IS THE WORLD GOING MADDER?

Some difficulty seeing the way ahead

There is, as the saying goes, some crazy shit going on in the world today. 

There is controversy about things like money laundering, the rich and the powerful setting up offshore companies to avoid paying any or the high rates of taxes they would have to pay if they set up these companies in their normal places of domicile, and controversy about whether Britain should or should not leave the European Union. There is controversy about who is fit to become the next President of the United States, what to do about the hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants in transit in Europe, what to do to boost the world's sluggish economy, and talks about making peace in Syria and Yemen. As if there is not enough problems to occupy the world for decades, in Britain, the Labour Opposition is trying to make political capital out of a report that the Minister of Culture had a relationship with a sex worker, by calling on him to resign his control over Press Regulation.  Of course, we now have this kind of operative hypocrisy enshrined in law, passed, of course, by hypocritical politicians, which makes it a crime for one to buy sex, but not a crime to sell sex.

Yes, crazy stuff, with everybody trying to prey on everybody else.

Why should the fact that a Minister had a relationship with a sex worker be a necessary and sufficient cause for him to resign from the press regulatory body?  Are sex workers not people, and does being such a worker - yes, a worker, which means she has a job while thousands of others do not - make her any less reputable than any other worker; except for politicians, who must at all times be viewed with great caution and circumspection?

So, yes, my take on this story is that it is no more than a minor issue being exploited by politicians with little or no good faith. Hypocrisy and outdated puritanism which would have some currency in the Islamic Caliphate, but should have none in 21st Century Europe.

And what is all this talk about the EU wanting companies with more that 600.000 euros to have to keep and publish more accounts than they already have to do? I thought business were already suffering badly from the downturn in the world's economy - what with Tata Steel having to sell or close its UK businesses and making thousands of employees unemployed - and needed more incentives, and not dis-incentives?  The EU has certainly not disappointed its detractors, by its knee-jerk response to the tax avoidnce and evasion issue, with a bureaucratic proposed remedy. Talk about making a bad situation worse.

And what is going on in Syria? How is it that no sooner has the temporary ceasefire begins to hold, than the western press drastically reduce its reporting of what is happening over there. It is as if  peace has arrived, or the political and economic elites have advised the press to de-prioritise reporting on the conflict; as they seemed to have done on that in Yemen. 

Try to get a clear perspective

And so we have it, that we, the people, are only given the official 'news' or stories which the elites want us to have.  Of course, the 'new' is never objective and is not necessarily the 'truth', which requires us to consume it with caution.

My take on all of this madness is that politicians and governments should take time to carefully reflect on the problems which confront them and society, and never come up with precipitous  apparent solutions, especially when it is not necessary to do so. Consider what President Obama has said about leading his country into invading Libya.