I was from the off astonished by Gordon Brown’s seeming ability (as a never-elected Prime Minister rapidly demoted to history’s footnotes) to promise things to Scottish Naysayers. Now the soi-disant Worldsaver is in every UK newspaper saying “we” can’t walk away from our promises.
Whaddya mean “we”, paleface?
Meanwhile, Nick O’Grayling weighed in with his huge piscean brain in order to opine that ‘If the Scottish Parliament – and probably other devolved assemblies – are to be given new powers, then England has to be a priority as well. That was clear from the Prime Minister’s statement on Friday, in the wake of the referendum result. It is something the Conservative Party is united on. We cannot have a situation where more and more decisions about Scotland are being taken in Scotland, and yet Scottish MPs come to Westminster and vote on English-only issues’.
Well Christo, it’s nice to see the Conservative & Unionist Party united on something. I’m merely left wondering (yet again) what the effect of statements made on Friday and Saturday might have been had they been made last Wednesday. And I think the conclusion one must reach is that most politicians are brave after the event.
Dark mutterings are nevertheless emerging from the wing of the Conservative Party that would very much like to be independent of Camerlot. “Promises that cannot be fulfilled have been made” one especially outspoken lady MP told me this afternoon.
I’m not Scottish, but I do detect the sound of relieved English politicians reverting from hype to type. The Ed Miller Band, for example, isn’t keen on this idea of banning Scottish Westminster MP votes on English issues. It sees, quite correctly, that the Conservatives could use such a device to create a near-permanent majority for themselves on at least 75% of all known issues.
Anyway, there it is: Greece is trading insolvently, RBS is trading criminally, and the Scots have voted with criminally impenetrable stupidity. But as always, there is no shortage of nouveau ruling class rationalisation.
Recently at The Slog: The margin of error that did for Scotland
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