Emperor Juncker

The EU parliament cannot formally propose any candidates for Commission membership.
It, now, has the right 'to be consulted' in the case of the appointment of the EU Commission President. Juncker was approved by the EU Parliament from a short list of 1.
The people can't sack an emperor and we can't sack Juncker.
 Job security is close to absolute. The EU Parliament can only remove the entire Commission, en masse. (This the so-called 'nuclear option').

Think on that when he issues his decrees concerning worker 'flexibility'.
I need a drink.

Japan's demographyThe incredible shrinking country.

Japan's demographyThe incredible shrinking country

Japan’s government has issued another alarming sign
Banyan
Mar 25th 2014



A QUIET but constant ticking can be heard from the demographic time bomb that sits beneath the world’s third-largest economy. This week it made a louder tick than usual: official statistics show that the population declined last year by a record 244,000 people—roughly the population of the London borough of Hackney.

Japan's population began falling in 2004 and is now ageing faster than any other on the planet. More than 22% of Japanese are already 65 or older. A report compiled with the government’s co-operation two years ago warned that by 2060 the number of Japanese will have fallen from 127m to about 87m, of whom almost 40% will be 65 or older.
Latest updates

   
The government is pointedly not denying newspaper reports that ran earlier this month, claiming that it is considering a solution it has so far shunned: mass immigration. The reports say the figure being mooted is 200,000 foreigners a year. An advisory body to Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, said opening the immigration drawbridge to that number would help stabilise Japan’s population—at around 100m (from its current 126.7m).

But even then there’s a big catch. To hit that target the government would also have to raise the fertility rate from its current 1.39, one of the lowest in the world, up to 2.07. Experts say that a change on that scale would require major surgery to the country’s entire social architecture. One of the first things Japan would need to do, says Kathy Matsui, chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, is make it easier for mothers to work. “Evidence shows that work-forces with a higher female participation rate also have higher birth rates,” she says.

Mr Abe has invoked Ms Matsui in his quest to boost the birth rate. Progress towards bringing women into the labour force is far from assured however. The latest Gender Gap Report, compiled annually by the Davos-based World Economic Forum, ranked Japan 105 out of 136 countries, down 25 places from 2006. (South Korea—another country with a fertility crisis—does even worse, coming in at 111th place.)

The looming crisis has so alarmed Japan’s government that in 2005 it created a ministerial post to raise fertility. Last year a 20-member panel under the ministry produced a desperate wish list to reduce what it calls “deterrents” to marriage and child rearing. It included a proposal to assign gynaecologists to patients on a lifelong basis and even to provide financial support for unmarried Japanese who undertake "spouse-hunting" projects.

Immigration is being approached as a last resort. Even so the prime minister faces tough choices. The United Nations estimates that without raising its fertility rate, Japan would need to attract about 650,000 immigrants a year. There is no precedent for that level of immigration in this country, which is still a largely homogenous society.

Roughly 2% of Japan’s population is foreign. And even this figure includes large numbers of permanent residents—mostly Chinese and Koreans—who have been here for generations. Tellingly, the recent story about the government’s discussion of immigration broke in the right-wing Sankei newspaper (in Japanese), which is especially unlikely to embrace the idea of a Chinese family living on every Japanese street.

Japan’s demographic dilemma grows more urgent by the year. Last week the government passed the nation’s largest-ever budget—a mammoth $937-billion package swelled by welfare and pension spending. Japan is already weighed down by one of the world’s largest public debt burdens. With its inverted population pyramid, where will it find the tax base to repay this debt, and to care for its growing population of elderly?

The 2012 government report said that without policy change, by 2110 the number of Japanese could fall to 42.9m, ie just a third of its current population. It is plausible to think that the country could learn to live with its shrinking population. But that might mean also embracing a much diminished economic and political role in the world. Mr Abe would seem to be the last leader to accept that.

by D.M. | TOKYO

Vote for the Tory leader

Thunderbirds are go! Well, Gove's gone.

Thunderbirds are go! Well, Gove's gone. Brains : F.A.B. Well, that didn't go entirely to plan.

Blah, Blah, Tony Blair

Blah, Blah, Tony Blair,
have you any bombs?
Yes Bush, yes Sir
Three planes full;
One for Syria
And one for Iraq
And one for Afghanistan
He gives not a fuck.

Corbyn gains another 100,000 members

The Labour Party has gained 100,000 new members since the EU referendum, taking it up to around half a million members.

Image from: London Economic

Breaking! Danny Alexander makes bid for Conservative Party leader.

Prince of Darkness steers Eagle to plumb new depths!

Angela Eagle

Angela Eagle will, at some point, in a minute, soon, one day, make a Labour leadership bid.

Alistair Campbell & Peter Mandelson

Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson put 'their' heads together and solved the Labour leadership impasse.

The Brexit referendum

The remainers cry for another referendum, rock, scissors, paper and two out of three and a return to the status quo. It's as if Brexit stole their foie gras goose complete with golden eggs. Let’s close our eyes, stick our fingers in our ears, and loudly sing la, la, la, la, la. We’ll walk the streets of Shangri-La rather than the green fields of La La Land.

Remainers, in a binary howl, accuse Brexit of racism. That’s essentially the argument: I voted Remain and am therefore not a racist. If that’s the single reason for voting remain, buy a badge. Equally: I only voted Brexit because I am a racist, get a tattoo.

There is no status quo. ‘Carry on regardless’ and hope is not a solution to the European Union’s problems. The people of Europe are shouting at the top of their lungs but the politicians have firmly pushed their fingers in their ears and cry, “I can’t hear you.” But people do see and hear. They are choosing not to vote for, or listen to, established politicians.

The right-wing are on the march all over Europe. The answer isn’t, “Oh, it’ll go away.” It won’t. The EU desperately needs fundamental reform. The EU commission would take a remain vote as an endorsement and would continue with their plans claiming a mandate. The EU is a market. As in any bargain, once the customer buys the product haggling ends.

So we rerun the referendum and remain win. This could work if the EU doesn’t think their threats changed public opinion – and if the institution is capable of intelligent introspection. But if we continue as if the referendum was just an aberration, we’re in for a crude awakening. The march of Jackboots will cross Europe, as it is here; hoping the right won’t seize power in Europe isn’t an answer. It takes just one charismatic leader; the mainstream media can publish their complaints but a determined and disrespected people will ignore that cry, as they did with the referendum. What happens when the far right seize control of the European Parliament? To wish it won’t happen is to travel hopefully and without an idea other than ignore the problem. We’ve done that. The cry, “I don’t want to change,” resolves nothing. Europe will change. It is changing now and not for the better. Austria’s right have called and won the right to rerun their election . . .

It could and should have been different. A few tweaks here and there were all that was necessary Re: Labour. But of course, Cameron and Company droned their anti-welfare fodder as if it were Holy Writ. Companies, sign contracts, hire, and bus workers from Eastern Europe to Britain. The EU insists the host country honours those contracts. No doubt £3.50 sounds tempting to many a Rumanian. Employers bleat he/she can’t find the workers. And the mantra: Doing the job the Brits won’t do. Not only do the workers of the host country see their wages slide as they have to compete against people willing to undercut their pay, they are accused of laziness and suffer welfare cuts too. They can’t take the jobs. It doesn’t pay their bills. The support for migrants and refugees has fallen on the shoulders least able to support them. And now they’ve dared ask, “What’s in it for me?”

Nothing, as people have to use food banks while in full-time work. But carry on. It’ll go away if you refuse to look.

It’s an oversupply of labour, squeezed into a stable housing market. The market determines lower wages and higher rents. Capitalism is now a mutation of its old red in tooth and claw standard. We have socialism for the banks and corporations, and ruthless Darwinism for those at the bottom of the pile. There’s no reason for supply and demand to apply in this new Corporatocracy – so we’re told! But the markets have and will decide outcomes. That’s why we now have families living in garden sheds. Still if you’ve hired a cheap plumber, nanny, or electrician it appears on the surface wonderfully cosmopolitan and multicultural. Open that shed door, your eyes, and look. Remove your fingers from yours ears and listen to the grumble. Unless, of course, the EU now deems sleeping twelve to a room as aspirational.

The far-right won’t disappear. The right have stolen the march and seem better able to harness the justifiable anger of those punished and ridiculed for the plight inflicted on them. It is insufficient to respond the EU protects workers’ rights. Those regulations do not apply for the many who freelance or those on zero hours contracts.

The latest insult heaped on Brexit voters supporting immigrants by sharing their pay, their housing, and food, is they are most likely, fat. No one’s yet published a chart showing Brexit voters don’t bathe, but I dare say publication of that statistic is imminent. Love everyone – until someone steals your goose. Remainers don’t love people, or difference. They care about an ideal. But look, touch and listen? No, thank you. There’s no reason, under those condemnatory remarks, ‘innocently' juxtaposed against the ill-educated statistic to think otherwise. The fat slur demonstrates nothing more than loathing and fear of the lower orders by the bourgeoisie. They have proved just as capable of dislike, generalisations, and oversimplification of which they accuse Brexit voters. There is no reason to suppose the far right can’t and won’t use those beliefs and prejudices to their advantage.

Remain have shown they will revile all those who aren’t like them, don’t agree with them, or who they deem inferior. This isn’t an insurmountable difference between remain and the right-wing message. Remainers distaste is as similar and is just as generalised as those who are xenophobes and racists. The far right must be crowing. Once people accept that others aren’t worthy to vote, the right wing has won. And remain have already tolerated that message.

Now they rail against democracy. “Democracy has failed us. Stupid voters.” That sounds like a far-right battle-cry. But then I don’t have my fingers in my ears.

No one is responsible for his or her birthplace, class, nor gene pool. 

Love Europe not the EU.

The Blairites smite Jeremy Corbyn

But I say unto you, the Blairites doth shall smite him.

Corbyn and the EU

So just how much does Mr Corbyn share his party's enthusiasm for the UK's relationship with Brussels?

Jeremy Corbyn voted to leave the European Economic Community in 1975

Mr Corbyn has expressed Eurosceptic arguments in the past - in 1993, he spoke out against the Maastricht Treaty which established the European Union and moved towards economic and political union.

The treaty, Mr Corbyn said, "takes away from national parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation and high unemployment throughout the European Community".

He voted against the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, and in one article on his website, said the EU had "always suffered a serious democratic deficit".

Apparently written amid speculation on who would become the first European Council president in 2009, the article said: "The creation of the post of president is a triumph for the tenacity of the European long-sighters.

"The project has always been to create a huge free-market Europe, with ever-limiting powers for national parliaments and an increasingly powerful common foreign and security policy."

At a GMB hustings Mr Corbyn said "I would advocate a No vote if we are going to get an imposition of free market policies across Europe", before going on to criticise the "growing military links" with Nato and calling for trade union "harmonisation" across the bloc, "rather than just allowing it as a business free-for-all across Europe".

In another debate, hosted by the Fabian Society, he said he had "mixed feelings" on the EU, and at a hustings in Warrington said he would not rule out campaigning to leave.

He said: "I think we should be making demands: universal workers' rights, universal environmental protection, end the race to the bottom on corporate taxation, end the race to the bottom in wage protection.



Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has made his first appearance in the national debate on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU), ahead of the referendum in June.

With recent polling showing that he is more trusted on the issue than the Prime Minister David Cameron, Remain campaigners are hoping that he can inspire the people of Britain to vote to stay in the Union.

Mr Corbyn used his speech to argue that the EU was imperfect but that there is a “strong socialist case” for voting to remain within it, and that “collective international action through the European Union” is needed in tackling the big issues of the day. He insisted that he now thinks reform of the EU to be the best course of action.

But he hasn’t always been the flag-waver for the Union that he is today, as the following quotes, taken from debates held over a period of more than two decades, demonstrate:

July 2015 – “Brutal”

“If the EU becomes a totally brutal organisation that treats every one of its member states in the way that the people of Greece have been treated at the moment, then I think it will lose a lot of support from a lot of people.”

June 2015 – “Colonies of debt peonage”

“[If] Greece leaves both the eurozone and the EU its future would be uncertain, but at least it could be its own. … There is no future for a usurious Europe that turns its smaller nations into colonies of debt peonage.”

January 2015 – Undemocratic

Public opposition to the EU’s TTIP treaty is “a cri de coeur for democracy and for the right of people to elect a Government who can decide what goes on in their country.”

April 2013 – “Worst of all worlds”

“Switzerland, which is not a member of the EU, has no problems integrating rail services with Germany, France and Italy, and I do not think that any other country should have any problems either.  What we have is the worst of all worlds.”

February 2011 – Human rights abuses

“We have EU trade agreements with a number of countries that include a human rights clause that has not been enforced or effected. Is it not time for us to look again at the whole strategy for the region?

May 2005 – “Simply crazy”

It is morally wrong [to] pay farmers to over-produce… then use taxpayers’ money to buy the over-production, so it is already a double purchase, and it is then shipped at enormous public cost across the seas to be dumped as maize on African societies. … The practice is simply crazy and must be stopped.”

October 2003 – Morally Unjustifiable

“[W]e are now exporting 40 per cent of the world’s sugar and subsidising it to the tune of €500 per tonne. That is not justifiable in any moral or other sense. We are driving cane sugar producers in Africa and elsewhere out of business so that European sugar can be dumped on their markets.”

May 1993 – Opposition to Maastricht

“I am sure that [Labour MPs] will vote against the Maastricht treaty again tonight, primarily because it takes away from national Parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers”

March 1993 – EU Army

“[W]e are moving towards a common European defence and foreign policy. That being so, one must ask who proposes it, who controls it and what it is for? … Title V states that the objective of such a policy shall be “to safeguard the common values, fundamental interests and independence of the Union”. What exactly does that mean?”

As part of the whitewashing of Mr Corbyn’s past stance on the EU, he has also deleted a number of blogs on his personal site which are critical of the EU. One, titled “The Plight of a Forgotten Land” included the following quotes:

“The EU, to its shame, concluded a special trade agreement with Morocco for fishing rights that includes the waters off occupied Western Sarah. In doing so, it authorised the plunder of natural resources on a grand scale with no benefit at all the Saharawi people.”

He added that Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara “involves the gross abuse of human rights and theft of natural resources – and the EU is directly responsible.”

Margaret Beckett cries

Margaret Beckett cries for the Labour party.

EU tells UK single market access requires full free movement of people

George Osborne's missing weekend

Osborne scares voters by threatening budget

Greasy plans of a Snake oil salesman

Cameron's anus

David's Cameron's hard working