Spanish life
is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher
Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain.
My usual Thursday morning thanks to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for some of today's items.
Cataluña: Election
Day!
- So . . . What has President Rajoy achieved by his decade-long mishandling of Catalan aspirations? Well, he certainly hasn't (re)established the stability which he (laughingly) claimed was not only the objective but also the result of his imposing direct rule from Madrid and imprisoning Catalan politicians. Worse, the only certainties about today's election are that there'll be a high turnout and that Rajoy's PP party will lose votes and forfeit up to half its seats. Some victory! But at least he's increased support for PP in the rest of (anti-Cataluña) Spain. Perhaps this is what he was after all along, not being able to see beyond the end of his nose.
- One likely consequence of split political sympathies in Cataluña is that the 'far left' Podemos party will hold the whip hand in the - inevitably unstable - consortium of parties which eventually takes power when all the post-election wrangling is done. Ironically, Podemos has been critical of both the Catalan and the Spanish nationalists. So isn't popular with either tribe.
- The Guardian overview: In a rarified and confrontational atmosphere, opinion polls cannot be trusted. . . . The only certainty is that whoever wins on Thursday will face two daunting tasks: mending the divisions between Catalans and making peace with Madrid.
Spain
- While the Brits remain the biggest buyers of Spanish properties, their prominence is falling.
- Here and here are videos - in English - on the massive corruption of Rajoy's PP partly, currently the focus of one of the major trials wending through their way through the Spanish courts.
- And here's another of those non-surprises which regularly occur in Spain: The National Commission for Markets and Competition has fined Gas Natural and Endesa for fraudulently working to raise electricity prices. Which resulted in massive increases last winter. Wonder if we'll now get our money back . . .
- Disappointing not to see any Galician hospital among then best 15 public institutions in the country, though one in La Coruña did creep into the top 20.
- Some very good news . . . Several Starbucks here have closed their doors
- In case you need it . . .Here's The Locals': How to survive Xmas on your own in Spain. I have difficulty believing the writer will be alone for either Xmas or New year.
The EU
- Good to read that Brussels doesn't intend to go down Fart's road to a non-neutral internet. For now, at least.
The UK
- Private Eye's comment on the premiership of Gordon Brown:-
- As readers will know, I'm a fan of Ambrose Evans Pritchard. So, I can't resist posting below his article on the Singapore model. Which is far from the caricature usually favoured by dismissive Remainers . . .
The USA and Nutters
Corner
- Paul McGuire and Troy Anderson plan to get their book Trumpocalypse into Fart's hands so that he can announce a National Day of Repentance. Says Anderson: A minister friend of ours is working with the White House and members of Congress on a congressional resolution that would call for a national day of repentance. The idea is that, from the Oval Office, Donald Trump would read the Lincoln proclamation, repent of America’s sins before God and there would be a day-long event. Rabbi Jonathan Cahn has agreed to do a Passover seder, Anne Graham Lotz has been praying with our minister friend who is coordinating this and many members of Congress and faith leaders are getting on board with this. This, of course, is all because we are in The End Times and nearing Armageddon and The Rapture. Or vice versa. You couldn't make it up. Oh, yes. Someone did.
Pontevedra
- No sooner do I give international prominence to the fate of our football club than the manager is summarily sacked. He was, it turns out, the longest-running Mister, at something over 4 years. But he probably expected his defenestration. Perhaps Pontevedra FC will now go for the Dutch guy who took Everton into the relegation zone of the Premier League, before he got his comeuppance . . .
Finally
- Can it really be true that many makers of electric cars sell you the vehicle but only rent you the battery?
Today's Cartoon
THE ARTICLE
'Singapore in the
Atlantic' is a splendid model for Brexit: Ambrose Evans Pritchard
If you consider it
daunting to wrench a divided nation from its economic moorings and
launch into the unknown, remember what Singapore had to face when it
was born in trauma at the height of the Cold War.
Founding premier Lee
Kuan Yew literally broke into tears as he explained to a medley of
distraught peoples - Hokkien Chinese, Malay, Tamils, and Eurasians -
that all attempts to keep the island-entrepot in the Malaysian
federation had collapsed.
His foes had warned
during months of bitter wrangling that Singapore would have to accept
subordinate terms imposed by Kuala Lumpur or else lose the Malaysian
rubber trade and access to its core Peninsular markets. It would be
reduced to a "tropical slum"; it was even threatened with
loss of its fresh water supplies from the mainland in one infamous
warning.
"The idea that a
small island city-state of two million people with no hinterland
could survive in what was then a difficult and troubled region - the
'Balkans of Asia' - seemed manifestly absurd," said Kishore
Mahbubani, the dean of Lee Kuan Yew University.
This is not the place
to rehearse the causes of that complex crisis in 1965. Suffice to say
that the Malaysian leader - the Tunku - in the end thought it
preferable to "amputate the gangrenous limb" in order to
preserve ethnic Malay dominance, rather than having to share a
federation with the Straits Chinese.
Lee Kuan Yew had to
assuage aggrieved Malays, recently embroiled in deadly sectarian
riots and prime candidates for irredentist resistance. Many thought
him a crypto-Communist, sympathetic to the Maoist Revolution that was
so stirring the passions of the Chinese diaspora.
Westerners feared he
would draw Singapore into the Sino-Soviet orbit. The British
High Commissioner of the day more shrewdly thought him a
"crypto-anti-Communist", as he most certainly proved to be.
But defeating Communist subversion was no easy task either.
"It is nothing
short of a man-made miracle that Singapore has enjoyed fifty years of
continuous peace and prosperity. Its society might easily have been
torn apart by ethnic strife," said Professor Mahbubani. This is
the fate that befell the small multiracial states of Guyana, Cyprus,
and Sri Lanka when the British Empire withdrew.
As we all know today,
Singapore is a Wirtschaftswunder. It is at peace with itself and its
neighbours, with perhaps the best-educated teenagers on the planet,
and very rich. Its leaders defied the import substitution orthodoxies
of the post-colonial 'Bandung Generation', which failed to
varying degrees almost everywhere. It pioneered the free trade
strategy that catapulted the country from Third World to First World.
When foes of Brexit
deride the notion of a "Singapore on the Thames" they
typically equate such a strategy with hyper-deregulation, a low-tax
race to the bottom; or perhaps some sort of free marketry run
amok, with over-reliance on finance. But that is to do this
disciplined, cohesive, and essentially Confucian-Socialist nation a
disservice on several levels. It is also ill-informed.
"Singapore
continues to maintain regulatory and supervisory standards that are
among the highest in the world," states the International
Monetary Fund in its latest Article IV report. Corporation tax
is light at 17pc - where Britain is already heading - but not
super-low like Ireland or the Baltics.
Rolls-Royce builds
Trent engines for the Airbus A380 and Boeing's Dreamliner at the
old RAF fields at Seletar. Keppel has grown from the Royal Navy yard
to become the world's biggest producer of drilling rigs for oil and
gas. Manufacturing makes up 22pc of GDP, comparable to Germany or
Japan. "And we want to keep it that way," said Chng
Kai Fong, the Trinity College, Cambridge, alumnus in charge of
economic planning.
The ruling party
clamped down on mass immigration after an election upset in 2011, a
protest of sorts by Singaporeans feeling the crush on scarce
resources. The island's new 'labour-lean' model offers a template for
what Britain may face as it curbs inflows of unskilled migrants after
Brexit.
The IMF says the
manufacturing sector has shed workers for ten consecutive quarters,
and productivity is recovering briskly after a period of stagnation.
"Tighter limits on foreign workers have led to a permanent
increase in real wages relative to the cost of capital," it
said.
This refutes academic
claims in the UK - already under fire for lack of rigor - that
low-skilled immigration does not compress the real wages of British
indigenous workers. The IMF says firms in Singapore are being forced
to boost investment in labour-saving equipment, leading to "higher
optimum capital intensity levels".
Policy-makers in
Singapore have concluded that labour-intensive growth may have been a
trap, raising the risk that they would miss a crucial jump at the
development frontier. This is revealing: if you make such claim
in the British debate, you are accused of Brexit delusion - or worse
- by free movement ideologues.
The architect of
Singapore's post-independence economy, Goh Keng Swee, studied Japan's
Meiji Restoration in the 19th Century. He targeted strategic sectors
in an East Asian form of hybrid dirigisme with market signals,
whether precision engineering or seizing on Singapore's nodal
position in the Malacca Strait to control shipping.
Laissez-faire it is not. "The government takes an equity stake
to de-risk projects and show it is in the game," said Mr Chng.
The UK cannot copy the
model but a country like ours living chronically beyond its means -
with a current account deficit near 6% of GDP, and a household
savings rate at post-War lows - should certainly heed the message
posted in giant letters at schools: "no one owes Singapore a
living".
Behind the soft images
of the shopping malls, is a hard machine, a ruthless process of
meritocratic selection, all held together by a communitarian
eco-system.
The basics of life are
cheap. My plate of rice, beef, and Asian spinach today cost £2.40
from the food stall of a 'hawker centre', the gathering spot of
Singapore neighbourhoods. Prices are capped by fiat. The produce is
imported tariff-free from wherever it is cheapest, often Australia.
There are no EU 'Corn Laws' here.
The metro (MRT) is
automated, without human drivers, and costs a trivial sum, while cars
are ferociously discouraged. Road certificates cost around £25,000
for ten years. New issuance is to be frozen. The aim is to halve car
ownership per household from 40% to 20%.
The government owns
most of the land. It builds the leafy mid-rise blocks that house 80pc
of the resident population, mixing small and big flats together and
carefully managing racial quotas - 74% Chinese, 13% Malay, 9% Indian, etc - to prevent ghettoes. Cultural balance is handled with
enormous care. There is none of the liberal carelessness - bordering
on anthropological nihilism - that has led to Europe's unassimilated
banlieues.
The state sells
property on a lottery basis, with the highest numbers getting first
choices for their bracket. Prices average £62,000 for a two-room
flat, £104,000 for three rooms, £160,000 for four rooms, and so on.
If you buy directly from the government, you cannot sell for five
years.
This system has
prevented a housing shortage in a city with a population density that
is 60% higher than in London, keeping prices well within the range
of young couples. Counter-cyclical tools, such as adjustable
loan-to-value caps (currently 80pc) and variable stamp duty, are used
aggressively to prevent booms.
Prices have been
falling gently since 2013. The aim is to stop them rising, unlike the
deranged British practice of trying to push them higher with
incentives. "The Chinese are studying our model very long and
hard," said Khoo Teng Chye, Singapore’s urban planning guru.
Perhaps the Tories should do the same.
Citizens are docked 20%
of their income at source for the Central Providential Fund, matched
by an equal contribution from employers. Young couples - singles
forbidden, mind you - can draw on their named account as the
fund for mortgages.
This system creates a
colossal pool of national savings for investment. It is a key reason
- indirectly - why Singapore runs a current account surplus of 19% of
GDP, and why it has amassed Norway-sized external assets through its
sovereign wealth funds Temasek and GIC even though it has no oil.
The level of compulsion
is not for the Anglo-Saxon psyche. There is a dark side to
Singapore's hierachies, a tier system of differing rights for
citizens, permanent residents, and lesser pass-holders. Maids from
the poor-abroad, Myanmar or the Philippines, are deported within days
if found to be pregnant in routine health screening.
Yet there are potent
lessons in this success story that Jeremy Corbyn might usefully study
for his own dirigiste drive, if he can overcome his affinity for
ruinous Bolivarian caudillos.
Prof Mahbubani says
Singapore achieves the extraordinary feat of tapping into four major
"civilisational streams" - Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and
Western - without conflict and to multiplying economic effect.
That perhaps is the
best guidance as Brexit looms. Let Britain be a world nation, more at
home with rising Asia and its peoples, and a little freer from the
clammy embrace of that defensive white cartel we call the European
Union. 'Singapore in the Atlantic' is not a bad rallying cry at
all.
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