UN greed and cupidity, EU waste and stupidity piss away $803m in Greek Aid

"One senior aid official estimated that as much as $70 out of every $100 spent had been wasted"

So says a piece in the Guardian today that catalogues the greed, stupidity, empire buiding, tantrums, thefts, frauds, jealousies and malfeasance that has pissed away $803m in aid to Greece to accommodate the migrants there. Who is surprised? 

The gainers from the aid have been UN bureaucrats, apparatchiks and aid workers paid third-world 'hardship pay' bonuses for being posted to this holiday destination, the international aid bandwagon, EU bureaucrats, Greek civil servants and their contractors, and Turkish and German taxpayers. Losers from the aid have been the migrants, who have little improvement in living conditions and the people of Greece, who have gained nothing and lost much. 

The piece is a damning litany of lunatics running the asylum. Few migrants have been returned to Turkey, few have been accepted under Juncker's quota rules but UN managers are fat with gold and puffed with a hubristic flatus of self-importance. Vicious turf-wars between aid agencies have seen donor aid pissed away in campaigns to counter opposing aid agencies rather than in assisting the migrants to go home.   

If any further evidence were needed that the UN and EU are run for the benefit of their officials, Greece provides it in spades. Nasty, self-loving incapable fools, chiselling little crooks, petulant penpushers and leeches, their vile misappropriation of tax and aid money is only now becoming clear.

Monbiot's annual outing on this blog - 2017

I read Monbiot every week in the Guardian and for fifty weeks a year there's really nothing worth commenting on. But as regulars will know, around once a year old Moonbat comes up with a column that presses all the right buttons. This year's hit is a post on Big Data.  

Not so much Big Data as the Big Money that uses it, in the West anyway. Those who have great wealth, from across the political spectrum, inevitably turn their attention to using it to gain greater political leverage than their single vote alone would allow. And they all make me nervous; Gina Miller and Tony Blair as much as Lord Ashcroft and Arron Banks. Whilst we're working towards controls that restrict their funding of political parties - controls that depend on also controlling TU funding - the funding of 'sniper' technology that allows campaigns to be precisely focused rather than shotgunned is not so controlled. And the State can also use it;

" ... deep-learning algorithms enable the state to develop its “citizen score”. This uses people’s online activities to determine how loyal and compliant they are, and whether they should qualify for jobs, loans or entitlement to travel to other countries. Combine this level of monitoring with nudging technologies – tools designed subtly to change people’s opinions and responses – and you develop a system that tends towards complete control."

However, Monbiot also recognises that Localism, Direct Democracy and other systems that 'take back control' from the overwheening centre can counter these malign effects

"But digital technologies could also be a powerful force for positive change. Political systems, particularly in the Anglophone nations, have scarcely changed since the fastest means of delivering information was the horse. They remain remote, centralised and paternalist. The great potential for participation and deeper democratic engagement is almost untapped. Because the rest of us have not been invited to occupy them, it is easy for billionaires to seize and enclose the political cyber-commons."

To a point, George. So long as we maintain universal adult suffrage and the secret ballot on all matters of importance, this can be supplemented by as many citizens' juries as you wish. But any solutions that disenfranchise any part of the population are unacceptable - and Labour has a shameful history of supporting Eugenics in the party's early days, a fascist tendency that resurfaces from time to time. 

So, Herr Juncker, let me see if I've got this right ...

The fury from across the Channel this week at a reports that finds that the EU have no basis in law for their demand of a €60bn reverse golden handshake reveals rather more than the Berleymont apparatchiks would wish, I think.

It can't be because they didn't know that they have no basis in international law for their demands. They know as well as we do they have no lawful right to ask this of us. The weakness of their case is amply demonstrated by their demand that the matter of the exit bill is decided before any trade terms are discussed. They must also know that there is no way that Mrs May can agree a lump sum before knowing by how much the trade deal will benefit or disbenefit us.

On the other hand, Mrs May has clearly signalled her fall-back position; we leave without a deal on WTO terms, our contributions stop in March 2019, and we use our rights under international law to reclaim our assets; unlike the EU's spurious claims, our reclaiming our investments such as the €40bn we've put into the European Investment Bank will be enforced. And yes, WTO terms will hurt our GDP, but the lump sum we win back plus the €10bn a year buffer of no more Danegeld could compensate for the downturn. Whereas the EU has no such capital cushion, and faces charging its contributing nations far more, and will also suffer its own hit to EU GDP from a Brexit without any buffer at all. 

Have I misunderstood this or are we negotiating from a pretty strong position? Are the comrades so cross because they've worked out how weak they are in all this?