Fun Online Polls: Syria & Indian Bicycle Marketing

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Is arming the Syrian 'rebels' a good idea or a bad idea? Multiple selections allowed.

Bad idea - it will only benefit our arms manufacturers - 20 votes
Good idea - it will be good for our arms manufacturers - 18 votes

Bad idea - Arabs will just end up killing each other - 42 votes
Good idea - violent Arabs will be killing each other - 36 votes

Good idea - they will overthrow a dictator - 5 votes
Bad idea - the weapons will end up with Al Qaeda - 74 votes

Opinions on whether the first two likely outcomes - that this will (only) benefit our arms manufacturers and Arabs will just end up killing each other even more - are in themselves A Good Thing or A Bad Thing appear to be evenly split and thus both sides cancel out and can be ignored.

Which leaves us with the tie-breaker question of whether arming the Syrian 'rebels' will lead to the overthrow of a dictator (good) or just fall into the hands of Islamists (bad) and on this one the answer is crystal clear.

There you go, that's how you formulate pragmatic foreign policy. Sorted.

Total number of people taking part = 120, total number of options chosen 195, average 1.6 each. Thank you everybody who took part.
----------------------------------------
Today marks another high point for the Indian Bicycle Marketing practised by the three main UK political parties.

They have now all timidly suggested that some universal pensioner benefits be "looked at" or means-tested or that wealthier pensioners simply waive their entitlement, and been duly lambasted by the other parties for their callousness. Bonus points to the Tories - IDS suggested it, his leader dismissed it, and two months later the Chancellor proposed it again, e.g.

September 2012 Nick Clegg: wealthy elderly should lose winter fuel allowance and other benefits

April 2013 Iain Duncan Smith calls for wealthy pensioners to hand back benefits

Later the same day in April 2013: Cameron dismisses Duncan Smith's idea that well-off pensioners should hand back bus passes, winter fuel payments and TV licences

Early June 2013: Labour would cut winter fuel payments for rich, says Ed Balls

Late June 2013: George Osborne to review winter fuel allowances for the elderly

The whole thing is a joke of course.

Universal benefits are the best kind of benefits as they are the cheapest to administer, and the Winter Fuel payments (known as Christmas Bonus in less PC days of yore) only amounts to £2 billion a year, so if we take them away from the top tenth of pensioners (ranked by current income? Total wealth? Value of home?) that would "save" £0.2 billion a year at the cost of making twelve million pensioners fill in yet another form at huge expense, so the net "saving" will end up at something like 0.1% of the annual government over-spend, but hey.

But it's a good illustration of how Indian Bicycle Marketing works, even though all three parties have a similar policy on x, y or z, they all:

a) Slag off the other parties for having such a policy, and

b) Defend their identical policy on a different but inherently flawed basis. Broadly speaking, the Lib Dems want to do it on the grounds of "fairness", Labour wants to "focus spending on the most vulnerable" and the Tories want to try and "reduce the size of the state".

Anyway sod it, vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"America to press for restrictions on potent sovereign wealth funds"

"Bunch of wankers miss the point", really.

If e.g. Saudi Arabia or Russia or some other evil foreign country buys up a shed load of 'vital US assets', which country is then more dependent on the co-operation and friendship of the other?

If said evil foreign country declares war or something*, all the Americans have to do is to expropriate their US-based assets, ergo, this sort of thing makes it less likely that an evil foreign country will declare war on the USA.

So from the American point of view, this is a win-win. There's money coming in and American influence on other countries' foreign policy is strengthened**.

* Whether military, political or economic warfare.

** See also Venezuala. They have expropriated foreign owned oil interests, without provocation. Why should the USA or the UK now give a shit what happens down there? All they have to do is wait until Chavez has completely fucked things up and he gets replaced by somebody more sensible, then Big Oil can buy the stuff back for cheap in exchange for getting the oil industry back on its feet. Seeing as Big Oil plan decades ahead, I suppose this is just a minor inconvenience for them.