Just over a year ago I commented on the unwillingness of President Hollande in France to comply with rules imposed by the European Union. Today the big news story is the outcome of the general election in Greece. The winning party, Syriza, has made clear their intention to increase the minimum wage and provide large numbers of people with free electricity (not really free, but paid for by someone else).
What makes this election result momentous is that Greece is an economic disaster, with unemployment running at around twenty-five percent. The Greek people have been enduring this misery for many years now, and its membership of the Eurozone is largely to blame.
Syriza is not opposed to membership of the Euro, or at least not at the moment, but it is opposed to the austerity measures that membership has inflicted on the Greek people.
Back in the late 1990s, Denis Healey warned that the European single currency would work only if there was a perpetual flow of money from the north of Europe to the south. Now the Greeks have elected a government which wants Greece to stay in the Euro, but without the Greek people paying the price. More money must come from elsewhere in Europe, and Germany is the country which immediately comes to mind.
Germany can refuse, of course, but to refuse might prompt the Greeks to quit the Eurozone. If Greece were to prosper outside the Eurozone - and European countries not currently in the Eurozone are faring much better than those within it - then it might prompt other countries to leave as well.
The eventual outcome could be either the demise of the Eurozone or else a much smaller Eurozone with only Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, and maybe Austria retaining the single currency.
Either way, the original dream of a gigantic pan-European single currency is dead in the water. Austerity was supposed to keep it alive, but democracy has killed it.
Related previous posts include:
Cameron versus the EU
Austerity versus democracy
Monday 26 January 2015
Sunday 18 January 2015
Immigration and crime: a response to Eric Schlosser
The Guardian is currently running a series of video adverts, each of which features a comment by someone whose opinion The Guardian considers worthy of advertising. One of these videos features an American journalist called Eric Schlosser. Please take less than five minutes to watch it.
I will not claim to know anything like as much about the American penal system as Schlosser, and so I will assume that the factual content is accurate.
Schlosser claims that the prison population in the USA has increased considerably over the past thirty years or so, and yet so too has the non-white population. Schlosser also asserts that a large proportion of inmates are black or Hispanic, which might lead any rational person to ask whether or not black or Hispanic people are more likely to turn to crime than non-Hispanic white people.
Schlosser uses the word poor to describe a lot of these inmates, but this is misleading. Many people in Britain in the 1960s endured a level of poverty which would be hard to imagine nowadays, and yet very few of them turned to crime. If white people can suffer hardship without turning to crime, then surely black people can do the same.
Schlosser also mentions the fact that many inmates are in prison for non-violent crimes, and in doing so appears to be implying that prison should be only for the violent criminal. He notes that many female inmates are in prison because they refused to inform on boyfriends who were dealing in drugs. If their loyalty to an evil boyfriend exceeds their loyalty to humanity, then maybe prison is the best place for them.
Schlosser may perhaps make some good points here and there, but this video appears to be in large part just a leftist rant with little substance.
Related previous posts include:
Wednesday 14 January 2015
The Jews are afraid, but what about the rest of us?
According to a recent press report Britain is currently experiencing a sharp increase in incidents of anti-semitic hate crimes. As a result, many Jews in this country are beginning to wonder if they have a future in Europe. In France the situation is far worse, with many Jews emigrating to either Britain or Israel.
Last year a leading British newspaper columnist argued that Israel is the country where Jews go to live when they are afraid of being killed.
My first comment is that the main engine of anti-semitism appears to be Islam, and yet I don't hear Jews arguing for an immigration policy which excludes Muslims. Likewise I don't hear them arguing for The Koran to be banned from prisons or for Islamic schools to be closed down.
I have noted some of the contents of The Koran in previous posts, and I can assure the uninformed reader that Islam is far from innocent.
My second comment is that it is not only Jews who are victimised by Muslims. Gentiles also suffer at the hands of Muslim intimidation, but the difference is that gentiles do not have their Israel. I am a gentile. When I am afraid of being killed, where should I go to be safe?
My third comment relates also to the news that survivors of the fictitious National Socialist holocaust are being given medals. While I accept that many Jews died in German concentration camps, it is fair to say that their fate was no worse than that of many concentration camp inmates. (Apparently there is some controversy about whether concentration camps were invented by the Russians in the eighteenth century or by the Spaniards in the nineteenth century.)
Millions of people died in the Second World War, and millions more in the First World War. The vast majority of these people were white gentiles. Where is there a memorial to these victims? It is true that almost every town and village in Great Britain has a war memorial, but these record only the fallen from the military. There is little recognition of the civilians who died. Evil politicians like Barack Obama implore us to remember an imaginary holocaust of Jews, but do not mention the very real holocaust of white gentiles.
Right now my sympathy for frightened Jews is very limited.
Related previous posts include:
Fellow traveller comments on Islam
Are you anti-semitic?
Jews matter. Does anyone else?
Last year a leading British newspaper columnist argued that Israel is the country where Jews go to live when they are afraid of being killed.
My first comment is that the main engine of anti-semitism appears to be Islam, and yet I don't hear Jews arguing for an immigration policy which excludes Muslims. Likewise I don't hear them arguing for The Koran to be banned from prisons or for Islamic schools to be closed down.
I have noted some of the contents of The Koran in previous posts, and I can assure the uninformed reader that Islam is far from innocent.
My second comment is that it is not only Jews who are victimised by Muslims. Gentiles also suffer at the hands of Muslim intimidation, but the difference is that gentiles do not have their Israel. I am a gentile. When I am afraid of being killed, where should I go to be safe?
My third comment relates also to the news that survivors of the fictitious National Socialist holocaust are being given medals. While I accept that many Jews died in German concentration camps, it is fair to say that their fate was no worse than that of many concentration camp inmates. (Apparently there is some controversy about whether concentration camps were invented by the Russians in the eighteenth century or by the Spaniards in the nineteenth century.)
Millions of people died in the Second World War, and millions more in the First World War. The vast majority of these people were white gentiles. Where is there a memorial to these victims? It is true that almost every town and village in Great Britain has a war memorial, but these record only the fallen from the military. There is little recognition of the civilians who died. Evil politicians like Barack Obama implore us to remember an imaginary holocaust of Jews, but do not mention the very real holocaust of white gentiles.
Right now my sympathy for frightened Jews is very limited.
Related previous posts include:
Fellow traveller comments on Islam
Are you anti-semitic?
Jews matter. Does anyone else?
Thursday 1 January 2015
The death penalty - who dies?
It is New Year's Day 2015, and I am returning to my blog after some time away for reflection. There have been a lot of news items in the last couple of days which I feel demand my attention, but some of them require greater consideration.
I have therefore decided to return to a favourite subject of mine, being the death penalty. Some weeks ago a young woman told me she had been burgled, and unfortunately not for the first time. She is not rich, and the items taken were of small value. It is therefore likely that the burglar was a drug user who wanted to steal pretty well anything he could find of any value so as to allow him to buy more drugs.
I told the young woman that at the last general election I had voted for a political party whose policies included bringing back the death penalty as a punishment for drug dealers. She appeared to grasp the point I was making.
As I write it is reported that at least three men in East Anglia have died recently, apparently as a result of taking ecstasy. The national newspaper which reports these deaths quotes someone as trotting out the usual cliché that these deaths are tragic. These deaths are stupid.
Drugs are dangerous, so why don't we vote in elections for political parties who seek to hang drug dealers? If the drug dealer who supplied these ecstasy tablets had been arrested and hanged as soon as he turned to drug dealing, then maybe three New Year's Eve revellers would still be alive.
The choice is this simple. We let drug dealers die at the end of a rope, or else we continue to let idiotic drug users die after taking drugs which they presumably know to be illegal.
I have therefore decided to return to a favourite subject of mine, being the death penalty. Some weeks ago a young woman told me she had been burgled, and unfortunately not for the first time. She is not rich, and the items taken were of small value. It is therefore likely that the burglar was a drug user who wanted to steal pretty well anything he could find of any value so as to allow him to buy more drugs.
I told the young woman that at the last general election I had voted for a political party whose policies included bringing back the death penalty as a punishment for drug dealers. She appeared to grasp the point I was making.
As I write it is reported that at least three men in East Anglia have died recently, apparently as a result of taking ecstasy. The national newspaper which reports these deaths quotes someone as trotting out the usual cliché that these deaths are tragic. These deaths are stupid.
Drugs are dangerous, so why don't we vote in elections for political parties who seek to hang drug dealers? If the drug dealer who supplied these ecstasy tablets had been arrested and hanged as soon as he turned to drug dealing, then maybe three New Year's Eve revellers would still be alive.
The choice is this simple. We let drug dealers die at the end of a rope, or else we continue to let idiotic drug users die after taking drugs which they presumably know to be illegal.
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