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Banning the Burkini

The Mayor of the French town of Nice has passed a law banning the Burkini, a full body cover designed for swimming. Quite how you define this is beyond me. I for example am luminously pasty and often cover up on the beach because while I CAN go out in direct sunlight, I don’t like it. I might, wear a rash suit rather than deal with suncream, especially if on my own. Would I be asked to disrobe, and risk sunburn?

There’s the hypocrisy too: Pictures of armed french police demanding a woman disrobe are uncomfortable. I thought we in the west were about female emancipation?

Nuns, bathing in even less revealing clothing inspired ultimately by the same abrahamic exhortation to female modesty, will, I presume remain unmolested.

This isn’t about the Burkini, of course, but about muslim integration. There’s no doubt muslim immigration has unsettled large swaths of the population of Europe. It’s not about terrorism. It’s about feeling a stranger in your own country, surrounded in some areas by people who speak a different language, wear different clothes and do not mix or integrate with the native population, and it’s these feelings that are driving people to le Front National, Brexit, Swedish Democrats and so forth. 
A Burka ban is clearly silly, unenforceable but eye-catching. A symptom of something we have to address. Perhaps Islam IS incompatible with western ideas, especially where the immigrants are poor and in large numbers. But I don’t think this to be the case. The USA, with far fewer, better-educated muslims has done a much better job of integrating than Europe or the UK, where ghettos have been allowed to form, and the 2nd and 3rd generation are, in contrast to previous waves of immigration, no better integrated than their parents and grandparents. If anything in places like Bradford, or the poor areas of Brussels some muslims are becoming increasingly radicalised as immigrant communities and the native population reject each other.
What the people voted for in Austria when they nearly elected Norbert Hoffer, In France when they nearly elected Le Pen, in the UK when they voted for Brexit is an end to immigration, especially of people who don’t share our values. And Muslims far too often don’t share our values (nor, brexiteers, do they come from the EU…).
In wearing a Burkini on the beach, or the Niqab in town, a woman (or her husband…) is visibly making a statement rejecting French culture. A man in a Shalwar Kameez makes the same statement. If he’s in a local majority, these clothes subconsciously say “this place is ours now, not yours” and this can feel profoundly threatening. Especially when combined with a wave of Islamist-inspired terrorist outrages. The difference between me wearing a rash suit on a beach, and a woman wearing a burkini is one of intent. The only statement I am making is “I have very pale skin”.
These feelings are inchoate, but they are real. The rejection of western society represented by the people wearing these clothes is real. I don’t like seeing a woman in Niqab, which makes me profoundly uncomfortable with the alien creed behind that outfit. Clearly I don’t think I should have a right to do anything about it, and the problem is mine more than theirs. The state controlling how people dress is clearly absurd and illiberal. There’s little that can be done beyond an exhortation to the locals to exercise a bit of tolerance, and to the Muslim population of Europe to make an effort to fit in. Blaming “islamophobia” will just make matters worse because radical Islamism as practiced by a small minority is the main terrorist threat and the isolated, unintegrated communities of overwhelmingly decent muslims is the water in which the islamist sharks swim. Fear of unintegrated muslims isn’t irrational. Multiculturalism doesn’t work. We all need to share the same values, and isolated, inward-looking communities which reject mainstream society don’t work for anyone.
Integration is as much about appearance as behaviour. So, yes, in France, ‘making an effort’ probably does mean getting the girls out on the beach. And Muslim chaps: perhaps save the Shalwar Kameez for the Mosque on Friday, try to look like a Frenchman the rest of the time? That way the locals will feel less threatened, and muslims will be less isolated. Ultimately a law banning Burkinis represents a failure of European society to persuade immigrant communities our society is better. Do we even still believe it is? And Finally, les Gendarmes: have a look at the Peelian principles and leave innocent women on the beach alone, whatever they choose to wear. This sort of thing is about persuasion, cultural change and shouldn’t be enforced by men with guns.
Now, where’s my leopard print thong, and the factor 50?
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On the EU Army Nonsense.

The UK military has operated independently twice in the past 400 years with a 1-1 scoreline. The treasonous war of American so-called “independence”, and the Falklands conflict. Otherwise we always operate in an alphabet soup of foreign alliances.

The EU Military staff doesn’t directly command troops, who usually (but not always) operate under the auspices of NATO.  Most military co-operation in Europe is bi-lateral such as Anglo-French missions to Mali, or multi-lateral and Ad Hoc, like EuroFor. Eurofor, which has deployed several times, isn’t an EU army but multi-lateral co-operation between Italy, France, Portugal and Spain, and has mainly operated in the francophone Africa.

The EU battlegroup training on salisbury plain recently isn’t a nascent EU army, just one of the alphabet soup of foreign co-operative organisations of which the UK military is part, one which hasn’t deployed anywhere, and is a bit like the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps of which the UK has long been the core.

The French, long suspicious of NATO and who want to make the EU a counterweight to EU power, have accepted that while the UK is a member of the EU, an EU army isn’t going to happen and rejoined NATO’s command in 2009. They pulled out in 1966 arguing (no, seriously…) that NATO (get this, right…) undermined their sovereignty. (Lol).

The EU army isn’t going to happen, because the UK has consistently vetoed the formation of an independent EU military command.

Of course were we to leave the EU, then the French would be free to get their way, leaving NATO’s command again and possibly taking the Germans with them in time. We must remain to prevent the French using the EU to undermine NATO.

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The Oil Price Collapse, & why No-One Starves in the West.

Two years after the fall of Soviet Communism, a visiting Russian official seeking to learn about how free market systems worked, asked the Cambridge economist Paul Seabright “Who is in charge of Bread Supply in London. He was astonished by the answer: “No-One”.

No-one has starved in a free market system since the Potato Famine in Ireland in the 1840s, which happened because of the failure of a staple crop, and despite significant Government initial efforts to alleviate it. The free market failed there, for a huge number of reasons but that remains the only example, and much has been learned since. Many of the other famines in what were nominally free-market systems, like the Bengal Famine of 1943 can be put down directly to interventions in the markets such as the (democratically elected) Punjabi Government preventing the export of food to Bengal, whose other major source of food, Burma, was having a little local difficulty which became known to history as World War 2. Because of this intervention by the Punjabi government in the market in response to shortages, and subsequent inaction by the Indian Government, over a million people died.

The oil price rose throughout the ’00s in response to the rise of Chinese demand, lower interest rates and increased car use in the developed and developing world. Then people started to hurt. Oil price protests rocked the world. The cost of maintaining subsidised petrol in the non-petro-state middle-east is one of the sparks that lit the ‘Arab Spring’. In the west, cars got more efficient as the price (and taxes on petrol) rose. People bought smaller and more efficient cars. Highway speeds fell, as cars started to have ‘fuel economy’ displayed on the dashboard and people realised how much more it cost to drive at 90mph than 70. People changed their behaviour and drove less: ‘Peak car’ was in 2005 in the USA.

Meanwhile, engineers went looking. We had long known about ‘Tight oil’ (oil soaked into porous shale or tar-sands), but it was expensive to produce, and uneconomic to extract, until the prices rose. And when they did, engineers sought means to improve production efficiency. And they were successful. The spike of Oil prices in response to cheap money and the recovery from the credit crunch led to an enormous explosion of production in Texas and North Dakota in particular. The USA became the world’s largest oil producer in 2013. Cost of tight-oil production in Texas is around $40 and falling. In much of the traditional reserves in the North Sea, it’s $35.

There is the equivalent of five Saudi Arabias worth of reserves in the Eagle Ford shale in East Texas alone. (1.25tn Barrels of Oil Equivalent vs 255bn BOE) . And it is ALL economically viable to extract so long as oil remains above $50 per barrel. And there’s the Bakken in North Dakota and others. Peak Oil? Um… no.

So the response to a temporary shortage of Oil was for people to use gradually less in response to a price signal, and for people to go looking for more, in response to the same price signal. And the result is the glut of Oil the world is currently enjoying as oil that was prospected when the price was $120 is now hitting the market. My guess is we can expect $45 or so and then stabilisation around $50-70. Having got used to Oil at twice that price, it will feel like a tax cut for the world. (Except Nigeria, Venezuala, and Russia…).

What is true of Oil – the price goes up when demand exceeds supply – is true of wheat, and pork bellies, and olive oil, and corn or Tea. And the substitutes, barley, chicken, rape-seed oil, Sorghum, coffee, and so forth get used instead. People economise and substitute. So long as the market remains, it will become increasingly profitable to move stock from places of low value to places of high value where things are scarce.

Even the much-maligned speculation, or what used to be called ‘hoarding’ helps, by creating a reserve  in anticipation of higher prices to come, to be released onto the market in response to shortages. Hoarding ensures the commodity is always available at a price. And so no-one starves.

And the lessons: how to grow crops or burn fuel more efficiently, cannot be unlearned. So when supply returns, prices often collapse, the speculators often get badly burned, but the economy as a whole is richer as a lot is being done more efficiently.

Ah… I hear you say… but what about Africa: how can Africans pay the same prices as Europeans? But 21st century famines in Africa are almost never SUPPLY problems, but DISTRIBUTION problems. This isn’t about cash-crops being removed even as people starved, like Ireland in the 18th Century. We in the rich west are not taking African food because we can pay more, indeed quite the opposite. There’s often plenty of food, grown in the region or supplied as Aid, but due to poor infrastructure or more often, war and banditry, it cannot get to where it is needed. Where the rich west is holding Africa down is by preventing much of the continent from developing a cash-crop economy. The Africans are actively prevented from supplying our markets with cheap food by rich-world Farm subsidies, So roads aren’t built, and when the crops fail, food cannot get in from outside, either in response to rising prices or even Aid. Aid which often as a by-product, destroys the livelihoods of local farmers by undercutting them.

The European Union, USA and Japan, to name the most egregious examples have their boots on the face of Africa, keeping him down, but not in the way you’d think. African farmers cannot compete against our heavily subsidised farmers and so cannot invest or develop their production, even if they wanted to. The market for the end product isn’t there. Without that bottom rung, the rest of the development ladder is much harder to climb. Then, by demanding Africa opens up their economies to everything, except the one thing they have a comparative advantage, African economies struggle to compete and struggle to develop.

The fact Africa now contains some of the Fastest-growing economies on earth is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Imagine how much better it’d be if we’d not retarded African development by to appease French farmers’ selfishness. Every famine since 1840-41, everywhere in the world is BECAUSE, not despite a Government somewhere intervening in the market. And the same is true of poverty. The African governments and their trade partners who’ve worked this out are doing well. But it took millions of lives, and is still not widely understood.

Rising prices are merely the means by which no-one starves and the pumps still have petrol. Would you rather we ran out occasionally?

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Cameron’s Euro Gamble.

We will find out over the next few days, but I suspect the conversation went something like:

France: “We want to impose a Tobin tax, Europe-wide”
The UK: “Um… sod off, you greasy little squit”.
Germany: “We’d like to impose regulation on financial services designed to move transactions from London to Frankfurt”
The UK: “You two are shitting me, right”.
France & Germany “No”.
The UK: “Fine then, bugger off”.

Everyone is claiming either victory, or that Cameron’s made a terrible error. UKIP, because we’re not getting a referendum that for some reason they think will solve everything, STILL call Cameron a Europhile. Labour think it’s terrible that Britain is “isolated”.

Actually I think the situation is broadly what the Conservative party AND the British people want: a 2 Teir Europe, with the UK the leading member of the small “never going to join the Euro” club. These will slide towards a Norwegian/Swiss position, while everyone else forges ahead with a Franco-German empire monetary and fiscal union.

So Cameron has shot UKIPs fox who will continue to frot themselves about a referendum which is no longer needed and will fade into irrelevance. Labour will find themselves arguing that Cameron SHOULDN’T have wielded his veto and should have instead bent over for whatever the Merkozy borg was suggesting. This demonstrates Ed Miliband’s tactical and strategic ineptness, and may have cost him the poll lead.

I am not sure Cameron could or should have played it differently. But there are deeper and more lasting issues here, which may or may not cause problems further down the line. This is an epoch-making moment. It is the end of 500 years of consistent English (& 300 years of British) foreign policy towards the continent. Namely that if the dominant hegemonic power isn’t England, no other power, or combination of powers should be able to rise to dominate the continent. As I mentioned before

Since the wars with Spain in the 1500s, when England stood at the head of an alliance of anti-Spanish nations culminating in the Armada of 1588. Next, through the Wars of religion Protestant England was happy to ally with anyone including Catholic powers keeping Spain down. France was (believe it or not, after strings of stunning military victories) next up in an attempt to become the dominant power in Europe, first under the Bourbon monarchy and later under Bonaparte. Comprehensive British victories at Trafalgar in 1805 and Waterloo (with a little help from ze Prussians) in 1815 put pay to Napoleon’s ambitions in that regard. The Russians made an abortive bid but were seen off by a Anglo-French alliance in the Crimea and turned their imperial ambitions east. A long peace saw the Rise of Germany, and the brokering of an Entente Cordiale between France and the UK should Germany get uppity and start throwing its weight around. They took some stopping, and the help of the Americans but Germany was prevented from getting a massive European empire….

…1914-1918 and 1939-1945 were the same war, with a bit of time to let Fritz regroup. The hun may have been utterly defeated, but they have never abandoned the dream of European empire which has burned in the Teutonic heart since the unification of Germany under the Hohenzollerns in 1871. The hush-puppy may have replaced the jackboot but the Boche are still marching in step.

Well that nightmare is upon us. A unified Europe stares at us across the Channel and our only allies are Sweden, the Czech republic and Hungary to block the behemoth that is the Eurozone and the lackeys who STILL wish to join. Our influence in a club, which by treaty and Geography, still affects us deeply, is much, much less today than it was yesterday. The UK cannot outvote a EU17 voting at Merkozy’s whim as a block. Euroskeptics, amongst whom I count myself, should not kid themselves that this decision is without cost.

Even if we leave the European Union, we still have to deal with that European behemoth, which will remain our biggest trading partner and closest neighbour, linked by money, blood, and habit. Unlike yesterday, we have no reins with which to control the monster which a federal German-dominated euro zone will become. It will rapidly become under French influence, more protectionist and inward-looking as our counterbalancing influence will wane. This isn’t in Britain’s interest.

Britain got what she wanted and may yet regret it.

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British European Policy.

British foreign policy has been remarkably consistent towards Europe for the last 500 years, since the English monarchy abandoned its rightful claim to the French crown. It can be summed up by the simple observation that, seeing as the Hegemonic power of Europe cannot be England, no other hegemonic power should rise to dominate Europe.

Since the wars with Spain in the 1500s, when England stood at the head of an alliance of anti-Spanish nations culminating in the Armada of 1588. Next, through the Wars of religion Protestant England was happy to ally with anyone including Catholic powers keeping Spain down. France was (believe it or not, after strings of stunning miliary victories) next up in an attempt to become the dominant power in Europe, first under the Bourbon monarchy and later under Bonaparte. Comprehensive British victories at Trafalgar in 1805 and Waterloo (with a little help from ze Prussians) in 1815 put pay to Napoleon’s ambitions in that regard. The Russians made an abortive bid but were seen off by a Anglo-French alliance in the Crimea and turned their imperial ambitions east. A long peace saw the Rise of Germany, and the brokering of an Entente Cordiale between France and the UK should Germany get uppity and start throwing its weight around. They took some stopping, and the help of the Americans but Germany was prevented from getting a massive European empire.

And now Angela Merkel is belying her Hausfrau appearance and threatening war.

1914-1918 and 1939-1945 were the same war, with a bit of time to let Fritz regroup. The hun may have been utterly defeated, but they have never abandoned the dream of European empire which has burned in the Teutonic heart since the unification of Germany under the Hohenzollerns in 1871. The hush-puppy may have replaced the jackboot but the Boche are still marching in step.

The European project has operated at the behest of and for the benefit of the Germans. As a result, interest rates were far too low on the European periphery for most of the long boom leading to the catastrophic asset price-bubbles which have now turned to bust. The Euro was weaker than the Deutsche-Mark, benefiting Germany’s exporters leading to the illusion of German thrift – their workers aren’t particularly competitive, they just rigged the system to make it appear so. Greek bankruptcy is only partially a moral failing. Some of the blame lies at the door of the Bundestag.

Germany now needs to but dip its hands in the pocket and the Eurozone, those foolish countries that thought abandoning their currency would allow them to remain independent of Germany will be theirs. This is cheaper than war. C’mon Fritz; you broke it, you bought it.

Britain for her part should be true to her half-millennium of consistent European policy. We should lead the non-Euro nations of the EU in continued resistance to the onward march of German Kultur that the Greeks are about to experience. Again. This means that we should continue to operate within the EU, to frustrate the Franco-German axis, with help from Scandinavia, Poland and the rest of the non-Euro nations. This too is cheaper than war.

Were there a referendum on British membership of the European Union, my heart would vote to withdraw. But my head is more equivocal. The appalling mass-murder occasioned by the CAP needs nations with a weight equivalent to Germany and France, committed to free trade to argue against it in the Councils of Europe. Britain’s influence in Europe saw off the Spanish Empire, Napoleon, The Kaiser and Hitler. Herman Van Rumpy Pumpy and Cathy “face like a melted waxwork of the Princess Royal” Ashton leading a bunch of grey bureaucrats just shouldn’t offer the same resistance as the Waffen SS or Napoleon’s Cuirassiers.


Even the French Army is more threatening than Manuel Barroso.

Remember, when the French and Germans are left to decide Europe’s fate, the result is a pile of corpses. We should stay in the EU, not for our sake, but for Europe’s.

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A Warning To Euro-Sceptics.

Right now, the EuroSceptics across Europe are enjoying a moral ascendancy. Peter Oborne was able to openly ridicule a Eurocrat on Newsnight to the extent that Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio stormed off, with Oborne receiving barely a ticking off from Paxman. The Germans are close to refusing to pay the bills, the Italians are reliant on the ECB for solvency and Ireland, Portugal and especially Greece have seen their economies destroyed by an inappropriate currency union. From his Spectator essay last week

Very rarely in political history has any faction or movement enjoyed such a complete and crushing victory as the Conservative Eurosceptics. The field is theirs. They were not merely right about the single currency, the greatest economic issue of our age — they were right for the right reasons. They foresaw with lucid, prophetic accuracy exactly how and why the euro would bring with it financial devastation and social collapse

This credibility was hard-won. The BBC, The FT, the CBI and even the Tory party were all infiltrated by extreme Euro-fanatics who painted those sceptical of the project as a Lunatic fringe. Fortunately, the Fleet-street Newspapers knew which way the British public felt. By the skin of our teeth, the UK was kept out of the Euro. For the UK the price was the credibility of the Tory party and 13 years of Labour idiocy. All reasonable people, even the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and at least one of their former leaders who argued strenuously for Britain to ditch the pound, are now on record as saying the Euro will not be suitable “for the foreseeable future”. The sceptics have been utterly vindicated.

It would be unwise to dent this credibility by suggesting things as “inevitable” such as Greek withdrawal or a currency collapse, which aren’t. The ECB, in common with other money-issuing central banks, can in final analysis, print enough money to meet any and all liabilities. The Eurozone as a whole is in considerably better fiscal shape than the USA or Japan. The UK despite the advantages of a long maturity debt profile is STILL running a 10% deficit, and is catching up fast with Germany & France’s debt as a percentage of GDP. The question of whether the Eurozone stays together is ultimately one of political will. And there seems no chink in the Armour of the European political class’s will to defy their people, people whom it should be remembered are not yet voting en mass for deeply Euro sceptic parties. Euro sceptics must remember that most people really don’t think “Europe” a big issue. Not big enough to change their vote. Until they think it is, they will tend to vote for the Status Quo, or allow themselves to be led by the political class on an esoteric issue of which they have little understanding.

This is why I believe the Euro will survive this crisis, intact. Enough money will be printed to keep all the nations together, only Greece and then possibly Portugal & Ireland will default. Financial crises come around once every 10 years or so. The next one will probably not affect the EU, so at a guess, the Eurozone will not face another significant challenge for a couple of decades. In the mean-time, the growth-denying aspects of the way the Eurozone is structured will fuel Euro sceptic parties across the EU, who will have received a boost from this crisis. The next crisis may find traction in a more skeptical political class. Or it may not.

Rather than indulging in wishful thinking, by saying “the end of the EU is nigh”, we have to CONTINUE to make the arguments. Events are not yet going to do it for us. The end of the disaster for economic growth and democracy that is the European Union is unfortunately some way off. We cannot pat ourselves on the back just yet.

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