The Quiet Road

As I was reading the latest news on the terrifying acceleration of Arctic Climate Change, it struck me that — assuming both humanity and the Santa Claus myth survive the next couple of centuries — at some point we are going to be forced to relocate old Saint Nick to the Antarctic. Unless we add some kind of undersea base into the myth, the North Pole is rapidly becoming an untenable location for Santa’s workshop. And over the next hundred years, even Lapland is likely to look distinctly “unChristmassy” for most of the year.

Some parents will weave Santa’s relocation into the myth… it may well become a “traditional” way of introducing young children to Climate Change? Others will simply insist against the consensus of informed opinion that Santa has always lived in the South Pole and it’s a goddamn Chinese hoax to suggest otherwise.

UPDATE: Within 20 seconds of posting this, I read Philip Challinor’s far better take on the story…

You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is going to drown https://t.co/VlR55gGHtA

— Philip Challinor (@pchallinor) 21 December 2016

As I watched President-Elect Donald Trump become embroiled in a twitter flame-war with China, it struck me that we are indeed entering a period of genuine uncertainty.

I am vaguely hopeful that my general cynicism about US politics and democracy is validated; that the president actually has little or no real power; that Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex will simply keep trundling towards catastrophic climate and resource wars in much the same way its been doing for the past 50 years; and President Trump will essentially become the world’s most embarrassing reality TV show for the next 4 years. The Pentagon’s Court Jester.

Because the alternative… that the guy will actually be responsible for substantial shifts in US policy, that he will set directions and the US behemoth will follow them… that’s honestly quite terrifying. His position on Climate Change alone — if translated into active policy changes — will make him the most damaging president in recent US history. I’m not saying current US policy is anything short of disastrous on this issue… but Trump’s anti-science stance has culminated in threats not just to ignore existing climate research but to veto any further research being carried out by US government organisations. This is very worrying (hint: remove NASA, the EPA and the USGCRP from climate research and you deal a very serious blow to the entire field that will cause lasting damage).

Bizarrely, I find myself sincerely hoping that American democracy is fundamentally broken. That the president is an ineffectual figurehead who will be deftly handled and manipulated by the Illuminati, or the Rockefeller Foundation, or the Gnomes of Zurich, or the Zionist conspiracy, or the the Liberal Elite, or The Greys, or the Milk Marketing Board… to essentially keep everything exactly the way it is.

Normally when a politician gets elected I hope they shake things up; that they challenge the system and turn against the establishment. Not so with Trump. The man is a menace.

Just a quick one — but too long for twitter.

I’ve been reading a bunch of UK news stories about that “having cake and eating it” note. The note is irrelevant, but all of the news stories about it — in fact almost all of the UK news stories about Brexit — appear to be framing the impending negotiations in completely the wrong light.

Brexit came as a shock to me. I suspect it came as a shock to most people reading this. But I believe there is a general consensus (even among Brexiteers) that the UK decision to leave was at least as much a political / cultural decision as it was an economic one. Certainly, many in the “Leave” camp would argue that the UK stands to be better-off, economically speaking, as a result of Brexit. I personally doubt that very much. But whether or not that might be true; it’s reasonable to say that political and cultural concerns played a part in the vote to leave.

However, the negotiations are being framed — by most UK media — in purely economic terms. At least from the European side. The media is well aware that British politics is going to shape the British position (whether or not free movement of people can be sold to the British people in the current political climate, should it be the only way to salvage access to the free market) but they seem to cast the European position as either being purely about balance sheets, or at best in terms of the internal politics of a particular nation (how will the current French election campaign affect Europe’s position, etc.)

What is being overlooked is that the negotiating team from the European side will not bring with them the politics of any specific nation. They will be tasked with getting the best deal for Europe. Yes, economics will take primacy as it often does. But the institutions of Europe will also bring their own very definite political agenda to the table. And that agenda will be to make the British option — leaving the EU — as unpalatable as possible to others.

The UK vote has created a huge amount of instability within Europe, at an already unstable time. The EU’s negotiators* will not be tasked with “getting the best deal for both sides”, though that will be the public stance of course. They will be quietly tasked with getting the best deal for Europe in a way that makes the entire thing look like a gigantic mistake for Britain. And ultimately I don’t think that’s going to end well for anyone.

The tram stops at Fettercairn. A man steps on, wreathed in smoke from a just-discarded cigarette. He smells faintly of last night’s beer. And he smells of cigarettes — though not faintly. His face looks like it’s seen more than its fair share of fights. His fists are clenched in what I feel certain is a near-perpetual anger. Anger with the world. With himself. With anyone or anything that catches his eye. He takes a seat and stares furiously out of the window.

The tram stops at the next stop. Belgard. A man steps on, wreathed in smoke from a still-lit cigarette, smouldering on the platform behind him. The breeze comes from a different angle here at Belgard, but I feel certain that he too smells of last night’s beer. And cigarettes. His face has also taken plenty of punches. His fists have also doled them out.

He spies the first man, sitting with his back to him. Tap tap on his shoulder. The first man turns… his eyes wary.

“Where are you off to?” asks the second man.

“Court.” replies the first in a voice shredded by smoke.

The second man grins as he takes a seat opposite the first. “Me too.” he says.

Vladimir Putin is a dangerous, authoritarian despot. This fact is illustrated both by current Russian domestic policy (towards minorities, opposition groups and free-thinkers) and foreign policy (in Ukraine and now Syria).

It seems likely to me that Russian intervention in Syria will have a fairly disastrous outcome. Putin’s military will almost certainly kill and maim many thousands of Syrian civilians in an attempt to prop up the vicious local dictator, Assad, who also routinely kills and maims Syrian civilians. It is a hideous state of affairs.

I don’t claim to know exactly what’s best for Syria and its people; but I am 100% convinced that turning it into Guernica writ large is not the solution. So I – and I hope all right-thinking people and governments – unequivocally condemn Russian policy in this case.

Get the hell out of there, Russia!

That said; the faux-outrage emerging from the United States government and media is nauseating. Any global condemnation of Putin is effectively undermined when the American government joins the chorus. So long as the US military is bombing hospitals in Afghanistan and providing active support to the murderous Saudi Arabian campaign in Yemen, their government should shut the hell up.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own?

Over the past few years the citizens of Ireland have, collectively, been plunged into crippling debt likely to last generations. This was done, ultimately, by a fairly small group of politicians, bankers and property speculators. Our response has been fascinating. With the singular exception of the water privatisation* issue (which has sparked protest and may yet prove a rallying point for a broader “anti-austerity” movement**) we’ve pretty much accepted it with a reluctant shrug. There’s been plenty of anger, don’t get me wrong. But it tends to be seething and grumbling and the narrowing of the eyes with us (rather than riots and petrol bombs and voting for socialists).

I could write at length about why the Irish collective psyche has reacted this way, but I’ll leave that for another day. For now I just wanted to highlight the weird way in which powerful establishment figures involved in the financial crisis occasionally pop up in the media ostensibly to “apologise” (or in this case “renew their apology” – how weird is that!?) but actually seem to be insulting the very people they have completely screwed over. What other explanation can there be for former Allied Irish Bank chairman Dermot Gleeson’s testimony in front of the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry today?

I feel confident in saying that every person reading this post had learnt and understood, by the time they were 10 years old, that “but everyone else was doing it” does not constitute a legitimate justification for doing something. Parents and grandparents will ram the point home with questions about hands in the fire and jumping off cliffs. We knew, as children, that doing something wrong because “the others were doing it” is bullshit plain and simple.

So I feel no hesitation in shouting “Bullshit!” when Dermot Gleeson acknowledges that yes, absolutely, AIB was indeed engaged in:

lending that was ‘expansive’ at a time of excessive risk taking on the back of a construction and property-fuelled boom

but that no single lender could have done anything about it. Because:

“if AIB had stopped lending, their competitors would have happily stepped in to satisfy the demand”

It’s hard to believe, I know, but that really is the former head of Ireland’s second biggest bank telling a government committee that because all the other banks were running up huge unsustainable debts that would one day collapse the economy, it was OK for his bank to do it too. More than that, it was the government’s fault for not stopping him.

The regulator was “hopeless” he claimed. I can’t be the only person made furious by that, right? The man was in a powerful position with a huge amount of public responsibility… but he didn’t comprehend that the point was not to see how many insane things he could do without falling foul of the regulator. We clearly need regulators (not least because of eejits like this guy) but if you’re in charge of a bank deemed of national importance and structurally vital to the stability of the public finances and you’re playing a game of chicken with the regulators. Then you’re doing it wrong!

The heads of our major banks should not be tasked with seeing how close to the edge they can bring the institution in the name of ever increasing “shareholder value”. These banks, sadly, are too damn important to us – the people – to act in so reckless a manner. Or be allowed to. And if we’re still employing that kind of fricking idiot to run our big institutions (hint: we are, because absolutely nothing has changed in that respect) then we need to stop right now.

That said, Gleeson is correct in implying that the government are far from blameless… everyone involved should be writing their memoirs in jail. But as the head of the second biggest bank in the country it was at least part of Gleeson’s job not to run the bloody thing into the ground and the country with it. It’s not acceptable for the head of AIB to steer the institution in whatever reckless direction he fancies so long as he manages to find a way around government regulation and oversight.

Mind you, you kind of have to admire the way he so succinctly illustrates the central attitudes of capitalism with his every utterance.

Also let’s be very clear about something… if the second largest bank in Ireland had actively tried to put the brakes on during the run-up to the collapse; while it clearly would not have prevented the crash, it’s not unreasonable to imagine the country would be in slightly better shape today… a few billion less in debt at least.

And because that equates to a few billion less for the salaries of doctors and nurses and teachers and policemen and the coast guard… well, let’s just say that Gleeson’s failure to learn a lesson most of us grasped as children has caused a great deal of suffering and maybe even cost a few lives. But hey, he’s sorry. So leave him to his wealth. We will condemn him to the inconvenience of appearing before committees every year or two – that’ll surely deter future bankers from destroying the financial system.