Ghost Dog
Ghost Dog's Journal$20 per dose, the back of the neck stuff? Hmm...
Much cheaper here... I guess I could supply that by mail out of the Canary Islands for under $12.
Would that make a small- business plan?
U.K. Told to Double Scale of Co2 Cuts to Meet Climate Goal
... Have to dig the headline's typically potentially rabble-rousing spin (although this is Bloomberg, not a Murdoch/Dacre tabloid). Who dares infringe our sacred superior sovereignty, telling UK government and people what do do? F'ing EU. Leave!
Uh, nope. It's a UK government-appointed advisory committee telling dickhead pols what has to be done to avoid utter catastrophe. As the article explains, but what percentage of the deliberately dumbed-down actually read beyond the kneejerker headline?
More honest headline: Energy Ministry: UK must Double Scale of Co2 Cuts to Meet Climate Goal
... Energy Secretary Amber Rudd on Thursday endorsed a recommendation for the U.K. to slash carbon dioxide emissions by 57 percent between 2028 and 2032. The government’s official climate adviser said current policies only deliver about 53 percent of the reductions needed, and the vote to leave the European Union will further complicate environmental policies.
The recommendation in an annual progress report by the Committee on Climate Change indicates the tough decisions Prime Minister David Cameron’s successor faces. Britain already has cut emissions 38 percent from the 1990 baseline used in the calculations, leaving environmental groups seeking deeper cuts in greenhouse gases increasingly at odds with industry and consumers who are demanding cheaper power. The vote on the EU adds another dimension.
“Leaving the EU will require the reassessment of some existing and proposed policies but does not change the need for the U.K. to play its role in reducing emissions,” said John Gummer, the chairman of the committee, who is also known as Lord Deben since his elevation to the upper chamber of Parliament.
The committee was established by the government to advise ministers on policy and will produce a detailed analysis on the impact of the vote to leave the EU in the autumn. That decision may lead to the scrapping or weakening of some Brussels-led green policies, such as new car emissions standards, the EU Emissions Trading System and laws on waste and harmful fluorinated gases, the committee said...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-30/u-k-told-to-double-scale-of-pollution-cuts-to-meet-climate-goal
Marina Hyde on "The pisser for Boris"
Except he isn’t. Standing at a podium bearing not a soaring campaign slogan, but the rather more prosaic “ST ERMIN’S HOTEL”, the leading political bounder of the age announced that he had thought about the individual needed to take the country out of the mess he’s dumped it in (I paraphrase), and “concluded that person cannot be me”.
Where did it all go right? Normally Johnson is so smart he doesn’t even fly by the seat of his own pants. Unfortunately for him, his wingman recently decided he isn’t willing to offer up his undergarments any longer. Michael Gove, fresh from destroying his friend David Cameron, is going for the accumulator by announcing his surprise Tory leadership bid. As Gove put it this morning: “I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead.” It sounds like a tragic conflict of disloyalties, with which Gove has wrestled for perhaps 24 hours...
... Even so, and however inevitable it might feel after some reflection, this was a shock. We did know a schism might be on the House of Cards, as it were, thanks to yesterday’s accidentally leaked email from Gove’s wife Sarah Vine. Think of her as Claire Blunderwood. The pisser for Boris is that he now can’t even contemplate having Michael beaten up, like he did that troublesome little journalist back in the day, because many people have one eye on the news at the mo and would probably notice...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/30/boris-johnson-michael-gove-london
... And, an interesting comment at the Guardian (proofread & edited):
Murdoch (rightfully) doubted the commitment of Johnson to the actual Leave cause.
I think this significantly increases chances of an actual Brexit happening, since with Murdoch's backing Gove has a very real chance of securing the Tory Leadership.
He will then follow up on his master's wishes and take the UK out of the EU, no matter what the cost, and turn it into a neo-liberal heilstate in order to stay competitive globally.
Murdoch will have an even firmer hold on UK politics after, and be rid of that pesky EU that just would not listen to him.
This will most likely cost Gove's political career, but he undoubtedly has plenty of assurances from Rupert that the Goves will be well taken care of as a reward for their loyalty.
I wouldn't feel so sure.
I read in some TPP Environmental Chapter text (via New Zealand) this defining clause:
... and wonder who and how it would be decided what constitutes a disguised restriction on trade or investment?
I also read an analysis from the Center for International Environmental Law which is gloomy:
... So I have my doubts... To put it mildly.
The EU, btw, for similar reasons, will not pass the TTIP because France, as any EU country can, will veto it, M. Hollande has said. The mad in power in the UK might go for it, though.
Only around 30% voted to leave the EU:
UK Office for National Statistics mid-year population estimate 2015, released 23/6/2016 is 65,110,000
Of these, 7,053,719 are under 18, so of the estimated UK resident population (2015), 58,056,281 are estimated to be of voting age.
The UK Electoral Commission reports that the electorate for the referendum was 46,500,001 registered deemed-eligible voters, of whom 72.2% voted. There were 25,359 rejected votes, 16,141,241 votes to remain in the EU and 17,410,742 to leave.
I have not yet compiled figures on the estimated number of UK residents who are not currently EU citizens, nor on the number of non-UK residents who formed part of the electorate, but in broad terms perhaps all can agree that those voting to leave the EU were approximately 30% of the eligible voting-age EU citizen residents in UK (includes, of course, UK citizens) and 27% of the total estimated population including those under 18 whose future is here so much at stake. I think it is reasonable to assume that those eligible who did not vote or did not register to vote did not feel strongly that the UK should leave the EU (and very probably break up the UK and possibly the EU too).
These are not enough votes here to justify such radical UK Constitutional and International Treaty change.
The global order is dying. But Britain cannot survive without the EU (Paul Mason)
... Today, the event we are living through is just as momentous – but with more tabloid lying and internet memes, and bleaker economic prospects. Brexit, looked at through the lens of history, signals the high-water mark of neoliberalism – the system of free-market economics and global trade that began in the early 1990s. It was triggered, ultimately, because enough people associated their own poor prospects and economic hardship with a treaty coordinating the economic policies of different countries.
The impact has been immediate. Almost unnoticed amid the post-Brexit hysteria, French president François Hollande announced his intention to veto TTIP, the free-trade treaty between the EU and the US. For clarity, that means it is dead...
... The Tory right – unlike Stanley Baldwin andRamsay MacDonald in the 1930s – has noJohn Maynard Keynes to call on. It has only the promise it has made itself: that lots of countries in the world will do swift bilateral trade deals and that – somehow – Britain will end up more global, more outward-facing, than when it had a mere 500 million people to sell to.
This is an illusion. It will not happen. And in their hearts, many of those who voted for Brexit do not want it to happen. Talk to them: they want less free markets, less migration and less open trade. And, unlike in the 1930s, they have newspapers that represent them and talk radio stations to wind them up to fury. So the real nightmare scenario is not Brexit – it is what happens, socially and economically, when Brexit does not work...
More... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/27/global-order-britain-survive-eu-alternative-economic-model
The PP wins the Spanish election, but who will help it into government?
But the fact that the conservatives fell short of the 176 seats required for a parliamentary majority, in a highly polarized environment that is not conducive to dealmaking, means that governing coalitions will be hard to come by...
... Against all forecasts, the Socialist Party (PSOE) has managed to hold on to its second spot although it loses five seats (85 against 90), while the leftist alliance of Unidos Podemos has lost a million votes even if it gained two seats from December (71 against 69).
The biggest loser of the night was Ciudadanos, which dropped from 40 to 32 seats after voters heeded the message of fear issued by acting prime minister Mariano Rajoy, who said moderate voters had to band together to stop Podemos from reaching government...
http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/06/27/inenglish/1467012828_937419.html
Also, and crucially, it is the EU Council, consisting of
the democratically- elected leaders of the member states, that tells the EU Commission what to do (and what not). On some issues, the EU Parliament can also give instructions to the Commission. The bureaucracy executes those instructions. If, at the Council level, UK leaders have been relatively politically ineffective, they have only themselves to blame.
Encyclopedia Britannica:
Political and social science
Written by Nicola Smith
Last Updated 3-23-2016
neoliberalism, ideology and policy model that emphasizes the value of free market competition.
Although there is considerable debate as to the defining features of neoliberal thought and practice, it is most commonly associated with laissez-faire economics. In particular, neoliberalism is often characterized in terms of its belief in sustained economic growth as the means to achieve human progress, its confidence in free markets as the most-efficient allocation of resources, its emphasis on minimal state intervention in economic and social affairs, and its commitment to the freedom of trade and capital...
http://global.britannica.com/topic/neoliberalism
Laissez-faire
Economics
Written by The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
laissez-faire, (French: “allow to do”), policy of minimum governmental interference in the economic affairs of individuals and society...
... Laissez-faire was a political as well as an economic doctrine. The pervading theory of the 19th century was that the individual, pursuing his own desired ends, would thereby achieve the best results for the society of which he was a part. The function of the state was to maintain order and security and to avoid interference with the initiative of the individual in pursuit of his own desired goals. But laissez-faire advocates nonetheless argued that government had an essential role in enforcing contracts as well as ensuring civil order.
The philosophy’s popularity reached its peak around 1870. In the late 19th century the acute changes caused by industrial growth and the adoption of mass-production techniques proved the laissez-faire doctrine insufficient as a guiding philosophy...
http://global.britannica.com/topic/laissez-faire
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