Snouts in the Trough

I went to a presentation this week by a ‘leading economist’ on how to revive the British economy.

This great economist – a well-paid adviser to government – started by briefly talking some sense. In 1970 manufacturing accounted for about 32% of the UK’s output and now it’s down to just 10%. Almost no economy can survive unless manufacturing is at a minimum of 15% of GDP. So far so good. That makes sense. A country can’t earn a living unless it has resources like oil or makes things other countries want to buy.

Then the great economist started talking utter b*ll*cks. According to his theoretical economic model, if we could reduce the value of the pound by about 20%, then our exports would start growing and manufacturing would increase as a percentage of GDP making the British economy successful again. There’s only one problem with this – it’s not what happens in the real world.

Let’s imagine a traditional Northern England industrial town. We’ll call it Karachi-on-Tyne. And let’s imagine there are a few factories in Karachi-on-Tyne. Gradually over the years the pound goes up in value making these factories in Karachi-on-Tyne uncompetitive compared with factories in China.

One by one the British factories close down, people lose their jobs, the premises become derelict or are knocked down to make way for new Tesco superstores or housing estates for benefits-dependent, Britain-hating immigrants. Moreover, the people in the companies supplying those factories also lose their jobs. Then the main activities in Karachi-on-Tyne are collecting benefits, driving taxis and raping underage white girls.

Now, let’s test the great economist’s theory. As the Government is not taking enough in taxes to pay for all the services and benefits it has promised to Britain’s rapidly-growing largely immigrant population, it has to borrow and borrow and borrow. Eventually financial markets lose confidence in Britain’s economic management and there is a sterling crisis. Suddenly the value of the pound drops by 20% to 25%.

According to the great economist and his great economic model, the drop in the value of the pound makes British goods competitive again, the factories in Karachi-on-Tyne can now export again and British manufacturing will grow. The inhabitants of Karachi-on-Tyne will then be able to get jobs making things, will drive fewer taxis but will keep on raping underage white girls.

There’s only one problem. The factories in Karachi-on-Tyne have gone. In their place are Tesco superstores and housing estates full of benefits-dependent, Britain-hating, gang-raping immigrants. Moreover, the former suppliers to the factories in Karachi-on-Tyne have also gone bankrupt.

In the great economist’s model, the fall in the value of the pound should have led to a surge in manufacturing and exports. Even a total nincompoop can see this can’t work in the real world as the factories in Karachi-on-Tyne have all closed down.

And buffoons like this great economist with his economic model are advising the Government and deciding Britain’s economic policies.

God help us.

In economics there’s something called the “Dutch Disease” (not to be confused with Dutch Elm Disease, something gardeners might know about). It’s called the “Dutch Disease” because in the Netherlands in the 1960s, discoveries of vast natural gas deposits in the North Sea caused the Dutch guilder to rise, making exports of all non-oil products less competitive on the world market. Thus, what should have been a massive benefit for the country actually resulted in business closures and job losses.

So what? Well, I’ve had a little look at what happened when Britain started producing oil and gas in the North Sea

Here are the UK’s revenues from North Sea oil and gas (click to see more clearly)

You’ll see a massive spike from about 1978 to 1986 and then another spike from 2004 to 2011. These two spikes will have been due to two things – the world oil/gas prices and the quantities produced.

Now let’s look at unemployment in the UK (click to see more clearly)

You’ll see a big spike in unemployment from 1978 to 1986, exactly when oil and gas revenues were at their highest. In Britain in the 1970s, when the price of oil quadrupled and it became economically viable to drill for North Sea Oil off the coast of Scotland, Britain became a net exporter of oil and the pound soared in value, but the country fell into recession as exports of other products became uncompetitive, businesses collapsed and people lost their jobs.

Britain caught the “Dutch Disease” and much of the government’s revenue from the oil and gas was wasted paying for a massive army of the unemployed rather than being reinvested in building new industries.

“Wait a minute”, you might say. “while what you’re saying may be true for the period from 1978 to 1986, the second big spike in revenues from 2004 to 2011 wasn’t matched by a rise in unemployment, therefore the theory about Britain catching the Dutch Disease falls apart”.

But remember the two charts I showed you yesterday about how successive governments had used disability benefits to mask the real level of unemployment (click to see more clearly)

Of course, there are other reasons why unemployment rises and falls. But what I think we’re seeing is that Britain definitely caught the “Dutch Disease”, most of the government’s income from taxes on the North Sea was squandered and we have virtually nothing to show for the hundreds of billions of pounds of oil and gas produced.

Truly we are ruled by idiots.

(Sorry if today’s post was a bit theoretical. But hopefully some readers will find it interesting)

Scenes like this used to be quite common in Britain:

And scenes like this:

But since the Rotherham scandal and the rise of ISIS, our friends from the glorious Religion of Peace (RoP) have been slightly more subdued in expressing their loathing of everything about Britain (apart from our generous benefits system).

Up till now, our craven rulers and cowardly media have been able to dismiss previous antics by the followers of the RoP as “having nothing to do with *sl*m”. But first Rotherham and now ISIS have revealed the reality of the hell we have allowed to grow in our midst. Even the stupidest Brits are beginning to realise that something is going badly wrong and that the RoP may not be quite as benign as our cowardly leaders and gutless press have been claiming.

As for Britain’s M*sl*ms, they have understood that we are beginning to see them for what they really are and so their leaders have now, very belatedly, started to half-heartedly denounce some of ISIS’s more colourful activities – denunciations that are eagerly reported by the yellow-livered media to ‘prove’ that “*sl*mic State has nothing to do with *sl*m” and that the RoP is really peaceful and tolerant and forward-looking and so on and so forth.

But should we trust British M*sl*m leaders’ lamentations and excuses and cynical, self-serving crocodile tears? Or are they just in a state of panic at being found out?

And what about the great alliance against ISIS? Some of the Arab countries supposedly involved are also those channelling the most money to ISIS. Their strategy is to play both sides so they can be certain of ending up with the winner.

Finally, we keep hearing about how the latest victim of ISIS was “kidnapped”. As far as I understand the situation, he was not kidnapped at all. He was betrayed and sold to ISIS minutes after entering Syria by people in the M*sl*m charity he had trusted.

*sl*mic fascism (real *sl*m) is on the rise. It’s spreading down from the Middle East through Africa and across from the Middle East to India and Pakistan.

ISIS have shown us the nature of the greatest threat to civilisation since our German friends slaughtered about 50 million people when they last tried to take over the world and our leaders and the media are looking ever more ridiculous as they fraudulently claim “*sl*mic State has nothing to do with *sl*m”.

Here we go again. Another disaster in Africa. Sometimes it’s famine. Sometimes it’s disease – aids. Sometimes it’s yet another war. This time it’s a disease – Ebola.

The media give us the same old story. Africans are poor therefore they’re starving or diseased or fighting or whatever. As they’re poor, they don’t have money to buy food or they don’t have medical facilities to treat the sick. As they don’t have proper schools, food doesn’t get grown or the disease spreads. We, in the West, have to pour in ever more money to help the poor suffering Africans.

And we’ve been hearing the same garbage for at least the last 50 years. So, let me give you some facts the mainstream media don’t mention:

After the Second World War, under the Marshall Plan European countries were given around $20bn a year (in today’s money) for 5 years – $100bn in all – to rebuild their economies. And this was successful.

Since 1965, when foreign aid really started to flow into Africa, the continent has received about $1trn (in today’s money). That’s $20bn a year for fifty years – equivalent to 10 Marshall Plans – and most African countries are still poverty-stricken hell holes. In fact, the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa is lower than it was in 1965.

Now let’s take Liberia where there’s a serious outbreak of Ebola. Liberia is one of the poorest countries in Africa with a GDP of just $454 per year. Liberia receives around $700m in aid every year. But Liberia’s ruling elites steal around $1bn a year from the country and stash most of it in offshore tax havens. Duh, no wonder the country is a miserable impoverished sh*t-hole.

What about Liberia’s population? Well between 1965 and today, the population of Britain, France and Germany has risen by just 17% from 180 million to 211 million. Over the same period, the population of rotten, godforsaken Liberia has shot up by over 300% from 1.2 million to 4.3 million. Duh, when population is rising faster than an economy grows, people get poorer

Liberia’s problem is that it is a venal overpopulated hell-hole that can never develop as long as its leaders steal most of its money and its population grows so fast. Ooooh, did Oxfam and Red Cross and Save the Children forget to tell you that when asking for your money?

One aid expert explained the obvious when he wrote : Countries are not poor because they lack roads, schools or health clinics. They lack these things because they are poor and they are poor because they lack the institutions of the free society which create the conditions for economic development. Aid has it upside down

There is only one solution for Liberia – make it a UN protectorate; depose its leaders and try them for corruption or crimes against humanity or whatever; send in administrators to run Liberia’s civil service, schools, health services and security services; launch a massive programme to control population growth. Then the country can start using the $700m a year foreign aid to build schools, roads, clinics, railways and all the other elements of infrastructure which will kick-start economic growth instead of letting this $700m pour into the offshore bank accounts of the corrupt ruling elites.

Until we admit the truth about hopeless Liberia and until the UN takes over the country, then nothing will ever change for the better in that basket-case hell-hole country.

I have to leave early for London today, so I’ll just briefly expose Oxfam’s lies about how they really use our money.

Oxfam claim that £8.40 of every £10 we give them goes to “saving lives”. This is a lie.

Here’s what really happens to our money (click to see more clearly)

Oxfam raises about £385.5m a year. It spends about £90.6m running its shops and fundraising. That leaves £294.9m (£7.60 for every £10 raised) for “saving lives”.

But Oxfam spends about £31.9m of this on administration and governance. That leaves £263m (£6.80 for every £10 raised) for saving lives.

Of the £263m left, Oxfam gives over £90m of this to other charities. As they will also have administration and management costs of about 20%, then that’s another £18m lost to overhead costs leaving just £244.9m (£6.35 for every £10 raised) for supposedly “saving lives.

Finally, depending on the Third World country where Oxfam operates, between one third and two thirds of all money used will be lost to waste, incompetence and corruption.

So, Oxfam’s claim that £8.40 of every £10 raised is spent “saving lives” is a brazen lie and you should not be fooled into giving them your money until Oxfam honestly tells us what they really do with our £385.5m a year.