The headlines all say that the Bank of England has pumped another £50 billion into the economy in the third round of quantitive easing. In fact, the money will not get far into the economy. It is given to the banks and other financial sector companies, and evidence from the previous £250 billion worth of quantitive easing is that almost all of it will stay there, being very handy stuff with which to fund massive salaries and bonuses.
This whole notion of what is and isn’t useful in the economy is strange anyway. This cold weather is making us all use a lot more gas for heating. Those higher bills will count as increased economic activity and higher GDP, but actually we are all less comfortable. This morning I have put on an electric heater to boost the central heating. That is increasing economic activity and increasing GDP. But for the last week I have been burning logs from my own garden on an open fire – that doesn’t increae GDP as I didn’t pay for them. But they were warmer and more pleasurable. A homely example that the automatic equation of GDP with a better life is nonsense.
There is a mystery about the way Q.E. works. The Bank of England does not just give the cash away to financial institutions, but exchanges it for assets. We are told that this is not the Bank of England saving the bankers from their mistakes by buying up toxic assets, but rather that the assets are gilts.
I do not understand this at all. Why would banks want to cash in gilts? Gilts are already perhaps the most liquid asset you can hold, other than cash, in the classic definition of liquidity that they can be easily sold without much affecting their value. On top of which, these same financial institutions are actually still buying bonds from the Bank of England on a regular basis, which would make the process pointlessly circular. And the current Bank of England bonds the banks are buying pay historically low rates, almost certainly lower than any gilts they are exchanging under Q.E.. Why would they do that?
The only sense I can see is that the Bank of England is giving cash in return for junk, and the gilts line is a cover. Any genuine official statistics on exactly what the Bank of England has bought up under Q.E.anywhere?
It is beyond doubt true that the effect of creation of new money is to reduce the value of currency already in circulation. The effects will show through in inflation and the exchange rate. Of course, those will continue to be affected by other factors as well, which is why there are better and worse times to do it. But in effect Q.E. is still a transfer of wealth from those who hold any of the currency to those given the new stuff. In other words, more cash from you to the bankers.
Actually if QE had been used genuinely to stimulate the economy it would have been a marvellous thing. With £350 billion we could have built an enormous amount of social housing on brownfield sites, converted derelict high streets into housing, built the Severn barrage and a high speed rail link from London to Aberdeen and still have had change. We could have reopened the steel industry to do it. a thousand manufacturing firms could have been re-tooled. Millions could have been employed. The entire logic of economic depression could have been turned around.
Instead we gave more cash to the bankers.
Steve Keen (Australian economist, one of few to predict huge financial crisis etc.) had some interesting things to say on QE in Debunking Economics. I don’t recall the specifics but I do recall his conclusion that money creation works in the opposite way to how it is described by economics: banks essentially ‘force the hand’ of the central bank when they create loans. The money multiplier is therefore an apparition and QE is thus useless unless the money is given directly to the public.
I highly recommend the book.
@canspeccy
“But the Great Depression was the mother of all liquidity traps and the Keynsians assure us that recovery would have been achieved had the money supply not been allowed to contract.”
What????
No, no, no….you are so confused.
A central theme of Keynes’s General Theory was the impotence of monetary policy in depression-type conditions.
Clarke, you say, ‘The obvious reasons for this are corruption and the undue influence of Big Money over government.’
Is it possible we’re looking at it the wrong way round? Could it not in fact be secret government controlling or having a large stake in Big Money, which then controls the government we know.
Ruth, I think that the way you put it amounts to just about the same thing. We get a glimpse of some of it, like the many entries in the register of MP’s interests of £5000 per month for an hour’s work; this looks like simple bribery. Then we see the sort of collusion like the senior MI6 man with his position in BP and the way he behaved over Libya:
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http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/09/bp-profit-from-torture/
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This aspect of government is secret not in the sense that we can’t see the people involved, but rather that we don’t know why certain people make the decisions that they do, or maybe we only work it out years later, and by then most of the evidence trail has gone cold. Then there’s the likes of Werritty, who got away with unknown stuff for years before anyone spotted him because he wasn’t officially part of the power structure at all, and thus escaped scrutiny.
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Then, there’s the propaganda machine, which somehow operates in plain sight whilst generating very little suspicion of itself. Even you seemed affected by this (I was, too), when you were speaking for the opposition in Libya; I doubt that you really support the thuggery we’ve seen there since then. Compare the Libyan atrocities with the contents of Suhayl Saadi’s comment of 11 Feb, 2012 – 4:17 pm near the end of this thread:
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http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/02/know-your-limits-syria/
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When you see a tip, you can’t predict much except that there’s probably an iceberg underneath, but it’s shape, size and structure remain hidden.
Suhayl Saadi’s comment that I mentioned above deserves a re-post even though it’s off-topic here:
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Suhayl Saadi
11 Feb, 2012 – 4:17 pm
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I just got this from a Syrian friend, whom I do not wish to name. I’d asked them their views on what has been happening and also expressed the wish that their family remain safe. It is heartbreaking.
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“My father, mother and brother are fine since they are in Damascus but two of my cousins who are in the army have been seriously injured by the armed gangs who are attacking the civilians and the army and sarcastically are claiming the opposite.
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My country is suffering from a fierce global media war and an internal war with the terrorist gangs who mostly have the same fanatic beliefs as alqaida (the Muslim brotherhood) who will bring Syria to the dark ages if they will rule, and who are doing jihad against the army and civilians as if these people are not Syrians like them. The other side of these gangs are paid people to disturb the peace of the country.
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One of the things which makes my heart ache is that the behind the scenes players, Al Jazeera, Saudi Arabia, Qatar among others, grew hatred between Syrians to create a civil war (divide and rule) which is a new thing because all Syrians from all religions sects political beliefs were an example of harmony and peace.
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As for the government, they are not perfect and it’s so easy to throw everything on the president but the government has done, and is doing, reforms which made a lot of difference in Syrians’ lives which not a single media channel has spoken about. I believe that the media is desperate to make it another Lybia, another Iraq, which I believe is not going to happen because we have friends who know the real situation.
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Syria has always been with the resistance and with the Palestinians since many years and that’s why we are paying for our stands now. As for the shameful Arab League, they remind me of a folklore tale which talks about a village invaded by a foreign army in which all women have been raped except one, and when the other women got to know that the woman was still a virgin all of the women united to rape her! I hope I answerd your concerns and please feel free to share any thing on this topic.”
With certain notable exceptions, the degree of confusion, ignorance masquerading as deep understanding and general bollocks on display here is shocking.
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AJ claims that:
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“A central theme of Keynes’s General Theory was the impotence of monetary policy in depression-type conditions.”
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That is precisely the opposite of Milton Friedman’s analysis of the Great Depression which resulted, so he concluded, from a 30% decline in money supply. And it was Friedman who famously said “”we are all keynesians now.”
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True Keynes preferred direct government deficit spending to buggering around with the money supply, hence his admiration for the brilliant execution of Keynsian policy by Hitler and Hirohito.
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A good many people here seem to favor the Hitler/Hirohito approach, pissing money away of uneconomic high speed rail and other boondoggles. At least Hitler’s autobahnen made economic sense.
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In fact, the Keynesian approach is largely irrelevant now because the problem is not due merely to a lack of demand. People will spend any given amount of money. The problem is that however much they spend it creates few jobs in the west, since the west is competing with four billion people in Asia and Africa who earn only a dollar or two a day. Until A.J. and co get their minds wrapped around that problem they will be no further ahead in the search for a solution.
I agree Mary – the Uzbek man was possibly ‘set-up’ and I suspect they will use him via a CIA handler to gather intelligence on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU, considering it’s objective is/was to overthrow Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, and to create an Islamic state under Sharia. It would be interesting to hear Craig’s take on this scenario since the supply route through Uzbek is now critical to the war in Afghanistan. – overthrowing the ‘simmering torture President’ is a tempting proposition.
Ruth, thinking further about your comment, I shouldn’t assume that I know what you mean by “secret government”. There are certainly elements of great power that are either hidden from view, or can be seen to be powerful but wield other power outside their acknowledged sphere of influence. And between these power structures there will be links with varying degrees of visibility.
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But do you mean that there is some formal structure with posts or positions within, such that one member knows another member’s responsibilities, and that there’s a clearly defined “chain of command” with declared policies that all members are working towards? This would be secret from outside, but everyone inside would know about it.
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I doubt that such a formal structure exists as such. If it did, we could then postulate a “secret, secret government”, that operated outside the knowledge and authority of the first-level structure that is hidden merely from the “public”.
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I think that many, maybe most of the powerful got to be powerful because they’re ruthlessly opportunistic, that they will cooperate with each other while that suits their purposes, but will stab one another in the back if circumstances make that more profitable, and any level of collusion, cooperation, competition and deception in between.
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But if by “secret government” you just mean power outside and/or above the publicly visible government, and that at any given time it has some structure that has formed spontaneously, then yes, that exists. Absolutely. Certainly.
This little bio made me smile. First the name of the second dinosaur and second how one of the papers was so boring, it made his wife drop off to sleep.
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Mike Taylor
Mike Taylor is a dinosaur palaeontologist, computer programmer and open access advocate, affiliated with the University of Bristol. He has named two new dinosaurs, Xenoposeidon (“alien earthquake god”) and Brontomerus (“thunder thighs”) and written other papers so boring that his wife fell asleep reading one of them.
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He is the author of this good piece in the Independent on academic publishing.
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http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/02/09/the-future-of-publishing/
Phew! What a long list of bankers with NuLabour gongs.
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http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=columnists&
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Methinks y’all need to reconsider what you are likely definitely facing, and certainly hereby confronted with …. and decide upon which fence you want to sit should you be powerless and impotent to act on your own volition/without third party initiative and novel noble leadership, which is just the same as admitting to yourself that you are nowhere near smart enough to think in a new effective way of getting things done differently for a better, positively reinforcing, mutually beneficial advantage which can be shared and delivered to all. Fortunately though would there be others who are not at all petrified by circumstance and so intimidated into such as would be an apathetic and pathetic submission, which appears to be wholly reliant on one remaining in abject ignorance of one’s true condition.
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This has just been posted elsewhere, and highlights the sort of issues you are challenged to deny exist.
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“Hey, DWoTSOT, what’s the alternative? A good old fashioned depression”
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There is a depression already, you just haven’t noticed because of things like QE and a press that has no curiosity. Propping up bubbles that are inevitably doomed to pop is just moving the problem further down the road and exacerbating it.
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The alternative is to recognise that it is the financial system that is bankrupt, mostly cause by fraud and insider dealing, and not nations. Once that is recognised then enforce existing financial regulations and laws relating to such crimes.
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Why should tax-payers be on the hook for generations just so a few hundred extremely wealthy bondholders of banks have their obscene wealth protected at the expense of the vast majority?
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The Greeks seem to understand this very well.
I think we possibly might be at the end of an era, and that we are not going to emerge from the ‘recession’ anytime soon, if ever. That it’s a semi-permanent recession.
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What’s depressing is the widespread idea that Keynes was some kind of ‘socialist’ or ‘left-winger’, if he was, then it was the adoption of ‘socialist, central-planning’ in the service of the liberal, capitalist, state, which is rather ironic.
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Personally I think it’s bizarre that the politicians are choosing to save the banks and the financial sector by sacrificing the rest of the economy, to put it bluntly and crudely. This is seen most clearly in Greece.
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Restore the health of the financial sector and then, due to ‘trickle-down’ eventually the rest of the economy will get well too. But is this true?
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Why did so many highly paid and fantastically intelligent and competent bankers lend so much money to Greece? Shouldn’t they pay the price for lending so recklessly, the full price, and show that markets work, without the state having to step in a rescue them, what kind of capitalism is that?
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They lent Greece money because they knew that if things went wrong the state, also known as the Germans, would be forced to step in a clean up the mess. This is the definition of predatory lending, using pretty much the same methods one uses to ‘hook’ third world countries.
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How could we, in theory, as one model, get out of the crisis?
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Nationalise all the banks, this would really only be re-branding, as they already are effectively nationalised. They the state bank could begin lending to small businesses and industry.
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We’ve then got the problem of lack of demand and unemployment.
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We could by-pass the banks completely and send checks to every household in installments, aimed squarely at the poorest sections of the community. This would massively increase demand for basic goods.
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Start a huge housebuilding programme, and a state financed renovation of existing homes to save energy by raising the level of insulation, which is so dire in the UK.
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Obviously there are lots of problems associated with an alternative, green, economic strategy, because the economy has become so un-balanced over the last thirty years. It would be a real up-hill struggle, not least that so many imports would be sucked in due to the chronic lack of domestic UK industrial capacity. Yet, at least one would be moving in the right direction.
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‘Making Britain more competitive’ is code for cutting wages so we can ‘compete’ with Asia. This is madness, and, arguably, impossible. Making the country poorer before we can get richer is a recipe for disaster.
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The main challenge today is, unemployment and the chronic lack of demand, we have to fix this FIRST, if we are to stand any chance of ever climbing out of the depression we’re mired in. But, as the Irish story goes, about the Irishman giving advice to an Englishman who’s lost and is seeking directions home, ‘I wouldn’t start from here, Sir!’
Put more succinctly, we are concentrating our resources at the wrong end of the economy, and this is incredibly wrong according to Keynes. We should be aiming to help the bottom, not the top. Our economic and social priorities are as wrong as they possibly can be. The bottom has to be lifted up, not, as we are doing pushed down even further. The coalitions policies will never work and only lead to a semi-permanent recesssion.
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Unfortunately, the government’s policies benefit and have ‘saved’ the ‘ruling, financial aristocracy’ from ruin, by putting them on welfare for millionaires. Reversing this ‘class-war’ policy, will require challneging the power structure of society and massive, entrenched, inequality, and how likely is that?
In October there was a 12 day period when the London exchange grew 20%, almost 1,000 points, while trading volumes remained low. Proof of a manipulated stock market – unless there are some fantastically rich investors who want to pay substantially more for stocks than they are worth – oops, that is manipulation.
http://www.advfn.com/ftse/FTSECharts.asp?index=UKX
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There are 930,000 empty residential properties in the UK of which 83% are owned by banks. That’s about twice the amount needed to house all of the UK homeless.
I wonder if they believe that more QE will be beneficial? I suspect that some of them do. Some, of course, are just crooks, but never underestimate the power of belief. Clever people are especially guilty of believing strange things.
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We jest, but I worry. Everything points to one thing: massive FUBAR. Within the next few years, probably. The lies and PR and self-justification will continue as before, until it all goes horribly tits up, and then the recriminations will begin in earnest. It’s curious that the non-economists, the man in the street, can see that the castle is built on sand, whilst the trained economist looks admiringly at the castle, lauding it’s foundations, and telling us all to stop worrying. But there it is.
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If I’m honest, I’ll admit that I don’t quite understand QE. I vaguely grasp the idea, and kind of get the outline, but I won’t pretend to fully understand how it all works. But you do wonder if economists themselves really fully understand how it works. Craig’s theory that the money is going to buy shonky debt is perfectly plausible, and in fact rather likely. But we don’t hear to much about this from the experts; experts, what do they know?
o/t but interesting, I hope. After Scottish independence there’s nowhere to put the nukes.
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http://www.banthebomb.org/ne/images/stories/pdfs/nowheretogo.pdf
Little bank gives silver to Big bank.
Big bank gives paper to Little bank.
Little bank and Little bank’s friends trade these pieces of paper.
One day Little bank & friends ask for silver to be returned.
Big bank asks if they will accept some more paper.
Little bank and friends agree to accept more paper.
Everyone soon forgets all about silver and now there is only good paper and soon there is also some toxic paper created by Little Bank and some of its clever friends.
Little bank runs out of good paper but has plenty of toxic paper.
Big bank prints more good paper and distributes to little bank and friends. Its not really so good because there is so much of it and it yields very little, but so long as it is printed by big bank its good paper and makes up for all the toxic paper. The low interest means that Little bank and friends can profit.
Big bank’s yield on their recent paper is so low they need to sell more papers to Overseas big fund.
Overseas big fund gives very good paper for Big bank’s promise to pay with its good paper.
Big bank gives little bank and friends some of its newly printed good paper and little bank and friends return some of Big bank’s older good paper.
Everyone can see that Big bank is able to sell its newly printed paper and that there is market from big bank to buy back this paper with new paper. Everyone i.e. Overseas big fund, little bank and its friends all join in buying Big bank’s good paper and they are all confident that Big bank will buy it back off them. If they don’t want it they can return this good paper to Big bank for other good paper.
The carousel is spinning and everyone is happy.
Isn’t this called creating confidence in a market for Big bank paper?
Clarke,
What I mean is that ‘… a vast apparatus of permanent unelected Government exists. This permanent Government consists of senior civil servants, intelligence and security officers, key figures in certain city and financial institutions, key industrialists and directors of major monopolistic companies, senior politicians.’ I also mean that they control a vast web of secret companies and resources.
http://govermentterrorism.blogspot.com/2012/02/syrian-invasion-by-foreign-troops-in.html
Syria : Brit invasion on the cards
James C is absolutely correct about how the QE process works, and if anyone cares to look at the the Bank of England balance sheets on their website they will see that this is what is happening – they really are buying almost entirely gilts rather than something else as Craig and others are suggesting.
James C and others are also absolutely right as to why it isn’t working – although the banks now have more than enough liquidity and capital they are just not lending more into the economy (in fact quite a lot of studies are showing that they are lending more than would otherwise do but the impact on the real economy has been pretty marginal with GDP being c1% greater than it would be)largeley because there isn’t much demand for additional borrowing from said economy. Project Mercury is a bit of a farce, largeley because the targets are set based upon gross rather than net lending to SMEs.
So what should be done – well as well as not cutting the deficit now I quite like Robert Skidelsky’s proposal that the QE funding should be provided to a bank that it is prepared to invest – i.e a National Investment Bank (or perhaps one based on the existing Green Bank) rather than the current shower who think that they are still entitled to bonuses when their profits and share prices fall. Obviously politicians might want to interfere and mess around with the investment criteria used by such a bank in making its loans – but such a risk could be managed by proper oversight by a few real bankers, assuming that there are still enough around to remember what a bankers role used to be.
Canspeccy
It is hard to take your views on economics seriously – which seem to be a deep belief in free markets and keeping government interference to a minimum except that this should stop when it comes to the White Cliffs of Dover. But oh you live in Canada!
I’m impressed by many of the above contributions, especially Writerman at 8.14 and 8.21 am today. However, this can lead to disempowering despair eg his final sentence “challenging the power structure of society…how likely is that?” A traditional Marxist response is to hope for more of the same and revolution. However, most of the voodoo economics comes from the Tea Partying neo-cons. It’s worth remembering that there are other directions which get support from traditional economic analyses.
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For example, see Wenchao Jin et. al. “Poverty and Inequality in the UK:2011”, Institute of Fiscal Studies May 2011. Also (though some of the the maths and stats are beyond my grasp this sane reminder of the blindingly obvious:
“Since rich individuals are probably more likely to employ avoidance practices, the government levies heavier taxes on those who are less well-off, which will not only increase vertical inequality but may slow down the development of small businesses and economic growth.”
Tatiana Damjanovic and David Ulph (University of St. Andrews St Salvator’s College, KY16 9AL, UK) Tax Progressivity, Income Distribution and Tax Non-Compliance. September 15, 2009. Text of the full article is at http://tinyurl.com/7pf35gl . [I take pleasure from the authors’ being at the same college whose Master carpeted me in 1962 for publishing a “pornographic poetry magazine”.]
Now an extract from that Iain, would cheer us all up at a miserable day like this.
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How very odd, Writerman, that you do not see that governments’ policies and markets’ actions have exposed and are highlighting the rigged and easily abused ways in which control of paper money, which has now morphed into the electronic transfer of notional sum of spontaneous, arbitrarily decided fiat currency wealth, renders you slaves to misery, and the whims of those who fool you into thinking that everything can be bought and therefore great wealth is an overwhelming power, rather than a global indicator to any and all of that which needs to be addressed and/or physically attacked and destroyed should things not change beyond present recognition and perception.
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It is illogical to not think, and to think that things do not radically change and evolve, and to imagine that the status quo position is tenable and to be supported, is to display a lack of intelligence which allows systems vulnerabilities to be ruthlessly exploited and old wealth to be transferred into new virtualised programs replacing old analogue systems.
RBS bankers arrested in tax fraud investigation
HMRC says five current and former employees of Edinburgh-based bank were detained in investigation into personal financial affairs.Bankers from the Royal Bank of Scotland have been arrested as part of an ongoing investigation into an alleged tax fraud.Four current employees and one former employee of the Edinburgh-based bank were arrested at their homes across London and the home counties on Wednesday, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) said.HMRC said the allegations related to the financial affairs of the individuals rather than the activity of the bank.An spokeswoman added: “As a result of an ongoing HMRC investigation into tax-related criminal offences, HMRC has arrested a number of people, some of whom work for UK banks.”This investigation relates to the actions of the people arrested in relation to their own financial affairs and is not connected to the business activities of the banks.”Royal Bank of ScotlandBankingHMRCCrimeguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
(Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:03:23 GMT)
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/browse.headlines.php?ID=49
I’m not a ‘Marxist.’ I rememeber reading somewhere that Marx himself once lashed out and cried, “I am not a Marxist!” in reaction to the rigid determinism of many of his followers, who perhaps didn’t fully grasp the complexity of his observations and theories.
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I haven’t actually given up on the possibility of radical social change. In many respects I think we are in a ‘pre-revolutionary’ period. ‘Pre-revolutionary’ in the sense that we’ve been moving in the wrong direction for at least thirty years, and changing course is goinf to be extremely difficult.
The challenge of our present era how to mobilize the middle-class into resisting their own ‘pauperization’ which is intimately linked to the gutting of the traditional welfare-state model, on which so many of their careers and life-style choices are founded.
A ‘pauperized’, intelligent, educated, unemployed, and resentful, middle class who sees their traditional routes to social advancement being closed off, is a potentially ‘revolutionary’ force in society.
‘A ‘pauperized’, intelligent, educated, unemployed, and resentful, middle class who sees their traditional routes to social advancement being closed off, is a potentially ‘revolutionary’ force in society.’
Ameen
What should one call this new era Writerman?, you exceptional posts need developing. This new era, were justice, human rights and equality are displaced by hegemonial lambasting, geo strategic wrecking and pseudo financial sticking plasters, could be called the age of Leviathan, rather than a less suitable ‘end of history’, for it is the one and only neocon who is stalking the globe in pursuit of its hunger for more of the same murder injustice greed and chaotics.
I like your solution to this calamity, Brendan, concentrating on those at the bottom who are able, with a little push start, to help themselves. We have to start loving self stustainability, limited protectionismn and bartering. Hording silver and gold will not solve high food prices or feed you, but growing you own will take the sting out of your pocket, swapping seeds and foodstuffs locally will become vogue, local markets are an essential to promote in such bottom centric economics.
Ruth is right in her presumtion of an unelected Government and for that reason this country needs a revolution, nothing less will do, sadly, because those you speak of Ruth, have become accustomed to their positions and traditions for far too long, they will not want to move or share, in unison with those at the bottom, so they have to be moved from their perch, indeed the perch itself should be abolished, central Government and centrally lead politics have merged with the aims of Leviathan and hence, had their day. The centrally lead and organised politi is dead, parties are lost for ideas and are clasping at starws, youth parliaments and false competitions, are designed to grow the next generation of yes sayers, under the disguise of particpatory democracy, rather than acting on mandates received, new young faces are groomed for a repetition of the old same formulae.
looking at the education system, I’m not surprised that some parents and teachers are taking it into their own hands, education otherwise has grown out of all proportions and firneds I know are only too happy to school their kids themselves, or in small groups, sharing tuition and such like.
Whatever Independents once represented, today they have a new palette of policies they can proffer to voters, but it would take a united Independent movement to do it. A common, ten point policy anker could moor these Independents into their respective locales; together with decentralised power and a drastically cut down centrallity in Westminster, one could establish a proportionally elected english parliament, increase constituencies and leave the supra national agendas to a strict rotation of locally selected/elected few who keep up the international relations.
With modern comunications there is no need for ambassadors in countries that cooperate with a new global agenda, no need for civil servants and hangers on.
Our royal family can decide where to live and where they want to spent their summer holidays, they will have to live sustainably, or face the consequences. Curtailing their multiple incomes from their businesse gained through their preferential status must be contemplated. Other royals live within their means, no shortage of good examples. With this exciting thought I leave to make some bread.
I also would like to see an extract of your youthfull paper exploits Ian, or were they autobiographical? 😉
Thanks for that cheerfull british news from Ghanaweb,Mary, you know it must be true when you read it abroad first.
here is a slighly different take to the water alliance forged by our privatised suppliers with one eyed water villains abroad. These ties seem to be more important than any others one could forge in Europe, with our trading partners, not scoundrels.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/02/11/now-britain-helps-the-water-thieves/