Ghost Dog
Ghost Dog's JournalEngland's northern towns need real power
What form of constitutional change is best suited to delivering power to English towns such as Wigan? In this part of England which has seen power drain towards London, wealth flow upwards into the hands of asset holders and technological change driven mainly from abroad we are going to need something close to regime change to flatten the socio-economic divide between north and south.
The first building block has to be a national industrial strategy. The government claims to have one in the northern powerhouse. But in large parts of the actual north, the phrase is regarded as a sick joke. And thats because there is not really a strategy only a document setting out vague aspirations. Meanwhile, the industrial strategy council, headed by the Bank of Englands visionary chief economist Andy Haldane, is a club of powerless retreads from the era of Blair and David Cameron. All talk of a Green New Deal remains just that. Because there is no intention at the heart of government to use its power to coerce and shape private investment to deliver lasting change and revive the north.
Right now, all 38 of Englands local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) are pointlessly competing with each other to become high-tech hubs in the industries favoured by the government, wasting time and energy. Some even overlap. The perverse result is that nowhere is really allowed to emerge as a power centre beyond London. In the north-west, for example, there are no fewer than four LEPs covering the urban space west of the Pennines, between Crewe, Liverpool, Manchester and Preston. Turf wars have broken out, and as someone who spent their youth traipsing between the rugby league grounds and nightclubs of these towns, I understand why. North-west England has intense local cultures, with enmities stretching from the English civil war to the English Premier League...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/england-northern-towns-power-may
I am serious.
I want green and socio-economic and therefore political new deals all round. Anything else --> Catastrophe.
Of course, this will only work once the great majority of people see and agree.
Big Brother is here now, thriving on disinformation and double-think. The intelligent alternative I describe would have to be open and transparent to all, with all agreeing that the sails have been correctly trimmed, the helmsperson under control, charts throroughly consulted and the vessel on the best possible course considering the surrounding environment it is navigating through towards the future.
Or else: No future.
Trump Accuses Bolton Of 'Trying To Start A War' In Venezuela: WaPo
And remember, Bolton has also been a key figure in escalating tensions with Iran to what is starting to look like the brink of an armed conflict...
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-09/trump-turns-bolton-accuses-him-trying-start-war-venezuela-wapo
Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez Propose 15% Cap On Credit Card Rates
(Note: this is ZertoHedge... but well-enough written...)
On Thursday morning, Visa and MasterCard tumbled after the democratic party's "progressive" socialist wing consisting of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, announced they would introduce legislation on Thursday to cap credit card interest rates at 15%, a sharp drop from current levels. The proposal follows not long after AOC also proposed the "Green New Deal" - which among its various policy proposals urged to give a generous and recurring cash handout to any and every American, regardless if they work or not, and which according to analysts would cost the US as much as $100 trillion over the next several years. In addition to a 15% federal cap on interest rates, states could establish their own lower limits, under the legislation.
Sanders, the socialist Vermont senator running for the Democratic nomination for president, told the WaPo in an interview that a decade after taxpayers bailed out big banks, the industry is taking advantage of the public by charging exorbitant rates. Wall Street today makes tens of billions from people at outrageous interest rates, he said. Ocasio-Cortez, the socialist New York representative who is expected to run for the Democratic nomination for president as soon as she is eligible, will introduce the House version of the bill.
According to some, the proposal is quite timely, and comes just as credit card rates recently hit an all time high despite artificially low interest rates, according to Creditcards.com, which has been tracking the data since 2007 and compiles data from 100 popular cards. The median interest rate was 21.36% last week compared with 20.24% about a year ago and 12.62% about a decade ago, according to the website...
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-09/bernie-sanders-ocasio-cortez-propose-15-cap-credit-card-rates-visa-mc-tumble
"irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies"
We are facing a state of continual unfolding loss, compounding impacts on our psyches. It could be loss of animals and plants we hold dear or lifestyles we have grown accustomed to such as eating whatever we want whenever we want. As the time length between loss and impacts shorten, personal recovery times reduce. At the same time there is anxiety about what is still to come. Yet there is no way to do justice to the threats we face without it being scary and provoking anxiety. How do we face up to these warnings without falling into apathy, denial or being evangelically optimistic? How do we find a way to confront our climate and ecological reality and yet respond in a meaningful, purposeful way? ...
... Climate change and environmental movements have long been criticised for trying to motivate the population through negative narratives and doomsday scenarios. It is obvious how such framings can turn people off or at worse encourages a state of denial. As a result, we have seen much of the movement shift in recent years towards more positive narratives of climate hope and telling stories of change... This has largely resulted in a politically passive eco-modern citizen that is more concerned with energy-efficient technologies, light bulbs and recycling than dissent, protest and structural change. Personal guilt comes to the fore when the virtuous lists and sustainable resolutions are not kept up with, and the issue is again pushed out of mind...
... But to truly tackle the climate and extinction crisis we also need to give ourselves permission to grieve, personally and collectively. We can use grief to galvanise what is most important and bring forth new visions. Then we need to be empowered, to be fearless and take action. One of the most important ways to take action is to vote for what matters most and to vote for parties which have clear policies to address climate change...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/i-have-felt-hopelessness-over-climate-change-here-is-how-we-move-past-the-immense-grief
XPost: Editorials & Articles: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016231762
"irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies"
We are facing a state of continual unfolding loss, compounding impacts on our psyches. It could be loss of animals and plants we hold dear or lifestyles we have grown accustomed to such as eating whatever we want whenever we want. As the time length between loss and impacts shorten, personal recovery times reduce. At the same time there is anxiety about what is still to come. Yet there is no way to do justice to the threats we face without it being scary and provoking anxiety. How do we face up to these warnings without falling into apathy, denial or being evangelically optimistic? How do we find a way to confront our climate and ecological reality and yet respond in a meaningful, purposeful way? ...
... Climate change and environmental movements have long been criticised for trying to motivate the population through negative narratives and doomsday scenarios. It is obvious how such framings can turn people off or at worse encourages a state of denial. As a result, we have seen much of the movement shift in recent years towards more positive narratives of climate hope and telling stories of change... This has largely resulted in a politically passive eco-modern citizen that is more concerned with energy-efficient technologies, light bulbs and recycling than dissent, protest and structural change. Personal guilt comes to the fore when the virtuous lists and sustainable resolutions are not kept up with, and the issue is again pushed out of mind...
... But to truly tackle the climate and extinction crisis we also need to give ourselves permission to grieve, personally and collectively. We can use grief to galvanise what is most important and bring forth new visions. Then we need to be empowered, to be fearless and take action. One of the most important ways to take action is to vote for what matters most and to vote for parties which have clear policies to address climate change...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/i-have-felt-hopelessness-over-climate-change-here-is-how-we-move-past-the-immense-grief
XPost: Environment & Energy: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127127277
UK and Ireland's Common Travel Area to continue after Brexit
(If Brexit happens).... Under the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding signed on Wednesday, free movement of people between Britain and Ireland, and mutual access for citizens to social security, health and education will continue after Brexit.
The CTA also enshrines a reciprocal right for citizens to vote in local and national parliamentary elections. Until now, the CTAs provisions were found in disparate pieces of legislation and bilateral administrative agreements, while some overlapped with EU rules.
The CTA is a practical demonstration of the enduring strength of the British-Irish relationship and of our people-to-people ties, said Irelands Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Simon Coveney, who signed the deal in London with British Prime Minister Theresa Mays de facto deputy David Lidington...
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-ireland/uk-and-irelands-common-travel-area-to-continue-after-brexit-idUKKCN1SE1QA
No time to go 'wobbly': Pompeo scolds Britain over China and Huawei
Source: Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Britain on Wednesday it needed to change its attitude towards China and telecoms company Huawei, casting the worlds second largest economy as a threat to the West similar to that once posed by the Soviet Union...
... Ask yourself: would the Iron Lady be silent when China violates the sovereignty of nations through corruption or coercion? Would she allow China to control the internet of the future? Pompeo said.
Insufficient security will impede the United States ability to share certain information within trusted networks. This is just what China wants to divide Western alliances through bits and bytes, not bullets and bombs.
Pompeo said China steals sensitive intellectual property and sensitive commercial data in Europe, Asia, and the United States, and singled out Huawei...
Read more: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pompeo-britain/no-time-to-go-wobbly-pompeo-scolds-britain-over-china-and-huawei-idUKKCN1SE0Q5
Is Brexit breaking Britain?
Local elections point to Remain but big parties sell mantra of need to deliver Brexit
First, and most obviously, there is interpretation. Electoral desertion of the two main British parties was not a shift by voters towards Remainy parties, as described by Robert Peston, ITVs economics editor. The parties in receipt of voters favour were 100 per cent Remain.
This is not just semantic quibbling: the British media, with one or two exceptions, immediately bought into the narrative that the electorate now just wants Jeremy Corbyn and Teresa May to get on with Brexit. Surprisingly, it wasnt just the ultra-right wing, billionaire owned bits of the press. Even the BBC was at it. In the unlikely event of a referendum on the future of the BBC, I would now vote to abolish it: the betrayal of its public broadcasting mandate has been grim to observe.
Secondly, there is the psycho-pathology of the whole thing. Its tempting to talk about gaslighting, Orwellian double-speak, believing six impossible things by breakfast, confirmation bias and lots of other psychological theories and descriptions of the oddities of human behaviour. None of these come close to an explanation. Perhaps it is a form of mass psychosis...
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/brexit/is-brexit-breaking-britain-1.3881604?fbclid=IwAR2kVXnN7lxwE9rIKAnAZ13_eo1SSAWrSPPKxdaA2qm0QRxZ0y5D9LNvTk8
XPost in UK Group: https://www.democraticunderground.com/108815948
From the comments at the Irish Times:
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: Canary Islands Archipelago
Home country: Spain
Member since: Wed Apr 19, 2006, 01:59 PM
Number of posts: 16,881