What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Is Donald Trump going to win a second presidency in the next US election - UK journalist cum news pundit Andrew Marr thinks it highly likely.

In a recent YouTube video he said that quite frankly, he didn't see anyone, either republican or democrat, who was stepping up to the plate with anything like a credible shot at preventing this happening.

There were a number of reasons why this should be a cause for concern, both for the American people and for us on the other side of the Atlantic as well.

Firstly, we all know about Trump's divisive nature as a politician and Marr described it as America being "torn in two" by a second Trump presidency. How bad such a tearing in two could become is anyone's guess. Could there be a second civil war? God, let's pray not - not in a country with (what is it?) 300 million guns distributed amongst the population. It would be carnage on an epic scale.

Or perhaps, not as destructive, a continued Union of the North and South would simply be impossible? Perhaps the old lingering divisions of the civil war would again raise to a point where continuing political union became impossible and a negotiated separation would have to be arrived at? Not, perhaps as impossible as many would see it - and once the process had begun I suspect we'd all be suprised at how quickly the seemingly impossible would come about.

Or thirdly, perhaps it'd take the form of just Trump being Trump, and the febrile atmosphere of the States would become even more febrile yet. Already boiling with animosity between the rwo sides of the political debate, the population is seething with barely suppressed hatred for 'the other', whichever side any given individual happens to stand on (look at the degeneration of this site alone to see the pernicious effects of this). Perhaps this'll just get worse and worse as the second Trump presidency wore on?

And that's just on the US side of the Atlantic. What of the wider world.?

Marr observed that in Ukraine they are terrified - terrified - at the prospect of Trump winning. They know that if he does, it's effectively curtains to their efforts to push Russia out of Ukraine. What the Ukrainian people think about this I'm not so sure; reports suggest that while no official figures are being released, Ukrainian losses on the battlefield are horrendous (figures of 400,000 plus have been cited). But it is beyond doubt that the leadership would see a Trump win as a disaster. Trump has made no secret of his desire to see the war ended without delay and any negotiated settlement at this stage would by necessity involve Ukrainian ceding of territory. Such a peace settlement would see a resurgent Putin, both within Russia where his popularity would soar, and in his confidence in his dealings with the West at large. We in Europe have been used to the American bulwark as the final defence (if you like), the ultimate rock upon which European stability can fall back on. Perhaps this will end - and with what ramifications one can only guess. But no question, Europe will need to tighten up its own act in terms of taking responsibility for its own situation and this will involve much tighten collaboration than has hitherto been the case. Our recent departure from the EU cannot but be a hindering factor in such a changed world. Alone and isolated, our vulnerability is plain for all to see, and does the rest of Europe no favours either. An emboldened Putin, riding high at home, with the American threat neutralised, has to be a cause for concern, even for those of us who do not see Russia as any kind of existential threat to the UK or the West more broadly. He has a capacity for mischief that must not be underestimated.

So yes- the movers and shakers of the West have much to consider if Marr's predictions are correct. One Trump presidency was difficult to absorb. A second could see changes that dwarf the first one's, making them as nothing.

(But this is not to say that nothing good could come out of it. Some realpolitik about the changing foci of the world, the new nature of the world economic order, is absolutely necessary and there is no sign of it coming from our current leadership. Trump at least seems to get something of how the world is changing, and more to the point, seems comfortable with it. This could signal a sea-change in East-West relationships (and North-South to boot) and could be the big step forward that the world really needs. A turning away from the past and towards the future. Let's hope for this, even as we see the problems of a second Trump presidency outlined in the way above. )

[peter]

For a few days the UK news agenda was been dominated by two stories, both of which are interesting in their own ways.

We had firstly, the escape from HMP Wandsworth of terror suspect Daniel Abed Khalife, who strapped himself to the underside of a delivery van and absconded for four days before being caught in Northolt West London, some eight miles from the place of his last sighting. Khalife, previously a member of the UK armed forces, is on remand for suspected terrorist related offences which include planting a hoax bomb at his army barracks and possibly being in the employ of a third country (named in the media as Iran) to which he may have passed intelligence.

Then we had the Westminster spy scandal, in which parliamentary aide with contacts to a number of government ministers was arrested back in March, accused of spying for China, but of whom we only learnt about a few days ago coincidentally (or otherwise) just as foreign secretary James Cleverly was headed of to meet his Chinese counterpart in Beijing. His visit, and the spy revelations that appeared in so timely a manner, have caused a rumpus in Westminster, with calls for China to be upgraded to a 'hostile state' in our foreign office rating system and for relations with the country to be scaled back to minimal contact and dialogue between our two nations.

The problem I have with both stories is that I don't believe them. Or at least not in the way that they are being presented.

In both cases the individuals involved are being treated in the media as having been proven guilty, yet neither has been found so in a court of law. In the case of Khalife, he may be all that is claimed, but equally he could just be a lonely and somewhat misguided youngster who built up some imaginary fabrication in his own head, that he could be a 'spy' for the Iranian state. He was reported as being a 'joker' at his military training camp, and his failure to put any distance between himself and his prison escape, let alone try to leave the country, does not speak of an underground network of connections ready to provide him with assistance in fleeing from the country.

Similarly in the case of the putative Chinese spy, he has not been formally charged with any offence and since being named in the media (the instruction that he should not be not withstanding) has issued a statement via his lawyer declaring his complete innocence from the charges which both have, and have not, been made against him. This does not speak of an individual shrouded in guilt, but rather one who is the victim of a calumny of some sort, an accusation made in error due to the misinterpretation of some essential facts, or indeed as a result of a false accusation coming from a third party. The guys background - son of a GP, atendee of an elite private school etc - isn't one you would normally associate with the holding of extreme anti-British sentiments, and the fact that he has not been charged must suggest that there is ongoing investigation or consideration as to whether the accusations are based on solid facts.

As an aside, the knee-jerk response of many on the Tory right (Ian Duncan-Smith being the most vocal) that Westminster and the country more broadly is awash with a network of Chinese espionage agents all of whom should be rooted out and flung from the country...... Well, it's just about what you'd expect really. The anti-Chinese lobby is strong in the Tory Party, not least I suspect because they know that the day of Western hegemony of world affairs is fast approaching its end, and the calls for the redesignation of the Chinese status is of real significance. If the foreign office were to comply with these calls, then every individual with any contact with the Chinese state, or indeed a company that had connections with it, no matter how slight, would have to report to the authorities on a regular basis, giving a full account of their activities and where and what they had been doing. Clearly this not only allows us to protect ourselves from what we would consider to be anti-British activity, but equally gives us the opportunity to probe into and gain insight into Chinese activity, business or commercially sensitive though it might be, with impunity as to how that insight or information is used. My personal feeling is that much of this 'fear of the Chinese' is simple xenophobia together with smoke-and-mirrors distraction stuff. Why would the Chinese be wasting their time with us when they had the much greater 'threat' of American commercial competition (not to mention political and ideological) to consider - to be honest, it just doesn't make any sense to me. When the Chinese spokesperson stood up in Beijing and said that this whole thing was a nonsense and not even worthy of commenting on, frankly, I believe her. That half of the Cabinet clearly does as well (Kemi Badenock and James Cleverly being examples) lends weight to this.

But back to my original point in making this post, what exactly is it all about that our media bandwidth is so taken up with these stories that dominate their attention, but that have such spurious grounds for being anything of real significance (the decrepit state of security and protocols at Wandsworth not withstanding)? Well, I believe I alluded to it above. Smoke and mirrors. This government, the Tories more generally, are so desperate that we the public, do not turn our attention - our real attention, not our ten-minute and then forget all about it attention - to what they have done, to the devastation they have brought down on this country, that they will do anything, anything, to avoid this happening. And so we get this continuous stream of distracting stories - Chinese spys yesterday, Wandsworth prison breaks the day before, raac concrete the day before that - each of which are presented as though they are the end of the world......a veritable skip-load of dead-cat stories dumped on our heads, to keep us looking there, now there, now there.......anywhere but here, where the true scandal lies. In the destroyed hopes and futures of our lives, our children's lives, and their children's lives on into the future.

This is what I believe is going on. I might be wrong - I've been so, many times before. But I might not be. I might not be.

And of course, the underlying real story is there, if we have but eyes to see it. Because both the raac concrete story and the Wandsworth prison debacle (a decline into a state of demoralisation and deteriorating standards reflected no doubt in prisons up and down the country) are both in themselves mirrors of what is going on in the nation. A continuing hollowing out of public services, demands for the maintaining of which are simply unmeetable in the face of our long-term flatlining of growth and productivity, now becoming manifest un highly public breakdowns in the sectors involved. Schools falling down through lack of maintenance: prisons becoming ungovernable because of failings of recruitment and retention of staff. These are the real-time effects of our failure of governance. Of austerity followed by Brexit (which sucked up political attention to the exclusion of all else for three plus years) followed by pandemic followed by warmongering. These stories are what we get and of themselves, tell us all we need to know about the way our country has been run.

This should give us pause for thought if nothing else.

[peter]

Assessments of casualty figures in any war is problematic in the extreme, not least because of the understandable tendency for each of the protagonist's to play down their own figures while overstating the enemy's.

But there are worrying signs that the figures of dead and injured in the Ukrainian conflict are considerably higher than either the officially released figures (by Ukraine at least - Russia tends not to release any figures at all in these situations, until the very end), or indeed of the external estimates coming out from the US or other nations with an interest.

It seems fairly clear that somewhere around the 300,000 mark at minimum have died (by US and French estimates) with this figure split about evenly between the two warring sides, but this might be a gross underestimate. Some estimates of the Ukrainian losses alone exceed even this combined figure, and while the truth of this cannot be known, losses are certainly sufficiently high that even the BBC ran a news coverage story on them a few nights ago. In the segment, reporters visited a Ukrainian morgue where an employee recounted her experiences of processing numberless victims coming through the gates. In the most extreme scenario, it was reported (and I cannot guarantee the truth or otherwise of this) that in a recent Ukrainian government web posting, the people had been encouraged to come out to remembrance services to reflect on the lives of the 400,000 lost. The person giving this account said that the posting had rapidly been withdrawn, implying that it had been posted in error, either because the figure was wrong, or that it wasn't, but that the state did not want it to be publicly known to be so high.

This figure seems overinflated to me, but what is undeniable is that the toll is big - too big for it to have been worth the candle.

To make matters worse, it seems that the Zelensky administration is resorting to pretty desperate measures to resupply the army in the face of these losses. Virtually anyone between the ages of 16 and 60 is now regarded as fit for enlistment, and while this might be Russian misinformation, there was a report of a 71 year old man being found in charge of a captured tank when prisoners were taken. Reporting pressing of Ukrainian civilians into service is coming out, specifically from the eastern regions of the country, and also the use of conscripted prisoners, a tactic of supplementing numbers we are more used to seeing on the Russian side.

It is clear that the will to fight in this war is not universally felt by all the Ukrainian people, as evidenced by the numbers who have fled across the borders to avoid enlistment. That this is a significant problem, despite the borders being closed to all Ukrainian males of serviceable age (and if the figures above are even near correct, this term is applied pretty loosely), is evidenced by a recent Ukrainian request for its enforcement officers to be allowed to enter Poland in order to return abscondees back to Ukraine in order to take up the uniform.

These are the stories that are out there if you look in places that are not part of the official media narrative. In situations such as this, it becomes increasingly difficult to sort the wheat of true unvarnished reportage from the chaff of state sanctioned propoganda, and thus one is forced into places where one can no more be sure about the impartiality of what one is hearing/reading than when looking at the legacy media output. But if half of what I report above is true, then one wonders if we should be involved here at all. I make no apologies for having been dubious about our involvement in this conflict from day one. I've observed the misgivings I have about the involvement we have had in the Ukrainian political situation, Western foreign policy in terms of encroachment of Nato right up to the Russian border, and our general tendency to interfere in places where our involvement is neither needed nor helpful, many times in the past.

Nothing that I hear about the situation in Ukrainian convinces me I have been wrong. I (alongside ex President Donald Trump it seems) believe that this war is a disaster for Ukraine, a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions, and that it needs brining to an end by the diplomatic means by which it is only and always going to be resolved, at the earliest possible opportunity.

All of the upper-end papers feature pictures of the glitterati flying in for the Vogue World fashion event in London, proof positive if we needed it that the hard times being felt by the bulk of the population are not equally distributed in their effect: that a (not so) small elite at the top end of our society are milking it like never before. They've never had it so good, as their smug smiles and ridiculous costumes evidence, and thoughts about those who are under the harrow at the shit end of our society stick, could not be further from their shallow minds. They remind me of the effete gentry of the Louis VI court, powdered and vain and too stupid to be aware of the groundswell of anger that is building beneath their feet. (Last paragraph put in by accident, but I like it so in it stays.)

[peter]

Odd little points of interest in this morning's papers: let's run through them.

Good of American grandee Mitt Romney to engage in a rare bit of honesty from a politician. He's quite open in this morning's Telegraph that in his opinion (and probably I'm guessing, pretty much across the whole Biden administration and the bulk of the defence establishment as well) it represents "good value for money" to be funding the Ukrainian conflict to the tune of billions of dollars per year.

In his opinion, the draining effect on the Russian military, both in terms of forces and budget, achieved for "five percent of our military expenditure" makes it money well spent.

As close an admission that the Ukrainians are being used as pawns in furtherance of American interests as you will ever get. So let's hear no more about the opposing of tyranny or the protection of freedom and democracy, if you don't mind. The realpolitik is that the Americans could not give a flying fuck about these secondary matters, or indeed the Ukrainian lives that are thrown away in this meaningless war. It's all about them, about what advantage they get from it. The rest is just sophistry.

The 'i' has PM Sunak blaming the doctors and nurses for his complete failure to bring down NHS waiting lists from the seven plus million where they currently stand.

Rising from under a million when the Tories took over from Labour, those fourteen years ago, this can in truth be seen as one of the Tories greatest successes since taking office. Because under what circumstances were they ever going to convince the public to part with the free at the point of service....errr.....service they enjoyed if it was performing well! It was absolutely necessary to knock it back from where the Blair government had left it, in good order and fulfilling its brief, and reduce it to chaos. And then bingo, along came the pandemic like a gift from heaven to allow them to do just that.

So hospitals were closed, doctors and nurses sat twiddling their thumbs while the predicted floods of covid sufferers never materialised, and up and up the waiting lists went. I don't say that this was done deliberately to bring up the figures, but it was a beautiful consequence to anyone who wanted to see the case for privatisation of the NHS given a shot in the arm.

And now the service having been starved of cash for a decade and a half, the doctors and nurses having seen their real terms salaries eroded away by sub-inflation pay rises, and the pandemic effect thrown on to boot (or rather the government NHS policy in respect of the pandemic) .....now it is the doctors fault that the waiting lists remain high. What hypocrisy. What egregious deceitfullness. Sunak (alongside his right wing puppet masters in the world of finance) have no desire to see the waiting list figures come down. That would take them back to square one, erode away their gains. And the doctors have put themselves exactly where these ghouls need them to be in order that Sunak can make such a claim. Perfect.

All of the upper-end papers feature pictures of the glitterati flying in for the Vogue World fashion event in London, proof positive if it were needed that the hard times being felt by the bulk of the population are not reaching their exalted and rarified world. On the contrary, it seems that they have never had it so good, as their smug smiles and ridiculous costumes would evidence. Like the Roman civilization before us, the elite wallow in decadence while the proles thrash around in the shit. Nothing could be further from their shallow minds as they strut and pose their way up the red carpet, too stupid and self-absorbed to be even aware of the suffering of the people or indeed the groundswell of anger building beneath their feet.

Kier Stamer continues his journey into the dirty right of British politics by aping his opponents in the rhetoric he is using on immigration. He's cooked up some plan to agree to accept x number of immigrants from Europe in return for being able to return those who turn up illegally in the small boats back to the countries from which they embarked on the final leg of their journey. It doesn't sound any worse than what we have at present to be honest, but Stamer is going the whole hog and saying that if you are not in support of his plans you are being un-British, and he's branding the smugglers themselves as terrorists. I don't think that labels like this should be bandied around, especially in arguments surrounding immigration and questions of nationalism. It is in itself the jargon of the far right and it ill behoves the Labour leader to stoop to it.

And an odd little brouhaha is developing within the Tory ranks as proposals by Michael Gove to outlaw no-fault evictions seem to be being blocked by the whips office where, it turns out, five if the 16 whips just happen to be (you guessed it) landlords. In fact it turns out that twenty percent of the entire tory backbench MPs are buy-to-let landlords, so you can see why landlords not being able to turf out their tenants on a whim and at short notice would not be appealing to them. The proposed strengthening of the rights of tenants by Gove has to go before Parliament before it can be put into Law, and this is at the discretion of the whips office to decide when it occurs. It seems that they are in no hurry to pass it through. Now I wonder why that could be?

[peter]

I had wondered at German car manufacturer BMW's decision to site a factory producing the all electric Mini in Britain, but on reflection I guess there is a certain logic to it. The car is unlikely to sell in huge numbers elsewhere, but has always held a place in the hearts of the UK public, being seen as an icon of 'swinging sixties' London and harping back as it does, to a time when all seemed to be going well and we had as a nation, everything to play for.

The forthcoming trade restrictions between the EU and UK would mean, were the car to be produced on the continent, that it would attract a ten percent tarrif on export to its main market, which would be silly. Given this, it makes clear sense to capitalise on the cheaper price it will retail at if produced in the country where the bulk of the sales will be made.

But Sunak's wavering over his net zero commitments this summer, following his win in the Uxbridge by-election (where it was deemed that London's Labour mayor had essentially scuppered Labour's chance of winning by his policy of extension of the Ulez zone scheme across the whole of Greater London, which would hit the city dwellers hard in their pockets) could have been a game changer. Had the PM decided to row back on his government's commitment to end the sales of all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, suddenly the siting of the factory, indeed the decision to build one at all, might have not seemed such a good one after all.

But despite his comments that "more flexible" routes to net-zero must be found (ie if ditching commitments are a vote winner, then he'll do it without a second thought) the commitment to ending the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles it seems, will stand. The PM has given his assurance of this, it is reported in today's Times, but this has absolutely no connection to the BMW promise to build the factory. Sunak, as a brexiteer, has absolutely no desperate need to see at least something - anything - coming into Britain as a result of Brexit, and he has not - absolutely not - given a behind closed doors promise to BMW that the petrol/diesel ban will stand.

Of course you haven't Rishi. We absolutely - absolutely - believe that you haven't!



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

Spare a thought for the poor old Tory MPs departing politics at the next election.

Up to seventy of them - big names and small alike - have decided that the game is up and that they are going to quit altogether and return to the private sector.

But alas, like everything else in this world, supply and demand rules apply, and apparently the sudden availability of a plethora of names such as Dominic Raab, Ben Wallace, George Eustace and Sajid Javid, has overfilled the market on the supply side. Suddenly the availability of cushy little board jobs, of sinecures that pay fat bucks for little or no work, seems to be drying up. Perish the thought (and I know it seems ridiculous), but it appears that some of these ex ministers and MPs might actually have to work for a living.

The over-supply argument probably does account for some of the shortage these deserters seem to be facing, but I have another thought. Perhaps the guys who would normally be dishing out these cushy positions are actually looking at material on offer and having second thoughts. Perhaps they are actually seeing what the rest of us could, while these guys were performing their political tasks as our elected representatives: that they are a bunch of second rate loosers who under normal circumstances, would never have made it to within a mile of political power, never mind the front bench of the Conservative government. What, they will ask themselves, could these guys ever bring to the table? Certainly not their good reputations - they haven't got any. Having say, Dominic Raab on your board would give you about the same level of kudos as having a dog turd on the sole of your shoe. Nadhim Zahawi and Sajid Javid? It'd be like having Dr Evil and Mini-Me sitting at the table. No - this crop of deadbeat all coming on the market simultaneously is too much of a bad thing. The bulk of them will go straight into the bargain bucket of politics - working for lobby companies where they will spend their time whining into telephones for meetings with ministers and MPs who have no interest in talking to them. Like second rate call-centre operatives they will be hooked into the bosses office now and again to be castigated on their poor performance, and then be sent back out onto the pool, where they'll vainly try again to find someone - anyone - who will talk to them.

And it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys. Having destroyed this country and then fled into the hills rather than staying in the game to face the music, you could hardly find a worse bunch to offer up as prospective captains of industry and commerce if you tried. Not the one of them is worth a spit, especially not in terms of the records they hold. Bullies, tax avoiders, politicians who sold their principles to the highest bidder in return for advancement to a man. What board or business that had any respect for itself would touch them? Into the dustbin of history with the lot of them and good riddance.

[peter]

My father once employed a guy who was a Seventh Day Adventist.

He was a fantastic character and a genuinely good man, funny and highly intelligent, who took an active role in my early religious education. He used to take my sister and me to Sunday school classes from the earliest age, and remained a good friend of mine until his death in my forties.

But he was undeniably an ......unusual character, much influenced by his commitment to his faith and the church whose teachings he followed. On one occasion, in accordance with the instructions he had received from the minister of his local branch, he informed all of his co-workers at my father's business, that the world was to end on a certain date in the (then) very near future and that they should all prepare themselves for the forthcoming apocalypse and subsequent judgment which would follow.

He was unperturbed himself, certain of his place in the glorious resurrection that would come thereafter, and quite genuine in his concern that his colleagues should do all they could in order to take the necessary steps to be delivered of salvation (miserable sinners though they were, to a man).

The allotted Saturday came closer (Saturday being the seventh day - the natural choice of God on which to deliver his coup de grace) and on the Friday evening he left work, shaking each of his work friends by the hand and saying he wished them all the best in the forthcoming eschaton, and expressing his hopes of meeting them all again in the hereafter.

Clearly, the world did not end and the following Monday my father and his small team of staff awaited with interest the time that Mr M.... would normally start work (he was an evening worker, a part-time employee who was a bank teller during the day). At the allotted time he arrived as normal, hung his coat up in the office and took his usual seat behind the large communal office desk. He made no reference to his appearance, nor to the failure of the world to end, but rather simply picked up his books and began his usual task of tallying the previous weekends takings. My father, not one to let the thing go without question, asked him what had happened, why he was still here along with the rest of the world. Mr M barely lifted his head - he genuinely wasn't interested. He mumbled something about a mistake in the calculations, and then continued his perusal of the figures before him as though nothing of any significance, either to him or anyone else, had occurred. It was classic Mr M. A cup of tea was placed before him exactly as normal and with smiles of affection, his co-workers returned to their own tasks. He never referred to 'the day the world didn't end' again and I don't think his colleagues did either. His faith remained absolutely steadfast, the event causing not the slightest ripple of question in his mind.

Alas, the next cause that most of us had to consider the Seventh Day Adventist Church was when its offshoot, the Branch Davidion movement, under the influence of its charismatic leader David Koresh, found itself in conflict with the US authorities in the until then little heard of town of Waco, Texas.

-----0-----

In what must be one of the most egregious examples of......gosh - I genuinely don't know what word to use to describe it....., I don't know, bone-headed insensitivity, brazen defiance of shame, glorious self-deception...???...whatever.....Liz Truss is in this morning's Times accusing Rishi Sunak of (wait for it) wasting money!

This is the Liz Truss who along with her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, nearly brought the entire world economy to its knees. The Liz Truss who, failing to listen to a single advisor or economist begging her not to do it, who declining to release an Office of Budgetary Responsibility report on the likely consequences of her actions, decided to set the economy to rights by borrowing an eye-watering quantity of money........and then giving it away to the wealthiest people in the land in the form of tax cuts. The Liz Truss whose incautious mini-budget caused a wobble in the guilt markets that, had the Bank of England not intervened, would have rendered the pensions of millions of hard working people worthless, and as it was caused the interest rates rises that have crippled the finances of millions of mortgage holders and threatened their continuing ability to pay for their hard won mortgages. The Liz Truss who in 44 days of disastrous over confidence and hubris, cost the country an estimated 74 billion pounds and set us back even further still than the crippling governance of the party she belongs to has already done over 14 years of unabated mismanagement.

She now has the absolute gall, the unmatched temerity, to tell us that the Sunak administration has spent 37 billion pounds more in propping up the economy than she would have.

Does it not occur to this fool of a woman that the country needs economic advice from her as much as an AA meeting would need advice from Oliver Reed? Has she absolute no shame for what she has done.....or simply no comprehension? It is significant I suppose, that the venue at which she reportedly intends to dish out her opinions on the Sunak government performance is a talk before the Institute for Government, one of those right wing Tufton Street think-tanks that spawned her in the first place, and a venue I'm guessing, where she can be almost guaranteed to have a friendly and receptive audience. It beggars belief, but undoubtedly these clowns still believe that her budget could have worked, had it not been for the fickle markets loosing their nerve and pulling the rug out from under it. What do they not get? The markets are the economy. The market decides en masse what it does and does not like, and your plans are either vindicated or screwed thereby. In the capitalist system we follow you cannot buck the market. This is the rule that all must follow alike. It doesn't alter, even in the face of thick as mince stupidity, protean incomprehension even at the level that Truss displays. It's just a fact.

But perhaps Truss believes that Sunak, in his weakness (and he is weak - really weak) will fall, and she will be welcomed back by a Thatcherite Tory party, energised to give her another go. It's the sort of comedy situation - almost high farce - that you can expect from our politics of late.

God, no! It couldn't happen could it?

[Savor Dam]

God, no! It couldn't happen could it?

As someone who (to no discernable effect) wrote in 2015 about Sinclair Lewis' novel
It Can't Happen Here, let me stress Yes, yes it can.

[peter]

Hi SD.

Strangely enough, one of the Sunday morning political pundits was asking pretty much the same question briefly. It's not really a possibility, but these are odd times. Sunak is pretty much regarded as a washout, neither having pleased the right of his party (too high a taxing PM), the left (too afraid of the right to do anything in respect of tightening up ties with Europe - key to getting growth into the economy) or indeed the public (he's brown, not Boris Johnson and they didn't vote for him).

Put this together with half the country struggling to meet their monthly demands, every service you can name in a visible state of absolute chaos and the economy going to hell in a handcart, and you have an electoral disaster on the cards for the Tories in the near future. And the one thing that unites both left and right off the Tories (both parliamentary and constituency) against a leader is bad polling. But they won't chuck him out until after he looses the election because they can't afford to emphasise their division as a party right before an election on the back of the possibility of the modest gain they think a new leader might bring them. It's a candle that isn't worth the wick, so in they go with an ineffectual leader, hogtied by the right, despised by all and clearly not even that interested in the job himself. (And who can blame him; he inherited a country in a mess, a party at war with itself, and a crock of broken dreams regarding Brexit. One wonders why a man in his position bothered in the first place.)

But anyway let's have a look at the papers.

The crash and burn of sleezy celebrity Russell Brand is taking up much of the media attention at the moment. Brand, it is claimed (by the media - the police don't seem to be involved as yet, which is a bit worrying, though they are looking into it by accounts) was a serial sex predator who preyed on those less powerful than himself and, if the reporting is to be believed, often pushed his advances in sufficiently forceful a manner as to constitute a possible offence.

Time will tell. The story isn't one that I find either surprising or particularly shocking. It's just another example of the kind of egregious abuses that occur when individuals of hugely differing power come into contact. It goes on throughout the world of celebrity, and includes the acting, sporting and political world in equal measure. It's normally men predating on women, but no doubt occurs the other way around as well. The police must investigate, and if credible evidence is found that genuine offences have occured, then he must be prosecuted.

Kier Stamer will be happy to read that the City of London has thrown its support behind him as (in its opinion) "the most market friendly solution" that could emerge from the next election. According to the Telegraph, a survey of City leaders gave a two-thirds majority thumbs up to either a clear Labour win or a Labour coalition as the best result. Coming from that particular sector of society and reported in that particular broadsheet, you can see how far Stamer has come in shifting his party into an electable force from the dark days following Corbyn's fall. He has certainly achieved it - whether he should be proud of it is something else. He has learned that to succeed in politics you have to be prepared to get your hands dirty. Well, he was a presecuting lawyer in a former incarnation, so I suppose his grounding was good, but he has probably exceed even his own imaginings in his success. He has taken the position that getting to power is the only thing that matters, and he's been ably assisted by the Tories decamping from their usually held position (which the business, financial and public communities all favour) of being the party of economic competence. All Stamer had to do was step into the suddenly vacant role (and boy, did the Tories under Liz Truss suddenly leave it; it was like they flung themselves out through the plate glass window) and the job was done. That he had to renege on every single promise he'd made in his leadership campaign, stab his former colleague in the back and execute the most ruthless purging in recent British political history to achieve it, is something he will have to mull over alone in his own conscience, during the heady days after the achievement of his political dreams. (As an aside it should be noted that the market is as much still reeling from the onslaught of the Truss mini-budget, for which it has not yet forgiven the Tories, as it is keen on Stamer's economic policies, which have to date been more about what he won't do - increase taxes, borrowing, unfunded spending etc - than about what he will. {And Brexit - they are not happy with Brexit either.})

Someone described Kier Stamer's policy at present as a 'ming vase' strategy. He's carrying the said vase, ever so carefully across the track, towards the winning line. Ever so carefully not to frighten anyone that he might have anything 'not economically sensible' in mind. He's tiptoeing ever so carefully and all the signs are that it's working. He's become the Tory that the Tories want as their leader, but with the only exception that he's in charge of Labour. But it might not go all his way. This morning's Guardian has the story that his biggest funding union, Unite, has decided to divert some of its funding away from the Party, and into a campaign in the so called 'red-wall' seats in the North of England (traditionally more left wing areas of the country) demanding more radical left-wing policies from the leadership. They (the union) have not forgotten Stamer's leadership pledges to nationalise the energy companies, to increase tax on the wealthiest of our society and embark on a levelling up policy, both North-South and in terms of income inequality, and they intend to mount a billboard campaign in the Northern constituencies to remind the people of this before electoral campaigning begins. This is a fly in the ointment that Stamer will not be happy to read about. Ironic that this should be coming from the Labour friendly Guardian (though the story is meant rather as a reminder to the middle class 'Guardianista' Labour voters, that the perfidious workers still have a tendency to get above themselves; they love to sing the praises of the workers until the workers actually start to think for themselves, then suddenly they revert to being the red-necked ignoramuses that they are) while the good news is in the Telegraph. Wonders will never cease. Still, as I say, odd days.

[peter]

There is little doubt that the media had in their own minds, arrested, tried and convicted comedian and anti-establishment pundit Russell Brand before the stories of his alleged sexual misdemeanours were even printed in the Sunday papers, and such trial by media is unbecoming in any society, let alone one that prides itself on justice and fairness above just about everything else.

That being said, nothing detracts from the seriousness of the allegations being made and they certainly must be investigated (now they have suddenly come forth in this torrent) and if he is judged guilty then he must pay the price in terms of the sentence handed down.

But we are a country whose legal system operates on the basis of the presumption of innocence, and with the ongoing wall-to-wall coverage of the situation it becomes difficult to see how, with so much of the story already presented in this pre-judged way, the man will ever be able to receive a fair trial.

But that is by-the-by; what interests me here is the way that this has all come about and why.

The evening news last night was at pains to tell us that this was a story the media had been aware of for a long period of time, but were unable to air. What they didn't tell us however, was why. Okay - let that go, but there was still something rather unpleasant in listening to Fiona Bruce's barely disguised disapproval and condescension when talking of Brand's case, especially given the knowledge of how the BBC had facilitated the career of Jimmy Savile and kept his behaviour as their best kept secret for years before the truth came out.

And the whole business seems slightly the wrong way around doesn't it. Aren't offences such as this supposed to be reported to the police, then be reported by the media after that, rather than the media deciding to hunt a particular story down and then for them to be presented to the police?

The BBC were at pains to report last night that a complaint had now been made to the metropolitan police, and the event concerned was claimed to have occurred three years before those referred to in the Sunday papers - but somehow the way it came across was that they were over-keen to use this as a way of saying "Look - this isn't to do with what we have reported.....it was going on before, so it must all be true. Hmm...methinks (as the Bard would have said) they protest too much.

And what is the source of these allegations. Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4's Dispatches program. Okay. They are investigative media outlets amongst other things, not simple reporting devices. They have a responsibility to get in there amongst the grubby end of things and ferret out truth. This is fine. But everyone knows that until the police have actually looked at all this stuff, spoken to the people concerned and decided that an offence or offences have been committed, then it's so much hot air. Not a real story at all. For this reason there is almost a desperation about the presentation of every little fact (".....errr, the police are looking at it - someone has made a complaint - they really have!" style of thing) that again seems rather.....well.....overdone in its attempt to convince us that there is meat on the bones of this story.

Brand for his part has come out and said that it's all media conspiracy to bring him down. Well, he would, wouldn't he. He's a "conspiracy theorist", as we were told a dozen times in the BBC news report. They then had one of their usual blacked out 'victim interviews' (complete with actors voice, so you can neither see nor hear Brand's accuser, which rather begs the question as to why they are actually there at all, if not to just lend theatrical clout to the BBC report) in which the (actor's) voice complained that it is "insulting" for Brand to say that it is all a put up job. If the allegations she is making are true then one absolutely has to sympathise with the victims disgust at such a cover - but equally one cannot but be suprised that Brand would make such a defence nor indeed blame him for doing so. It is he who stands accused: he has an equal right to defend himself.

But whether Brand is guilty or not; whether he has just been doing what a million powerful people have done for eons before him, and abusing the power differential he holds over other people to predate upon them sexualy, to scoop up, then discard those in awe of his power and celebrity - or wherever he is an actual serial attacker, even rapist, is something that the police and the legal system will have to sort out now.

But irrespective of Brand's innocence or guilt, the question I find interesting is whether there is in fact an unspoken agenda in the sudden appearance of this story. Because, like it or not, and separate to what he has been doing with his sex-life, Brand has made himself a thorn in the side of the establishment. He runs a podcast with a high number of listeners (running into the millions) in which he regularly lifts up the blinds that societies movers and shakers, the ones who benefit from the system exactly as it stands, and have most to loose if people like Brand are listened to, would rather remain firmly closed. This cannot be discounted in this story and it would be nieve to do so. Brand may well be guilty of all he is accused of - but the question then becomes, is the release of this story now because of this, or does it serve a different purpose for those who have revealed the truth they have been sitting on for years?

Like Andrew Tate (who I know jack-shit about) before him, Brand seems to be what you might call 'low hanging fruit' for any warning message that you want (as an establishment beneficiary) to send out. Because of who he is, the notoriety he has deliberately cultivated over his career, he is easy pickings. And he may well be guilty to boot (and if so, so much the better).

Because as the truth of the iniquitous injustice that has been perpetrated on this society over the last few years comes out, as more and more people of influence - some of whom command far more respect than Brand with his disreputable stage-antics could ever do - begin to come forward and shine a light on what our. leaders (and those who benefit from their particular brand of one-sided governance) have actually done to us, then there becomes an ever greater risk that people will begin to listen to what they are saying. And that cannot be allowed. So what is needed is a warning. Subliminal and sent out wrapped in a different packaging, but understood as exactly that for those for whom it is intended.

Now, okay. Speculation and (conspiracy) theory. I'm not saying that Brand is innocent or guilty. He's a grubby little character who's type of celebrity has never done it for me - but that doesn't make him a monster. Neither am I saying that he's the 'victim' of a media cum establishment conspiracy to a) bring him down and/or b) send out a warning message to others who seek to 'influence' and educate people on what has been done, he could well be guilty of the lot of it........ But what I am saying is that it would be nieve to discount the possibility. The media has been used to gull the public, to manipulate and manage their thinking, via all sorts of smoke-and-mirror tactics over the past few years (and long before no doubt). I, like numberless others today, believe that our political masters have done us wrong. They have overstepped their remit and strayed into the realm of authoritarian dictat. They have overseen a system that has benefited a tiny elite at the top of our society at the expense of the many. They continue to do so. They are the promulgators beneficiaries of a system that works in their interest and they will do anything and everything in their power to protect it. Laws will be passed and lives, where necessary, ground into the dust on the anvil of this end. Brand is, or could be, as nothing against this level of self interest and preservation.

Or maybe it's all as they present it. Perhaps they really did want to bring a monster to book, but were unable for whatever reason to do so. Perhaps Brand's behaviour has been an open secret I the industry for years and the means to expose him has really not been available until now (you'd have thought that someone would have reported him to the police before now though, wouldn't you?). Perhaps it's really all that they would present it as. Fiona Bruce is contemptuous and Brand is a dirty word in her mouth, the papers are full of care and sympathy for the victims of Brand's assaults, there is no underhand subliminal message going out, no warning of other like-minded thorns to "back off!"

I don't know. I'm not clever enough to see the wood for the trees. You decide.

[peter]

Kier Stamer was out pressing the flesh yesterday and cementing his position as Prime Minister in waiting, by a very public display of friendliness in a meeting with French premiere Emanual Macron. It was a cordial meeting of equals that PM Sunak could only dream of in this late stage of his political career.

Nevertheless, it throws up some interesting questions - ones which the Sky news broadcast last night was quick to capitalise on.

Their wording was along the lines of, "Kier Stamer met the French president Emanuel Macron today in his attempts to strengthen the ties between Britain and the EU" - a wording less than subtly put in its attempts to put into Brexit leavers minds that "Kier Stamer is not one of you! This of course, if it finds traction with the short memoried public (Stamer was a convinced remainer in the run up to the referendum) could be damaging to his election prospects (and the Murdoch owned News Corporation which includes Sky would not want that now, would they).

Stamer himself has absolutely ruled out any rejoining of the EU or even just the single market or customs union, but establishment of closer ties with individual countries within the block, or indeed rebuilding bridges damaged in the break up, with the whole block can be no bad thing.

But there is no question. He has the look of a leader about him suddenly. He's gaining in confidence and it shows. He won't be too worried about the apparent incongruity of meeting with Macron when he has made such a pledge of "no going back!" He'll simply play it as a necessary going forward, and win over both camps in the process. And the point scoring of such a diplomatic coup is worth every bit of the Sky attempt to stir up trouble for him in his attending the meeting.

The Tories for their part are attempting to gain traction with the voters by rowing back on their net zero commitments.

Uxbridge has taught them a salient lesson and they don't intend to waste it. The first thrust of this is to push back the dates of introduction of bans on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles, and gas fired domestic boilers. Sunak will make a statement to this effect on Friday (expect fireworks from the green lobby on Saturday morning) but it's widely reported in this morning's press. It's a slightly odd one in that it was no more than a week ago that Sunak was reported as saying that there would be no pushing back on the date of the petrol/diesel vehicle sale ban, but that of course was when he wanted to ensure that BMW would come here with their electic Mini production facility. Today it's a different need so we have a different story. As a key member of Boris Johnson's team Sunak has learned that such flip-flopping between incompatible promises is entirely get awayable with. The press (if they're on your side) don't even seem to notice and the public - well who gives a toss if a few pick up on it. The bulk have such short memories it won't even occur to them, and even for the ones that remember and are confused, well, like Trump's America which essentially functioned in nothing but such confusion, a bit of 'fuzziness' in your political utterances is no bad thing. I'm sure, Sunak if cornered, will be slippery enough to wriggle through it as would Johnson, his political teacher have done.

But are the Tories genuine that they will abandon their net zero commitments if we give them another chance, or is it just bullshit in order to win another election (in the face of overwhelming odds to the contrary)? If they won would they immediately renege on this promise and return to the bans as they originally committed? This is the dilemma the public faces when politicians enter the phase where you simply cannot believe or trust a word they say. Commitments from the Tories (as the EU found out) are now meaningless. They will now literally say anything they want, in order to win people's votes, with no intention of ever following through with it. (Would that David Cameron had taken the same loose view on commitments.) They might mean what they say; equally, they might not. We can, in this political age, never know. Given the ill-faith in which they negotiated the exit agreement from the EU, this kind of paltry deception of the public is as nothing. The public can't take a government who fail to live up to their pledges to court - it's just "changing circumstances, old boy - changing circumstances!"

So who knows. Will the Tories put the survival of their leadership of the country over the survival of the planet? There's a pretty good chance that most of them would do this. Half of them are climate change deniers anyway and the other half don't give a shit if the planet goes tits up, just as long as it doesn't happen until a day after they pop their clogs and doesn't impact their lives in the process. Remember - this is the party who would behead the king in Trafalgar Square if it would win them a further stay in power.

Think on and be afraid. Be very afraid.

Edit:

God - the implications of this has just struck me. The understanding of this and what it means.!

Going back to the Cameron thing and the realisation that this (the befor Brexit/after Brexit divide) is the point at which our polity fundamentally changed. From a place where you could believe that our politicians would indeed do what they said they would do, to a place where it no longer mattered to them. And to a place where in consequence (and this is the important point) you could never really know who to vote for ever again because their true intentions can never be known.

[peter]

I'll flesh out that last bit.

Kier Stamer has reneged on every pledge he made in order to win the Labour leadership. He now claims that we will never,under a Labour government, go back into the EU, customs union or single market. We simply cannot know this to be true, based on his performance to date.

Rishi Sunak stood on the steps of Downing Street promising honestly, integrity and transparency from his government. Yet he has operated in exactly the same devious and underhand manner of his political mentor and former boss Boris Johnson. He last week told us (and BMW) that there would be no going back on the 2030 petrol and diesel new car sales ban, yet yesterday he announced just that. Again it simply cannot be known what it is that he will do.

And this applies to both leaders right across the board. Is Stamer a left wing leader of the Jeremy Corbyn type, simply too wiley to show his true colours until he has secured the leadership? Who knows. Will Sunak stick to a single promise he makes during the election campaign, or is every one contingent upon what suits him best on the day? Who knows.

And this system of never being bound by any pledges you make, of feeling no obligation to fulfill any promises made, either in election campaigns or outside, but always being prepared to do the exact opposite on the simple excuse of the flimsiest change of circumstances - this leaves the voter absolutely high and dry.

And there is no reason to expect that were any other leader, say Ed Davy or Caroline Lucas, to (bizarrely) find themselves in Downing Street, that they would be any different. This latitude, once it becomes the accepted protocol for government, is simply too tempting a modus operandi to be eschewed. And oddly, the closer you get to the centre of the political spectrum, the worse it gets. One can be fairly certain that is for example Nigel Farage says we're not going back to being close to the EU that he means it. Similarly, if Jeremy Corbyn says that the energy companies are going to pay windfall payments or that taxes on wealth are going to be introduced, then it's going to happen. But the closer you come to the Kier Stamer/Boris Johnson/Jeremy Hunt/Rishi Sunak style of politician, the more untrustworthy their word becomes. This is odd because one might expect it to be the opposite way around. It's an interesting development in our political system and fairly surely goes back to Donald Trump and our subsequent apeing of his methods. Not good for democracy or the interests of the people however.

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[peter]

Right.

The first thing to be said, straight away, is that Rishi Sunak's statement of yesterday is political. In fact more than that, it was campaigning. What it most certainly wasn't, was reflective of some new-found 'care for the little people', a sudden realisation that they were the ones bearing the brunt of the prohibitive cost of the net-zero policy, and the essential unfairness with which it was being applied. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The brute truth is that Sunak and the Tories are tanking in the polls, are going to loose their eighty seat majority (and the general election to boot) by a country mile, and they are desperate to do something to reverse their fortunes. As far as they are concerned, the planet can go fuck itself, if it comes to a choice between it and winning another general election. They'll dress it up in all kinds of rhetoric about how "the necessary changes can be made in a fair and pragmatic way to achieve the same result" and it might even be true, but to believe that this is the reason for the Sunak announcement is to be away with the birds. They could not care less about what effect this has on the 'little people' consideration of which will always come third against the second place one of "how is the making of money by our class (ie the business class) maximised", and the primary one of "how do we stay in power". The Uxbridge result gave them the clue as to how to reverse their projected electoral fortunes and they are grabbing it with both hands.

Okay. So that much is settled. Now let's pick the bones out of it.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a massive political backlash against the announcement, the key points of which were that the banning of the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles and gas boilers will be pushed back by five years, more help will be provided to certain households for the change to heat pumps and the continued use, and sale of second hand combustion engine cars etc, will be made easier than it would have been. (Essentially it's the Trump policy of letting the two vehicle types run side by side for longer.)

Calls for an immediate general election by backbench Tory Zack Goldsmith. Pledges by Kier Stamer to reverse this and any other policy changes of this type, should he win power in the forthcoming election. Howls of anger from the business community who have invested billions on the basis of the time-frame that they had been given (and whose investments paying off are contingent upon the dates they were told being adhered to). Anger from former PM Boris Johnson who set up the original time frame which Sunak is now rowing back on.

Sunak for his part is making a good case. The costs of the net-zero policies have, he conceded, been hidden from people. The politicians have not been up-front about how much the man in the street would have to pay (tell me something I don't know) and this has been a mistake. Sunak assured us that by taking a more "middle course",:by being more pragmatic and spreading the burden of cost more fairly, exactly the same result of the net-zero by 2050 commitment could be achieved. This begs the question of why this "pragmatic and measured approach" wasn't adopted from day one, but let that go. Jacob Rees-Mogg was quoted in the Times this morning and I think his quote is worth repeating here to get a gist of just how big an admission is being made.

The problem with net-zero and having regulations coming in so quickly was that it was a scheme of the elite on the backs of the less well off. Rishi Sunak has changed that. He is going with the grain of the nation and going for "intelligent net-zero" by 2050, but not putting in costly bans in the next few years.

So much is great, but do you get that? He's actually admitting that the "elite" have been putting in place policy that favours their interests over those of the ordinary people of the nation. This is a big concession, especially from someone like Rees-Mogg who is balls-deep in the establishment elite of the nation if anybody ever was.

So as one of the little people, what do I think of it.

Well yes - I'm buying it, not because I can't see through it but because, well, why wouldn't I? I can't afford a new electric car, a heat-pump and new radiator system in my house: why wouldn't I like anything that put the inevitable cost of this back a few years. And I buy that it is entirely possible that the same result could be achieved re 2050 by a different route than hitting me in the pocket. And even if it can't I'm still going to take it because, well hell, if they're giving it why wouldn't I take it. I'm not a policy maker - I'm just going to do the best I can to look after my own interests because why wouldn't I? If your boss came and said to you, "I'm giving you a hunk of cash" and someone else cried, "But if you take it the business might go bust", to which the boss replies, No it won't - we can still make it," what am I going to do? Turn it down? Or take the boss at his word and trouser the cash? Same applies here. Sure, I know that he's not doing it for the reasons he says he is - but I also know that the way it as being done was that so the normal people of the country would see huge changes to their lifestyles while the elites of our society just continue to live blithely as though nothing has changed. Bill Gates ain't selling his six personal planes and twelve homes up any time in the near future, that's for sure!

And so you have it. Sunak has found his vote winner and Stamer must be feeling sick to his stomach this morning. Try though he might to take the politically correct approach, the 'sensible' approach of 'sticking to our net zero commitments', he must know that he's on to a looser. Because people see. They don't want to be the ones saddled with all the costs while the top end of our society just carries on as normal. And they can't afford it anyway and this, what Sunak is offering them, looks like a lifeline. Stamer's team must know this and know that it spells real trouble for them. At best it's his majority down the pan, at worst the entire election.

Suddenly his assumed win doesn't look so convincing and it's once again all to play for.

[peter]

Here's the thing. I believe in 'man made global climate change' - but I don't believe that in attempting to reverse/slow it down, that it's fair of governments to lump huge bills on everyday working people that they cannot begin to afford.

There must be alternative ways of dealing with the problem, or alternatively government, via special one-off wealth taxes or whatever, must shoulder the cost of making the necessary changes, spreading the burden and making the bearing of it more equitable.

So I welcome (late as it comes) Rishi Sunak's intervention in the debate, and his proposals to slow down the introduction of bans on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles and gas boilers etc.

I mean, how hard can it be?

A one-off tax hit across the whole nation calculated on wealth, and then utilisation of the proceeds to fit heat pumps into every home that it is deemed appropriate, free of charge.

At what point during the Covid crisis were people expected to pay out the huge costs for testing, tracing, vaccination and treatment? Is this less of a crisis then, that lesser measures to deal with it should be taken?

Surely it's time for some 'blue-sky thinking' to enter into this debate. I genuinely don't think that the bulk of people would object to a designated one-off tax, unavoidable and based on ability to pay, and ring-fenceed to cover the costs of achieving net-zero (and I mean the costs to the mass population starting from the base up, those with least ability to meet the demands being placed on them).

If it's that important, then this is the way it should be done - not by placing intolerable costs on the already hard done by general population.

[peter]

Contd from above....

In fact, this whole thing is wrong when you think about it.

The climate crisis is not a political matter at all. It's far beyond that and includes each and every one of us, man, woman and child on this planet. And yet have the actual people been brought into this discussion at any point - have they been consulted about what they think, how they believe it should be addressed? Have they hell.

But the politicians have as course, as they would be expected to do, corralled the crisis into their forum of debate, excluding the very people who should be at the heart of the conversation, the people themselves. And further to this, they have been unable to rise above their natures, but have instead debased the entire calamity by attempting to swing it to the advantage of their own political capital - actively making it political when in fact it is societal.

Surely, in the UK at least, this should sit above the level of politics and be addressed by royal commission? The politicians have already proven themselves unfit to deliberate on so weighty a subject, even if it were *necessary* to prove that this matter should sit in-between the monarchy and the polity, which I do not believe it is. Common sense tells you that this can only be dealt with at a collective level, and nationally, all represented by the monarch as head of the collective state is as close as we can get.

As I say, examination by royal commission, including regional public debate and submission, law appointment to oversee the process and referendum where necessary to approve key decisions.....by this method we could get the necessary policies in place with the public on board to support them.

By deferring to our politicians, we all but guarantee that the process will be corrupted and twisted, doomed to failure almost before it starts. Those in power in our societies will attempt to subvert the process, ensuring that if profit there is to be made, then they will make it, and that any 'clipping of the wings' of our lifestyles, will be introduced in such manner as they will be able to circumvent them.

[peter]

Sudiksha Thirumalesh. That's not a name you will have heard before.

The reason is that it was only yesterday that the High Court in London lifted the order barring her identity being revealed as the 19 year old who struggled against her doctors decision to end her treatment and put her on to palliative end of life care.

She lost.

Her doctors, in their all-knowing wisdom, went to court and claimed (against the testimony of two psychiatrists who deemed her of sound mind) that her belief that she could survive was delusional, and the judge agreed with them. On this ruling, the life preserving treatment (including essential dialysis) was ended, resulting in her death shortly thereafter. At the time of her death she wanted, and had independent financial backing, to leave the country and travel to Canada for untried experimental treatment which who knows, might have been successful, but this too was denied her. Her family, wanting her struggles against the state medical service to be made public, were bound by a gagging order which barred the media from revealing her name, and which was as I say, only lifted yesterday.

The Daily Mail has followed this story as it has unfolded and today reveals her name for the first time. There has to my knowledge, been no mention of this story on the BBC news, either broadcast or on their website, or indeed precious little in any other news outlet. Our bodies, it seems, do indeed belong to the state to do with as they will, despite their not being keen to advertise the fact. We had, of course, a much bigger example of this when, during the Covid hoax, we were all but mandated to accept the experimental vaccines that now it appears (though again you would be hard pressed to find a legacy media report on it) were far from being as safe as we were told.

I don't get this. At what point can the state prevent an individual from leaving to travel to a third country happy for them to enter, in order to receive possibly lifesaving treatment (if only as an outside chance) if that person wants to? Is it just the provision of the necessary care for the travel that can be withheld, or can they actively barr the travel even if some third party is willing to arrange and pay for the cost of the arrangements?

This entire story is disquieting and needs to be fully brought out into the open.

I was interested in the juxtaposition of this story (not, as I say, reported by the BBC) with that of the story that they did choose to cover on the 6pm broadcast yesterday, on the fight of Brazilian women to extend the limited rights to abortion within their country. I make no observation on the rights or otherwise of this, but did note that in the report, two women who were against the extension (which currently covers allowing the procedure under very limited circumstances) were given around 30 seconds of cover (and this cut off mid statement) compared to the five minutes or so given to the pro-abortion lobby. The BBC it seems, finds more to support in the ending of life than the preservation of it. Oh well, at least there is a consistency of sorts there in their failure to report on the 19 year old fighting for her life, but instead concentrating on the attempts of Brazilian women to terminate the lives of their unborn children. Choice, I believe they call it. It's a shame that Sudiksha was not given the same level of choice that it seems the BBC supports in the case of Brazilian women.

(Edit; I've just looked into it a bit deeper and it's more complex than a straight 'ban' on her travelling to Canada for the experimental treatment. This was all essentially mediated through the Court of Protection who were told by Sudiksha's doctors that while they would not stand in the way of her going, they did not feel that she would survive the trip. Their recommendation, in the face of what they said was her refusal to accept the reality of her situation, was to advance the course of her condition (ie to bring about her deterioration) by discontinuing her treatment and moving her into palliative care. As I said, the judge agreed and this was done. The gagging order of the Court it seems, prevented Sudiksha's parents from engaging in the fundraising activities by which they could have raised the money for her travel and treatment in Canada. As both Court and doctors didn't feel that there was a realistic chance of success in this course, presumably they felt no guilt about effectively closing off this route via the gagging order. The decision to end her regular treatment and thereby hasten her death against her wishes is questionable at best, downright cruel at worst. She expressed a desire to "die fighting for life." In my opinion she should have been accorded this right.)

-----0-----

There's a bit of a brouhaha about the high speed railway link between London and Manchester, which is running massively over budget and which it seems, the government may gradually be loosing faith in.

Rumours have been leaking out about considerations of terminating the connection short of their originally intended destinations at both ends, and while the government has been quick to respond to these, they have not denied that this may be in their thinking. The old excuse of "no decision has been made" has been wheeled out, and this in itself has raised uproar. Shouts of undermining the levelling up agenda abound (from both sides of the House) and many Tory backbenchers are just as angry as their Northern Labour counterparts.

But let's be honest. The link will shave at best, around 25 minutes off the journey. It's costing billions, and just at the time when people are travelling less and less frequently for work, relying instead rather on video-conferencing and working from home. It's a yesterdays solution to a tomorrows problem and the fact that it is hugely over budget notwithstanding, is soaking up money that could be far better utilised improving regional transport links and other infrastructure upgrading in the North.

Jacob Rees-Mogg pointed out on Question Time years ago that HS2 was a white elephant, and that continuing with the project was to make the mistake of throwing good money after bad. He observed at the time that there was a real risk of continuing with the project for no better reason than the money that had already been spent on it. On this occasion (and it's a rare one) I agree with him. This sinkhole for public money should be mothballed immediately.

[peter]

Elections are traditionally held in the autumn in the UK but Andrew Marr reports that there is increasing speculation in the corridors of Westminster that Sunak might opt for a spring one instead.

Tanking in the polls, it might seem an odd decision but (he says) given the central place that immigration and the small boats have taken in his priorities (and his much vaunted 'pledges'to boot) there might be sense in it. Winter will by necessity bring down the numbers attempting the Channel Islands crossing, and add to this the increasing liklihood of the government winning their forthcoming case in the High Court allowing them to immediately begin the deportations to Rwanda, the spring will be the time when the results of these things will put a significant dint in the numbers of new arrivals. And Sunak, it is felt, might want to capitalise on this while the going is good.

I can think of another reason he might plump for this - he fucking hates the job of being PM! Why would he want to spend a day more than he has to doing it. If he goes for a spring election, he can get it out of the way, serve the customary couple of months as MP for his constituency and then throw in the towel, bolt for California, and get settled there in time to get his daughters into their expensive private school, places for which he has effectively bought by his wife's recent donation of 3 million dollars for a tech/IT center.

If he stays for the autumn, he risks going to the polls just as hundreds of thousands are feeling their hugely increased mortgage costs beginning to bite, and against an economy that looks like it's dropped from a dog's arse onto the sidewalk.

So yes, I'm thinking that there might be something in this. The Tories are tired, they pretty know the game is up. John Major pulled off an election reversal against Neil Kinnock in 1992 against the odds, and with Sunak's recent popular rowing back on the net-zero commitments and this (projected) improvement in the asylum figures, it's just possible that he might repeat the trick. But Major was only five or six points behind Kinnock when they went to the polls -Sunak is 24. That's a big mountain to climb in anyone's book.

But in fairness, these are not normal times and the rules of yesteryear no longer apply. The public are angry about many things and are given to extreme swings in ways that they never have been before. And the net-zero thing is big. It's looming large in people's minds and put this alongside Stamer's lack of charisma, his deep unpopularity with the traditional left, his having turned off Labour remain voters by his adamant refusal to even contemplate a return to either the single market or the customs union, and the stage just could be set for something big.

And wouldn't that put a fly in Rishi Sunak's plans!

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

Grubby little story in this morning's Sunday Mirror about the sacking of a nanny employed by Boris and Carrie Johnson, who it appears was 'caught' enjoying a glass of wine in the company of Boris by his wife and given fifteen minutes to leave the premises.

Fair play to Carrie I suppose: Boris Johnson is not the kind of husband you want turning his attention to the nanny,if previous form is anything to go by, but all the same it seems a bit harsh.

Added to the story is the accusation that the Johnson's owe the woman thousands in back wages which she has yet to receive. Now why doesn't this suprise me. Could it be that I spent many years trying to prize money owed to the veterinary practice I worked in, from wealthy individuals who seemed to feel no obligation to pay their debts to anyone they regarded as lower down the hierarchical pecking order than themselves. They often seemed to see it as an insult of sorts, that you would have the temerity to ask for the money. They cared little that your business depended upon the prompt settlement of accounts, regarding that as your problem, not theirs. I have little doubt that the nanny's experience with the Johnsons falls into this category and I sympathise with her. But she should perhaps consider herself lucky. Johnson has a habit of leaving far worse consequences behind him than a bruised ego and a loss of money. Perhaps she should walk away having learned the wisdom of the advice not to mix business with pleasure. And I dare say the Sunday Mirror story has probably earned her more than the nannies salary would have, even if the Johnsons had had the good taste to pay it.

-----0-----

At what point do the papers think that we want to see pictures of 78 year old Angela Rippon kicking her legs up into the air as she did so outrageously (for a 'sensible' news reader at the time) and successfully all those years ago on the Morecombe and Wise show.

Back then she was seen as an attractive but prim and proper figure of the BBC establishment. She read the evening news with perfect diction (and had the piss taken out of her for her pedantically proper pronunciation on more than one occasion) and not so much as a trace of human emotion (which incidentally, I far prefer to today's faux emotion and judgement as practiced incessantly by the likes of Clive Myrie and that other woman - the one with the constantly arched eyebrow).

But now, fifty years on it's frankly just embarrassing. God, that poor klutz they've got paired up with her in Strictly Come Dancing is earning his shilling. Imagine having to hold that old bundle of sticks together through all of her kicking and swinging routines: one slip and they'll be carrying her out on a stretcher. Not being funny but if that's what people need to entertain them on a Saturday night these days then I don't know what the world is coming to.

Besides, I'll never forgive them for ruining one of my top jokes by the adding of the word 'Strictly' to the show's original title, when it changed from an ordinary dance competition for amateur dancers, to a celebrity dance-off spectacular. I'll repeat it here just for old time's sake.

What's white and shoots across the dance floor? (You guessed it.) Come Dancing!

[peter]

Can I feel there's something in the air tonight, Oh Lord?

Around a year ago an unmarked armed response police vehicle was tailing a vehicle flagged as being involved in an arms incident the previous day, and the officers decided to pull the vehicle over. The car was being driven by 24 year old construction worker and part-time rapper Chris Kaba, and for whatever reason (yet to be determined I believe) during the procedure he was fatally wounded via a shot made by a police officer through the windscreen of the car.

Perhaps Kaba had reached into his glove compartment or made some other movement which had alarmed the officer 'covering' him with his firearm, but whatever it was that precipitated the shot being fired, it was not that he was armed with a gun, because in subsequent search and investigation, no gun was found.

Clearly there was sufficient question about what had happened for the Crown Prosecution Office to feel that a crime had been committed by the officer who fired the fatal shot, because last week he appeared before the court at the Old Bailey charged with murder. And this has precipitated a headache of epic proportions for the Home Secretary Suella Braverman, because in response a third of the metropolitan police's armed officers have handed in their firearms, declining to be involved in the carrying of arms if their doing so can result in their being arraigned for murder for their pains.

And in fairness who can blame them. They receive no additional payment for the carrying of this extra responsibility, and if it (as it often does) puts them in the line of additional danger in their work, and they receive no official support when things (as they inevitably will) go wrong, then why indeed should they do it.

But things are of course, never that simple.

Just as the police can expect the full support of the state that puts them in the firing line, so to can the relatives of victims who may be innocently (or otherwise) caught in the crossfire. Clearly police cannot be given carte blanche to gun down any who stand before them and equally clearly, it was felt in this instance there was a case to answer. Perhaps the police should have been more prepared to give credence to the presumption of innocence that would have applied in this case, just as in all others, and to have trusted to the court to see that justice was properly done, but this is really to miss the point. As I understand it, it seems that the police's actions in handing over their weapons is not so much in unspoken support of their colleague (though this may well factor in their thinking) but in frustration at the failure of the system to recognise the difficulties they face in pursuit of such work and cut them some slack in the light of it.

Home Secretary Braverman has responded to this crisis in support of the police, saying that she recognises the split-second nature of the decisions they have to make, and will put in place measures to stop such criminal charges from being brought. But this in itself has not satisfied all concerned. In this morning's Times Lord MacDonald, KC and former director of Public prosecutions, is reported as having this to say.

The police cannot have a veto over charging decisions made by prosecutors. If thepolice refuse to carry out their duties because an officer is charged, and the Home Secretary supports them, then we have no functional rule of law.

This is no small thing. The rule of law, that we all stand equally beneath it, is a fundamental principle upon which our society is built. To give the police let on this, a 'get out of jail free' card as it were, is not to be considered. The Law must function independent of interference from the executive or it is nothing. We become in effect a police state.

And clearly the decision of officers to hand in their weapons is an act of defiance that puts the Home Secretary in a very difficult position. Without an effective armed response capability in the metropolis, it becomes a virtual free-for-all, a Purge style situation where for armed criminals and terrorists it becomes little less than open season. For this reason Suella Braverman has co-opted in the armed forces to stand ready to fill the spaces that the police have so abruptly vacated. This is far less than perfect, but it is (from her perspective) better than nothing. It sends out a message of reassurance that there remains a deterrent in place against criminal and terrorist related activity and a warning to those who would seek to exploit the situation in the absence of the police, that they will be met with equal, if not greater opposition, should they choose to do so. The army have however been at pains to stress that they cannot be expected to function as controllers of crime situations, having neither the training nor expertise to do so. They will function as they normally would, in terrorist type situations, to control insurrection and quell disorder. Beyond this their capability is limited.

But the whole situation is a difficult one. To have the police involved in effective defiant revolt against whom - the judiciary, the government/state, their superior officers - and to be set against the army in the process, is not a good circumstance for a government to find itself in. And it's not terribly reassuring for the public either. The army is a blunt instrument to rely on for maintenance of public order and the problem is that once government starts doing sit becomes difficult to stop. And given this government's record to date, it isn't a particularly appealing prospect, to have them getting a taste for having 'soldiers on the streets'. It's all getting a bit Belfast, if you know what I mean.

Yes, this is a very serious and concerning situation. The police in their defiant actions (no matter how understandable) and the Home Secretary in her incautious and unthought out support, are undermining one of the foundational pillars upon which our society rests - the Rule of Law. The separation of the Law from the executive (ie the government and police both) and the freedom of the former to operate as it sees fit, beyond the constraints or considerations of the latter. No small thing indeed.

Which brings me on to the second part of this essay/post - call it what you will.

As per usual, over the weekend I have spent no small amount of time listening to YouTube posts and news programs outlining what our government is up to, and have found there to be a certain....how shall I put it.....thread running through what I've been hearing.

It seems that I'm not alone in thinking that there seems to have been some kind of sea-change in the way our polity is acting in respect of the freedoms and democratic norms we have hitherto enjoyed as a nation, and that taken all in all, it's becoming a bit disconcerting.

To start with perhaps the most reactionary individual on my list (though at what point he could ever have been considered an outlier in any previous manifestation or life as we knew it, almost beggars belief in itself), I listened to the Saturday posting of Neil Oliver on YouTube. He was making certain observations about how we were gradually, and underneath the radar, being corralled as a society, into an ever more authoritarian and repressive circumstance, where the state has co-opted ever more power unto itself, to interfering in our lives.

He referred specifically to new laws which allowed our homes to be entered by force, if we are deemed to be falling short in our now legal obligations to follow the nation's green agenda, as outlined by government and backed up by law. If found not to be installing the requisite energy saving devices in a timely manner as bound by law to do so, we can (he told us) be sent to prison for a year, and hit with punitive fines. Okay, I haven't heard of this being done to anyone as yet, but this isn't the point. That it can be done at all is the point he was making and, if what he tells us is true, then I agree with him.

His next point referred to the online safety bill currently passing through legislation in the House. Presented, he told us, as a means to ensure the safety of children on the internet, it was rather a wolf in sheep's clothing that allowed the state to access even our most private communications, by legally obliging service providers to provide means of bypassing encryption devices which they offered to customers, to investigating officers of whatever branch of the state requested them. Privacy of communication would be a thing of the past, should the bill pass, he told us, and yet another of our assumed rights would have been sent to the wall.

Next, still on YouTube, I saw GB news host Mike Graham (who I'm not over keen on to be honest) interviewing respected political grandee David Davis (previous holder of many ministerial positions of high level). They were discussing the continuing existence of the government's secretive office for covid disinformation, which Davis told us had been brought into being during the pandemic in order to attempt to ensure complete compliance with the government position in respect of thinking and policy in dealing with the (so-called) crisis. Anyone who had deviated in any way from the government position had, he told us, been effectively shut down by the office, who had used their powers and contacts to ensure that divergent thinking found no platform to express itself. This was in itself anti-freedom on a level that we as the British public were not used to, but it's continuation beyond the end of the pandemic was, he said, beginning to look a bit Orwellian. It was just during such an emergency as the pandemic that the maximum levels of debate should have been encouraged, he said, but instead highly knowledgeable opinions from some of the country's leading experts were completely closed down from being expressed in the public debate. Not, he told us, the way we should be doing things here. Now you may like Davis or you may not. But he is a respected politician of note and he is in a position to know what is going on behind the scenes.

Lastly I come to the interview on the Sunday political slot in which Sky presenter Trevor Phillips interviewed renowned author and journalist cum commentator Lionel Shriver about her decision to quit the UK to go and live in Portugal. Shriver said she had become increasingly concerned about the direction of travel in the UK, which seemed she said, to e moving in an evermore authoritarian direction. It had first become overtly apparent she said, during the pandemic, when instead of relying on the common sense of people to do what was sensible, they (the government) had immediately imposed the most draconian and putative of top-down measures, based on punishment rather than persuasion. It was sufficiently bad that she now felt it was best to move on to different shores, sad as she was to do so.

Now individually none of these things is of particular note. Well, perhaps they are, but not sufficiently so to have the hair beginning to lift on the back of your neck. But taken together - three totally different sources involving people with totally different perspectives on life, all of whose opinions are worthy of listening to and have to be given respect......and it becomes a bit disconcerting. No government sets out to become authoritarian, and indeed many in the public domain actively feel that a period of 'strong government' is necessary (Andrew Marr said as much recently). But it is by thin slices, by incremental pieces, here and there, and pushed on politicians by events as they occur, that dictatorial regimes are made. By such things as the police suddenly deciding that they don't think much of their lot any more. By Home Secretaries that react, well, reactively and without thought of the consequences of what they say, by the use of the armed forces outside their normal function of defence of the nation. These are the nudges and pressures that take things in unforseen directions, and working with fallible human material, some of which is perhaps more inclined towards the stick than the carrot than it should be.......well, you see what I'm saying.

And just to round it off nicely perhaps I'll finish with another song reference that comes to mind. "There's a bad moon on the rise!"

[peter]

The wall-to-wall coverage of Russell Brand in the media continues apace today with news that the metropolitan police are investigating historical claims against the comedian going back as far as 2003.

Frankly it's dull stuff, being used as a distraction from the important issues that we should really be thinking about. Like the egregious and growing levels of inequality in our society, both income and wealth. Like why people are dying at elevated rates above the normal five year average. Like how our rights and freedoms are gradually being leeched away by an authoritarian state, determined that we will comply to its way of thinking, or be marginalised and shut out, rendered as 'non-person' by an establishment aware that it is reaching the end of its rope and preparing to use fear and repression as means of public control now its cover has been blown. Like the con that was perpetrated on us over the covid debacle; how we were convinced that a virus no more pathogenic than that which we faced without fear or comment every year, would suddenly unleash a wave of death upon us of biblical proportions. How we were plunged almost overnight into a quasi-totalitarian state of societal restriction, our business and economy trashed, our future blighted for generations to come and the world plunged back by decades in a single and all-encompassing outpouring of collective world madness.

None of these things it seems are worthy of comment.Julian Assange rots away in HMP Belmarsh, charged with no crime other than releasing the dirty secrets our administrations would rather we didn't see, but it's Taylor Swift's new boyfriend that we're given to read about. Our national media, both broadcast and print, has become a joke; a vehicle for propoganda, distraction and outright manipulation, worthy of Pravda at its best. "Don't look over there," it screams, "Look over here! Russell Brand has got his cock out again!"

Seriously, I'm not sure how much more of this bullshit I can stand. Our polity is reduced to a sham contest in which identikit politicians with not a sliver of difference between them are presented to us under the guise of choice. The bluster, piss and wind we hear from them on a daily basis has nothing - nothing - in it for the average Joe in the street to get inspired about. No change in the way things work is the order of the day in a society so desperately in need of radical alteration that it's virtually crying tears of blood.

So I'm going to randomly ask some questions, make some points that I think are really worthy of note, of consideration. If you agree (if there is still anyone out there - I don't ever look at viewing figures, and as no-one ever joins me here it's difficult to know) then please take them away with you and think about them, maybe pose them to an MP at election time or something. Anyway - here goes. (Nb. The following is framed from a UK perspective in the main; sorry about that, but there might still be something of interest in there for non Brits.)

1. How is a world that by it's nature is run along competitive lines, supposed to deal with a problem that can only be solved by collective action of an order infinitely beyond anything which has been achieved in course of history. Capitalism simply isn't made up deal with such a problem and the behaviour of our elites, our politicians, in dealing with this exactly exemplifies it. They are incapable of approaching it as anything other than a political problem, to be capitalised on or pushed aside according to the needs of the day. When not doing this, all that remains is to ensure that any meaningful change that is adopted is done so in such a manner that they, the wealthy elite, are not personally affected. The societal nature of climate change, that it affects each and every one of us irrespective of race,creed or religion, escapes them. It's all about "how can I manipulate this to my financial/political/personal gain?"

2. If as we were told, the public have not been levelled with over the costs of net-zero, or if it was an establishment "scheme" to ensure the main costs sat with the ordinary people of this country, bypassing the elite, why has it only been called out as such now. Why did those in the know remain silent until this juncture, until it was politically expedient in terms of securing an election advantage that was otherwise eluding them. Does the future of our planet really fall into second place against possibly winning another election in their book? Or do they simply not believe that man-made climate change is a real problem?

3. Why are we holding upwards of 100,000 people, ready and willing to work, in hotels, immigration centers, containment barges and army compounds up and down the country, and at a cost of six million pounds a day, when we are desperately short of labour? What is to stop these individuals entering the labour market while their applications are processed, thereby supporting themselves and relieving this cost to the Exchequer in the process (not to mention availing ourselves of the tax receipts generated thereby)?

4. How are we to begin to turn around our desperate economic picture when we refuse to acknowledge the devastating effect of Brexit on our performance as a nation? If our leaders will not square up to the reality that we can all see, then what hope can we have. With impediments to trade with our nearest and biggest trading partner firmly in place, and the rest of the world showing no real inclination either to invest or trade with us, how are we supposed to reverse our fortunes? Is not the establishment of conditions conducive to free and easy trade with the EU one of the key challenges that our polity must adress, and is not hiding behind a cloak of euroscepticism at this late stage in the day just making the job more difficult?

And finally,

5. When are we going to start being honest with ourselves about the damage - economical, societal and in terms of health - that our intemperate and disproportionate response to the covid threat has levied on our societies? When are we going to acknowledge that we made a terrible mistake, and did infinitely more damage to ourselves than the virus, even unchecked, could have achieved in our worst nightmares. That the health of the nation has been irrevocably damaged by the use of untested experimental products that should never have been allowed mass rollout until years of trialing and data analysis had been performed? That we relied upon modelling techniques that were compromised and ill thought out at best, and known to be so by their questionable predictive ability in past usage, to wreak havoc on the lives of millions of people who were given no choice but to comply with the mandates foisted upon them in consequence.

Surely, I ask, are these not the things with which our media should be concerning themselves, rather than the putative claims of sexual misconduct being made against a second rate comedian?

[peter]

A few months ago I wrote letter to my MP expressing my concern over the high volume of e-cigerettes I was selling to increasingly younger customers in the store (needless to say following the appropriate age verification). I made a particular point of drawing my representative's attention to the savy marketing techniques that were being utilised, including brightly coloured packaging, names that utilised existing confectionery products to describe the flavouring (bubble gum, candyfloss and cola as examples) and positioning of the products on prominent display near the front or sweet counters.

Consider my amazement then, when on the BBC news last night, they ran a story in which a doctor spoke of his concern about the safety of the products, and outlining (what my MP had essentially said to me in her reply) that the government advice still maintained that vaping was "95 percent" safer than smoking cigarettes (on it's website), but that this figure was now looking somewhat more doubtful.

Hugh Pymm, the BBC health editor, spoke to a woman who had been instrumental in compiling the official advice, and while she conceded that the figure given was now under question, the products remained significantly safer than the alternative (ie smoking proper). What, she said, was important now, was to establish why there was such a sudden increase in the use of these products (and they are referring to the particular type of disposable product I describe above), particularly amongst young people.

It beggared belief.

Here was a government advisor - a supposed expert in the subject - scratching her head as to why these products are of increasing allure to young people, when they are called names like pineapple-ice, banana-suprise and cola-cherry, sold in multicoloured and 3-D packaging and placed next to the sweets! And to add to my nonplussment, not one mention of this marketing and merchandising strategy was referred to in the entire BBC report! Can it seriously be that neither the BBC nor the so called expert on the subject were aware of this? How blindingly stupid could these people be? Or willfully stupid perhaps? Any shop assistant from any corner store in the country could explain why the kids are taking to these the moment they can find someone old enough to buy them for them. I've had eight year olds standing in front of me discussing the flavours that their parents use. Everything about the products are designed to appeal to the young!

I'll sort the problem out in one fell swoop if they want me to. Ban anything but tobacco flavoured products, utilise the same graphic warnings and imagery that are used in the packaging of tobacco products and place the products away from public view, in cabinets or behind counters, and certainly nowhere near sweet products. Job done, without any need for million pound research units or highly paid experts that pretend the situation is a hundred times more complicated than it is simply to maintain their importance and subsequent income from the state.

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

A number of years ago I was fortunate enough to visit Havana and spend a week wandering its streets and soaking up its ambience.

One of the things that struck me was how in any given street (and the houses tended to face right onto the pavements with no gardens between the front doors and the passers-by) was the mix of people you found there. Coloureds would be living next to Asians, Blacks next ro Indians, whites and browns all represented haphazardly in any one quater.

And there seemed to be no problem with this at all. I got no sense of anything relating to race or ethnicity in the country at all; in fact quite the opposite. People just seemed to be interested in getting on with life, not expressing 'who they are' or 'the culture ' that they hailed from. And maybe I'm wrong, but it seemed so natural, so unforced - like it just followed as a consequence of the mixing I was seeing on the streets. That people, when they lived together, rapidly homogenised into one type, the only true type - that of being human.

Thus I find myself oddly in agreement with Suella Braverman, that the project of multiculturalism we have been engaged in in the UK has failed. If my experience in Havana did not deceive me, then their way of doing it seemed infinitely more successful - none of the divisions and animosities of our 'identity' groupings, none of the racial tensions and frictions that exist in our separated but contiguous communities. All that the money spent on promoting 'cultural diversity' in our society seems to have achieved in my book, seems to be division and antagonism, suspicion and grievance.

I'm not going to immediately join the Braverman Fan Club, or agree with her that being a woman gay shouldn't be reasons why you might be justified to come and live here, but on the multiculturalism comment, I think she could well be correct.

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

[peter]

The truth is that everybody and his mother knows why the Tory government have issued licences to go ahead with drilling at the Rosebank oilfield.

No matter how much we hear that it's "good for the economy (probably true) or that it "makes use of our own oil and gas supplies, meaning we won't have to import as much" (absolute bollocks), we all know that these are the thin veneer of 'presentable' excuses being used to cover the underlying real reason. That if you dig deep enough, carve your way down into the dirty and muck ridden layers of how the Tories finance themselves, somewhere, buried far away from public visibility, will be a cash donation.

It'll be deep. We'll never see it - not for decades and probably never - but it'll be there.

And the way it is reported makes the gore rise up in my throat as well. Yesterday on the 'Global News' that features on LBC, Classic FM and other popular radio stations, I heard a Tory MP telling us how if we opened up the field, we would be contributing to our energy needs of the future, and thereby reducing the need for importation of the same, for years into the future, beyond even the 2050 point at which net-zero is supposed to be achieved. This simply isn't true. It has been acknowledged that the bulk of oil produced by Rosebank will be exported and the field will contribute little toward our own fossil fuel needs, either in the near or more distant future. But the news channel saw no reason to qualify the MP's comments by pointing this out.

How, I ask, if people are presented their information in this partial way, with essential qualifying facts that must be known to the providers (unless they are completely inept at their jobs of gathering all the relevant information before putting out reports) being left out, are they supposed to come to informed opinions on such matters? It stinks, and it has the Conservative Party's smell of rank corruption all over it.

(Nb. This is supposed to be in the 'What do you think today' thread, but I hit the wrong frikkin button to post it as a new thread instead, and it wouldn't let me post it any other way. If a mod out there could transfer it across then so much the better. If not, then I'll let it stay as a standalone, because its important in its own right. Well - I think so anyway. )