Beware of Africa

It is terribly easy for a resident in Europe or the Americas to ignore Africa. Nevertheless the European Union is subject to a massive invasion of African economic migrants, many of whom claim to be refugees; but fewer and fewer are even allowed landfall on the continent. An unknown number of hundreds of thousands have gone to ground in Europe, many of whom have no prospect of becoming fully registered members of the workforce and of the social security systems. The main political focus on this issue is on keeping any more of them out, as 'populist' politicians gain votes from people who are scared [rationally or otherwise] by the prospect of culturally alien people of different skin colour 'swamping' medical services, schools and the jobs market.

Some voices are raised to point out threat the flow of would-be migrants would be massively less if more attention were given to economic and political development of African countries; but weary EU politicians who take any interest in such matters count the billions of dollars of 'aid' that have been abused by dictators on their personal lives and on military equipment to mount or to defend against political adventurism. The continent is seen as inherently corrupt; with many western corporations hesitant to trade there because of draconian anti-corruption laws that operate in their home states.

China has been very active in construction, especially of railways and port installations that enable the sources of materials and crops in which they have invested to get back to China easily. China has become a major manipulator of the African morass for its economic advantage; which has relatively disadvantaged the west where firms are hamstrung as mentioned above.

Almost every African country is an artificial construct, with boundaries set by the European imperialists in the nineteenth century which have simply been handed on the post-colonial regime that now prevails. These boundaries ignore ethnic diversity, and give cause to conflict on those grounds. It is estimated that half of the world's population growth in the next two decades will be in Africa, centred in just five countries; which are as diverse as Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa.

There are renewed signs that the ethnic tensions which have to some degree been restrained over the post-colonial half century will break out with renewed force. The key example here is in Kenya, where a few months ago a court whose participants - all native Africans - wore English eighteenth century white wigs and black gowns as handed down by the former colonial government to announce the decision to quash the result of a presidential election. Now the losing candidate in that election, who knows that he will also lose any re-run of the election, has stood down from the contest. So long as there is an acknowledged candidate from the Kikuyu population, as there is in Mr Kenyatta, no minority ethnic group has a chance of being elected, however free and fair the election process is. Mr Odinga uses many arguments, but the weight of numbers will always be against him.

So does Odinga try secession: do a Catalonia? It has been tries many times, all over Africa, dating back to the secessionist campaigns in Katanga and 'Biafra' several decades ago. There will be much more of this kind of thing, which will increase the lawlessness and political chaos that have paralysed most of central Africa for several decades. No outsiders have any right to tell Africans how to conduct their lives. The problems will multiply; and their effects will rebound on the rest of humanity: not only as an endless procession of boatloads of miserable, desperate humans who are even more unwanted in Europe than they were where they come from.

Penal Economy

It is increasingly well-recognised that prisons in the United Kingdom are at, or very close to, a crisis point. The Cameron-Clegg-Osborne austerity programme has reduced prison officer numbers below the level at which health and safety requirements for the inmates can properly be maintained, and though some recruitment is now taking place it is probable that the new staffing levels will be enough.

Meanwhile health fetishists are arguing for a complete ban on smoking in prisons. This indicates the tip of a huge iceberg of trouble. It is notorious that many thousands of prisoners are addicted to tobacco [and very many to other addictive substances, including cannabis], and that there is a massive underground economy to supply the prisoners with their 'need': backed-up by a brutal system of enforcement among the inmates. Today the BBC placed a report that massive amounts of tobacco and other addicts' supplies had been found in prisons over the past year: together with thousands of illicitly-held mobile phones [and, presumably, the related charging devices]. The use of drones to carry some of this contraband into prison has been reported extensively; and means to prevent their use have been implemented in some prisons to modest effect.

But it is clear that the historic routes for illicit commodities into prison are via visitors and by the use of corruption or intimidation on prison officers. To impose mandatory vaginal and anal examination of 'innocent' visitors to prisoners would be considered outrageous; so that route for contraband remains open. Given the operation of human nature, activities like threatening an officers' family will always find a way of influencing individuals. There are historic ways of mitigating this problem, but it will never be eradicated. As was indicated in Ronnie Barker's brilliantly-scripted series of TV scripts about life in prison, there is a stand-off, a compromise, between inmates and management that can usually be kept in balance. To overset that balance by having too few staff, or unacceptable strains placed on prisoners [such as a smoking ban would cause], would be calamitous. The attempt both at once would be catastrophic.

Leaving Politicians To It

A Greek journalist faces arrest and imprisonment for publicising a list of reputed avoiders of foreign-exchange regulations, with the imputation that many of these people were corrupt and/or tax evaders. Successive Greek governments have held, and apparently ignored, the list. A new super-tough budget has been laid before the parliament which will further impoverish the residue of the middle-income groups and increase unemployment throughout the age spectrum. Yet the challenges to the government come as ritualistic strikes and occasional riots, rather than as any movement with the potential to bring down the government. The so-called 'technocrats' [some of whom are classic eurorats] will continue to perform the charade of compliance with German demands for austerity that does not affect their own caste.

The British parliament last evening voted to demand that the Prime Minister should use his entire power and influence to bring about a real-term reduction in the European Union budget. A significant minority of the Conservative Members of Parliament voted for the motion; which nobody expects will have any effect other than to deepen ancient fissures within the tory party. Earlier in the day the government had orally accepted and institutionally shelved a Report by Lord Heseltine that proposed a reversal of forty [or more] years of centralising bureaucracy which was dedicated to the systematic destruction of industry around the country. Some parts of the former deputy prime minister's Report will receive some lip service: the Prime Minister may attend one or two meetings of a National Growth Council before it is handed down to Clegg and allowed to run into the sand; and there may be announcements - vitiated in the event - about the manner in which flows of funds already announced to support 'investment' will be publicised so that they can appear to be responding to the Heseltine proposals. As usual, the politicians will ignore the best advice and steer a course that avoids obvious day-by-day responsibility for company failures and the increasing dependency of the economy on imported manufactures. The process that Harold Macmillan condemned as "selling the family silver" back in the nineteen eighties continues, as beloved brands [most recently Branston Pickle] follow the utilities into alien ownership so that an outflow of revenue to brand-owners augments the flood of payments for imports.

Britain desperately needs a growth policy: but even more it needs a capitalist policy. The term capitalist is massively misunderstood. One of the most capitalist regimes in world history was that run by Stalin; in that no regime has comparably sacrificed human living standards, human rights and human lives in the interests of investing in the growth of industrial production. Since the invention of Economics, with its atomistic obsession with transactions and its determination to submit transactions to 'free market' conditions, 'capitalism' has been retained only as a term of political abuse. One needs to go back to the Political Economy that pre-dated Economics, as exemplified in the school textbook by Millicent Fawcett that featured in my last blog, to get an  understanding of why the concept of capitalism is a good and necessary central feature of economic thinking.

Heseltine's plan, even if it were to be adopted, would be useless without a monitoring organisation to ensure that all the investments that it supports are capitalistic. Heseltine comes close to recognising that it is essential to rebuild and consolidate the nation's capital; its capacity-to-produce material things. To do that the system needs to deliver the services [appropriate education, excellent workplace training, access to applicable research, real-world banking, positive and powerful trade unions, supportive planning rules and flexible trade regulations] that conduce to making things. In one of the last textbooks of sensible political economy Mrs Fawcett emphasised that a country will fail unless its economy maintains and develops - continually - enough capital to provide all that people demand [and can pay for]: either by producing the required commodities and services within the country or by selling exports that directly pay for the things and services that are imported. It will be a hugely difficult and prolonged task, to compensate for half a century of borrowing [both within the economy and from foreigners] and asset sales to pay for imports. It has seemed comfortable to generations of politicians to observe reports of a growth of transactions - which have increasingly represented statistics of material imports and of contracts that simply churned debts - and accept a delusion that the economy was growing. In a world where 'capitalism' and 'capitalist' have been terms of abuse, a concern with material reality became an irrelevance.

 In future bank lending, government investment, and investment by the few valid pension funds that survive, and all other flows of investment should be steered towards investments that really do strengthen the nation's capital. That requires not merely a radical shift of policy but also an intellectual revolution. The renewal of the economy cannot be entrusted to machine politicians. British politics will go the way of Greek, unless the inexorable decline into poverty is halted. Capitalism is the only way out of the crisis.

International Aid

Today's News in Britain features the last round in a long-running debate about the relative merits of 'defence' spending and the allocation of money for assistance to other countries for 'development'. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, is again reiterating his commitment [and that of his government] to give at least 0.7% of the reported national income in donations to developing countries.

There is a growing groundswell of opposition to this spending. Although 0.7% is a small amount, there is a great deal of evidence that some of the money over the years has been stolen by kleptocratic rulers, a lot has been wasted, and some attracts criticism by being awarded to India that has established a space programme [which many people regard as evidence of affluence].

Under the present coalition government major components of Britain's military might have been abandoned. No government since that of Charles II [who ruled from 1660 to 1685] has so far reduced the country's capability to defend itself or to make the sort of intervention against anarchy that restored stability and hope in Sierra Leone just a few years ago. The 'illegal' war in Iraq that was waged by George W Bush and Tony Blair, and the counter-historical 'intervention' that is still costing lives in Afghanistan, have alienated a very large proportion of the home population from government foreign policy; while generating in the population a huge empathy with the armed forces that are placed under extreme strain exacerbated by inadequate resources.

There is an increasing lobby that argues that having the military capability to intervene beneficially in destructive situations around the world is a more valuable source of assistance to the causes of democracy and to global economic stability than are cash handouts that can so easily dribble away in corruption and waste. There is a strong suspicion that the dominant Conservative component of the coalition adheres to the aid budget as part of the publicity that has been devised to try to show that their party is no longer the 'nasty party'. Cameron asserts that unless major problems of conflict and mass migration are addressed by an outward flow of aid they will "come home to visit us". The Prime Minister would only need to take a short bus ride from Downing Street to see that uncontrolled immigration, extra-legal employment and poverty are rampant already in London; to an extent that could not be 'cured' by the reallocation of the whole of the overseas aid budget to these legal and social problems. Out-of-touch governments have allowed these massive socio-economic problems to emerge; and the present government shows no signs of awareness of them; so, obviously, they have no way of addressing them properly.