Tag: Europe

Speaking of Insufferable Prats Having a Bad Day

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The British supreme court just ruled that Boris Johnson’s proroguing parliament for 5 weeks is illegal.

Basically, they said that he lied to the Queen:

The supreme court has ruled that Boris Johnson’s advice to the Queen that parliament should be prorogued for five weeks at the height of the Brexit crisis was unlawful.

The unanimous judgment from 11 justices on the UK’s highest court followed an emergency three-day hearing last week that exposed fundamental legal differences over interpreting the country’s unwritten constitution.

………

Then, giving the court’s judgment on whether the decision to suspend parliament was legal, Hale said: “This court has … concluded that the prime minister’s advice to Her Majesty [ to suspend parliament] was unlawful, void and of no effect. This means that the order in council to which it led was also unlawful, void and of no effect should be quashed.

………

She [Hale] added: “The court is bound to conclude, therefore, that the decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.”

The judgment said: “This was not a normal prorogation in the run-up to a Queen’s speech. It prevented parliament from carrying out its constitutional role for five out of a possible eight weeks between the end of the summer recess and exit day on 31 October.

………

The court stopped short of declaring that the advice given by Johnson to the Queen was improper. It was a question. they said, they did not need to address since they had already found the effect of the prorogation was itself unlawful.

That denial at the end seems to me to be legalese for, “I see what you did there.”

I’m not sure how the politics will play out, but it seems likely that it’s better for people not named Boris Johnson than it is for people named Boris Johnson.

History is Rhyming Again

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Once again, the policy of austerity is leading to the rise of right wing nativists throughout Europe, and once again, it’s happening in Germany:

The anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland party made strong gains in two crucial state elections in Germany on Sunday, increasing its support significantly but failing to oust the mainstream parties.

But the sharp shift to the right in Saxony and Brandenburg – AfD came second in both states – is a blow to the ruling coalition of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), both parties having lost thousands of voters to AfD.

The AfD was also able to mobilise several hundred thousand people who had never voted before, initial analysis showed.

Exit polls showed the CDU remaining the strongest party in Saxony but losing more than six points to secure 33%, while AfD reached 28.1% – a gain of 18 percentage points, and a larger share of the vote than pollsters had predicted.

In Brandenburg, the SPD, which has governed there since 1990, narrowly clung to first place, winning 26.6% and losing 5 points, while AfD secured 24.5%, a more than 10-point rise and a larger share than predicted.

AfD’s success in Saxony and Brandenburg, both in the former communist east, reflects the breakdown of support for Germany’s mainstream parties, the centre-right CDU and the left-of-centre SPD and, as elsewhere in Europe, the increasing fragmentation of the political landscape.

When governments adequately provide for their citizens, the fascist right does not rise.

The fascist right is rising.

QED.

What Do Brexit and the Black Death Have in Common?

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Rising wages,* it appears.

This is precisely what the experts said would not happen:

No, really? Yes, really, via Reuters:

Major British employers gave average pay rises of 2.6% to staff in the three months to July, the highest pace of increase in more than 10 years, data from industry consultants XpertHR showed on Thursday.

Annual pay settlements in Britain began to rise roughly a year ago as the lowest unemployment rate since the mid-1970s put pressure on employers to retain staff, but deals had been stuck at around 2.5% in recent months.

And more:

In sharp contrast to the broader economic slowdown that has taken Britain to the brink of recession, the Office for National Statistics said annual average pay – excluding bonuses – rose by 3.9% in the three months to June, the highest rate since June 2008.

The ONS said about 115,000 more people found a job between April and June, when Theresa May extended the Brexit deadline until October, pushing up the number of people in work to a record of just over 32.8 million.

I’m not sure that the whole “Black Death” thing is particularly reassuring though.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

*For those of you who are not up on your labor history, after about half of Europe died of the plague, peasant wages jumped as a result of labor shortages.

There is a Briar Patch Metaphor Here

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The US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, us threatening to move US troop installations to Poland if Berlin does not increase defense spending.

So, the US is saying that Germany would not have to deal with the noise from the jets, the tanks blocking streets when they deploy for war-games, and the other issues that arise from large deployments of foreign troops on their soil, because they would be just on the other side of the border and just as available for their defense needs.

I do not claim to be an expert on the German zeitgeist, but you have to be pretty dense not to get this:

An envoy of U.S. President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s unwillingness to boost defense spending might give the United States no choice but to move American troops stationed in Germany to Poland.

The comments by Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, signal Trump’s impatience with Merkel’s failure to raise defense spending to 2% of economic output as mandated by the NATO military alliance.

“It is offensive to assume that the U.S. taxpayers continue to pay for more than 50,000 Americans in Germany but the Germans get to spend their [budget] surplus on domestic programs,” Grenell told the dpa news agency.

Germany’s fiscal plans foresee the defense budget of NATO’s second-largest member rising to 1.37% of output next year before falling to 1.24% in 2023.

Eastern European countries like Poland and Latvia, fearful of Russia after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, have raised their military spending to the 2% target, drawing praise from Trump who wants Germany to do the same.

No nation wants foreign troops on its soil, it’s a price that they are willing to pay for other benefits.

The Trump administration just offered the benefits with none of the costs.

It Appears that the Very Serious People in Britain Think that Corbyn is Worse than a Hard Brexit

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I have been rather confused by how the anti-Brexit, and anti-hard Brexit actors have been behaving in what can only be described in a self-destructive manner.

Well, recent developments show that they believe that Jeremy Corbyn being Prime Minister is worse than a Brexit crash-out.

Considering the scenarios that they have described for a no-deal exit from the EU, a complete shut down of exports, food shortages, and an economic implosion, their phobia of the left-wing Labour leader is nuts:

Brexiters stop at nothing to get what they want and remainers stop at everything. The laws of political motion then dictate which direction things move.

Jeremy Corbyn has written to MPs inviting them to install him in Downing Street, having deposed Boris Johnson with a vote of no confidence. His tenure would, he promises, be “strictly time-limited” – long enough to call a general election and seek the necessary article 50 extension to conduct a ballot.

For Corbyn this is the simplest route out of the current mess. There is a government hell-bent on doing something that a majority of MPs oppose and believe to be ruinous – hurtling off a Brexit cliff-edge. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act gives the Commons 14 days to organise a replacement when an incumbent government is defeated in a no-confidence vote. Who else is going to lead that administration if not the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition? In constitutional terms he is the obvious candidate; probably the only candidate.

But in the minds of scores of MPs he is not. His past equivocations over Europe are not the reason, or at least not the only reason. Pro-European Tory rebels, Liberal Democrats, the rag-tag platoon of independents and semi-autonomous tribes of Labour MPs have spent months fretting about ways to thwart a hard Brexit, apparently ready to pull every procedural lever and contemplate all manner of unorthodox coalitions. Not much has been excluded from those considerations, except for a tacit prohibition on any route that makes a prime minister of the current Labour leader. Their horror of Corbyn is equal to – or greater than – their horror of Brexit. That has been so well understood by the participants in the discussion that few have felt much need to articulate it. Corbyn’s letter now obliges them to spell it out.

That is easier for some than others. Tories and ex-Labour independents don’t have much difficulty vocalising reasons why they think the Labour leader is unfit for office, even on a time-limited basis. They see him as a political extremist, a friend of terrorists, Putin stooges and antisemites. They think he would bring to Downing Street a sinister creed and a cabal of advisers whose very presence inside No 10 would sabotage the safety of the UK. For MPs who feel that way, the objection to a single day of Corbyn rule, even for a tactical purpose, is visceral and moral.

But there are others – Greens, Lib Dems and Labour moderates – who, if they share that passionate aversion, are reluctant to express it in public. Jo Swinson comes close. When elected to lead the Lib Dems she ruled out an alliance with Corbyn on the grounds that he couldn’t be trusted on the European question, but also (added almost as an afterthought) because “he is dangerous for our national security and for our economic security, too”.

………

There is something disingenuous about the discussions among MPs about a “government of national unity”(GNU) to avert a no-deal Brexit. It is predicated on concepts of nation and unity that don’t include those who are desperate to leave the EU. Those who voted leave are broadly satisfied with the government they currently have. It is, in truth, a euphemism for a model of technocratic, centre-facing liberal administration defined as much by a rejection of Corbynism as by revulsion at the Trumpian nationalist character that Brexit has acquired. There are many voters who would be glad to have a moderate, bipartisan government. They can play fantasy football with exotic cabinet combinations – Dominic Grieve as chancellor; Keir Starmer to fix Brexit; Caroline Lucas for the environment; Jo Swinson for home secretary. And the prime minister? David Lidington? Yvette Cooper? Anyone as long as it isn’t a Johnson … or a Corbyn. But the Commons numbers don’t add up for that either, unless most of the parliamentary Labour party abandons the whip. It won’t.

The Labour leader knows this and he is calling the whole GNU bluff. If a government falls, the opposition leader is the next in line to have a go and, if that can’t be arranged, there is an election. That is how it works. There might be many reasons why MPs do not want an opposition leader to take charge – that is their constitutional right, too – reasons of tactical political advantage and reasons of conscience. But MPs have not all been candid about what those reasons are; why it is that so many find Corbyn as toxic as Brexit. Their problem is that there aren’t a lot of other options. And the laws of political motion are working against them.

This level of antipathy is not driven by a fear that Corbyn will fail, it is being driven by a fear that he might succeed.

It’s OK that Iceland jailed the bankers and protected its citizens, because there are fewer than ½ a million people on that island.

If that happens in the UK, and more importantly to the financial center known as the City of London, then their patrons, and their comfortable lifestyles, are a thing of the past.

There Hasn’t Been a Tory Political Figure Who Has Failed Upward so Spectacularly since ……… Checks Notes ……… Winston Churchill

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So, Boris Johnson is the new Conservative Party leader, and so he will be the next Prime Minister of Great Britain.

While it is patently obvious that he will be an unmitigated disaster, in the States we would call him a hot mess, but the Brits prefer the term, “Shambolic,” it is almost certain that he will be better than Theresa May.

Theresa May was inflexible, deeply stupid,convinced of her own brilliance, and unwilling to admit her own errors. (She was also cruel for its own sake, just ask the Windrush immigrants, or the recipients of public aid, or people trying to get healthcare at the NHS)

Apart from the trait of stupidity, Boris is a classic upper class twit who would not be out of place in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, he shares none of the above shortcomings.

Boris has no integrity, and he has made a career out of screwing up, and then using his considerable personal charm to get things fixed, and he is gleefully ignorant.

It is inevitable that Boris Johnson will be a complete disaster as Prime Minister, but it is likely that he could still do a better job than Theresa May.

At the very least, I expect him to adapt, and get people planning for a hard Brexit.

Additionally, I think that BoJo’s antics will likely foam the runway for Jeremy Corbyn.

As to my title mention of Churchill, read your history, this was a man who had a legacy of uninterrupted failure: Gallipoli, the return to the gold standard, calling for the use of poison gas on Iraqi civilians, and his disastrous Norway campaign, whose failure led to the resignation of Neville Chamberlain and Churchill’s ascension to Prime Minister.

I’ve Seen This Movie Before, and It Does Not End Well

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We Have Learned Nothing

We are repeating not particularly old, but remarkably destructive, patterns.

It appears that low and no money down mortgages are surging again:

What does the chart show?

 It illustrates the growing proportion of UK mortgage lending at loan to value (LTV) ratios of 90 per cent or higher. Figures from the Bank of England last week found this type of lending had reached its highest level as a share of the total since the financial crisis, topping 18.7 per cent of all lending in the first three months of 2019.

 The data appeared in a July report published by the BoE’s Financial Policy Committee, which monitors potential risks to the financial system. It is based on product sales data from the Financial Conduct Authority and the central bank’s own calculations.

Admittedly, this is the UK, which is a smaller real estate market, and is facing unique challenges **cough** Brexit **cough** at this time, so it may be an outlier, but this has unsettling echoes to the 2008 meltdown.

I Want to Live in France

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It’s not for the food, and it’s not for the theater, and it’s not for the existentialism.

It’s for the work environment.

In the US bullied workers shoot their coworkers, while in france bosses are facing criminal charges over conditions that led to employee suicides:

In their blue blazers and tight haircuts, the aging men look uncomfortable in the courtroom dock. And for good reason: they are accused of harassing employees so relentlessly that workers ended up killing themselves.

The men — all former top executives at France’s giant telecom company — wanted to downsize the business by thousands of workers a decade ago. But they couldn’t fire most of them. The workers were state employees — employees for life — and therefore protected.

So the executives resolved to make life so unbearable that the workers would leave, prosecutors say. Instead, at least 35 employees — workers’ advocates say nearly double that number — committed suicide, feeling trapped, betrayed and despairing of ever finding new work in France’s immobile labor market.

Today the former top executives of France Télécom — once the national phone company, and now one of the nation’s biggest private enterprises, Orange — are on trial for “moral harassment.” It is the first time that French bosses, caught in the vise of France’s strict labor protections, have been prosecuted for systemic harassment that led to worker deaths.

………


“The company was going under and it didn’t even know it,” Mr. Lombard, the ex-chief executive, testified. “We could have gone about it much more gently if we hadn’t had the competition banging on our door.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Lombard, he was recorded saying in 2007 that he would reach the quota of layoffs “one way or another, by the window or by the door.” The window is what a number of the employees chose.

“This isn’t going to be lacework here,” Mr. Barberot said in 2007. “We’re going to put people in front of life’s realities.”

To the mounting signs of distress management turned a deaf ear, testimony at the trial suggested.

In the United States, those executives would have gotten a glowing profile in Entrepreneur magazine, and the workers would have ended up going postal.

Here is hoping that those bastards burn.

Is This Like a Money Market Fund Breaking the Buck

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A major equity fund in the UK has suspended redemptions, meaning that investors cannot access their funds, which are normally supposed to be available within 24 hours.

This sounds a lot like what happened to institutional money market funds during the financial crash in 2008, when you could not redeem from funds that were supposed to be a safe as cash:

There’s still no sign of relief for the hundreds of thousands of investors whose money is trapped in one of the UK’s biggest equity funds, the Woodford Equity Income Fund. The fund is supposed to offer its shareholders daily liquidity, meaning they can take part or all of their money out any day of the week. But that was before a slow-motion (but accelerating) run on the fund forced its manager, hedge-fund legend Neil Woodford, into taking the last-gasp decision, on June 3, to place a ban on redemptions. Since then, investors have been unable to access their money. And it’s not clear how much longer this could go on.

The problems at Woodford have raised serious questions about just how liquid other equity funds in the UK may be. In the past few days, UK’s biggest broker, Hargreaves Lansdown announced that it plans to remove the Lindsell Train UK Equity Fund, the largest managed UK shares fund, and the Lindsell Train Global Equity Fund, from its Wealth 50 Best List due to liquidity concerns, which prompted shares in Lindsell Train Investment Trust to tumble 22% on Friday.

………

The Woodford Equity Income fund has performed terribly for the past two years. Bad bets were made, often on unlisted assets, resulting in big losses, which in turn triggered a cascade of redemptions as the sharpest investors began yanking out their money. The total amount under management at Woodford has steadily shrunk by almost two thirds since 2015, from £10.2 billion to £3.7 billion.

At the very least, Woodford’s investors will have to hang on for another three agonizing weeks, when the decision to gate the fund is scheduled to be revisited. When the last 28-day review period came up, around a week ago, Woodford told the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority that the fund was still not ready to reopen its doors.

………

Most of Woodford’s liquid assets are already gone having been sold off when the giant flood of redemptions began. By this spring, only three of the fund’s 105 holdings were FTSE 100 companies, and only 26 paid out dividends, which is highly unusual for a fund that is supposed to be almost exclusively devoted to equity-income.

In recent weeks Woodford has reduced his holdings in Raven Property and Horizon Discovery, two long-term investments, as well as other listed companies, including BCA Marketplace, New River Reit and Oakley Capital Investments. But most of the remaining assets are highly illiquid, which means selling them will be a lot more difficult, unless at a very heavy discount.

By EU law, equity funds like Woodford’s are allowed to hold a maximum of 10% of their portfolio in transferable securities that are not dealt in an “eligible market” such as the FTSE 250. To get around this rule, Woodford reportedly bundled up his fund’s illiquid unlisted assets and listed them on the minuscule Guernsey-headquartered International Stock Exchange, which despite its impressive-sounding name has barely any trading activity at all.

This was enough to lend his most illiquid assets the appearance, albeit flimsy, of liquidity. The move was within the letter — though not the spirit — of the law, according to the FCA chief executive Andrew Bailey. Mr Bailey told the Commons Treasury select committee that Woodford Equity Income fund was “sailing close to the wind,” adding that “listing something on an exchange where trading does not actually happen, as far as I can see, does not actually count as liquidity.”


So, they engaged in dodgy bookkeeping combined with a run on the fund.

Yet another dodgy player at the big casino.

They have learned nothing.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

I Drink Your Milkshake

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Matt Gaetz got milkshaked in Pensacola pic.twitter.com/yqz3bPgjw5

— jordan (@JordanUhl) June 1, 2019


She is thinking of Daniel Day-Lewis in this Mug Shot

Milkshaking, protesting by tossing dairy beverages at racists, appears to have moved from the UK to the United States.

Representative Matt Gaetz just got milkshaked.

I do not support milkshaking. I think that is unAmerican.

In the United States, we favor “2nd amendment solutions”, so put down the milkshake, and pick up the gun:

A newly minted British tradition—throwing milkshakes at idiot conservatives—has arrived on the shores of the New World at last. That’s right: milkshaking has come to the good old US of A.

 The target of said milkshake attack, which conservatives are already bemoaning as a sign of the end of civilization, was Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was pelted with a shake in his Florida district on Saturday, according to WKRG. Don’t worry, there’s video. 

At the time of the milkshake attack, Gaetz was leaving a town hall in Pensacola, FL. As he walked outside, the Congressman was surrounded by protestors. Then one of them absolutely nailed him with a milkshake.

Police arrested Amanda L. Kondrat’yev, a 25-year-old protester who allegedly threw the milkshake, and charged her with battery. Her mugshot is pretty good.

I am amused, and I can think of no target more deserving in the House of Representatives:  Gaetz is currently under investigation by the Florida bar for witness tampering by threatening Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.

History is Rhyming Again

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German Jews have been warned by the commissioner on antisemitism not to wear yarmulkes in public:

Germany’s government commissioner on antisemitism has warned Jews about the potential dangers of wearing the traditional kippah cap in the face of rising anti-Jewish attacks.

 “I cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah everywhere all the time in Germany,” Felix Klein said in an interview published Saturday by the Funke regional press group.

 In issuing the warning, he said he had “alas, changed my mind (on the subject) compared to previously”.

 Klein, whose post was created last year, cited “the lifting of inhibitions and the uncouthness which is on the rise in society” as factors behind a rising incidence of antisemitism.

 “The internet and social media have largely contributed to this, but so have constant attacks against our culture of remembrance.”

 And he suggested police, teachers and lawyers should be better trained to recognise what constitutes “clearly defined” unacceptable behaviour and “what is authorised and what is not”.

 His comments came just weeks after Berlin’s top legal expert on antisemitism said the issue remains entrenched in German society.

………

Antisemitic crimes rose by 20% in Germany last year, according to interior ministry data which blamed nine out of ten cases on the extreme right.

Humanity, in all its splendor, huh?

Bye Felicia Theresa

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Theresa May became the leader of Britain after the country voted in a June 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. Brexit was her No. 1 job, and she failed to deliver it.

May announced Friday that she will resign as her party’s leader June 7 and make way for a new British prime minister later this summer.

Speaking in front of the official residence, 10 Downing Street, May said she had “done my best” but was unable to sway members of Parliament to back her compromise vision of Brexit. She told Britons that compromise was not a dirty word.

“I believe it was right to persevere even when the odds against success seemed high,” she said. “It is and will always remain a matter of deep regret for me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit.”

Near the end of her brief remarks, May noted that she was Britain’s second female prime minister and promised there would be more women in the highest office. Then her voice became shaky and tears almost came as she said she was departing with “no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.”

It’s amazing that she became PM, and that she hung on as long as she did, since she made a complete dogs breakfast of everything that she has done.

I can only conclude that her deliberate cruelty (immigrants when she was Home Secretary, and toward poor people when she was PM)  reflects a core value of the Conservative Party, and her support flowed from that.

Unparalleled Self Owning, Or Masterful Trolling

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On Reddit, user u/Strikeactionemployer completely owns himself, blithely suggesting that he listened to his accountant, and not his lawyer (Solicitor, it’s the UK).

It’s a director for a firm who tried to screw his employees, and then fired them when they went on strike, which, shockingly enough, is illegal in the UK, and then he tried to loot the company, declare insolvency, and then restart the corporation with its old asset.

It’s really too long to summarize, but this comment explains why you should read this:

I just want to say that if you’re for real about this, this is absolutely hilarious. On the flipside, if this is a very elaborate exercise in trolling, I’m even more impressed, since you’ve put in time and effort over a year to set this up which is much further than the overwhelmingly vast majority of trolls will go, and you’ve also captured the exact tone of greedy bewilderment that most company directors have in real life.

Read in chronological order, including the completely unsympathetic comments.

It is a thing of beauty.

So much ownership in so little space.

H/t Charles Saroff for the tip.

A Good Start

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Germany’s health minister has proposed a €2500.00 fee for people who refuse to vaccinate their children:

Germany, like the US, is facing a resurgence of measles. But the country’s health minister isn’t taking things lightly.

Health minister Jens Spahn is proposing a blanket fine for any parents of unvaccinated children. The fine runs up to €2,500 ($2,790). He also suggests banning unvaccinated children from all kindergarten and daycare facilities to protect those who are too young to vaccinate and those with medical conditions that prevent them from being vaccinated.

In an interview published over the weekend, Spahn explained that immunization is a “social responsibility,” adding that “measles vaccinations save human suffering. We protect ourselves and others.”

Fining anti-vaccine and vaccine-hesitant parents isn’t new. Officials in New York levied $1,000 fines on parents of some unvaccinated children amid ongoing measles outbreaks last month. However, the fines only applied to children in specific areas at the epicenter of the outbreak. Spahn’s proposal, on the other hand, would see fines handed down regardless of an outbreak—and the fine is even heftier.

Good.

Germany has the Military Industrial Complex Completely Losing Its Sh%$

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Germany has decided not to procure the F-35, and Lockheed Martin is not happy.

I do think that the apocalyptic terms used are a bit over the top:

Germany’s decision not to buy the F-35 stealth fighter jet is a “retrograde step” that could hamper the country’s ability to operate at the same level as its Nato partners, according to the European head of Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the aircraft.

 Jonathan Hoyle, vice-president for Europe at the US defence group, said the German decision in January to exclude the F-35 from further consideration as a replacement for its ageing Tornado fleet had caught a lot of governments “on the hop”. The German defence ministry said at the time it had decided to acquire either more Eurofighters from Airbus, the European group, or Boeing-made F-18s.

 With the German rhetoric in the past three years having been about stepping up its defence capabilities, the decision not to consider the F-35 had prompted questions among other European governments over “Germany’s position going forward, and therefore what does it mean for Nato”, Mr Hoyle told the Financial Times in an interview.

 ………
 The German decision was seen by many defence observers as a signal by Berlin that it remained committed to pursuing a next-generation Franco-German “future combat air system” (FCAS). Paris had previously voiced fears that a German order to buy the F-35, widely seen as the most advanced aircraft on the shortlist, could have made the FCAS project — due to form the backbone of both countries’ air forces after 2040 — redundant.

It’s also a signal that Germany finds the F-35 too expensive to own and operate, as well as being too inflexible (limited weapons loadout and payload) for its needs.

Even ignoring Eisenhower’s characterization of the Military Industrial complex, this decision makes sense.

This is Heartbreaking

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The spire falls at about 15s

There has been a at a massive fire at the Notre Dame de Paris :

A fire that devastated Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris was brought under control by firefighters in the early hours of Tuesday morning, though officials warned there were still residual fires to put out.
 Thousands of Parisians watched in horror from behind police cordons as a ferocious blaze devastated Notre Dame Cathedral on Monday night, destroying its spire and a large part of the roof.

 An investigation has been opened by the prosecutor’s office, but police said it began accidentally and may be linked to building work at the cathedral. The 850-year-old gothic masterpiece had been undergoing restoration work.

 The French president, Emmanuel Macron, attended the scene and later gave a speech in which he vowed that the cathedral would be rebuilt, as fire crews said the landmark’s rectangular bell towers and structure of the building had been saved.

I’m not sure how much has been lost, but given that the structure, the part that isn’t wood, is limestone and old mortar, which is very susceptible to fire damage.

I’m not sure what has been lost, but I’m pretty sure that when a final inventory is made there will be some very sad architects, artists, and historians.

In bizarrely related news, there has been a (relatively minor) fire at the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Unlike the Notre Dame fire, the source of this one is currently suspicious, having occurred during a 15 minute change-over of local security:

A fire broke out in al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam, on Monday. The blaze didn’t cause significant damage, but it did endanger a part of the worship site that’s over 2,000 years old.

​The fire broke out in the guard room outside the al-Marwani Prayer Room Monday evening, according to a statement by the mosque’s Islamic Waqf (Endowments) Department. According to The New Arab, a guard reported a short gap in guard rotations between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. local time.

Weird.

I’m With France on This One

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The French have instituted a digital services tax, and the United states is unamused:

France will stick to plans for a tax on digital giants such as Facebook and Apple, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday, despite angry opposition from Washington.

Last month, France unveiled draft legislation to set a three percent tax on digital advertising, the sale of personal data and other revenue for any technology company that earns more than 750 million euros ($841 million) worldwide each year.

The effort comes amid rising public outrage at the minimal tax paid by some of the world’s richest firms which base operations in jurisdictions that charge low rates.

“We are determined to implement a tax on the largest digital companies to bring more justice and efficiency to the international tax system,” Le Maire said as he arrived in Bucharest for talks with his eurozone counterparts.

“All states take their own free and sovereign decisions on tax matters,” Le Maire added.

………

Le Maire spoke just hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised his objections to the tax as he met French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Washington.

Pompeo said the tax would hurt US companies “and the French citizens who use them,” according to the State Department.

The US has opened several fronts against the tax, announcing in March that Washington was considering a complaint to the World Trade Organisation that the levy was discriminatory.

Tax evasion is central to the business models of many (most) of the internet giants, and all of the talk of changing the tax code to work with this is just that, talk.

What France has enacted is a relatively elegant solution to the problem, and it address a problem present in more universal solutions:  That aggressive lobbying by the tech firms, the economics term is “rent seeking”, would have watered down any proposal to meaninglessness.