Tag Archives: BBC

June 12, 2016 · 20:47

Brexit? Because Pizza!

Yes, it sounds nuts (honey covered ones), but that was pretty much the first thought that came to mind. You see, I have been trying to see beyond mere Brexit and Bremain, because comprehension gives insights that hopefully leads to wisdom. That is the path we need to be on in many cases (those who can). You see, we have seen one irresponsible side exposed in Brexit, that side is perhaps the majority reason why people are in the Brexit camp. No matter how clever Mark Carney was, the notion we see soon thereafter as Mario Draghi speaks of a willingness to spend another trillion plus to ‘jumpstart’ the economy is giving the voters even more reason to jump on the Brexit train. So no positive part there. No we get the European courts adding fuel to the fire that steams the Brexit train is seen (at http://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/jun/07/france-wrong-imprison-ghanian-woman-enter-britain-illegaly-eu-court-rules) in an article called ‘Imprisoning woman trying to illegally enter UK was wrong, EU rules‘. So these high educated judges are giving an outspoken ruling that it was wrong?

Perhaps this law student could give them something to consider ‘A person must not use a document which is, and which he or she knows to be, false, with the intention of inducing another person to accept it as genuine‘, which made it a crime as early as 1958 (actually long before that and not just in the UK). It is still a crime in most commonwealth nations. So perhaps this judge can explain to the people how having false identity papers is not a crime? It is speeches like these from the EU courts that makes people less interested to remain within the EU that the judges are trying to ‘non-enforce’. We have all heard the court stories about men who cannot get deported after a rape because he has the right to a family life. We tend to react really emotionally, which could be seen as equally wrong, yet the people who hear this will accept any verdict the victim gives, when she is voicing deportation, we all tend to shout it for the victim. In addition the case where a transgressor’s case is delayed for 2 years and in that time he has three additional children, so he can rely on article 8. I am not judging how appropriate the verdict is, I am merely voicing a thought most people in Britain tend to have. On the other side we see some statements that Bremain is the only option because of the damage to some profession when Brexit becomes real. There, the incomplete and incorrect statement that Metro gave recently (March 2016) ‘From April people will be deported for earning less than £35,000‘, whilst the evidence of this incorrectness is not correctly voiced does not help matters any. The fact that all media seems to ignore section 14(f) of the regulations that clearly state “In all cases, the pay must be compliant with National Minimum Wage regulations“, gives rise that unneeded stress is being created, making the issues muddy and stressful for all immigrants and it is in my view counterproductive. On that other side, we see misrepresentation voiced via the BBC, where we get ‘EU laws ‘prohibit UK from sending foreign criminals home’‘ (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36467725), we see the two speakers with the quotes “Mr Raab said British families were being put at risk – and argued leaving the EU would make the UK ‘safer’” and “Immigration minister James Brokenshire, who backs Remain, said the UK had deported 6,500 EU criminals since 2010“. In my view the statement from Mr Raab is a bit of a joke. Not because of the validity of the claim, but it is my personal view that in a population of 68 million, 50 are less than a blip on any radar, in addition when looking at places like banks like the Royal Bank of Scotland and accountancy firms like Pricewaterhouse Coopers. So when we consider the ‘swap victims‘ and Tesco, how many victims did that lead to and how many of those involved in those matters are currently in prison? I partially agree that an immigrant when intentionally choosing a life of crime has no business living in the UK (or any nation that they were not born in), but let’s remain a little bit more realistic, shall we?

This is exactly why people are confused and some are scared. The fact that the political players are taking this approach to ‘mis-communicate’ the issues is matter of concern. As we see statements that are regarded as ‘credible independent experts’, should enough evidence be shown that these credible experts have been on any agenda, or that any clear level of miscommunication is found, than these so called experts should be barred from any government contracts for no less than 10 years. See how that works! Here my reasoning is what we initially saw in Iceland (source: Inside Job), there were these so called ‘experts’ and their reports and actions made for a change that should never have been allowed.

I reckon that last week’s position that includes certain stated by Ipso MORI, should be published with the raw data. It is time to make it clear to all that misrepresentation requires addressing on both sides of the isle!

So when we see the BBC article (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36464905), ‘Don’t sit on the sidelines over EU, PM urges‘, which is a week old. Yet the quote “hailing warnings against an EU exit from Japanese multinational Hitachi and the chairwoman of the US Federal Reserve” instils within me the quotes “Would Janet Yellen be so kind to remain quiet and address the 19 trillion debt, preferably by actually solving the issues?” and towards Hitachi I would state “Yes, please consider moving away from a 68 million consumer base, and the moment the UK is progressing forward in an economy, consider the competitors that will then surpass you with 99% certainty. So the empty statement should be considered to be retracted at the very next opportunity!”

These are just my views, but consider in a global economy of margins, walking away from a customer base of 68 million is completely unheard of. The fact that Hitachi did what it could to expand in the Netherlands, which is small in comparison to the UK implies clearly that it requires the UK to keep its top position. That view is strengthened when we consider the quote “Mr Nakanishi said his firm, whose European headquarters is located in Berkshire, had invested £1bn in the UK energy and rail sectors in recent years. He said it was in the process of recruiting 730 new workers to build the next generation of high-speed inter-city trains“, that part remains and it will make money the same way, it is a good investment, especially when the UK economy gets past the first wave and especially in light of the European economy slowing down for 2 more years. When Hitachi walks away and other Japanese firms come in Hitachi will find itself surpassed in more than one way. It cannot take that chance as I see it, yet again, it is my speculation and I could be wrong.

Now, I am not stating that this view is the right one, I am merely in the personal believe that my view is not wrong! Let me explain the difference. Hitachi might leave, yet why? Is that because of mere commerce or due to corporate tax shelters (or tax havens) that could fall away? How is a firm an asset when it relies on non-taxation? I think that it is time to completely overhaul that system. Revenue sounds sexy, but when it is not required to be taxed, how are they a good thing? We can argue about the semantics of a tax haven versus tax shelter until the oceans freeze over. The simple fact is that the tax coffers remain too empty to support the British way of life! If you do not believe me, than consider the shortage the UK currently has, it is nowhere as bad as in the US and Japan, but it is not good, the amoral approach that corporations have remains unaddressed. We were too eager to accept the amoral route of taxation, now that the backfire comes, we become all ‘holier than though’, yet it is not too late to take a different course, the corporations not adjusting will lose out. In the end, they have a product that requires a customer base, no customer base, no revenue, no profit. I am oversimplifying this! Am I wrong?

As I see it both sides seem to be misrepresenting the case, Bremain and Brexit are both coming with issues and to some extent they are intentionally miscommunicating the issue, creating fear for all those involved. The question here becomes the issue we see. When is a presentation for one’s position misrepresentation towards the people at large?

I showed yesterday with decent clarity that Bremain is misrepresenting the facts and I believe that we can see at present that Brexit is doing the same. It is the Independent that is now adding fuel to the fire. ‘EU referendum: Poll reveals massive swing to Brexit – with just 12 days to go‘ (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-poll-brexit-leave-campaign-10-point-lead-remain-boris-johnson-nigel-farage-david-a7075131.html). On one side we see no wrong “The survey of 2,000 people by ORB found that 55 per cent believe the UK should leave the EU (up four points since our last poll in April), while 45 per cent want it to remain (down four points)” is fair enough. Yet, who was asked? I showed to all clearly that weighting and responses was an issue yesterday. Now we see the responses (2000), which is definitely indicative, but from where? You see, this article is from the survey point of view good. It gives us the numbers and other elements, yet the one part not given is where they were from. Perhaps that information was not available? And in this case geographic location is most certainly a factor!

The part that I do find interesting and valuable is seen in two quotes “According to ORB, 56 per cent of people who voted for Labour at last year’s general election now back Remain when turnout is taken into account, but a dangerously high 44 per cent support Leave” and “Only 38 per cent of Tory voters endorse David Cameron’s stance by backing Remain, while 62 per cent support Leave“, which gives another light a part we did anticipate, it is the Conservative/UKIP side that has the largest Brexit sentiment. It is strengthened by 44% of labour voters. The fact that we see “the economy is more important than immigration” only gives additional value to this survey. If there is one issue with the article than it would be the ‘Take our EU referendum poll‘, because apart from Exit and Remain, the option ‘Undecided’ should be there, because that group remains too large and it will remain a significant group until the day before the election. In the end I would ‘casually’ predict it to be a 50.3 versus 49.6 result, because anything that is this important will nearly always be a close call. From a comical point of view it works, especially when we see the faces on Wall Street in the minutes after the results are announced.

What is nearly a given is no matter how it turns out, we will likely see the new version of Trivial Pursuit with an additional card. ‘What happened on June 23rd 2016?‘

The answer “Brexit, because Pizza!” or “Bremain, because Chicken Tikka Masala!” will be known in 12 days.

 

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June 4, 2016 · 14:17

Your Affordable Front door Key

There was an interesting article in the Guardian yesterday (at http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jun/03/london-foreign-investors-money-housing-property). The article has a missing side, but that is not in question. You see Dawn Foster is illuminating an essential side. The issue ‘housing without xenophobia‘ is well found and well-founded too, all rounded and informative. An excellent piece. My side is not of opposition, but on a part she did not pause on (which was never a requirement).

The quote “they drone about how “Britain is full”” is one you need to remember, you probably will because the average UKIP person will hammer it to an uninterested audience on a daily basis. The second quote is probably one of the most brilliant ones “Britain is not “full” and very little of the country is built upon. With an ageing demographic, we need our population to expand; and with birth rates declining, immigration will be key to propping up the economy, the NHS and the care industry“, I agree with Dawn, but in that light she does not acknowledge that London is actually ‘full’, that part is nearly a given. Nearly being the operative word as the bulk of the UK population can’t afford to live there. There are plenty of other places where people in the UK cannot live, because the prices have gone up by too much. You see, the silent part in this article is all around ‘affordable housing’.

Dawn does illustrate this in the quote “But the most pernicious and covert xenophobia in the housing debate concerns “foreign ownership”. The amount of overseas investment, particularly in the London housing market, is increasing. Empty towers owned by foreign money are also an issue, because they ramp up house prices and concentrate construction on luxury suites rather than family homes and flats for first-time buyers” and she emphasises the need for housing to be affordable. Yet, I ‘accuse’ her of remaining silent? How come?

Well, first of all, her article was not required to ponder on it, perhaps we the readers should be doing that. The UK must soon, if not as early as yesterday amend the investment rules regarding real estate and investments. You see Dawn is not the first person getting close to the issue. There was David Batty, who is not as batty as some say he is (at http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/30/luxury-london-homes-86m-social-housing), where we see on January 30th of this year “A Treasury spokesman said: “This government is already taking strong action to ensure fairness in the housing market and help people on to the housing ladder. In 2014 we introduced a higher rate of stamp duty for properties over £1.5m and from April 2016 additional properties will face additional rates of stamp duty. This will enable us to double the affordable housing budget”“, which makes me wonder how far those plans are coming along. In April of this year (at http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/20/london-housing-crisis-sub-prime-problem-super-prime), Anna Minton reminds us with “Down the road from Balfron, Peter and Alison Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens, also internationally acclaimed, failed in its bid to gain listing, and is now one of dozens of estates, housing tens of thousands of people around London, facing imminent demolition“, we should not forget to carefully ponder the quote “While David Cameron has heavily promoted the sink estate narrative to justify “estate regeneration” – essentially a euphemism for demolition – Lord Adonis (PS not the same person Greece refers to), the former Labour minister appointed by George Osborne to chair the national infrastructure commission, is given to blunter statements, having made it clear that a central reason to knock down London’s estates is that they are sitting on “some of the most expensive land in the world”“, it is there that we see the problems and the issues for London and for the UK. The part ‘the most expensive land in the world‘ comes from a push we saw in the 80’s. I remember those times really well. Here is an actual decent quote from the Telegraph (who knew): “Mrs Thatcher and her Chancellor Geoffrey Howe confronted the recession in a very brutal way. Rather that cut taxes, they raised them, and rather than increase Government spending, they slashed it“, written by Angela Monaghan. It is not unlike the days the UK is facing right now, people have forgotten that from that era new wealth was created, in similar light, the politicians have forgotten that life in those days was at least to some extent affordable when we consider the UK rents, so there is the issue that is unspoken, we need to cap certain events, not in light of some assumptionary value of land, but to a value where we count the value on how many people are housed within that area. That is where we need to see the changes to investment taxation when it comes to real estate. So what if this balance is not a seesaw as we often approach it, what if it is more like a Balancing Bird Center of Gravity (at http://www.amazon.com/Balancing-Center-Gravity-Physics-Colors/dp/B0019LNESE)? So as the body and tail of the bird is the lucrative side of investment property as foreign investors see it, than the affordable housing part would be represented by the size of the wings. The fairness of not opposing ‘profit’ for those foreign and domestic investors, but to carry their profit they need to invest into the wings and quite a large amount too. Of course, that could mean that the wings are not in London, but that would not be the worst part would it? In the end those houses are also part of their fortune, whether it is rent to own, the foundation of those investors becoming housing corporations or even the start of a new British housing dynasty. They will grow into long term investors and growing the need the UK has for affordable housing, which is where we see the highly needed balance of profit and endurance.

That is the silent non addressed issue. That part should have been dealt with for the longest of amounts. One of the articles mentions Heygate Estate, we see the area of Walworth, Southwark, and South-London as a housing project, but what it became was even worse than a failure. The fact that it required to be demolished 40 years later, only 40 years later is the huge issue. The idea of modernisation was overshadowed by many issues, yet in this light is the clarity that the buildings failed to foster a sense of community. In my view it seems to image a prison estate. Modernisation without elegance fosters alienation plain and simple. Architect Tim Tinker stated: “farrago of half-truths and lies put together by people who should have known better” (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-23371735), yet who are those people? You see, when you place people in such a massive proximity, you negate the need for what I regard to be ‘spacious privacy‘. You might not comprehend this, or at least some of you will not, but when you are in an office, try to relate to people working in cubicles, those people tend to be different. Isolation in a work environment creates a different form of segregation. There is actually a decent blog article on the matter (at https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/open-office-beneficial-detrimental), I think that there is another layer at work. The writer states this on the open Facebook/Google culture “They are popular and effective no doubt, but only work because their office layouts align with their company culture and caters to diverse staff needs“, here I do not completely agree. Yes, he is stating a correct fact, but an incomplete one. You see, in an open environment we do not only work our way, work in open space and in cohesion, it works because these people work with the need to consider the work of others. That is where these housing projects are an issue. As there is a lack of community, consideration takes a downturn for the worse more and more. Yes, it can breed inconsideration, crime and anti-social behaviour, but is that actually happening or is that only happening in the mind of the other person, the fear of hardship due to isolation? Only the people who lived there would be able to tell for certain.

It is a mere question and the question matters because that is a psychological event that has been known LONG BEFORE that housing project became to be. I personally believe that if the project was more spacious, with a small Tesco mall in the middle with a lower population on such an area, I reckon (an assumption on my side) that a critical population point was surpassed here. I do not have the skills or the math to help you in that regard, it is only speculation from my side. However, to see housing to be demolished after merely 40 years shows a larger problem, problems with planning, with execution and perhaps even with the quality. Whatever it is, this needs to be done better and it needs to be done soon and adjusting foreign investments is the only clear way to do this (so far four administrations have been a failure in this). The issue as I see it is that Margaret Thatcher was the last one truly working on affordable housing. Some state that this started to happen in 1997, whilst there is enough evidence that the flat line was as early as 1991, making the starting point of this issue whilst the power was in the hands of Sir John Major, the fact that this continued during what we now laughingly refer to as New Labour. Even as we accept that a lot was done under the Thatcher government, we have to raise the issue that several of them after 40 years are now changing hands and getting pushed into other projects, making the costs 40 years ago high and might be regarded as a bad investment. This is here we are now, the need for affordable housing and no solution in sight, especially when the government is well over a trillion short. Foreign investors could be the solution, but it will require a different kind of investor. Now, we will hear on how those investors will consider it bad investment and walk away, because plenty of them are all about short term gains. I am stating that we do not deny them the gains, we just want them to be longer term, especially with the massive tax breaks they enjoy. They can feel free to move to the US and invest there, but when that 18 trillion debt collection falters their investments could collapse or be held against much higher tariffs making the United Kingdom the best option for a safe investment, even if it is not short term. And if they back off there will be other new millionaires jumping at the chance of a long term gain with a long term balance of value and increased exposure as welcomed new wealth.

The BBC is showing us the reality of the mess that affordable housing has given its tenants: “An entire community has been forcibly displaced for the sake of mere land value speculation“, which is the failing of three governments and a really inadequate planning department, not to mention that in all this the House of Lords equally failed its citizens by not adjusting the balance against such greed driven motives. In addition, after a long term of playing Ping Pong with the Hose of Commons, we see that projects are set to readjusting, which would make sense, but the fact that the tenants are ‘forcibly displaced for the sake of mere land value‘, whilst the tenants are partially the reason for the increase in value gives weight that these tenants should not have been allowed to be displaced, but should have been awarded an exchange to a similar sized apartment at no extra cost. The value was in part due to their tenancy. From my point of view both the House of Commons and the House of Lords failed these tenants, which makes us wonder: who gives a flying fig when greed comes to town?

There is in part the silence too, but that will be an article for another day.

The UK is currently in a place that whether Brexit happens or they are faced with Bremain, local issues will not be resolved until certain measures are taken to keep the people safe, not just from investors, but from local folly and rezoning needs at a price that might not be worth the effort, not in the long run.

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April 4, 2016 · 21:21

Working for a new boss

This morning starts off with an entirely different wave of events. Brexit is turning out to the two teams misrepresenting issues as much as possible, many of these representations are about scaremongering. The NHS is going on and on and on and other views are given. In both cases I agree with some parts, I disagree with loads of it (from my point of view with decent evidence). Yet all this we would have overlooked almost half a dozen articles. The story is only the smallest part of it. What is massively interesting that there is for a chosen few a job available! It is not glamorous, you will be frowned upon, but consider a job that will get you a 7 figure income (after a while), a decent house, possible tropical views a few times a year. In this day and age? Who would not accept that? Perhaps the single ideological man or woman, but that leaves a few million people, all ready to accept a position with the glamorous firm of Mossack Fonseca, a panama based law firm, with services on a global scale. Clients like Russian President Vladimir Putin (allegedly). They operate in tax havens including Switzerland, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, and in the British crown dependencies Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man. I would love a nice job on Guernsey, a nice house, retirement at some point. I am a Trade Marks attorney, one that would love to get an additional degree in finance if that gives me a good job with Mossack Fonseca, is that not what you saw?

The first article ‘What are the Panama Papers? A guide to the biggest leak in history‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-panama-papers), assisting the rich and famous store their wealth in tax havens. You see, this is all legal, this is not FIFA screwing its soccer fans over breaking ethical boundaries. This is all thankful to a multitude of short-sighted politicians (or really clever ones depending on your point of view) who enabled options in their tax homes. The article ‘used lawfully to anonymously hold property and bank accounts, these companies were registered in a range of tax havens and this map shows the most popular locations among its clients. The British Virgin Islands held more than 100,000 companies‘, so you would not be breaking the law. You just have to accept that some people pay (a lot) less taxation. After 30 year I have clearly seen and learned that living morally correct will get you a one bedroom apartment in the suburbs, a place you will not be able to pay off before you die. So as morality is not a legal requirement, as all this work is perfectly legal, why not?

This is all coming to light because of a leak, someone (as stated by the Guardian) got a hold of 2.6 terabytes of data. The quote is literally “There are 11.5m documents and 2.6 terabytes of information drawn from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database“, which implies that the facts were discovered through criminal activities. This means that Mossack Fonseca might have a case against those perpetrators. Another interesting quote is “Using offshore structures is entirely legal. There are many legitimate reasons for doing so“, so why not become a service provider here?

On the other side there is the quote “In a speech last year in Singapore, David Cameron said “the corrupt, criminals and money launderers” take advantage of anonymous company structures. The government is trying to do something about this. It wants to set up a central register that will reveal the beneficial owners of offshore companies“, which is equally valid. Mossack Fonseca stated: “it complies with anti-money-laundering laws and carries out thorough due diligence on all its clients. It says it regrets any misuse of its services and tries actively to prevent it. The firm says it cannot be blamed for failings by intermediaries, who include banks, law firms and accountants“, this gives us another side too. When we consider banks we can consider Barclays (Libor 2012), Marcus Agius, former chairman of Barclays, resigned from his position over it. He’s sitting pretty being amongst others on the board of the BBC. Now, there is no evidence that he was directly involved, but it happened under his nose (so to speak), with a few exceptions most got out with their bonus intact and this was a legal transgression, so why would anyone not want to work for Mossack Fonseca, who is not breaking any laws?

When we consider law firms we should consider the news form the Independent in 2013 where we see: “The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) knew six years ago that law firms, telecoms giants and insurance were hiring private investigators to break the law and further their commercial interests, the report reveals, yet the agency did next to nothing to disrupt the unlawful trade” (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-other-hacking-scandal-suppressed-report-reveals-that-law-firms-telecoms-giants-and-insurance-8669148.html) and when we see the word ‘accountant’ I think Tesco and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. For example the quote I used “Tesco paid PwC £10.4m in the last financial year – plus another £3.6m for other consultancy work“ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2014/09/30/thriving-team-tesco/) in the article ‘Thriving Team Tesco?‘, where again the case of wrongdoing should be regarded as more likely than not, so why would we not consider perfectly legal work at Mossack Fonseca?

Let’s not forget that the governments on a global scale are enabling this to get some tax revenue. Consider that the British Virgin Islands have 100,000 companies, without them, how much taxation would have been collected? It is a mere case of need and availability.

For example, a fictive person goes to His Excellency John Duncan and states: “Sir, if you offer us a favourable tax option, the option would be open to bring industry and taxable revenue in access of $1,000,000,000. Would you be willing to consider a low taxation plan?” to this the governor would respond “My dear man, we have no profit tax and no corporation tax!”

So how long until the big boys move a few billion to a place like that?

We seem to find time to worry about ethical issues, when the installed governments in Europe have yet to show a mere accountable bone in their bodies for overspending trillions. We seem to be ignoring the obvious. Even if this was illegal, how many banker have gone to prison from 2004 onwards? This is not illegal, this is a mere application of true globalisation. In addition, consider that offshore companies and offshore trusts are in most cases taken out of the view of taxation to begin with, so why not employ this option?

You see, the part that is in the middle of all this is not answered, it is skated around. No one seems to care on HOW the information was gotten at. The quote “2.6 terabytes of information drawn from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database” implies hacking. This does not mean that it could not have been facilitated by internal sources. Such an amount of data does not just easily download, so either someone got access and mirrored a drive, which implies that the server was accessible, what is more likely (read: speculation), is that this is one of the first cloud hacks. To have such a large environment, so global gives the option that data was in the cloud and someone was able to access it. This morning IT Pro had the following quote (at http://www.itpro.co.uk/data-leakage/26293/panama-papers-leaked-through-server-hack-1). “it had opened an investigation after discovering that “unfortunately” it had suffered “an attack on its email server” and that it is taking “all necessary measures to prevent this from happening again“, which could be the case. My issue here is that from a server, getting access to that much data should either be noticed (bandwidth), or it was internal (read: facilitated). When we consider the e-mail data overall, there is nothing that raises flags. Oh yes, there is! That much data with a truckload of attachments gives food for thought. Even as we consider no criminal acts have been undertaken, one would try to secure that much data. Perhaps this was done, but how was so much data gained?

In my view, encrypted UNIX servers would have required massive amounts of time to access and a good IT team always keeps one eye on their servers. Fortune quoted “Mossack Fonseca is calling the 11.5 million leaked documents a “limited” breach” (at http://fortune.com/2016/04/04/panama-papers-law-firm/), which is also likely, yet in all that if that was limited, yet fortune gives us one quote the Guardian would be unlikely to state “It appears that you have had unauthorized access to proprietary documents and information taken from our company and have presented and interpreted them out of context“, now that part will be close to impossible to prove, because the Guardian clearly stated “Using offshore structures is entirely legal”

No matter how this plays out, it seems to me that politicians on a global scale will start playing their ‘hypocrisy card’. Which is another laughing matter altogether. I cannot predict how this will officially play out, but they do have a website at http://www.mossfon.com/ and they are also in Trade Marks, so I should see what my options are. For you the reader, especially those with a degree in wealth management. I suggest you send your resume to:

The MF Group
54th Street, Marbella
Panama, Rep. of Panama

You could also go to web page: http://www.mossfon.com/about_service/careers/, if you want to post your resume online!

Let’s not forget, these people have not broken any laws (at present).

Have a fun day and dream of a life without debt in a place you could never have afforded in any other legal way.

 

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February 16, 2016 · 19:31

Fear mongers cannot learn, will the reader?

The technology section of the Guardian had an interesting article (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/13/artificial-intelligence-ai-unemployment-jobs-moshe-vardi), ‘Would you bet against sex robots? AI ‘could leave half of world unemployed’‘, is that so? So, is the title a reference that 50% is in prostitution, or is there more?

The article starts straight of the bat without delay it gives the quote: “Machines could put more than half the world’s population out of a job in the next 30 years, according to a computer scientist who said on Saturday that artificial intelligence’s threat to the economy should not be understated“.

I remember a similar discussion now 35 years ago. It was 1981, I was working on the defence mainframe and I got the inside scoop how computers would replace people, how those machines would put hardworking people out of a job and a future. In the first 5 years that followed I saw the opposite, yes some work became easier, but that also meant that more work could be done. The decade that followed gave us an entire new region of technology. A region that would open doors that had never been there in the first place.

This technology is not any different, it will open up different doors.

Now, the people in ‘fear’ of it all are not the most half-baked individuals. They include Physicist Stephen Hawking and the tech billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk, in addition there is professor Vardi from Rice University, his statement “AI could drive global unemployment to 50%, wiping out middle-class jobs and exacerbating inequality“, I massively disagree here. The words of Elon Musk calling it “our biggest existential threat” and in addition professor Vardi stated “humanity will face an existential challenge“, those two comments are closer to the reality. Yet here too I believe changes will dominate. Consider a few years back, back to the time when I was younger then young (like 900BC roughly), in an age of Greek wars and utter ‘nationalism’ the Olympic truce was created. “Ekecheiria”, was established in Ancient Greece in the 9th century BC through the signing of a treaty by three kings: Iphitos of Elis, Cleosthenes of Pisa and Lycurgus of Sparta. (Source: olympic.org) There was a lull but in 1896 it started again. An event, which origin was to create an option to not be in a war and to compete. Of all the existential angst we have, robots should not be on the list any time soon.

My reasoning?

As we saw the start of recruitment for Mars, a serious recruitment to start colonising mars, we must admit that there are issues on mars, several could be diminished with the use of intelligent robots. Or perhaps the idea that NASA is looking on how to get resources from asteroids, so how about that Android solution? The BBC gives us the speculation on ocean living (at http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131101-living-on-the-ocean), again an element where we do not thrive, but a robot could pave the way. In my own view, with the massive energy issues, how long until someone has the idea to place paddled wheels above a hydrothermal vent in the ocean to capture it as an energy source? Not the kind of work a person can do, a machine could, and an AI driven one could excel there. Just three places where we could end up with more and not less. Yet Vardi does give an interesting side, if robots replace people to some extent, that value of physicality might be lost. Now ask the bricklayer if he could do something else, would he? There is indeed the danger that physical labour becomes less and less appealing, yet that does not mean it will be gone. It would take at least half a century for things to be completed, whilst in that mean time new evolutions start, new challenges start.

More important, much more important is the one fact people tend to avoid out of fear. But you the reader, if you are over 45, consider that in the near future you will be dead! So will 3 out of 7 of your friends. Yes, the population is growing, yet the age groups are shifting, this implies that robots could be a solution for some of the work areas that do not require academic thinking. All these opportunities, not threats!

So as we see a new iteration of fear, is this version more valid than then the previous one? With that I mean the implementation of the PC. Perhaps having another set of less fear mongering eyes would help. The second part people forget is that fear mongering is also a drain on productivity here. Even as we speak Japan has a lead in this market, as does America. So how about we start getting ahead of the rest, so that is wrong with the commonwealth picking up a robotic skill or two, because one truth remains, once the other player get too much of a lead, the consequence will be that the followers are not considered for the creational jobs here and that is where the real mulah is, the IT explosion taught us that and that field grew a multitude of billionaires, the next technological iteration will do no less.

I am not alone in my way of thinking, the writer Nicholas Carr gives us: “human creativity and intuition in the face of complex problems is essentially irreplaceable, and an advantage over computers and their overly accurate reputation“, which is where the new future will head. Not to create robots, but the creativity to make then excel in extreme places where we could not comprehend until out boundaries are clearly mapped. So how is this news such an eyeopener? Well, when we get back to the beginning we saw “artificial intelligence’s threat to the economy“, as stated, much like the Personal Computer, it will not be a threat, but a solution, an opening into a new arm of the technology sector, even more important, this is not just a IT only field. It will require quality engineers and depending on the application of the scene. This means that we get new challenges, different ones mind you, but not lesser ones?

In that regard, depending on the implementation, it will require analysts, engineers, programmers and a few others on the list of adepts.

all these options and we did not even need to get close to the technological design of the new age cybernetic machines for the purpose of erotic exploration (level 1 at http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/04/sexbots-realdoll-sex-toys), which is nowhere near an AI experience, time will tell how real that field becomes. Consider the age of STD’s we see nowadays. Mycoplasma Genitalium might be the new ‘trend’, as it can be cured with a mere one week setting of anti-biotics. So how long until it evolves into something that does not cure? Yet we do not even have to go that far, consider all the areas where man (or woman) cannot function, the risk too high and the rewards become too low. Here comes the clockwork system (aka the AI robot) and we are back on track.

So I see the robot as a positive wave. For careers, for jobs, for business evolution and for evolving technology. We only need to see the light of creation and we will end up with a lot more options than we bargained for.

 

 

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February 15, 2016 · 21:33

Is there a doctor on this budget?

The title ‘Is this doctor (and Ukip candidate) right that EU migrants will destroy the NHS?‘ seems inflammatory to say the least, but the reality is actually a lot less appealing. Even when we see today’s article: ‘NHS vows to transform mental health services with extra £1bn a year‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/15/nhs-vows-to-transform-mental-health-services-with-extra-1bn-a-year), the quote “People facing mental health crises will be able to get community care 24 hours a day, seven days a week as part of the biggest transformation of NHS mental health services in England for a generation, to be unveiled on Monday“, that quote now reflects back to the initial NHL article. There we see that Professor Angus Dalgleish is giving us another view: “He says the NHS is on its knees and “could collapse completely” because of immigrants from the EU that we are legally obliged to treat“, so even as the Guardian is hiding behind the identity ‘Pass notes‘, there are issues. The first is the unintelligent trivialisation by ‘Pass notes‘. The quote “Eighteen British hospitals made £42m from people coming here for treatment on 2010” is just too ridiculous to be considered valid. I am not stating that it is a lie, but consider that the NHS budget is set to be around £115b for 2015/2016, that £42m amounts to roughly 0.000365%, so how insignificant is that trivialisation? Especially when we consider that many papers (including the Guardian) reported the NHS to be £1.6b in deficit, so there is an issue already.

Now we get the next step.

From several sources we see that refugees are coming. That is not an accusation, or negativism, it is merely factual that over the next 5 years 20.000 refugees will arrive. Now consider that these people come from actual devastated locations, on a horrendous trip that has lasted years (including their stay in refugee centres) to get to the UK, if only 75% needs mental health care, the UK should be thanking their lucky stars. So that £1bn will not last too long, especially considering the current population is in dire need of mental health in one form or another. So as ‘Pass notes‘ complains the quote “But I expect doctors to be liberal! By which I mean intelligent! By which I mean liberal! We expect much. And sometimes we are disappointed“, which is just the Guardian showing that its own values are not set on intelligence. The NHS itself states: “However, if you are now living in an EEA member state and pay into a state healthcare scheme then you are entitled to apply to that member state for an EHIC. Under EC law, this entitles you free of charge to ‘all medically necessary treatment’ here, which provides a greater coverage than that mentioned above since it includes routine treatment for chronic conditions such as diabetes“, which gives way to the claim that Professor Dalgleish is making. In addition the National Health Service Act 2006, section 83 states that “all reasonable requirements to provide or secure necessary primary medical services for all patients, irrespective of their immigration status, within their areas” must be met, this is a legal duty for the primary care trust as reported by the Primary Care Commission (at https://www.pcc-cic.org.uk/sites/default/files/articles/attachments/pcc_briefing_-_illegal_immigrantsv6.pdf), which now implies that Professor Dalgleish has indeed reported an issue that the Guardian casually trivialises. Yet, we must also ask, what if the Guardian is correct? Well, section 83 of the National Health Service Act 2006, literally states at s83(1) “Each Primary Care Trust must, to the extent that it considers necessary to meet all reasonable requirements, exercise its powers so as to provide primary medical services within its area, or secure their provision within its area“, which bakes the cake on one side. The issue is however not done, it is about to get a lot ‘worse’, because s83(2)(b) gives us: “A Primary Care Trust may (in addition to any other power conferred on it) make such arrangements for their provision (whether within or outside its area) as it considers appropriate, and may in particular make contractual arrangements with any person“, which now gets us two elements:

  • Make contractual arrangements with any person, which also implies that it could be a contract set at £0.00.
  • Arrangements for their provision (whether within or outside its area), which now implies that the Primary medical services can transfer a refugee or illegal immigrant to psychological care and/or specialised mental health clinics.

So ‘Pass notes‘ is not reflecting on the dangers that Professor Dalgleish was trying to illuminate. More important, these issues have been known for some time. Issues on these elements have been illuminated in plenty of publications going back to 2012. There is even more information at http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Issue%20Brief/2012/Dec/1650_Gray_hlt_care_undocumented_migrants_intl_brief.pdf, yet overall they tend to give the same reflection, especially when you look at page 3, where the cubic impression titled ‘Exhibit 1. Three Dimensions of Health Care Coverage Policy for Undocumented Migrants‘, gives rise to the massive growth of costs that could be associated with migrant health care (not to mention due to incoming refugees).

So how much valid weight can be given to the statements of Professor Dalgleish? I personally believe that the weight of his statements should be weight on a debatable high level (evidence to follow at the near end). The issue is not just regarding the costing the immigrants and refugees bring, the fact that the Euro systems is wreaking havoc all over the world is an equal concern. I cannot state for certain what will be the best path, what is a given is that trivialisation was never an option.

When we add ‘Jeremy Hunt on the NHS: ‘I think this decade needs to see the quality revolution’‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/15/jeremy-hunt-on-the-nhs-i-think-this-decade-needs-to-see-the-quality-revolution) to the fold, the plot thickens. You see, quality revolution sounds fair and essential, it is in fact at resent likely the least important part. There is a massive shortage of medical professionals, there is a lack of funds and that lack can be sized into the billions. This implies that quality, though nice is nothing compared towards the lack of resources. Which gets us to the Junior Doctor contracts. You see the quote “none of the 152 foundation trust hospitals in England will be obliged to force their junior doctors to accept the deal and can instead offer them better terms“, which gets us back to that massive deficit and more important, what additional pressures will be added onto it?

That is a part which has been known for a while, I voiced it at least 2 years ago and the current investigation that the BBC gave visibility to in January 2016 (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-35361908) is still centre in all the issues that will come. You see, without a proper IT system, the NHS will have less and less options to streamline any solution, with that I mean larger operational matters for streamlining. Even as Tavish Scott (Lib Dem Scotland) asked on who got figuratively axed, we got the answer: “The chair of the board is no longer there, the chief executive is no longer there and the chief finance officer“, a very unsatisfactory answer. When we consider “he was not informed of a ‘fundamental flaw’ in the system being delivered for 22 months, adding “other, more junior staff were aware of omissions” in the contract, “but they didn’t tell me”“, we see a systematic shortening of another matter. The fact that junior staff were aware, implies that the documentation was an issue from day 1, in addition, no clear QA protocol was in place. No drilldown teams, from Junior to board member line was in play and overall the system was beyond merely defective. Consider the simple quote: “Mr Turner, who signed the 1,000-page contract for the IT system in March 2012, said he felt “very let down” by a senior colleague, saying they “didn’t advise me at all”“, can anyone explain to me, how such a document does not come with an excerpt chapter by chapter (by members of the NHS) underwriting per chapter how the contract impacts the NHS, the system and their services? A mere SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) would have made all the difference before signing. A waste of £40-£50 million is more than just a few doctors, the lack of such a solution will give additional worry to the claims Professor Dalgleish made. In light of refugees, illegal immigrants and costings, the lack of oversight will soon pressure resources down further.

This all gives a clear view that a doctor is required to take the pulse of the budget. It is billions in deficit and the drain will only increase. The fact that most parties have not given clear light to several sides is only a first reason why Ukip is gaining momentum. That view goes a little further when we consider “Committee convener Paul Martin said there must have been issues with management if staff did not feel able to come forward“, Scottish Labour has more than just a point, the issue becomes why junior members were not asked directly. Someone had to make an inventory, which means that the step was skipped, or intentionally overlooked. That now gives way to the fact that axing three members is not nearly enough. There is, what could be regarded as an institutional failure within the NHS. Considering that the NHS 24 is only one of several systems that are not on par, or even worse, then never got properly managed is proof further still that the NHS cannot handle too many pressure points at present.

What was wrong from Professor Dalgleish is that ‘EU migrants’ are only one of several straws, each currently heavy enough to separately break the camel’s back (read: NHS), which might be a case that the professor was trying to make, but ‘Pass notes‘ was too busy writing lame non-jokes, whilst the editor of the Guardian remained absent in this matter, which is why its readers are left in the dark (and in the near future untreated too). It was interesting to see that Rochdale Online did give more information through the statement by Louise Bours, UKIP health spokesman and North West MEP.

Here you must ask yourself the question: “Is this all just a storm in a teacup?” Especially as the larger papers ignored the ‘Dalgleish matter’. I myself expect that the statement from Dalgleish is out of context and incomplete. This failing as other elements that are driving the NHS over the cliffs were ignored could have been an option to illuminate why Ukip might not be the answer, yet as we see these levels of trivialisation, people are wondering the why; mainly because no clear explanation is coming forward they start to listen to Ukip more and more. Which is EXACTLY why I wrote the initial view with supporting documentation of a more academic level. So it is not a storm in a teacup, as we can clearly see that the NHS could be seen as close to ‘terminal’, but the factors here are a lot more than just the EU-migrants, what is a given is that unless certain things change, the EU-migrants could be breaking the NHS back, but that is equally a given for a few more factors that are currently in play.

Should any of these elements drive you crazy, then you will be equally out of luck as the BBC reported that finding a mental health spot has become pretty impossible, in that element alone, the £1b might be a great help, but there is a decent chance it will not be enough, because it is not just the beds that are unavailable, services are an equal worry, services that require staff and the refugee pressure will only add to that shortage (which is not the fault of these refugees mind you).

 

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February 13, 2016 · 14:51

Looking for an Exit sign

You are on board the EEC. There are four emergency exits, Brexit on the left, Frexit on the right, each marked with a red EXIT sign overhead. All doors except the overwing doors at 3 left and 3 right are equipped with emergency funds. These funds will keep you debt dependant for decades. Yes, it sounds like the speech a flight attendant might give you as you travel from the gates of the fake economic upbeat information towards the airport of Conturbare Gentem.

There is the impulse to state ‘the real issue is’, but that is not the case here. As we see ‘Brexit ‘will be the first step of the definitive decline of the EU,’ says former Prime Minister of Italy’ (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-will-be-the-first-step-of-the-definitive-decline-of-the-eu-says-former-prime-minister-of-a6861326.html). You see, I have been trying to warn my readers for well over 2 years on this danger. In a few cases it was laughed off loudly, but those ‘economic wannabe’ agents are not laughing now. When I was feeling a little evil. I asked them (as they honed me in public), to explain last week’s events, how it will lead to new prosperity. They basically told me to ‘f*ck off’. They are no longer laughing. I proclaimed these events, whilst also clearly stating that I am not an economist (a fact I did not deny). This situation was for the most a simple exercise of math, basic high school math actually, interesting how an economist missed that part.

The subtitle here is also interesting ‘Enrico Letta warns London ‘would lose a lot of influence’ on world stage‘, actually, it will not. As the UK turns their economy into a stronger engine, as we see this impact, we see that both Germany and the UK will get ahead faster and faster. Italy because of their election timing could end up with the worst deal (which sucks for Italians). You see, all that rattling we hear is empty and hollow. The financial markets might threaten to leave, but they will not, should they do so, than they end up in an even worse situation. Yes, they have options, but when the system crashes, their only option for now is Germany. If they select Paris, their issues will fossilise into a brittle solution, one that impacts their markets for decades.

In Germany they will be too isolated. In all honesty, their only decent alternative is Amsterdam, yet that comes with other perils. The Dutch DNB has stronger rules in place, so in that regard Paris seems a better choice, but overall that move isolates them from a few places down the road. London will remain the better option. And it is not even close to any decision. When we see the AFP article (at https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/30812452/cameron-confident-of-reaching-eu-deal-to-avoid-brexit/), we also see second rate top people go all out with quotes like “pragmatism and courage… and their ability to compromise” or “my wish is that the United Kingdom is and remains an active member of a successful European Union“, which are unique examples of misdirected communication. The “a deal could be reached allowing Britain to remain in the European Union and avoid a so-called Brexit” sounds so nice, but in the end, there is still a referendum and because too many European players were sitting on their thumbs creating ‘ease and inaction’, maximising their gravy train. The people have caught on and they are not playing nice anymore. Just 9 days ago in my article ‘Intimidating the Euro‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/02/04/intimidating-the-euro/), I mentioned the BBC article (at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35122710), which was claiming that “Now the experts are predicting once again that the economy will return to growth in 2016, unless something else gets in the way“, so how ‘lame’ are these experts? Only a weak later we see in the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/12/eurozone-recovery-falters-greece-recession), giving us “Greece fell back into recession“, oh really Captain Urban Funding? So cheap oil and the ECB stimulus was kind of pointless, was it not? So when we get these aggregated levels of bad news, explain to me how a united economic Europe is anything other than a really bad idea? One the UK should seriously consider getting out of and that will drive the immediate departure of France and Germany. The scenario I predicted all along. And for 2 years experts, the media and political players remained in denial.

Now we see added ‘news’ on how Brexit works for Putin, which clearly reads like an American, ‘communist fear’ as pressure for keeping the UK right where it is now. That does make sense, because the collapse would have an impact on US economy. The Dow Jones Index would be hit a lot harder than it was in 2004 or 2008. In my view, the EEC has no future because it will not correctly deal with the legislation to prevent the non-accountable acts of some, which was the direct reason of this mess in the first place. Greece was never held to account the way it should have. The news on ‘new’ Grexit fears as we see that there is no solution where we see that the Greek government and European creditors have come up with a credible plan to make the country’s debt sustainable. Yet the established situation that Greece cannot be evicted gives rise to additional worries, which fuels both Brexit and Frexit. The Financial Times (at http://blogs.ft.com/brusselsblog/2016/02/08/brussels-briefing-back-to-turkey/), gives more on Frexit. Yes, all parties agree that this will only happen after a referendum, yet what is not given directly is that this would be the first act by Marine Le Pen if she gets elected. Both the Hollande and Sarkozy fronts are scared there, because Marine might only get elected with a clear majority, when that happens, neither party will have any options to stop Frexit from becoming a reality. Which gets us back to that ‘Greek news’. I believe that the parties have all come to an arrangement with the fears that Brexit brought. Because the EEC exit cannot be made enforced under current EEC legislation (discussed in previous blog articles), the article, in my personal view implies that Greece will volunteer to opt out of the Euro on the concession of debt relief, with total debt forgiveness being a possibility (my speculation). What will remain unspoken is that those parties who would, if successful to keep the EEC alive, will only do so when the price is right. That implies taxation not relief on several fronts (for non-Greece nations), realistically it will be a tax that will last generations. Did the people of Europe sign up for that? A Europe that is even less accountable to a chosen few (who forgave debt)? That path basically spells out that these ‘providers’ will get their money’s worth in the form of grants and non-taxability, but at the expense of all the other European citizens. So how is Brexit anything else but a really good idea? In addition, the Financial Times reports, or better Christian Oliver alerts us to the fact that Greece took a fall for Schengen (at http://blogs.ft.com/brusselsblog/2016/02/12/greece-takes-a-fall-for-schengen/). The quote “Athens has received a list of 50 measures that it should undertake to improve its handling of the tide of refugees“, which sounds great, but it is extremely short sighted. The quote “The EU insists that Greece needs to take the 50 steps, citing “serious deficiencies” in the management of the country’s external borders” is even more hilarious. You see, that risk has forever been there, there used to be some level of control, but now we have a bankrupt nation, its requirement to cut staff by almost 66% and the need to build a collapsed infrastructure. There are mere matters of fact. Greece has thousands of miles of borders that are a nightmare to watch. With the inability to get the Syrian matters under control people are running like crazy, they either run through Turkey or the swim from island to island (either way they have a 50% chance to make it). So, how are these requirements anything but a joke, anything but a hollow requirement from the Greek government? The mere logic (and any cheap world map) shows us that those refugees had to get around Cyprus and get either via Turkey, or take the waterway directly, which is well over an 800 Km trip, taking them past Turkey most of the way. So when we consider speeds, on smaller loaded ships, it would be a 3-5 day trip past the Turkish navy, so why is the Schengen council not having this discussion with associate EEC member Turkey? You see, we can blame Greece for many things (actually, just their politicians), but the refugee wave is something Greece got overwhelmed with, even with a functioning economy it would have overwhelmed Greece. More important, how are the refugees getting to the Greek islands? This can only be done with Turkey either ignoring refugee transgressions on their territory (which is weird as they shot down a Russian jet after it allegedly invaded their airspace for 14 seconds), yet refugees that have travel past Turkish waters for days are casually ignored.

It seems to me that we are watching a new game, one that is burdening Greece on many sides, only to allow Greece to cast themselves out of the EEC/Euro for a price. A price the other taxpayers must pay for and they still hope that Brexit will be averted? Good luck with that notion!

So as the Brits and the French are looking at the exit signs to get off the plane, they are still confronted that the pilot of that plane has been massively irresponsible. Its maintenance crew has maintained the plane on the foundation of their ego and as such certain best practices, practices that a real engineer would have taken were ignored. This has led to today’s predicaments. The Brits are of mind that even in flight, getting off is more likely to lead to a survivable situation that silently staying on the plane will. When the Brits get off, the planes integrity will be permanently compromised, which leads to the events I predicted.

So now the media is giving us more and more articles on the crew giving us horror stories on what happens when someone opens that door. Yet, some of them are exaggerated. In the end the opening of the door could just force the plane down to the nearest airport where the passengers who no longer trusts the pilot could disembark. We do not deny the risks, but the current pilot is taking the plane to places the fuel reserves cannot reach.

Yet in addition to what I already claimed, the British City A.M. (at http://www.cityam.com/234438/ignore-eu-scaremongers-why-britain-would-thrive-post-brexit) gives us ‘Ignore EU scaremongers: Why Britain would thrive post-Brexit‘, which is partially the view I have. Ruth Lea, economic adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group gives us “a timely reminder that we are a crucial market for EU exporters – £89bn of the total £125bn goods deficit for 2015 was with the EU, £31.6bn with Germany alone. For every £3-worth of exports to the EU, Britain imported £5-worth from the EU. It is quite simply inconceivable that any German car exporter or French wine exporter would wish to see any impediments to their trade with Britain“, which I see to be a partial truth. You see, that is what it is and in the future it is what it was, but for a time, we will see European resentment and anger. Several European nations will take part of the £3-worth of exports and they will find another place in Europe to get between £1 and £2 of that export and find another source. That element is equally ignored. It will be up to that current UK government to make quick and lasting agreements that would diminish the losses, but it will again be in the hands of the UK, not squandered by EEC inaction. Should you think that my view is exaggerated, then consider recent news! How the economy grew 0.3% yet billions were pushed into it for the ‘reasoning’ of stimulus. Now consider that stimulus refers to attempts to use monetary or fiscal policy to stimulate the economy. Stimulus can also refer to monetary policies like lowering interest rates and quantitative easing. So, how was the economy stimulated? If we consider the Wall Street Journal (at http://www.wsj.com/articles/ecb-announces-stimulus-plan-1421931011), we see ‘European Central Bank to Purchase €60 Billion Each Month Starting in March‘ that amounts to over 400 billion for 2015 (6 months, Mar-Sep). The quote “the ECB will buy a total of €60 billion a month in assets including government bonds, debt securities issued by European institutions and private-sector bonds“, so how did this benefit the UK or people in general? Now to get back to stimulus, where we saw the inclusion of quantitative easing. Let’s take a look there too: “A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying financial assets from commercial banks and other financial institutions, thus raising the prices of those financial assets and lowering their yield, while simultaneously increasing the money supply“. with ‘references’ in play, in my view, the Stimulus by ECB President Mario Draghi is nothing more than a catch and refund net for bad investments, buying back a paper tiger that was not worth the paper it was printed on, allowing governments to spend again. How does that benefit the people?

These elements are all in play, because as people realise that this economy is so that the large corporations go on not being tax accountable, governments spend money on so many things that benefit everyone except the people in general. Consider how many actual problems 400 billion could solve, not some joke called ‘the EEC economy’ but broken things we could actually fix!

 

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February 11, 2016 · 21:37

Rerumphobia

Somewhere between merry old England and joie de vivre France are islands, there are a few there and some actually have a population that exceeds the number of sheep (so you know it is not New Zealand we are talking about). The island has roughly 66,000 people, making it smaller than the total size of the Australian Defence Force and less people than Boston, Lincolnshire, meaning that merry old England has 304 cities larger than the population of this island.

Now that you have this collection of conversation starters, let’s get to the gritty of it all. The place I am referring to is Guernsey, a beautiful location that is caught between the island where you can order tripe with mint sauce and the main land that serves Steak Tartar. I was starting my browser to get a daily view of the Guardian and this is what got my initial attention ‘Guernsey chief minister defends anti-racism comments‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/09/guernsey-jonathan-le-tocq-defends-anti-racism-comments-islamophobia).

Jonathan Le Tocq, Chief Minister of Guernsey stated, according to ITV “they could meet many of the necessary UN requirements, such as education provision, they would not be able to guarantee the security of refugees if they came to the Bailiwick“. The paraphrase is not incorrect Jonathan stated: “…not be targeted or excluded, we’re not there and sadly that’s not possible”, this is a direct pragmatic statement.

In my view, a few players have missed the boat by a lot, let me explain. We have seen news, from nearly all sides. The quote “The protracted plight of these refugees has become an international security issue as terrorist groups have recruited from refugee camps“, which comes from Jill Goldenziel, a Harvard PHD, her article ‘Refugees and International Security‘ starts on page 3 of the attachment at the end of the article. She follows that quote with “These crises thus highlight the limits of the international refugee management system” So not only do they not know who has been going all over Europe, there is absolutely no way to know how many ISIS martyrs will be entering any given nation. That is not a scare issue, it is not an attempt to create fear; it is a visible established fact, a fact that has resonated all over the world and not just by the intelligence community. So in this case, it is Jonathan Le Tocq who brings the valid concerns here. He is more than just a man who will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of his 27th birthday next month (March 4th if you want to send him a birthday card at: Sir Charles Frossard House,  La Charroterie,  St Peter Port,  Guernsey,  GY1 1FH,  Channel Islands). He is chief Minister of an Island that is on the 305th place within the UK for population size, if we see The Right Honourable Jonathan as the Minister Chef of the Commonwealth Island of Guernsey he is not in the 305th position, he would slide down the list in a massive way.

So, can anyone show me a list of cities higher on the UK population list, with next to that name the number of refugees they have taken in? You see, Guernsey, Jersey and a few other islands have a massive problem. When things escalate, by the time help arrives, the population of that island could be decimated. When you consider the thought that this is just paranoia, consider the two attacks in Paris, a city with massive police power was left near powerless for too long a time, so how will an island with 146 policing  members deal with a threat like that? More protection? With what money?

Let’s not forget that we tend to trivialise the police at times, whilst laughing at ‘the Thin Blue Line’, we all know that the police is a lot more than Det. Insp. Derek Grim trying to defuse the threat of ‘dratsuc’, yet people deny the direct deadliness of extremism as people looked away when a French Muslim policeman Ahmed Merabet got gunned down in cold blood by extremists, because he was protecting the French people and their freedom of speech. In equal measure there is the internal fear that a wave of panic could hit the population, lashing out unjustly. None of these facts point towards racism. Fear is a strange bedfellow, causing no good wherever it is, but in all this there is the reality of that what is, so can we see the list of the 304 larger places in the UK, with the number of refugees they have taken in?

Let’s also acknowledge that 99.999% of these refugees are real refugees seeking a way out of hell, a way towards decent sleep and decent food, but over 60,000 refugees that this means that there are 60 potential terrorists. The two attacks in France only required 11 assailants, as 34,000 police agents (over 15 districts) were too late in all the points of attack. So where does the Guernsey police stand? No matter how well Patrick Rice has his ducks in a row, with a force of 134 there is a risk and it was the responsibility of Jonathan Le Tocq to voice this.

So when we see many sources that there is “Islamophobia” on Guernsey they are not correctly voicing all of the facts. For any Christian place to state there is no “Islamophobia”, in my view that state is clearly lying, we all, have forever feared the unknown. To voice this, let me ask you a question (providing you are over 33), ‘Give me three differences between Shia Islam and Sunni Islam‘, if you know that, then ask yourself, did you know this on September 10th 2001? This comes from the award winning TV series ‘the Newsroom’, but the truth is clear, non-Islam earth for the most did not have a clue regarding Islam before that fateful day. Since that moment religious extremism (not just Islamic) has been on the rise on a global scale. In my view, the political failing to make the hard calls that need to be made are still a worry today. The humanitarian tsunami has shown that an open Europe brought massive problems and the dislodgement of millions of people is draining resources and stopping actual solutions to be implemented. This means that the fear of the unknown will hit many places and isolated easier and more intense. It does not make the people of Guernsey phobic, it does make the media at large hypocritical as it played the fear card for spinning, exploitation and scaremongering for too long, in all this the readers got caught in the middle. An example is shown (at http://www.smh.com.au/comment/terror-scaremongering-threatens-our-democracy-20140919-10jcxq.html), here we see that the 2014 rehashing of all the events show that the 2005 events were massively out of focus. The quote “The evidence in the lengthy court proceedings that culminated in a Supreme Court trial in 2008 showed nothing of the sort. The reference to the Westgate Bridge had been taken out of context and was completely innocent. There was simply no evidence of a plot to blow up Flinders Street station, and the reference to the MCG was in the context of a vague conversation between two of the accused“, in addition we see “The case against these men was put by the prosecution on the basis that they did not have a terrorist target and that they had no plan in place to commit a terrorist act. Christine Nixon’s phrase, “imminent terrorist attack”, was simply wrong“, in itself this might not be seen as evidence, but the clarity is still overwhelming. We fear what we do not understand, and not many comprehend Islam, which impacts all around. So the issue from Guernsey is still there, there is still a need to address the fear, which will not happen overnight. Yet as the press gives us that Guernsey is shown as an isolated case, would Steven Morris be so kind to give us a list of the 304 larger cities and the amount of refugees they are taking in? I did like the video that Steven Morris did put online with the view of the local populous, ‘the majority are not‘, which is very true, but a tinderbox can start with as little as two people and on 78 square kilometres, 135 people (one police commissioner and his blue minions) won’t have too many options soon thereafter, no matter in what direction the escalation went.

Let’s be clear here, I expect the chance to be so extremely low that it is not funny, but can any of the officials on Guernsey take that chance?

That is the one element people forget, you see Australia might be an ‘island’, but with 132,000 km of possible beachfront property, that little ‘island’ has a circumference equalling three times the earth. Unless you actually lived on an island (the size of Guernsey), the issue of island safety tends to elude us all. A side not clearly shown in the article, or by a massive amount of sources for that matter.

In the end, the clear refugee registration failure is part of all this. The nations of entry have missed the ball on a Titanic scale here which, under the sheer amount of refugees is not that much of a surprise, but it does give the UK now its own set of problems. Which gets us to one of the other reasons we get from being an island. ‘A lack of infrastructure and support services to help them‘, is not just a valid issue, it is a massively large one.

So as we await the list of 304, lets contemplate the wisdom of places a clearly limited group in the one place where they end up getting isolated from the other refugees (the 99.99999% that will not be placed on Guernsey), does that step make any sense at all? to end all this, lets shine a little light on a Guardian article from November 19th 2015 (at http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/19/syrian-refugees-in-america-fact-from-fiction-congress), there at the end we see “Since 2012, the US has accepted 2,174 Syrian refugees – roughly 0.0007% of America’s total population“, the article does show that the UK is staying behind in all this, which is not a good thing, but the UK is an Island, it comes with a setback, yet compare this now with the mainland (the graphic at the end of the article is very illuminating). Nations like France, Norway and Poland might not have done a lot, but they are on par with the ENTIRE United States of America, the fact that a nation like the Netherlands has taken 260% of what the USA has accepted makes the Guernsey debate a joke! That flaming, below sea-level, clog wearing nation called the Netherlands, a nation that is roughly 65% the size of the state of West Virginia, so shall we ignore the issue that is exaggerated regarding Guernsey and look at the issues why this is a global problem (apart from the valid reason of registration)?

So for those moving to Guernsey enjoy the fact that the weather at St. Peter Port will be a high between 5 and 14 degrees Celsius, so those people will face a few more shocks, not just cultural ones. Rerumphobia, ‘the fear of facts’. The final part to consider is the price tag. This costs, which no one ignores. That is a good thing, yet of all the options Jonathan, the words we could go broke was not one of them. So when you look at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-guernsey-35546424, consider that these numbers have been known for a little while now. So as tourism goes down, business visitors down by 39%, what do you think will happen next to those missing out? What will happen to the Guernsey business on that scale? In addition Tourism is set to be down by 7.8%, how will that impact retail? All elements that are a reality, when we see ‘Der Spiegel’ reporting “Some mayors have cancelled the contracts of tenants in publicly owned apartments in order to house refugees“, which is not the whole story, but a reported fact, we realise that Germany is in a decent economical position, with plenty of space, yet the pressure that 500K refugees are pressing on a population of 80 million, gives us that 0.00625%. So here we are, not confronted by “Islamophobia”, but with the underlying issues, of resources and needs, which will pressurise any situation.

As I said, let’s see how many refugees the larger 304 locations of the UK are taking on, before we start accusing smaller places by taking text out of context.

 

goldenziel_refugees_and_international_security__2010

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January 31, 2016 · 16:59

Not allowed to refuse

Yesterday the Guardian showed us a side that has avoided visibility to some extent. Part of the title is ‘recognise Palestinian state if new peace effort fails‘, the missing part is ‘France says it will‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/30/france-recognise-palestinian-state-if-peace-effort-fails-ultimatum). So what is going on? You see, the Guardian gives us many of the goods, but not all of them, which will lead to speculations (even, or is that especially by me?).

Let’s look at the parts the Guardian does give us, which is “France has issued an ultimatum to Israel, saying it will recognise a Palestinian state if a renewed push for a two-state solution fails“, it is not an unseen strategy that the larger player (sometimes called ‘the bully’) will resort to the ‘do this or else approach’, which we are used to see through American politicians, not to mention those large American corporation. So when France resorts to such a tactic we might be taken aback a little. You see, when we hear the growl from a Staffordshire terrier we look nervous and wonder what happens next, but do we have that same feeling when a Poodle growls at us? I would say no, but there we have part of the conceptual problem, because France is no Poodle, the time of Brigit Bardot with Poodles looking young, sexy and helpless was an illusion that was never the real France to begin with. If we look at the economic power of France, we should regard France to be nothing less than a Dogue de Bordeaux, it seems large and silent, but it is powerful and deadly to its opponents. To give an indication of size: Banque Martin Maurel, Société Générale, Natixis and Crédit Agricole. These are just four financial institutions, but they have the cloud to underwrite the total American public debt of 18 trillion. So you better believe that France has massive cloud here, even as America no longer has it.

Perhaps just like France gave the US Lady Liberty, perhaps the US should give France a statue honouring Monsieur Souscripteur? I am digressing!

You see, the quote “The Palestinians have welcomed France’s renewed efforts to negotiate a two-state solution at talks that are expected to include leaders from the US, Europe and Arab nations“. That quote sounds nice, but it is not in the heart of the matter, for the longest of times Palestine has done nothing to contribute to any peace solution. Part of the information that is missing is shown in the Jerusalem Post. At http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Analysis-Is-Abbas-losing-control-443117 we see: “Abbas has been facing increasing criticism in the past weeks from senior Fatah officials in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It seems that they have tired of his autocratic-style rule. Some of them, including Jibril Rajoub and Tawfik Tirawi, have even come out in public against the PA president, demanding that he share power enough at least to appoint a deputy president“. What would be a better solution for what is ‘regarded’ as Palestine authority to push other players in trying to push Israel in budging. America (at present) is no longer seriously considered a player in the Middle East.

Turkey_strut_small

Reasoning here is that it cannot deal with Russian events and in addition, there is a ‘minor’ in our midst called Turkey who is making new claims regarding ‘air violations’ on Turkish airspace, hoping someone holds their hands (just me guessing).

 

 

 

 

‘My airspace has been invaded!’

Getting back to the Post, we see “Fatah seems to be in even worse shape in the Gaza Strip. Fatah leaders and activists there have accused Abbas of ‘marginalizing’ the faction, and are making unmistakable break-away noises“, which is all about politics, but the fact that Abbas and Hamas are at odds is not a good development, in addition, Hamas ‘pledged’ on January 7th that they were considering resuming suicide attacks against Israel, so whatever acts France has on its mind, it plays towards Hamas, not the Palestinian people and in addition the continued ISIS action in Gaza are fuel for even more concerns, so ‘recognising’ any part of Palestine is a really bad idea. Let’s not forget that they are at the core of a mess that many parties wanted to solve (or at least seriously try to solve for over 2 decades). Now we get to the good stuff! The quote “Fatah leaders in Gaza are furious with Abbas. They have a substantial list of grievances. First, Abbas has not paid the salaries of thousands of their members there, including policemen and security officers who have been sitting at home since Hamas seized control over the Strip in 2007“, so now we see what Abbas needs, he needs money, stability and a large player at his back and that player better brings money and loads of it. Something America cannot achieve. So now we see the links that France is ‘opted for’ to bring to the table. The Jerusalem Post brings even more issues, which are linked but less direct when regarding the French Connection Abbas seems to hope for (apparently through Laurent Fabius), I could go on that it is a socialist situation, but that seems slightly too petty, because believe it or not he is a good and intelligent politician who was in 1984 the youngest Prime minister of the fifth Republic of France to be elected. In addition, I personally believe that a man like that is about French Interests (the price for being born in the Arrondissement de Passy).

Yet, I feel certain that I am not the only one who sees this for what it is, it is an economic play, yet to what extent? That will remain pure speculation. You see, the quote gave us “talks that are expected to include leaders from the US, Europe and Arab nations“, it is the part ‘Arab nations’. I feel certain that whatever deal is struck that can be ‘presented’ as ‘short changing’ Israel, whomever pulls that off will get loads of leeway in the Middle east. As America dropped the ball more than once, France seems to be going into ‘Mastiff’ mode and is taking the game to a new level. There is additional consideration that this play would take loads of Muslim pressures away from France, which is a tactical consideration. Whether that part is at all in play is not certain, as stated, I am also speculating here. The steps make sense, but the facts are not out in the open.  The BBC has hinted in the past months in that direction, but they have not given any specifics in the last two weeks. The Washington Post did confirm in more than one article that Palestinians consider the reign of Abbas an utter failure, which gives us the second side. How can any state be recognised that has been unable to keep its own ducks in a row, it has no real economy to mention and the last numbers that have any reliability have been a decade old. One source (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/palestine/gdp) gives us 6.9 billion in 2013, yet I personally believe that these numbers are inflated. My reasoning? Well, when we consider that they have the following ‘ranks’, Palestine Corruption Index at 26.00 Points, Palestine Food Inflation at 3.72%, and Palestine Unemployment Rate at 27.40%. When we consider (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/palestine/gdp-growth-annual), we see GDP growth, in 2014 per quarter set at 7.1%, 3.9%, -10.1% and -1.1%, that is in my view adjusted overly positive speculation. As per July 2015 it is suddenly set at +9.6% for Q3 2015. Is no one catching on here? The numbers do not add up, it is (as I personally see it) an interaction of overly positively weighted expectations with a massive downdraft when inspected, in addition, with 25% corruption and 27% unemployment GDP can never rise to that extent. The Doghmush clan (now known as Jaysh al-Islām) might be the only growing GDP player. Perhaps the PNA could report whether their economy comes (partially at least) from Jaysh al-Islām?

As I stated, speculation, but if Palestine has no economic footprint, how can any headway be made if the numbers don’t add up? I accept that any nation will forever be more than its economy, yet when we see that too many questions exist on BOTH the political and economic field, how can any agreement be kept or be pushed in any direction? A peace process requires both sides to keep to any agreement and there is too much evidence that any agreement will not be honoured by the next player and Mahmoud Abbas is already on the way out, making the efforts of France a mere waste of time to say the least.

 

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January 28, 2016 · 20:41

Bitches of Technology

There are multiple issues in play, first there is the continuation of the previous part, which I will address here. The second is the article the Guardian published (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/uk-should-be-punished-if-it-leaves-european-union-to-deter-other-exits) titled ‘UK should be punished if it leaves EU to deter other exits, say former ministers‘.

My first response in regards to this would be “are you bitches out of your mind?” which sounds highly emotional and it is. You see, Brexit (and the possible upcoming Frexit) is a direct result of the people in charge of REFUSING to take action when they could, in addition, they decided to hide behind ‘Status Quo’ when they should have acted. In final addition, several acts of change have been pushed forward again for the good of big business, which makes me question their intent.

To illustrate this with evidence (which is always important), in my article ‘Dress rehearsal (part 1)‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/07/01/dress-rehearsal-part-1/), which I published on July 1st 2015, I included the PDF at the end of the blog too ‘Withdrawal and expulsion from the EU and EMU some reflections‘. On page 33 we get “it is likely that some Member States would object to the introduction of a right of expulsion in the treaties, coupled with an amendment of Article 48 TEU to make that possible, since this would expose them to the risk of being forced out at some future date. Moreover, apart from it being politically almost inconceivable, forcing a Member State out of the EU or EMU would inevitably give rise to tremendous legal complexities. This, perhaps, explains why expulsion has not been, and may never be, provided for in the treaties“, as the members in charge of that piece of paper were already too deep in the mess on non-accountability, they actually set themselves up for a long fall, one the Greece instigated and even now, reflecting back on all the warnings I gave from 2013 onwards, none would have been considered. Now again in this paper we get on page 11 the text “The silence of Community primary law on the existence or otherwise of a legal right of withdrawal was, in any event, inconclusive, lending itself to two fundamentally opposed interpretations. One is that a right of unilateral withdrawal existed even in the absence of any explicit reference to it in the treaties, since sovereign States were, in any case, free to exercise their sovereign right to withdraw from their international commitments“, the text refers to P. Doehring and P. Hill where there seemed to be the case of favouring the theory that it reflects the hope of the drafters of dissuading Member States from withdrawing. That was nice in those days, but the interested parties of today have had enough of the utter irresponsible acts of other so called world leaders. In addition there is the expression ‘Sovereign power’, coming from ‘Sovereign States’ which has been defined as ‘power not subject to limitation by higher or coordinate power held over some territory’ this comes from N. MacCormick’s ‘Questioning Sovereignty‘.

So even after we saw the useless and toothless statements from some in the past regarding “throwing Greece out of the Euro and the EEC“, we see an even more toothless statement from several former ministers at this junction regarding the punishment for those leaving the Euro/EEC. It is given additional voice in the quote “We should not encourage other populist forces campaigning on exit such as National Front in France or Podemos in Spain. This is a very important consideration. This is in the interests of Europe that we do not encourage other EU countries to leave. The common interest of remaining members is to deter other exits. This should have an impact on the terms Britain gets”, words spoken by the former Polish deputy prime minister Leszek Balcerowicz. He is probably realising that his goose is cooked soon after Brexit and Frexit. Even though he looks ‘good’ on paper, 53% debt of GDP still comes to 236 billion dollars, in a nation with 38 million people. They are all panicking now, because the British referendum is not going good (read: the way they want it to go). If only someone had the balls to strongly intervene with Greece, and in better terms clean up legislation a long time ago, this mess would have been speculative at best. Now we see the texts that the writers want us to focus on, but in all this, in that same air, we see the ignored facts. Facts, that (as I see them), Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor is not eager to inform his readers on.

The little part in all this is something that was mentioned twice, including the photo caption. You see, this is an exercise to debunk issues by the Open Europe Think-tank. You might notice some ‘fluffy’ facts, yet the truth is, is that these people are speaking whilst at their backs (read: they are the political shield) for players like Jardine Matheson Holdings (61 billion plus) and British Petroleum (358 billion plus), with a lot more then these two, we see that Open Europe is a shield for the bigger players, all behind a fluffy website (at http://openeurope.org.uk/). These groups are very dependent on keeping the EEC as is, the Status Quo to be, but the people all over Europe have had enough of this non-accountability from both politicians and large corporations. That is exactly why Le Pen and Farage are a worry to them. Even now we see (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/25/northern-ireland-irish-republic-eu-referendum-enda-kenny) the first mentions that a referendum is not needed until the end of 2017. That stalling is exactly what Farage is hoping for, showing more vigour in this fight! We see that Reuters is giving us “To loud applause, Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, told a Grassroots Out campaign event that Europe’s policy of taking in migrants with few checks had endangered the lives of those living in the 28-member bloc“, with an additional “Farage was joined on the stage by Britain’s former defence secretary Liam Fox from Cameron’s ruling Conservative party who is also campaigning for an exit“, which is now a growing issue.

Now I need to get back to the previous article, even though this time it is not about the man or the victim, this is about data and data systems. you see, certain amendments were to be made in Serious Crime Bill (at the http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-06/06/cybercrime-bill-life-sentence), Wired informed us regarding “there is no existing offence of owning manuals that offer advice on how to groom or abuse children sexually“, which might not help Breck Bednar and family any regarding the circumstances. In addition, the Serious Crime Act would in this case apply AFTER the damage is done, so no matter how many improvements, Breck Bednar ends up remaining terminally dead no matter what.

When we look at the Serious Crime Act of 2015, we see at section 3 we see ‘Unauthorised acts causing, or creating risk of, serious damage‘, but this is AFTER the fact and even then, many of the facilitating acts will remain unanswered. In my previous blog I got some comments on ‘the Nigerian prince‘ issue. They were fair enough, but in some of these parts we have two issues. We can go with the part that Breck Bednar got himself killed by not listening to his mother. Which to some extent makes sense, yet in the same light, we see that levels of facilitation remain unanswered in many ways.

Consider the following

  1. The administrator of a server service gets to intentionally misrepresent himself or herself. We have two issues, one, is that we already have issues of misrepresentation. The issue given is “He claimed to be a 17-year-old computer engineer running a multimillion pound company“, the fact that this misrepresentation comes with “he was invited into an online gaming group – a ‘virtual clubhouse’“, in the foundation there is no initial cause of imminent danger, but the danger could have been avoided in a few ways.
  2. What if such servers need to be openly registered and linked to a registered corporation or firm, which now gives us the issue that Lewis Daynes would have been better known, moreover, the police would have seen more red flags possibly intervening before Breck Bednar entered a state of being permanently dead. I will go one step further, what if, not unlike ‘Raising the bar’ in IP law (2013), we see, contemplate and try to adjust the validity and the accountability of the facilitator. Now we get that change!

You see, Lewis Daynes would have to answer several questions, logs would have been available for the police to investigate. That is the one step too many sides do not want to consider, because accountability in too many cases seem to deflate maximised profits, yet in all this, is that a valid train of thought for any government to consider?

  1. Consider that on February 17, 2014 Breck Bednar ended up dead, those facts had been in court for a while (he was convicted in January 2015), yet knowing that this issue was already playing we see (at https://www.nspcc.org.uk/fighting-for-childhood/news-opinion/flaw-law-online-grooming-legislation/). The headline ‘PM announces new online grooming offence‘ sounds nice, and there is forward movement, yet there is a massive gap in the prevention of grooming, which is not even correct in this case, when we consider the law. Most laws would have been able to use the path of facilitator, most social media will still be able to hold onto the defence of ‘innocent disseminator‘, yet, the action of Lewis Daynes do not allow for that. His continued interactions stop him from that path giving us an option to grant an additional level of protection to future victims, whilst not hindering business and profit as a whole, because the bulk of all social media is founded on interactions by users and facilitation by the system. Even in the most precise case of scripting, it is not towards ONE individual, it would be towards a spearheaded group of thousands. Breck Bednar would have been in an automated introduction amongst thousands and in this case there is safety in numbers, because the actions of Lewis Daynes would have raised many more flags, enough from barring him from a system he did not control and in his own system he is not the facilitator. It is the lack of many organisations (governments, corporations and legal parties) to dig into the option of setting safety parameters regarding ‘facilitation’.

As seen, there needs to be an additional circle of protection, which addresses the dangers of the ability for grooming. This is a hard issue to address and in light of any Brexit it could become a lot harder, if any law has to be addressed, than in light of all the changes the next 10 years will bring, a massive change to digital devices, for example, the new Huawei P9 will come (read: is rumoured to come) with 4GB RAM, 64GB ROM, 8MP front camera and 16MP back camera, and installed Android 6.0. It comes with a 64-bit processor that outperforms plenty of laptops.

Now we get back to part one, because the two are linked in cyberspace.

You see, the chance of Brexit which was 39% in November 2015 is now surpassing 48%, this means that there are a few issues coming forward, apart from the growing danger that UKIP seems to be. You see, this is not just a Nigel Farage thing. There is a rather massive jurisprudential lag in prosecuting economic crimes, especially economic cyber-crimes.

Some of the information can be found (at http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/news/british-crime-survey-reveals-extent-of-fraud-and-cyber-crime-in-sngland-and-wales-oct15). The article ‘British Crime Survey reveals extent of fraud and cyber crime in England and Wales‘ gives us “the cost of fraud to the UK economy estimated at £30 billion more needs to be done and more resources are needed to assist law enforcement to help victims of crime and prevent further victimisation“, which sounds nice in theory, but the foundation needed is stronger legislation.  Yet in all this, there is an issue with the article. The quote “This is new crime in our society and it brings new challenges for policing in prosecuting offenders and protecting victims. Notwithstanding the cuts to police budgets we must find ways of responding to the needs of victims of fraud. Alongside this policing response the UK needs to begin a prevention revolution to educate the public on how to stop hackers and fraudsters from taking our money“, which focusses on the money, just on the money, in all this there are other venues where there is an issue (perhaps the name Breck Bednar sounds familiar).

The issue is to deal with the facilitators without strangling true entrepreneurial options, which is what has been lacking both within the Commonwealth and outside of it. You see, the danger to the many sides of life through technology, including the children is growing on a near exponential level. First of all, the main issue is IPv6, it was essential to conceive this new technology for the mere reason that its predecessor has actually run out of options. With a mobile growth that seems to double on an annual base, the new phones won’t just have IPv6 (as the mobile industry started to adopt it since around 2009), the growth of IPv6 has doubled in the last 12 months. At http://betanews.com/2016/01/05/ipv6-adoption-nearly-doubles-in-a-year/ we see that usage went from just below 6% to well over 10%, falling just short of 84%, here I mean that over 10% of all traffic to websites is now IPv6. For the most, this cannot be clearly monitored, which means that with the next mobile iteration, we will see a growth unlike we have seen before. You see, Statista (at http://www.statista.com/statistics/263441/global-smartphone-shipments-forecast/) forecasts a sale of 1.4 billion phones in 2016. This would include the upcoming Huawei P9, the Apple iPhone 7, Google Nexus 6, HTC One M10, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and a few more. These phones will ship with up to 4GB RAM (in two cases 6GB is rumoured), several of them with 64GB internal storage.

This is a nightmare to the intelligence community, as well as the CPS and the DPP, yet I feel that for parents the worry should be bigger, a lot bigger. As social media gets more and more derived solutions, niche groups will be a consequence, which means that children like Breck Bednar could end up being an even larger target, because there is too much evidence at present that monitoring those groups will become technologically near impossible. IPv6 Now (at http://www.ipv6now.com.au/primers/IPv6SecurityIssues.php) shows us a few issues. The first quote is “With 18 billion billion addresses in a /64 subnet, sequential scanning is pointless. It would take 500,000 years to scan a single /64 at a million probes per second“, I will immediately admit that I left a little part out of it, so there are options, yet let’s see my reasoning.

That part is seen in the quote “In IPv4, multiple addresses are always possible, but rare. But in IPv6 they are very common, arising from SLAAC, temporary DHCPv6, link-local addresses, multiple prefixes, overlapping lifetimes, as well as IPv4 addresses. Admins must be aware of all possible interface addresses and the capacity of network devices to create their own addresses“, this implies that the admin is all on the up and up, but when we consider those with other agenda’s like Lewis Daynes and we see apps appearing that allow for a peer-2-peer approach, a system that piggybacks messages. At some point someone will miss out on checking, especially when they are distributed in other ways. Financial opportunists, organised crimes, schoolkids and monsters in the making a system that cannot be monitored in any way because governments ended up being too lax in a world where those in power requiring ‘space’ and not realising who else they were enabling, or perhaps they did know but did not care.

Now we are beyond running out of time, because of the Statista is even close to correct, the world could have an IPv6 based mobile server park (as well as a data cloud) that ends up being unmonitored. Now, I am not evangelising not allowing for these iterations, yet the need to adjust legislation that additional options exist to hold certain groups to account becomes an increasing essential need.

There is one final side that IPv6 Now gives us. The quote is part of auto configuration (which is too often way more dodgy than I care for) gives us “DHCPv6 (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) allows a server to supply addresses to hosts. DHCP in IPv4 needed external support, but in IPv6 it requires nothing but a working router for the connected host to be immediately reachable“, if we consider that any mobile phone is a router, how reachable will this modern host be and more important, what data could be gotten access to, especially in an unmonitored way?

At this point, we seem to become nothing less than the bitches of technology. I could state that there is a group that will try to align certain paths, but it is already too late for that. People, their lives and whatever they own is streamed on a near 24:7 foundation and in all this there remains a technological lack in the places that cannot afford not to have it. When we see the news on the ‘evolving’ systems fighting fraud and other creative (and sometimes graphical) activities, we see that the gap of our safety and our allowance for accepted acts is widening to the extent that everyone is an evolving target without any clear means of staying safe. There is support for that statement. It comes from the Czech Ministry of Education (at http://services.geant.net/cbp/Knowledge_Base/Network_Monitoring/Documents/gn3-na3-t4-cbpd132.pdf), now we will accept that this is a 2011 document, yet, this does not diminish the quote “IPv6 configured hosts on an IPv4 network can bypass defined security policy or hide their identity using temporary IPv6 addresses“, consider that in conjunction that many users (young and old) tend to use free Wi-Fi locations whenever possible, making monitoring an even lesser option. Now consider those places and the traffic that they could (unintentionally) offer through ‘temporary IPv6 addresses‘, so what safety is there?

Clearly we have become the bitch of technology and the law is falling behind more and more. The EEC has done too little and Brexit could go either way in protecting the people, but the danger here must be acknowledged, if ‘protection’ becomes too draconian it would not become protective and only drive away commerce, a mere lose-lose situation for everyone involved.

 

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January 24, 2016 · 22:05

Persecuting the prosecutors

Sometimes things get to me. We all have those moments, we all consider the things that touch us in different ways. For me, I have been a gamer since the beginning of gaming. This world started for me in 1983 with the Vic-20 and was followed up with the CBM-64 a year later. I never stopped gaming, so when I got hit with the article ‘I couldn’t save my child from being killed by an online predator‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/breck-bednar-murder-online-grooming-gaming-lorin-lafave), I kind of lost it. This gaming world is a world I share, virtually and in reality. I talk to my co-workers on the new games, the challenges some games give and how we feel about some games. A few friends are all about GTA, some share my passion for Fallout, Diablo 3 and Minecraft. Whilst some games we all play by ourselves, because we cannot be into every game that is a mere reality. We hunt down the mutants, kill them with our rifles (all by ourselves), and when we get that legendary monster we get to talk about it the next day. This is a world of fun, joy and challenges. We do not ignore the real life, we interact with others too, which is not always about games. So, I was slightly dismayed when Olivia Wilde chose Jason Sudeikis over me (it must have been the beard). Life goes on, so as you see, we have our dreams, our fun, our joy, our fantasies and we go out of our way to get as much joy into our lives without bringing harm. That is as I see it a way of life that the bulk of us gamers have.

Some are a lot more competitive and even relenting on gaming as they kill virtually to be the best, some of them have a too vivid drive to be winners and dissing the losers or at times being the wannabe’s that strike out to winners. In that world we have all kinds, but actual harm, those cases are rare to say the least. So as I read the article, a form of anger flushed over me. This is for the mere reason that, for a large part of my life, I have been driven by logic and common sense (apart from that Olivia Wilde moment). From what I have read, there are several things wrong here. Not towards one person, but towards a few, including the victim himself.

This is the first quote that actually came after the second one “He claimed to be a 17-year-old computer engineer running a multimillion pound company. Sometimes he was in New York, working for the US government. Other times, he was in Dubai, or off to Syria” and “the ringmaster, whose server they played on. While the other members were known to Breck or his friends, Lewis Daynes was not someone they knew in real life“.

These two quotes should have been a red flag to all parties. We cannot blame a 14 year old, but this should have been the red flag to upset the parents. You see, I will never be a multi-millionaire (actually if Larry Page listens to an option I came up with, I could be). What is the issue is that gaming comes at a price, for the most the really wealthy ones work too much to get time to be on gaming servers. In addition, his location should have been all over the place, any Cyber squad could have seen that, it would have been a real orange flag to the victim that not all was on the up and up, the first thread on the loom of disaster would have been dismantled.

The quote “Lewis says I don’t need to finish school as he can get me a Microsoft apprenticeship when I turn 16” is the second flag. It should have been the alert on several levels. The man was either some ‘multi-millionaire‘ working for Microsoft, or again this was a ruse. The additional “I should be allowed to game as long as I want“, should have alerted parents and police. You see, in common Law even at 16 Breck Bednar would have remained a minor. So, why is a stranger deciding on what someone else’s child does?

The final quote on that topic is “I’d be telling Breck to get offline and he’d literally have Dayne’s voice in his earphones telling him not to listen. I could see Breck’s face, torn between me and his cool mentor who had the whole world going for him”, which now gets us a stranger involving themselves in the life of a minor.

The police as well as the cyber groups should have been all over this, in addition, did anyone contact the FBI here (even though after the facts it seemed an irrelevant act)? You see, the events not yet known could have been averted before zero hour, as Lewis Daynes was from Grays, Essex. This could have diffused a lot of issues. His stories out in the open, for Breck Bednar and all his friends to know what kind of a person Lewis Daynes was before he could strike. Now we can blame the police, and I am doing that partially. Yet in all this, we must also expect that there is a limit to the resources the police has, limitations in time and hardware. Not all is a given.

But there is an issue when we go solely from the article we see in the guardian. You see the quote “I told the call handler what I’d heard, what I feared. She obviously didn’t understand online grooming” has more than one side.

The known elements here are that Breck Bednar was a minor and that there was a clear indication that Breck Bednar was unlikely to be the only minor. We have the following parts, when we look from the other side: ‘Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk an individual. It may include monitoring, identity theft, threats, or gathering information that may be used to threaten or harass‘, I edited the non-relevant parts out of here. So we see that Lewis Daynes was monitoring, we have identity theft, we can make that case as he assumed to be a person, moreover an industrial who did not exist. This could be seen as a danger to the life and wellbeing of minors.

The elements here are now another matter. You see, in the eyes of the court there is no established guilt, or even crime at this point, yet exposing the elements would have diminished the threat Lewis Daynes was and would most certainly have protected at least one child, leaving us with the reality that Breck Bednar could have been alive today. In this we might consider that the police is to be blamed to some extent, but in equal measure, they did look for the elements, the issue here is the fact that does also count. When we see the quote “Daynes later pleaded guilty to murder with sexual and sadistic motivation“, we are confronted with a combination that is really rare, and with the elements as found, or better stated those that were missing, mainly that the police didn’t find a single image or text about bodies or sex. Certain flags were never raised, but as stated, from what we can see, enough flags should have been raised to take this serious, to give clear indication to Lewis Daynes that he was under open investigation, perhaps enough for him to back off. Enough to diffuse the situation.

Here is my part that is now also an issue. This took me mere minutes, which also beckons on what more precisely happened. You see the police is not lacking or stupid, I would go even further that the involved people might be burdened with guilt. So why is it so clear to me? Well, first of all, to see this in the article is simple, a mere exercise of logic. The true elements over time are a lot less clear, but in all this, the main elements were gamers, gaming platforms and servers, they have time lines and logs. Any level of logs missing would have been another red flag, any other interactions would create even more red flags. So why were these elements missed? Where did the police system fail? In my view there was a clear failure here. Police 101 had failed in a few ways, but it is uncertain whether the failure should allow any level of blame. You see, there is an element that is in the article, but cannot clearly be weighted. it is  “Now 18, he was unemployed, living alone in an Essex flat where he bought server space and used it to game with teenage boys“, we are looking at a 2012 system, so what kind of server space? Did he have his own server? Or did he lease hardware? Unemployed and cash for that? If it was a solitary server, we see another element, because it would not be in an enterprise environment, showing even more flags, if it was a personal server, the cyber division had a place to look at, who had Lewis Daynes been interacting with? Even more parents would have been alerted, other gamers would have been informed that he was a jobless no one, and not the 7 figure income person dangling IT jobs from Syria, New York or Dubai.

All elements, all flags and more issues. All out in the open could have prevented the fatal consequence to Breck Bednar, but that is me talking after the events. As stated, this one article is not a proper setting for it. Yet the BBC article gave a few more issues to consider. The fact “Five other counts against Daynes, including the rape of another boy, were not pursued as there was not a realistic prospect of a conviction, the prosecution said“, so perhaps the fact that the element of rape might have been an additional flag that there was a real risk of danger to Breck Bednar. Yet, the BBC is unclear as per when those criminal elements would have been known. Yet there is additional evidence. If there had been a clear investigation the evidence “encrypted electronic equipment” as stated by the BBC could have given additional issues, because they might have been there validly in an organisational situation, in the case of an unemployed 18 year old, such elements could give rise to flags of a criminal aspect, a criminal aspect that had children in the mix.

Even though there have been investigations and even though a misconduct notice was brought, it took almost no time to find enough flags to raise concerns on several levels. This gives concerns to what else is getting missed. Not because I am so bright (I am that), or that the police is that stupid (they really are not), but the need for an evolving infrastructure. If you think that issues are missed now, what do you think will happen when the transition to IPv6 really gets underway? With handheld and mobile devices all stronger than the average data server in 2007, what was reserved to data servers and corporations, is already in the hands of individuals, most of them having no clue what they are holding onto and what these systems are capable of. How can any police force sustain its workload if it is not reshaped into an evolving infrastructure that is able to adjust to other criminal elements? This level of evolution is currently not happening, moreover, it is not happening in many nations. Which is a worry when we consider the case of Lewis Daynes, you see, in this age of economy, the danger of extreme behaviour in a time when people have no jobs, no outlooks and no prospects, these souls are more likely to become extreme, that is a given, yet the extent to it happening is not known, it cannot be predicted and it requires for a better level of investigation. If we are to lower the dangers that kids like Breck Bednar face, we have no other choice but to evolve and change the way we investigate these issues. There has been a clear call for a long time that legislation requires adaption to all kinds of cyber-crimes and cyber based crimes. This for the mere reason that the jump to IPv6 allows a jump from the 4.3 billion addresses that IPv4 gave, to the amount that every person on the planet would have a unique address for every device it owns. More important, IPv6 will allow for every person on the planet to have 1,000 devices, each with their own address and even after that less than 0.1% of all available IPv6 addresses would have been used. We are pushed into an evolution because IP addresses are no longer available. Our devices, each 1,000 times more powerful than the computer that got Apollo 11 to the moon, the computers required to monitor the satellites is now no more than an app and nearly every mobile phone from the previous generation would be able to run it. We moved technology that far ahead. We are now moving to the situation where we see that almost 4 Exabyte a day is transmitted. All that data, once we are in IPv6, all that data can be identified per person and the amount of data will increase almost exponentially. When we get there, how impossible will it become to find extreme elements like Lewis Daynes? That is just the extremes, we haven’t even considered what organised crime could be up to. A situation that brings more questions than answers. Some answers are being sought by Lorin LaFave and I wonder if enough parties are asking the right questions, because some questions come with the element of costs, and they will grow, yet the costs will already be high to begin with. A dimension many politicians are not ready for because the coffers are empty and budgets constraints will limit the steps that need to be made, many are aware of it and nearly no one are voicing those elements.

There is a reality to that, but the reality we need to address is the nightmare Lorin LaFave is forced to face and she is not the only mother who should be worried.

 

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