Sunday, January 04, 2009

No-one saw it coming. Well maybe not quite no-one...

Back in 2001/2 a couple of friends were thinking about buying houses and asked for my opinion on the future prospects of the UK housing market

My take was that, even back then, the cost of housing was moving ahead of historical affordability levels and there was no way that house prices could
keep rising faster than people's wage rises.

I guestimated that house prices would peak in the Summer of 2003, then fall back 10-20%, quite sharply

Which, of course, didn't happen




or rather it did happen, but in nothing like my estimated timescale


My mistake was that back then, before my full-on Conspiraloonery days, I assumed that the people responsible for our government and banks were not amoral
sociopaths; fully committed to the path of deliberately wrecking millions of lives

Only an amoral psychopath would have encouraged the boom to continue beyond the 2002/03 levels, to a point where the inevitable economic correction would
have to be so large it would become a national, and international, calamity

Make no mistake, a ghastly economic crash was a 100%, guaranteed, dead cert, inevitable consequence of the way our economy was being run, and anyone who says no-one saw it coming is either a liar or a fucking idiot

Now, as it happens, I've concluded that only a minority of the people who claim that no-one saw it coming are liars.

The majority really are fucking idiots;
easily manipulated, greedy, dissonant, fearful idiots

You can take pretty much anything you've even seen written or said in the mainstream media about economic and financial affairs over the last ten years and
forget it. It was all Wrong and yet the people who earned a living peddling Wrong are still at their jobs peddling a new brand of Wrong. For all the good they did anyone, they may as well have stayed at home, playing with themselves and eating cheesy wotsits, and not bothered going into work for the last ten years


Better than a career in journalism or banking, especially when combined with self-abuse


The same also applies to millions of people employed in the service sector over the last decade. A ridiculous number of people have been whacking off, playing silly games and kidding themselves that they were engaged in meaningful work.They enjoyed an undeservedly high standard
of material living off of worthless IOUs paid to foreigners who've been working in sweat shops and fields on their behalf.

So preoccupied did the British become with
getting rich (sic.) off the back of shuffling paper that we took to importing several million immigrants to wait on us and wipe our kids' arses

This was all bonkers and wrong on so many levels


And there came a point where you would have to be an idiot yourself to believe that no-one in a position of power saw the inevitable collapse coming


It is also worth remembering that the infrastructure for a full-blown police state was being rushed-in at the same time the debt bubble was being inflated to calamitous levels

I now firmly believe that the people responsible for our governments and banks truly are amoral psychopaths, engaged in deliberate economic and social warfare against the rest of us, and the quality of my spooky predictive powers is now several orders of magnitude greater than it was seven or eight years ago

Put simply, if everything really was the result of a cock up rather than a conspiracy why is it that the apparent cock ups virtually always end up favouring the same class of people?

-

And whilst on the subject of dissonant bullshit...

There are some interesting parallels between the mainstream coverage of the recent economic boom and the Man Made Global Warming narrative


Each involved people looking at graphs of recent upward trending data, extrapolating those trends way, way up and fabricating explanations as to why this
time it is different and why the upward trend was going to continue for the foreseeable future.

Both groups of rampers, economic and MMGW, have had the bulk of the mainstream media, industry and government on their side


In opposition to the people who believe that Man Made Global Warming, like house prices, could only go up there was a minority of people arguing that global mean
temperature, like house prices, is cyclic, that there are signs a turning point has been reached and a downturn could well be on the cards

If and when it is established that a turning point has been reached, we will doubtlessly be told that (virtually) no-one saw it coming and that the Man Made Global Warming advocates were acting on the consensus of opinion of the majority of the experts

Bullshit

As with predictions about which way the economy was heading, consensus counts for absolutely fuck all

Either something is right or it isn't


And popular climate 'science', as it is currently practiced, has a lot more to do with politics and story telling than hard, testable science


There's a world of difference between hard sciences like chemistry and physics, which involve testable, repeatable processes and the more complex, chaotic
natural sciences, such a climatology and evolutionary theory; which involve making up stories to explain that which has already happened and which is unlikely to happen again in quite the same way

It is easy enough to whip up an experiment to prove or disprove a theory about gravity. A lot harder to come up with something repeatable and testable which explains where wombats came from or if it is going to snow in New Orleans next week

Which is why the often-repeated claims that Man Man Global Warming is all about hard-science are bollocks

Staring at graphs of natural systems and kidding yourself that you've come up with a computer model which tells you what's going to happen next, be it with the weather or the financial markets, is a mug's game and will inevitably end up with only one result.


My favourite comment from the 1,000 or so posted underneath this recent article. Reference to to 'serious' scientists, i.e. scientists who agree with the views of the commentator, is as good an indicator that the writer is an utter twunt as any I know.

And, remember, whenever commenting about MMGW underneath news articles, any stories about unusually cold temperatures or heavy snowfall are examples of 'weather'. Any stories about unusually high temperatures or Hurricane Katrina are examples of 'climate'. 'Climate' stories are inherently more significant than 'Weather' stories'


-


A few days ago Lord Patel, because he knows I enjoy this stuff so much, sent me a copy of the latest press release from the Met Office. It's a corker...


30/12/2008 11:38

Met Office (National) (Met Office)

Pacific Continues to Influence Global Climate


2009 is expected to be one of the top-five warmest years on record, despite continued cooling of huge areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known
as La Nina.

According to climate scientists at the Met Office and the University of East Anglia the global temperature is forecast to be more than 0.4 C above the long-
term average. This would make 2009 warmer than the year just gone and the warmest since 2005.

During La Nina, cold waters rise to the surface to cool the ocean and land surface temperatures. The 2009 forecast includes an updated decadal forecast using a Met Office climate model. This indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.

Professor Chris Folland from the Met Office Hadley Centre said: "Phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina have a significant influence on global surface
temperature. Warmer conditions in 2009 are expected because the strong cooling influence of the recent powerful La Nina has given way to a weaker La Nina. Further warming to record levels is likely once a moderate El Nino develops."

These cyclical influences can mask underlying warming trends as Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia,
explains: "The fact that 2009, like 2008, will not break records does not mean that global warming has gone away. What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007, with an average of 14.44 C, was 0.21 C warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000." ENDS


Wow! Warmest year for four years! Maybe...


Outstanding!


The Met Office has now taken to reporting predictions, predictions from people with an unparalleled record for making shit predictions, as if they were fact.

They're getting pretty desperate now


and really beyond parody


And, sure enough, this prediction was faithfully reported as 'news' by the press agencies straight away


The implication of the Press Release it that the deep ocean is acting as a huge heat sink, hiding all that 200 years' worth of alleged surplus warming out of
the way for the time being. I would love to see some data that proves it's actually warmer down there - because everything I've seen to date points to nothing of the sort

As with the now discredited ramping of the housing and debt markets, this MMGW thing is now getting beyond the point where the people ramping it can claim
honest error. Their subjectivity has become quite blatant.
We're heading into outright dishonesty now.

Just like our fucked up financial services industry, the MMGW lobby is trying to tide itself over with some short-term fudging; in the hope that things will somehow turn back their way before the fudging is more widely comprehended


And, as with the now discredited ramping of the housing and debt markets, I'm not claiming for a second that the majority of people who have Faith in MMGW
are being deliberately dishonest - the boundless human capacity for self-delusion, dissonance, religious belief and self interest can account for much of what is going on

But not all of it

There is no good reason to believe that the top people behind the MMGW agenda, or our economy, do not understand the inevitable consequences of what they are doing


and there's every reason to believe that they do understand what they are doing


.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Off topic I know,,,grimmest video yet from Gaza.Helps put our problems in perspective.



http://muslimtv.magnify.net/video/ISRAEL-CARNAGE-CIVILIANS-CHILDR

Stef said...

Do you know if anyone has put up any background to this video? Where this happened or when or who produced it?

Anonymous said...

Apparently immigrants work hard and take the jobs lazy Brits won't do. Yes, people still talk to me like that even now.

Anonymous said...

I cannot find find any info on the video.I assume someone nearby filmed it on his cell phone.There are shills on the notice boards saying it´s old footage.

this for example.

Ari_Lux said:
Exactly like Hizbollah propaganda in the Lebanon war. Dont fall into this. This video shows the results of the explosion of a Hamas military Jeep (shown at end of clip) and most killed people are in uniforms. And, the peopls who post this are dishonest because this clip is several years old and has nothing to do with the israeli attack this week.

Anonymous said...

Having said that could it be this incident?
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1103
Blast at Hamas Rally Kills 10, Injures 85

Truck With Militants, Homemade Rockets Blows Up at Hamas Rally; 10 People Dead, 85 Others Hurt

By SARAH EL

The Associated Press

Sep. 23, 2005 - A truck filled with masked militants and homemade weapons exploded at a Hamas rally Friday, killing at least 10 Palestinians and wounding 85 including children bringing a grisly and terrifying end to one of the last gatherings by armed groups celebrating Israel's Gaza pullout.

The blast sent a huge cloud of white smoke over the mass festivities, a sea of green Hamas flags and thousands of people gathered at Jebaliya, a Palestinian refugee camp that was the scene of harsh fighting between militants and Israeli soldiers during the past five years of violence.

After initial confusion, people began running away from the rally and gunmen fired in the air. People wailed in grief as others tried to tend to the mangled and dismembered bodies of the dead and wounded.

Mishandled explosives apparently caused the blast, which came a day before an agreement by militants not to publicly parade weapons is to take effect.

Witnesses said many children were among the casualties.

Hamas said six militants were killed, including Jihad Shaleal, head of the group's military wing in Jebaliya. Hamas blamed Israel, but the Israeli military denied any connection. Palestinian security officials said the blast was an accident.

"There was smoke all over, and then we saw people in pieces, but we couldn't make out what really happened," said 18-year-old Hazem Abu Rashad.

Anonymous said...

stef,
I can confirm that the footage is NOT recent.It did NOT take place during the recent conflict.
There is a rather nasty site called Ogrish that had this footage posted last Sept.

always a good idea to check and cross reference un-sourced material.

ziz said...

You are right to question authorship etc of the video - this is discussed on xymphora.

Ogrish morphed into Live Leak who also have the identical video as do some other sites.

2 curious features of what is quite self evidently an actual event and is in no way a "fake" event..

The video has never (previously) been ascribed (as far as we can find out) to the Hamas rally explosion - although it sounds plausible.

Reports at the time of the Hamas rally explosion are not illustrated which might make cross reference possible.

Another possible explanation is that it relates to The Jerusalem Post report on Jan 1st that IAF jets on Thursday evening bombed the home of Nabil Amrin, a senior terrorist and the commander of a Hamas battalion.

Reports from Gaza / ME media of that event are slight and confusing.

Even more conspiroloonacy it could be a subtly Zionist bit of disinformation / Ant Sallyism, to highlight the unreliable nature of anti Zionist propaganda.

ziz said...

BTW
Anon 13.22

Ari-Lux commentator

This is taken from a comment made by Ari-Lux biog on the Muslim tv site

Commented on ISRAEL CARNAGE CIVILIANS CHILDREN GAZA (WARNING: GRAPHIC)
Exactly like Hizbollah propaganda in the Lebanon war. Dont fall into this....etc

Ari Lux joined the fray on 3rd Jan 2009.

No friends, no links, no biog

http://muslimtv.magnify.net/
user/4QNXL25SCPLV8PMH

Hmmmmmmm

Anonymous said...

well whenever this incident took place it MUST have been before Sept 2008 because that´s when the video was posted on Ogrish by a chappy who goes my the name "the Mortician"

"Even more conspiroloonacy it could be a subtly Zionist bit of disinformation / Ant Sallyism, to highlight the unreliable nature of anti Zionist propaganda."

could be.The video has been circulating the seedier parts of the net for months now.

Stef said...

Apparently immigrants work hard and take the jobs lazy Brits won't do. Yes, people still talk to me like that even now.

What immigrants do is provide a readily exploited workforce that keeps direct labour costs down

Apparently that wasn't such a big deal whilst people could compensate for the reduced spending power of their earnings by borrowing

The borrowing, however, is now thin on the ground

Incidentally, the bloke who picked up some boxes I was sending overseas the other day was telling me that him and his mates have never been so busy

Ditto for the nice lady at the bank who handles foreign exchange transfers out of £

Stef said...

re. that video

One of my cardinal rules is that I don't trust any fucker without some backup, even if he's saying something I want to hear or agree with

I don't want to sound heartless but there are some very sneaky bastards out there capable of thinking more than one move ahead

Stef said...

Many yonks ago I had the dubious privilege of sitting in on the first public screening of the infamous Santilli Alien Autopsy footage.

I came down with an uncontrollable giggling fit and had to leave the auditorium only a few minutes in

Earlier at the same event I also sat in on a presentation by David Percy claiming that all the Apollo film footage was faked

I found it interesting that some of the same characters who uncritically swallowed the Santilli video quite happily lapped up Percy's thesis as well

Anonymous said...

I bought that "Dark Moon" book and it isn't even funny. What a piece of shite this book is. Would the book at least have some enternainmental value, it wouldn't have been a total waste of paper (that of the book and that paper printed with €s on it).

(Damn, I'm stupid, I almost "bought" that video...)

Stef said...

I thought it was hysterical

So you won't be wanting to buy my autographed copy then?

There is much that isn't quite right about Apollo but I certainly wouldn't rely on Percy as a guide

Anonymous said...

I would trade your copy with a awesome .999 fine lead bullion. And it comes in a convenient pipe shape:

http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2008/07/15/awesome-999-fine-lead-bullion-in-convenient-pipe-shape/

Anonymous said...

Good thing my friend was there to help me out and does "real" work (civil engineering).

Anonymous said...

Stef, what do you make of this statement? (something I hear quite a lot in certain social circles):

Although it is true, there was a whole program on BBC dedicated to it. I said that we don't do the jobs on average as well as they do. That's not opinion, that's fact. There are plenty of stats flying around about workforce productivity in the labour market comparative to earlier years. A trip to Google might suffice.

The jobs will likely be filled at one point or another, although I wouldn't expect it to be the kind of speed at which they were taken a year ago. The sad truth is that a British citizen can quite effortlessly gain 15k a year through benefits, so why earn 11k at subway and have to work for it? Unemployment has far too many benefits, no pun intended.

As for those who are employed, take builders for example... It's pretty common knowledge that if you want an excellent individual job done you don't employ British labour. It's par to say the least, where as the foreigners really earn their money and do a great job (talking averages here), and do it a lot cheaper.

The absence of the immigrants means that we're not going to be filling jobs as fast, we're going to lose out on productivity, and it's going to waste money for corporations. Be that on recruitment, productivity, employment (maternity rights, anyone?), and general service. And that affects our economy.

A lot of people slate the Polish for reasons they don't understand, but they were actually a great benefit to our nation - and they expect very little.

Stef said...

There's a lot of talk in the press about one group of benefit scroungers, the 'feckless' unemployed, and fuck all talk about another group of benefit scroungers, exploitative employers, who can get away with paying shit wages and benefits because the shortfall in what they give their staff is picked up by the welfare state

The DSS, that would be the rest of us, effectively subsidises lousy companies

So maybe, just maybe, a large part of the problem is not that the benefits are too high but the wages are too low

Stef said...

It's also worth remembering that the expression 'productivity improvement' is largely a euphemism for paying people less money to produce more output

Maybe you could argue that was a good thing if that money made was reinvested in productive infrastructure or paid out in dividends to the the people who took the risks and created the company.

What usually happens in practice is that the financial benefits of 'productivity improvements' are trousered by senior management who have no problem with paying people more to do less if they are the people being paid more

By any measure, income inequalities in the UK have increased over the last 10-15 years off the back of this kind of mentality

And, as well as being inequitable, it's unsustainable because, sooner or later, once you've ripped off ordinary people past a certain level they can no longer afford to buy the goodies that make your system go round

People forget now but about 10-15 years ago the press was full of talk of a 'leisure bonus' as new technologies promised to reduce the amount of time people would need to spend at work.

Fifteen years on and now we're being told that we won't be able to afford ever to retire

What happened?

Imagine for a moment you're a member of the Evil Overlord class. Can you imagine anything worse than the prospect of the plebs having more free time on their hands and being financially independent?

Fuck that

Think about the kind of useless jobs so many of us are engaged in. Jobs that offer no real benefit to society as a whole and absolutely no sense of satisfaction or self-worth to the people doing them.

The Evil Overlord class would have us believe that any job, however intrinsically worthless and soul destroying, is worth having just for its own sake

Bollocks to that

It's also worth pondering upon the fact the vast majority of jobs people would identify as being intrinsically worthwhile and offering a sense of self-worth to the people doing them usually sit at the bottom of society's pay scales. And speaking as someone who's held down a couple of highish paying jobs in his time I can absolutely guarantee that higher pay is absolutely in no way intrinsically linked to high ability, high intelligence, high integrity or high commitment

Migrants play along with this shit because they're economically desperate and easily exploited. Neither of these qualities strike me as something we should be encouraging in our society. However profitable they may be for The Few

Anonymous said...

The Apollo film footage IS faked and I dont need a photographic expert to tell me that.
A few seconds of simple observation and common sense is all you need.
Saw an American documentary on it the other day via on demand. The NASA bloke trying to debunk all the glaring problems was hilarious. His only defence was "Thats [insert adjective here] (usually absurd or ridiculous), because we went to the moon"

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the people I speak to and that make these statements are the minority that do well out of such a system. I couldn't have said all that better myself Stef.

Stef said...

A few years ago I was having a chat with a couple of London based accountants, earning something in the £40-50k bracket

Both of them we're so saying how great it was that migrants were coming in and reducing the costs of building work, domestic slaves, shit like that

Having spent a fair bit of time in Eastern Europe I mentioned that a lot of those migrants were ferociously well educated and, once settled in, would be looking for more professional work and start cutting into the accountancy employment market

Both of the people I was talking with started laughing nervously and said 'no, that would never happen' and spent the next five minutes convincing themselves that was the case

Anonymous said...

Tell me about it, they're morons really...

Perhaps when they can no longer spend £8,000 on a watch due to a redundancy that they'll realise this, but of course it'll be too late for them then.

£8,000. I've lived on less than that a *year* in London.

Stef said...

I've come in at way lower than that over the last five years

but, there again, I am an exceptionally tight bastard

Anonymous said...

Were you renting a shack, per chance?

When I said £8k, that was including concessions like council tax benefit, housing allowance etc etc. living alone.

Stef said...

lol

nope, but my property cost was on the low side and split between two people

plus anyone who put their hands anywhere near the central heating control had the trained rats set on them

Stef said...

that and bartering sexual favours for food

or did I dream that?

yes, on reflection, I think I did dream that

Anonymous said...

In terms of actual cash for day-to-day costs (including bills) it was £2,000. Beat that then :p

Stef said...

/ folds