What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Nice spot Fist - shows how much I know about superhero movies!

Green-washing. I'll remember that for my next peevish and bile filled rant on the subject.


Last night I watched a BBC dramatisation of a 2014 novel by the authoress Sarah Solemani about the "rise of fascism" in 1960's Britain and the efforts of members of the Jewish community to resist it. I put the words in quotation marks because this is what we are told was happening at the start of the program (which was highly entertaining I have to say) along with the information that the story is "based upon actual events".

I don't normally keep much of a tabs on what the BBC is turning out in the way of drama, and this one would probably have passed me by had it not been for comments made by journalist Peter Hitchens on a radio broadcast I had listened to earlier. In it, Hitchens had complained that the series, while perfectly good as a fictional story, was presenting itself as a true account of the state of play in Great Britain at the time. This is nonsense he said. Fascism was not on the rise - the neo-nazi rallies as depicted by the program did occur but were roundly condemned and indeed broken up by hordes of people who pelted the speakers with stones and fruit and their leader, the odious Colin Jordan arrested and ultimately imprisoned for attempting to set up a paramilitary organisation.

I watched the first in the series more out of interest in the political depiction than of the actual story I have to admit, and I cannot but agree with Hitchens that the BBC have overstepped the mark in their twisting of the narrative (certainly never intended by the author because it was written well before the referendum) into a sideswipe at the Leave Campaign and the movement to exit the European Union. The meetings and rallies are peppered with phrases like 'take back control' and references to foreign invaders etc, and the unspoken parallels with the brexit mentality are both deliberate and lightly hidden at best.

I agree with Hitchens that this is neither fair nor productive. Certainly not fair because while there was an undoubted element of nationalist xenophobia in brexit, there was also much more besides, and not productive because like it or not, people will at the popular level, take their belief as to how things really were from programs such as this. I was born in the late fifties and grew up in the period depicted. There was much casual racism certainly - we never gave it a moment's thought really - but to suggest that we grew up in an atmosphere of sympathy for far-right political ideologies is a nonsense. The politics of the day was if anything, less conservatively radical than it is today, with so-called 'one nation Toryism' being very much the order of the day. Certainly the Labour movement was more radically left-wing, but I think the stench of far-right extremism left over from the experiences of the war were far too fresh in the collective memory of public thinking for any such a revival to be given legs.

I am fully with Hitchens when he says that the BBC exercises huge power to effect public thinking (way more than say the church) and it has a huge responsibility to ensure that the output it produces is reflective of the true facts of history, or certainly at least where programs are presented as being so. Neither is it the function of the BBC to pass judgement upon the decisions that the British people make, either politically or socially in the pursuit of their lives. As the state broadcasting service its job is to inform and entertain. Judgement of our decisions, distortion of our understanding of the past, propoganda to influence our behaviour in the future - these things are outside it's remit and if it is to carry on recieving public funding for its activities for the foreseeable future then it had best remember so. My personal belief is that it has already exceeded the point where it's continued funding from the public purse is justified. There are many in parliament who agree with me.

[peter]

Spent last night with Mrs P at a hotel in north Cornwall and went to a restaurant that has in the past been very highly rated. It was good, but not great (the restaurant). Trouble was we've been there before and know that the chef can do better. He's reorganised the way he does his menu a couple of times since we last visited and doesn't quite seem to have found his mojo yet. Last time we went the restaurant was rated by the Good Food Guide as the top restaurant in the UK and our experience would have confirmed this (insofar as any such title has meaning). For whatever reason he moved away from this winning formula, quite possibly for perfectly sound business reasons. It can be really hard to make a restaurant turn a profit, especially if you concentrate purely on the food quality without giving the profitability aspects sufficient consideration. El Buli, ranked best restaurant in the world six times, never turned a profit ever until the day it finally closed, so our man may have had little choice but to change tack - but good as the meal was, it was clear to us that it wasn't him performing at his best.

But that is really by-the-by. What I really came to post about was something completely different that bugged me as I ate breakfast in our hotel this morning. We had a pot of tea and a small jug of milk, and neither tea-pot nor milk-jug was able to pour without dribbling the contents onto the table. I mean, how hard can it be? You make a vessel with a spout - it has one function in life, to pour. That's it. Just pour out the contents into the cup or whatever in a clear stream without spilling out where it isn't meant to go. And both failed in this purpose. It wasn't as if they came from a matching set with a specific design flaw; they were not related by the makers in any way, yet in both cases they bollocksed it up. I'd take the sign from above my business and snap it over my knee if I was them!

Anyway, that's it. Got that off my chest. Have a nice day.

[Avatar]

A sadly common design flaw, most often found when the spout is not isolated from the rim.

(Annoyingly my kettle does it. I'm aware of the existence of the issue so usually look for a kettle that does isolate the spout, but sadly this last time I replaced it, could not find one and did not want to spend time going to multiple different places, so took what I could get.)

A difficult one though, I find that this can often be controlled for by reducing the speed of the pour so the flow does not overwhelm the spout and force the liquid up over the top of the rim.

--A

[peter]

It's a thing I come across from time to time Av, but fortunately my German designed kettle at home is capable of doing the job properly. German engineering - you can't beat it?

But on to more serious matters, n the last few days I've come across a couple of things in the papers, not made much of, but that I think give an idea of the direction of travel of the UK post brexit.

Firstly, a couple of days ago I read that the ministry of defence had issued a statement saying that they intended to invest more time and effort into development of cyber-attack capabilities - viruses to hit enemy infrastructure and the like.

Now today I read in the telegraph that we have agreed to sell missiles to the Ukraine, a thing that we were proscribed from doing under EU rules because of the likelihood of destabilising the region even more than it is currently.

Both of these measures are clearly directed against the Russians and signal a much more hawkish stance on our part than has previously been the case. I might be wrong - none of these things are done without serious consideration, including the announcements that they are being done, but do these things make the world a safer place? I have my doubts.

[Avatar]

One would think that investing in cyber-defence capabilities would be more useful...

--A

[peter]

Post brexit UK is into sending out signals Av. And the signal here is that we are going on the offensive.

[peter]

Okay. Let's have a look at today's headlines. Sunday is a day that the papers tend to put out the stories that reporters have turned up in their investigatory work and occasionally some pretty big scoops can hit the fan on the day; let's see if today is one of those days.

Hmm......

The People is running with "51 MPs have reported incidents of threats and abuse to the police in the last year". This is a follow up to the murder of Sir David Amess by a terrorist at his constituency surgery a week or so ago. I'm surprised to be frank, that the number isn't higher; as an MP you are going to be blamed for just about everything by somebody, and in today's always boarder line hysterical society (or tightly wound should I say) the threat of anger spilling over into aggressive behaviour is an ever present one.

The Observer is going with the Government preparing to bring in strict "Plan B" Covid restrictions. No surprise there. It was always going to happen, and in the face of a fully vaccinated population at high levels of herd immunity, must be seen as pretty much of an admission that this thing is never going to end. No surprise there for anyone with eyes to see; I've been saying this from the word go. Like a child with a toy, we broke the world and there ain't no fixing it now. They also have "Facebook boss is not willing to protect the public from harm". Why would he be? Not protecting them from their own stupidity has made him the richest (and one of the most powerful) men in the world.

Mirror has "Boris's 21 tons of hot air" refering to the PM's huge carbon footprint. Boris won't give a frick about that and neither will anyone else.

The Telegraph tells us that Chancellor Rishi Sunak is going to spend billions digitising the NHS. Some NHS trusts are apparently (can you believe it) still based on paper! So what? If it ain't broke don't fix it, is what I say. Not everything has to be done on a screen to be better. There are times - and plenty of them - when paper and hard copy works just as well. By all means, digitise those NHS trusts when the country isn't broke, but up against the wall as we are at present........ C'mon?

And lastly the Times, with what I think is the most important story of all. It concerns the murder of a young African woman, allegedly by a British soldier in Kenya, who's identity, the paper tells us, has been an "open secret" amongst members of his regiment since the 2012 killing, but no official investigation by the army has ever been carried out. Why the frick not? What kind of a place are we in where the army hierarchy would not see that the killing of a young mother potentially carried out by one of their number, would trump any regimental loyalties that might exist, or indeed any political or service oriented kickback (bringing the regiment into disrepute and that sort of thing) - that such a devastating and important event could not be covered up, swept under the carpet? Why, if the girl died by accident (which it is suggested might be a possibility) did the man not come forward; why is he not immediately presented to the Kenyan authorities for interview? Why, if the paper knows his name, is it not out there in their report? Justice is more important than regimental loyalties, or regimental pride. If a mistake has been made, let's out with it and get people's lives back on track. If a cold blooded murder was done, let the guilty man pay the price for the act. This is how balance is restored - not by stubborn silence and misplaced loyalty.

[peter]

I might have told this story before, I can't honestly remember, but will do so now simply to get it down for the sake of posterity.

When I was sixteen, the first rock band I ever went to see were the writers of the perhaps more well known song 'All the Young Dudes', namely Mott the Hoople. They performed a gig on their 'Mot the Hoople's Rock and Roll Circus Tour' at Plymouth Guild Hall which I attended. As the name suggests, the tour was a bit themed, and in keeping with the name, between the two performing bands (Hackensack being the support act) a few circusy style acts, knife-thowers and the like, gave short performances on stage. Among these acts was an old vaudeville performer called Max Wall, whose speciality was walking around stage doing 'silly walks' in a pair of black ballet tights, shirt, jacket and tie. He looked ridiculous and, impatient as we were to see Mott the Hoople, we were not kind to him. He was roundly booed and mocked by the audience throughout his act, which he manfully completed.

The gig went on, years passed, and very occasionally I saw Max Wall again, popping up on TV on the odd variety show, still doing his old vaudeville act for which in those old days, he had been pretty famous. It would be fair to say that his 'second coming' back onto the TV was not hugely successful, but he did at least gain some of his former recognition back before disappearing once again. Again years passed, until one morning, some twenty five years from the original gig, I was lying in the bath on a Saturday morning listening to the radio (as I was wont to do at the start of my weekend), when I heard the following.

The show's DJ, Steve Wright, was doing a regular sketch in which he got listeners to phone in with stories of unexpected encounters they had had with celebrities, and a guy had just related how, in a cheap motel bar one night 'George' out of George and Mildred had walked in, wearing nineteen seventies lounge wear (it was the nineties by then) complete with big rounded shirt collars and polyester suit, and surrounded by a gaggle of adoring middle aged women hanging on his every word. Actor Brian Murphy (player of the eponymous George) was clearly in his element and was going it large.

The story was entertaining and Wright made some comment on it before continuing.

"The only time I ever ran into a celebrity was in a pub in Plymouth. I walked in late one evening into an all but empty room with one rather lonely looking individual sat at the bar. I walked up and stood beside him and glancing across, saw it was the old vaudeville performer Max Wall. I said to him 'You're Max Wall aren't you" and he replied in the affirmative."

Wright asked him what he was doing in Plymouth and Wall explained that he had been doing a short gig between two rock bands over in the Guildhall. Asked how it went by Wright, he replied that it had bombed. Steve Wright feeling somewhat sorry for him, offered a few words of consolation at which Wall stiffened up and straightened.

"Oh, it's nothing", he said. "When you've been in the game as long as me you get used to it. Sometimes you win the audience and sometimes you die. Tonight I died like a louse in a Russian's beard!"

And so saying he downed the whiskey he was nursing in one, wished Wright goodnight, and left the pub.

[peter]

Cue all round cheering: Rishi Sunak is to announce an increase in the national minimum wage from 8.91 to 9.50 pounds per hour. Now is the winter of our discontent made summer by this......(you get the picture).

But hold on. A few days ago there were reports that shortages and all round problems including the supply chain issues, were pushing prices through the roof, and that as one retail industry chief put it "the era of cheap food is over". Couple this with fuel price increases, rising heating costs and soaring prices of just about any and every other commodity besides, and you have a rate of inflation that makes the currently claimed Consumer Price Index inflation rate of 3.0 percent seem like a woefully underestimated figure (and that figure, it should be noted, is the largest ever recorded rise in the CPIH twelve month inflation rate).

Figures show that in the last twelve months, (actually May 20 to May 21) 2.5 million people in the UK were forced to use food-banks in order to survive, an increase of six hundred thousand on the previous year, and one can only imagine what the effects of a period of high and sustaned inflation will do to this figure.

The double whammy of brexit and the pandemic is about to bite in this country and will result in the kind of inflation seen but a few times in a lifetime, the kind that marks a sea-chane in what people can do with their income and the radically diminished portion which is actually disposable thereof. The last really comparable bout I can think of was caused by the oil price hike of the seventies, so nearly fifty years ago, and I doubt that most people have any conception of what such a price hike across the board will do to their living standards. Let alone the fact that millions, literally millions of more people will be forced into food poverty in a short period of time and will be very angry about what has been done to them. Very angry indeed.

At this point Sunak's much vaunted largesse (by today's headlines in the right wing media at least) will be seen for what it is: a pitifully small and woefully inadequate attempt to mitigate at least a little of the economic pain that is about to descend (actually, is already descending) on every household in the country. It is a pathetic attempt to stave off the potential civil disorder that will likely result when the people of this country realize the extent to which they have been duped, just how badly they have been led astray by a Tory Party that was only ever concerned with looking after its own interest, and cared not a hoot about the future of this country or the people living in it.

And to every person who comes into the shop complaining about the price increases and how their lives are being devastated, I will have only one reply. "You voted for it!"

[peter]

Could you spend a week without looking at a screen of any kind? No television, tablet, mobile phone. No cinema, computer or gaming console? Does the idea fill you with apprehension, or are you happy that, thrown back onto your own mental resources in order to provide your entertainment, you could pass the time without feeling withdrawal symptoms, without becoming bored and restless, and succumbing to the desire to reach for your i-phone?

Let's think; you could spend your time reading or in the garden. Getting up to speed with all of those jobs around the house that you have been putting off forever. You could talk - actually talk - to your family, contact old friends that have slipped under the radar, even write some letters! Or you could go out walking, paint the bedroom or visit an art gallery. There are a million different things that you could do with the time that is normally stolen by your need to be almost constantly in front of a screen.

But somehow none of it seems very appealing. The idea, fresh at first in your head, suddenly seems to loose its sheen: to sound like a drudge that it would be easier just to forget about. There is even a tiny niggling worry that you might find yourself completely unable to do it, simply not up to the task. You might discover that the screen has become such an integral part of your life that deprived of it your world might start to unravel, to go into free-fall. You might become bad tempered and aggressive, upset your family and fall out with your friends. Far from being the toys you use to enrich your life, screens have become your very raison d'etra. Without them you are reduced to a shell, a shadow of what it is meant, to be human.

You may have guessed that I'm writing this simply because there is nothing of note in the papers today that I want to comment upon, yet rather than go and occupy myself in some productive way, I've gravitated toward the screen anyways, simply to be doing something via an interface. Shortly I'll go and have a bath, go on a games console for an hour or two, watch TV for a bit then head to work (where I'll be engaged with a screen in the form of a till checkout for the remainder of the afternoon and evening. Then it'll be back home where finally, for an hour and a half, before turning out the lights, I'll be engaged in something that doesn't involve a screen (reading, I hasten to add for the more rude minded amongst you).

And so will end another productive day. Tomorrow it will be rinse and repeat, and the next, and the next (insha'Allah) - until one day it isn't. Suddenly the idea of going cold-turkey on screens is starting to look better again.

[peter]

Sunak's budget yesterday was an interesting one. Commentators on the television in the immediate aftermath were united in agreement that this was more of a Labour - think Gordon Brown - style budget than the usual Tory (give away to the rich) stuff we see.

There are good reasons why this should have been. The Office of Budget Responsibility has upgraded it's growth forecast from four to six percent this year, but against this good news (and it's only good against a backdrop that our economy shrank more than anyone else's in the first place) the forecast is one of higher inflation lasting much longer than had previously been anticipated.

Put this alongside the double hits to the economy from brexit and the pandemic (neither of which have truly begun to bite yet), the supply shortages and energy supply issues driving up prices and the picture for households going forward is a pretty bleak one. Standards of living (we are told) are going to stagnate and the sunlit uplands of post brexit UK look as far away as ever.

I think that even this dreary picture is over optimistic; standards of living will not stagnate - I reckon that they will plummet. We are at the cusp of a tsunami of economic consequences the scale of which the analyst's are almost too afraid to iterate in public. But behind closed doors, the Government are well aware that the economic shit is about to hit the fan, and what we saw from Sunak yesterday was his attempt to mitigate this by spreading a bit of fiscal fertilizer onto the economy in the form of spending, spread far and wide, like a farmer throwing seed corn onto a tilled field. Rather than use the better than expected recovery from the pandemic (or rather the fiscal revenue accumulated thereby) to hammer down on spending and taxes in the usual Tory style, he has thrown it back out into the economy with the promise of tax cuts and prudence in future budgets to come.

This is telling. Johnson and Sunak are neither of them into spreading largesse for the sake of it: Johnson certainly likes to be seen as a Prime Minister of good news, he'd happily spend today and worry about tomorrow when it comes as long as it keeps his opinion poll ratings up - but Sunak is a different animal. His political hopes will rest on how things go with the economy over the next few years, and he'd like to cultivate a reputation for fiscal responsibility to the greatest extent possible in order to lay his path to the top job in the future. That he has not done so in this budget is indicative that he is in fear of what could transpire were he to follow the normal Tory pathway. To be handing money back to the richest in the country while squeezing the pips on the already on their knees poorest households and the hard pressed middle, would not look good. It could even trigger a backlash that could cost the Tories the next election (those 'red-wall' seats in the North have to be looked after, after all), and Sunak could not risk that. So he has had to bite the bullet, try to shore up the economy and spread a bit of visible generosity around, and hope, hope, hope, that the economic car-crash he can see approaching in slow-motion will be a bit softer thereby.

Good luck with that Rishi!

[peter]

Well that didn't take long! A day after Sunak's 'budget of largesse' mortgage rates have gone up, interest rates are shortly to follow and the Institute of Fiscal Studies reports that the lowest half of the country are going to be badly clobbered in the year ahead as the economic storm approaching gathers pace. The average household is set to face tax increases of 3000 pounds, and this against a backdrop of the rising cost of heating, fuel, food and mortgages.

Sunak, the man who could do no wrong as he threw out handfuls of cash during the lockdowns, is suddenly waking up to find that he is no longer the press's golden boy, with even the Financial Times running a piece "Sunak failed to deliver plan for Britain" in its 'Budget Reaction' section. Other papers are even more scathing: The Mirror talks of his "failure to level up" and the Mail's Littlejohn says that he "spent like a drunken sailor, but picked the pockets of middle-England".

Luckily for Sunak, the French came to his rescue by choosing to up the anti in respect of the growing hostility about the post brexit fishing settlement and how it is being applied. The French are furious about the small number of UK fishing permits that are being granted to their fleet to fish in UK waters and are threatening retaliation across the board, all the way from arresting UK boats on trumped up charges of failure to produce the correct documentation (as happened yesterday) to increasing the charges levied on the Channel Islands for French generated electricity. This spat has allowed much of the traditional Tory press to play down the criticism of Sunak's budget and avoid the dire predictions for the future in terms of household standards of living altogether.

Another diversionary story that we have is that proposals to prescribe free vaping pens on the NHS are being considered by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Agency, in order to help those trying to quit smoking in their battle. I wasn't aware that the full story in respect of the actual safety of these products themselves was as yet known, but perhaps I'm wrong on this. Either way, they could hardly be more dangerous than the dreaded weed itself, so perhaps it's an idea worth considering.

But that's my penn'oworth for today folks. Have a good day.

[peter]

So brexit, not satisfied with screwing this country into the ground, could now actually f*** up the entire future of the world to boot.

A number of papers run with the ongoing dispute over fishing between France and Great Britain with the Observer reporting that if it is not toned down pronto, the two countries have been told they risk scuppering the entire COP 26 summit, at which it is hoped that a 'climate change deal' will be arrived at that will limit global warming to 1.5 degree centigrade - seemingly the highest temperature rise that can be allowed if the world is not to suffer the catastrophic consequences of rising sea levels and huge population displacement otherwise predicted.

The Telegraph and the Express have pictures of Carrie Johnson and Boris respectively, enjoying a visit to the Coliseum (a privilege few of us get these days) with the latter paper hailing the PM as a "gladiator" for standing up to the French in the above cited fishing row. Myself I'd have compared him to a great bloated Nero, fiddling while Rome burns rather than a battle honed champion of the arena, but I'm not the editor of the Express and have no need to maintain the pretence that voting him into parliament was anything but the most stupid thing that the collective British public have done in my lifetime. That and of course the referendum result itself, the Office of Budget Responsibility having in the last week officially confirmed that Brexit has been twice as damaging to the economy as the pandemic (and of course will continue to wreak damage for the foreseeable future). This makes it a bit difficult for Rishi Sunak, who continues to remind us that the pandemic has severely damaged the economy, but somehow never mentions that brexit (which we chose to inflict upon ourselves at his and others recommendation) has been far worse.

Rather amusingly the Times tells us that "base on a poll of younger voters", there is firm evidence that "the handshake is back" from its Covid induced battering. Well I suppose it may be amongst the type of younger voters that read the Sunday times, but I have to say, it's in pretty short supply amongst the young individuals I come across in the shop every day where fist bumps and high fives are the order of the day (when they become actually motivated enough to tear their eyes away from the mobile phone invariably clutched into their clammy mit that is). But there you have it, I'm off for a cup of tea.

[peter]

Journalist John Ronson tells a horrific story in his book on internet shaming (sorry - I forgot the title) in which a woman, en route to her parents home in South Africa for a vacation tweeted from the departure lounge jokingly that she hoped she didn't get aids while she was there. Okay, it was a stupid comment, but by the time she reached her destination, her phone having been turned off for the ten hour flight, her life had unbeknown to her, gone into tailspin. The first inkling that something was adrift came in the form of a message from a friend saying that she was "so sorry" about what was happening. To her horror, the woman discovered her tweet had gone viral, millions of people had seen it and given the thumbs down, within hours her employer had contacted her to say that her position was under review and she was shortly thereafter 'let go' from her successful career. Years later when Ronson interviewed her, she was working in a much reduced area of employment and still trying to recover her life of prior to her momentary lapse of judgement. In short, the punishment handed out by the 'crowd justice' of her peers on social media was infinitely out of proportion to the 'crime' of her silly comment.

But this is not where it ends.

It has been written that all that is required for the instigation of the totalitarian state are two things; mass surveillance and public control. And with the now ubiquitous smart phone and our ever increasing dependency on some form of mobile internet connection, we are effectively handing powers way outside our sphere of influence (think giant tech companies and Governments both) a direct conduit into the very heart of our lives. The phone itself gives an effective surveillance of where you are, what you are doing, who and what you are in communication with. The presence of millions of cameras around you at all times, ready to record even the slightest deviations from societal rules and norms, in combination with the one that you hold in your pocket and the type of fallout I record above if you step out of line, has an almost 'panopticon' effect on you - an effect of moderating your behaviour and policing and judging you, in an almost invisible way that you are barely aware of. Add to this the type of behavioural psychology tricks that our Governments have resorted to in their desire to get us to do this or that thing, accept this or that diktat over the course of the pandemic, and all of the pieces are in place for a subtle form of totalitarianism that can invidiously be used to control our lives, should some unscrupulous complex of interests outwith our understanding, choose to do so.

But it's all very conspiracy isn't it? Bordering on the paranoid even? There are no forces that would try to control us en mass in this way; our Governments and the giant tech companies are benign entities that would never think along the lines I am outlining here. They have only our best interest at heart and if they sometimes do things that seem a little sinister, a little bit under-the-belt manipulative, well that's because we just need a little bit of help to do the right thing sometimes. So you see, there's nothing to worry about here - nothing to worry about at all.

[peter]

COP 26 is in full force now and all of the news is full of world leaders and assorted hangers on telling us that we all have to do better and get to grips with this thing. Most of them have traveled half way round the earth to tell us that, and today are full of themselves that they have slubbered up a few agreements on methane production and deforestation etc. "We are going to do this and that etc etc" they tell us, but the reality is that none of them are going to do anything. With the strokes of their pens they are going to make sure that it is us that can't do this, that it is you and me that are no longer allowed, or can't afford, or are simply unable, to do that.

This is the way things are. Those like Leonardo DiCaprio (who was there for some reason today) and Boris Johnson and Joe Biden - the glitterati and the super-rich - will simply do as they have always done, but simply pay the extra cost of doing so. It won't impact their lives or behaviour in the slightest. The cost of putting things right will not be shared equitably between us - it will be payed in inverse proportion to your wealth, with those at the top paying the least in terms of lost opportunity and lifestyle.

When was it ever different?

[peter]

And so it continues; in today's press the world's financial institutions jump onto the bandwagon, pledging to join the fight against global warming by no longer financing high polluting industries like the oil and petrochemical sectors. They seem to forget that they made exactly the same promises at the Paris conference in 2015 and then did nothing.

It all looks so good: it all sounds so good - but the reality is it is all a sham. At its heart, unless the conference gets an absolute and binding commitment to hold to the 1.5 degree temperature rise target of Paris, it will have failed. Even at this lower level of temperature rise the projected scenario is bad - rising sea levels, falling fish stocks, significant population displacement,increased frequency of extreme weather events etc - but at the higher levels of two degrees plus the consequences are devastating. Think fifty percent of the global population being displaced into the remaining land above sea level and the geopolitical fallout from that - and that's just for starters.

And if we are to achieve the 1.5 degree target, this requires a cut in emissions of fifty percent - that's all emissions, not just the methane which accounts for twenty percent of the total (though significantly higher contribution to warming) - which to date, the talks have not come even close to agreeing. And the biggest polluters in the world are not even there.

Behind the scenes, the pessimism must have turned into the realism of an understanding that we are not going to make it. Sure, they will make all of the correct noises, come out at the end patting themselves on the back and claiming to have saved world - but behind closed doors they will be, each and every one of them, calculating their own survival, working out how the global elite will secure themselves away from the devastation that is to come, while the mass populace is left to fight it out.

Do androids dream of electric sheep? I think we're about to find out.

(I really fucking want to post a good old fashioned optimistic post one of these days, but it just doesn't seem to be happening. Sorry about that - I'll keep trying I promise!)

[peter]

Pretty severe backlash against the Tories in today's press, on their voting to block the suspension of MP Owen Paterson, previously imposed by the Commission of Parliamentary Standards watchdog.

Paterson had been accused of "egregious and repeated breaches" of Parliamentary rules in respect of taking payments for raising issues in the House, being paid in excess of half a million pounds stretching over five years. He apparently used his parliamentary office to conduct multiple 'business meetings' which he was then paid large sums of cash for. He strenuously denied the claims as well as suggesting that the investigation had contributed to the suicide of his wife due to the ongoing stress that the two year investigation had placed them under. He maintains that any lobbying he did were in the public interest and that any benefit therefrom that happened to fall in the direction of the companies who were paying him was entirely coincidental.

The vote to overturn the suspension as as well as to overhaul the process of investigation of MPs conduct, was 'whipped' by the PM (ie all Tory MPs were obliged to vote in favour of the amendment or face punishment by the whips office for their refusal), but nevertheless saw significant numbers rebel against the PM's instructions and vote against. A parliamentary aide to Michael Gove has lost her position already and no doubt further reprisals will follow.

The problem is that the whole thing stinks of corruption. The independent Commission on Parliamentary Standards was set up a number of years ago when, as a result of a newspaper tsunami of reports on MPs expenses and extra-parlimentary payments, it was seen that the whole system was rotten from top to bottom with misconduct and self-interest. For Johnson to be seen to be overturning that independent process of keeping MPs in check, and the House to be seen to be supporting him in this, does not look good - and MPs (including his own backbenchers) know it. There have been accusations that it has the ring of "marking your own homework." It's like, having been reined in for a few year, they have reverted to type, once again giving their venal side full scope to dig in, snouts in the trough of 'cash for questions', and business it would seem, is booming!

It should also be noted that the body which this vote aims to overturn and replace with one more 'conducive' to MPs interests, is also the one currently investigating the PM himself over the 'donation' he received to redecorate his Downing Street accomodation and for which to date, the source of the money involved has not been fully revealed. No self interest on the PM's part there then.

All in all a grubby affair which goes pretty much to demonstrate (if such a demonstration was ever needed), that a PM with a good majority in the UK Houses of Parliament, can do pretty much whatever he or she wants to do - a level of power enjoyed by few rulers outside of totalitarian dictatorships, anywhere in the world. That, of course, is assuming we are living outside a totalitarian dictatorship........

Edit; That was early this morning - this is now 6.45 pmish. It appears that BoJo's power is not as extensive as either he or I imagined. In the face of the backlash I mentioned (which was mirrored within parliament itself, as vehemently as it was in the media), Leader of the House, Tory MP Jacob Rees Mogg this morning in the House, had to announce that due to both opposition parties and some Tories themselves (though Rees Mogg missed the latter) refusal to cooperate with the voted decision to set up a committee to revise the current means of monitoring and addressing Parliamentary standards, the motion of the previous day (ie to overturn the ban on the MP and set up such a revision committee) would not be acted upon.

It appears that even though the motion was passed by a reasonable number of votes, such a committee is by convention bound to be cross-party in its composition. In the face of the refusal to sit on such a committee of opposition parties, said Rees Mogg, it would not be possible to proceed with the intended revision. The truth is more prosaic; the backlash was simply far greater than Johnson had anticipated - he must have been really surprised to discover that even some of his own MPs had principles and that there was a line that even they would not cross - and the damage to the Government's credibility had they continued on with their intentions, would simply have been too great. In the reports I read on the issue, it was said that some MPs believed that Johnson had made a serious error of judgement in not allowing them to vote with their conscience, but rather whipping them to vote with the Government - and it seems that they may have been right.

[peter]

Mmm......

I'm going to stick with the Owen Paterson affair because it is shaping up into a really big thing for this Government and might even be a game changer for the current administration as it struggles to put the unsavoury business behind itself.

The MP has now quit, citing pressure from his children and saying that he is "unable to clear (his) name" under such circumstances. This has prompted a by-election in which the other parties are talking about standing aside in order that an 'anti-sleaze' candidate might have a clear run at the seat. (Quite what such a candidate might be, from which party he or she might be selected, is not as yet clear.)

Johnson's back bench MPs are furious that the situation has descended into such a debacle and are turning on the PM in their droves n anger that it should have been allowed to develop. Number 10 is doing its best to throw blame onto the Chief Whip's Office and there have been calls for Mark Spencer, the said Chief Whip, to resign. For his part, his Office is claiming that he is under the PM's instruction and simply does what he is told to do. This is fair comment, and try as he might, the PM is going to find it hard to distance himself from the disaster that is unfolding before his eyes, both in parliament and in the wider commentariat more generally.

The mistake he made, either himself or following instructions from his advisors, was to conflate the attempt to save the career of his ex-government buddy with a more general attempt at revision of the process of monitoring parliamentary standards - a mistake acknowledged by Rees Mogg when he made his U-turn statement in the Commons yesterday. Johnson is said to be furious and yesterday, by accounts, carpeted his No. 10 aides demanding to know how they had allowed him to become embroiled in this situation.

Statements from various individuals reported in today's press are almost laughable in their pompous naieveity; Lord Evans, Chairman of the Committee on standards in public life said it was "a very serious and damaging moment for parliament and public standards in this country". As if the public take their measure of how to conduct themselves from the 'example' set by MPs! What world is he living in? Most of the UK public don't even know that we have MPs - or barely - let alone give them any thought or take their lead from them. Another Tory MP thought that they had "abandoned the moral high ground"and that it was a "bad day for democracy". Well, the idea that this Government had any moral high ground to abandon is almost laughable in itself, but in fairness you can see where he is coming from.

Other statements issuing from Number 10 saying that any connection between the PM's attempt to review the parliamentary standards procedure and the ongoing investigation into his refurbishment of his Downing Street accomodation is entirely coincidental and the suggestion that the two were in any way connected is "entirely incorrect". Yes, well PM.......

All in all this has not been a good episode for Johnson and while it is not likely to bring down the Government per se, it certainly won't do them any good. The public impression of the parliamentary Tory Party, already one of a party composed of individuals who look purely toward their own interest and enrichment, can only be strengthened by this fiasco, and the Tories have given their enemies in the media a serious stick to beat them with as they approach the next election. As things get tougher and tougher as time passed, as the effects of brexit and the pandemic start to really bite, such messages of Tory corruption could really begin to do serious damage to their election chances, and might even result in a loss of seats as unprecedented as was the gain seen by them in the last (brexit) election.

This was a very poor choice of fight for the Government to get into at this particular time, but having chosen to do so they could not have handled it in a more clumsy and cack-handed fashion if they'd tried. It's all very well to support your chums, even when they are palpably guilty of the accusations against them, but this PM is making a habit of it, and it's starting to look like a succession of bad decisions on his part, particularly when in all cases the accused individuals are forced to go anyway. Cummings, Raab, that pipsqueak Health Secretary who put his hands on his aides arse in his office - Johnson has failed to act in all cases and now he is seen to be supporting an MP who's offenses are by accounts, egregious and long-term (not to mention bending parliamentary procedure in the pursuit thereof and attempting to force his parliamentary colleagues to support him in so doing) - so all in all his MPs have every right to be pissed at him, and every right to consider whether he is up to the job.

[peter]

They used to say of women in the workplace that they had work twice as hard to be thought half as good. Well the same applies to old people I can tell you.

Last night I worked with a guy who had been taken on by my company as a temporary staff member at the outset of the pandemic. He had worked in my shop for a couple of months before moving on to other shops in the chain closer to his home. He took a shift in my shop to cover sickness yesterday and we had a chance to catch up. He was, he informed me, going up through the ranks like a helium balloon. Already a supervisor in his regular shop and contracted to 35 hours per week (I remain on the twelve I was taken on at and pick up extras like a dog scavenging for bones), he was he told me, in line to be given his own store as soon as one became available.

We worked our shift together during which I went extra hard at the job to get what needed to be done finished, and he served intermittently behind the till and when not doing so, toyed with his phone or stood outside the door using his vape pen. At the point where I said, "you must be fed up standing at the counter - do you want to go and work stock for a bit?" he did so briefly before gravitating back to his phone and the door, and when I returned to the shelving I found that the small amount he had covered was poorly done and minimal in quantity.

We finished our shift, and I said that it had been good to catch up (I wasn't going to start complaining - he was covering for sickness at short notice after all) and we parted. As I went home I had cause to remember the oft repeated quotation by Gandhi. "There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Join the first group - you will find that there is less competition."



Now for a brief scan of the news, when the Express start's criticising Boris Johnson you know he's in trouble - and that is just what is on their front page today. He's loosing it with the voters, warns the paper, having polled their readers in the wake of the recent days events catalogued in my earlier posts. The same is true of his MPs according to the 'i', who tell us that they have "rounded on him in fury" following the debacle.

The FT has a story that won't make for widespread coverage in the more generally read or broadcast media, but should flag up warning signs as to what might be ahead this winter. The Government, it tells us, has struck a deal with gulf state Qatar to supply us with liquid gas in the event of likely shortages over the colder months. The country has already directed five such tankers our way in recent days, and is poised to sign up as a supplier of last resort (for a price no doubt) in the event of serious shortages later in the year. If this Government has been galvanized to act to allay such risks with preemptive action then they must be high indeed. The Guardian tells us that there are renewed calls to investigate the two hundred thousand pound refit of Johnson's Downing Street accomodation and also that he has refused to disclose the cost of his recent Marbella holiday, given as a gift to him and Carrie by the wealthy and influential Goldsmith family. In fairness to Johnson, I think that he has every right to the same privacy as the rest of us in respect of his holiday arrangements, and as long as the inland revenue are satisfied that he is paying the necessary tax on such gifts and they are not being given on the understanding of recieving return favours in the future then I don't see a problem.

And lastly, a few papers are covering the dropping of the ex-England cricket captain from his show on BBC radio due to his purportedly having used a racist word in reference to one of his teammates twelve years ago (apparently used more in banter than in intended insult, but such a distinction carries little weight in these pc days). I know that he shouldn't have done this, but isn't it a bit late for his accuser to dredge this up now. Why not do it at the time, rather than wait for an unfeasible amount of time to elapse and then bring it up? Clearly there is no 'statute of limitations' that the BBC have to worry about in such cases, but I tend to think along the lines of Hamlet when he asked, "Use every man according to his just dessert and who should 'scape a whipping?" Not perhaps the right approach but that's just me.

Have a good day.

[peter]

Patchy old affair in this morning's papers, but Johnson is by far from being let off the hook, with the Observer publishing the results of an opinion poll that show the Tory lead spectacularly reduced and Johnson's personal ratings at an all time low. Besides this (which won't be too significant because all of the people polled will be pretty anti Tory at the off) they have simply rehashed the old material from their sister weekly the Guardian, in order to keep the anti-government momentum going.

Of more significance to the Tory Party and Government is the Sunday Times leader which tells us that three million quid is the price of a seat in the House of Lords under this administration. Apparently there is an 'omerta' in the Tory Party about this practice, that goes on in open sight, but about which no parliamentary Tory MP dare speak. A number of 'scources' have spoken to the paper telling of their deep unease at the practice (significant because the Lords have a role in making legislation and are by far from being simply honourary positions), but are bound by a combination of fear and party loyalty from speaking up openly on the subject. Since 2010 no less than 22 major Tory donors have been ennobled compared to 2 Labour and 5 Lib-dem. This, story, while not a new one- the situation has been reported on many times before - still has the power to ruffle feathers with the voting public, and I suppose that the ST thought that it was a good time to wheel it out again in the face of the unfolding events of this week. In another front page leader the same paper tells of the PM leaving a "toxic mess" behind him, following his weeks activities, and for the first time mention of MPs "sharpening their quills" in preparation for writing to the chairman of the 1922 committee (who has the power to call a Tory PM in and demand he stand aside) is made. Not happy reading for BoJo this morning then.

What else have we got? The Mail on Sunday telling us that that the right to travel and not quarantine is to be tied to ones having had a third (booster) vaccination - no surprise there (but surprised - or perhaps not - that no paper has reported on the BMJ's recent publishing of a paper calling the Pfizer vaccination trial protocol into question). The People has a heart-rending story of a baby born who will never know her mother (who died of Covid) and telling all mothers to be to get jabbed, and the Telegraph has a really serious story about the damage being done by the ongoing feud between the UK and Brussels to R&D projects in which ongoing collaboration post brexit is supposed to have been agreed. The EU, they claim, has, in retaliation for our leaving, been restricting access of our scientists into three collaborative projects (scientific, satellite and nuclear) to the point where the Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng and Brexit Bully-boy Lord Frost have been discussing the viability of our staying within the programs at all. This situation will no doubt have researchers up and down the country tearing their hair out, both from the academic hold ups they are suffering and from the fear and uncertainties surrounding their continued work should such collaborations break down.

And Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has set out a vision for Britain as "the beating heart of a global network of liberty". Yes, well - tell that to Julian Assange Liz!

Chow folks.