Hoffa Knocks on Labour's Door

Derek Simpson, who oddly enough resembles Gordon Brown, laments on the future of British collective bargaining power. Apparently oblivious to the fact Britain hasn't been overtly affected the deminished export power of the Pound because Britain doesn't make a hell of a lot to export, The FT quotes him as saying, "the two biggest concerns that people have in employment today: job security and pensions".

The pink avenger goes on to note the good man's solution to all of this is,

Unions need to join forces with their counterparts in the rest of Europe to lead the fight against multinationals, according to the head of the biggest union involved in merger talks... Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, the largest of the three unions involved in talks to form a super union in Britain, also hinted that membership risked becoming a sham for many workers unless the unions managed to boost their position against international companies... The comments, made in an interview with the Financial Times, suggest that the face of Britain's union movement could change radically during the next few years. It also underlines the crisis the unions are facing, with the decline in both membership and bargaining power.... Although Mr Simpson conceded that a super union in itself would not necessarily raise bargaining power against individual employers, he said the merger could help unions co-operate when a multinational was trying to play one country's workforce off against another by threatening to transfer jobs abroad... Mr Simpson, 60, was frank about why the merger was so important.

"Back in the days when I was an apprentice we used to call them international capitalists: big corporations that had the ability to move around the globe almost at will. And we could no more affect their actions then than perhaps we can now."
At that time, they employed perhaps 10 per cent of the union's potential membership, "and for 10 per cent of our members we may have been a bit of a sham because we could not really affect the actions of global companies". "What's happened now is that it's not 10 per cent any more. In fact, it's a majority of companies."

Ah yes, a super-duper union! That would stop evil multinationals from going to countries with workers that will do the exact same job, at the exact same or better quality, for less money... Seems Unionist over here still haven't figured out they can't outsmart the ironclad laws of supply-and-demand anymore than the Keynsians haven't figured out that they can't make 2+2=5 by pretending that investment can come from something other than savings.

Reality aside, I'm expecting this little idea to quickly pick up steam around the EU, seeing as how it's sympatico with the Eurotopians/Eurocrats concept of free trade: as in free of competitive advantages between states. Of course, dear Mister Simpson probably doesn't realize all the former Soviet Bloc countries this would end up screwing, were his designs seen to come to life. But then again, they're not really Europeans, just new Europeans...

GASP! Babyboomers catering to themselves, I'd of never noticed!

The FT reports that the Employers Firm on Age has statsitically verified what has been common knowledge to all of us on the outside looking in on the Baby-Bomber generation.

Age discrimination against teenagers is an even bigger problem than discrimination against 50-years-olds, according to a study commissioned by some of the country's biggest employers.... EFA said: "Ageism is an even an even bigger problem for people in their late teens. Some 25 per cent of school leavers have faced age discrimination compared to 21 per cent of those over 50.

This one get's the "Well no shit, Sherlock!" award of the week. I personally believe its just such ageism that is part of the reason why your average bachelor's degree doesn't get you anywhere a high school diploma + a few years work under your belt won't. Don't get me wrong, the current rigours of the ever eroding standards in edutopia probably play a larger part. But ask yourself how often do you ever heard of someone fresh out of college, with grades and accomplishments that are neither extraordinary nor especially lacking, being able to get the job their degree? Trust me, nothing short of Death Knocking is going to get this demographic lot out of the way...

This is your brain. This is your brain on gov. Any questions?

The boys in the RAF are going to being flying just a little higher, these days, Scotland on Sunday reports,

SOLDIERS and aircrews will be dosed up with "pep pills" to help them stay alertfor longer under controversial plans being developed by the Ministry of Defence, confidential papers have revealed. A secret MoD report obtained by Scotland on Sunday has laid bare the project to test whether the drug modafinil could be used to reduce the amount of sleep needed by servicemen and women on active duty. The covert supply of stimulants to fighting forces has become a controversial subject in recent years, particularly after it emerged that two United States F-16 pilots - Major Harry Schmidt and Major William Umbach - who killed four Canadians in a "friendly fire" incident in Afghanistan in April 2003, had taken an amphetamine issued by their superiors.

Hell yeah! Better living through chemistry! Seriously though, I find this interesting. I figured the governments stopped juicing up the troops when NAZIs stopped making their own special blend of crystal. Anybody ever see those reels of Service men sitting docily in front of mushroom clouds?

But look on the bright side, they can option Ozzy's Flying High Again! for their commercials.

Titty Bar Czar... Only in Scotland

I am most reticent to link anything to the Herald, but alas they're the only ones with any substance on what's otherwise a watershed moment in the Scottish Parliaments history.

The Weegie-land rag goes on to quote the Executive as saying,

Mr McCabe said the executive "takes adult entertainment issues seriously" and "intends to take a stronger approach to adult entertainment activity – including lap-dancing – recognising the concerns being expressed about it". He said the work "will look at any impact of adult entertainment activity on local communities and the dancers themselves, and a key issue will be the protection of the people who work in this area."The group's tasks will be to identify "all relevant activities, while recognising the need not to suppress artistic freedom". It will consult with women's groups, the industry and its staff, while using anonymous research of activities. It is required to tie in any proposals to parallel studies into prostitution

Ah yes, so noble, so valiant... to brave the sordid and lascivious wiles day and night to do this critical, timely, and most importantly taxpayer-needed service. My thoughts go out to the lucky bast- er, selfless statesmen...

First off on our magical mystery tour of the week that was,
Man Bits Dog. Literally.

The Edinburgh Evening News reports that,

A BLIND man bit his guide dog during a savage attack on the animal in the middle of a busy city street. The 34-year-old man sank his teeth into the dog’s head in an astonishing attack. The assault has provoked fury from animal welfare groups who said anyone found guilty of an attack on an animal should be banned from owning one, even if they have a disability. An eyewitness said they saw the man dragging the eight-year-old bitch across the access road at Meadowbank Retail Park before biting its head and kicking the dog’s body. The sickened passer-by immediately contacted Lothians and Borders Police.

This one must have the deconstructionist-omnibus and other who get concerned for a living in a tizzy. I mean, who do we feel sorry for? The blind man who won't have a dog he's entitled too anymore, or the dog who took teeth to the head? I'm sure there's more to this than was reported, but if the guy was just being a dick, than I think he should have his smothered in warm dog-food juice and fed to that dog at its next meal time.

Miscelania...

Ah, greetings all you skinny-dippers at the slue! I've got a mostly relaxing two day break from retail/tele-surveying hell ahead of me. Even a pinch of my favorite controlled substance awaiting me at the crib to boot! Last night I watched "Fletch" for the first time since I was in the single digits for candles on the cake. I now realize just how horrible that movie actually was... in a good way.

It was a busy week last week in the news (for once). So there'll actually be a bit of blog fodder for you. Having surfed my usual haunts of conspiracy, porn, and whatever else I could find to get a rise in the old sympathetic nervous system or caught my gnat's derth of an attention span, I guess I'll regurgitate some thoughts on the week that was!

The Good State Giveth, The Good State taketh Away...
*Dispatch from Edutopia tie-in*

Thanks to the leftist obfuscation and languishment of the American education system, we've gone from a "republic" to a "democracy" without so much as a constitutional convention or even a vote. Nowhere in the federal or any state constitution does the word "democracy" manifest itself, yet somehow we reflexively identify ourselves as a "democracy" and declare "democracy" is a good thing. The average man on the street isn't to blame for this, after all, your compulsory, state-issued education would surely provide accurate and reliable information about said state, right?

Well, along with engendering three generations with an undeclared, yet unquestioned fallacy on the nature of our civil heritage, Americans have also been quietly robbed their property rights through deliberate maleducation. Property rights are at best, in most class rooms, brushed over and students are comforted with the notion of "eminent domain" protecting us. Yet even this has become merely a flimsy formality in the wake of the statist, collectivist notions that somehow owls, the war on drugs, the dangers of smoking, and failure to pay an constitutionally and even statutorily dubious income-tax take place over God-given, natural right to what we create and earn. Property isn't merely the land the highway department or the EPA can claim from you. Property is your money, along with your tangible and intangible assets.

Sadly, many people's eyes glaze over at the mention of these notions. People have grown all too languid as legislative powers have been slowly ceded from elected officials, who are supposedly accountable, over to faceless bureaucracies that only metastasize. This slow erosion is the mirror of western leftist's past realization that the trick to remaking the world into their utopia involved patient, incremental erosion of society's prevailing notions. Those prevaling notions were of individual freedom. Through pandering to egotistical notions of enlightenment, they began replacing acceptance of individual rights, bit by bit, with collectivist notions of entitlement and liberation from oppression. A peculiar oppression that indelibly ended up stemming from the white, Christian, male segment1 that had hitherto forced hoary notions ranging from racism, to freedom of vocabulary, to monotheism, to objectivity, and to bigotry.

Of course, Eastern leftist never had to bother whittling away notions of individual rights to property and your own person. Take Mother Russia, where recently the previously private YUKOS energy conglomerate ended up being too juicy a morsel for the wolves in Moscow to leave unmolested, as Ted Roberts notes,

The company was charged with tax evasion and presented with a bill for 28 billion in back taxes. Sure they're guilty. So are 100,000 other companies and a hundred million individuals. The only innocents are the dead and the bankrupt. Vladimir Putin... locked up the majority stockholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, grabbed his company and then conducted an auction. Several internationally qualified companies responded. Strangely, this unspellable money-maker was sold to an equally unspellable organization, Baikalfinensgroup. (More confusion for Western political analysts!)Baikalfinensgroup is a syndicate unknown to the world, but obviously well known to the oily bureaucrats in charge of the auction. It turns out that the government that indicted and seized Yukos and conducted the auction, awarded the contract to ITSELF!

"Okay, but that's Russia..." some would say. Fair enough, but a few years ago in New London and elsewhere around the country Wal-Mart has used local municipalities and courts to have land "condemned" and "rezoned" in order to snake people's property away from them that I guess they couldn't talk them into selling.

"So what does this have to does all this have to do with natural rights and democracy, again?" many ask. The answer is pretty simple- it has been in the name of the mythical, sacred cattle of "democracy" and "group rights" that individual right to property, self, and the pursuit of happiness have been eroded. We are told that we cannot hold out for these "selfish" things because it doesn't serve "the greater good". Of course, the problematic question there is, "Who defines the greater good?" The answer, it seems, are our democratically elected officials. Of course, the problem with giving them the power to decide this is that they only get to keep this lofty position only by doing two things. One is pandering to the apathy of greatest number of special interest group (who are proven to control votes). The other is pandering the lowest common denominator of the greatest number of special interest groups. Hence P.J. O'Rourke's caveat of,

When politicians control buying and selling, the first thing to get bought and sold are the politicians.

So sadly, as this precedent of special interest group-imperialism strips future generations of their money, freedom, and pursuit of happiness they'll likely scratch their heads in wonder, harboring a subtle though socially unacceptable sense of somehow being wronged. Of course, by then they'll likely not have the terms and words necessary to articulate this curious notion. Of course, I'm sure they'll know just how to write in txt. msg to their representative at the UN...

1 as a brief asside, I'd like to repeat what others have already noted as the peculiarly oedipal smacking that underlies all the deconstructionist propaganda.

View From the Slue

Greetings you occasional stumblers upon my many meanderings. I have a few predictions for this coming year. Expect George and Tony to suddenly have a falling out. Despite their Wilsonian notions of democracy-mongering and their self-styled notions of being happy-shiny leaders, riding the third wave or third intestinal track or third-whatever to the day after tomorrow, Tony has to triangulate and secure his left-flank (he is still labour, don't let the new business fool you). So don't be suprised if the Global Warming issue makes for a convient watershed from them to part company on, for a while. China will get its first high-profile Keyensian hickups this year. There's too much pressure on the dollar to stop proppering their currency up and too little oil for them keep steam-rolling along. Lastly, brace yourself for a serious deflation, if not outright bust in the housing-market bubble. It may not be as catastrophic as the nay-sayers claim it will be, because the riptide of capital created by the artifical suppresion of the interest rates created through the Macs and Maes of the Federal government, has carried all the that money out into the fiat eithers.

Also, brace for many a laughs coming out of the new and improved DNC, headed by Mean Dean the Scream Machine. Nothing revolutionairy to be said here, but if any of it pans out, I'll be able to pat my little head and tell the 3 people who look at this stuff, "See, I told ya so..."

Three Cheers to Signapore

The FT reports that Singapore is borrowing a page out of the Gipper's book and lowering it's top income tax rate to 20%.

The top income tax rate would gradually fall from 22 per cent to 20 per cent over the next two years but it would still be above the personal tax rate of 18 per cent in Hong Kong, seen as a main rival to Singapore for foreign investments... Tax incentives will be offered to promote wealth management activities, Islamic financial services and the listing of real estate investment trusts (Reits).... Singapore is seeking to maintain its competitiveness against China and India and has focused on services, including the financial industry, logistics and tourism to create new jobs

Don't hold your breath in anticipation of most of your political leaders showing this much good sense....

Miscelania

This weekend was a bit boring. RIP to Raoul Duke. I'm begining to realize the true mark of a great newspaper is not in how it handles a hot newsperiod, but in how it handles the doldrums. On this scale, the FT is sliding down the weyward scale. It's leftist tendencies are begining to seethe up and dillute what's otherwise great writing. Then again old Tony is up for relection as as I've said many other places, they all feel a tory in drag is better than a tory in power.

RIP, Rafiq


A good man who did much for his country. He tried toeing a fine line for many years between the powers that be and the reforms needed to bring his nation back to prosperity. When he made a decision to make a stand, he was cut down. God's peace to his family and too his countrymen. Hopefully his sacrifice will hasten the day I can finally lay flowers on Gibran's grave, and his as well, now.

HR 418- Taking Auditions for the Anti-Christ, today!

It only gets better. Thanks to Brian Doherty from Reason for pointing this out. It turns out that pudgy little fucker who supported this bill wants to create an international ID card, that will let the Canadian and Mexican governments be able to pull up your details at the click of a mouse. Let me guess next, the UN? If it hasn't dawned on you yet that its time to reign in the federal leviathan and let some of the air out of it, than you're in deep shit.

A Columnist growing on me...

Burt Prelutsky is about the only columnist on Papa Joe's outfit that I find myself following with any regularity, other than mix master Vox. He's made a very succinent and frankely over looked point about the price of gasoline this week,

In 1936, a gallon of gas cost 21 cents. A year later, my dad bought a new
Plymouth sedan for less than $800. In 1946, it was the car he was still driving when our family moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. In 1949, a 14-ounce bottle of ketchup cost 15 cents, and a T-bone steak cost 55 cents a pound. My reason for giving you this brief history in practical economics is to point out that the price of gas has only gone up about 10-fold in 68 years. Compare it to some of those other everyday items. Do you think you could buy a new Plymouth for $7,800? Buy any T-bones lately for $5.50? Get into any first-run movies for $2.50? You can't even buy a bag of popcorn for that price. And try spending 40 cents on your first date – I can guarantee you won't have a second.

He goes on to point out, quite correctly that,

So, why is it that it's only the price of gasoline that makes so many people go berserk? I believe it's because the Left has politicized petroleum.... These are the same Neanderthals who rail that Republican Bush doesn't make a move without first checking with the Saudis, even though the Saudis urged him not to take out Saddam Hussein, but never get around to explaining why Kennedy, Johnson, Carter
and Clinton did nothing to free us of the necessity to go hat-in-hand to the
Arabs.

Personally, methinks he's giving Bush a little too much credit to the Republicans, but then again we are talking about a proud reformed whore who's still enamored with the realization that Republicans aren't the root of all evil. Still it's always nice to see someone speak with some ratiocination and level-headedness about "our precious, scarce natural resources". Idiots who still subscribe to the bait-and-swith alarmism that the ecotopians spout and the leftist use to erode individual liberty should bother reading Megatrends. Or, if that's too heady and caliginous for you, Basic Economics.

Miscellania

Blogger conviently shit the bed on Saturday and I see my brilliant post on John Major got fucked up. Figures. This week will probably once again be a bit lonely around the Slue. I'm working 5 days for the first time in I don't know how long. Yes, I know so does the rest of the world, but sadly it cuts into my internet access.

*Update*

Blogger is apparently back up. Let's hope it stays that way.

Wally-world calling the bluff in Canuckistan

In the first bit of good news I've come across on here today, I see Wal-Mart told a bunch of lazy frogs on the nothern frontier to take a hike up the road to the croisant factory or something. Seems the pumpkin patch-parisians wanted to montrez la solidarité and got told "fukk auff, thaynka vereh myuch" by the Walton's down in Benton, AR.

OH! IT GETS BETTER!



This asshole, the bill's sponser, also included giving the Secratary(soon to be minister) of the departpment of fatherland security the ability of waive any law that gets in his way. The section of the proposed legislation, reads as follows,

SEC. 102. WAIVER OF LAWS NECESSARY FOR IMPROVEMENT OF BARRIERS AT BORDERS.
Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. 1103 note) is amended to read as follows:
(c) Waiver-
(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary's sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.
(2) NO JUDICIAL REVIEW- Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court shall have jurisdiction--
(A) to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or
(B) to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.
Sensenbrenner says the main purpose is to "prevent another 9-11 attack by disrupting terrorist travel."

Never in my lifetime has the caveat of Henry Kissinger rang truer,

The illegal we can do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a bit longer.

So much for the "lesser" of two evils...

News.com reports that your champions of smaller government, federalism, and individual rights, the Republicans, have swept into motion a bill to create a national ID card. I really hope all of the commentariat-goon squad finally start seeing that the lesser of two evils is still evil. Likewise, along with the fact that a car idling off the face of a cliff is fundamentally no better than one that has a brick on the accelerator. Something's gotta give. It'll either be them or you. Make a choice, while you still can.

The Forces of Darkness falling...

Here's one for those of you who are always bitching about corporations in the same religious and eshtalogical tones you talk about "empire" in. Although in this instance, I'm inclined to agree. Blockbuster has lost about 20 million rentals recently to the growing online competitors who are offering things a hell of a lot cheaper with no late fees. Here's to the power of the free market giving the consumer the choice to tell Sumer Redskull to take all those late fees and buy a nice vacation where his shit's wanted. Trust me, the satelite radio industry is going to put the nails in Queerchannel next....

Oddly Enough, The Last Bit of Redundancy I'd Expect Eurocrats to be Concerned With...

The FT reports on Monday that of all the street corners the Eurocrat prostitutes could be fighting over, it happens to be Human Rights alley. My favorite fusia colored rag states that,

The Council of Europe has told Europe's leaders to address the growing risk of duplication and waste in one of the continent's most congested industries: monitoring human rights. Plans by the European Union to set up a fundamental rights agency have fuelled concerns that the continent could be overrun by competing human rights and democracy monitors.

I'm still not sure what to make of it, I just find this deeply ironic somehow.

Miscaeliania

Sorry about yet another drought of input here at the slue. I finally got a couple of (hopefully) regular jobs lined up for the time being and they've been occupying my time this past week. Hopefully I'll be able to get the mighty-mighty broadband at the house, at which point I'll be able to update from the comfort of my jim-jams... Just like Dan Rather's doing these days...

**New Ongoing Feature**

Dispatches from Edutopia, Part One

Having barely escaped the mental-meatgrinder I affectionately refer to as Political Correctional Institutes (as in typical colleges and Universities around the US and the world at large. PCI hereafter), I'd like to start a new ongoing list of examples of just how open-minded and diverse Edutopia actually is. Even as the New Media wages its war against the Legacy Media-Machine, the left still manage to control what is perhaps the greatest prize of all in the War of Ideas, the home field itself. I'll have to disagree with Neal Boortz and say that most kids aren't that dumb, but they have scant little in choices for input about the world around them. Anybody who thinks Edutopia and the PCIs constitute it doesn't generatea hive-mind mentality obviously hasn't looked deeply into the subject matter. This applies to both conservative and the more typical leftist outfits equally. Although I imagine conservative outfits homogonize out of need for mutual self defense. In the liberal establishments, it's more of the Cult of Dime-Store Intelligenstia. After all "Publication is vanity, Tenure is sanity, and Dissertation is reality" in these joints. Anybody who bucks the tenured party-line is going to be sequestered and ultimately neutralized. It's an intellectual racket. The tenured become untouchable the way made men were in the mafia. Here's a prime example of it from Thomas Sowell,

A student at Lewis College in Colorado was actually kicked by a professor for wearing a sweatshirt proclaiming his Republican views. This happened at a birthday party, of all places, and the professor has been quoted as saying that her only regret was that her kick was not "harder and higher." The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which monitors campus intolerance, is trying to get some action taken against that professor. Good luck.

Does he Speak for you?

The truth is that men are tired of liberty.
Benito Mussolini

Socialists Declare War on Musicians

The Scotsman reports,

NORTH Korea has launched an intensive media assault on its latest enemy - long hair. A campaign exhorting men to get a short-back-and-sides has been aired by state-run television. The series is entitled Let us Trim our Hair in Accordance with Socialist Lifestyle. While the campaign has been carried out primarily on television, reports have appeared in North Korean press and radio, urging tidy hairstyles and proper attire. It is the strongest media campaign against men’s sloppy appearances mounted in the reclusive and impoverished communist state. The propaganda drive on grooming standards has gone a stage further than previous attempts. This time television identifies specific individuals deemed too shoddy. It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy.

Heh, so much for that voting bloc in N. Korea....

State of the Union Address

What in the hell is there to say? Just the typical lofty notions eluding to some Neo-Reaganesque ideal that in practice will be about as treacherous to liberty as everything else GW was a signatory too in the preceding years. Once again, I'm not an avid Bush-hater, I just think he's a political animal a la Richard Nixon (however, nowhere near as visionary) who likes the rhetoric of the right better than the rhetoric of the left. I think it's the terms in which the debate about Bush are framed that are precisely the reason why he's still in office. The have Left grasped at any and all straws and literally any patch of mud they can scrape up to sling. Which leaves the Bush PR machine (I refuse to call them the right) needingly only to embed themselves on the strategic watershed between meaningful and trivial criticism/debate in order to keep their guy in. Because the left failed to use the same tactics of triangulation to siphon support from the tepid-GW voter as they they did cobble to together a middle class trump card for Clinton, they greatly contributed to the egg on their face in this past election. The left should have learned from the right's example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory back during the impeachment. By conducting a witch-hunt to get the guy, the Republicans galvanized support on Clinton's flanks and demoralized their own base, which was flabbergasted that despite millions of dollars being spent to investigate him and having seen several of his colleagues go to jail, all they had on Clinton was the fact he lied about getting a blowjob in court. By conducting a similar witch-hunt to get Bush and Cheney that clearly reeked of desperation, the left put off most that weren't already foaming at the mouth for a Bush defeat.

As for the contents of the speech, nothing short of open political revolt from the American people will stop the alien-amnesty steam roller, along with the Arnie amendment. Americans eyes already glaze over far too fast for any hopes of a meaningful discussion on the substance of Social Security reform to be conducted. Just expect a bill reflecting the lowest-common denominator possible to be lobbed through, even though I'm sure it'll be a bandaid dressing a dismemberment, at best. Already Bush is hinting at its full burden to be subsumed by people my age. So much for the caveat about borrowing from your children's future....

If I missed anything important, other than a inferential but clear message that in not saying anything in particular about the theatres of operation America is currently engaged in or potential battle fronts, that he's desperately looking for a face-saving exit, let me know.