| This may be a little rude for some of you, so don’t say you have not been warned!
But it does contain strong support for their Green Party, so it far from all bad! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9yjujH9QgvI |
| I have been asked by a number of people, mostly outside of the Green Party, for my views on the debt crisis that currently engulfs us all. What follows is a essay I have written to try and formulate and refine my own views on the matter. I believe that it is based on principals that the Green Party shares, but would not suggest that it reflects Party policy. I offer it as my own thoughts – none particularly original – that may at least give food for thought.Andy Chyba.“The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into their debt irredeemably, by a trick.”
“This money comes into existence every time the banks ‘lend’ and disappears every time the debt is repaid to them. So that if industry tries to repay, the money of the nation disappears. This is what makes prosperity so ‘dangerous’ as it destroys money just when it is most needed and precipitates a slump.” “There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. An honest money system is the only alternative.” Frederick Soddy, M.A., F.R.S., Nobel Prize Winner, 1921. So, we cannot say we were not warned. Ever since I first heard of fractional reserve banking, when studying A level Economics in that fateful year, 1979, I have never understood how it could be sustainable. For years I gave up trying to understand it assuming I was missing something or simply not smart enough to fully understand it. I was doing myself a disservice. For those that still have no idea how fractional reserve banking works, I know of no better clear and simple explanation of it than the Money As Debt video: The most sinister and immoral aspect of the system is that banks are lending money that they do not have. You and I cannot get away with that, can we? They do not ‘make’ money; they ‘create’ money out of thin air! A carpenter does not create a chair; he makes it from wood, thereby enhancing the wood’s usefulness and value. The value he adds by his skill is him ‘making’ a living. Bankers, on the other hand simply credit your account, or give a cheque, against nothing more than your promise to pay it back. Central banks simply issue more money – it is known these days as ‘quantitative easing’ The only real money banks hold is savers’ deposits. They tempt people to place and keep their money with them by the paying of interest. They rely on depositors not all want their money back at the same time because they lend it out many times over and rake in multiple loads of interest on the loans. The system works so long as loan interest is paid. It does not really matter if the principal is repaid most of the time because all that interest collected is way in excess of interest paid out to savers/depositors. It only ever gets scary for the banks if too many depositors want their money back at the same time – because they haven’t got it to hand having lent it out many times over. This is the infamous ‘run on the bank’ scenario that triggers economic depressions. It is all built on sand – as we are currently witnessing. Allowing banks to create money by issuing loans against thin air is pretty obviously inflationary. This is why everything costs more over time. This has been particularly obvious in the housing market. The bankers’ greed lead to them fueling house price inflation by lending out ever larger income multiples, over longer terms, and to higher percentages of the property value (over 100% even) in the belief that property values will continue to rise. This was patently stupid and unsustainable but was allowed to happen. Hence the inevitable sub-prime mortgage fiascoes that have seen mortgage defaults, people thrown out of their homes and their homes devalued through the bankers’ greed. To try and put a cap on this human disaster, interest rates get forced down to record lows and savers start to see little point in keeping their money with the banks. Banks start getting twitchy about lending, loans are called in and, as a direct consequence, the money supply starts drying up and everything starts unravelling. The government response? Instead of abolishing the unsustainable system that has created this debt pandemic, and punishing the bankers whose insatiable greed has triggered the meltdown, what do they do? They bail out the banks with taxpayers’ money, they ‘quantitatively ease’ the situation by pumping new money into the bankers’ coffers to encourage them to start lending again and, the final slap of the public’s face, they impose austerity measures to try and control their own reckless borrowing. Utter madness. This is why greed is regarded as deadly sin in Catholicism and usury is regarded as a deadly sin in Islam. There is no religious reasoning here; it is simple, common human morality (that also says ‘do not kill’ and ‘treat others as you would yourself like to be treated’, for example) that dictates the merit of these declarations. Usury is the ‘sin’ of charging interest on loaned money. Christians, in the past, and Muslims, even today, have seen the charging of any interest as sinful. Any moral human can certainly agree that the practice of charging excessive, unreasonably high, and often illegal interest rates is exploitative and indefensible. Take a look at these supposed ‘Best Buy’ payday loan deals: http://www.moneysupermarket.com/payday-loans/ APRs of 1734% and upwards!! On loans of £100! Only the desperate and/or the stupid would succumb to such usury. Is it not the role of a decent society, through the rule of law where needed, to protect people from exploitation? A civilised society would not allow the poverty that drives such desperation, and would crack down on the immoral exploitation of the desperate in such ways. Payday loans are the legal end of the loan shark spectrum. Something like 200,000 people in the UK are embroiled with illegal loan sharks. One million per cent APR is not unheard of in this realm. It is patently obvious how this should be dealt with. These debts are immoral – plain wrong. They should be legally cancelled and the victims refunded everything they have paid over the loan principal. The only people that will suffer by such a policy are the greedy, exploitative, immoral bastards behind these practices. Would you not agree? If so, hold on to that thought. The same logic and morality has been behind the campaign to cancel Third World debt. At the end of the ’70’s, many oil-exporting countries had large amounts of extra money. They put this money into Western banks. The banks then loaned a lot of money to Third World countries for big development projects. However, several factors (a rise in world interest rates, a global recession, and low commodity prices) caused the size of these debts to start growing very fast; several countries began to fall behind in their payments. The amount of money owed by developing countries has increased dramatically since the early 1980’s. These countries now owe money to commercial banks and also to organisations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and to First World governments. Trying to pay off the debt (debt service) has become a serious problem for these countries, and it causes great hardship for their people. Take the region of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example. This region pays $10 billion every year in debt service. That is about 4 times as much money as the countries in the region spend on health care and education. What would happen if we simply cancelled these debts. Quite simply, the debts would no longer exist. The developing countries would not have to repay the loans and they would not have to pay the interest. After all, what do the developing countries really owe the developed world? They have repaid their loans many times over in interest payments. In addition, in many cases, developing countries have paid the First World more (in debt-servicing) than the Northern countries have given in aid, loans and investment. From 1983-1989 a surplus of $165 billion went FROM countries receiving aid TO the countries who were ‘giving’ it. Again in 1994, the less developed countries paid out $112 billion more than they received. Of course, cancelling Third World debts now will not solve the problem in the future. To do that, we must change the present financial system, which is based on debt and interest payments; a system that keeps control in the hands of those who are rich and powerful. So how does this line of thinking work on the current Eurozone crisis? There is no doubt that we are at a key moment in history with regards to banking systems across Europe. There is going to be a lot of pain as we reap what we have sown for decades. The Greeks are the focus of attention at the moment but we are all in the same mire to varying degrees. The UK is on schedule to reach £10 trillion of national debt by 2015, with interest payments of £70 billion a year. With a predicted 24 million household by then, that computes to approximately £415,000 of national debt per household and annual interest of just under £3000 per household on that!! It was Benjamin Franklin who said ” Who goeth a borrowing goeth a sorrowing”. The capitalist system that our governments have encouraged and become beholden to has produced a system whereby the bankers, who produce nothing, slowly but surely gain a death grip over the land, buildings and labour of the nation. The borrowers have become the servants of the lenders and placed themselves, and future generations, on the treadmill of debt. We continue to fall headlong into their vice-like grip on our futures. The steady march towards a cashless society is a utopian dream of the bankers that is almost upon us. It is a dream shared by capitalist governments as it offers the prospect of extraordinary social control: no tax evasion, no ‘black’ market, no existence outside of the system. We are at a tipping point in history and we have the opportunity to tip the balance away from the banks and capitalist control of our lives. There has to be some sort of revolution to change things as it is clear that our governments are intent on propping up the system as best they can, because it is the system that controls them, rather than the other way round. How that revolution will manifest itself is hard to predict at this point in time. It it could be calm and orderly and done through the ballot box, but I am not sure there are signs to encourage that prognosis. It could get violent and nasty. There have been signs of this in Greece, especially as they been bullied out of allowing democratic input their decision making process. Greece may become the first toppling domino precipitating economic revolution across Europe, just as Egypt was the initial toppling domino precipitating democratic revolution across the Arab world. Even if we can dodge these rather dystopian visions, we can all do our bit to bring change and control back into our lives. Co-operatives and green economics based on localism provide alternative means of raising funds and supporting economic activity, independent of the old, decrepit, morally and financially bankrupt establishment. We have seen these sorts of new community structures begin to flourish in isolated pockets. It shows that we do not have to sit back and accept the consequences of our participation in the capitalist society that is coming apart at the seams. If we are brave enough, we can opt out and forge a future that is truly sustainable, in every sense of that word. It is an optimistic note on which to end, although there is much work to be done in selling this vision (even to my nearest and dearest). One final thought, pinched from Andy Parsons stand up show, we will know when we are getting somewhere when, instead of teachers and students marching the streets worried about their futures, we see bankers out there instead!!
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| I bumped into Philip Irwin, journalist with the Gem group of newspapers, and he asked me to take a look at a couple of recent articles on fracking published in the right wing national media. He asked for my reaction to them as part of a piece he was himself preparing on the topic.
Ever willing to help, I had a look and my response was as follows> Hi Phil, You are a crafty man! You asked me to take a look at Leo McKinstry’s piece on shale gas and fracking, knowing full well that it would be a red rag to a bull. You were right when you said you doubted I read papers like the Express, Mail and Telegraph. I glance at the odious rags occasionally, just to see what warped nonsense they are spinning. It has to be said that this particular article plumbs the depths of lazy, bigoted, ignorant twaddle, even for these papers. He starts off by hailing North sea oil as the economic saviour of our country. Had we placed a large proportion of it in a sovereign wealth fund, like the Norwegians, it could have achieved a lot and helped alleviate a lot of our current economic difficulties, but no! The fact is successive governments, especially McKinstry’s right wing chums, have frittered it away in tax reductions and boom-bust policies, fueling a twenty-year consumer boom and a property bubble, which sucked in imports, causing a structural balance of trade deficit. He talks of ‘epic acts of folly’. Witnessing the the human and environmental costs of oil related disasters, while at the same time utterly wasting the economic potential of the revenues generated has to be one of the greatest follies in history. It is now close to running out, and just what have we got to show for it, Mr McKinstry? He talks of how North Sea oil ‘enriched’ us. Just how was that so? Did it enrich us culturally? Socially? Politically? Economically? Had it been used to help reduce inequalities and produce the happier nations this leads to, like Norway, it could have done all these things. But what happened here is what always happens in the capitalist system. The filthy rich get richer and the poor suffer the consequences of all the negative impacts. He then talks about the ‘idiocy’ of not grabbing the same opportunity offered by shale gas, as if the exploitation of it was just the same as oil. This is where he reveals himself as the lazy hack others have labelled him as. It is an idiotic comparison that even the frackers themselves would not make. The technology, locations and risks are utterly different. He acknowledges that it is only recent technological advances that have made exploitation of shale gas ‘profitable’. This is McKinstry’s only measure of acceptability. It is now profitable, at last, so full steam ahead before some bastard puts a spanner in the works by asking us build in the costs of trashed aquifers, compensation for health implications, and imposes a carbon tax on every stage of the operation, not just the methane combustion. He consistently shows himself to be gullible to the PR spin the fracking companies, to be generous to the man. A cynic might accuse him of deliberately peddling and perpetuating their thinly veiled lies and deceits over things like frack fluid. I have exposed these fully elsewhere, but one sentence from McKinstry exposes the lie/deceit completely. I quote: ‘Since the liquid used to break up the rock is 99.86 per cent water and sand, it causes no long-term environmental damage.’ Is he really this stupid? I invite him to drink a glass of water with 0.14% made up of the chemicals Cuadrilla own up to using (let alone the ones they don’t). And in case he does not realise it, they use a bit more than a glass full in a frack job. Do some maths Leo! 5 million gallons per frack X 10 wells per site X 6 fracks per lifetime X at least 40 site in Lancashire = 12 billion gallons of frack fluid used in Lancashire. 0.14% of this, Leo, is 16.8 million gallons of chemicals set lose into the environment. Cuadrilla admit to using nasties like hydrochloric acid, hydrocarbon oils (diesel), acrylamide compounds and poisons (biocides they call them). And this is before we even consider the heavy metals and radioactive isotopes commonly released from the shales alongside the shale oil and gas. He talks about economic potential of meaningless numbers like 200 trillion cubic feet of gas. He fails to mention that it rare to achieve recovery rates of more than 20% of this potential. He talks of the potential for 15 more years gas supply. Then what? He talks of cheaper gas – but surely knows that commodities like this are priced by a global market and must also have noticed how wholesale price drops rarely make it through to the consumer, but mostly go to inflating the gas company profits. Yet more ignorance is displayed by him totally missing the point of the significance of any earthquakes in a fracking zone. It really does not matter whether fracking itself triggers them or not. As he rightly (just for once) points out, these earthquakes are tiny. But they are significant enough to crack cement. Has the penny dropped yet, Mr McKinstry? What are the boreholes lined with to prevent chemicals and gas seeping into strata above the shale – into the groundwater? You’ve got it now! Yes, it is cement! Now you understand why Cuadrilla stopped operations the instant a quake struck their site. The irony is, of course, despite Leo’s blatant lie to the contrary, it has now been confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt that it was Cuadrilla’s fracking operation that triggered the quakes. Finally, McKinstry talks of being blinded by ideology. It is not ideology that would make a Government impose a moratorium to properly evaluate these suspect practices. It is commonsense that drives such a precautionary approach. It is, however, capitalist ideology that blinds a Government to all but the potential profits to be made. I have wasted enough time responding to McKinstry’s appallingly bad excuse for journalism. I expect he is a pal of David Rose, who wrote a similarly atrocious piece in the Mail recently. I lost count of the factual inaccuracies in that piece of nonsense. The good news is that tide of opinion is now flowing steadily in our favour. I am increasingly confident that getting a moratorium in place is not only achievable, but now simply a matter of time. Best wishes, Andy Chyba |
Should fracking be banned in the UK?A report has concluded that the controversial gas extraction method of fracking was ‘probably’ to blame for two earthquake tremors near Blackpool. As protesters call for its banning, do you agree with them?
Poll closes in 2 days Votes are counted every 60 seconds VOTE HERE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2011/nov/03/should-fracking-be-banned WE NEED AS EMPHATIC A ‘YES’ VOTE AS WE CAN MUSTER!! |
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| GREAT NEWS STORY No.1
BBC coverage: http://www.BBC.co.UK/news/UK-England-lancashire-15550458 South Wales media coverage: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/11/02/fracking-technique-proposed-for-south-wales-was-probable-cause-of-blackpool-earthquake-report-finds-91466-29706165/ (Should be in South Wales Echo and/or Western Mail tomorrow – 03/11/11) QUOTE: (I received a call from the SWE journalist this morning asking for my reaction to the BBC story. I have been slightly misquoted, but not to a point of making an issue out of it) Andy Chyba from the Bridgend Greens campaign group said the report demonstrated why fracking should never be seen in Wales. He said: “Geologically South Wales is even more complex than the area near Blackpool where the tremors occurred and the chances of earthquakes due to fracking would be higher, certainly in terms of frequency and possibly severity. “With fracking you wont ever know what effect you are going to have on the environment until you do it. “There has to be a moratorium now. There are just too many unanswered questions.” Louise Evans, from campaign group Vale Says No which has fought drilling applications in the Vale of Glamorgan, said: “It is more proof that this is something to be strongly discouraged in Wales. “We are continuing to call and lobby for a moratorium on the process and arguing that everyone needs to take a step back and carry out the necessary studies about the impact of fracking. “Today’s report says earthquakes like this are unlikely to happen again but that does not fill me with any confidence at all. If the geological conditions meant the area was vulnerable to earthquakes then why were they drilling there in the first place? If you have to drill first to find out then that is not going to give people confidence.” Cuadrilla’s press release today regarding the Earthquake report: “This combination of geological factors was extremely rare and would be unlikely to occur together again at future well site“.Is this supposed to re-assure anybody? This is tantamount to saying ‘this fingerprint is extremely rare and unlikely to occur on someone else’s hand’. It does not mean there is only one ‘thief’ about and will not be any more robberies!GREAT NEWS STORY No.2 Again hot off the press: The Vale of Glamorgan Council Cabinet have just voted in favour of formerly requesting a moratorium on shale gas drilling from the Welsh Assembly!
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| Just returned from an excellent talk and Q&A with Molly Scott Cato in Swansea.
She offers a lot of hope and has visions of the future that I share. The challenge is winning the battle of ideas and backing of the people before we have to endure radical re-structuring the hard way (the total collapse of the banking sysytem and capitalist market economies) Find out more here: http://www.gaianeconomics.org/molly.htm You can also get directly involved through the Positive Money campaign: Try your best to get to the CARDIFF MEET UP tomorrow night – 2nd November: |
The Coalition Government landed a severe blow to the solar industry today by announcing that feed-in tariffs to support the installation of solar PV will be halved.For domestic-size schemes, payments are being reduced from up to 43.3p per unit to 21p for sites of 4kW or below, with installations completed after the consultation ends on 12 December 2011 set to receive the new lower rate from 1st April 2012. Brighton MP Caroline Lucas has slammed the Government’s decision to punish solar success’, warning that by failing to take a more gradual approach to reducing the rates to allow the industry to adapt accordingly, the Government risks killing UK solar off altogether. Caroline Lucas MP said: “The reckless decision to slash feed in tariffs for solar by half poses a serious risk to the UK’s burgeoning solar PV industry – and proves yet again that not even a successful, jobs-rich sector like solar is safe from the anti green forces in the Treasury (1). “Initial reports of an even more drastic cut – from 43.3p to 9p, said to be the preferred option of some in Government – was nothing short of pre-emptive spin to try to take the heat off Ministers for absolutely failing to defend this flourishing industry. “The timing of the decision is particularly damaging – this wasn’t supposed to happen until April, yet the Government has chosen to bring it forward and cause massive chaos, just as it did with the solar installations greater than 50kw back in March. “It’s crucial that the levels of Government support are known to industry far in advance to enable people and organisations to plan ahead. “This shock treatment will seriously damage the business case for solar energy programmes, such as Brighton & Hove City Council’s ambitious plan for solar panels on public buildings and council houses. “While everyone accepts that the tariff needed to be revised in line with falling installation costs, consumer bills and economic realities, the speed and scale of this cut is simply unacceptable and will cause huge disruption to a sector just finding its feet – not to mention the 25,000 jobs which it has created. “Local councils like Brighton and Hove, who were looking to this programme to partly offset Government cuts to their budget, whilst reducing their carbon footprint, tackling fuel poverty and creating local jobs, have severely been let down by this tariff reduction.” Caroline Lucas concluded: “Furthermore, by claiming that the solar cuts will benefit other energy producers, the Government is trying to drive a wedge between different players in the renewables sector, when it should really be focusing its attention on keeping its promises to clean industries and defending green jobs.” ENDS Notes 1) The feed-in tariff scheme was introduced in April 2010 and has seen over 80,000 solar installations, the creation of more than 22,000 jobs and almost 4,000 new businesses. |
| Share this far and wide!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=acBDTpZ2aLE |
| On top of Molly Scott Cato’s talk in Swansea on Tuesday evening, we are invited you to the first Positive Money Meetup in SOUTH WALES – in Cardiff – on Wednesday, 2nd November 2011.
The location is in Cardiff but it is hoped that the many Positive Money registered supporters in other South Wales locations particularly Newport and Swansea will make an effort to attend. Attendance by the latter should enhance Campaign efforts to spread the word and educate a wider area of the South Wales population of the need to Reform our Money Creation System as advocated by Positive Money. The urgency for this to be widely recognised is dramatically emphasised by the current complete meltdown of the Financial/Banking System that has caused devastation of our Real Economy, increasing unemployment and rising inflation. DATE & TIME Wednesday 2nd November 6.30 PM for 7.00 PM start VENUE PARK INN (CARDIFF NORTH) Circle Way East Llanedeyrn Cardiff South Glamorgan CF23 9XF Let me know if you want me to arrange a lift share again. http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/ |
| How Green Economics could transform Wales.
Dr Scott Cato will be speaking at a public meeting in The Environment Centre, Pier Street, Swansea, SA1 1RY at 7:30 PM on Tuesday 1 November. Entry is free and everyone is welcome. Molly Scott Cato is a green economist and expert in the social economy. She specialises in the issues of trade, work, money and cooperatives. She is a Reader in Green Economics at the Cardiff School of Management and Director of Wales Institute for Research into Co-operatives. She studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics in Oxford, and after working in the publishing industry, earned her PhD from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth with a thesis on employment policy in the South Wales Valleys. Her publications include Seven Myths About Work (1996), Green Economics: Beyond Supply and Demand to Meeting Peoples Needs (1999 co-edited) and Market, Schmarket: Building the Post-Capitalist Economy (2006). Her report on the structure of government specialist science advice committees, I Dont Know Much About Science, apparently influenced the structure of the government committee examining the effects of low-level radiation. Another report in 2002 for the Association of Green Councillors was titled Using Best Value to Encourage Green Procurement in Local Authorities. Keith M Ross of Swansea Green Party said, Thanks to green thinkers like Molly Scott Cato, the Green Party is able to offer a real alternative to the failed economic policies of the traditional parties. Were very pleased to have Molly speaking in Swansea against the background of the governments proposed Localism bill a subject she is well versed in. More details of Molly Scott Catos work can be found at:http://www.gaianeconomics.org/molly.htm LET ME KNOW IF ANYONE WANTS TO LIFT SHARE FROM BRIDGEND AREA. |
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Protesters are calling for blanket ban on fracking in the UK. Photograph: PA
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