Political Bias rears its head again at the Beeb...

I shall be brief, as I have to go be all bartendery shortly.

The BBC repeatedly refers to the BNP as Right Wing. It equates fascism with the political Right. This is a fallacy. The Nazis, similarly are confused with the Right. This is incorrect. The Nazis were (wait for it) The National Socialist party. Socialist. Anyone get that last word there?

Yeah?

Okay.

So. The BNP have very similar economic, political, and dare I say it, social policies to those of the now defunct National Socialist Party of Germany circa 1933-1945. The Nazis were actually not that far from the Communists in economic terms - really, Stalin and Hitler would have agreed on quite a lot were it not for their racial loathing of each other - particularly from old Adolf's point of view.

Both were left wing. The BNP, who espouse the same nationalist, protectionist and exclusionist policies of the fascist Nazi party (as well as other loathesome policies formed around a general dislike for anything other than Caucasian Heterosexual Men and their doting stay-at-home Women) are also left-wing. They are Left-Wing Authoritarians.

Will someone in the BBCs political editorial department PLEASE take note of this?

That is all.

Chocolate Tax and Speed Limits. Give over...

DK has already given this both barrels, and Dr. Crippen agrees with him.

Some Doctor in Lanarkshire has put his head above the parapet to deliver us his esteemed opinion. Apparently, since chocolate is unhealthy, we should tax it to fight obesity. I’d love to take this one apart, but the Devil already has, with far more vitriol than I can muster on a Monday.

Given that the SNP are talking about introducing a minimum price on alcohol, now a Scottish doctor is getting above himself and pressing for a chocolate tax, you might think that we’ve filled our quota for illiberal and misguided ideas for the month, but no, elsewhere, another Scot has come up with another way to infringe upon civil liberty.

The Times reports that Jim FitzPatrick, the roads minister, is supporting a plan to reduce the speed limit on roads from 60mph to 50mph. Obnoxio is not impressed. Neither am I.

Just what is it with Scotsmen acting like illiberal pillocks at the moment?

On all three counts, booze, chocolate and driving, we see the heavy hand of the state thinking that people can’t decide for themselves, so must be told. If you can’t see the problem here, then quite frankly I weep for the future of our children, for they will be brought up in an authoritarian, nanny state where choice and liberty are but a distant memory.

A stone in a glass house

Sir Fred Goodwin is under pressure from Alistair Darling to ‘voluntarily’ reduce some of his pension, from a pot apparently worth in the region of £16m, which he will draw annually to a sum of £650,000.

I’d love some of that, thanks.

Now, aside from the usual socialist idea that they who have more should give to they who have less (laudable while voluntary, illiberal and despicable when enforced), I wonder what the law of unintended consequences would result in should Sir Fred agree to this.

If Fred forgoes a part of his pension, where will that money instead go? Will those funds make a significant impact on the day-to-day operation of RBS? What would Fred do with the money if he received it? Would he spend it or invest it, thus ‘stimulating’ the economy? Would he bury it under his bed? Would he save it in a bank (thus providing them with deposited capital)?

I am reminded of Frédéric Bastiat, the French economist, and his essay ‘What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen’. What is seen is that Sir Fred Goodwin takes a reduced pension; public anger is doused (maybe), and RBS has a few million Sterling more in its pension pot. This will reduce the deficit the pension fund faces, but I suspect not by a significant amount.

What is not seen is that Fred no longer buys that yacht from the manufacturing company down south, that entertainment suite from a specialist retailer, that brand new Jaguar or Aston Martin. He no longer chooses to invest in that promising start-up company, or donate to that charitable organisation. Those parts of the economy which might have seen growth from his spending may not now benefit from his money.

RBS is the broken window; is this not simply paying the glazier?

EDIT: Corrected typo. £16m, not £61m!

Not quite so idyllic...

The maddening lunacy of students who get on a bandwagon for a ‘cause’ almost always ends in some poor sap having to deal with the fallout. In the wake of Israel’s targeted action against Hamas in Gaza, the student fury over the Eden Springs water contract has roused itself from the doldrums where it belonged.

Basically, Eden Springs UK are a subsidiary of Danone Springs of Eden, a leading water supplier in Europe. No problem so far. The complication comes here: Mayanot Eden Ltd. is an Israeli mineral water producer which operates in Europe under the Eden Springs brand. It extracts water from the Golan Heights in Israel, and this is where Palestinian Solidarity groups have taken offence. Mayanot, they claim, oppress the Palestinians and steal their water, as the Golan Heights were illegally annexed. It’s the old ‘Israel the Villain’ argument, and guess what, it’s EUSA and the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Society who are peddling it.

Some students are really good at causes. They do their research, look at all angles of an argument, reason out the good from the ill and make their stand accordingly. Others, and probably most, jump on the nearest bandwagon for the nearest underdog and shout as loud as they can, whether or not their case actually has any validity.

Which brings me to this case: Eden Springs UK does not supply you with water from the Golan Heights. Their parent company is majority owned by Group Danone with a 58% stake, not Mayanot. If you really want to dig into it, Eden Springs UK is held by Danone Springs of Eden BV (a Dutch company) which is ultimately owned by Danone SA – a French company. None of these companies have been charged or convicted of a criminal offence. Eden Springs UK are in fact a Scottish operated group – so all that EUSA/SPSS are doing is promoting the boycott of a Scottish company. Well done there!

So the sins of the father shall be visited upon the son. In this case, whether any sin has been committed at all is a matter of perspective, but let’s leave that out of it. The Golan Heights have been Israeli territory since 1981. Why penalise a UK holding of a French company for something that one of the partner organisations may or may not have done wrong?

While this has been bubbling along for a while, the Gaza conflict has once again brought it to the fore. The result of the renewed interest has been that a lot of University contract teams are under pressure from students to cancel the contract. Legally, they are under no obligation to do so, as you must have an actual, valid reason to cancel a contract. In this case, a bunch of students in a tizzy does not constitute a valid reason. Criminal conviction, breach of contract, failure to supply and so on – those would be good reasons to review the contract. If there are break clauses they may be able to exploit these, but they’d really have to ask why the heck they’d want to rather than tell the students to go forth and multiply.

EU Procurement law Vs. My taxes.

I received today an e-mail inviting me to attend a seminar on EU Procurement law. There have been rather a lot of seminars on this subject lately, but this one was going for an attention-grabber:

“The EU procurement rules are fraught with difficulty.

You are required to navigate between the black letter of the law and the commercial reality of putting together a procurement.

To manage the risk effectively you need rock-solid advice on what you can and can't do.”

It went on to list a number of the hurdles and complicated rules that can make a public sector contracting exercise something of a minefield, from when you can and cannot speak to suppliers during the process, when a framework is anti-competitive and thus non-compliant, and so on and so forth.

Normally these things get the ‘delete’ treatment without any further ado; however this framed the problem faced by contracts teams within the Public Sector very succinctly. Basically, there are so many pitfalls, red tape and ridiculous levels of bureaucracy designed at making the process as ‘fair’, ‘open’, ‘transparent’, ‘non-discriminatory’, etc, etc. as possible that it becomes an uphill struggle before you even get started.

I’m not saying that any of these goals are a bad thing. On the contrary, they are wonderful principles of a free market. Public money should be accountable, and we should not be awarding the contract to someone who isn’t going to offer the best value for money.

It’s also fucking difficult to argue against the rules. They make irritating sense to a free-marketeer. If followed, they stop protectionist policies and are intended to prevent sharp practice, all good things. In fact, you can’t even say that a public body should be able to spend its money in the local economy, because the whole point of the rules is that the best response to your tender will win the business.

In other words, if local suppliers want to win the business, then they need to up their game and improve. It also means that there should be no barrier to those local suppliers winning business elsewhere in Europe, if they decide to do so. Great, in theory.

So, does that mean I’m happy that my tax money is going to line a German, or Spanish company’s offers? Well the flipside is that their tax money could well be lining those of a British company, so you could argue that it will all come out in the wash.

What I’m trying to make clear here is that the spirit of the EU Procurement rules is something I agree with. My issue is more whether or not the sheer cost of implementing the laws, enforcing them, and even writing the damned things is actually delivering us any value for money, or if in fact is costing governments – and therefore you and me as the taxpayer – a huge amount of money that could be better off back in my pocket.

It also means that the UK Government can’t say to contracting authorities (basically a body spending public cash) that they should source locally and support the British economy. It has no say over where that public money will end up. Of course I should be happy that the most economically advantageous tender will win, therefore saving the taxpayer money. It’s very easy to end up in a circular argument on this.

When the House of Commons commissioned the construction of new offices for MPs, what was to become Portcullis House, the contract for the windows went to a British firm. The problem was that a French-owned firm, Harmon, had submitted the most economically advantageous bid. Someone at the House had decided we should buy British. Harmon challenged this under a breach of the EU Procurement rules and were awarded damages in court for £1.85m. There were other aspects they could also sue for, however the House of Commons settled out of court for an unspecified fee. So the taxpayer paid for the windows twice over, maybe more. Now, can you spell colossal waste of my fucking money?

Fine, you say, live within the rules. I question not the spirit of the rules, let me re-iterate that. What I do believe in is choice. The same choice afforded to the private sector, which has far more freedom to make decisions on where it spends its money. What I question is why that accountability seems to lie with Europe, and not with the UK taxpayer. Why the fuck are some overpaid bunch of bureaucrats allowed to tell our public sector that it can’t support local businesses if it chooses to do so? It may not be the right choice, but the point is that the public sector in the UK should be responsible to the UK taxpayer, not to fucking eurocrats.

I fail to see why we need another layer of bureaucracy on top of our own, trying to tell us what we can and can’t do – private or public sector. Big government is not a good thing. More big government above a big government is worse. We have enough crap from our own politicians, we really don’t need to be subsidising eurocrats as well, and we really don’t need more layers of red tape, processes and procedures that cost the taxpayer even more money.

Editorial row? I'll wiki it.

I’m sorry, but why in the name of fornication is this news? My BBC RSS feed has just informed me that Wikipedia is engulfed by an editorial row.

Engulfed. What an interesting word to use. Yes, I can see it now, swept asunder by editorial fury, drowned like Atlantis under the torrents of their rage...

The story goes that the unmoderated editing of Wikipedia entries is being reviewed after a number of wags changed certain pages – in this case those of Senators Robert Byrd and Edward Kennedy – to suggest the subjects in question were no longer amongst the living. This isn’t new, it has happened before. Lore has it that the Microsoft entry has on a number of occasions been edited humorously to be less than complimentary about dear old Bill.

The part of this I’m missing is why this matters. A group of people passionate about their product are reviewing one of the core principles on which their vision was founded. I would be much more surprised if there was laconic agreement to such a big shift. Of course there will be arguments and raised voices. Those who believe in a free interweb and information sharing tend to be evangelists for their principle, and if some amongst them are questioning that, the discussion is likely to be heated.

For what it’s worth, I would urge a little backbone amongst the doubters. Whilst Wikipedia has grown to be a respected and trustworthy source of information (due to what I like to think of as the Law of Anal Retentives), it has done so without official moderation. The truth generally outs. The principle of Wikipedia as being the encyclopaedic equivalent of open-source software should not be threatened simply because there are some irresponsible people out there who decided to have a bit of a chuckle.

My word to the editorial team: leave it as it is. It works, and don’t let the minority spoil something you have every right to be very proud of. Even if your founder does think it's okay to wear a kimono.

The boy who lied

I heartily apologise for the total lack of blogging for the last week or so. My bad, etc.

So, quick recap - Obama got sworn in, Gordy B immediately tried to pin himself to the reflected glory, RBS became even more nationalised than it was already (oh, how the mighty have fallen) and I got thoroughly 'refreshed' at a Burns Dinner one night early. Because having Burns night on a Sunday - and therefore a school night - is just silly.

Anyway, on the notice board at work a co-worker had posted a piece of poetry singing the praises of GB for nationalising RBS in the name of every Scot, thus saving the world. This irritated me on a number of levels, not the least because it involved nationalising, a distinct lack of economic understanding, and because it smacked of nationalism. I therefore spent fifteen minutes of my lunchtime coming up with a suitably withering response, got a bit bored, and came up with this.

The Boy Who Lied
by teh basementcat

Economy in meltdown,
A currency in decline,
A leader who is frightful,
And apparently quite blind.

While mortgaging our future,
Haemorrhaging our cash,
He seems to think we’ll let him,
Spend our money like a rash.

The solution isn’t working,
Simply spending will not save,
When grassroots change is needed,
This man is just not brave.

He will not trust the public,
He curtails our liberty,
He wants their private data,
But he’ll lose it as you’ll see.

A rigid style of leading,
He bullies all his peers,
Decries opponents as ‘do nothing’,
When they are what he fears.

He claimed an end to boom-and-bust,
That he brought a golden age,
While flush he failed to fix the roof,
He’s clearly no great sage.

His work is self protection,
Delusion is his game,
Our fault to perpetrate it,
But, oh, what is his name?

His touch is not like Midas,
This misguided lying clown,
He curses all he touches,
His name is Jonah Brown.

Okay, so it's hardly Whitbred Prize-winning stuff, but it was a suitable outlet for my irritation.

PC Brigade Strikes Again

The sad thing about public life is that all it takes is for one little comment to be taken out of context, and before you know it, the PC Brigade are jumping all over you demanding an apology.

My comments somehow failed to make it on to the BBC website, but it looks like my opinion was mirrored by a good many others who made their voices heard.

On one hand, I can understand how an outsider might see Harry referring to a colleague as a 'paki' could be taken as racist, except that would mean by extention that calling him a 'brit' would also be offensive. I appreciate that the word has connotations, but who gave it that connotation? Isn't not using it perpetuating the negative connotation? I mean, the gay community reclaimed gay, why can't the pakistani community reclaim 'paki'?

In context, it was more than likely being used as a nickname - call a spade a spade, right? As for raghead... well our troops are being expected to go off and shoot Afghan terrorists and Iraqi insurgents. Shooting is fine, calling them names is not, clearly.

Now if Harry meant it offensively or was bullying the lad, then I could understand the issue, however, I don't believe that in this instance he was. It's another example of the PC brigade jumping on an opportunity to get wound up over nothing and for the media to whip up a little frenzy.

Get. Over. It... and leave the poor lad alone.

You what?!

Seriously, how dumb do some people have to be?

Benecio del Toro seems to think that it's okay to support mass-murdering fuck-heads (to use Eddie Izzard's phraseology).

Further evidence that intelligence is not a prerequisite for film stars. If he was talking about Stalin or Hitler he'd be creating a PR disaster, except that the general public are blithely unaware that the bearded cigar-smoking motorcyling one was a brutal killer and enemy of freedom and liberty.

Giving the issue a wide berth

I read this article with some interest and, I’ll admit, dismay. I might have even found myself getting a little angry, possibly because I recognised that to some degree, I don’t like to offend people and I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings – and that can be counterproductive. The BBC are suggesting that obesity might be turning into a taboo subject. I think that’s a disaster. People should call a spade, well, a spade.

In this case, they should call an obese person for the fat Buddha that they are.

Quite frankly, all this talk about protecting the children from being ‘stigmatised’ and ‘labelled for life’ is completely divergent from the message that we need to act to prevent child obesity. Referring to these children as ‘very overweight’ just uses two words to replace one that said it pretty damn well. It perpetuates the myth that it is acceptable to be overweight, and it sounds like the plea of parents who are trying to excuse themselves of responsibility for the wellbeing of their children.

A report due to be presented to ministers today will outline that childhood obesity is set before the age of five. This is an extremely important period in our development as it is, and I suspect the findings of these researchers will come as no surprise to most responsible parents. Until you pack the little buggers off to school, it falls to the parents to shape the future of their child. Stuffing it with crisps, sweets, and foods with high calorie-density is as damaging to their development as showing it video recordings of Hitler at Nuremburg. It also means that all the focus on PE and healthy eating at school is wasted if the parents take their eye off the ball and get lazy with the massive responsibility they have brought into the world.

While Jamie Oliver’s school-dinner frenzy is ultimately changing things for the better (even if it is interminably irritating), this report shows that the real focus ought to be on the parents before the child gets to school. The mandatory measurement of height and weight at school suggested by Professor Terry Wilkin of the University of Bristol is likely to be met by wails from parents determined to deny that they had any part in turning their child into a small blimp that is going to struggle with its size – possibly for the rest of its mortal life. I agree that it is of prime importance that we don’t alienate parents, because it is of vital importance that they are on-side and understand their role in this. I also believe that playing a sop to their ego is unacceptable. If they think they are being made to feel responsible for their child’s health, well, in almost all cases, they are. As a wise man once told me, man up and face it.

The Chief Medical Officer for England, Sir Liam Donaldson, has gone on the record saying that although we need to get in early “...and build the foundations of healthy living at an early age...” it is also “...never too late. Obesity is one of the few serious medical problems that can be reversed very, very quickly.”

David Haslam of the National Obesity Forum concurs with this view, telling the BBC that: “It is never too late or too early to intervene. The earlier the better in terms of long-term outlook.” In his view, childhood obesity is probably down to environment and learned behaviours.

So that’s three learned figures all telling us that it’s down to the parents. And yet these are the parents who we’re listening to trying to excuse themselves of the guilt for turning their child into ‘the fat kid’. Except there seem to be rather more of them these days.

Obesity should not be a taboo word. If their child gets the shit kicked out of it mentally or physically at school for being the size of a small moon, then that should send a pretty fucking clear message to the parents. You can’t blame the kids (although you can blame their parents for not teaching them tolerance). Stigmatised? Good. Then do something about it.

You want to become fat in later life? That’s your call and your responsibility. Don’t take that choice out of your child’s hands, they’re not responsible enough to make that decision for themselves because they don’t know any better. Give them a fighting chance in life. Show them pretty colours and clever toys. Read to them. Give them a copy of The Hobbit as soon as they’re capable of reading for themselves; tell them about the gay penguins if you like. Do all this, and for their sake, feed them healthy food and take them out to play.

Raising a child shouldn’t be easy. It’s not difficult and it’s not rocket science, but it does take effort. If you’re not prepared to put that effort in and invest in all that potential just waiting to be realised, you don’t deserve that child.

I've said this already...

...but in all seriousness, just because other people are doing it doesn't make it right.

The Tories have the temerity to suggest that we live within our means, or at least make an effort to. Darling and Brown respond by calling them a 'do nothing' party. I get it... no, really...

While I agree that doing nothing is not a viable solution, I can't see that is what the Tories are suggesting. Cameron and Osborne are suggesting that the £20bn is unsustainable and could cripple us in the long-term, and having looked at Gordon's sums, I can't say I disagree.

We're facing a massive tax-hike down the road to cover the cost of borrowing now, when our currency is dropping like a brick. That means printing more money to reduce the real-terms value of the debt, which will benefit borrowers, but penalise the savers who are the only ones who acted responsibly through all this.

Yes, fiscal stimulus is needed, but not in the amounts Labour are proposing. It's a lazy, clumsy response and is akin to using a sledgehammer when what is required is a well-honed sabre.

Somewhat delusional

And so Gordon Brown has responded to David Cameron's critisism of his spending frenzy by declaring that everybody else is doing it, so it must be the right decision.

Yes Gordon, you keep telling yourself that while you plunge us further into debt. Did someone say something about lemmings?

It also seems that I'm not the only one a little confused about his math.

Public Safety Announcement

This is a public safety announcement.

If you are a pedestrian in the City of Edinburgh, this applies specifically to you. It goes for every other city too.

Please look before you cross the road. Just because you can't hear a car/bus hurtling towards you or you think that the traffic light is going to stay red long enough for you to run across the road does not mean that it is in fact safe to cross. Cyclists use the road too, and are much quieter than cars. They may also be going quite fast, and nipping past the queue of cars, because they a) can, and b) are perfectly entitled to do so. Running out between cars without thinking to check in both directions is patent stupidity at best, tantamount to suicide at worst.

If you have a death wish, please ensure that of you are going to step out gormlessly into the road, you do so in front of a bus or 4x4, and not in front of a fragile, high-speed cyclist. You will likely kill them, rather than yourself.

Pedestrian Crossings are there for a reason. Please use them, and if there is a red man, it is on for a reason.

That will be all.

A matter of distance...

It looks like Harriet Harman can see the writing on the wall. She clumsily avoided giving any vote of support for the Speaker, Michael Martin, whose failure to stand up to police (who entered without a warrant) was compounded by a weak statement at the opening of parliament yesterday. This should hardly surprise us, after all, he lets Brown and NuLab get away with murder in the commons.

Interestingly, the focus seems to be moving away from Jacqui and Gordon. Their apparent ignorance of the plans of the Counter-Terrorist police to arrest Damian Green suggests that they are either incompetent, or liars.

Surely not?

Back to the Speaker for a moment, the Times makes a good point about the actual rights of MPs, but you might have thought that it was his duty to ask Police whether they posessed a warrant, and at least satisfy himself that their response was in proportion to the alleged offence.

The real issue at stake here is why the police suddenly felt this particular mole and MP were worth going after, and why the response was so heavy-handed. After all, Gordon Brown made boasts about his leaks for years, perhaps the Met might like to chase down some of these politicians as well?

Softly Spoken

The speaker 'regrets' that the Police had been able to raid Damian Green's office without a warrant. Apparently, yes, ladies and gentlemen, the House of Commons speaker really is that wet. He spoke not so much with conviction, but with a whimper. Grow a spine, man, and stand up for democracy!

In other news, amongst the other Bills contained in the Queen's Speech was the Savings Gateway Account Bill, whereby the Government intends to pay 50p for every £1 that low earners manage to squirrel away into this special new account, up to a maximum Government contribution of £300. Without massaging the figures, that's a 50% interest rate for the first £600 saved. Now I'm sure there must be stringent controls over how this works, but hold on just one second, I'm all for incentives to save, but isn't that what ISAs are all about?

It is important for people to have savings - you need that cushion for a rainy day. Furthermore, it encourages financial discipline, and in my opinion, saving for something makes far more sense than borrowing the money to buy it. Not only do you feel like you have earned your purchase, but you don't have to pay ridiculous interest on it.

So what we have here is the Government telling us to go out and spend (wait, isn't that how we ended up in this mess?), while at the same time telling us to save (which could contribute towards stagnating the economy) which it will encourage by spending taxpayers money at a time when we have a budget deficit. Talk about mixed messages.

I is payin fur mah guverment. I wantz refund.

In the beginning...

And Lo! For Basement Cat looked upon his domain, and saw that it was good.

Finally, he thought, somewhere to flounce my wit and bemoan all those whose actions and words drive me to despair. A place where I can declare my fury, express my joy... and question the integrity of those who lead our nation to the precipice of oblivion.

I say this because, quite frankly, it seems like the current government seems hell-bent on eroding our civil liberties and saddling us with a national debt that makes US Defense spending look almost reasonable. The Taxpayer's Alliance were quick to point out that the Pre-Budget Report (PBR) showed that Darling's (aka Brown's) budget was going to cost the nation more than it did to defeat the Kaiser. If you were wondering about the number, the total debt planned for the period 2009-2014 stands at £512,000,000,000,000.

Of course, the Government has a responsibility to look after the economy, and since we've all been spending too much of the money we clearly didn't have, let's solve this by encouraging people to spend even *more* money! It's bombproof! And since we're short of cash as it is, let's lower VAT to get them out spending (2.5%, I'm touched, Gordon, really), ignoring the cost of change to the retailers, plus failing to mention that we plan on hiking it to 18.5% next year. For crying out loud... If you think you can spin that to show how it benefits businesses you're forgetting that fundamental flaw in your plan - Businesses claim VAT back anyway.

At this point I should add that I know this is all old news in blog terms. The PBR was last week and the VAT slash took place on Monday. Apologies, I'm playing catch-up.

Funnily enough, I had a sneaking suspicion that the VAT cut might be politically motivated (Never! I hear you cry), because NuLab are desperately in need of some popular politics right now. The announcement of a 2.5% reduction could have a number of effects - after all, if you knew that the £1000 shiny new Television that Gordon really wants you to buy would suddenly cost you only £948.75 if you held off your purchase til December, you might be tempted to hang on a week or two. Replicate that logical decision across the nation, and November will be a dire month for retailers (if it wasn't already). December, on the other hand, should see a surge of delayed purchases PLUS the general Christmas rush, allowing Comrade Brown to declare to the public 'Look, my plan worked!'. Once you factor in the demise of Woolworths and the fire sales to follow, sparking a brutal throat-slashing extravaganza between retailers on the High Street and beyond, I have little doubt that December will see a big boost in sales, if not so much in profits.

Yesterday's Scotsman (Hootsmon to those who know) led with a front page story on the success of the 2.5% rate cut bringing hapless shoppers out into the street. Really? Wasn't just because Christmas is coming soon? Wasn't anything to do with the massive reductions on the High Street that make the 2.5% cut utterly irrelevant?

Teh econumi. Ur doin' it wrong.