Politics

Capitalism

Friend Steve and I often discuss politics and, although there are many things we agree on, sometimes find ourselves at odds over capitalism. What we both agree on is that capitalism is the only viable economic framework. Small enterprises can be capitalised on sweat, an approach I have sometimes taken in my working life. Any large enterprise, however, will need funding and that can come only from private investors or the state. If all funding comes from the state the state necessarily controls all related projects, an approach that has been demonstrated not to work, for whatever reasons, countless times. So the role of private investment, and capitalism, seems to be crucial, irrespective of one's political views.

Steve and I also agree that unfettered capitalism, “red in tooth and claw”, is not desirable. The CEO of Unilever has been cited as echoing Winston Churchill's comment that democracy was the least bad system of government that has been devised: words to the effect that capitalism is the least bad economic framework that has been devised. Where Steve and I sometimes diverge is on the nature and placement of the restraints that should be put on capitalism. However, a recent article I read (in which the Unilever CEO was quoted and which I can no longer find and therefore attribute) could have a basis to reconcile our views.

The article was primarily arguing against companies buying back their own shares, on the basis that that was the company “eating itself”. Share buy-backs are a way of keeping a share price artificially high, in line with the prevalent business view that a company's first duty is to its shareholders, but essentially just move money between the company and its shareholders. They do nothing for the economy at large and it is economies at large that are the major concern now. The article argues that this is not only bad for economies but also for the company itself in the longer term. Most interestingly, the article argued that concerns about unemployment, the level of the minimum wage and the growing wealth inequality gap might all be resolved by a rather different economic view.

The basis of the difference was the assertion that a company's first duty should be to its clients and not its shareholders. By focussing on clients as its primary duty it would be in a position to create more income and, incidentally, more value to its shareholders. More income means the possibility of expansion and more jobs and raising the level of the minimum wage would mean more disposable income for employees to spend; since a percentage of employees might well also be customers, the additional wage cost was not simply a cost drain; moreover, it would serve to put a brake on the wealth gap.

Other large-company CEOs echoing this view were cited in the article. An intriguing point about this is that if this view comes to prevail and it is accepted that shareholders are best served in the medium to long term not by focussing on them but on the company's clients, then this is capitalism reforming itself from within rather than by any state instigated legislation. So an army of civil servants wouldn't be needed to enforce it. In a sense, it would be a return of the great industrialist philanthropists of the Victorian era. And arguments on minimum living standards and the wealth gap could move from the moral realm to the economic one, with potential benefit for all concerned; that is, all stakeholders in society.

I think that this is a view on which friend Steve and I, despite our slightly different starting positions, might quietly agree.

Cuba

The alternative to capitalism can be seen in Cuba. I have tended to regard Cuba with some sympathy, since I believe overthrow of the Batista regime benefited the large majority of Cubans. True, in return for the improvements Cubans received, in terms of healthcare and education for instance, they had to accept restrictions on many personal liberties (and listen to exceedingly long and boring speeches). Economic sanctions imposed by the USA were and remain a heavy burden, although that aspect may be changing. However, I have friends who know Cuba and have suggested to me that the country is now in an extremely parlous state, only marginally attributable to the USA's foreign (economic) policy. Shortages of essentials in the country can only partially be attributed to sanctions; the state-run economy has failed and the country is kept afloat only by tourism. To aggravate matters, interference with personal liberties has reached an intolerable level, unsustainable outside a dictatorship and police state. That is what I have been told and I have no reason to doubt the truth of it; and tourists are mostly kept in enclaves and can have little contact with local inhabitants.

I knew that some other friends of mine would be visiting Cuba shortly tourists and I knew that they, as well as wanting to enjoy their holiday, would be interested in meeting and knowing about the lives of the local inhabitants. I was going to prime them but was too late; they had already been and, anyway, apparently found no way to escape their enclave.

Implications of the Euro

I have a good life here in Mollans. I Like the place and most of the people in it; I garden, play boules, join in and promote village activities, eat frequently with friends, go shopping and do very many other satisfying but unremarkable things. And living here is well within my very reasonable financial means. I estimate the cost of living as similar to that in the UK, probably slightly less as a retired person, and there is not a lot to spend money on here. In short, I can live well here, quietly, and within my means. A significant factor though is the pound-euro exchange rate, since my income is in pounds which I have to convert to euros. In my time here I've seen the exchange rate swing by about 25% one way or the other but it has been easy to even out that effect on my income. What though if the euro or even the EU itself were to implode?

To my mind, the euro has been a big mistake. There was huge political backing for it at its inception, as a means to achieve financial integration in the EU. Financial integration and the euro are interdependent; you can't have one without the other. At the euro's inception financial homogeny didn't exist between EU countries and a nod to its necessity was made through financial requirements for joining the eurozone. These were widely and blatantly flouted though, particularly by Greece and Italy; only political wish-fulfilment saw them and a few other countries through. The result is a currency that is currently unsustainable. Of the major eurozone economies only Germany's is healthy. The second most important economy, that of France, now seems to be in serious trouble; if that continues to fail, questions about the economies of countries such as Ireland, Spain and Italy will become irrelevant. In fact, the financial crisis of the past few years has seen European economies diverge rather than converge, the opposite result to that desired. As in individual internal economies, the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. The euro will collapse, at least in some countries, unless Germany agrees to underwrite all eurozone debt.

The popular reaction to that possibility in Germany has been a swing to nationalism; why should Germany underwrite other countries' debts? That is the reaction not only in the most powerful country in the eurozone but also in the weakest: Greece. And similar rises in nationalism can be seen in Spain and France and even outside the eurozone, in the UK. When times are hard for most people, a rise in nationalism is normal and it generally subsides when a solution to the problems causing the hard times is found. In the current context the situation is serious because the only available solution could be disappearance or retrenchment of the euro and a fundamental rethink of the EU. We can probably dismiss the prospect of a Europe-wide war, a reaction to these circumstances in former times, but withdrawal of some countries from the eurozone and severe curbing of the power of Brussels are distinct possibilities. Certainly, global currency speculators will continue to attack the euro until its weaknesses are resolved; and they are currently being exacerbated rather than resolved. And, with the rise of nationalism, the idea of devolving more power to Brussels to achieve greater financial integration must be a forlorn prospect.

So what is to happen and how will it affect my quietly happy life? Accounting has always been a moveable feast, a game of smoke and mirrors, so I expect attempts to salvage the euro to continue, whatever fudges are involved, until or unless a total impasse is reached. That won't affect me greatly although, one way or another; I expect the cost of living here to rise sharply in the future, though hopefully still within my means. The rise in nationalism is unlikely to affect me nearly as much as it may other immigrant communities. But I think it may well produce radical changes in Brussels. If these include transference of power from the European Commission to the European Parliament, so much the better because that would apply a brake to the grand designers in favour of the pragmatists. And Brussels has always suffered from a lack of the latter. Such a change also could preserve the good work that the EU has done whilst eliminating its wildest flights of fantasy.

So I don't see any great threat to my quiet life but I do see some changes which, hopefully, won't be too disruptive.

St Martin

St Martin

I have not long returned from a fortnight in St Martin. A friend from my days at Bristol university, Kay, found me via the internet and invited me for a holiday at her house there. It was good to meet her again, after almost 50 years, and also to have a break from the winter in Mollans. It's not that often that I get the chance to swim in a warm sea and acquire a tan in February.

I found St Martin to be a beautiful island but strange in many ways. Not least of its many quirks is that despite being very small it is split into two distinct territories. About two thirds of the island is still officially part of France; the other third is an autonomous region within the Netherlands. Moreover, the official currency for the Dutch area is still the guilder, which exists only as a virtual currency. Dutch functionaries apparently have their salaries denominated in guilders but actually receive American dollars at a fixed exchange rate between the guilder and the dollar. So the physical currency is the American dollar.

The island has little history and what there is is recent, dating from European occupation. Arawak indians from South America landed on the island from time to time but it appears to have been uninhabited when Europeans arrived to fight over it. Ownership switched between the usual suspects, the English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and French before ending up in the hands of the last two. What they fought for, apart from their natural inclination in past centuries to fight one another anyway, was salt. St Martin had, and still has, large expanses of salt lagoons.

But possibly the most defining characteristic of St Martin is that it has no natural fresh water supply. Clean water is provided nowadays by means of desalination plant and the houses mostly have roofs designed to enable rain water to be collected and used as a secondary supply. This probably explains why the island was rarely inhabited until European colonisation and also explains something else I found strange: the striking lack of cultivation. I saw no fields of crops or garden vegetable plots and most plants in gardens seemed to be trees or bushes. Irrigation by desalinated water is clearly uneconomic resulting, although there was some grazing by goats and cattle, in almost all food apart from fish being imported.

Despite this handicap, St Martin is a genuinely beautiful island. It's highest point is only 455 metres but it is far from flat, unlike it's near neighbour Anguilla; hills abound. Its most appealing features are the many spacious beaches, most fringed by restaurants and cafés serving quality meals. The fish in particular is excellent. There are also many restaurants offering creole dishes, which is what passes for “native” cuisine. Whether this is accurate or a delusion is a matter for debate as most of the indigenous population would seem to have its origins in the slave trade under colonisation. However beaches and food are what attracts the tourists, primarily from North America, who underpin its economy. The fact that the island is duty free no doubt helps too. And St Martin is famous also for Juliana Airport, the runway of which is no more than 50 metres from a beach on which sunbathers seem to risk getting a haircut from the wheels of landing jets.

Apart from the beaches and restaurants there is not a great deal to occupy tourists. There is a small but interesting museum in Philipsburg, a butterfly farm by the Le Galion beach and abundant bird life. The pelican is the islands national icon; I saw egrets, many varieties of sea birds and others I could not name but what particularly caught my eye were the humming birds, which seemed completely unafraid by my presence.

My friend Kay's beautifully designed house overlooks the Grand Case bay with what must be one of the best views on the island. It was a real pleasure to have a morning coffee and evening G&T (Kay makes a superb one) whilst admiring the view below. So I returned having renewed acquaintance with a good friend, eaten some very good meals, bathed on some spectacular beaches and with a tan. Moreover, I returned in time to witness the early days of spring here in Mollans. To compensate for a very noticeable drop in temperature I can start on my gardening.

Doom And Gloom

.Financial Gloom And Doom

For me personally the recent financial climate has been good in as far as the pound has been relatively strong against the euro. Financial news in all the press and reasonable deductions that can be made from incidental news, however, I find very worrying. And this not about the euro per se, which I expect will stagger along from mini crisis to mini crisis until EU mandarins find the courage to take some really unpalatable decisions. It is about finance more generally, political stability and the conjunction of some rather alarming straws in the wind.

The gap between the very rich and the poor seems to be widening, even disregarding some very dubious use of statistics in some quarters. It may well still not be as great as it has been in previous centuries but previous centuries sorted that out by means of some rather bloody revolutions which it would probably be best not to repeat. Such revolutions may not be obviously on the cards yet but protests are widespread in the developed world and large protests can easily turn violent and get out of hand, with unforeseen consequences.

The protests in the developed world are easily understandable. Levels of unemployment in Greece, Spain and Italy, for example, that would have been inconceivable a decade ago look set to endure for quite a while longer and can only contribute to political instability in those countries. Claims made that pulling out of the recession imposed by the last financial crisis meant we're all in this together are clearly false. The net result of measures taken is that the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. That simply exacerbates political instability.

Reduction of the price of oil to unforeseen levels points to a shrinking global economy. When, for reasons I'm only vaguely aware of, it was deemed necessary to raise the GDP of western economies, it seems that the addition of trade in illegal drugs and prostitution was the only means that could be found. And it seems that one of the few, maybe only consistently profitable lines of business is hedge funds: essentially a gambling casino for the very rich with odds stacked in favour of the punter and, generally, bets on share prices falling (and, effectively, economies shrinking). It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that capitalism is running out of control and, unless the major powers of the world find a way of reining it in, then revolutions of sorts, quite possibly counter-productive, will occur.

None of these points in isolation is necessarily that significant. Put together they paint an alarming picture of the future. And I haven't even mentioned terrorism.

The National Health Service

I occasionally watch BBC Question Time and every time I do I vow never to watch it again. It is simply too frustrating seeing obvious questions not asked, politicians dodging and resorting to point scoring rather than dealing with issues and unincisive chairmanship. My last viewing, a couple of weeks ago, was no exception.

The subject was the NHS and the question asked was whether it could remain free at point of delivery and affordable by the government in the future. The question was admittedly rather badly phrased but no one on the panel or the chairman sought to rephrase it and so everyone just passed the time throwing bread rolls and dodging. The question should have been what is the minimum acceptable level of service by the NHS and can that be afforded by the government in the future. Of course the NHS can remain both affordable and free in the future; you simply cut the level of service, time after time.

If people are prepared to accept weeks' delays in getting a GP appointment, 6 hour delays in getting an ambulance and 12 hours delays in being seen in A&E, then that can probably be provided for free into the foreseeable future. If they want a better service, it will cost more and may not be affordable by the government alone for free delivery. It is almost axiomatic that better service costs more.

Lots of bread rolls were thrown regarding private/public involvement in provision, private medical insurance and comparisons with other countries, all without a semblance of accurate aim. The facts are that the UK population is growing, people are living longer and thus requiring more professional care and medical attention and advances in medicine are providing solutions to previously insoluble medical problems. All those factors imply increased cost. At some point, for even the most caring of governments, these rising costs must raise questions as to what level of service can be delivered for free. That is the real question: what level of service is acceptable and how should that be funded. Personally, I think that any acceptable level of service described by Everyman will at some point become unaffordable for free delivery by government funding alone.

Weather

The weather has been significantly colder over the last month, the first sign of real winter that we have had at this year-end. The most noticeable aspect has been the top of Mt Ventoux, which normally has an enduring covering of snow between mid-December and March but has had that this year only in the past month, during which time also snow has been visible on the hills around down to about 1000ft. That must mean the skiing season on Mt Serein started late and could well finish early. So, unless the weather changes drastically over the next month we will again have had an unusually clement winter.

Charlie Hebdo

Charlie Hebdo

It is difficult to let the Charlie Hebdo attack and its aftermath go uncommented here. The village held its tribute to the victims on Friday, a minute's silence outside the Mairie. The relevant details have all been published and I can add nothing other than a personal view.

Firstly, the claimed legitimacy for the attack on Charlie Hebdo's offices should be dismissed out of hand. Islamic extremists were of course provoked by Charlie Hebdo's cartoon, as indeed they could claim to be provoked by the day-to-day life of almost everyone in western society. Western society has standards that Muslim extremists will never accept and has every right to those standards. As much was demonstrated by the public display of solidarity by the leaders of western nations and religious groups in France. Any Muslim who cannot accept that should live elsewhere if possible or else confine their objections to peaceful protest.

I think too much attention has been given in western societies to Muslim sensitivities, no doubt partly because of fear of such reprisals. Politically correct circles and advocates of bizarre forms of multiculturalism have played no small part in this. Sensitivity to others beliefs is a laudable form of courtesy but not to the extent that it precludes criticism or occasional lampooning; those are rightly cherished freedoms in the west and must remain so, the more so if threatened by fear

By the same token western nations have erred, I believe, in their interventions in Arabic nations' affairs. Democracy and freedom of speech have never had much of a role in Arab culture and the west has no right to try to introduce them. If other countries willingly harbour groups plotting and effecting terrorist acts in western countries then by all means give them a bloody nose but stay out of their culture. Even, I would argue, if clear atrocities are being carried out in their countries the west should abstain from direct intervention. If their culture is to change and become more humane, the inhabitants of the countries themselves must effect that change.

At the root of much of this is oil and Israel. While the west remains dependent on Arab oil, so foreign policies will be skewed accordingly. And Israel's situation, whilst complex and difficult in the extreme, has not been helped by their policies and strategies towards Arabs in and around their territories. Netanyahu's offer to have the Jewish hostages who were killed buried in Israel was a blunder simply pouring fuel on the fire, another stupid mistake.

The world is in a mess but at least we should not compound the mess.

French And Holidays

Le mot juste

I have become very wary of the danger of making a perfectly accurate translation of English into French but one that is simply not how the French would express themselves. Years ago, when translating the booklet on the History of Mollans I fortunately had the prescience to get friend Steve to check my English. I had blithely translated “monument aux morts” as monument to the dead and Steve pointed out that we call that a war memorial; obvious, but I'd missed it. That was French into English but the same applies in the opposite direction.

So, establishing the French version of the media library for my website (www.mon-mollans-sur-ouveze.fr), I have been adding French captions to the photos as I loaded them. That is something I generally feel happy doing without consulting my French translators. One caption, however, needed to be for a photo of villagers dressed up in historical costumes for a parade through the village. I decided on “defile en costumes” (with acute accents on three of the “e”s which I haven't put in here because the Blogger software screws up the HTML after accents). It then occurred to me that “defile costume” (accent-free zone again and in following text) might be the term needed so I asked Daniel when he called in for an aperitif. He confirmed that I had the right expression, adding as an aside that if it had been a ball it would have to be “bal costume” (costume ball or fancy dress ball in English?) and not “bal en costumes”.

Daniel and I then chatted through some other similar traps. I already knew that an “assurance vie “ was not life insurance; it translates as endowment insurance. What we English call life insurance translates into French as death insurance, reasonably enough. Another example we came up with was the “mutiles de guerre” notices that used to be placed next to selected seats on Paris metro trains. In English that wouldn't be war mutilated but war wounded (blesse in French); same idea, just a different way of expressing it. Incidentally it occurred to me that both French and English expressions for war memorial were inadequate. The term war memorial is not a memorial for a war but for the dead of a war; the term “monument aux morts” is not for the dead in general but for the dead of a war or wars. So both cultures have made compromises without finding a succinct “mot juste”. What should the (succinct) expression be?

Spell-checkers

Decades ago, when electronic calculators were the new “must have”, an American IT friend commented to me that it was a pity because American kids were losing the ability to calculate themselves and calculators often made errors, particularly when the batteries were running down. I knew the problem and always made a round-figure mental calculation when using a calculator and believed the result if it was broadly the same. An analogous situation now is with spell-checkers; evidence on the internet suggests kids can no longer spell and aren't aware of the dangers of relying on spell-checkers.

The Holidays

The “fetes” as they are known here have passed quietly and happily as far as I am concerned. For me, an atheist, Christmas is all about kids and their excitement. In their absence, and since days off work are no longer relevant, Christmas is little more than an occasion to spend something extra on food and drink; also an occasion when most people feel they should be jolly (“disapproval would be folly”: Tom Lehrer). When I was in my teens, it was about that and parties. The same goes more or less for the new year, except that young kids don't really come into it, except for any fireworks displays going on locally or on TV. There is always a “reveillon” or two in the village but I've never felt inclined to sign up for them. So it has been for me.

My one outstanding memory of the new year is witnessing some car carnage when tracking back home in the very icy early morning with a girlfriend from a party in central London. A car parked along the road we were walking along was trying to extricate itself from a line of parked cars with a ridge of iced snow against its outside wheel. Revving up to the maximum it escaped the ridge only to slither across the road and crash into cars parked opposite, ricochet back into cars parked on the side it had been, ricochet again into cars parked on the opposite side and then drive on, leaving seven or eight cars on either side of the road distinctly damaged. No happy new year for some.

Websites, Metrics and Wine

Bad Websites

I wrote some time ago about the stupidity of websites using the UK postcode system unthinkingly, particularly those which would claim to be part of the global market. My annual trip round websites where I look for possible Christmas presents, cards, etc, has shown up more stupidities.

Looking for Christmas cards, which I prefer to buy from charities rather than commercial firms where possible, I went to the Oxfam website. Thee was a reasonable selection of cards from which I chose various packs and I then went on to choose other items. Right at the end of the purchase sequence, when it came to confirming items in my basket, the packs of cards I had chosen were marked as unavailable outside the UK. This meant paging back through the site to delete them, the site was very slow and I ended up aborting the transaction. The problem could have been avoided had Oxfam marked cards as being available only within the UK up front. It was a good demonstration of how to piss off customers and encourage them to shop elsewhere.

Another demonstration of stupidity occurs on the SNCF website. The site demands the age of would-be passengers. If I put in my correct age (over 60) the site automatically assumes I want a reduced fare for pensioners, which is restricted in availability both in numbers of seats and times of trains. The result is a very short list of choices of trains, usually at inconvenient times. To get the full list of trains available I have to falsify my age. It took me a while to discover this since nowhere on the site is it stated. In the case of SNCF, there is no train alternative so maybe they don't care about the difficulty in using their website. Also, many airline sites refuse to give you a general flight schedule; you have to propose to book a flight and then manoeuvre around alternatives when a general schedule would be much more helpful. In this respect, travel agency sites are often easier to use than airline sites; I wonder if the airlines realise that.

All this leads me to wonder about the testing websites are put through. In any IT development there is a whole battery of tests that should be applied, one set of which should be user testing: how easily, efficiently and effectively the software can be used by Jo Public. Testing was always the poor relation in IT development and that seems still to be the case; it would be easy to assume little or no user testing had been carried out on many websites. One glorious exception is Amazon, which has probably been a significant factor in the company's success. Not only do I find that I can do everything I want on their website, I find I can do it quickly and easily. I've been looking for a site that exposes website stupidities but can't find one; it's badly needed and overdue.

Metrics

I went to the Post Office to send off Christmas cards en masse and was duly given strips of stamps in multiples of a dozen. It didn't strike me as odd at the time but friend Steve pointed out you'd really expect them to be in multiples of ten in a metric country. He had an experience a few years ago when he went into a local hardware shop to get some chipboard and he had measured out what he wanted in yards. The shop assistant huffed and puffed and said we sell it in metres (obviously) and so did the conversion. When Steve asked how much it was per square metre he was told that they charged for it in yards. Confusion reigns!

There are other anomalies, such as the “demi” you ask for in a cafe when you want a beer being a half-pint rather than a half litre. Apparently in Napoleonic times there was an attempt to metricate the calendar, which obviously didn't have much success. Beautifully simple as the metric system is, there are some things that just aren't suited to it and now, anyway, a lot of things have gone binary or octal.

Wine

WE Brits are apparently drinking much more wine than 30 years ago, according to all accounts, which makes me wonder about the future of various staple dishes in the English diet. Baked beans on toast, for instance, particularly with brown sauce, wouldn't go with any wine I can think of. Neither would kippers or grilled herring. I can't see wine enhancing fish and chips or sausage and mash either. My point is this: almost any French dish I can think of seems made to go with one sort of wine or another. As the Brits drink more wine, will that start to shape the composition of dishes in the typical diet?