Save the Humans

Michael Moore Clueless at the End

For those who can spare the time (and I admit it might be few), travel to the other world and read Michael Moore's piece on the demise of GM. If you don't remember Michael Moore, he was a fierce critic of anything to the right of Stalin, and has created a number of movies about left causes such as socialised healthcare, gun control, George Bush, etc. Sort of like Al Gore, but with broader interests. He also wrote an entertaining book called 'Stupid White Men'.

Anyway, Mr Moore's piece about GM is priceless on so many levels. His delusions are reaching the point where he really should be his own comedy show.

Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars?

Perhaps even in the USA there are a few people who are not employed by GM? Yes GM employed 250,000 people, but there are 300m in the USA. If the job can be done more cheaply elsewhere, then perhaps this is a hint from the market that 100,000 auto workers could do something more productive.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with.

So perhaps moving those jobs to Mexico was a good think? I'm just not clear whether working for GM Is good, or bad?

Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM.

Well if that's as clear as it gets, I just hope he is not allowed near a medical patient.

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices.

We are at war? Is this the war on terrorism? The war on drugs? The war on fat? The war on lame comedy?

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders.

Ahhh, the war on global warming. I should have known. In fact the whole piece boils down to this. The greenies have some responsibility for killing GM (all their whining about fuel efficiency).

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth.

So the oil companies hate us?

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline.

So the government hates us? How can it be fleecing when the oil companies work hard to sell us a gallon of petrol at a reasonable price, but good value when the government just charges us for doing nothing? Utterly clueless.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds.

The land area of the USA is nearly 10 million km2, versus less that 0.4 million for Japan. Japan is long and thin. Japan has a small number of urban centres with large populations. Japan is more than 10x as dense in terms of population overall, and a quick look around Tokyo or Osaka (a major bullet train link runs between then) will convince most observers that the cities are in a different league to Flint, Houston or Boston in terms of density..

Few would doubt that fast trains could be very handle in particular areas, perhaps on the east cost to link up a few cities. Still, what do you do at each end? Unless you live in a large city, you are going to want to drive home from the train station.

The idea that trains will replace planes for flights between New York and LA seems far fetched at best. What doesn't Mr Moore just come out and say that he is pleased that GM died because it was interfering his precious environmental credentials? Or perhaps he did.

For a real discussion about GM's demise, you could always try The Economist.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Board Games

Hugo Rifkind makes light of an evil dictator in the Times this week, after his election activities:

I wind down by further loosening my already quite loose collar and inviting a couple of young Basiji militiamen to my home for an evening of board games. We start with Scrabble. The first Basiji scores 11 and the second scores 32. Then I score 11,073.
...
After all, he’s the Ayatolla Khamenei. “Kh-ahman-ay-eye,” he says.

“I’m sure that’s not what you said last time,” I say.

The Supreme Leader gives a guilty chuckle. He admits he keeps changing it to confuse the BBC.

Go have a read, I suspect it's pretty close to the mark.

What Killed General Motors?

Timid management and coddled workers, according to this great article in the WSJ. If you are interested in this topic, read the whole thing!

The union was defending production
quotas that workers could fill in five or six hours, after which they
would get overtime pay or just, you know, go home.

But the company signed generous labor deals during the 1970s,
including the right to retire after 30 years with full pension and
benefits, partly because it believed the contracts would cripple its
smaller competitors, Ford and Chrysler. Then along came Honda, Nissan
and Toyota, which didn't have to deal with labor contracts at all. That
was the beginning of the agonizing decline.

I am sad to see Pontiac go - I owed a great car call a Grand Prix in the 1990s. It's going to be interesting to see if GM can recover from this. For Chrysler, it must be very embarassing for ex-ecutives on the Grand Blanc golf course admitting they were bought for a song by a bunch of Italians...

Packaging Versus Plastic Bags

What is wrong with supermarkets being difficult about handing out plastic bags? Well I have covered the arguments many times, but here is another one.

We purchased a joint of meat the other day and it came in a plastic box with a film lid. In case were were unsure what it would look like when cooked and sliced (and covered in gravy), the supermarket printed a colour photo on the front.

My point is that the material and cost in these outers is considerably more than a plastic bag, which is after all made from waste gas. Sainsburys (I am pleased to say) is not the villain of this piece - they happily provide plastic bags free of charge to those who want them.

The worst offender in the UK seems to be M&S, which has the most packaging of any surpermarket on the planet, and yet charges 5p for a plastic bag. Shame.

From my little surveys, most M&S staff seem to agree that it is 'silly'. I would call it a stunt, and I certainly hope that M&S shareholders are paying for this silly stunt in lose sales.

Plastic bags do not harm the environment, they are hugely convenient, and those who seek to restrict their use are just trying to make our lives more difficult.