Cayman’s politics of exclusion

An old chum from my school days in the bush went into politics later, and for ten years represented our local electorate in the Australian Federal Parliament. It was a safe Country Party seat, and it was no big deal for him to win 60% of the 100,000 votes cast each time.

The electorate’s area was unusually large, even for Australia – slightly larger than the State of Texas, if you can believe that, and twice the size of the entire British Isles. (Wikipedia’s entry for “Division of Maranoa” shows its size in relation to the State of Queensland.)

Of course Australia is a big place, and Queensland alone dwarfs all but a few dozen of the world’s nations. But what was (and is) remarkable is that all the candidates standing for this huge constituency visited every homestead, settlement, drovers’ camp and railway-gangers’ hut, before every Federal election. Every voter needed to be assured of his or her importance.

What brought Maranoa to my mind is the spectacle of our local candidates in Grand Cayman striving desperately for the attention of 16,000 voters spread over a bare eighty square miles. Sixteen of them will be elected, each with a responsibility (on average) of five square miles. Oh, the hustle! Oh, the bustle! Talk about a scramble for a slice of the pie, in this fabulously rich little island.

My parents never actually voted for my mate Ian, because by 1980 we were long gone from the district. Our whole family would have done, if we’d had the chance. Sentiment is such a strong factor in politics. Dad once told me – I was fourteen at the time – “You know, I really ought to vote for the Labor Party. They’ve always done more for me than the Country Party has.” But he never did.

The Country Party was the self-appointed party of landowners big and small, and Labor represented the working class. Cultural loyalty usually does trump personal-interest loyalty, wherever the two conflict. Look at Cayman. Bloodline Caymanians (on the whole) would never vote for immigrant candidates, even if the law allowed; and they (the bloodliners) have always made damn sure the law does not allow.

Never mind how incompetent and dishonest a bloodline candidate might be, he would generally be preferred (by his fellow-Caymanians) over a competent and honest immigrant candidate. We expat voters – probably half of all voters, these days – are having a hard time choosing from among the 56 Caymanians standing in the next election. They all practice the politics of exclusion, quite without embarrassment.

Some of the candidates are too corrupt for our delicate sensibilities, and some are too openly anti-immigrant. And none of them have committed themselves to a specific course of action in the event of their election.

Not one candidate – even among the independents – has made a credible promise to reduce Import Duty (the main cause of our high cost of living), or to set aside a portion of Public Revenue each year to pay off the huge loan that falls due in 2019. Cayman’s failure to elect someone with the necessary skill and guts will cost us dearly over the next four years, and the four after that.

In theory, what political parties are good for is to present agendas of what they will and won’t do if elected. My friend Ian made his Texas-size pilgrimages just to show his face and that’s all; the voters already knew what his Party’s policies and promises were. If Cayman’s pretend-parties had any sense they would do the same, instead of requiring their candidates to get by on charm alone. The first of our parties to devise a full and detailed set of policies might sweep the polls.

Many of us expats would vote for a Party that promised to sell the Turtle Farm, Pedro’s Castle and Cayman Airways, and to close down the Protocol Office – never mind who the Party put up.

Unsafe custody – how some banks stay alive

Ever since Central Banks began topping up selected banks’ cash reserves to prevent them from going broke, the likelihood of rampant price-inflation has flourished. So far, it has affected mainly high-end corporate salaries and bonuses and the things the recipients spend them on – multi-million-dollar paintings and mansions, etc. The rich are getting noticeably richer.

The reckless money-creation has also benefitted government bureaucrats and other dependents such as welfare recipients and the military-industrial complex. When the new money eventually filters down to the man and woman in the street, that will mark the beginning of the currency collapse we’ve all been warned about for so long. Large and regular across-the-board increases in the prices of food and other commodities will speedily devalue the money in our bank accounts and pension funds.

Speedily, but not instantaneously. For instantaneous financial losses, consider the following three examples.

Last month, some insolvent banks in Cyprus (they had invested in Greek bonds and other rubbish) suddenly converted up to 60% of customers’ current and savings account balances into shares in the banks, without notice or warning. The shares may not be sold; there is no free market for them.

In effect, the rule of law was suspended; the money was flat-out stolen. The government of Cyprus was too much in debt itself to bail out the banks, and reckoned the only way to save them was to steal the customers’ money. The European Central Bank agreed.

A week later, an international Dutch bank (ABN AMRO, owned by the Dutch government) confiscated all its customers’ gold bullion being held in safe custody. The bank did agree to pay for the bullion, though at artificially low prices. The custody contracts were simply ignored, and the bank used the bullion for its own purposes. (ABN is ten times the size of the biggest Cyprus bank, and half the size of the Royal Bank of Canada.)

18 months earlier, a commodities broker in the USA (about the same size as the Cyprus bank) confiscated all its clients’ Trust Account balances (“segregated funds”) and put the money in its own general bank account. Even with this illegal bail-out, the firm went bust; the clients’ money was never returned. The relevant government agencies decided not to prosecute anybody for the theft.

It’s a growing trend. These three thefts are expected to become precedents for insolvent banks throughout the US and Euro currency-blocs. We amateur investors have to wonder how vulnerable our deposits and assets are, held by professional custodians however reputable.

For centuries it has been legal for banks to lend out multiple times their deposit-bases. As long as a prudent balance is kept between the expiry-dates of unsecured loans from customers (savings and cheque accounts) and of secured loans to customers, there should be no danger. But “segregated funds and investments” have always been untouchable, until now. Suddenly, it’s a dangerous world we live in.

When secured loans go bad, things can quickly get nasty. That’s what has been happening over the past several years, since some of the world’s most senior bankers and auditors allowed personal greed to over-ride their traditional ethics and practices. When assets held in trust become vulnerable to theft at the whim of the custodians, where will our savings be safe?

Which bank or broker can we trust? Could it happen here in Cayman? Yes, it could – if Britain allowed it. God knows our government is just as incompetent as Cyprus’s, in the management of money. It would be nice to hear some assurance from the custodians of our money, locally. And from our Monetary Authority, too, and the FCO. What do they all think of the shenanigans going on in Cyprus, Holland and the USA?

France – a love affair

International Driving Permits are valid for twelve months, and I must have bought mine just before leaving Australia in 1963. When it expired, I was in the middle of France with Chris and Annika. Chris was one of the South Africans from our Earl’s Court flat, and Annika was his Dutch girlfriend.

We had been down to Andorra and Spain for a couple of weeks, and would be back in London in a few days – if the gendarmes didn’t catch me driving without a valid licence. Also, our wallets were all but empty, so we couldn’t even pay a fine. We had to go without breakfast to afford a new Permit. (Annike had lost her purse two days into the trip, and we scraped by without its contents; it had been a frugal vacation since then.)

As it transpired, the cost of the Permit wasn’t a problem. A polite-but-cold bureaucrat in Grenoble explained that Permits could only be obtained in one’s country of residence. Sorry! “But madame! I am not in my country of residence. I am here!” [Basic schoolboy French, you understand. “Je suis ici!”] Shrug. “Then you must go there”, she said. “How will we get there?” “Drive.” “But madame, it would not be legal for me to drive in France without a Permit.” It was like that Harry Belafonte song, “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza...”

She shrugged again. I tried another angle. “Could I perhaps obtain a French domestic licence?” A snort, this time. Ah well. I made a careful note of her name and title. If the Police stopped me and demanded a current Permit, I would ask them to phone her and she could explain the situation to them – n’est-ce pas?

It’s hard to generalise about a nation of fifty million, but by and large the French are a practical people. Legal principles aren’t set in stone; every once in a while they can be set aside in the interests of peace and goodwill. My middle-aged antagonist glared at me for fifteen seconds, shook her head in disgust, and typed the Permit. I kissed her hand passionately, made it plain that if she and I had been alone in the office her marriage vows might have been in danger, and got out just before she smiled.

I’ve loved France ever since, and everything about it – except its predilection to torture its colonial subjects; its rulers tend to be nasty people. And, to be truthful, I don’t love Marseilles, either.

Almost thirty years later, another example of the same practicality – this time in Martinique, a French Overseas Department in the Caribbean, where I was due to represent the Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce at some EU-Caribbean conference or other. It was a bit of a shock to be refused entry because I didn’t have a visa in my Australian passport.

On earlier visits to France (Martinique is part of metropolitan France, constitutionally), no visa had been required. Unbeknownst to me, the rules had changed since then. Australia had for some reason (the Rainbow Warrior affair, perhaps?) begun requiring visas from French visitors, and France had retaliated.

Under the new rules, I had to be put back on the plane that brought me. But, well, this was an international conference at which France’s prestige would be on the line... and I assuredly would have been granted a visa if I had applied... and the plane wasn’t departing until the next morning... and... The young gendarme shrugged and smiled a trifle ruefully as he stamped me in and wished me a pleasant stay.

Nobody’s perfect, of course. French people can be very rude, especially to foreigners who don’t speak French well enough. I’ve been the victim of that. What you do is insist on speaking French to the rude one – badly, loudly, and at length. Keep at it until he or she runs away sobbing. Then turn to whoever is still around and ask gently (in French) if they speak English. You’ll be surprised how many are willing to try.

Me and Miss Ohio

When I think back to my travelling days in the ‘60s, I sometimes wonder where all the money came from. Not where it went. I know where it went, pretty much.

There must have been more in the kitty than I remember, when I boarded the boat in Brisbane. Bob and I got the cheapest cabin available (“down near the plug-hole”, in his words), sharing with two strangers. Right from the start, we all watched our pennies, saving everything for the big experience to come.

We both had good steady auditing jobs lined up in London; David from New Zealand had an introduction to a firm of Lloyd’s brokers, though in the end he chose to be a parking-lot attendant instead. We three planned to live in London the following winter (“We could share a flat.” “Sure, let’s keep in touch.”), and backpack our separate ways around Britain & Europe before and after.

Louie had been born on the ship taking his parents to Australia from Greece after The War, and was on his way “back home” to meet his relatives. It had been a Greek ship, so technically he had been born Greek. On his return he was immediately drafted into the Greek Army, and his relatives had to buy his way out. Just as well he had watched his pennies on the boat, really.

We three did share a flat in London, with three others, and lived the good life in Kangaroo Valley. Money was always tight. When my dad was dying, I had to borrow 200 pounds from David for the flight home. Yet, a few months later I was off in Hamburg buying a VW Beetle. How was that possible? I must have had a reserve fund in Oz, that I now transferred to England. My Grandma Hancock had left me some money, years before; maybe that was the reserve fund.

The Beetle was a retired Police car, black and white like all Hamburg City Police cars. I begged, but the yard wouldn’t let me keep the colours, and painted it all white (for free). David & I met up in Berlin, and took a week or two to wend our way back to London.

For the life of me I can’t recall how much the car cost. 300 pounds? 600? Whichever, there was enough cash remaining to tide me through the next twelve months of travel down to Shiraz and back, in Iran. Did Linda pay for half the petrol, etc? Maybe. Probably.

Back in London, I drove my Mum around Britain, at her expense – me in Youth Hostels, her in bed-and-breakfasts. The car – bashed and battered, left-hand drive – went for a song. Mum had to lend me the cost of an air ticket to Toronto, where Linda had found me a room for seven dollars a week. Not a great room, but we were watching our pennies again.

Then Linda gave up on me for a while and flew home, and I had to persuade her to come back and get married. “Put it in writing”, she said; “Oh, and send me the fare.” Sigh. What can you do?

We left Canada in 1967 with $3400 between us, headed for a job in Jamaica. Instead, we stopped in Nassau, and settled down to save some serious money for the first time in years. First, though, we spent $2600 on a brand-new TR-3 and drove around with the canvas top folded down. Me and Miss Ohio...!

There’s a gentle bluegrass song by Gillian Welch, that’s mildly mocking of a young woman showing off in a convertible –
Oh me oh my oh, would you look at Miss Ohio,
She's runnin' around with the rag-top down.  
She says I want to do right, but not right now. 

My son has inherited my casual attitude to money and “success”. We believe that everybody should at some point take time out to be running around with the rag-top down, literally or figuratively, before it’s too late.

Cayman’s election candidates

 What a fiasco our election process is! 25 candidates are standing in George Town for its six LA seats out of 18, and we voters haven’t got a clue what any of the 25 might do if they get in. Not one of them has committed himself or herself to a single specific action. They’re all going to wait till they’re safely in the House and then decide. Good grief!

It’s what’s called a beauty pageant. “Vote for me because I’m a nice person. Look: here’s a photo of me smiling; here’s my cool slogan. What more could you ask for?” Well, a lot more, actually. Here are some sample questions all of us voters ought to be asking all of the candidates.

Will you continue to waste tens of millions of dollars on Cayman Airways, the Turtle Farm, the Economic Statistics office, and all those other government units whose work could be better done by the private sector? Will you increase taxes, to pay for all government’s loss-making enterprises, or will you force our Pension Funds to buy government bonds to finance the losses?

What – specifically – will you do to block the appointment of political cronies to government boards and committees? Who will you favour for appointments to those boards and committees? Will you reach out to immigrant communities and allow them to share in the governance of these Islands, or will you maintain the politics of exclusion, and keep all political power in the hands of bloodline Caymanians? One of the independents is a former Chairman of the Immigration Board, for goodness sake. Not a good sign...

How will the independents rid government’s overloaded payroll of its wastrels and time-servers? What specific cuts will they make (or try to make) in Public Expenditure? If they haven’t decided yet, will they be equally indecisive in the House? I wrote a blog-post called “How to balance a budget” a couple of weeks ago; do they read that sort of thing? Who would they vote into Cabinet, and who would they not vote in? Why won’t they tell us?

The reason why so many people despise the three political parties is that we can’t trust them to do what’s right. Since they have no formal policies, all elected MLAS from the UDP will support its leader for a Cabinet post, and will take his advice on everything. All elected members of the PPM will support its leader for Cabinet and will do whatever he says; all in Julianna’s team will do her bidding.

That’s reason enough for us to vote for independents and to urge others to do the same. BUT would the independents be any better? Why should we put our signatures at the bottom of a blank page? Roy and Jude (for instance) are reckoned to be shoo-ins; they’re very nice fellows, and would bring some accounting expertise to the job. But must we gamble on them? Why won’t they tell us what they intend to do to get Cayman out of the current fiscal mess?

In the last election, expat voters and their Caymanian friends and families swung the result against the PPM because of its members’ anti-expat rhetoric, and towards the UDP because of McKeeva’s 3000 Status grants. From what I hear on the street, the same twin factors will be in play this time. Contempt and gratitude are powerful sentiments, not to be ignored.

Imagine an Assembly with six UDP, six PPM, two Juliannas and four independents including Ezzard and Arden. Wow. What a prospect! How long would Cayman survive before the first coup attempt? How long before our Offshore clients are driven away by the sight of such a dog’s breakfast?

Terrorists and patriots

When half of Britain’s North American colonies rebelled against the Empire in the 18th Century, the king and his minions classified the rebels as terrorists; those in each colony who did not rebel were called patriots and loyalists. The rebels themselves had things the other way round.

The same thing happened in Ireland in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Those who fought against imperial rule were terrorists in the Empire’s books, and patriots among themselves. To the British king of the day, those who did not rebel were patriots and loyalists; to the rebels, the occupiers were terrorists and scum.

Sigh. It’s the same today in the Middle East. Most Western governments support the US in its imperial role and adopt the Empire’s labels. There is the same divided perception as there is in all military conflicts. “We” are always the good guys: “they” are always the bad.

 Guantanamo and Bagram contain what the Empire calls “the worst of the worst” – so blatantly bad and ugly that their abductors don’t see any need to gather evidence against them. Yet from the perspective of the prisoners’ home communities, it is the prison guards who are the worst of the worst – dehumanised brutes who torture for the fun of it.

We who speak English don’t usually know what the words for terrorism, patriotism or imperialism are, in foreign languages. But we presume they use words that are culturally equivalent to ours. Invaders who kill villagers from the air will always be terrorists in the language of the victims. Members of the local resistance will always be patriots and war heroes. The French Resistance in World War II thought of themselves as patriots and war heroes; the German occupiers classed them as terrorists.

“My country, right or wrong” is no more or less powerful a message for us in the West than it is for the primitive tribal villages our militaries destroy.

A predictable side-effect of blind patriotism is that it damages the integrity of our language. Weasel-words corrupt it. “Enhanced interrogation” (torture), “collateral damage” (civilian victims), and even “defence” (protecting military aggression) – all of those corrupt the English language.

Even everyday terms are dangerous. “He was in Iraq serving his country”... But how was he serving it, exactly? Was he raping and murdering women and children in their homes, or standing by watching, and lying to investigators? Or was he living a blameless life working in the regimental kitchen? Service can mean so many things, in the killing fields.

In Orwell’s “1984”, the Ministry of Peace was responsible for maintaining a permanent state of war. In the book, war was peace, in that it kept the populace from rebelling. By that measure, invasions and occupations are defence, in that they keep the populace united against the created enemy.

“1984” also had a Ministry of Love, that required the citizenry to accept its enslavement. If necessary, individuals would be tortured until they were convinced that loving Big Brother was good for society. Our Big Brother is not yet as fully developed as Orwell’s, but they’re working on it. So far, the torture camps are only for Moslems and foreigners. However, domestic dissidents are next in line. They aren’t called dissidents, of course; the public isn’t ready for that yet. Instead they’re called “domestic terrorists”.

Evil, filthy, nasty, savage, treacherous, anti-social, domestic terrorists! So evil, we can’t tell you how evil! No, really, we can’t tell you, so don’t ask. Whose side are you on, anyway? Frown.

How to balance a budget

The process of “zero-based budgeting” is familiar to everybody who has ever been involved in starting a private business, and to most people who have bought existing businesses. All it means is, justifying every dollar spent. Right away, you can see why it’s not popular with government bureaucrats.

Every new venture of theirs starts with plenty of cash in hand and with instructions to spend it all. Their job is to provide the authorised service within the authorised budget; it is not to minimise expenditure. For existing government services, each annual budget is based on the preceding year’s expenditure. New expenses are required to be justified, but no existing line-item has to be justified ever again until the end of time. It is presumed to be justified, even when it obviously isn’t justifiable.

Whenever bureaucrats say they have cut back on expenses, they mean they have cut back on budgeted expenses, not actual ones. That’s the way they think. “We have cut expenses 10%! Are we being ruthless, or what?” Well, no, the reduced expenses are below the budget for the current year, but higher than last year’s actual. “Government accounting” is a different beast from real-world accounting. The former doesn’t even have to justify a purpose. That, too, is presumed to be justifiable, however many years or decades since it was originally justified.

Zero-based budgeting would require the closing down of Cayman Airways, for instance. Its formal purpose – bringing tourists to Cayman – could be served by paying foreign carriers a few million a year to guarantee a certain number of flights. Five million dollars, tops. We’d still be saving twenty or thirty million each and every year. Is Cayman Airways worth raising taxes for? Oh, please.

The formal purpose just wastes time and money; yet it goes on and on like the Everyready bunny. The true-but-unacknowledged purpose is to provide free trips to and from Florida for the families of government employees, past employees, friends, friends of friends, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. It’s simply a variation of the petrol-card scam – free use of the public’s assets.

(The total of all the Cayman Airways subsidies – overt and covert – over the years is about equal to the entire Public Debt. That’s irresponsibility of a very high order, surely.)

All these years, you know – all these years! – Cayman could have been running substantial Budget surpluses, not deficits. Ours is a wickedly rich little Island, and we should have no public debt at all. Our local representatives have acted with all the restraint of kids running wild in a candy store.

Well, now the British FCO has turned up and demanded that our local politicians and bureaucrats balance their budgets. Now, they must actually set aside some of the vast sums of taxes and fees that come in. They must stop borrowing. They must face the reality that Public Revenue may not increase year after year after year, and that new taxes are not the best option.

Let’s hope that the visiting FCO team has enough experience and wisdom to apply the concept of zero-based budgeting to all the state bureaucracies. If they don’t, then increased taxes will strangle our economy, sooner or later.

Some readers of these words may never have heard of zero-based budgeting before now, but it’s not a concept I pulled out of my hat. There are hundreds and hundreds of accountants here on the Island who could tell the FCO how it’s done. Those accountants are almost certainly all in the private sector, but the visiting team shouldn’t hold that against them. Come on, you FCO chaps: think outside the box!

Cyprus and Cayman

So. Creditors of Cyprus’s banks and government have destroyed the country’s Offshore finance sector, and probably the entire economy. Until last week, not everybody in Cayman had even heard of Cyprus, let alone knew it was an Offshore tax-haven. Not a sophisticated tax-haven like Cayman’s is now, but very like Cayman’s used to be thirty or forty years ago.

Could it happen to Cayman tomorrow? Yes it could. We have all the same weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Could our local commercial banks become so insolvent as to need bailouts by government? Yes. Could our government become so indebted as to need bailouts by Britain? Yes, indeed. That’s why the FCO people are down here at the moment, to stop that happening.

The British government is itself woefully incompetent in the management of its financial affairs. It too – like Cayman’s – suffers from crony-corruption among its politicians and senior Civil Servants. It too has borrowed on the security of its future revenues – revenues that are now projected to fall a long way short of expectations. Our local rulers are not alone in pledging our grandchildren’s incomes as security for irresponsible borrowings – borrowings that finance our bloated civil service and its fat pensions and unlimited lifetime healthcare.

In Cyprus, irresponsible governance required a levy of 10%-40% on individual and corporate bank balances, to assuage the creditors. Could it happen in Cayman?

Yes, it certainly could. All the talk in our government circles is about increasing taxes. The alternative – cutting wasteful government expenditure – receives no serious attention. There is no real intention to go in that direction. Not one single candidate for election has identified one single dollar that could be eliminated from the government budget. From among such cowards will come our next rulers.

But would our elected rulers ever actually steal money from the accounts of bank customers, the way Cyprus’s elected rulers did? Damn right. The legislation and regulations are already in place! You didn’t know that? Think “dormant accounts”. Already, our government has authorised our banks to steal 100% of all accounts they deem “dormant” – inactive for 12 months, I think it is. If that’s not stealing, what is?

To date, the banks have been kind enough to let us re-activate dormant accounts for free. But the law doesn’t say they must. One day they might decide to levy a fee – 10% of the balance? 40%? – and it won’t even need a change in the law. Exactly as happened in Cyprus.

In Cyprus, all Pension Funds will be forced to invest in bonds issued by the government or any of its agencies. Could it happen in Cayman? Could our Pension Funds really be made to buy shares in or lend to Cayman Airways or The Turtle Farm or Pedro’s Castle? Huh. You betcha!

Back in 1987, when the ruling politicians of the day first proposed compulsory pensions, they drafted a law that required all contributions to be handed over to government, for investment by its cronies. I read the draft law; I know what it said. That’s what all the fuss was about with the Chamber of Commerce, back then. (See Confessions of a subversive in this blog’s Archives of last October.) I bet that old draft is being dusted off right now, even as we speak.

The essential difference between Cayman and Cyprus is that we are a British colony and they’re not. As an independent nation, Cyprus had no restraints on its politicians’ and Civil Servants’ incompetence. Britain monitors what our politicians do – belatedly, it’s true, but better late than never – and its FCO team is currently rescuing us from the mess incurred by our two political parties. God save the Queen, eh?

Bullying and bad manners

The difference between bad manners and bullying is only a matter of degree, when you think about it. Speaking on a cellphone during a meeting is bad manners, shouting on one (except in physical isolation) is bullying. Jumping a queue is bad manners; using force to do it is bullying.

Dog-owners who turn a deaf ear to their animals’ incessant barking are ill-mannered yokels; their failure to stop the nuisance crosses the line into bullying when the beasts wake the neighbourhood every morning. Bullying is leaving a person no peaceful option but to let the bully have his way.

I admit to something of an obsession with barking dogs and their irresponsible owners. Some people with Dog City values moved in across the fence from us a few months ago with two yappy yard-dogs. (“Dog City” is one of our Islands’ noisy slums.) Over the road is a dog that barks off and on all night, owned and uncontrolled by yet another bad neighbour. Actually, she is a wonderful neighbour in many ways. But she has a moral blind-spot when it comes to her bullying dogs. Sigh.

(A recent public petition here in Cayman called for a ban on the importation of Paraquat, which is a strong pesticide used by local farmers against weeds. It is the local householder’s weapon of choice against barking dogs. I wouldn’t use it, but I understand why others do. They (those others) should adapt the slogan of America’s pro-gun lobby. They could brandish placards proclaiming, Paraquat doesn’t kill dogs; sleepless neighbours kill dogs.)

Adult bullies have usually picked up the trait during their childhoods – from families, playmates, schools, and now Facebook. Sometimes their DNAs drive them towards psychopathic cruelty. For members of violent criminal gangs, bullying is a necessary means of survival – as is allowing themselves to be bullied, of course.

Legal gangs of one sort or another practise the art of bullying even in some of the more sophisticated of nations. Today’s police and soldiers (all too often dressed like stormtroopers, in their Star Wars regalia), other uniformed state employees, and of course priests... not all of them, of course, but plenty!

For a priest who has been trained to tell congregations who will and won’t go to hell and suffer eternal torment by the agents of God, it is a small step to tell children to take their pants off and submit to the will of God’s earthly agents. Why should we be surprised that it happens so often?

As we know from media reports from the world’s conflict-zones, whole tribes and nations can take on the aggressive behaviour we associate with criminal gangs. Military invasions and occupations are pretty much inevitable, by cultures that tolerate bullying and extreme bad manners in their communities.

Soldiers who, or whose units, commit atrocities naturally feel superior to any pussies who hold them accountable. Bullies feel contempt for their victims. Contempt dehumanises the victims. Thus, drone-pilots feel no compunction about wiping out villages full of civilians, any more than Air Force bombers and field-artillery gunners did in earlier invasions.

Ah well, war crimes are a far cry from shouting on cellphones in public, and barking dogs at midnight! However, the principle is the same. Bullies are bullies, regardless of circumstances. The meek might indeed inherit the earth, as the Christian Bible tells us; but short of Judgment Day it’s the bullies who hold all the title deeds.

1984 revisited – “Airstrip One”

This is my second post called “1984 revisited”. The first, in November 2010, complained about the American TSA’s operations against passengers in US airports, specifically its practice of grooming young children in such a way as to weaken their resistance to sexual predators. The TSA was and remains today the employer most favoured by child-molesters of both sexes, and its hiring policy doesn’t discriminate against them.

Since I discovered that policy, I have forbidden my Norwegian family from flying through the US to or from Cayman. (That is, I forbid them to fly that way if I am paying for the tickets.) Their other options are via Toronto, Havana, Jamaica or Honduras, from either London or Madrid. London-Nassau-Cayman and back costs me $1000 more each time, but protecting my granddaughters’ private parts from paedophiles is well worth the expense, of course.

Now it looks as though London Heathrow may have to be taken off the list. “Airstrip One”, George Orwell’s dismissive name for Britain in his novel “1984” looks set to fall into line with some of the US master’s practices.

Not the child-molesting, I hasten to say. The UK Border Agency tried that a few years ago, but backed down when threatened by the European Court of Human Rights. Not yet the rubber gloves stuck up selected orifices (the gloves are changed twice daily, whether they need it or not), and not yet the cancer-inducing “backscatter” radiation machine.

What the UK Agency is doing (so far) is testing the public’s resistance, and bearing down hard to see what it can get away with. Hastening to catch a connecting flight to Norway the other week, after an 11-hour overnight flight the other week, our nine-year-old granddaughter forgot to surrender her full bottle of water at the checkpoint in the in-transit area.

With insolent and exaggerated slowness, Big Brother’s goons inspected every single item in the whole family’s carry-on luggage, until the departure-time for the connecting flight had passed. Then they let them go. It was a clear victory for the storm-troopers, causing maximum stress with minimal effort. Well done, lads: gallantry medals all round!

This small incident would be nowhere close to the worst that occurs, I’m sure. But it illustrates the sheer banal nastiness that lies in wait for visitors to Airstrip One. One is left to wonder why British officials do that sort of thing. The actual luggage-searchers are jobsworths, of course, but how did their supervisors earn their stripes? Are they made to rip the legs off live frogs to earn their promotions? What will happen when they are given tasers, as is bound to happen sooner or later?

Cold-blooded, unprovoked meanness to defenceless strangers is not natural to most people. It’s not normal behaviour. It’s the kind of behaviour one expects from Blackwater bullies in Afghanistan and Iraq – savages, who have been trained to reject their humanitarian feelings. Why are people like that hired to harass innocent airline passengers? How did they get their jobs ahead of normal, decent, men and women who applied for the jobs? There must be a reason.

An attractive and cheerful nine-year-old with a bottle of water is not fair game, sleepy or not. Humiliating her was an act of petty meanness that is not easily explained. What a sad fate awaits ordinary visitors in transit at Heathrow, if checkpoints require weary children and their weary parents to run the gauntlet. What a sad place England will have become, a few years from now.