The book is a hilarious compilation of spontaneous proposals by the audience of Mark Thomas radio shows. They are ideas of people who think that they can do a better job than the politicians that represent them.

Some of the policies would, if enforced, result in the end of the civilisation as we know it, like making party political manifestos legally binding or ending tax havens, including the many British ones (and bomb Switzerland). Other are deceptively simple like legalising all drugs or enforcing that members of parliament have no other job than, well members of parliament.

I go for these two: the right to use a product without having to reference a user manual and the opt-out system for organ donations.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief.”

Alan Greenspan admitted in October 2008 that there was a “flaw” in this “ideology”. Now, that is a tautology. He mounted a defense of this last 25 years as Fed chairman based on two axis:

- The scale of the crisis was much bigger than the room of maneuvre of the regulator

- Forecasting is futile: nobody could have prevented the housing bubble and the criminal activities of the banks in the US

Quoting a confused minister talking to Malcolm Tucker: I don’t know what level of reality I should be operating on. The UK government does. It knows exactly how much money it recognises as debt. Which is significantly less than the liabilities that it currently holds:

• Public pensions £3.3 trillion
• Lloyds and RBS bail-out £2.6 trillion
• Official National Debt £1.0 trillion
• Nuclear decommisioning £0.1 trillion
• Public Finance Initiative debt £0.1 trillion

Source: Burning our money – Lastest on National Debt

Public Finance Initiative is an euphemism for contracts for builders and infrastructure consultants.

The OFT found projects worth in excess of £200m, including schools, universities and hospitals, between 2000 and 2006. This is where building firms submit quotes for jobs that are not actually priced to win the contract, so the client gets a misleading idea about the real extent of competition.

Kier Group was fined £17.9m, Interserve was fined £11.6m and big names like Carillion, Balfour Beatty, Galliford Try, Ballast Nedam, ISG Pierce and Crest Nicholson, John Sisk & Son, Connaught, Concentra and Durkan Holdings and Bowmer & Kirkland all more than £5m.

The Chartered Institute of Building also found that cover pricing was a widespread corruption practice across the building industry.

- Unemployment in Spain is high and rising, so only the most qualified individuals with full command of Spanish and English have some chances to get a job

Photo by Christopher PLEDGER

- British expats only pay for a few local taxes however, contrary to working immigrants in Spain, retired Britons drain the resources of the efficient but overstretched Spanish NHS
- The collapsing welfare system in the UK and the growing rates of unemployment block the return home of most Britons in working age

Instead of admitting that the chances of a colossal economic cataclysm are alarmingly high, many comentators rubbish the recent financial situation of Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy, etc.

The probable collapse of the debt burden and the sterling in 2010 calls for a reality check, pronto. The UK is a little country clinging to, but ignored by, the US. Berating the EU bureaucracy is cynical and pointless. The corruption of the UK political class and the burden of its gigantic public service (7 million public servants) should suffice to start sorting out its own house before criticizing others.

- BAE admits guilt over corrupt arms £43bn deal in a corruption investigation that found evidence of bribes, kickbacks, false accounting and making misleading statements

- Police is charging four MP’s and half of Members of Parliament have been asked to repay a total of more than £1m to the Commons authorities because some of their previous claims were deemed improper. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, returned more that £13,000 over improper claims

• deficit of £175 billion worth 12.4% of gross domestic product, the worst in the G20
• £6.8 billion deficit of BT’s pension fund
• £9.3 billion budget for the Olympics in London 2012

Dominic Ridley, in “Bloody Bequest”,
The Guardian—Weekend,
21 April 2001

ETA is a terrorist group based in France and Spain. It is traditionally described in Europe as a ‘separatist’ group, a epithet that Spaniards protest when given the opportunity abroad. The foreign agenda of the Spanish government includes the shifting of the perception of the group from a political experiment turned sour to a terrorist group period.

Mr. Salviano claimed yesterday in Santander, Spain, that ETA is funded by the trade of cocaine. It sources the drug from the terrorists of the  Colombian FARC. It also trades weapons with the Italian mafia.

How is ETA perceived in English? A simple experiment consists in combining the keywords related to the term ‘ETA’ and noting the results each of the queries show:

• ETA terrorist separatist mafia: 14,000 results
  
• ETA terrorist separatist: 61,900
• ETA terrorist mafia: 37,900
• ETA separatist mafia: 10,400
• terrorist separatist: 483,000
• terrorist mafia: 1,080,000
• separatist mafia: 66,200
• ETA terrorist: 362,000
• ETA separatist: 151,000
• ETA mafia: 870,000
• ETA: 69,200,000
• Terrorist: 34,500,000
• Mafia: 46,400,000
• Separatist: 2,180,000

I am too lazy to calculate the c-index of these terms but it seems to me the that the co-occurrence of the terms “ETA” and “mafia” is, surprisingly for a such a recent meme, the highest of them three.