The Economy solved... do I have your attention? Good.

At current the economy is a, shall we say, confusing entity. Like the facts surrounding the middle-east conflict, there seems to be just as much misinformation as there is truth and because of this, whenever we hear the words "economy", "fiscal" or "monetary",whilst we may not understand what is being said, but we can be reasonably certain that its not good. 

So allow me to simplify the issue with a very brief history of the economic crisis, leaving out all of the hype and ridiculous words such as "fiscal" which means "money", or "monetary" which means... "money"! or "quantative easing" which, though it sounds like it should have something to do with making an obese man's trousers slightly bigger round the waist, simply means printing money.

Basically what happened was that we (and by we I mean bankers) borrowed lots and lots of money at a certain interest rate price (this we will call "loan 1"). This price is paid annually yearly until the borrowed money is returned. What the banks then did was invest lend this borrowed money to businesses and individuals at an even higher interest price (this we will call "loan 2") and in so doing, reaping the profits money left over after paying the first, lower price. Now this sounds like a very clever scheme, and it would have been had they not become over zealous with there lending. Not only were banks lending to other banks (which they assumed were doing all the necessary checks to insure that they could pay back the loans which they were taking out and so often neglected to do the necessary checks themselves, which in and of itself is not that bad because everyone assumes that the one thing banks know how to handle is there own monetary affairs money... or at least back then they did) but they were also lending more and more recklessly to more and more high risk ventures people who may have not been able to pay the money back.

It is often at this point in the explanation that bankers say that it was the borrowers fault for borrowing more than they could pay back. This is not true, if you are loaning out other peoples money then it is your responsibility to ensure that the people whom you loan the money too are reputable and have the income ability to pay it back plus the interest on top price. It is double your responsibility if loaning lending money is your JOB and you are paid to do it!

So then the inevitable happened and people could not pay back the loans ("loan 2") so now banks were accumulating adding on month by month and year by year, the yearly interest price which they had to pay on their loans ("loan 1") which they took out to fund them lending out money in the first place (I know this is a bit confusing but basically the banks are now getting in debt). A lot of these loans ("loan 2") were being secured against properties (if they couldn't pay back the money the back would take the persons home as payment) however because prices of houses were so high, people were not buying them so banks had to keep reducing and reducing the price of the houses which they were selling meaning that they were not getting back the amount of money they were expecting (banks now getting into even more debt). Moreover, the lowering of the house prices at market level meant that house prices in general started to decline and as such the mortgages on them money borrowed to buy them became more than these houses became worth (these "mortgages worth more than the houses" are referred to as "sub-prime mortgages"). 

To compound the issue even further, bundles of these "sub-prime mortgages" were being sold (yes that's right, they were selling debts, as in "if you buy this off me, then they will owe you the money which they owe me") in a shop called "wall street" (its a shop where you can buy and sell industry specific banking and investment products and ventures stuff that is so detached from reality that it is questionable whether or not it even exists) under the new title "structured Investment Vehicle" (SIV) and these SIV's were being bought and sold as if they were an independent entity from the debt which they are made up of (brings to mind an image of playing pass the parcel with a bomb). Whoever ended up with a SIV which they couldn't sell on, when looking inside it to try and claim the debt money owed, often discovered that it was in fact a lot less money than what they had paid to buy it in the first place. Moreover, the people who owe the money often couldn't pay it back and repossessing selling the house it was secured against would be pointless as the house is worth less than the money owed (are you still following? basically the banks are really really in debt now!)

Now, the question is raised, who do the banks owe? And the answer is us! Its our money which we are putting in current accounts and savings accounts which is being loaned out and gambled on by the bankers. As such, it isn't directly them who are accumulating building up debt, but the company which is the bank. If the bank invests lends poorly, it isn't the bankers who lose their money, but us whose money they have been playing with. It is this knowledge which led the banks the turn to the Government to ask them to pay off the banks debts ("loan 1") on the basis that it would harm the general economy because millions of people would lose lots of money (neglecting the fact that it was entirely the bankers fault that millions of people would lose lots of money, and in so doing ensuring no negative repercussions for the bankers). The Government agreed and used tax money to pay off the banks debts (which basically means we paid money to the Government, to pay money to the banks, to save our money... confused? you should be.). Now this would have been Ok had the Government had enough money to do this... but it didn't, in fact the Government were one of the organisations which had been borrowing money off of the banks in the first place! 

This massive climate of debt triggered what is referred to as a "recession" which is basically when people stop spending. This meant that people were not buying products so companies were not making projected profits so there share value was declining on wall street which meant value of the company was declining which mean wages and jobs were being cut which meant people had less money so they stopped spending which meant products weren't being bought... and round and round it went. To end this vicious cycle, the government injected billions of pounds into the economy, which it of course didn't have and so had to borrow, which increased its debt even more. 

This recession was not limited to the UK but was a Global recession which affected Europe and US just as much. This is because banks were borrowing and lending internationally meaning that bail-outs (governments saving banks) were being made Globally not just in the UK and all government were borrowing and thus getting in debt.

Because of the annual price put on this debt, for every year that it goes unpaid, its cost increases. In the UK this has got to a point where we now owe 2.2 trillion pounds, which is nearly 5% of all the money that there is in the world! 

So how do we solve this horrible situation? The answer is actually very very simple. First you pay bankers by commission with a five year deferred gratification period. If the investment's which they make prove profitable, then after five years (whereby sustained profitability can be determined) they get paid a percentage of the profit of the investment. This means less risk for our money and more incentive for bankers to make cautious and yet profitable decisions with our money. We also need to put in place regulation which states that any investment losses are shared equally amongst the investor (us) and the investing banker (the bankers) this way they are held accountable, in an appropriate manor, for the decisions they make.

secondly, to pay off this massive debt build up we need to do one very simple thing which we should have done a long long long time ago...

LEGALISE CANNABIS! 

The cannabis trade in the UK is currently estimated to be worth £85 a week for over 3 million people, thats £255 million a week and £13.26 billion a year! current policing of cannabis costs £50 million a year meaning we could save £13.31 billion a year if we just stopped saying cannabis was illegal and started growing it here instead of farms abroad. More over it would destroy the drug cartels and dealer networks which is estimated to save the police a further £2 billion a year! The regulation of the drug would also meant less dangers to the users and an estimated saving to the NHS of a further £500 million a year! That's a total saving of £15.81 billion! or in other words, £15.81 billion is how much it costs to keep cannabis illegal! 

Thirdly, you bring every troop home! Every single troop that is stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, it doesn't matter you bring them back. We can't afford war on a moral or an economic basis. If people choose to attack us then we retaliate but until then why aggravate foreign sovereignties? We can leave america to do that!

These are just two of the very simple things that can be done to help the UK out of this financial crisis. They are not radical, nor are they new ideas... in fact they are very old ideas which have been mentioned countless times by numerous people. I am not radical, nor am I trying to be radical by advocating them. I also advocate having a maximum wage per employee so that if you own a company which employ's only ten people, then you as the owner/CEO can only earn so much until you employ more people. This way it is ensured that where money is being made it is also being distributed in a fair manor. This is not so much socialism as responsible social capitalism.

Remember, the more people earning, the more people spending.

Mr Magic

Israel: Without the history lesson please!

Israel. A small strip of land, about the size of wales, that is claimed to be one of the top 5 worst human rights violators. In fact many claim the west bank as being the worst place to live on the planet... period.

These people are what I like to call "wrong".
Isreal is not amoungst the top 5 worst human rights violaters, in fact its not even amoungst the top 10. If you truely think that the West Bank is the worst place to live on the planet, try spending a weekend in the Sudan or Somalia... or maybe North Korea and see if you still feel that way afterwards.

That's not to say that Israel has a squeaky clean human rights record, because it doesn't, it does violate the basic human rights of hundreds of people every day, most of these people being ethnographically percieved as palestinian, however it does nothing to help the pleight of these genuinely oppressed people by exaggerating the extent of the violations and extrapolating into relms of oppression that simply are not truthful in there representation of the situation in Israel.

This brings up an important question however, seeing as Israel is not actually amoungst the top worst countries in the world, why are we always hearing so much about Israel and so little about all these other countries? The answer to this is three-fold; Geographical, Historical and PR(ical?)

Geographically Israel is situated right in the middle of the Middle East, all reginal policies must consider it and any transport over land or air must negotiate with it. It has a near inpenitrable desert and situated right in the middle of that desert is demona, Israels Nuclear facility. It also has some of the most fertile ground in the whole of the region. This makes it an incrediably important political figure in the region and, taking into consideration the wider region's oil reserves, one of the most important areas in the world.

Historically, Israel (specifically Jerusalem and Bethlehem) is the birth place for many of the world's major religons including all the Abrahamic Faiths (Christianity, Islam and Judaism), Many wars have been fought to maintain its existance, during one of which nuclear bombs were very nearly used. Historically its international secret service MOSSAD is viewed as being the best secret service in the world, not only in capturing escaped nazi officers but also in counter-terrorism. This meant that after the event of 9/11 the US turned to Israel to help it in its "war on terror". Add to all of this the extreme circumstances in central Europe during the 1930's-40's which led to the UN deciding to establish Israel as a Jewish State in the first place and we can see that it is historically very significant.

A point should be made here that it is very easy to get caught up in the religious aspects of Israel and in so doing, ignoring the actual reasons for the conflict. This is not, nor should anyone try to twist it into becoming, a religious war. The conflict in Israel is currently based around land ownership and Human Rights and these are this key issus which need to be resolved.

In terms of public relations, it can simply be said that because Israel is currently under media attention, other media are jumping onto the band wagon and so it will continue to be in the public eye until either something really major happens elsewhere or until the issues are resolved and so stop becoming news worthy (media and good news tend not to mix so much).

So how can we resolve the situation in Israel?

Well many political bodies are advocating a two-state solution whereby a seperate Palestinian state is formed in the West Bank, bordering both Israel and Jordan. However, Many others are advocating a single-state solution and equalting a two-state solution to being the same as the "separate but equal" policy of segregated 1950's US. Those advocating the two-state solution reply by saying that two states would be more equale than the situation at current and so thusly an arguement ensues.

I personally do not advocate either a two-state or the current single state solutions. In fact I do not advocate any solution because all of the current ones being debated are formed from political bodies, each one with their own personal agendas. The Arab League, The UN, The US and even Amnesty International have all demonstrated extreme bias on the issue of the Middle East and so no solution which is designed by any of these bodys can be truely trusted to be based around what is best for the people of the region. Instead I advocate, not a solution but a system whereby, instead of top-down solutions being formed, bottom-up solutions can be formed about how to resolve individual conflicts in individual towns and neigbourhoods. This system can be refered to as local social networking and, due to current technology, doesn't even need a mediator. All solutions to local issues can be discussed by local peoples and then either voted on or decided upon within the same medium. Even better than this, if international expertise is required, that too can be sought within the same medium. Now many of you maybe asking, what is this magical medium of which I speak, where we can vote and learn and discuss with people across the seas? I have a one word answer for you: Facebook.

 Facebook, Twitter and I'll go so far as to say basic Email! Any form of communication which can be seen by all local parties and can be made at anytime by anyone within the locality.

We have already seen how effective Facebook can be at organising clean up efforts around London and England, as well as making the world aware of major international events such as the Norway attack. Thus I cannot see a reason why social networking cannot bring about peace in the Middle East.

Please note very clearly that I am not claiming to have found the solution or even a solution to the issues in the Middle East, but I am claiming very strongly that the only place where such solutions can be formed, and be relevant, are from within the region itself, so instead of us" internationals" looking for a solution to the problem, we should instead be focusing on facilitating modes whereby solutions can be internally formed. These modes need to be primarily safe areas of discussion where not only are people allowed to express their opinions but also their naiveitys about the issues affecting their areas and about those whom they have been culturally taught are "the enemy/the other".

It is especially important that these modes be kept clear of external political motives, a prime example of which would be thirsty America (a thirst which seems to only get worse the more oil it drinks).

Mr Magic

The beginning of victory

Whosever said that political activism was folly has thus been proven wrong for it is true indeed that the ban on MSM Blood Donations has now officially been lifted! This has been announced and publisised in several key sources including the BBC and the Metro... however it isn't a complete victory.

The lifting of the ban is conditional, in complex terms the doner must not have engaged in MSM for at least a year before they can donate blood. In simple terms this means that if Mr Magic were to have sex with, oh lets say Mr... Science. We would both have to wait a year after our romantic evening before either of us would be allowed to donate blood, even though neither of us have ever been diagnosed with HIV. In fact even if we both got tested, then had sex, then waited three months and got tested again... with all the tests coming back negative for HIV... we would still need to wait another 9 months without having sex, before we would be allowed to donate blood.

The scientific basis for this is that there is a three month period, after catching HIV, where the virus is undetectable and so this time lapse is to allow the virus to become visible to the tests. Now, I could understand if the rule was that gay men had to wait three months after having sex with a new sexual partner, that would be completely scientifically justified... but twelve months of celebasy is not.

I am also, however, aware of the political context that we are currently in. It was very recently that the House of Lords Released a Study called "No Cure No Vaccine" (or something along thoughs lines) which documented an increase in people catching HIV and though I cannot prove it, I am sure that this study did have some impact on the 12 month rule. This 12 month rule is also applied to people who have injected illegal drugs or had sex with prostitutes (and their sexual partners).

Whilst I do not endorse applying the same rules as we do for prostitutes and drug addicts onto the gay community,I can say proudly that any lifting of the ban is a step in the right direction, not only because for what it means for gay equality, but also because it shows without a shadow of a doubt that direct political activism does actually achieve results.

Let the Doubters Doubt... You Just Need To Keep Campaigning!

Mr Magic

MSM Blood donations: The Governments Reply

Behold what many thought would never come to fruition... a reply, not from Dame Sally Davis alas, but from Rowena Jecock; Head of policy for blood safety and supply since 2009. Please Note that it has been reformatted and my real name ommitted, but the content of the reply has not been changed.

Dear Mr Magic

Thank you for your email of 6^th August to Dame Sally Davies, bringing to her attention the e-petition asking for the abolition of the exclusion of men who have had sex with men as blood donors.  Dame Sally has asked me to reply on her behalf.

I would like to agree with your point that the selection criteria for blood donors should be based on scientific fact and medical knowledge.  This is certainly the Government’s policy.  And as scientific and medical knowledge grows over time, the criteria need to be reviewed.

You may be aware that the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs has completed a review of the evidence base for donor exclusion and deferral in the UK which was started in 2009.  This includes a review of the criteria which relate to sexual behaviour.  The findings of the review are being considered by the relevant Health Ministers across the UK, and further information on any resulting changes to current blood donation policies will be made available in due course – in light of all the evidence.  We continually review the evidence base for policies already in place, and will continue to do so.

I would like to reassure you on one point.  You mention that there is currently a blood shortage, and that patients are going without operations and other treatments as a result.  I am pleased to say that this is not the case: the National Blood Service in England is very carefully managed to maintain supplies without wasting donations.  When stocks are running low in certain areas, NHSBT may advertise to attract more donors locally, but I am pleased to tell you that they have been able to maintain blood supplies to hospitals to meet their needs since the alert system was set up ten years ago.

Yours sincerely,

Rowena Jecock

Head of Policy, Blood Safety and Supply

And thus we come to an interesting conflict of facts, please observe:

http://www.harrowobserver.co.uk/west-london-news/local-harrow-news/2010/06/17/blood-shortage-could-kill-me-116451-26671959/

This is only one of several such articles which can be found relating to people having to wait for transfusions and transplants because of the aquisition of blood.

Also observe the date of this article... 2010, which to my calculations is not ten years ago, though I could be wrong as maths is not my strongest of subjects.

Secondly, she has brought to my attention a piece of knowledge that I had not previously known, that the review of the policy for excluding sexually active gay men (which has been around since 1977) was started in 2009. This is interesting as, to my knowledge, Dr Rewena Jecock was appointed head of policy for blood safety and supply on the 22nd of January 2009. This means that, unless it was started during the first 22 days in January, she was person that was incharge when this policy started to be questioned.

So, for anyone who would like to contact Dr Jecock and ask her personally why gay man are banned from giving blood or to congratulate her for challenging the ban in the first place, the E-mail address for her Secretary is Tina.Lee@dh.gsi.gov.uk

Happy Writing

Mr Magic

Enterprise zone's?

This blog entry is very short, my apologies in advance.

In a society based on production where manufacture is the primary industry, an area or space of involuntary labour, whether that be due to force or the lack of ability/oppotunity to sustain oneself without labouring, is referred to by the emotionally charged term "Labour Camp".

We live in a society that is not based on production but instead based on services, the intermediary industry providing mediums of sale and the services required for such sales (i.e insurance, fiscal products, clarical and secritarial services, sales assistants, etc). These sales can be of almost anything, even other services, such as education (we provide the teachers) or medicine (we provide the doctors).

The big question that I wish to pose is, what would be the equivalent of a "Labour Camp" in a service society?

What would we call an area or space of involuntary service, involuntary due to the lack of ability/oppotunity to sustain oneself without providing service?

hmmm...?

The arcane solution to all social issues: Remediation

"Remediation"

I am nearly certain that politicains of the past invented this word so that it could be used, at times like these, to sound very impressive and as if they have discovered some incrediable solution to all of the social issues around. What remediation actually means is very simple, "to remedy, cure or treat usually via educative means", In simpiler terms it means to give people schooling.

What this signify's is the beginnings of the stratification of the post-secondary education system. Those who naturally progress to A-Levels and then BA's are viewed as normality and those who do not are viewed as damaged and so require "remediation" so as to rehabilitate them onto the "correct" path of life, whether that be them completing the former qualifications later on in life, or whether that be accepting that they are less educated and therefore undeserving of gratification of a high salary and generally less beneficial to society.

Educational stratification can also be called intellectual segregation, where the highly intelligent are kept separate from those who are not. The issue with this stems not only from an ethical standpoint, that people should be defined by their intended actions rather than their genetic intelligence, but also from a scientific one. Intelligence is a subjective term and whilst I may have an IQ of 134, my knowledge of immunology is compariably lower than that of a biological scientist who's IQ maybe considerably lower. That same biologist may end up finding cures for very many diseases and save thousands of peole's lives, whereby it is highly unlikely that I will find the cure for any biological disease. How is it right to say that I am better than that person then, simply because I have a greater intelligence? How can it even be claimed that I have a greater intelligence? Surely it is more intelligent to dedicate you life to finding cure's for diseases and in so doing furthering the medical ability of humanity, than it is to large segments of your time writing a "blog".

So what really is going on?

At the momemt, remediation is being considered for those who, the government believe, have a high chance of committing crimes. This does not mean to say that they need to have committed crimes in order to be sentenced to involutary remediation, only that they are at high risk. Remediation already exists with the criminal justice system for those who have been found guilty of criminality.
In my previous two post's I mentioned two possible aim's of the government, one was the gentrification of area's of the UK and the other was the possibility that the government maybe trying to criminalise having low economic means. If the latter is enforced then the involuntary remediation of all of those with low economic means may follow. Remedial educational facilities tend to be separate to general educational facilities, thus the result would be the separation of the lower class from general educational facilities occupied by the middle and upper classes. Whilst I am definiately no Marxist, this is certainly beginning to look reminiscient of the theorie's of the aforementioned.

Separated from general educational facilities, driven out of their homes due to gentrification and criminalised because they are poor... These are not simply measures to limit riots or to increase the economic stability of the UK, they are the same segregational techniques employed in central europe in the 1930's, however I believe that the aim is slightly different here than there and is one that has never actually be acheived.

Proletaricide. A word you will probably never have come across before. It means the destruction of the lower class within a society and is normally precidented with an attempt of simple ethnocide, which is the attempten destruction of their culture.

In easier to understand terms, Tony Blair's 'war on terror' was an attempted ethnocide of the culture of terrorists and when this failed it lead to the attempted destruction of the people of that culture (i.e. the terrorists). In the same way I fear that when David Camerons attempts at ethnocide of the culture of the lower class fails, he will resort to attempting to destroy the people of that culture.

Mr Magic

Is my family classified as a "Gang"?

As David Cameron, Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith declare war on "Gangs" it would appear that they may inadvertantly be declaring war on something far far bigger than they could contemplate. Is my family classified as a "Gang"? in short, the answer is yes.

According to the definition of what constitutes as a "Gang," my Family unit is, in fact, a prime example, as is also a group of electrical plugs, a navigation systen made up of lighters and my personal favourite, an economic tool used within the printing industry. The term is so vague that it can be made applicable to any group of people, regardless of age or reason for meeting. In fact it is so vage it can be applied to any group of anyTHING.

Whilst this might seem a pedantic point, I raise it because of how often this word is now being banded about in statements claiming to explain why the riots happened and how we can stop them in the future. For example Iain Duncan smith said recently on the BBC the "gang problem that we have in the UK" and that the way to resolve this is to "crackdown on all gangs, everywhere, at the same time, for all the time." He even stated that the gangs manipulated the criminality of the riots.

Now if you simply replace the word "gang" with the word "group," you can see just how empty and meaningless statements like this are. What is clear from these statements is that he was refering to "criminal gangs (groups)," which only increases the ridiculous nature of these statements as the founding purpose of the police was to stop people breaking the law, "everywhere and at the same time, for all the time." We have in fact been doing this for the last 300 years.

My concern, however, is not in the semantic intelligence of politicians more than in their proposed policies and the current discussions about giving police more powers to diffuse "gangs (groups) of youths (children)" especially as the specific people that they are talking about stem from low economic backgrounds. To put this as bluntly as possible, if this policey is enforced it will criminalise friendship groups being formed by teenagers in public. Whilst this will not be too damning for those who have private spaces to form friends, those who do not have such spaces (those who come from a backgrounds where their "private space" is either shared or simple non-existant due to a lack of economic means) will be hindered in their social development and possibly alienated because of this social deficit.

In the previous post I mentioned the possibility that the eviction of people from public housing initiative's maybe an attempt to gentrify areas. This Alienation technique could also be seen as method to induce gentrification, however I am now concerned that it maybe to do with something far more grave. Again, whilst I am not suggesting that this is what the government are planning, the steps they are currently taking indicate that the following maybe their desired goal.

What I am now refering to is the criminalisation of having low economic means. This is an inversion of the model of economic gain that we are used to. Under the previous Governments, It was the employers responsibility to pay their employee's a decent wage. If they did not do this then they were viewed as the criminal and the employee was viewed as the victim. Under this model, it would appear that, it is the employee's responsibility to ensure that they are recieving a decent wage and if they are not then they are viewed as a criminal because they either need to rely on benefits, or exist in an empoverished state which decreases the social and economic value of the area they reside. They are viewed as lazy and those earning a higher wage (this group, most likely, including their employer) are viewed as the victims because their tax money is being spent on either supporting these "lazy" people, or because their tax money is being spent on attempting to improve the areas where these "lazy" people reside instead of their own. This is not a sustainable economic model in a society claiming to be ethical as it de-humanizes those who are the most vunerable. It should also be recognised as the clear violation of basic human rights and morality that it is. We should feel priviledged to have the economic means to be charitable to others, rather than be resentful of giving the little that is asked of us.

Mr Magic