Perspective on the U.S. deficit

U.S. annual federal deficits over receipts 1901 to 2006

I found the following graph on Wikipedia. It gives us a little perspective on the U.S. budget deficit.

Is Hastings an option?

Yesterday I drove over to Hastings stopping off at Bexhill on the way. The gossip in Brighton is often that Hastings is an option. A sort of cross between how Brighton is supposed to be and a fall back position. Brightonians argue through the ideas that Brighton has become too expensive, trendy, busy, full of tourists….(take your pick) and that Hastings may be an option.

War Cafe

Hastings has excellent architecture, lots of interesting passages and back streets and, indeed, it seems that the alternative set may be moving in if one judges alternative by cowboy hats, chopper trikes, idiosyncratic shops and sartorial inelegance – not that I decry such inelegance; on occasion I admire it.

We ate in a nice little restaurant which was perhaps a tad too expensive. (£18 for a steak – in Hastings?! With my reputation?!) though the fish was good value and the ambiance excellent. Later we had coffee in a quaint though ghastly little sea front cafe which appeared to have been decorated by some kind of second world was appreciation society. Churchill and Union Jacks everywhere.

approaching Ditchling Beacon

As we drove back Ditchling Beacon looked very impressive on the horizon.

Any discussion regarding relocating to Hastings usually ends with the observation that there is no work there and the rail and road connections are not good. That, then, usually is the end of the matter. However, perhaps there is another reason. On arriving back in Brighton we drove down Grand Avenue and the city felt busy and switched on. It was dark and the lights beckoned us to the pubs. To be sure, Hastings, is a nice little town but it is just that. A little town. One gets the feeling that after frequenting the gaggle of little shops and pubs downtown for a year or so one might feel a little constricted. It lacks the anonymity of a city. As Brighton does to some extend compared to London. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it is, perhaps, difficult when one is not used to it.

Of course, this is not the end of the debate. With me, it is rather like my yen to emigrate to America or move back to London. A constant theme which will, most likely, rattle around my head until the day I die.

It is the curse of those who have travelled and lived in different places to always feel  dissatisfied as everywhere will lack something from somewhere else. A city will feel too big or a village too small. Africa will feel too foreign while England too mundane. Many years ago I attended The Isle of Man TT motorbike racing and we did some pubbing with the locals. They told us that The Island full of retired ex-pats who the locals term “When I’s” because they preface most statements by the words “When I” - As in “When I was in Bahrain” or “When I was in Aden”.

A friend is about to go to AntArctica to live for a few months. When he returns, will he yearn for the interminable bitter cold? Perhaps not but he’s bound to miss something.

Obama blows reputation by cave in to U.S. Jewish lobby

Jewish lobby blocks progress

To be a Palestinians must be to be very very cynical. When Barack Obama gained the presidency of the United States The Palestinians must have seen a glimmer of hope. Despite stupidly surrendering Jerusalem in a speech to AIPAC, Obama did appear to be less prone to automatic support of Israel. Indeed the Obama government demanded that Israel stop all building on Palestinian land prior to negotiations recommencing.

Of course we do not know what pressure Obama is under but I cannot say that I am surprised that he has caved in to the American Jewish lobby. The news media is reporting that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has just visited the middle east and backed down on the demands that Israel should stop building.

Think about that.

The Palestinians are driven from much of their land to create the state of Israel. Irrespective of the Jews historic claims to the land this was their home. They had a historic claim too. The Palestinians are damned as terrorists when they resist. They rise up in an Intifada and are brutally suppressed. They are forced to live as second class citizens in their own land while Israel builds modern settlement for fundamentalists Jews on the remaining part of the land allocated by the U.N.

 

Israeli settlement

Now they are told that they must negotiate even while Israel continues to consolidate it’s land grab and settle more religious fundamentalist on Palestinians land. This is obscene!

 

What nation would agree to negotiate while their opponents continue their aggression?

It is the settlements activity that gives the lie to the Israeli claims to be the victim in this conflict. It is the settlements that show that Israel support fundamentalist religion lunatics just as much as Hamas. The United States has been a solid friend of Israel over the years and ending settlement activity now would go some small way to returning this friendship as it would allow the United Statesto claim a symbolic success in it’s leadership of the peace process. But Israel gives nothing to anybody.

The Jewish lobby in America is misguided and, by it’s mindless and amoral support of settlement activity, is standing in the way of a resolution of this conflict. Obama’s reputation in the Muslim world must have rested  on whether he can stop the  settlement activity and it looks like he can’t. Israel has had everything it wants for  so long that it is now like a spoilt child who simply throws a tantrum whenever it is opposed. It’s time that Israel grew up and The United States Jewish lobby realised that supporting Israel doesn’t have to mean supporting settlements.

VR Goggles

Virtual reality goggles? Remember them? We haven’t had much talk of them lately but it seems Google have precipitated a blue peter aproach to the manafacturer of VR goggles.

Embarrassing Seagulls

Isn’t it about time to recognise Pythonesque features in Cantona’s feathered friend. Hasn’t his seagull followed its last trawler? Isn’t it appearing decidedly nailed to its perch. Frankly, we have been propping it up for far to long and I’m feeling quite as sick as the hapless Norwegian Blue did before it ‘joined the bleedin’ choir invisible’.
Let’s examine this odd bird. 17 or so years ago Cantona used a simple metaphor. What on earth is going on in philistine Britain that we still want to scratch our heads? Are we ‘bird brains?’ Cantona made a perfectly straightforward, albeit figurative statement to the effect that ‘the press are scavengers’ and we descend into awe at the incomprehensible obscurantism of a Gallic genius. At the time I was reasonably comfortable with the idea that Cantona had said something a little unusual for a man of his profession: that he had risen a little above his fellows in revealing that he could string a sentence together; even, let’s give him his due, a quite entertaining little metaphor about the vagaries of the British tabloid press. But to hold it up as some incomprehensible jewel of deep philosophical profundity is frankly embarrassing.

Seagulls

Lets deconstruct it a little to follow in the footsteps of a Foucault or a Baudrillard.

“when the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea”.

The seagulls are the press – the sardines stories, Cantona is the trawler: end of.

How difficult do we think this is? I am truly astonished that perfectly intelligent (one presumes) commentators and journalists continue to resurrect Eric’s quip as if it was drawn from the depths of French intellectual tradition to take its place as an unfathomable mystery of our time. ‘What could he possibly mean?’ our perplexity grows and the mystery deepens.

Perhaps if he had said, ‘the press are like a rats going through my bins’ he may have inspired less awe. Perhaps it was his heavy french accent. Maybe it gave the squawking metaphor something of ‘a lovely plumage’ denied to more home grown breeds. But whatever it was it’s got to stop.

Now, please don’t take this as a criticism of Cantona. Were that everyone expressed themselves with a little elegance and intelligence (I won’t dwell on the karate kick incident that led to Eric’s delusion that he was being hounded). Indeed, I shouldn’t wonder if Eric himself has come to view the seabird as more of an albatross everytime he sets foot in Britain. For my part I am simply ashamed as we cry out to our near neighbours across the channel; ‘look at us, we’re stupid!’ Yes, it was a little bit clever for a footballer judging by the normal post match comments – but not for most of us. We do know what it means, its not that tricky – please stop going on about it because it makes us look like morons. The press followed Eric around because they expected to get a story; doh, doh, doh! We got it at the time and we still get it. We are not a nation of idiots! Stop telling us that we are bewildered, confounded or otherwise perplexed after all this time
by something that never baffled us in the first place. Why do we want to appear stupid?
Throwing sardines to the dead gull should cease, it must go to meet its maker.

I’ll leave you with a proper bit of obscure French philosophising. This one from the pen of Jean-Paul Sartre and I hang my head in shame, in advance, toward all those of you who find these words equally straightforward.

“My position in the midst of the world is defined by the relation between the instrumental utility or adversity in the realities which surround me and my own facticity; that is the discovery of the dangers which I risk in the world, of the obstacles which I can encounter there, the aid which can be offered me, all in the light of a radical nihilation of myself and of a radical, internal negation of the in-itself and all affected from the point of view of a freely posited end. That is what we mean by the situation.”
- Dominic Duckett

Sub Prime

Below is a link to a Powerpoint presentation with as good an explanation of the current financial mess as any.

sub-prime1