Life's a beach.......

Today’s slightly pre-Christmas blog comes from what would be a delightful Coconut Grove Hotel located on the Hainanese coastline just East of Wenchang. I say ‘would be’ as, at the time of writing, the immediate environs seem to be suffering from the effects of some local stubble burning and there is a somewhat pungent smell about the place. My room looks out directly onto the South China Sea, but the potentially pleasant view is diminished to some extent by the aforementioned haze to the extent that one can barely see the island 600 metres away, let alone the horizon. At the moment, I am not sure if this is a temporary phenomena or more a permanent state of affairs. Seeking further information from the reception staff yielded little or no insight, just the usual emotionless expressions and disinterested shrugs.

This is something of a shame as most everything else about this location is really very pleasant indeed. The hotel is well named ‘The Coconut Grove’ as it is located within a veritable forest of coconut trees. The whole area is a fecund mass of verdant and copious growth, so much so that the experience of walking though it is somewhat akin to enjoying the tropical plant section in Kew gardens or a few hours in the Eden Project but on a much, much larger scale. I must have walked five or six kilometres this afternoon and, apart from the odd basic dwelling, the inland side seemed to consist of an almost infinite variety of flora and fauna with quite literally more coconuts and mangoes than you could shake a stick at.

Butterflies would flutter by, some tiny little things with delicate, pale yellow wings, others were about half the size of my hand with pitch black, velvety wings adorned with large red spots like bloodshot eyes. I inadvertently walked through a couple of thick spider’s webs, a worrying experience given the size of some of the insects on this island. One’s imagination took flight at the thought of the monstrous arachnids that may have been lurking in the shadowy undergrowth nearby, just awaiting their chance to pounce on unsuspecting passers-by like myself.
At one stage I did actually partake of one of the coconuts which were being offered by a roadside peddler. She seemed to be a somewhat passionate woman, much given to haggling very aggressively with her customers. In my particular case the first price I suggested to her, six yuan (slightly less than $1), seemed to be acceptable and she immediately, and rather skillfully, sliced up the coconut. I found myself partaking of the delicious juice within barely thirty seconds of ordering it. In the meantime, the woman herself carried on arguing with the rest of her clientèle. For my part, if there is one lesson I have learnt in life that I could and would pass on to my readers it is that one should rarely argue with an angry woman, but particularly avoid said pastime if the female in question happens to be in possession of a machete and knows how to use it…

After a couple of kilometres I turned down another path that led back down towards the beach. The jungle was very thick at this point and the path only a couple of feet wide, but I was drawn on by the increasing volume of the sound of the waves of the South China Sea lapping up against the spartan seashore.
The beach itself was an odd mixture of the most pristine sand and huge amounts of carelessly discarded debris of all sorts. This particular strand would have appeared to be something of a tropical paradise if it wasn’t for the sheer amount of flotsam and jetsam either washed ashore or simply thrown away by the locals. There is a peculiarity in Chinese culture that I have noted on many an occasion whilst here: the care and respect that they treat their own environs with contrasts completely with the absolute disregard for shared surroundings. It is curious how commonly one sees this environmentally disastrous attitude expressed throughout the land. Rubbish and detritus matter not if they are deposited somewhere, anywhere, outside of one’s own house or car it would seem. I blame Confucius myself, and all that ‘filial piety’ nonsense he was so fond of espousing.

The sheer scale of the debris was interesting in and of itself. All manner of discards from used mattresses to farm implements, fishnets (of the angling variety rather than female hosiery...) to plastic containers, curious industrial metal hangers to worn out tyres, a vast cornucopia of chaotic chattel cast aside with nary a thought as to any consequences.

Dotted about the beach were also numerous holes, some a mere half or even a quarter of an inch, others as wide as four or five inches. I guessed that these might be the domains of the crab population and only paused for a seated break on the beach in a spot that was relatively free of them. Even then, after only a few seconds, I noticed that a particularly curious crustacean was espying me via his beady eyes which extended a fraction of an inch or so above his head, having popped out of his humble abode to work out just what was going on in the neighbourhood. This was one of the bigger crabs, perhaps three or four inches across, with a brownish green body adorned with red spots across the front. I say ‘front’ somewhat warily, as the crabs themselves don’t seem to understand where their front is actually located. The multiple, smaller gray crabs walked much in the fashion so popular amongst the crab population and would lurch off very quickly to the side. If they were particularly alarmed, they seemed to have the ability to stand up on just one side and run at high speeds in this upright position. A strange and slightly disconcerting sight.

Gazing out upon the beach from my somewhat nervously maintained vantage point, the panoramic view reminded me of my boyhood and watching endless films of American Marines storming up the beaches of exotic tropical islands led by the ever-present and seemingly bullet-proof John Wayne. Japanese snipers would be waiting in the tops of the coconut trees for a chance to take a pot-shot at one of our American allies but would be felled with a dull and satisfying thud by the sharp-shooting skills of one of our trans-Atlantic heroes.

After all this excitement, I was more than ready for some satisfying sustenance. Hainan Island is famous for both its fish and its chicken. The first I rarely eat but will do so when not much else is available, the second I steer clear of completely. At the roadside though, and particularly in the vicinity of the restaurants, there were many small vegetable plots where the locals were taking advantage of the puberal and prolific nature of the soil. The restaurant I settled on actually asked me to simply pick whichever vegetables, mainly greens and salad, that I fancied. This was then prepared with garlic and herbs and offered up with a bowl of rice for around 15 yuan (about $2). It literally could not have been fresher, within seconds of being picked the leaves were sizzling away in the wok.

Existence here on Hainan is very, very pleasant, particularly in such small resorts as the one I am currently staying in. Occasionally I think of life in the UK at this time of year, of the crowded shopping malls filled with heaving, frantic and frenzied masses of frenetic present purchasers desperately trying to acquire something appropriate in the way of a gift to the mind numbingly and ubiquitously tedious accompaniment of John Lennon, Wizard, Madonna, Paul McCartney, Slade, Wham etc., etc., etc., or even, God forbid, sickly sweet and soporifically sonorous Christmas carols.

Yes, life is good here in far flung Hainan away from such tedious traditions. In the last ten years, I have managed to avoid spending all but two Christmas holidays in the UK. Each of those reminded me of why I dislike the whole unpleasant ‘festive’ season in the first place.
Long may these escapes continue!

A merry Xmas to all...

Irrational Exuberance…..

“But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?”
Alan Greenspan

This week’s episode come from the small but delightful Green Tea Cake which, strictly speaking, isn’t really a café at all but more a bakery with the possibility of having a green tea thrown in if customers should so desire. They do a rather scrumptious red bean loaf here for a very reasonable 7 yuan. Probably not the healthiest thing in the World, but a very pleasant indulgence nevertheless. The wifi connection is relatively strong and, for the most part, it feels like a little haven of peace in the day to day madness of this manic metropolis.
Life in China is intense, perhaps a little too intense for some tastes. People’s attitudes are often very direct which does, I have to admit, take a bit of getting used to. In the city centres, they often seem to live in an almost constant state of agitation, an ongoing struggle to get ahead in whatever terms ‘getting ahead’ is meaningful to any particular person: getting in front of the car in front, getting over the zebra crossing first, getting to the front of the queue, any queue, by fair means or foul. It is quite routine here for the person behind in line to demand whatever they want even as the shop assistant is dealing with the person at the head of the queue. In almost any other country that I have visited over the years this would be considered ill-mannered at best, here it is so normal that the locals scarcely bat an eyelid.

This manic freneticism is perhaps nowhere more desperately expressed than in the Chinese Stock Markets. China has two main markets, the Shanghai Securities Exchange, which has been in existence some four decades now, and the much more recently founded Shenzhen Stock Exchange in Guangdong Province. Since being in China, I have kept a weathered eye on these two and have been somewhat amazed at just how drastic the daily gyrations are. Vertiginous price movements in a given share are nothing unusual in these markets. Such drastic movements in an upward direction are looked upon very positively by the authorities here. On the other hand, a ten per cent move downwards can lead to further selling being suspended for the day. It’s a free market, but with Chinese characteristics...
Originally, I had been tempted to examine the possibilities of investing here but, after a few weeks of investigating just how the system ‘works’, I have come to realize that any semblance of a relationship between the price of a given share and the underlying reality of the business in question is purely coincidental.

Many moons ago, in the dot com boom at the turn of the century, I found myself caught up in much of the ‘irrational exuberance’ referred to by Alan Greenspan. Fortunately, by nature, I tend to have a very strong sense of caution and often display more than average skepticism when it comes to such mass indulgences. I remember being criticized at the time by a friend who explained to me that I ‘failed to understand the new paradigm’. What he meant was that the old rules relating to valuations of companies no longer applied. Caught up in the spirit of the times, so many people actually believed this to be the case. Personally, I did indulge a couple of times, but was fortunate to have been taught the value of stops (prices at which you automatically sell if a position is going against you) by another friend who shared my skepticism. This allowed me to walk away with a very decent profit. Others were not so fortunate and found it hard to let go when the bubble finally burst.

Much the same sort of situation, at least as far as the psychology goes, applies to the Chinese markets of today. I examined multiple shares, looking at their earnings, or more often the lack of them, their PE ratios (price/earnings), their debt, their growth and the actual nature of the industry or business they were involved in. A normal PE would be in the region of 10 to 20, much above that and the price begins to look a little frothy. British shares tend to the lower end, American towards the higher, but the range isn’t huge, at least not when compared with China.
What I found is that some of the ratios in China would be in the 30’as or 40’s, with some reaching into the several hundreds. I looked into the nature of the underlying securities to try to understand how such prices could be justified and found... car manufacturers, travel agents and electric plug makers. Such companies as these may grow, but the possibility of them justifying such huge PE ratios is more or less zero.
One of the problems for China is that the average investor here tends to have little experience and even less knowledge. The market is commonly viewed as simply another form of gambling, an activity much beloved in China (even if technically illegal), rather than a means to invest in a business. In Europe, the UK and the US, the biggest influences on prices are the major institutions and hedge funds, professional investors all. In China, it is Joe Bloggs on the street.
To put it simply, the market reflects a tidal wave of irrational speculators but very, very few informed investors.
In light of these investigations, any temptation to find a means of investing in such madness quickly disappeared. This bubble is so huge that when it bursts, as indeed it must, the sound of the explosion is going to reverberate around the globe.
Back in the Green Tea Cake, I find myself struggling to resist the temptation of some of the gorgeous dangao (cakes) on offer. China has grown much in recent years and there is a general sense of prosperity about this part of the World. Beneath the surface though, the threat of the investment bubble, the real estate bubble and, perhaps the biggest of all, the credit bubble that supports the whole house of cards lies simmering away in the background (Just how many metaphors can a lazy flaneur mix in one sentence?...). With these things one never knows just when lightning will strike, but strike it will. Given the vast amounts of capital involved in each of these situations, this is likely to be bigger than the dot com catastrophe or even the 2008 financial crisis. At times, tis a scary old World…

Down the aisle...or down the garden path?

“Have you ever wondered why so many items of women’s clothing don’t have pockets?” Esther Vilar

This week, I find myself in the rather dark , albeit friendly and relaxed environs of Cochan Coffee in the bustling business district of South Dongguan. These Chinese cafés seem to work to a recipe that demands the ubiquitous presence of music continuously blaring away in the background. Some, like C café, have a tape that consists of about three songs only and loops from dawn to dusk and beyond. Others, like Hey!!! Cyber, feel that Western Rock is an appropriate background to the enjoyment of a cup of coffee. They are sadly mistaken, of course, but that same recipe is repeated day in and day out. This particular café specialises in somewhat softer Western Pop and seems to actually change the music on a daily basis. Such practices come as something of a relief. Listening to tapes looping again and again has something akin to the effects of the infamous Chinese water torture on me and brings on an almost irresistible temptation to place a booted, size 14 foot, through the offending apparatus.
The Chinese, or at least it seems to me, are dominated by custom and practice, even when that custom and practice are no longer applicable or, worse yet, were not a good idea in the first place. All societies have expectations of their constituents, ways of being and acting that seem fitting and appropriate within that society. In China, perhaps, those expectations are nowhere more prevalent than in the area of marriage and reproduction. Every person within the society carries the weight of expectation that at some stage, the earlier the better, they will pair off and create multiple replicas of themselves. Not that China is lacking in such replicas, currently they have some 1.38 billion of them and going up. One area that China is definitely not to be found wanting in is people…

The weight of these expectations in China has been keenly felt since the age of Confucius and his emphasis on filial piety. The ‘rightness’ of getting married and having children is scarcely ever questioned within this society, even though the country suffers from severe problems of massive overpopulation. At some stage, usually without much personal consideration at all, the average Chinese will feel it is almost a duty to fulfill his/her society’s expectations and thus lock their lives into a certain, pre-determined course for decades to come.
One of the relatively good things about China though though, is the relative simplicity of the marriage contract. People are general married via a secular ceremony carried out by a local official. Chinese females, being female, often insist in many of the trappings of Western style weddings: white dresses, bridesmaids and all the rest of the paraphernalia associated with celebrating the capture of a husband. Despite all this, if the marriage fails (which they are increasingly likely to do in China, just like almost everywhere else), it is relatively easy for the couple to divorce. If both parties are agreed, this can be done in a weekend. Even if they disagree, the process is still much simpler than that which is ‘normal’ in the West.
If the husband had a property before the marriage, there is no question of it being shared with the wife after a divorce, especially if she has made no contribution to the acquisition of that property. The split is relatively equitable. Children are provided for, if necessary, but beyond that there is no onerous obligation on the part of the husband to sacrifice his financial well-being to his now ex-wife.
Perhaps this is an area where we in the West could learn from the Chinese and the way that marriage and divorce are handled here, at least in the legal sense. Given the lack of even-handedness in divorce law in the West, there is clearly a need for some re-adjustment before men start to give up on the idea of marriage altogether. Indeed, exactly this is happening in America at the moment. In previous decades, 70% of those of marriageable age would, indeed, be married. That figure is now barely 50% and going down fast. The main reason for this is appears to be that men are now perceiving marriage as a ‘bad deal’. One wonders what took them so long?
Given current legislation in most Western countries, almost all the risk of marriage is taken on by the male, almost all the reward given to the female. This becomes even more so if the couple divorce. Whether or not she has contributed to financing the property the couple live in, the wife will tend to end up benefiting if they separate. Unlike in China, no consideration is given to the simple fact that she has not contributed and she is deemed, simply because of the fact of living there, to be entitled to at least a share of the said premises, sometimes the whole kith and caboodle. This same situation often applies to the husband’s wealth, even when the wife has made no contribution whatsoever, she can still expect a ‘nice little earner’ from the settlement.

The blatant inequality of the law in such situations has led to the creation of a new career path for females in the US, although admittedly similar situations have occurred in many cultures over the centuries. The phenomena is known as a variation of ‘hypergamy’ and consists of a process of ‘marrying up’ through a range of husbands, gradually moving up in social class, and gaining greatly from the settlement each time the female divorces yet another man who has become surplus to requirements. If there have been children from the previous marriages, so much the better for her. The courts will have awarded her generous settlements which, essentially, will allow her to live out her days without the need to actually work ever again. The same, of course, cannot be said for the ex-husbands. They often find themselves working all the hours for the next few decades in order to pay maintenance to their former wife to keep her and her new lover/husband in some degree of comfort. Failure to do so, at least in the US, can lead to incarceration.

Given such a situation, is it any wonder that more and more men are rejecting marriage altogether? Even a ‘successful marriage’ will entail restraining their options in almost every area in life simply for the reward of providing a female with house, home, financial support and replicants. As Pete Duel asked, somewhat incredulously, in the role of Hannibal Heyes, ‘That’s a good deal?’
Back in the Cochan the musical accompaniment has changed to a relatively pleasant, and markedly less intrusive, classical composition. The early morning crowd of stressed and smoking men has disappeared into their offices and the clientèle now largely consists of middle-aged housewives, perhaps the partners of those very men who previously occupied the place, contentedly passing the time of day with their friends. Tis a hard life for some...

Rebel Without A Cause...

"Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy".
|Thomas Hobbes

This week’s blog is brought to you from perhaps my favourite port of call of the moment, the Hey!!! Cyber Cafe just off the main square in South Dongguan. The coffee is reasonable and reasonably priced, a comparative rarity for China. The décor is wonderfully minimalist and the staff are friendly and helpful. The only downsides are the constant muzak, in this case an icky pop/rock selection of current Chinese favourites, hence particularly tiresome, and the fact that despite many signs to the contrary a host of customers who insist on smoking. This is perfectly normal in China where such rules are routinely ignored if inconvenient, much like zebra crossings, traffic lights and theoretically pedestrianized zones. There is the world of difference here between what is supposed to happen and what actually happens.
Throughout my life I have felt myself to be something of a rebel, someone who finds it not only convenient to ignore certain rules but actually has great difficulty understanding their significance in the first place. This has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in the sense that I have been happily free from the pressures that many feel to conform to some arbitrary norm, but a curse in that I sometimes inadvertently break some social convention or rule, much to the annoyance of people I value as friends. Given this, I find myself somewhat divided in my feelings about the attitude of so many Chinese citizens, and their ubiquitous and routine flouting of rules and conventions. In some ways I find it really quite annoying, as with the smokers right now, in others there is something actually quite liberating about their refusing to do something just because someone, somewhere has made up a rule about it.
In this particular discussion I take no position, have no guidelines and admit myself quite bereft of recommendations, let alone answers, but during my travels these thoughts have often occupied my mind. I ponder this question often, it goes to the heart of the nature of governance and even the need for governance at all.
I must admit to finding myself confounded and confused, befuddled and bemused as to whether the imposition of strong governance is a good thing in that it imposes an amount of ‘civilized’ behaviour and standards on the citizens governed, or a bad thing in that it limits, sometimes to a quite extraordinary extent, liberty and expression.
It seems I am not alone in my discombobulation, this question has vexed many a philosopher since the beginnings of what passes as civilization. The great 17^th century English thinker Thomas Hobbes stated: “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.”

His fear was, that without the control of law and governance, man would revert to a condition of internecine and ongoing war, each person, family, tribe and group struggling with and against each other. Given the ongoing state of the World over the centuries since he wrote those lines, it is difficult to disagree with him.
A couple of millennia previously, the Greek dramatist Sophocles had put it perhaps even more simply: “There is no greater evil than anarchy.”

The country I find myself in at the moment, the People’s Republic of China, brings these questions sharply into focus. There is an odd admixture here between very strict laws in any area in which the government feels the possibility of a threat to its authority, the ban on any meaningful protest and the constant, paranoid monitoring of every action on the internet being obvious examples, combined with a completely laissez-faire approach to law enforcement in general. The smoking ban in cafés is an obvious example of laws that have been passed but remain completely unenforced. The roads here are perhaps the most anarchic I have ever seen in a theoretically civilized country, drivers tending to do whatever happens to enter their heads at any given moment without the slightest consideration of others around them or concern about rules, laws or regulations.
As sino-advocates never tire of reminding us, Chinese civilization goes back some five thousand years or more, but the results of this ‘civilization’ are hard to see in the day to day behaviours of people here, particularly when they are in a position of power or behind the wheel of a car.
An opposing view to Hobbes was put forward by the much-admired American writer Henry David Thoreau who advocated the freeing of people from the constraints of government when he said: “That government is best which governs least. The best government governs not at all"

He has a point, and one that is supported by many in America who consider themselves libertarians in the sense that they feel their freedoms should be protected from interference from government. In their view, the US government should be as small as possible or even, ideally, non-existent. For my part though, I must admit to a certain alarm at the thought of a complete lack of governance. It would seem clear that Thomas Hobbes had a valid point in relation to the probable result of complete freedom.
So, given that we need to have some form of governance for civilization to exist at all and for us not to live in constant fear of anarchy and/or violence from our fellow man, the question becomes what form of government should we have and how is it to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the populace.
I quoted Tony Benn on this issue last week, but perhaps this would be an appropriate occasion to give the full text as it makes several interesting and valid points: “In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.”

Such thoughts often occur to me when faced with living in the quixotic and paradoxical China or holidaying in the semi-anarchic corruption of Thailand. Just where do such governments gain their legitimacy? And how is this legitimacy ever tested? Authority is often enforced through the arms of the state such as the police or the military, but is this, as W.W.W. McNally once pointed out, simply a case of the police being the biggest gang in town with access to the most resources?
Such questions leave me vexed and perplexed on a regular basis. In all humility, I have to admit to having no answer but merely the desire to fathom the depths of these conundrums, to attempt to arrive at some kind of valid position, if not a solution.
For anyone interested in such arcane but fascinating debates I would recommend checking out the Harvard lectures of the excellent Michael Sandel. He has the habit of asking the most obvious of questions and demonstrating again and again that the answers themselves are nowhere near as obvious as the questions.

Back in the Hey!!! Cyber I take another sip of their reasonable Americano and look around at my fellow customers. In some ways at least, I have to admit to finding them pleasingly pragmatic. Over the past 150 years or so the Chinese have seen many systems of governance come and go, from Emperors to Democrats, from Fascists to Communists, to arrive at the present ambiguity whereby those in power pay lip service to communism, or at least to ‘the Party’, but in reality follow policies that are in themselves simply pragmatic in nature. Perhaps China is the first country to arrive at a solution to the endless political debates that have divided men seemingly forever. They seem to have reached a point that perhaps can be best described as post-politics, or at least post-idealism. Sadly for those of us who still have some vestige of belief in political ideals, perhaps that is the best that the human race, with all its greed, its violence and its irrationality, is actually capable of?

You can fool some of the people some of the time…

This week, I find myself in the sumptuously indulgent surroundings of the Reading Mi bookshop and it’s very pleasant extension, Cafe Mi. Coffee is an eye-watering 35 yuan a cup, which equates to around £4 or $5 a cup at current rates. The coffee is good, but not that good. What you pay for is the experience of enjoying an Americano in such a wondrously pleasant circumstance: softly lit and comfortable booths on the inside of the café or overlooking the Hongfu Road and the Exhibition Centre on the other, the tables surrounded by voluminous volumes many of which, quite fortunately given my awful Mandarin, are actually in English. It should also be noted that coffee in China also has something of an added cache to it, even a common-or -garden Starbucks will cost you somewhere in the region of $4 here, hence the incredibly inflated prices in Café Mi.

I write this particular piece a couple of weeks after the election of one Donald J. Trump, an event that came as something of a surprise to some, but which others, myself included given my recent experience of the Brexit vote in the UK, suspected may well come to pass. I actually wrote a piece two days before the election warning people to expect the unexpected but, due to the difficulties of blogging from China where I currently find myself, I was unable to find a means of publishing that particular diatribe in time.
Let me be perfectly clear, before I begin a process that is likely to bring some degree of opprobrium down upon my head, that I thought, and still think, that Donald Trump was a perfectly awful candidate for the office of President of the United States. He was, however, the better of the two candidates on offer as his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was so distasteful that it was only through necessity, and the thought of the dangers of Donald Trump achieving the ultimate office, that even dyed-in-the-wool Democrats were persuaded to vote for her. 

A good friend, and a man whose judgment I much respect even when I don’t completely agree with it, put it a little too succinctly perhaps when he expressed his relief that HRC fell on her ‘fat, feminist fascist ass’. A little crude perhaps, but he does have a point. Feminists, particularly the type represented by the extremists such as HRC, have in the last decade seriously damaged the fabric of American society and, by their actions, precipitated a long overdue reaction that has worked very much in the favour of the American right. Equality of the sexes is no longer the aim for contemporary feminists, but rather the complete emasculation of all expressions of what it is to be male. Misandry has become politically and socially respectable, no matter how violent, how hateful or how sexist. ‘Fascist’ is an extreme accusation, but given the way that all debate has been stifled, all expression of contrary views suppressed, all freedom of speech trampled underfoot in the universities of the US in recent years it is, perhaps, not too far short of the mark.

As ever, the UK tends to follow in the wake of such cultural movements in the US. Britain’s universities have also began to suffer from the same depressing, repressive and regressive tendency to expound a single, narrow, ‘politically correct’ point of view and to suppress all others. Speakers who do not toe the line have found it increasingly difficult to find platforms, even those whose views are only a few degrees apart from the PC hardliners find themselves struggling to be allowed expression on university campuses.

Both the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump also revealed a most disturbingly arrogant attitude from some, by no means all, of those who found themselves on the losing sides in these debates. The line, oft repeated of Brexit supporters and now applied to those who dared to vote for Trump, has been that they are either ‘old’ or ‘stupid’ or, more likely, both. Such people have been much derided for not having understood the issues involved. My own experience has been quite to the contrary. Those who understood in depth the issues involved were more likely to vote Brexit.
During the UK campaign, I was somewhat shocked to find that the the theoretically left-wing Labour Party was supporting the notion of remaining in the European Union complete with its democratic deficit, with its unelected and unrepresentative Commission and with its deep embrace of Globalization. Tony Benn must have been spinning in his grave (not to mention one Jeremy Corbyn and his quite woeful hypocrisy on this issue). The only left wing choice if one cared at all about the fortunes of the British working man, the man who has seen his standard of living absolutely slaughtered by Globalization and the free movement of labour across Europe, was to vote to leave that benighted institution.

 
Given the decimation of prospects that working people have seen in the last 25 years, surely their choice of Brexit can be described at many things but stupid it was not. Logical, consistent, rational...all these words would fit quite nicely, but stupid it was not.
Much the same can be said of the American working class, although the ravages of Globalization have by no means stopped at that level. They have suffered a very similar fate to those in the UK with their jobs and their livelihood disappearing to the countries of the East where workers rights and conditions are much exploited and hence products can be manufactured at far cheaper rates.

This has worked hugely to the advantage of China and other countries of the Far East. Every time one returns to this land one sees it developing at an incredible pace. In effect, much of that development has been achieved by usurping the livelihoods of the working and middle classes of the West: of America, of the UK and of Europe.

For a tiny, tiny fraction of society in the West, the top one or two percent perhaps, this has worked out just fine; they have been having a glorious time exploiting sweat shop labour whilst throwing their fellow countrymen and women to the wolves. For the rest of the population though, it has not been quite so much fun.

Back in Café Mi I look around at my fellow customers. They are mostly of the increasingly prosperous Chinese middle-class enjoying the benefits of two and a half decades of economic growth. They are well-dressed in fashionable and stylish attire. They read intellectually challenging tomes or chat whilst enjoying an overpriced cappuccino and the view across to the gargantuan Exhibition Centre opposite. Such folk are as much the beneficiaries of Globalization as their counterparts in the West have been the victims. They once looked to the West in envy at the lifestyle that hard work and application could achieve there. Now they look with a faint curiousity and perhaps just a little sympathy…

Much Pride, but not too much Sense...

Since my early summer trip to Madrid, this particular nomadic flaneur has not been anything like as nomadic as he would like to be. This is about to be remedied with trips to Zuhai, Dongguan, Saana and Hangzhou planned in the next three months, plus perhaps a jaunt over to Phnom Penh in the new year. Norfolk, where I currently find myself, has proven to be a not unattractive place to spend the English summer though. Huge forests, varied coastlines and an English quaintness which, at times at least, can be quite charming.
The largest city in this area is Norwich, with a staggeringly tiny population of 213,000, a figure that would barely qualify it as a town in China. I have to admit though, that parts of the city are really rather lovely and hark back to previous times of economic influence and a long history as a prosperous, if somewhat diminutive, metropolis. I personally spent several pleasant and interesting days there in the summer and even sampled, as is so often my wont, a variety of the coffee serving hostelries on offer.
On one visit in late July I happened across an interesting phenomenon, quite jolly at one level, quite sinister at another. As I wandered through the market in the centre of the city I became aware of a disproportionate number of outlandishly attired folk of indeterminate gender, wandering around that particular part of town. Hair coloured lime green or purple seemed to be the order of the day, make-up de rigeur (at least if you were male, perhaps not so much on the females) and all manner of sartorial choices the only theme of which seemed to be to engender an ambiguity in relation to gender.

I also noticed that many folk were sporting badges along the lines of 'Gays against Orlando'. A few weeks prior to this mass demonstration there had been a very unpleasant incident in Orlando, Florida where a muslim man of troubled sexuality had burst into a gay night club in the city armed to the teeth with a variety of automatic weapons and proceeded to mow down all and sundry simply because they were likely to be gay in such an establishment. A truly awful incident that seemed, at first glance at least, to speak volumes about America's problems with gun control and more or less the whole planet's problem with radical Islam.
I wandered further up to hill to the street just in front of the town hall. There various speakers were regaling the jolly throng of demonstrators with words of encouragement and support, outrage at the act itself and bemoaning the disrespect of society for the human rights of gay individuals. Most of these words chimed with my own fairly liberal views on such things. As a general rule I believe in the notion of live and let live, as long as said process doesn't unduly impose on another against their will. 

At this point though, I did notice a rather strange phenomenon. Many of the protesters either wore badges or carried placards stating 'Refugees Welcome Here', many of these provided in the yellow and red of the Socialist Workers Party. Generally speaking, the country I currently find myself in (the UK) has a long and distinguished record in its attitude to refugees, something that speaks well for its general tolerance and ability to accommodate all manner of attitudes. The refugees in this particular case though were specifically the wave of Islamic migrants that, due to a very misguided policy, had been flooding into Europe over the course of the previous 18 months. 

 

The idea of supporting an influx of people who shared the very same belief system as the person who perpetuated the awful act in Orlando, and who used it as the justification for said act, seemed to this flaneur to be oddly inconsistent, if not downright contradictory. Here we had a group of people, gay to be precise, urging the mass importation of very significant amounts of people whose belief system very explicitly expresses the notion that all homosexuals should be put to death. There is no ambiguity in this view, no doubt, no room for maneuver, just a crystal clear tenet of the admittedly rather bizarre belief system that is Islam.
Perhaps it is me, but demonstrating to allow a group of people into the country who hate you, who despise everything you stand for and who want you dead seemed to your correspondent to be just a tad, how can I put it, illogical? It was bad enough that the banners mostly originated from the Socialist Workers Party which, when I last checked, was an avowedly atheist party, but the fact that they were being carried by people whose lifestyle is the very antithesis of everything that Islam stands for seemed to be stretching credulity just a bit too far.

I reflected back on the events of that awful night in Orlando. The shooter, one Omar Mateen, was a 29 year old Muslim who, in case their was the slightest doubt, rung 911 three times to inform them that he was carrying out the atrocity in the name of Islam and ISIL. As he carried out his terrible crime he was heard to shout out 'Alluha Akbar' numerous times. His father, as it turned out, had also been something of an apologist for the Taliban and had previously been under surveillance by the American security services, as had Omar Mateen himself.
There seems a strange form of denial occurring in what used to be called the 'liberal media', an almost magical form or reframing events in such a way as to avoid the all too obvious cause and instead pontificate endlessly on about anything else other than the blatantly obvious. The Washington Post indeed, in an article devoted to the Orlando shooting, somehow managed to construct a multi-column piece and not mention the words 'Islam' or 'Muslim' once. One must admire their creativity, if not necessarily their intellectual honesty.

As I watched this oddly deluded demonstration taking place, particularly as I listened to the various speakers on the steps of the town hall, the urge to point out these glaring inconsistencies rose up within me but....given I was but one voice in a crowd that seemed convinced of a contrary view, and given that almost any utterance in such a situation can so easily be defined as a 'hate crime' (the police seem very keen on that particular type of felony in these days of post-referendum Britain), I held my counsel and simply looked on with a somewhat bemused expression on my face.
There are, as some wag once put it, none so blind as those who will not see...

Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself....

This week I find myself in Madrid, the very pleasantly sunny capital of Spain. As I write these words, I am enjoying a very tasty 'desayuno' consisting of coffee, fresh orange juice and a bocadillero (which seems to be a very large chocolate bun) at a local cafeteria, restaurant and cervezeria that glories in the title of "El Restaurante Jordan Gala". Having spent a month shivering and quivering in the unseasonably cold UK (it's been the second coldest April on record, apparently), I decided that it would be expedient to set off on my peripatetic perambulations once more and head South for sunnier climes (as it happens, a heat wave hit Britain three days after I left - que sera...).
Madrid in the last week has enjoyed temperatures in the mid 20's centigrade, occasionally spiking to the low 30's if the local wall-mounted thermometers are anything to go by. These sort of temperatures just about qualify as pleasant for me these days – one becomes somewhat spoilt by the constant 35 plus of Thailand, a little too hot perhaps, especially when compared to the UK, but surprisingly easy to get used to.
The UK, at the time of writing, is caught up in an ongoing campaign prior to a referendum on remaining in the European Union. The actual vote is still nearly two months away, but the tactics employed by the remain campaign seem like an echo of those used to win the Scottish referendum of last year. At the time it was known as 'Project Fear', dire warnings of all the terrible consequences that would befall the Scots if they dared to leave the Union. The current EU campaign feels like deja vu all over again… every piece of bad economic news that emerges is blamed on the possibility of exit, or Brexit as it has become popularly known.

Unemployment was up last month – because of fears of a British exit apparently.
The growth figures were down last month – because of fears of a British exit.
The second coldest April on record – no doubt because of fears of a British exit…
We are told that house prices will drop, wars are more likely, the UK's security will be threatened, industry will suffer, prices in the shops will raise and every family will somehow be £4300 worse off by 2030 (a rather magical figure, as it turned out, produced by projecting figures that the treasury have rarely managed to get right over three months out to fourteen years, then using a completely fictitious method to calculate household income - et voila, £4300!).
 
It seems that anything and everything negative that happens in the UK at the moment is down to fears of a British exit from the EU. Oddly, the opposite effect seems never to be observed. Whenever good economic stories emerge no reference at all is then made to the possibility of Brexit being at the root. One wonders why?
At the start of the referendum process, and as someone quite pro-European, I was leaning towards the notion that staying in the EU was the better option. I was aware of the relatively peaceful state of affairs since the inception of the Common Market and was inclined to believe that at least some of that peace and prosperity was down to the sharing of the economic interests of the central European powers.
Unfortunately, the more I looked into the matter, the more I realised that the EU is an institution that stands for almost everything that I perceive as being at the root of the problems that plague our World today. One of the most egregious of these is the pernicious effects of globalisation, the process whereby fewer and fewer multi-national companies come to dominate the World's economy, usually undercutting and ruining local communities and small businesses in the process.
Two days ago, I spent a delightfully sunny afternoon in the centre of Madrid. I alighted from the metro at Banca de Espana and made my way up to the Calle de las Infantas. I found this narrow street to be thoroughly charming. I had gone in search of a local shop that specialised in juggling equipment (unfortunately closed recently – yet another victim of the process it seems), but found numerous small and very colourful shops, each unique, each very individual and very Spanish in character. I spent nearly an hour wandering in flaneurial fashion from shop to shop enjoy the imaginative décor, the shop windows and the goods on offer. For someone such as myself, well disposed to strolling through the World's more interesting cities, this was a pleasant experience indeed.

Unfortunately, it did not last long. Pretty soon I was in the Calle del Clavel, leading down to the Gran Via. This pedestrianised area was packed with the likes of Nike, New Balance, Starbucks and various other American based multi-nationals selling exactly the same stuff as they do in Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok, London, Paris or New York. The type of corporation that turns you from being a customer into being a consumer. The type of corporation that is killing local business everywhere. The type of corporation that pays rock-bottom rates to their staff and their suppliers, whilst at the same time avoiding tax whenever and wherever possible. Given their influence in the seats of government and in the EU, barely ever are they brought to book for their nefarious practices. All this results in an enormous competitive advantage which makes it nigh on impossible for small, locally run business, paying their fair share of tax and their employees a reasonable wage, to compete.
Small, as E.F. Schumacher pointed out in his 1973 book, is indeed beautiful. It is also somewhat more fragile, especially when opposed by the power of multi nationals backed by the might of trading blocks such as NAFTA and the EU. Such blocks reach well beyond government, well beyond the democratic process to impose their standardised, homogenised, de-individualised World upon us all. 

 
Such trading blocks are little influenced by notions of social responsibility or democracy. They are there to be lobbied by corporations and multi-nationals, often to the mutual benefit of the corporations and the likes of the EU Commissioners. As regards the EU itself, it is interesting to note,that the most powerful part is not the parliament, but the totally non-elected Commission. The politicians come and go, but the all-powerful Commission remains, unreachable, untouchable, unchangeable by the electorate, yet lobbied (often a euphemism in itself) and influenced by big business and the forces of globalisation.
This lack of accountability of the EU Commission is one aspect of the so called 'democratic deficit'. There is lip service to the needs of society, but when it push comes to shove (think Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal) it is the needs of the financiers, of the banks, of the corporations that are catered for, no matter how severe the effects of the austerity imposed on these countries are. In effect, what we have is a massive transfer of money from national governments and tax payers into the hands of corporations. The EU itself is at the very heart of this process.

Back in the Jordan Gala, I find myself enjoying the very sociable atmosphere  and the general conviviality of the place. The Spanish, fortunately, seem to have lost little of their appetite for good living, for enjoying themselves, for friendliness, despite suffering for years now under the cosh of austerity imposed via the EU. The effects in the smaller suburbs of Madrid are all too readily apparent; high rates of unemployment, buildings in need of repair, streets needing to be cleaned. Beneath this though, and despite the ravages of draconian and ineffective austerity, the spirit of the people shines through. Spain, like the UK, like many countries in Europe, needs to free itself from the shackles imposed by the EU or face ever more austerity and ever steeper decline in living standards for all but the select few.