[contentcards url=”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/11/11/liam-fox-not-little-englander-free-marketeer/”]

Brexiteer @johnredwood warns investors to get their money out of the UK, then tells the UK to go for hard Brexit. #disasatercapitalism https://t.co/Akjfu4ytI2 cc @FlipChartRick

— (((FrancesCoppola))) (@Frances_Coppola) November 12, 2017

Booming back at ya,

Wanna reach out and grab ya,

How I wonder where she’s AtRa,

Comes back at you twice as hard

According to the Wall Street Journal Donald Trump plans to combat the US opioid crisis. 

It was only the other day that Janet Yellen, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, mentioned that the opioid crisis was undermining the US labor market. 

How funny that a hundred years after the British imposed the opium war on China that the latest round of opioids are undermining the United States while China is still growing.

Here we are crawling the cracks between walls of church state school & factory, all the paranoid monoliths. Cut off from the tribe by feral nostalgia we tunnel after lost words, imaginary bombs.

[contentcards url=”https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/22/mall-of-america-minnesota-retail-anniversary”]

If Socrates was against writing – what would he have made of Amazon?

[contentcards url=”https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/on-writing-memory-and-forgetting-socrates-and-hemingway-take-on-zeigarnik/”]

Jamaica is only allowed to legally grow Marijuana now that it is already well established in US law. US firms have been granted licence to grow and experiment in Jamaica.

[contentcards url=”http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20170721/cannabis-licencing-authority-approves-46-ganja-applications-rejects-8″]

[contentcards url=”http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-pot-veterans-201707-story.html”]

For some reason Food and Brexit doesn’t get discussed in the news but as many of us will wind up eating food from fertilisers I think it’s worth a mention.

What is potash? Learn more in our blog, Prospects → https://t.co/8tDPWyfycT pic.twitter.com/YvuWVlSrFZ

— BHP (@bhp) July 17, 2017

When Vulture Capitalists start talking about ousting fatcat CEOs because they are overspending on entering fertiliser markets that looks like a sign that food prices are going up in the not too distant future.

What else can be gleaned from this?

I am much more interested in this than I normally would be thanks to the work of Public Interest Researcher Helena Paul who has commented on the link between Agri-Business and War.

Real Media interviewed Helena for Real Media earlier this summer:

Roughly forty minutes into this great podcast, Tim Harford talks about the significance of the Haber Process.

[contentcards url=”http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/financial-times/ft-alphachat/e/50849097″]

The Haber Process revolutionised the world of explosives in World War One before being used in many of the world’s fertilisers — fueling the population explosion.

[contentcards url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process”]

[contentcards url=”http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rushkoff-universal-basic-income-silicon-valley-20170721-story.html”]

The dark side of basic income. Parasites need hosts.

Is this a truce between President and Press?

Just as Ian Fraser says that his book Shredded about the Royal Bank of Scotland is not just about RBS but really a prism through which to interpret lapses in UK financial regulation, nor is Donald Trump’s presidency really just about Trump the man or even the office he finds himself in but how a taboo-ridden self-censoring litigous society responds to rising inequality,  increasingly obvious and endemic collusive corruption and the most obnoxious merger of government and corporate interests in living memory. Most establishment figures are so compromised that they cannot say or do anything about this. We most certainly do live in the age of the compromise. 

As George Clinton of Funkadelic might have said, Free yourself from the shackles of integrity and the rest will surely follow. Feel free from the need to be free.

Michael Gove,  Minister for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, twice referred to a five year parliament as he started to backtrack on the Government’s austerity programme during this morning’s Andrew Marr politics show.

At no point did Andrew Marr pull the Gove up on his error. 

This could have just been a double oversight on both of their parts – not that unlikely given the sheer incompetence emanating from the Tory party and the BBC right now. 

But it could all just be more intrigue and subterfuge from a politician who, by U.K. standards is a well accepted as being as dishonest, self-serving and Machiavellian as they come. 

Few politicians enjoy the degree of political protection that has been afforded to Michael Gove. The risk free environment in which he operates has convinced him – quite fairly – that he can actually do no wrong. 

The man is a close friend of Rupert Murdoch’s and just as his fellow Brexiteer Boris Johnson’s sister Rachel writes for the Mail on Sunday, Gove’s own wife Sarah Vine is a columnist for The Daily Mail. 

Gove himself returned to the Murdoch Times during his recent sabbatical when he managed to deliver the ‘Exclusive’ interview of Donald Trump from Trump’s palace in New York with his own boss and fixer Rupert Murdoch in attendance. 

With Gove’s ex-Cabinet colleague former Chancellor George Osborne already editing London’s only high circulation freesheet, you’d be forgiven for contemplating whether the sudden acceleration of the pace of the revolving door be a signal of what anti-corruption expert David Whyte calls a “high degree of tolerance of collusive corruption in this country.” 

Any  honest journalist, unlike Marr, would have flagged as, in and of itself, the massive risk to UK Public Health that Gove really represents. 

Some other interesting things about his interview. 

Gove used the term 5 year parliament twice but was never picked up on this. 

Gove’s appearance is supposed to reflect Tory backtracking on Austerity. 

Damian Green implied there will be a U-Turn on University fees.

But Gove defended fees by saying it isn’t fair that those who don’t g to uni fund those who do. He didn’t go so far as to say that those who have been funding people to go universities deserve a rebate so it is a wonder whether he means anything he says.  

 The 1% public sector pay cap may go. There was the £1bn to Northern Ireland. Abortions. Same Sex marriage. 

Gove was asked how he fel, as an individual, about austerity, to which he replied that he is not an individual – that he is a member of the government. He also told Marr that that Marr himself said that he has had to learn to keep his own views to himself. So here we had two men – both public figures – admitting to have no personal investment in their own words. 

This reminded me of the scene at the beginning of Michael Lewis Liars Poker in which he said that banking was really all about people who didn’t know what they were buying buying from people who didn’t know what they were selling. 

[contentcards url=”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/09/emmanuel-macron-wants-buy-european-act-stop-uk-firms-winning/”]

How is this going to play out?

Seeing as protectionism is in fashion maybe the EU will now be more upfront about its priorities.

I came across this book whilst researching an interview with David Whyte who has a new book called The Violence of Austerity which he edited with Vickie Cooper.

It’s straight-talking and more relevant than ever given the ongoing collusion between the state and corporations.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party needs to have an urgent debate about how to resolve billions of pounds of New Labour’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) debts, according to a leading PFI research expert.

PFI was conjured up by John Major’s Government but deployed by New Labour on a grand scale.

Overcharging on PFI projects has meant the British taxpayer has  given away billions of pounds to the Private Sector that the government itself could have borrowed for far cheaper by issuing its own bonds.

“We cannot continue to expose the flaws in PFI, have a review and do nothing. More radical action is essential for which there is wide public support. The public cost of PFI buyouts, bailouts and terminations plus the extra cost of private finance and higher PFI transaction costs is £28bn – enough to build 1,520 new secondary schools for two million pupils.” says Dexter Whitfield of the European Services Strategy Unit.

PFI has allowed successive governments to pay for schools, hospitals, motorways and various military and government buildings without the borrowing showing up in the the government’s annual spending.

The borrowing is hidden off balance sheet so the government is able to look as though it is building projects for much cheaper than the real cost of the project — in other words PFI is based on accounting tricks.

However no major politician, including John McDonnell or Jeremy Corbyn, talks seriously about investigating, prosecuting  or jailing PFI  fraudsters — let alone  recovering the proceeds of crime.

I asked Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell’s office to contribute to this piece but I have been told to wait till later in the campaign for their PFI policy.

PFI Schools

Last week Jonathan Owen wrote the following piece on the exorbitant cost of PFI schools for the Times Educational Supplement (possibly paywalled):

[contentcards url=”https://www.tes.com/news/tes-magazine/tes-magazine/ps8k-a-blind-ps2k-a-tap-true-cost-pfi?amp”]

Here is the shorter form article (not paywalled):

[contentcards url=”https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-ps8k-a-blind-ps2k-a-tap-true-cost-pfi”]

Neither piece names the firms who have been getting rich by overcharging the taxpayer.

However Jonathan Owen  hasn’t always been shy about naming greedy PFI contractors (this from 2015) :

[contentcards url=”http://www.independent.co.uk/money/loans-credit/crippling-pfi-deals-leave-britain-222bn-in-debt-10170214.html”]

But no names were mentioned in 2016 either:

[contentcards url=”http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/pfi-deals-will-cost-taxpayers-209bn-over-next-35-years-a6966986.html”]

Interserve strikes Back

Interserve are one of the profiteering PFI firms — it was announced today that  they’ve just won contracts to build more schools in Leeds and South Wales.

[contentcards url=”https://www.digitallook.com/news/news-and-announcements/interserve–2634294.html”]

Interserve Healthcare Services

Interserve were also heading the consortium to take over Cancer services in Stoke:

[contentcards url=”http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/nhs-bosses-move-forward-with-controversial-cancer-services-sell-off/story-29994121-detail/story.html”]

But that appears to have just fallen through:

[contentcards url=”https://wellards.co.uk/whats-new/687m-cancer-and-end-of-life-tender-process-fails”]

Dexter Whitfield

Dexter Whitfield – PFI researcher and expert – made the following statement:

The TES article on the operational costs of PFI school contracts again highlight the financial scams employed by PFI contractors to maximise their profits at the expense of education and healthcare.

But it also exposes the fundamental structural and financial flaws in PFI projects which have become an albatross for schools and hospitals – high debt burden, offshore profiteering and weak accountability. Interserve’s new PFI schools contract in Wales illustrates how PFI rolls on unabated.

We cannot continue to expose the flaws in PFI, have a review and do nothing. More radical action is essential for which there is wide public support. The public cost of PFI buyouts, bailouts and terminations plus the extra cost of private finance and higher PFI transaction costs is £28bn – enough to build 1,520 new secondary schools for two million pupils(1).

I strongly recommend the People v Barts PFI campaign proposal to nationalise the Special Purpose companies that build and operate PFI projects be supported and developed by the Labour Party (2).

(1) http://www.european-services-strategy.org.uk/publications/essu-research-reports/pfippp-buyouts-bailouts-terminations-and-major/pfi-ppp-buyouts-bailouts-and-terminations.pdf

(2) https://peoplevsbartspfi.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/413/