What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

James O'brien and a guest caller on his show - an ex BBC employee - both expressed their amazement that Nigel Farage should still be getting airtime on major TV and radio platforms (he appeared on Laura Kuenssberg's Sunday political slot and GB News interviewed by Camilla Tominay) when, in their opinion he should be history - quite simply gone from anywhere where current political discourse was occurring.

This is absolutely the kind of complacent arrogance, the total disconnect that caused the Brexit disaster in the first place. These middle class intellectual nonentities in their isolated media bubble, and Notting Hill chatterati in their satisfied and comfortable lives, completely divorced from what working men and women up and down the length and breath of the country were thinking, and misjudging in epic proportions what they would do in their millions when actually given the chance to make a real change in their lives.

Here they are making exactly the same mistake again - the mistake I was able to avoid because I actually meet the people in their hundreds on a daily basis. I came home in the days before the referendum and told Mrs P that Leave would win. Certainly it was close, but to anyone actually listening to what the ones who would vote were saying, the dissatisfaction and anger about the existing situation could be heard in their millions of complaints and utterances.

Similarly now, what O'brien fails to get, is that the people still love Farage. The people still love Johnson. Away from the political establishment and chattering classes, out amongst the grime and dirt of everyday life, the two of them still hold the crowds. I doubt even Farage and Johnson realise it themselves to be honest, but against the bland technocratic personas of Stamer and Sunak, the stultifying dullness and mediocrity of the political faces of the cabinets, these two stand out as beacons of force and certainty. Speaking their language, saying the things that they themselves feel and yes, entertaining them as well, these two strike a chord with the working people of this country that a thousand Sunak's and Stamer's could not in a month of Sundays.

So O'brien and his caller had better watch out. Political power in this country is up for grabs for the individual or individuals who get it right, tick the right boxes and make the right moves at the right times. Corbyn came within an inch of pulling it off in 2017. 2024 or 28 could be Farage and Johnson's time if they can work the oracle. And then the fur will fly!

------0-------

Meanwhile the war of words between Sunak and Johnson has exploded into the open with the PM accusing Johnson of asking him to do something he was not comfortable with or prepared to do (pertaining to the Johnson honours list) and Johnson retaliating is that he is "talking rubbish".

Johnson had included a number of names on his list that the honours committee had not approved, amongst which were Johnson loyalists Nadine Dorries and Nigel Adams, both of whom had expected to enter the House of Lords. He (Johnson) had asked Sunak to approach the Committee and ask them to reconsider their verdict, which Sunak had declined to do. This spat has ignited the fire that has been stacking up for months, ever since Sunak was instrumental in bringing Johnson's premiership to an untimely end. (Perhaps some would say timely.) It doesn't look as though the war of words is going to spread much further for the minute, but if Sunak (as he is being encouraged to do) moves to block Johnson from standing as a candidate in the next election then there could be trouble. Sunak's policies are not popular with the main body of Conservative thinking, and Johnson has honed in on this weakness in his valedictory essay. He has accused Sunak of loosing direction and says that the party needs to rediscover its "mojo" post haste.

------0-------

Neil Oliver was recently talking about the words of the Declaration of Independence (iirc) "Government of the people, by the people, for the people."

This got me thinking. How well do they apply to us in the UK? Are we achieving these lofty goals. Are they even lofty - should they not just be simple truths about the way society should function?

Well, the people are certainly being governed! Don't know whether we've met those other criteria of a different set of words, those about inalienable rights of freedom and the right to pursue happiness as you see it - we were locked in our houses for months - but we've certainly been governed.

By the people?

If you can say that a near billionaire is representative of the people, I suppose so.....ish. If an establishment that hold all of the reins of political power, generation after generation, if your political leaders are educated at the same schools, attend the same universities, follow identical paths across the board and with successive generations to their seats of governance - if this is by the people then it's an odd one. You'd have thought that 'by the people' would mean that those people were a representative slice of the whole, not just an establishment clique at the top end of our society, but hey, for some reason we vote for them.

And for the people?

Well, if it's for the people that they're trying for, then they don't seem to be doing very well at it. Because no matter how hard they try to stop it, no matter how much it pains them, how much wringing of hands and tears they shed.....the money keeps flowing upwards, defying gravity to land in.....errr....their bank accounts. Somehow the distance between the haves and have nots keeps getting wider, inequalities right across the board in wealth, education, health service, life expectancy, you name it, keep increasing. Somehow the establishment of a progressive tax system for the redistribution of wealth - just in its most egregious imbalances - seems always to elude them.

So no.Somewhere down the line between the saying of those words and the doing of them, something went adrift. But then we're human. Lofty in our aspirations, we somehow always seem to fail in the execution. Although no doubt if you happen to be amongst the one percent, the ruling clique, you are entirely satisfied with the way in which things have worked out. And will strive to endeavour that things remain just as they are - as they are meant to be. But be warned. Even the most docile beast of burden has its limits. Worms we might be, but we are the underground farmers and without us there is nothing. You risk, in your squeezing of evermore juice from the lemon, leaving yourself with nothing but the useless husk.

[peter]

What is all of this bollox about recessions.

The media, when it bothers to actually look at the economy is fixated upon this meaningless measure of the size of the economy - is it growing or shrinking - as if it were the be all and end all of people's lives.

Tosh! It is perfectly possible to have a growing economy, but for the mass of the people to be experiencing falls in their living standards that their forebears have not experienced in generations. The difference in people's lives between a point one percent fall in the size of the economy or the same in growth is nothing - they won't even feel it. But the one has economists falling down tearing out their hair and gnashing their teeth, the other has them indulging in a group cheer and back slapping extravaganza that would make you believe that we've all won the lottery.

What is significant is not recession or growth, but wealth distribution and inequality. And though the economy has been in growth pretty much since the end of the 2008/9 financial crisis (the last period of recession if I have it right) the standard of living of the mass of people has steadily declined over this period to the point where now the up coming generation may for the first time expect to experience a lower standard of living, lower life chances, than the generation that came before it. It is no coincidence that over this same fifteen year period (pretty much concurrent with the Tory coalition and straight Tory governments we have had over these years), wealth inequality has increased if not exponentially then certainly in large degree. This problem of wealth distribution has gotten significantly worse over the last three years to the point where it now threatens to become a real destabilising factor in our society.

Government has a limited number of jobs in terms of maintaining the balance of people's lives. Providing security of work/income and ensuring the availability of cheap food and housing are key amongst these things. Fail on these basic needs and you have trouble.

And what is happening? We are going through the worst period of food price inflation that we have experienced....I was going to say since the seventies, but I think this is worse. And it isn't beginning to be done yet. Unless the government get their act together to stop the full gamut of trade barriers and tariffs kicking in between the UK and EU in October, then what we have seen to date will be as nothing. Shortages and spiralling prices are just around the corner.

And cheap housing? Rent prices are going through the roof as landlords on the buy-to-let schemes desperately try to hold their house of cards property portfolios together in the face of rising mortgage costs. Tens if not hundreds of thousands face crippling mortgage price increases this month as their fixed rate mortgages come up for renegotiation, and companies are tightening their demands and product ranges in the face of financial uncertainties yet to manifest.

So in two of the three key areas at least, government is failing in its key remit. And it isn't going to get better anytime soon.

Because nothing - absolutely nothing - is being done to address the key issues of income inequality and wealth distribution in the country.

And what happens as all of this starts to bite? As people have less and less disposable income, as more and more of their income goes on food and housing costs, they spend less and less out and about in the community. They stop going out for meals and to the pubs. Holidays go to the wall. Gym memberships are suspended and cinema visits curtailed. And the death spiral sets in. Economic vitality is lost and everything is reduced to the basic need of eating and housing.

And this concentration by the government, the opposition, the commentariat, on the occurence or otherwise of recession hides the bald truth. It makes it look as though the thing that is hitting us is temporary, will go away in short order when we just rise out of recession again. But it won't. We've had a bad period, but it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse. Not as fast perhaps, but still inexorably grinding down because nothing is being done to address the income gap. The wealth distribution issue that underlies the whole problem is not one jot closer to being adressed. And so, recession or growth, the money that the country makes will still keep on flowing upwards instead of being redistributed by a progressive taxation system back into the society where it can do some good. Under our existing administration, nor any future Tory one (or indeed Labour one under the current leadership) nothing is going to be done to address this income inequality. Nothing is going to be done to mitigate the crisis in the affordability of food and housing. Nothing is going to be done to bring the country back into an equitable balance between the haves and have-nots.

So next time you hear ministers and commentators on television engaging in a bout of mutual dick-sucking because a recession has been 'narrowly avoided' ignore it. Ask instead at what point those who have benefited in huge degree in the last few years, who while the rest of us have been sinking have been laughing all the way to the bank, are going to start paying their fare share. Putting something back into the societies that have given them wealth beyond the wildest dreams of avarice.

Ask them this.

[lovettgr]

Does anyone know why there has not been an update from Mr Donaldson for so long ?

[peter]

Spare a thought for the poor old London Stock Exchange struggling to attract new business as yet another huge new floatation slips through its grasp.

Soda (the kind used in cement) giant W E Soda has declined to choose the City for its 7.5 billion pound initial price offering as it goes public. Based in Turkey, it is more likely that the company will now choose Wall Street or another venue for its 'coming out', which is yet a further blow to the prestige of the London financial hub on the world stage.

To date this year there has been only four floatations at what until recently was the venue of choice for such activities across the whole world. The reasons that the owners of the company give for their decision is the extreme caution of investors, most especially in the UK, about IPO's at the present.

Whatever the reasons for this - and my bet is that Brexit is a big part of it......the UK is just not seen as a good place to do business following our rejection of our place in the EU and subsequent isolation - its a big headache for Rishi Sunak. He's out there trying to convince everyone that the UK is on the up and up and the evidence from the City just pisses all over it. The truth is that no-one wants to do business here and until that changes neither will our fortunes.

And just to add insult to injury we have our Chancellor telling us that interest rates are going to have to go up yet further, in an attempt to get a grip on the inflation that is stubbornly resisting all attempts to bring it down in line with the PM's pledge to do so. The Bank of England set the base rate ostensibly independently of government, but in his statement Chancellor Hunt is effectively giving them the thumbs up to raise interest rates to whatever extent they need to, in order to rein in inflation and make good on Sunak's words. The base rate, currently set at 4.5 percent, is likely to get as high as 5.75, predict pundits on the subject, a fifteen year high that spreads misery and hardship into any household in the country who have a mortgage effected by this (and there are tens of thousands). This hike alone would represent another two thousand pounds a year on the typical mortgage figure, over and above what they have already soaked up. Common sense tells you that there is a limit as to how far these rises can be absorbed before things start to unravel. HSBC have increased their lending rate twice already this week and have pulled their product offerings off the market to re-evaluate their costings while doing so. It is an absolute given that other lenders will follow suit in due course.

And the evidence is that this is beginning to seep back into public confidence in the government (ha! That's laugh in itself!) and be reflected in their voting intentions. The 'i' newspaper reports that the Tories are hemorrhaging support among homeowners with Labour holding a fifteen point advantage and 44 percent saying that they will vote Labour in the next election (up from 33 percent in 2019).

All of which will be really worrying for the PM, weakening his support amongst his backbenchers even further and adding ever more weight to his opponents within his own ranks who are deeply unhappy about this interest rate increase policy, by virtue of the damage it is doing to the party in the polls. He'll certainly be the one to fight the next election for the tories, but beyond this he's a gonner. They never warmed to him in parliament and he's done nothing to turn anything around on this score. He'll loose the election and then he'll be gone. And the carnage that he'll leave behind him - that thirteen years of Conservative government, the Truss disastrous mini-budget, the ill-judged withdrawal agreement from the EU, the pandemic debacle, the cost of living crisis, people without homes and unable to afford the food for their families, the whole freaking shebang - well someone else will have to pick up the pieces, and good luck to them! It'll be like inheriting a derelict house that's had a down-and-out drinking school living in it for ten years, and being provided with a toothbrush and a pair of nail clippers with which to carry out the renovation. Only a fucking idiot would take up the job, which is why, I suppose, the Tories are content to run for the hills and Sir Kier Stamer is so ideally suited to be their fall-guy - the sap they will blame it on - in the next parliament.

[peter]

Well it was always going to be bad, but the report by the privileges committee on their conclusions as to whether Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament, stunned even the MPs most convinced of the former PM's guilt in the severity of its conclusions.

Five times, it said, Johnson deliberately lied to the House, and to compound his crimes, he led a campaign of abuse and intimidation against the members who were selected to investigate the matter. Had he not resigned, the committee said, it would have recommended his suspension from the House for 90 days - unprecedented in the modern history of the Commons - and now, subsequent to his resignation, recommended refusal of his parliamentary pass, effectively banning him from all parliamentary estates.

Strong stuff, but hardly surprising in the case of Johnson who was always going to go out with a bang, either in glory or disgrace (the odds being highly in favour of the latter).

Johnson has reacted furiously at the publication of the report, claiming it to be a spiteful piece of political assassination, and calling the privileges committee a "kangaroo court". Some of his supporters have repeated the charge and even those not considered to be fans of the former PM are somewhat taken aback by the harshness of its verdict. The anti Johnson elements of the media are predictably delighted at the confirmation of what they have been saying since the start, that Johnson is a serial liar who's lips never move but that falsehoods come out of his mouth.

The reaction of the Commons is interesting. There is to be a vote on Monday as to whether the House will endorse the Committee's findings and approve the parliamentary ban, and Johnson's friends have warned that MPs who vote in favour of the motion might well find themselves falling foul of their constituency offices, in which support for Johnson as 'the man who got brexit done' still runs high. Some, they warn, could even find themselves being deselected. Such is the recognition of the danger of the situation that it is predicted that many Conservative MPs will simply abstain or not attend on Monday (the one line whip nature of the vote allows for this) and effectively refuse to nail their colours to the mast. The motion will therefore carry on the Labour votes alone, and Johnson would seemingly be political history. Even Sunak himself is staying remarkably quiet on the issue. He was, of course, fined himself for Covid rule breaking, but that is not the problem. He knows that his party is on the verge of fracturing over the Johnson punishment and effective running out of parliament (justified or otherwise) and he's frankly too afraid to come out and state his position. He's (conveniently) going to be too busy on Monday to vote himself and so will dodge that particular bullet of criticism and anger that could have come his way. By saying nothing he's hoping that the motion will pass, there will be a flurry of anger, and then the whole thing (including Johnson he hopes) will go away. (I'd add that for all its uncomfortableness, it's actually been a damn useful dead cat, drawing attention away from the mortgage cost crisis and the collapse of the economy.... but don't worry Rishi, that will all come back in due course. It isn't going away any time soon.)

The privileges committee has reacted with petulance to any criticism of its conclusions and activities, threatening retribution against any MP who reiterates the Johnson claims of its being biased against him from the word go. The Commons seems divided on this, half supporting Johnson's contention that the conclusions are excessively vindictive and the other side saying it has done its work diligently and in fair manner.

So what next for Johnson?

It doesn't look like there is much of a future for him within the Tory Party - he's used up all of his legendary store of brownie points on this score and appears, finally, to have run out of rope. It's not impossible for him to return, but one would have to say that the odds are against him. And once having conceded this, one has to consider what his options are. He could join up with Reform UK. I know I said above that for him it would be the Tories or nothing, but since then his fall has been so catastrophic (in that how damning the conclusions of the committee have turned out to be) that that option really does look to be a chicken that won't fight. So in these circumstances perhaps the Reform UK option might look more inviting. He's going to be a huge figure in UK politics, even at the head of a pimple of a party, and with Farage alongside him (not an easy combination I'll grant, but needs must and all that)....well given the friable state of UK politics who can say where it could lead.

Another alternative could be to go down the 'elder statesman' route. He has causes to support - levelling up, his brexit agenda etc - and he could stay on the sidelines making interventions on these issues much as say Tony Blair or John Major do on theirs. But would this satisfy him. He's a man that thrives on the spotlight. He needs to be at the front, in the headlines, and I can't see him settling for a backstage role this early in his political career. He's a man who feels he was cheated of his position. He it was, who led us to greatness outside the EU! He won the Tories their majority! And now they do this to him. The desire to exact revenge will be great and if Reform UK offers the path to this, no matter how token it be, then maybe its worth considering.

Johnson is a free agent now, and like any free radical, he could fizzle away to nothing, or he could attach himself some place where he can do real damage to the Tories that have so wronged him.

Or being a right lazy ***t, he might just sit on his arse raking in the mullah and shagging anything that happens to come his way as he does so. Could be worse I suppose.

[peter]

If you haven't realised it yet, despite what Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are saying about their 'priorities', inflation is now hardwired into our economy in a way that nothing they can do will ever bring it back to the low levels we have been used to for many a year. In other words it's here to stay. Get used to it.

Which means that if our lives are to remain anything like that which we have become accustomed to, either you have to have consistently inflation meeting wage increases or regular wins on the lottery. And the one is frankly about as likely as the other.

Because it is the policy of our government (and probably that of the one on the other side of the Atlantic as well for all I know) for your wages not to keep pace with inflation. We, the heaving masses have (in their opinion) been living way above the level that we should have been for donkeys years and it is now well time for a downwards adjustment. They look at the populations of other countries lower down the international pecking orders of financial wealth and income of the lower parts of the pyramid and think, "Hang on - this lot get away with holding on to a far greater proportion of the generated wealth of their countries, while the people grub around doing the work to give rise to it: why can't we be like that too?"

For these people, the idea of the mass population driving around in cars (as opposed to begin crammed into stinking buses, the fares from which flow upwards into their bank accounts) and stuffing the already overcrowded airports going away for foreign holidays, is anathema. This behaviour, these luxuries, should be the preserve of a smaller proportion of the population - those higher up the earnings pyramid - and not readily available to the common man excepting in rare circumstances and on limited occasions.

And if you don't believe me, if this doesn't seem likely or reasonable to you, then look about you. Tell me why it is happening?

We've been growing our economies at a pretty regular pace for the past forty years (give or take a few hiccups here and there), but are you better off? Because those higher up the scale are. Lots.

And things are only going to get worse. The Resolution Foundation think tank has yesterday released its estimate that the average household having to remortgage between now and the next election are going to be paying 2,900 pounds a year more than they are now. That's hundreds of thousands of people, and all that money is going somewhere. And the 'i' newspaper tells us that it ain't coming back to the people in the form of increased interest rates on savings, because oddly enough, even giving the increased returns banks are getting on their loans, the rates payed on deposited cash remain laughably small.

And while all that money is definitely going somewhere, unfortunately the people paying it are not. Not on holiday. Not out for meals or into the gym. But they might be going somewhere however. Out onto the street. Estimated tens of thousands will simply not be able to meet the increased payment demands and will have to sell up. Lib-Dem leader Ed Davy's suggestion that a 3 billion pound relief fund should be set up to help those at risk of loosing their homes has met with rebuttal. Too inflationary we are told by Sunak and Hunt. Not going to happen. Besides which they, Hunt and Sunak, probably secretly belong to the gang who think that home ownership should, like foreign holidays and car ownership, be a thing much less liberally dispensed than it currently is. If it wasn't for that pesky greengrocer woman Thatcher putting the idea of home ownership into the heads of the hoi-poloi as a good vote winner all those years ago, it probably would be as well. Only problem is that, now hundreds of thousands of people are home owners who should rightly be renters, they expect to stay that way - and if they can't they are going to be pissed, and take it out on the Tories at the polls.

And the rental sector is a mess as well. Buy to let property investors are also feeling the pinch as suddenly they cannot meet the costs of their purchases (plus the costs of maintenance) from the rents they can take from them. Squeeze those tenants as they will, chuck them out on short notice and try to re-rent at higher and higher figures, they still can't make it pay. So it's sell up time. Houses flood the market. Prices fall faster and faster and suddenly, boom, you have a property crash on your hands.

I suppose ultimately that pushes up sales again so it self-corrects, but in the meantime myriads of people loose their homes, move back home to mum and dad's place, rent rooms in bedsits and the like, and generally everything gets more difficult.

And there it settles. Suddenly, before you know it, we're back in the nineteen thirties. Oh things look glossier for sure, and you have all that glittery tech - but try and find an NHS dentist, try and get a doctors appointment. Try and find a house that hasn't got ten people living in it meeting the cost of buying it, three generations of individuals packed into two generations worth of rooms. And a holiday abroad - maybe just not this year (again), a meal out - best not this week...things a bit tight, night's telly again I suppose - yeah, East Ender's is on.

But don't fret, because Richie Sunak has his hand on the tiller and he's still alright (because six hundred million seems to suddenly become seven, then eight, and it's all as if by magic because hell, I'm not doing anything to make it happen!)

I'd love to be able to say that there's a way out, a way back to where we were, but if there is I'm afraid I don't see it. We're stuffed - some of it our own doing, some not. But money's like food or air really. Above a certain amount (the amounts that Richie and his ilk commandeer) it's just numbers - and below a certain level (the amount that I and increasingly millions like me have at our disposal) its absence makes life, as our governments have built it, difficult. The trick is like Diogenes to be stoic - but always being minded that while you are some greedy **** will be buying up the barrel business.

[peter]

If I have it right around one hundred and eighty thousand homeowners will see rises of around three thousand pounds a year in the costs of their mortgages within the coming months and of these around thirty percent - sixty thousand - are in danger of defaulting.

Just saying, but this isn't really what I want to focus on this morning, although it will no doubt find its way in somewhere.

I want to start with the question that doesn't seem to be being adressed in any of the copious media coverage on the parliamentary privileges committee report, that if we accept the damning findings and criticisms of the former PM contained therein - and the bulk of the legacy media seems minded to do so - to what extent can our current PM be distanced from the findings such that at least some of the blowback from them does not contaminte him? After all, he and Boris Johnson were joined at the hip during the whole time during which the offences (and subsequent lying about them to the House) was occurring, yet he supported him in every utterance he made on the subject, never once displaying the same honesty that Johnson is today being pilloried for not having. Can it really be feasible that Sunak, living as he was right next door to all of the shenanigans - the puking up walls, parties in the gardens, kids swings being smashed up, wine fridges and suitcases full of said bottles being lugged in through the doors - knew nothing of the same? Surely as the second most political figure in the land, we could have expected him to call this out, or at least have had some kind of restraining influence on his neighbour?

Can there really be no kind of guilt by association here - once we accept the findings of the report? No wonder Sunak is keeping schtum about the it, claiming to not even having read it, and will not 'be available' to vote on it in the House tomorrow (having suddenly found that he has "a foreign leader" to meet that will prevent his being there for the debate).

Make no mistake, I believe that the conclusions of this report are important- very important. I said at the time that lying to parliament was a very serious offence, no matter how seemingly trivial the subject being adressed to which the equivocation pertains. The reason for this is because this is the House in which the laws of the land are drawn up. Being in the chamber of the House has certain privileges attached to it. You cannot for example be charged with slander, so can effectively say whatever you choose, make any accusation you are minded to, about any individual you want to, and use their name in the process. It doesn't require you to be Einstein to recognise that with this kind of licence comes a great deal of responsibility, and thus it is and must be an absolute requirement - absolute and inviolable - that whatever is said in it is guaranteed to be genuinely believed to be the truth when it is said. If a falsehood is spoken inadvertently, it must be corrected by statement within the House as soon as it is known that the mistake has been made. This is critical in the place where our laws are drawn up, such that the information upon which they are based is to the absolute best understanding, correct at the time od their drawing. There can be no flexibility on any subject in this.

So what then, about the case when a minister knows that what another colleague is saying is false, but does nothing to correct the record? Is that minister not also guilty of lying - by omission if not by commission? This seems an obvious extrapolation to me and if the thesis is accepted but regarded as being beyond that which could be expected of an individual (ie to come forth and expose the lie), then I would reply that these are not regular individuals to whom normal standards can be applied. These are individuals invested with the power and responsibility of leading the nation; their behaviour must be exemplary and beyond reproach at all times.

But I don't even believe that this was the worst of Johnson's (and Sunak's) crimes.

By far - by far - the worse crime was the absolute and crippling consequences they heaped upon the country by their convincing of the people of the veracity of the pack of lies that was the Leave campaign. This makes, in my mind, the partygate scandal shrivel away to nothing in comparison.

For the first time - well - ever really, ex Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney came out in yesterday's Telegraph and told it bluntly and as it is. The current economic straits of this country were in large degree due to Brexit. Everything that he in particular, and the remain campaign in general, had warned about, everything that Sunak and Johnson had labelled "project fear", has come to pass with devastating consequences. It would be decades, generations he said, before the country would recover (I would add what he couldn't say - if it ever does!). In this at least, Sunak's guilt by association is beyond question. I'd personally also add his guilt in supporting the devastating lockdown policy that is now universally recognised as having been a mistake of epic proportions (using the word epic as a deliberate understatement), and of having indulged in a borrowing and money printing splurge the effects of which we are only now beginning to experience - and note, I say beginning. (And I haven't forgotten beginning pilloried in these pages for forecasting all of this at the time either!)

So yes, in my opinion Boris Johnson is guilty as fuck - but so is Sunak, and the sooner our so called media get around to noticing this undeniable extrapolation of the privileges committee report the better.

[peter]

The video of those idiots dancing the night away at Conservative Central Party Headquarters at the height of the lockdown restrictions when we were all supposed to be observing social distancing, mask wearing and no social mixing tells it all.

They knew that what was beyond doubt a nasty virus was for the huge bulk of people entirely survivable, and certainly not an anvil upon which our country needed to be damaged economically and socially for decades to come.

There is absolutely no chance, despite the figures now being clearly and indisputably in, of our states and administrations admitting to what they have done, and because of this refusal to admit to what one leading American epidemiologist has described as the "greatest public health mistake ever made", the charade of displays like the Baroness Hallet Covid inquiry will keep occurring.

Or not.

The Hallet led inquiry is already, and without the PM's Downing Street office's delaying tactics making things worse, scheduled to take years - some have speculated as many as ten - by which time there will be a myriad of other pressing concerns for people to worry about, and upon release of its findings there will be a press furore for a week or two and then nothing. Other countries have already got their inquiry reports done and dusted, but for some reason ours has to take a decade.

And not one day of that time will have been spent on consideration of the questions that actually matter - whether lockdown should have been done at all, whether our government has destroyed our country's future and inflicted catastrophic economic and social damage upon it to no purpose. Rather it, the inquiry, will serve as a smokescreen against these real questions being adressed by deflecting attention towards those of how we could have handled the policies we did follow better. There will be no consideration as to whether those latter should have been followed at all. No cost-gain analysis done (because we all of us to a man know what it would show), and most significantly, no apportioning of blame for what has been done.

Well sorry - that's not good enough for me. These people, these so called guardians of our best interest, are in the positions they occupy to ensure that just the kind of mistakes that have been inflicted on us do not occur. And front and center of those to blame are the Johnson Cabinet of the day (in which our current PM Sunak was balls deep), the staggeringly hubristic Professor Neil Fergusson and his Imperial College epidemiological unit whose modelling would get them an F at GCSE maths level (and only then because no lower grade could be found), and turtle necked Chief Scientific Officer Chris Whittey and his Sage mates, all of whom led the shower of idiots and incompetents who were masquerading as our government, down a rabbit hole so deep that when they bent over they could see what they'd eaten for breakfast.

And the stupid, stupid people of this country are too blind to even see the trick that is being pulled on them. The legerdermaine of keeping us occupied with the Johnson debacle, the partygate scandal and its aftermath, the Hutton inquiry, all serving no purpose other than to distract them from the facts that they are loosing their houses and struggling to meet their bills, that their children have no futures and that their country is in ruins around them - and it's all the fault of those who still lead us, who still sit at the top table and ride it out - hell, even benefit from it - while the rest of us bear the cost.

I mean seriously folks, if we let them get away with this without even calling it out then frankly we deserve all that we get. I for one will never stop reminding them that I know what they have done, what they continue to do to hide it, for as long as I live. And I know - I absolutely know, that one day it will all come out. That at some future point the historians will come clean (if no-one else before then) and the story will be told, like some fucking nursery tale of the future, of the time when the government screwed up so badly, so fucked it up, that it was generations before the people, the country, was able to right itself, to begin to look to a future again, with any kind of hope.

[peter]

Fair to say that following the overwhelming support for acceptance of the findings of the parliamentary privileges committee report in the House vote last night, Boris Johnson is a busted flush in the Tory Party.

This is not the first time that the parliamentary party has been at odds with the wider party however, and while support for Johnson out in the constituency parties is difficult to judge, it nevertheless remains true that Johnson retains popular with the right voting public at large, most of whom it is fair to say do not understand either the nuances of the vote (ie that it was not about whether there was or was not parties in Downing St, or whether Johnson lied to parliament, but whether he knowingly did so) nor the importance of the principle that parliament must always be told the truth.

But it would seeat the moment that far as the Conservative Party goes, Johnson is a busted flush.

With his usual customary ability for judging the political headwind, Johnson had of course jumped ship long before the punishment could be administered, and knowing his support within the parliamentary party was weak to put it mildly, had attempted to cover this by issuing a flanking move of instructing his ''supporters' not to oppose the motion that the report be accepted.....which of course they wouldn't have been able to do anyway to any effect, because they didn't exist in anything other than the most minimal numbers.

Even those who did speak against acceptance of the report did so not in support of the ex PM, but on the grounds that the privileges committee was inherently biased against Johnson before it even began. True enough I think, because everybody and his mother knew he was lying and you'd have had to go to Papua New Guinea or somewhere to find anybody that didn't already share that opinion.

Sunak took the clever course (for which today he is being roundly called a coward by Labour and Liberal Democrats) of 'lying low and saying nuffin' (like Brer Fox in the bushes was it?). Certainly not very palatable to his opposition because it gave them nothing to hang any criticism of him on (one way or the other), but politically expedient because the less attention he draws to himself in terms of the reflected criticism of report re his own knowledge about what was going on, the better. It would be but a short step to having the media start saying, "Hang on - what did Sunak have to do with all of this? Wasn't he right in the thick of it as it was going?" So far he has avoided this awkward line of questioning and from his point of view, the least said now, the better.

Johnson won't like how it has ended, but to quote he himself, them's the breaks. And being Johnson, it won't be long before he finds away to draw the attention back to himself. Being the dignified elder statesman speaking from the distance won't I'm thinking, be much to his liking. A case of watch this space.

But as an addendum, and in response to the many claims by speakers in the debate that the motion needed to be carried in order to "begin the process of restoring public faith in parliamentary democracy", I'd say "you're 'aving a larf ain't ya?" Public faith (such that it exists) in parliamentary democracy is way beyond the point where anything like this could restore it. We've seen through the thin veil of our democracy in recent years in numerous instances and let me tell you, if it were toilet paper we wouldn't buy it!

------0---------

Amused to read that children are acting in the spirit of the endeavour to allow us all to be what we choose to be, by self-identifying as all kinds of things in the classroom, ranging from a variety of animals and objects, horses and dinosaurs being popular, to in one case the moon.

One teacher, it is reported in today's Telegraph, had to reprimand her pupils for not taking seriously one of their classmate's who identified as a cat. The child would only communicate in meows apparently, which they were finding difficult.

I don't know, but I find this story somehow gratifying. It's like at least the children seem to recognise just how silly the situation has become and are responding in the only way they know how - by being children.

Such is the wisdom of children when their adult counterparts seem to have briefly allowed their own to have gone on vacation.

-------0--------

Hope has to be fading for these five people who are missing in the submersible somewhere down near the Titanic.

When I first heard the story I wondered what the hell people were doing - essentially tourists - down at such dangerous depths, but then I remembered that I also had taken risks in search of thrills in my life and realised that this was no more or less, just being carried out at an immensely more costly level (around a quarter of a million dollars a pop).

It's a long shot that they can be found and saved. I'd hope that if something went wrong then their end was swift and painless. But against even this pessimistic outlook let's remember that miracles have happened before when it comes to survival against the odds. Let's each pray to our own God, or just to blind fate if you haven't one, that this can be one of those cases.

[peter]

What I don't get about this Titanic sub business is the seeming lack of preparedness by the operators for circumstances in which something goes wrong.

It seems to be a given to me that the first worry that would occur to anyone even remotely gaming such a scenario would be the possibility of the vessel becoming grounded on the sea floor.

I mean surely the first thing that you would ask, were you considering such a trip (and I mean as a fee paying customer) would be, "How will you get us back up if we get stuck down there?" If all I received was a blank expression in response it'd be a case of, "Ta - but no ta very much," and exit stage left!

I mean surely the operators must have had a backup plan for such a contingency?

Or is/was it a case of total acceptance that at that depth, if anything like that occurred then it was curtains down, game over? Again I'd be leaving the office and searching for a less risky venture.

Another thing I'm not getting is how there could be a loss of contact so quickly and completely in this day and age? How does that work? I mean, we have tech to speak to people on the far side of the moon, every damn life-jacket on every plane is fitted with a radio transmitter that kicks in the moment the jacket gets wet, making it possible to locate the individual in the sea, and yet this submarine thing can disappear like it never existed in an instant? I mean, given what they were doing, did not the operators consider maybe having a backup communication system - even just an emergency beacon transmitter for just such a circumstance? Again, these were things I'd have been checking even before I got out my credit card.

So maybe this absence of communication is more sinister than we are being told: perhaps the company know that the only circumstances that no such signal would be transmitted would be an event so terminal that virtually nothing would be left of the submersible or its occupants whatsoever. But still - no radio beacon? Could no beacon be designed that would withstand such pressures - I don't believe it. And if there is such a transmitter why is it not transmitting? Or was the vessel not fitted with it, and if not, why not?

Either this is a pretty Mickey Mouse operation or corners have been cut that never should have been. A British naval captain talking on Sky News was referring to a picture of the submersible saying how basic it was. There were no external arms that could be used to free the vessel in case it became entrapped or hitched up in any way. The vessel was tested to only 200 meters more than the depth it was traveling to - a pretty thin margin for error at best. Another thing was that the teams involved in the search were, from what they were saying, just that. Search. They seemed at pains to point out that they were concentrating on the search. Rescue plans would be considered once the vessel had been found. The implication was, said the naval man, that they had pretty much written off any kind of rescue, even if the difficult task of locating it was achieved.

So yes. Irrespective of the outcome here, there are going to be some very difficult conversations to be had in the very near future.

[peter]

Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer prior to Chris Whittey has told the inquiry that lockdown has damaged a generation of children as they struggle with the eating disorders and anxiety neurosis, figures for which have doubled since the pandemic.

In a day in which it was generally acknowledged that lockdown was not a policy that had ever been considered prior to the emergence of the Covid virus, George Osborne said that it was only following use of the policy in China and the overwhelming of the Italian hospital system that we decided to consider the policy. This all serves to lend weight to the Professor Ferguson account that it was only after seeing the same policy introduced in China and Italy that we thought, "Goodness - we can get away with this!"

I don't know if the stats still hold true, but it used to be quoted that five percent of anorexia sufferers will die as a result of the condition, rising to twenty percent in the untreated cases.

And at last it seems that it is beginning to be understood that the remit of the inquiry is perhaps deliberately narrow. The following quote is from this morning's Telegraph

Dame Sally is one of the former government officials who have criticized lockdown amid allegations that the long awaited inquiry was "limiting outside voices" on the policy's negative effects/quote]

[peter]

Kleptocracy: defn. A government whose corrupt leaders use their political power and position to expropriate the wealth of the people they govern, typically by embezzling or misappropriating government funds at the expense of the population.

Thankfully we have nothing of this kind going on here. Michelle Moyne, Robert Jennrick, Matt Hancock, Priti Patel, Nadim Zahawi, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Owen Patterson, Rishi Sunak......

The list of people absolutely not involved in anything like this, anything sketchy or that doesn't pass the sniff test, goes on and on.

(Pssst...... Wanna buy a cheap PPE contract, scratch a few millions from your tax obligations, wallpaper a few rooms at eight grand a rolll? Over here son - jobs as good as done!)

[peter]

Senior Tories, we are you'd today, turn on the Bank of England blaming them for underestimating the threat from inflation and doing too little too late to stop it.

The Bank, for its part, will today announce its thirteenth interest rise on the trot, likely to be a whopping 0.5 percent increase, bringing the base rate to five percent.

The furore in the media and in the political class has been brought about by the release a couple of days ago, of the inflation figures for May, which were expected to fall from 8.7 to 8.4 percent, but instead remained stubbornly stuck at the April level of the former. This is really worrying because the Bank has no other tool for dealing with inflation than hiking interest rates, and it is almost taken as religious dogma that doing so will see it (inflation) fall. Why then, the bods in the BofE must be asking themselves, is it not working for us?

It's an especial problem for Sunak since halving inflation was one of his five key pledges, and the one that he considered a free one since in every predicted scenario it would fall even if he did nothing, by virtue of a stabilisation of energy prices on the international markets. This has indeed happened for every other country in the G7, but not the UK.

And why not? What is different about our economy that it bucks the received wisdom that increasing interest rates will reduce inflation?

Well James O'brien posited one idea yesterday that no-one else to date has had the temerity to suggest. Could it be that being the first and only country in the world ever to impose sanctions on itself (via Brexit) that is making the difference? He made the observation that if you act to make the supply of goods more difficult, limit your choices for meeting demand, your capacity to produce by deliberately damaging your labour pool, then wouldn't it stand to reason that this would have an effect upon prices? It might not be the whole story but it'd damn well be a solid part of it - and it does remain the fundamental difference between our and the other comparable economies who are not experiencing this locked in inflation.

Which is a damn problem for the PM, standing right in the middle as he did, of the decision to leave the EU. And so the Bank must be blamed. And Putin. And Covid. Anything but the Brexit that he stood hand and shoulder behind. So today, you hear that his top ministers are angry with the Bank of England for getting it all so wrong. Methinks they do protest too loudly!

And the mortgage crisis?

It's taken months for idiot Stamer to bring up the possibility that perhaps, just perhaps, that mini-budget of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng might have started a process of destabilisation of the gilts markets that remains to this day. That the Truss debacle might not be the only thing rocking the housing market to its knees, but it's damn well in there. At last yesterday he made the connection in the House, not that it will ever find oxygen in the media. They are absolutely too behind the Tories (even if prepared to hold their noses in the fact that it is Sunak leading them) to ever make such an obviously damaging connection overt.

And meanwhile said crisis builds and builds. People in their millions prepare to shoulder costs that nothing in their worst nightmares can have prepared them for, and anger builds. Where and when it will break out is anybody's guess - in the ballot box or on the streets? Who knows, but when it does come, when the Tories eventually have to face the wrath of the country for what they in their stewardship have done, the carnage they have wrought, the result will not be pretty. I'll tell you that for nothing.

[peter]

Just to remind you (in case you have forgotten) PM Sunak has hung his political credibility upon five pledges, which ge insists we should use to judge his premiership on. Usefully for himself, he says he needs, "six months, a year, a year and a half," (pretty vague sort of timing threshold there Richie) before such judgement can be made - additionally convenient in that by this point we are likely to be at or beyond an election and very likely to be looking at a new (and equally useless) PM in any case.

The five pledges are 1) to halve inflation, 2) to increase growth, 3) to reduce borrowing, 4) to bring down hospital waiting lists and 5) to stop the small boats.

Asking for our patience before rushing to judgement is all well and good of course, but as a direct result of the policies that Sunak and Chancellor Hunt are following, potentially hundreds of thousands could loose their homes. It is estimated that around 1.4 million homes in this country are facing huge mortgage cost increases, the average figure of which rises by the day with every rise in interest rates, the only immediate tool that the Bank of England has to address the first of Sunak's pledges, and now stands at a staggering 6,300 pounds per year (based upon the average tracker and variable rate mortgage payments of two years ago).

But Sunak's demand for time notwithstanding, given the dire consequences of the policy he is following, it is entirely fair to look for indicators as to whether the policy is working, and also to consider the possibility that the medicine might be more harmful than the disease.

On the first, the indicators are that the UK economy is in some way not following the same path as all of the other G7 economies, none of which remains with high inflation. The problem is clearly one of supply side issues - supply shocks caused by Brexit, supply shocks caused by the pandemic, supply shocks caused by the war in Ukraine - pushing up costs, yet the Sunak government fails to even acknowledge that Brexit is having an input here. The question must therefore be asked, if we have a government who will not even admit to one of the principle causes of our problems, let alone consider possible solutions to that particular problem, then how can we hope that they can begin to fix the issues which afflict us? If they insist on denying reality and going further and further down the rabbit-hole of Brexit being nothing to do with it, then what hope have we?

On the question of whether the medicine is more damaging than the disease, well ask the families put out of their homes in the coming months the answer to that one.

But getting back to Sunak's pledges, there is to date no indication whatsoever that inflation is even coming down, let alone halving as the PM promised. In fact the suggestion is now being mooted - and seriously considered - that the economy should be deliberately pushed into recession in order to put downward pressure on inflation. If the economy shrinks because people have less money to spend and thus demand falls, then prices fall in line with this and inflation slows. This is the logic behind this, but okay, what then of pledge number two? Obviously if you deliberately bring about recession (and pushing interest rates ever higher will do this) clearly you do it by sacrificing growth as a consequence. You cannot have a recession and be growing simultaneously - the former is defined purely on the basis of the absence of the latter, the economy shrinking. So oop's - there goes pledge number two. And with the fall in confidence of the markets as a result of the economy being in recession (together with all the other reasons why the markets might be having whisperings of doubt about the economic competence of our government) the return on gilts goes higher and yet ever higher, and the cost of borrowing gets higher and higher and yes! You get it! Out of the window goes pledge number 3!

So it would be a fair assumption that, given the indicators we have to go on at present, things are not looking hopeful in respect of the first three of the Sunak pledges. But he assures us, "It's going to be OK. We are going to get through this." But let's be honest. There is no "we" in this. And thousands upon thousands of us aren't going to be OK. You are going to be OK Mr Sunak, not least because you have hundreds of millions of pounds in banks all around the world to make sure you are. And let's face it. The moment you loose the election you, like Boris Johnson before you, are going to get the fuck out of Dodge faster than greased shit off a shovel. No returning to the back benches to work your time out as an elder statesman for you. No, in your case it will be time to dust down that green card you kept tucked away in your back drawer and off sticks to America where your heart truly lies.

You and your lot have in fourteen years reduced this country to ashes. You will leave it a heap of smoking ruins and will give it no more thought. But behind you will be the people who you have deserted. Lives ruined, livelihoods broken, families and friends split asunder on the back of your Brexit lies and your pandemic misjudgement, and latterly on your refusal acknowledge the truth. You were given a charge on the day you were elected to parliament, a charge to represent the interests of the people who had elected you, to govern in their best interest upon a bedrock of honesty and integrity.

You have failed in your charge, egregiously and without shame. Be off with you. America's loss in having you on its shores is our gain.

[peter]

I suffer with mild OCD. Not the debilitating kind that has me measuring the fold size of my bath-towels or taking three steps forward and one back, but a milder form where I obsessively check doors are locked and cigarettes are out and the like.

My car is a favourite one. Have I turned the engine off, locked it, etc.

I used to believe it was because I was loosing faith in my aging brain to remember clearly, and in fairness there is probably some of that in it - on one occasion for example I actually did walk away from my car with the engine still running, so there is some basis for my needing to check it. But twice? Three times?

Taps are another one. I'll be just turning over to go to get comfortable for the night and I'll think, "Have I turned off the bathroom taps?" Then up I get, just to make sure. So to avoid this happening (because it's irritating) I'll check that they're off just before I get into bed. Twice. I'll walk away and then turn back and check them again.

Now the point is I know (at this point, after the first check) that they are off, but I still go and do it again. And I've only recently come to an understanding of why. It has nothing to do with making sure that the tap is really off - I already know it is. What I am doing is feeding off the little serotonin hit of security, the same as the small addiction people develop to receiving likes on Twitter posts etc.

I'll also undergo rituals at bedtime, such as always turning the lights off in the same order and following an exact pattern of small activities (placing my book, glasses and clock etc in exactly the correct positions, following the same procedure for lying down and arranging my body, pillows etc. Checking there is a handkerchief within reach. And it's the same thing again. The ritual gives me a sense of security which in turn provides a tiny hit (if you like). That relaxation aids me to settle down into sleep that little bit better.

In fact nearly all my OCD is nighttime related. During the day, with the exception of my car, I barely have any thoughts on it. Actually, not quite true - at work I'm always a bit on edge if I'm not following a routine of doing things at the proper time: it throws me and makes it difficult for me to judge what must be done in order to get back on schedule.

Anyway. A small insight into my odd world for you. Just because I can't find anything to post about in the papers really.

-------0-------


I was sad to see the aunt of Suleman Dawood, 19 year old victim of the recent Titan tragedy at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, saying on television that he had been frightened about going on the voyage, feeling that, "something was not right."

Despite this disquiet he had wanted to go because it was a bonding exercise of sorts with his father, and a father's day trip in which he wanted to take part.

This is so sad a story and my heart goes out to his family who must be suffering terrible grief at their double loss, but particularly in the light of this tale, and the loss of one so young.

It is a blessing of no small order that it appears that when the end came, it was not that horrific situation we were all thinking of as the search proceeded, but was rather instantaneous and right at the beginning of the unfolding events. The coastguard it appears, had been briefed on the possibility of the implosion of the vessel by the naval vessel that picked up the echo, so were probably aware that there could be no happy ending to the search. A clue that this was the case was given in the first briefing they gave, when no mention of a rescue mission was given and the spokesman said all efforts were being concentrated on finding the submersible.

All in all a tragic but in some ways compassionate end to the first part of the affair. Now alas will come the recriminations, which have started already. It's right and proper that consideration to the affair be given, but it perhaps won't help the grieving families if they learn that the losses they have suffered would have been avoidable with just a bit more caution on the part of the organisers.

It is what it is.

--------0---------

I for one will be booking a ring-side seat for the cage-fight between Tesla and Twitter boss Elon Musk and his ach rival, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

I don't suppose that there'd be any chance of a warm up bout - say a mud wrestling match between the Princesses Katherine and Meghan - just to set up the mood if you get me?

I'm all in favour of this kind of high end cultural event and can only think that our brainy tech boffins (not to mention multibillionaires (my predictive text could manage multimillionaires, but could not conceive of the former - something worth thinking on in that) are on to something.

[peter]

Phew!

I'm thinking that a lot of people - and not just inside Russia - will be breathing a sigh of relief that the 24 hours of insurrection by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group mercenaries have ended in a brokered settlement, the terms of which are not yet clear but which could involve the removal of defense minister Sergei Shoigu. Being Russia, there has also been a suggestion that the increasingly deranged (if video footage is anything to go by) oligarch warlord has been paid off with a multi billion pound bribe, a billet in Belarus and a guarantee of amnesty for himself and his recalcitrant troops.

Having got within a stones throw of Moscow before deciding that a head on confrontation with the Russian army proper - one involving bullets and tanks in the capital city itself - probably wasn't a good idea, Prigozhin decided that his point had been made (that his troops were being used as cannon fodder in the battles in Ukraine with neither the ammunition nor equipment to do the job that they were being ordered to do) and called his dogs back to their kennels.

It is unclear how much popular support Prigozhin enjoys within the population as a whole, but he is certainly a monster of the the Russian President's own making. Showing an unusual level of tolerance for the mercenary leaders increasingly belligerent outbursts over the recent months, Putin has allowed him a degree of freedom almost unequalled, certainly in Russia and pretty much anywhere else for that matter (a degree of freedom that in Russia could be interpreted as weakness and reacted to with lethal results). There is a speculation that as much as half of the Russian army could have switched sides to join up with the Wagner troops, but they real figures on this score are just that, speculation, and no clear picture can really be formed. Certainly for the moment at least, the heat has been drawn out of the confrontation and so we will probably never know for certain the degree of insurgency that would have occurred had push come to shove. Had the group continued on its march to the capital, there is no telling where the situation could have ended; anything from a peaceful protest in front of the Kremlin to a full scale civil war. Rumours are that defensive positions had been rapidly thrown up on the borders of Moscow, so had the group attempted to pass these, in every liklihood there would have been bloodshed. It seems however that as part of the deal, certain of the Wagner formations will pass across into the Russian army proper.

But while it was no doubt gratifying to see the Russians turning on each other in this manner for the Ukrainian leadership (not to mention in administrations across the western world), there will have also been a deep sense of foreboding as well. Prigozhin and his Wagner group are no friends to the Ukrainians, and there is every possibility that the actions of the man will inject a new sense of urgency into getting some serious progress visible to the Russian people, achieved in Putin's 'special operation'. If, as is thought is possible, he had wanted to actually replace defence minister Shoigu, then it is entirely possible that he might have made a better fist of it, to the Ukrainian cost. What is in no doubt is the hatred of the Wagner group for their Ukrainian foes. To see them properly equipped and led efficiently would be to no Ukrainian advantage whatsoever. This internal dispute, while engaging to watch playing out, could have had dire consequences. Putin is a bad lot, but by no means the worst that Ukraine and the West could be facing. There are much more authoritarian figures within the Russian politburo than him, and in his absolutely weakened state following this debacle it can only be a matter of time before one of them makes a move. For a good example of how Russian politics works when it comes to changing leadership watch Armando Iannucci's Death of Stalin - it'll show you how they do it over there.

Besides which, had the shit really hit the fan and Putin truly been at risk of loosing his position, there is no knowing what lengths he would or could have gone to in order to create havoc behind him. He controls a huge nuclear arsenal and with his mining of the huge nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia he wouldn't even have to use it to create absolute devastation to the West. His sanity has been questioned before. There will be no small amount of words being spoken behind closed doors in our corridors of power on this subject as we speak. A Putin in control at the helm is bad enough. A Putin acting in deranged fashion at the point of loosing everything is not to be contemplated. Suddenly a war dragging on for ten years in which only Ukraine gets levelled to the ground, bears the intolerable human cost while Western arms manufacturers laugh all the way to the bank, looks even more appealing to our leaderships. But wars have a nasty habit of doing their own things, going off at tangents which they are not supposed to nor anyone planned for. The last 24 hours was one of those tangents and people on our side will be sweating about it just as much as on the other.

[peter]

I have no doubt that Prince William is well intentioned with his 'Homeward' project which, rather than dealing with homelessness by provision of the short term fix of temporary accommodation, attempts rather to prevent its occurring in the first place.

William is embarking today on a six region tour with the intention of promoting his chosen project, and this morning's press is full of optimistic quotes from the Prince about how he is fortunate in having seen the efforts of local communities and NGO's in tackling this problem, and referring to the visits he and his brother made to homelessness shelters with his mother when they were still children. He wants to prove to the British people that we can have "hope" that this scourge can be prevented altogether, and that homelessness when it does occur, will be temporary, short-lived and unrepeated.

Fine sentiments I'm sure, and it would be cynical to point out that he's choosing a good time to get into the market given the shortly to be occurring mortgage tsunami in which potentially hundreds of thousands of homeowners will loose their homes, but in fairness I'm sure his concern is genuine and desire to help also, so let that rest. But in truth if you consider his words in their actual meaning, they convey a nievity about the causes of homelessness that can only cause to scupper his aims before they even get off the starting blocks. "Prevent homelessness from occurring in the first place." Okay, we'll just stop mental instability, alcoholism and drug-abuse, economic failure at the domestic level, familial breakdown, house building shortfalls.....that should go some way toward fixing the problem. These soundbites might sound good, but they are nieve to the point of being almost insulting in their failure to grasp the multifactorial nature of the causes of homelessness. There are as many reasons for homelessness as there are homeless people, each one of these unfortunate individuals having followed their own particular path into the sump of our not very fair society.

But, but, but.....

There are ways you can put a dint in homelessness; it was done in the period of lockdown when the state specified that you weren't going to get away with not staying inside just because you didn't actually have an inside to stay in, and managed to whip up temporary shelters out of shipping containers and nissen huts, or find accommodation in empty hotels for just about everybody. (Anybody who was simply too recalcitrant or disruptive to stay in such accommodation probably finished up drugged up to the hilt in some secure mental institution and probably remains there to this day for all I know.)

But the point is it was done. Homelessness was prevented. But it could only be achieved by use of a degree of authoritarianism that few of us would be comfortable with.

And then there's the problem of saying what homelessness actually is. If you are sofa-surfing around the houses of your friends, billeting in spare bedrooms of parents or relatives on a temporary basis having fallen out of accommodation of your own, are you homeless? If you are in a shelter ora refuge are you homeless? Technically yes, but you are not visible as such. We tend to think of homelessness as that thing where you are actually on the streets at night, searching for nooks and crannies to take shelter from the elements. 'Underneath the arches' in the true sense of the words. But it is most often in that unseen realm of sofa surfing where the actuality of homelessness starts, and as I say, this is an entry-point of no single doorway. It is a space within an already open space. And for this reason there is no prevention of it that does not involve barbed wire and cattle prods to get people out of it.

So okay William. Ten out of ten for effort. It'll never rival your father's Prince's Trust as a social service, but hey - don't let that stop you. The intention is good even if the concept ill thought out. You cannot prevent homelessness via other than draconian measures but you can certainly deal with it quickly and sensitively when it occurs. You can set up known and understood pathways to rapid and even preemptive help, integrating these services far better into our culture and educating away the social stigma that prevents so many people from being able to escape this terrible trap. So despite all I have said, Go William. Use that optimism, that nievity, to good effect and see what you can do about it. More power to your elbow.

[peter]

Now get this.

I forgot to post it earlier, but a day or two ago, Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer during the covid pandemic and favourite amongst the doom merchants for his grim podium announcements and instructions, gave evidence to the ongoing covid inquiry.

During the course of his testimony he said that it was pretty much inconceivable that scientists would have come up with the idea of lockdown unless it had first been suggested to them by politicians.

Get that!

Here we all were, being told by Boris Johnson and company that "We are absolutely following the science on this,", when in fact, if Whitty is now to be believed, it was not politicians following the science, but absolutely the other way around, science following the politicians!

I mean fuck! What is this? Talk about trying to distance yourself from something you were elbows deep in! Why isn't this on every news channel and media outlet in the country?

Suddenly, like Nazis at the end of the war, you can't find anyone that actually supported lockdowns at all!

I mean, give me strength! Whitty should be in jail alongside professor pantsdown and most of the government, for what they have done to this country, not headed for the House of Lords.

Bastards!

[peter]

Ex Health Secretary Matt Hancock is giving his evidence to the covid inquiry and as is totally predictable, believes that our biggest mistake in dealing with the pandemic was not locking down early enough.

He felt that the entire premise upon which pandemic planning in the UK was centered around was that of dealing with the consequences of one, to detriment of actually trying to prevent ones arrival in the first place.

This was entirely wrong he said. We know that prevention can be achieved and it's simply a matter of having the right measures in place fast enough to achieve this.

Well this may be his opinion but I see little evidence to support it. No policy that we followed early or late, seemed to have any preventative value that I could see: in fact if I recall correctly, the emphasis in those early days was not about prevention rather than slowing down the progress. I remember all that stuff about "flattening the curve" and whatnot, R numbers and the like. It wasn't about prevention it was about stopping the NHS from being overwhelmed - a state of affairs that would not have been a problem had the service been adequately maintained and funded in the first place (and incidentally, was not quantitatively different with covid than it was in any winter flu season it had experienced in the preceeding years).

Hancock was then, and remains, all about prevention at whatever cost. He seems blithely unaware, perhaps deliberately so, that the consequential damage, the collateral costs which we are now experiencing in their ferocity as our shreded economy attempts to function in the face of the rampant inflation caused by the printing of non-existent money, is worse beyond measure than the allowing of this mildly nasty virus to run its course in the normal fashion could ever have been. There will be quality life-hours lost in their millions alone because of this, because of the virtual cessation of normal screening and treatment programs, because of the services that will never be affordable, because of the shrinkage of our health service that will be forced upon us, in consequence of the economic repercussions of halting our economy in its tracks. These losses will make the hours lost to covid seem paltry in comparison.

Of course covid was a nasty virus. If you were elderly or vulnerable it was a significant threat just as any other flu or respiratory virus would be. But it wasn't in the same league as the Spanish flu virus of the early twentieth century of which countless millions died across Europe in result. There was nothing whatsoever about it that could ever have justified the disproportionate knee-jerk response that our government was panicked into. Yesterday I spoke with my wife in almost disbelief at what we had witnessed. People fined for sitting on park benches sharing a coffee. Police pouring blue dye into local beauty spots to make them less attractive. Drones used to spot and apprehend lone runners out on the moors taking exercises. And this is before you get into the really serious stuff! Did we really live through this? What happened here?

Yet Matt Hancock believes we should have done all of this earlier, faster and harder. Is he mad? Or does he recognise that as one of the chief architects of the lockdown policy, he must double down on it or face the risk that the growing anger at what was done will suddenly become the focus, that the emphasis might move from how we could have done what we did better to whether it should have been done at all. This is the absolute key risk for Hancock and all his testimony will be to direct attention away from allowing this shift to occur.

In fact it will be the key concern of most of the witnesses called to the inquiry. The alternative voices, the Professor Carl Hannigan's, the Professor Sinatra Gupta's, the Professor Karol Sicora's - these we will not hear. We will not hear them, just as we heard them not during the bleak times of the pandemic itself. For just as dissent from the received wisdom could not be tolerated then, now that the results are in and we are reaping the bitter fruits of the dark seed we have sown, voices that could quantify and lay bare the cost of what we have done will not be called forward now.

The dog is returning to its vomit. But it is absolutely essential - essential in an existential way for those who perpetrated this madness upon us - that it be presented as edible fare. Those who would make explicit that which must remain unspoken of, will not be allowed within a long mile of the inquiry witness box. See it and know it to be true.

[SoulBiter]

He has not learned a thing, except maybe how to control a population through fear. Your post is spot on as far as I am concerned. We, as a society(s) are dealing with the repercussions even now of locking down our economy and locking down our schools. There will be a lasting impact far beyond the deaths that occurred.