Do Brexiters love sinister corporate power grabs or not?

I'm pretty sure we all remember how Brexiters chose to fearmonger about TTIP in order to sell the case for Brexit. The argument against the TTIP corporate power grab is a very strong one, so it's no wonder Brexiters jumped on the anti-TTIP bandwagon.

One of the worst aspects of TTIP is the inclusion of sovereignty destroying ISDS components that would allow multinational corporations to completely bypass the democratic and judicial systems of any countries that have signed up to it in order to sue governments in secretive transnational tribunals. This means that if any democratic government introduces new legislation that multinational corporations don't like (plain packaging on cigarette packs, environmental protection laws, product safety standards, consumer rights, improved workers' rights ...) then the multinational corporations could extract £billions in compensation from the taxpayer in secretive transnational tribunals operated by a tiny band of extremely highly paid, mainly US based, corporate lawyers and arbiters.

It didn't matter how many times people like me pointed out that although TTIP is a very bad idea, it would have to be approved by every national government in the EU before it could be implemented. It didn't matter that we pointed out that the Greek government had already sworn to veto it. It didn't matter that we pointed out that the left-leaning governments in Portugal and France would be extremely unlikely to endorse it either. It didn't matter that we pointed out the massive scale of pan-European opposition to TTIP ... it was a fabulous anti-EU attack point for the Brexiters to use, and they did in their thousands.

Brexiters opportunistically jumped onto the anti-TTIP bandwagon despite the fact that the Brexit movement was driven by hard-right fanatics like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, John Redwood and Iain Duncan Smith who would just love to see British sovereignty completely over-written by a corporate take-over charter like TTIP. Before the Brexit vote the Tory party was one of the biggest cheerleaders for TTIP in the whole of the EU. Boris Johnson even wrote articles lavishing TTIP with praise and savagely condemning anyone who dared to criticise any aspect of it!

It should have been absolutely clear to any anti-TTIP Brexiter that handing even more power to the hard-right fringe of the Tory party by voting for Brexit would give them a perfect opportunity to ram through hard-right corporate power grabs to make TTIP look like a walk in the park, and without any democratic avenues to fight back against it either. Sadly lots of Brexiters just bought into the anti-EU rhetoric and chose to believe that that people like Boris Johnson (who so loved the idea of TTIP until a few weeks before his Brexit conversion) are genuinely concerned about protecting British sovereignty and "taking back control"!

Fast forward a few months and the adoption of another EU transnational corporate power grab called CETA is being stalled by three regional governments in Belgium. Three of the six Belgian federal parliaments have objected to this deal with Canada (the Wallonia region, the Brussels-Capital region, and the French community) so Belgium will not be able to sign up to it.

This deal between the EU and Canada contains exactly the same kind of shady ISDS tribunals as TTIP. It's precisely these sovereignty destroying ISDS components that are the main objection of Belgian politicians like Paul Magnette who have led the opposition to CETA.

The reaction from Brexiters has been comically hypocritical. They're now trying to claim that the CETA is a great thing and that the EU is a basket case for allowing regional democratic parliaments to obstruct this supposedly marvellous deal!

Before the referendum it was pretty much impossible to find a Brexiter who would argue in favour of TTIP because criticising TTIP conformed with their anti-EU agenda. Just a few months later it's pretty much impossible to find a Brexiter who will admit that CETA is exactly the same kind of sovereignty destroying corporate power grab as TTIP. Additionally the facts that regional parliaments in Belgium can obstruct it, and that all national governments will have a veto on its implementation are suddenly signs that the EU is "utterly dysfunctional", not conclusive proof that the EU isn't half as anti-democratic as the Brexiters were shrieking a few months ago.

What the hell do these Brexiters want? A few months ago they were telling us that corporate power grabs were evil and unacceptable attacks on our democratic sovereignty in order to push their anti-EU agenda. Now they're telling us that giant corporate power grabs are the absolute bees knees and the EU is a totally dysfanctional basket case because individual member states and federal regions can assert their democratic sovereignty to obstruct them!

Either the EU is a giant anti-democratic behemoth which imposes sinister corporate power grabs against member states' wills, or it's a democratic organisation that allows member states to obstruct wonderful, amazing. brilliant, marvellous corporate power grabs. It just can't be both.

It seems to boil down to this. If progress towards a massive corporate power grab can be used to attack the EU, then hoards of Brexiters will do it ... but if the democratic obstruction of another massive corporate power grab by Belgian regional parliaments can be used to attack the EU, then hoards of Brexiters will do that too.

The double dose of hypocrisy is absolutely searing. Before the referendum Brexiters told us that corporate power grabs are terrible, but now they're out in force to describe CETA as the bees knees, and before the referendum they wouldn't shut up about the importance of democracy and national sovereignty, but now that Belgium is asserting its democratic sovereignty within the EU they're shrieking "dysfunctional", "basket case", "red tape nightmare", "the EU is broken" ...

This multi-layered Brexiter hypocrisy is a perfect illustration of the blinkered and anti-intellectual ideological puritanism that is toxifying British politics. Screw the facts, screw the politics, screw the economic indicators, screw the experts, screw the evidence, screw rational consideration, screw ideological consistency, screw the consequences ... As far as millions of people are now concerned the EU is pure evil and they are determined to attack it from every angle, no matter how utterly hypocritical they make their cause look in the process.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Has nobody told Heather Wheeler that the British Empire is finished?

Instead of just enjoying the fact that the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic team managed to finish second in the Olympic medals table, the Tory MP Heather Wheeler took it upon herself to mock up a medal table for the British Empire in order to have an utterly pathetic dig at the EU. 

It shouldn't really be necessary to explain why this was an incredibly tasteless move, but it's not so long since a YouGov opinion poll found that 44% of British people are actually proud of our history of colonialism, so I suppose it's necessary. 

According to YouGov's findings, for every one person who recognises that our history of stealing other people's land, pillaging their resources and subjugating their people is not actually something to be incredibly proud of, there are two people who think that colonialism was a jolly good show!

If we forget about the land theft, the pillaging of resources and the political subjugation of millions of people and just look at a few episodes of famine, slavery and mass genocide, I think that's enough to get the picture that the Empire wasn't just a bunch of jolly japes.

• Australia: Thousands of indigenous Australians massacred during the British occupation of Australia.

• Ireland: Genocide and deportations, famine, severe political repression.

• India: Tens of millions of people died in famines during the British occupation of India.

• South Africa: Mass genocide, land theft, the first use of concentration camps, a political legacy of apartheid.

• Jamaica: Taken by the British in the 17th Century and established as a slave labour economy. Regular massacres of slave rebelloins, Maroons and indigenous islanders.  

• Canada and the United States: Mass genocide against the native American peoples.

It's certain that modern day Olympic heroes like Usain Bolt (Jamaica), Wayde van Niekerk (South Africa), Michael Phelps (USA), Penny Oleksiak (Canada) and the Fiji Rugby sevens team hold no animosity towards modern UK citizens over the appalling British history of colonialism, but they'd most likely react furiously if you told them that they didn't win their medals for their own countries, but actually for the British Empire.

Interestingly the Tory MP was using Britain's colonial legacy to have a dig at the EU. It's a spectacularly ill-conceived argument to say "look at how well all these countries we once invaded and occupied have done in comparison to your modern political union of democratic states".

Still, I guess a load of desperately ignorant Biffer and Kipper types will adore this harking back to the days of empire when the British could invade other lands with complete impunity, pillaged resources and murdered anyone who got in their way. I guess appealing to the savagely right-wing sentiments of people like that was the point of posting such an image.

I just can't figure out why Heather Wheeler couldn't just be happy with the spectacular over-achievement of UK & NI athletes in the medals table without bringing Britain's appalling history of colonialism into it to have an utterly pathetic dig at the EU.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Why 2016 is going to be a big year for the Basic Income movement

When I first started writing about the subject of Basic Income in 2013 the topic was very niche. Since then the Basic Income movement has picked up some significant momentum.

In this article I'm going to provide a few useful resources and then detail some of the most important recent Basic Income developments.

Resources

Basic Income is the idea that absolute poverty can be alleviated by providing every member of a society with an unconditional subsistence income. Beside the reduction in absolute poverty one of the main benefits of such a system is that anyone who chooses to work is always better off because their work related income is not subtracted from their welfare payments creating extraordinarily high rates of marginal taxation for the low paid as is currently the current welfare policy in the UK.

My first article on Basic Income was this introduction to the subject. I have also written this one about the labour market consequences of Basic Income provision, and this one comparing Basic Income with the current UK social security system.

If you want to keep up with the latest Basic Income news then it's worth following Basic Income Europe (Facebook/Twitter) and checking out the Basic Income Earth Network website.

Recent global developments

Finland
You may have heard talk that Finland is going to introduce a Basic Income payment of 800€ for all citizens, but this story has been severely over-exaggerated by elements of the UK press. What is actually happening is the establishment of Basic Income trials in Finland as a result of the Finnish government's adoption of evidence based policy (something else I've been advocating for many years). Essentially the Finnish government is planning to conduct a large scale Basic Income cost-benefit analysis. You can read more about the developments in Finland here.

Netherlands

Another major development is the announcement of a kind of Basic Income trial in the Dutch city of Utrecht. What is being done there is not a full-scale Basic Income trial because the payments will only be made to the unemployed, however it will be useful in determining if unemployed people are more likely to go out and find work if they get to keep everything they earn rather than having the majority of their earnings subtracted from their benefits as is the case under . Here's a recent article on the Utrecht experiment.

Spain
The Political party Podemos was only founded in March 2014, yet after the Spanish General Election in December 2015 it is now the third biggest party in the Spanish parliament, provides the mayors of Madrid and Barcelona and has a social media following twice as big as all of the other parties in Spain combined! Podemos support the concept of Basic Income, and if their exponential rise in popularity and influence continues, it seems only a matter of time before they enter government, meaning Basic Income would well and truly be on the agenda in Spanish politics.

Switzerland
The long awaited Swiss referendum on the introduction of a Basic Income payment for all Swiss citizens is due in the autumn of 2016. The Swiss political establishment are clearly terrified by the concept (voting 146 to 14 against the idea). Right-wing politicians queued up to spew furious fearmongering rhetoric against Basic Income, describing it as "the most dangerous and harmful initiative ever", "a bomb at the heart of our society and our economy" and a "hand grenade that threatens to tear the whole system apart". Despite the Swiss political establishment's campaign of fearmongering against the idea of eliminating absolute poverty through the introduction of a Basic Income scheme, opinion polls show that public opinion is still quite evenly divided on the subject.

Canada
The Liberal Party won an astonishing election victory, recovering from their worst performance ever in 2011 to win an absolute majority on an anti-austerity platform in 2015. One of the many progressive pre-election policy resolutions is the implementation of a Basic Income scheme for all Canadians. In December 2015 Kingston, Ontario became the first municipality to endorse Basic Income and call on the federal government to develop the measure at the national level. It's unlikely that such a bold progressive proposal would be implemented at the national level without a huge amount of pressure on the Liberal Party leadership, however the fact that Basic Income is on the agenda at all in Canada is definitely a noteworthy development.

Developments in the UK

Considering developments in other countries, the subject of Basic Income is still somewhat in the shadows in the UK. The Green Party are still the only significant UK party to put Basic Income as one of their headline policy proposals. There are Basic Income advocates within the SNP and the Liberal Democrats, but Basic Income was not mentioned in either of their 2015 manifestos. The Labour Party don't advocate Basic Income either, but the new leader Jeremy Corbyn has appointed the Basic Income advocate Richard Murphy as one of his economic advisers.

While the subject of Basic Income seems to have gained little traction within the UK political establishment, it is gaining more recognition elsewhere. Even though several of the recent articles about Basic Income trials in the UK press have been somewhat inaccurate in their claims, it's still notable that the subject is being written about in most of the mainstream newspapers.

It's also worth noting that the RSA have started advocating for Basic Income, as have the innovation charity Nesta.

Conclusion

Basic Income looks set to become one of the big political topics of 2016. If the trials in Finland and the Netherlands are as successful as previous Basic Income trials in demonstrating reductions in poverty, increased entrepreneurship, increased worker productivity, reduced domestic violence etc ... then advocates of Basic Income will have even more hard evidence to argue their case. The Swiss Basic Income referendum towards the end of 2016 is likely to attract a significant amount of press coverage, especially if the Swiss political establishment continue trying to polarise the debate with their policy of transparently alarmist fearmongering. 

Whether the Swiss referendum on Basic Income is successful or not, public awareness of the concept is set to increase dramatically over the coming year. In my view it's only a matter of time before Basic Income schemes become commonplace. When people look back they'll recognise 2015-16 as the period when the Basic Income movement really began to gain traction.

   

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The biggest threat to UK sovereignty is the TTIP corporate power grab

UKIP have made a heck of a lot of political capital out of harping on about British sovereignty. So much so that they have the Tory party running scared, looking to ramp up their own anti-immigration anti-Europe rhetoric in order to stop the exodus of voters, political figures and major party donors from their party to UKIP.

Given their professed concerns about British sovereignty it's extremely strange that the UKIP leadership have remained almost completely silent about the secretive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations underway in the EU, which are designed to carve open European markets (including the UK) for the benefit of gigantic US conglomerates, to bypass the UK courts and to undermine British democracy.

Investor State Dispute Settlements

The most concerning aspect of this so called "trade deal" is the inclusion of Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDS). These new rules would allow corporations to completely bypass the UK legal system and sue the UK government in secretive tribunals.

I don't think it's a radical view to say that if corporations want to do business in the UK, they should abide by the same legal system as the public. They shouldn't just be able to run off to a secretive transnational tribunal to sue our government every time the government does something that the corporations don't like.

Here are a few brief examples of how corporations could use ISDS proceedings to bypass the British legal system and undermine our democracy.

• NHS: If the NHS is made subject to ISDS tribunals, it would become impossible for any government to reverse the ongoing Tory privatisation of NHS services without compensating private health companies for their projected profits. 84% of the UK public want to see the NHS run as a not-for-profit public service, yet TTIP would prevent any UK government from doing what the public wants, without these secretive transnational tribunals fining our country countless £billions for trying to do what the electorate want them to.

• Renationalisation: 66% of the UK public want to see the rail network renationalised and 68% want the energy companies renationalised too. The ISDS components of TTIP would make it impossible for the UK government to ever deliver the renationalisations the electorate wants, without paying vast fines amounting to the projected future profits of the private profiteers. The $50 million case brought by Bechetel against Bolivia after the water system was renationalised is perhaps the most famous example of a corporation using the ISDS components of existing free-trade agreements in order to sue a government for renationalising infrastructure.

• Energy policy: The inability to renationalise vital energy infrastructure without triggering transnational tribunals and vast fines is not the only way government energy policy would be impacted. A Swedish company has used the ISDS components of another free-trade agreement to sue Germany for their decision to transition away from nuclear technology. The ISDS components of TTIP could provide more avenues for energy comanies to sue national governments. If a future UK government set a new target to transition away from reliance upon imported coal, they could be sued. If they set a new target to transition away from oil, they could be sued. Under TTIP control of national energy policy would essentially be completely abandoned to the private sector. 

• UK Standards: ISDS tribunals could be used to prevent the UK government from bringing in new standards. If the UK government introduced new safety standards on any kind of product, the product manufacturers could launch ISDS proceedings in order to sue the UK government for their lost profits.

• Public health: The Tobacco company Philip Morris has already used ISDS regulations in other free-trade agreements to sue countries (including Uruguay and Australia) for attempting to introduce plain cigarette packaging. TTIP would allow multinational corporations to undermine all kinds of legislation designed to promote public health.

• Environmental issues: Corporations have been using the ISDS components of existing free-trade agreements in order to sue governments and attempt to undermine environmental legislation all over the world (Canada, Peru, El Salvador, Australia, Ecuador). If any future UK government were to introduce new environmental legislation to protect our natural environment, or reduce pollution in our cities, the ISDS components of TTIP could make them liable to pay compensation to the companies they prevent from damaging the environment.

• Tax: Another important area in which ISDS proceedings could be used to undermine national sovereignty is the tax system. If any future UK government were to introduce new taxes (pollution tax, financial transaction taxes, Pigouvian taxes, wealth taxes) they would be opening themselves up to be sued by all manner of corporations.

Mode 4 cross-border trade (immigration)

The EU has a policy of including Mode 4 concessions in all of it's trade negotiations. This allows companies to transfer workers across borders. To simplify somewhat - Mode 4 cross-border trade is similar to outsourcing, but instead of moving the factory to a low-wage economy, workers are moved from the low-wage economy to the factory. Anyone with a job should be worried at the prospect of multinational companies driving down the aggregate value of labour in the UK by shipping in workers from low-wage economies.

This article gives a much more comprehensive description of what Mode 4 cross border trade is all about.

One would have thought, given their near constant use of anti-immigration rhetoric, the proposal to allow businesses to import foreign labour into the UK would have UKIP up in arms. Given that they now have 24 MEPs in Europe, surely one of them must have realised by now that ratification of TTIP could remove their power to "close the borders" should they ever actually get into power?
 

The Opposition

The silence from the UKIP leadership on the subject of this undeniable attack on UK sovereignty is telling. If they're not prepared to speak out forcefully against TTIP (especially the inclusion of ISDS tribunals and mode 4 cross-border trade) suggests that they don't really care that much about our sovereignty at all. It suggests that they're so wedded to Thatcherite ideology that they can't even see the importance of maintaining the sovereignty of our legal system, and the decisions of our democratically elected governments. They don't seem to mind about attacks on our sovereignty, as long as the beneficiaries are corporations.

The void left by UKIP's hypocritical silence on the issue has been filled by two other players on the political scene.

The campaign group 38 Degrees has coordinated activists and organised public information campaigns to educate people about what the mainstream media seems so desperately reluctant to talk about in critical terms.

The largest political party to take a strong stance against TTIP is the Green Party, who recognise this "trade deal" for what it is: A massive corporate power grab, and a grave threat to our national sovereignty. The three Green MEPs are part of the Green-European Free Alliance, which is the largest EU parliamentary group to strongly oppose TTIP.
   

What can we do about it?

Take direct action: The campaign group 38 Degrees has been coordinating public protests against TTIP. If you feel strongly about protecting British sovereignty it is not difficult to sign up. You don't have to be any kind of "radical" or "leftie" to participate. I'm absolutely sure that if you've never really got into politics before, or if you're a right-wing libertarian (who should surely be appalled at this kind of crony capitalism) you'd be gladly welcomed into your local campaign against TTIP. The more people on the streets speaking out against it and providing public education, the better.

Write to your politicians: We live in a democracy where the politicians would prefer that we keep our noses out of it, and limit ourselves to drawing a cross on a piece of paper every few years. One of the only semblances of participatory democracy in UK politics is the fact that we can write to our political representatives and expect a reply from them. If you're not an experienced letter writer, feel free to copy and paste excerpts from my work (I don't care about copyright). Your local MP has a statutory obligation to reply to you if you include your full name and postal address in your letter. It is also worth contacting your local MEPs too, since TTIP is being negotiated within the European Union. Contact your local representatives here.

Sign the European petition: In September 2014 the European Union blocked the launch of a Citizens' Initiative against TTIP. Apparently they are extremely frightened that if they allow the people of Europe to have a say, they'll say something inconvenient like "we don't want TTIP". The organisers of the Citizens' Initiative decided to go ahead and self-organise the petition against TTIP anyway. The self-organised Citizens' Initiative against TTIP could be the most important petition you sign this year.

Spread awareness: You don't have to join 38 Degrees campaigners on the streets to spread awareness. Many elderly people, people with disabilities, people who work long hours and people with young children often find public protest difficult or intimidating. You can spread awareness by sharing this article or any of my other TTIP related articles and pictures. You can share this concise document from the Green - European Free Alliance, or if you suspect your friends or family might be hungry for more detail, you could share this booklet. If people don't know about TTIP, they can't oppose it.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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How NSA overreach is worse than terrorism

Ever since the Edward Snowden leaks started it has become more and more obvious that the NSA and their Five Eyes partners (the spooks in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have been making a concerted effort to monitor and control the entire Internet.

They've engaged in vast data stealing exercises designed to sweep up and store the private communications data of virtually everyone; the NSA have employed a team of some 850,000 NSA staff and private security contractors to trawl this ocean of stolen data for whatever they can find; they've damaged international relations by snooping on dozens of heads of state; they've used their snooping powers to spy on companies like the Brazilian oil company Petrobras (surely motivated by industrial espionage, rather than their stated justification of "fighting terrorism"); they've undermined encryption technology - endangering the security of financial transactions; and they've compelled countless US based technology companies to violate the privacy of their own customers and to build backdoors into their products to enable NSA snooping.
 
In order to compress what they've been doing into a single paragraph, I've obviously left out a lot of the nefarious activities orchestrated by the NSA and carried out by their mercenary army of hundreds of thousands of private sector spooks and their Five Eyes collaborators. But even so, the above paragraph is more than enough to demonstrate that the security services in the US, and the other Five Eyes collaborator states, are running dangerously out of control.

The fact that the NSA and their Five Eyes collaborators feel entitled to trawl the Internet for whatever they can find, which is then stored in vast data centres and subjected to algorithmic analysis without the need for any kind of judicial warrant, demonstrates that something fundamental has changed in the relationship between the state and the citizen. Due process has been abandoned, and as far as the security services are concerned, we are all assumed to be guilty. They don't have to be able to show probable cause, they don't have to apply for a warrant from a judge, they just steal our data and use it as they see fit, with no democratic oversight at all over many of their data stealing operations.

The fact that the US state employs a staggering 850,000 NSA staff and private sector contractors to trawl this ocean of stolen data should be alarming to anyone with the brains to think through the logical implications of such a vast mercenary army. You would have to be a hopeless idealist to imagine that there are no "bad apples" at all amongst all these hundreds of thousands. If we assume that just 4% of them (one in every 25) are the kind of people that would use their access to enormous surveillance powers to do things like steal commercially confidential information to order, blackmail people, cyber stalk people, wage petty vendettas against old adversaries ... that would mean a rogue army of some 34,000 thieves, stalkers and blackmailers with access to the NSA's vast caches of stolen data and their extraordinary surveillance capabilities.

The fact that the NSA have been using their powers to engage in industrial espionage against various countries such as Germany, Russia, China and Brazil illustrates that "the few bad apples" narrative, although useful from an illustrative point of view, isn't actually the main concern. The main concern is that the NSA itself is corrupt to the core. Instead of using their powers to maintain the rule of law and to "fight terrorism" they're actually intent on using their unprecedented espionage capabilities in order to undermine global competition for the benefit of US based corporations.

One of the most worrying revelations is that the spy agencies have deliberately compromised the encryption technology used to keep our financial transactions safe, and that they have awarded themselves the power to hack into bank accounts anywhere in the world and simply erase money out of existence, or invent fictional transactions. They have undermined the integrity of the financial system in order to build themselves snooping capabilities that would have blown the minds of the East German Stasi or the Soviet KGB.

Perhaps the most damning element of all (from an American perspective) is the extraordinary amount of damage the NSA have done to the reputation of US technology companies, by compelling them to breech the privacy of their own customers and infecting their products with spyware. This trashing of the reputation of countless US based technology companies comes with an enormous price tag. It has been estimated that the reputational damage inflicted on US technology companies by their own government could amount to $180 billion, as millions of customers are turned off the idea of investing in buggy, insecure and spyware laden products from US companies.

If you add the estimated $180 billion in reputational damage to American companies to the staggering cost of running the NSA and employing an army of 850,000 spooks, the cost of this folly is absolutely enormous.

One of the worst things about having trashed the reputation of their own technology sector, is the fact that the technology sector is one of the few parts of the US economy that is healthy and productive. The US financial sector is a gigantic, virtually unregulated and desperately unstable hotbed of corruption and reckless gambling and US manufacturing power has been in decline since the neoliberals came to power in the 1980s and allowed short-term profiteers to asset strip US productivity. The US economy is in decline, but that decline has been offset by a remarkable period of exponential growth in the US technology sector. Any American with a reasonably comprehensive view of how their economy is structured must be absolutely aghast at the damage inflicted on the technology sector by the power crazed spooks that considered their mission to infect everything they could with spyware as far more important than the long term success of the US technology sector.

Not only does it look like the NSA's overreach is going to cost the US economy vastly more than any terrorist attack ever has, it also looks set to crush US ambition of controlling the Internet, as ever more people realise that the Americans can no longer be trusted to control the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. Any non-US corporation with the slightest regard for data security is going to move away from reliance upon the US technology sector as soon as possible, and any nation that values its own industries is surely going to approve of efforts to wrest control of the Internet away from the US.

The sheer scale of NSA data theft is driving the development of new highly encrypted technology. It is only a matter of time before spook proof browsers and encrypted communications become commonplace, because there is an undeniable market demand for such things. The most terrible thing from a US perspective is that US technology companies will be completely cut off from entry into this new market because everyone is now aware of how the US intelligence agencies have forced US technology companies to infect their own products with spyware and invade the privacy of their own customers. Nobody is ever going to believe US technology companies when they give assurances about privacy, meaning that the next wave of secure communications technology is going to arise outside the US.

The NSA have been using their surveillance powers to engage in industrial espionage in order to benefit US corporations. This is a clear demonstration that they see it as their mission to help US corporations by fair means or foul. Given that this is one of their core objectives, the fact that they have inflicted such an extraordinary amount of damage on the most vibrant sector of the US economy must go down as one of the most spectacular own goals in history. They built a vast data stealing operation in order to help US corporations, but in doing so inflicted more damage on the US economy than Osama Bin Laden could ever have dreamed of.

The NSA have used their scaremongering narratives about the threat of terrorism to justify the slaughter of their own golden goose, yet they would have us believe that they are not responsible. They would have everyone believe that Edward Snowden is the guilty party; that he alone is responsible for the damage to the US technology sector. But their case is a ludicrous one. There is clearly something dreadfully wrong with the way things are set up if just one man (out of some 850,000 spooks) can single handedly wipe an estimated $180 billion off the value of the US technology sector simply by telling the truth.
 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

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You've been Wongad

You know what Wonga is right? You've seen their adverts offering payday loans to desperate people and you've seen their logo emblazoned on the tops of football clubs like Blackpool FC and next season you will see it on the Newcastle United strip too.

You know that their business model is based upon making predatory loans to vulnerable people don't you? 

You know that Wonga loans can have APRs of up to and over 4,200%?

Well, that's about it for what I would expect any reasonably informed person to know about Wonga and the "legal loan shark" industry, given the mainstream media's reluctance to cover the subject in the detail it deserves.

Here's some of the stuff that the majority of the mainstream media seem happy to remain silent about.
 
Did you know that the payday loan sector has been booming since the economic crisis and the resulting "credit crunch"? In 2011 Wonga handed out an astonishing 2.5 million super-high interest loans. The predatory loan sector is one of the very few sectors of the UK economy that seems to be booming through the turgid economic climate created by George Osborne's ideologically driven, catastrophically miscalculated and economically destructive austerity agenda.

Did you know that these kinds of super-high interest loans are illegal in almost every other advanced western democracy? That other nations tend to protect their poor and vulnerable from this kind of brazen economic parasitism. Even the notoriously Ayn Rand inspired, free-trade preaching, banker friendly mob that run the United States have imposed a Federal maximum APR of 36% for loans to military personnel, which is less than one one hundredth of a typical Wonga APR. Predatory payday loans are illegal in 13 states and regulated in the other 37 states. In Canada these kinds of loan are prohibited by usury laws, with any loan exceeding 60% APR (including fees and brokerage) being considered criminal.

Did you know that some financial sector institutions use the receipt of a payday loan as evidence of credit-unworthiness? The fact that you can be credit blacklisted simply for taking out payday loans seriously damages the argument that these loans are just a "helping hand" and not predominantly marketed at the extremely poor, vulnerable and financially illiterate.

Did you know that these kinds of payday loan companies are so universally despised that even the Daily Mail readership are near unanimous in their condemnation (scroll down to the bottom of this article and click the "best rated" tab). Here's what Bob, a Daily Mail reader from Bridport, had to say about them:

"These rip off organisations should be properly regulated. Their interest rates are appalling. Feeding on the vulnerable in society. The adverts are a disgrace to elderly people. Shut them down now along with all the other Payday loan sharks on TV."

Did you know that Labour MP Stella Creasy has been campaigning to bring in US style regulation of the payday loan sector she describes as "legal loan sharks" and that the Tories have steadfastly refused to take action? Creasy described the Tory refusal to address the exploitation of poor and vulnerable people as "unforgivable". Once you read the next few paragraphs you'll come to understand why the Tory party are desperate to avoid imposing regulation on the sector.

Did you know that a bunch of Wonga executives spent £1,250 a head to attend a Conservative party "speed dating" event? An event which was held during the Tory party conference where paying guests (which also included representatives from companies such as  Aviva, Barclays and PricewaterhouseCoopers) got to spend 20 minutes apiece "chatting up" high-ranking Tories such as Michael Fallon (the enterprise minister), David Gauke, (the Treasury’s exchequer secretary), and Sajid Javid, (Tory economic secretary).

Did you know that David Cameron's senior digital economy advisor, Jonathan Luff quit and was allowed to go and work for Wonga as a political lobbyist, with immediate effect? A former Cameron advisor as a political lobbyist should be a valuable asset to Wonga, given that they are desperately fighting against mounting pressure for regulation of the predatory loan market and Canadian style caps on APR repayments.

Did you know that the revolving door between the Tory party and Wonga goes the other way too. Adrian Beecroft is the chairman of Dawn Capital, the private equity fund that Wonga.com belongs to. The Tory party invited him to draw up labour reform legislation for them, what he came back with was one of the most absurdly self-interested policy documents ever presented; the Beecroft Report. Aside from recommending a number of labour reforms that would benefit Dawn Capital directly, the report also recommended the introduction of fire-at-will legislation. Similar legislation was just passed in Spain and led to a huge spike in unemployment as companies saw the new legislation as a financial incentive to lay off their long-term staff and replace them with labor-rightless and low wage trainees. That the Wonga.com business model is fundamentally based upon the strategy of making super-high interest loans to desperate people, a large unemployment spike resulting from the introduction of Beecroft's fire-at-will legislation would certainly represent a significant boost for their business.

In March 2012 the Tory party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas was forced to resign after he was caught out offering direct political access to leading Tories including David Cameron and George Osborne for donations of £250,000 and making claims that donor's "issues" could be discussed at the Number 10 policy unit given a large enough donation, however the Beecroft affair (£537,000 in donations to the party followed by an invitation to actually draw up their economic strategy for them) and the Wonga revolving door are far more serious, but the mainstream media refuse to treat these issues as such.

It is bad enough that the Tory party allowed one of their wealthy donors to draw up party policy for them, but that some of the most obvious beneficiaries from the implementation of such policies would be the man who wrote it, his venture capital company and their Wonga.com operation. Now the revolving door is going the other way with one of David Cameron's senior adviser going to work as a political lobbyist for Wonga.

Given this revolving door between Wonga and the Tories it is completely unsurprising that the Tory leadership are obstructing every effort to regulate or restrain the activities of predatory lenders.

See also

The Beecroft report: A corporatist wishlist
 

Tory policy: All narrative, no substance
 
What is... a justification narrative?

Tory economic illiteracy
  
The Workfare-slavery debate
 
The Tory contempt for labour rights