Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
October 3, 2012
Large public contracts in India are often plagued by claims of favouritism, rigged specifications to suit a particular bidder, rigged evaluations, bid cancellations, vicious publicity campaigns by the protagonists and innumerable rebids. It is not uncommon for high profile complaints by a bidder after losing a bid to lead to a reversal of an award decision. The more high profile the complaint is and the closer in time a complaint is to an election, the more likely it is that a reversal of a decision can be achieved. The sales process in India does not end when a contract is awarded and any self-respecting sales manager does not stop until he has tried all available avenues to reverse an award decision which has gone against his bid. The primary avenues available are through approaches to politicians and the bureaucrats involved in the evaluation and award (and these approaches are not always without the appropriate lubricating flows of money). For politicians, the bureaucrats are both the potential scapegoats and the potential justification for reversals of decisions. For good and bad, the Indian Civil Service is modeled on the British Civil Service and the interactions between politicians and bureaucrats in India today have their roots in the methods of the British Raj. Bidding flaws and reversals of contract awards are usually a good indicator for the presence of corruption.
Phases of approval reversals
This story in the UK where high profile complaints from Richard Branson and Virgin Rail has led to the reversal of a decision to award a contract to a competitor could be a story lifted directly from an Indian newspaper. I note that in this case the politicians who have reversed their decision are using bureaucrats as their scapegoat. Who else? And when they make a new award they will surely justify their new decision on the pronouncements of other, more senior bureaucrats. It would seem that the methods of UK politicians and bureaucrats even today are not so different from those of their Indian counterparts. In India though, the opportunities afforded to bureaucrats and politicians by the bidding process have been raised to a much higher level.
The Telegraph:
Government cancels West Coast Mainline contract due to ‘flaws’ in bidding process
FirstGroup’s contract to run the West Coast Mainline has been cancelled by the Government due to “significant technical flaws” in the bidding process, which will be re-run. Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said that the flaws “stem from the way the level of risk in the bids was evaluated”.
Tags:bidding process, Civil service, contract reversal, FirstGroup, India, Richard Branson, UK, Virgin Trains, West Coast Main Line
Posted in Business, Corruption, India, Politics, UK | Comments Off on UK cancellation of rail contract is in the style of Indian contracts
September 18, 2012
The latest Mitt Romney “gaffe” is getting much attention. But I was a little surprised to find that while what he said may well be a gaffe in electoral terms – and he may even have lost the Presidential election here – his statement was actually quite correct. I had not appreciated that almost half of all US households paid no federal income tax at all. In the US, federal income tax is a major source of tax revenues and contributes about half of all tax revenues (tax revenues about 15.4% of gdp in 2011 with federal income tax providing 7.3% of gdp). Romney in his leaked video said:
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Tags:Income tax, Mitt Romney, Tax, Taxation, United States, wealth creation
Posted in Behaviour, Economy, Politics, US | Comments Off on Tax on income is easy to levy but fundamentally unsound
September 11, 2012
I perceive Greenpeace to be an organisation which was once well-intentioned but which has degenerated to become an extremist, semi-religious group where advancing of its beliefs justifies the use of even unethical means. The fundamental error – as I see it – is that it sees “humans” as somehow being separate from “environment” and the development of humanity as a threat to environment. Greenpeace and other similar organisations have lost sight of the fact that humans and their works are part of the “environment” and that the environment needs to be subservient to the needs of human development. They have become part of the coercive and alarmist movement that is eco-fascism.
Greenpeace has been known to exaggerate, mislead, cherry-pick data and even fake data in pursuing its religious goals. They may have done some good in the past but lately they have become one of the forces against improvements of the human condition.
So when Patrick Moore – a co-founder of Greenpeace – accuses them of crimes against humanity I am inclined to listen. Patrick Moore has been disillusioned with Greenpeace for some time and writes this article in Climate Depot which I have reproduced in full.
Special to Climate Depot
Greenpeace’s Crime Against Humanity
By Patrick Moore, PhD
September 10, 2012
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Tags:Climate Depot, Golden Rice, Greenpeace, Patrick Moore
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Environment, Politics | 1 Comment »
September 7, 2012
I expect that President Obama does have some electoral advantage in not being saddled with Al Gore – or it could just be that Gore is really upset that the income that would be generated for his companies by cap-and trade is not materialising.
TheDaily reports:
Al Gore is boycotting the Democratic National Convention because he doesn’t get along with President Obama and is disappointed that Obama hasn’t pushed harder for a cap-and-trade law that would force Americans to use less fossil fuels, sources tell Flash.
While tens of thousands of Democrats from across the country are gathered in Charlotte, N.C., Gore stayed in New York to cover the convention for his struggling Current TV channel. “Gore was not treated respectfully by the Obama team. He’s snubbing them, because they snubbed him,” said one Democratic fundraiser.
Former President Bill Clinton has been given an active role in Obama’s re-election effort, and was given a prime-time slot to speak just before Obama accepted his nomination last night. But Clinton’s running mate, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has been an invisible man.
“He’s been missing in action. It’s not just the convention. Gore hasn’t made any speeches for Obama, or campaign appearances, or fundraising solicitations … nothing,” said our source. …..
Tags:Al Gore, Barack Obama, cap-and-trade, Democratic National Convention
Posted in Politics, US | Comments Off on Has Obama dumped Al Gore?
August 18, 2012
In a previous post I wondered why the lurid series by Larry Pickering about crooked union leaders and Julia Gillard was not being taken up by the main stream media – though the content of the 5 part series by Pickering – “Is our Prime Minister a Cook?” – seemed quite explosive to me.
Well, it now seems to have reached the Sunday edition of Canberra Times:
(UPDATE! The same article is also in the SMH but it was on the web first in the Canberra Times. The Australian also carries a story about Julia Gillard and the loss of her job at the law firm of Slater & Gordon, which is then also reported on by The Telegraph. It looks like the msm are now running to jump onto the bandwagon started by Pickering.)
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Tags:Canberra Times, Julia Gillard, Larry Pickering
Posted in Australia, Corruption, Politics | Comments Off on Lurid Julia Gillard story reaches the main stream media
August 18, 2012
I have a theory that within a hundred years we will be bemoaning the lack of world population. The collapse of society will be forecast as an impending catastrophe as the total world population stabilises at less than 10 billion with the proportion of the young working population decreasing relative to the increasing numbers of the “leisured” population. And that apocalypse too shall not come to pass.
Matt Ridley has a new essay in Wired which needs to be read. Just some excerpts below:
Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times
When the sun rises on December 22, as it surely will, do not expect apologies or even a rethink. No matter how often apocalyptic predictions fail to come true, another one soon arrives. And the prophets of apocalypse always draw a following—from the 100,000 Millerites who took to the hills in 1843, awaiting the end of the world, to the thousands who believed in Harold Camping, the Christian radio broadcaster who forecast the final rapture in both 1994 and 2011. ………
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Tags:Alarmism, climate change, Doom-sayers, Harold Camping, Innovation, Limits to Growth, Matt Ridley, Thomas Robert Malthus
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Engineering, Environment, Politics, Science | 1 Comment »
August 13, 2012
I first came across Australian politics some 25 years ago when trying to sell a turnkey power plant to be located in W. Australia. I found myself trying to negotiate through a morass of cronyism together with convoluted local and national politics which I never did succeed to decipher. Since then I have been a fascinated – but always confused – observer of Australian politics. I never did manage to sell that particular power plant in Bunbury but I did manage to see a couple of Test matches at the WACA. I have subsequently sold steam and gas turbines in Australia where these projects did not attract the same level of political interest. But I still have a very meagre understanding of how things actually get done within Australian politics.
An Australian political cartoonist – Larry Pickering – has been running a series of articles on his blog (4 parts – so far – with part 5 yet to come just published). The contents seem to reveal a web of corruption and deceit encompassing a crooked union leader, the AWU, dirty weekends, a law firm and Julia Gillard who was then employed at that firm. Somewhere along the line Ms. Gillard was apparently sacked from the law firm and then entered politics. The revelations appear quite explosive to me but I note there is almost no coverage of these in the Australian media. I am not quite sure what to make of the apparent disinterest of the MSM. It could be that the “revelations” are pretty tame and just represent the “normal” and expected behaviour of Australian politicians?
Part One: Our Prime minister is a Crook
Part Two: Is our Prime Minister a Crook?
Part Three: Is our Prime Minister a Crook?
Part Four: Is our Prime Minister a Crook?
UPDATE!
Part 5: Is our Prime Minister a crook?
Larry Pickering’s cartoons are pretty interesting as well. The Bolt Games are over now and I like this one:
Cartoon by Larry Pickering
Tags:Australia, Australian Labor Party, AWU, Julia Gillard, Larry Pickering, Politics
Posted in Australia, Behaviour, Politics | 4 Comments »
August 5, 2012
The Leader of the Luddites, engraving of 1812: Wikipedia
This editorial in The Australian about shale gas got me to wondering how it has come to pass that what were once very laudable anti-pollution goals have morphed into an anti-technology and essentially anti-human movement. Luddites have always been among us and always need – and have always needed – a cloak of righteousness under which to operate. The current demonisation of technological advance has its roots – I think – in the politicisation of the concern for “the environment” which probably began in the 1960’s. As long as “environmentalism” focused on improvement of local conditions it did much good. It has contributed much to the clean-up of air and water pollution which had resulted from the speed of industrialisation. While industrialisation and technological development were necessary for growth and to ensure that humans could put food on their tables, the drive against pollution did much to improve their quality of life. But then the Luddites – who have always been around – “found” evironmentalism. The destructive forces had found a new righteous cover – this time coloured green. Politicisation and globalisation have now transformed what was once a relatively simple anti-pollution campaign focused on improving the quality of life for humans into something else – a fanatical movement with religious overtones. A coercive, destructive, backward-looking, anti-development, anti-human Green Monster.
The Green movement has become the cloak under which modern Luddites can hide and operate.
The Australian:
POLITICAL parties preoccupied with environmental protection, including the Greens, should take on board the benefits of breakthrough technology that is already allowing easier access to shale gas in the US.
As environment editor Graham Lloyd reports today, with 250 years’ worth of gas reserves now in play, the shale revolution is cutting power costs and carbon emissions and increasing energy supplies. In the longer term, it promises energy security, export earnings and stability as the West’s dependence on Middle East oil diminishes.
The unexpected emergence of shale, foreseen by very few four or five years ago, underlines the folly of governments trying to “pick winners” by investing in various forms of renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, which will only be viable on a large scale if technology improves.
Too little attention has been paid to Australia’s vast shale reserves, which are potentially far bigger than coal-seam gas. Apart from the volume of water needed to access it, shale poses fewer environmental problems than coal-seam gas. The geological formations are more stable and located in more remote areas. Given the reluctance of our politicians to pursue nuclear power, shale has the potential to be an important energy source for decades.
OED:
Luddite – In modern usage, “Luddite” is a term describing those opposed to industrialisation, automation, computerisation or new technologies in general
Greenie – a person who campaigns for protection of the environment
the environment – the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates; the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by human activity
Tags:development, Environmentalism, Green Monster, Luddite, Shale gas, Technology
Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Politics, Technology | Comments Off on The Luddite shades of Green
July 9, 2012
Julia Gillard’s carbon tax in action!
From news.com.au
AN apology has been issued to a grieving family by a cemetery which told them they were being charged a $55 carbon tax to bury a relative. …..
The family claimed that the cemetery slapped them with a $55 carbon tax bill for burying a relative – saying “even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax” – just days after the tax was introduced.
The outraged family complained to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, describing it as a “tax on the dying”.
Erica Maliki said the Melbourne cemetery told her and two other relatives that a $55 charge would be applied to her father-in-law’s burial due to the carbon tax. …..
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said it would be “reprehensible” if any cemetery took advantage of grieving families by misleading them over funeral expenses.
It comes as three companies were reprimanded by the consumer watchdog for cashing in on the carbon tax.
The ACCC said that it was investigating solar panel suppliers
Polaris Solar and ACT Renewable Energy for providing false information on the cost impacts of the tax, while bakery chain Brumby’s was caught advising outlets to raise prices and blame the carbon tax.
While cemeteries are not liable entities under the carbon tax, the funeral industry has previously warned of indirect price rises for both burials as well as cremations through higher energy prices and councils passing on their carbon tax costs.
And as ACM points out:
In any event, technically, burial is carbon sequestration. If it had been a cremation, however…
Tags:Australia, Carbon tax
Posted in Alarmism, Politics, Trivia | Comments Off on “Even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax”
The k2p blog 