In May

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau  died on Friday at his home in Bavaria. He was 86.

Sob

It Takes a Village

The verbal noun 'parenting' repels instantly.  The small HGs were not 'parented' but brought up.  As were their parents. And their grandparents before them.  They were involved in  kinship constellations  engaged in myriad exchanges, large and small, that provided the background against which their formal instruction in school was set - and judged, and adjusted or refuted, as well as accepted.

The notion 'parenting' deliberately confounds the meeting of immediate physical needs with the provision of an upbringing.  A hundred pounds the state is offering to reduce (or traduce) a child's birthright into advice on how to change a nappy.

Even Hilary Clinton knows that to bring up a child it takes a village.

Debt Kills Growth

The massive overhang of public and private debt in advanced capitalist countries (public debt to GDP levels exceeds the critical 90% threshold while "private debt is showing a marked upward trend and remains near pre-crisis levels") and its damaging effect on growth are analysed in this paper by Reinhart and Rogoff   (referenced in the Irish Economy blog).

The impairment of growth by debt overhang is both marked and long-term.  It is  made clear too that causality does not run from  growth to debt "the multi-decade long duration of past public debt overhang episodes suggests that at very least the association is not due to recessions at business cycle frequencies."

Unnervingly, even continued ability to access  capital markets at relatively low interest rates by debtor countries does not ameliorate the growth-killing capacities of large debt overhangs.   Consoling thoughts that at least the UK took a Euro-use opt out are ill-founded insofar as  "growth-reducing effects of high public debt are apparently not transmitted exclusively through high real interest rates."

The Wrong Men for the Job

London was there for the taking by Labour.  That's twice Labour has thrown away power by allowing tightly-knit groups of politically motivated men to manipulate the choice of Labour champions in crucially important contests for social democracy in England.

 First they couldn't summon the will to rid themselves of Brown as an inappropriate Leader (inappropriate Chancellor of the Exchequer did the more damage to us all but that's another matter) and he lost them the UK election.  Now they've failed to gain London (Livingstone's previous term in office was not a Labour term but a last fling for other left forces) because another inappropriate candidate imposed himself.  The comrades in Europe must be aghast (social democracy being what it is, the ultimate internationalist movement).  All their hopes for re-taking widespread positions of authority and influence in a post modern political elitey way  now rest on Hollande,  and future co-operation and reinforcing support is compromised.

Of the two losses -  the UK and London -  it is London that is the greater.  Power, like culture, goes where the money is.  London ( devolved in the same manner as were Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  but with many of the powers suppressed by the Blair administration when Livingstone took it in 2000)  could recover those powers over some forms of  taxation, health, education, infrastructural investment,  relations  with other devolved regions both within and outside the UK.

New Labour - the UK's local  social democratic elites  - intended devolution to be the permanent denial of power to the centre right ( the Conservatives here); they must  bitterly regret the regionalisation and other mechanisms  they put in place to safeguard themselves against democracy that have now fallen to the centre right.  Pity they failed to safeguard themselves against putting up wrong'uns and throwing away the loyalty, conviction and hard work of social democracy's supporters.

Welwyn Hatfield Council Results in Affirmation of Aspiration

Election Results - 3 May 2012

The Conservatives retained their control with a [slightly] decreased majority.
The political composition of the council is now:

• Conservative 34 seats
• Labour 11 seats
• Liberal Democrat 2 seats
• Independent 1 seat

There was Labour gains [So? So? Sometimes our grammar slips but aspirational doesn't mean perfect. It means there's no stopping us because we'll get it right next time.  Ed.] in Haldens and Hatfield West wards, and an Independent gain in Welwyn West ward.

Hollande vs Sarkozy

So did you watch the great debate?  And what did you think?  Has Sarkozy adopted the right tone to pull in the le Pen votes?  Is Hollande a deceitful liar?

Why should the hardworking of Europe fund eurobonds for the corrupt, the special interest lobbies, and the workshy?

Can a France  be taken seriously as an ally if led by Hollande, who wants to pull out of Afghanistan unilaterally when French troops are there as part of a NATO command?

What kind of to-be-taken-seriously energy policy could end France's commitment to nuclear power or is Hollande dog-whistling the Greenies?

Should there be a muslim commuity in France or a muslim community of France?

Is the presidency of France not in the least a 'normal' undertaking or is it just an apparatchik's job?

Should the President be stripped of legal invulnerabilities or is that a politically childish refusal to recognize the vulnerabilities of the exercise of power and that  the real, and proper,  containment of presidential power is undertaken by the Constitution?

Is former official contact with Berlusconi as a fellow European leader ethically equivalent to being Strauss Kahn's Party's substitute candidate after he was found out?

I thought Hollande was like Harold Wilson but without the political and high office experience, skills or charm.  He also shares with Wilson the need for an answer to the "Are you, or have you ever been..." question.

I thought Sarkozy was violent at times and contemptuous throughout, which didn't appeal to the English behavioural norms in me but might appeal to the voters he's after.

Come and Join Us!

There are lots of Americans permanently resident in Europe.  After all, it's the best place on Earth to live.  But their exodus is so irritating to the United States that our fellow European residents have started handing in their United States passports and renouncing their citizenship.

They're queueing up in various countries.  Bloomberg's report suggests the reasons are principally for tax evasion and avoidance but numerous readers' comments make it clear that what is objectionable au fond is the attitude of their fellow-Americans to those who prefer elsewhere: that they are tax cheats; that they are rich and disloyal; that they need to be made to pay.....

Idly, I looked up how to renounce UK citizenship.  No bullet-proof booth (shades of the confessional), interviews with embassy officials, long-term left-over tax liabilities,  huge fees, or other general big brother nastiness.  You just do it online.  And if you want to take up being a UK citizen again you can do that online as well - once certainly and, at the Home Secretary's discretion, repeatedly.