the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I know that we in what is almost certainly the most terrifying, confusing and anxious time for any human to be alive. There are more things wrong in this world than at any other time in its history, and if the past is anything to go by, future generations will look back and on this time with incredulity and ask, “You only had climate change, droughts, floods heatwaves, famine, and wars to worry about? Was that all?”

But the thing that annoys me most is the never ending noise. I don’t mean noise in some allegorical or figurative sense, but in the literal sense. I know its a first world problem but a first world problem is still a problem and one that seems all the more problematic because there’s nothing I can do about it.

As recounted previously in this blog, about two years ago the landlords of my old house decided they wanted to take back possession of it, with predictable consequences for me. Fortunately, my good friend Nosferatu lives in a house with enough space and invited me to share. Fandabbidosy. The only downside to this offer was that she lives in a row of terraced houses in a part of North London, where it seems everyone either wants a loft conversion or an extension. And when they’re finished, sell it only for the new buyers to gut the entire property and start again. It’s like a game of endless domino’s. A loft conversion is started and within a couple of weeks of it being finished an extension will be started at someone else’s house and when that’s finished, another couple of weeks will pass before work starts repairing someone’s roof and well, you get the idea.

According to Nosreatu, to whom I have mentioned this problem repeatedly and at some length, part of the problem is that I haven’t lived in a terraced house for over 30 years. When she wants to wind me up she calls me ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ on account of the fact that, as she says ‘You’ve always lived in Victorian hunting lodges and now you’re slumming it’, which I is unfair, given only one my previous abodes had a servants entrance.

But having gotten really quite used to the idea of peace and quiet, it is something of a rude awakening – literally – to be woken up by scaffolders noisy drilling their erections together. And that annoys me, why is it only in the morning they seem to work? Come afternoon they are nowhere to be heard. I know that every council has different regulations as to what time work can start but do they also have rules as to when it stops.

In the hot weather, sleeping with the window open is essential but I have to endure the bothering of my ears caused by the neighbours noisy vermin every morning. Early, and by early I mean 6.30 am early. Saturdays too, their shouting and screaming remaining unfettered by any notion of parental responsibility because one mustn’t curtail their freedom of expression. I’ve suggested to Nosferatu that I find a recording of screaming children, looping it so it lasts for hours, and playing it through a speaker that I’ve hung out of my bedroom window. A call to go back to bed.

But that, I’m told, is anti-social. As I wrote earlier, I know my problem with noise is a first world problem but a first world problem is still a problem and one that seems all the more problematic because there’s nothing I can do about it

The news that Harvey Weinstein has been granted an appeal of his 2020 conviction of rape and other sexual assaults should gladden the heart of anyone who believes in justice. It probably won’t but it should. The decision to grant his appeal isn’t an opportunity for him to protest his innocence, but more one that is based on his defence teams claim that he didn’t get a fair trial. The New York Sate of Appeals clearly decided that enough evidence was presented to them to warrant closer scrutiny of their assertion that he didn’t get a fair trial. Thats it.

The right to a far trial, together with a presumption of innocence, is rather like free speech. It either applies to everyone, regardless of what they are alleged to have done, or it applies to no-one. Its that simple. And the right to a fair trial should be a cornerstone of the judicial system of a state country that isn’t shy about admonishing other countries for their somewhat flexible interpretation of those principles.

But, as the song said ‘Times they are a changing’, and the times are indeed troubling. Now, one has to be merely alleged to have done something and if enough people believe it to be true, or if enough of the right people can whip up a social media outcry that makes others believe the allegation true, then that presumption of innocence is worthless as the hot air of those who proclaim guilt. Allegations are just that, allegations. Some have more credibility than others certainly but they are not in and of themselves evidence of anything. Does anyone remember Carl Beech?

It’s always baffled me when a judge instructs a jury to put out of their mind everything they seen or heard about the trial they are to give a verdict on, not to discuss the evidence with anyone and to ignore any coverage of it. To me that is as likely to happen as when a judge instructs a jury to disregard something a witness has just said, or when witnesses swear to tell the truth. What is truth, when everyone is now entitled to claim their own version of it.

My point is that a jury is aware that some trials are more controversial than others. How could they not be? They are members of the same society and subject to the same prevailing cultural orthodoxies that hold sway in the society in which the trial is taking place. Likewise, they will be aware of the impact both on them and wider society of their verdict If the trial is controversial enough and inflames passions sufficiently, that there’ll be protesters angrily demanding this or that, claiming that the verdict proves this or that. Certainly in America and therefore, soon enough, here.

So it’s foolish in the extreme to imagine that jurors are unaware of this, that it plays no part in their determination of innocence or guilt. That they can ignore the sounds of an angry mobs outside the court building and the police needed to separate them? Remain blissfully unaware of what people are saying on social media and which conventional media then reports on? I know I couldn’t.

I’m not saying that I think Harvey Weinstein is innocent. I don’t know if he he is or isn’t, and more importantly, neither does anyone else. Of greater importance is not only that he gets a fair trial, but that he’s seen to get one. He, like every other American is entitled to a fair trial. Whether he’ll get one second time around is another matter.

Until yesterday I never knew why Andrew Tate was suddenly in the news. Sadly, now I do and my life is none the better for it it. I read an article about him in spiked, and wished I hadn’t. If you wish to, be my guest but be aware that he combines the charm of a snarling Rottweiler with the wokeness of Bernard Manning. As far as I’m concerned, not to the sort of bloke who embodies qualities, attitudes and values that a man should have in this, let alone day and age.

But maybe I’m wrong, maybe now is exactly the time for hateful misogyny, maybe there is an audience for unique blend of violent and crass consumerism and ridiculous posturing. After all, Last month, there were more Google searches for Andrew Tate than for Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian combined. As of last week, he had 4.7million followers on Instagram – a huge jump from the one million he had in June. And on TikTok, videos tagged with Tate’s name had been watched an astonishing 12 billion times up until last week. Clearly, he appeals to some. Quite why this so baffles me, but that isn’t the point.

What is the point is that Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and now You Tube have all banned him. But this isn’t borne out of some moral repugnance or some other high-minded virtue. No, all of them have equivocated and claimed their rules weren’t broken when allowing other, more extreme, more hateful and more offensive materials to remain on their platforms. Rather, it seems to me, that He has committed the grievous sin of using their business model, which monetarizes the content its users generate, makes him and them money, and in so doing, has shown what truly matters to them. Not so much profit before principles but profits being principal.

In an attention economy, the one in which they operate, causing offence can be like hyper-inflation. And offence is a bit like pornography, difficult to define but we know it when we see it. Whats offensive to one may not be to another, so it’s a bit hypocritical for these huge corporations to suddenly develop a moral line in the sand, as it would be for Richard Desmond to suddenly become outraged of Tunbridge Wells.

A few years ago, shortly after the attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo by Islamic terrorists who thought that an appropriate way to object to some cartoons they didn’t like was to shoot dead some of their staff, I wrote the following; “Free speech is easy to defend when you agree with what the person is saying or writing, but less so when you find what they’re expressing offensive. That is the dichotomy of free speech. If you believe in it you have to believe that it applies to everyone or else it applies to no one. As Voltaire said “I may not agree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”.

Yes, I find Andrew Tates opinions as reported offensive, but the more offensive something is, the greater the obligation to defend the principal of free speech. I haven’t seen myself what has been banned but I chose not to see it, the decision was mine and mine alone and free speech means extending that choice to everyone, regardless of how they exercise it. Censorship is worse than the thing being censored but in this new digital world of ours, some speech is freer than others, especially when profits are involved.

I know that ‘The Daily Mail’ has a lot of detractors, from those who complain about it’s right-wing stance, to those whom object to its online version being so ready to stand in judgement against those who flout their own hypocritical moral code. I get that, I really do, and there’s a lot more not to like about it, but one thing one can never accuse it of is not being consistent. I mean it’s consistent in much the same way that the British weather, your favourite football team and visit to a hairdresser you’ve never been to before is, consistent in that one is never quite sure what to expect. Sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s very bad, very rarely it’s good, but even rarer still is it both really good and really bad at the same time. Occasionally, it’s Schrodinger’s newspaper!

Yesterday evening I happened to browse ‘The Daily Mail’ webshite, because there’s only so much doom and gloom elsewhere in the news and occasionally I like to switch off and look at an adult comic. I was left speechless by their top story, the one that greeted the viewers eye’s before anything else, and one that was uncharacteristically critical of Baldie and the Parasites.

“How many more homes can the ‘slimmed-down’ royals justify? At a time of an exploding cost-of-living crisis affecting working families up and down the country, the use of additional properties looks clumsily insensitive, writes RICHARD KAY”

The article couched it’s criticism in the mildest of tones, but there was no mistaking the seething anger behind it. An example was contained in this telling excerpt;

“Naturally, it is only fair to point out that Prince William and Kate are meeting the cost of renting Adelaide Cottage themselves and that, because of its location within Windsor Home Park, it needs, we are told, no extra taxpayer-funded security nor a costly refurbishment.” The unspoken thought, that immediately popped in to every readers head was ‘WTF’.

How is it that a married couple with three young children and no jobs, can afford three houses, send their children to public school without taxpayer support. We, the taxpayer, pay for everything they do. ‘Extra taxpayer funded’ is rubbing it in because it means that it’s just the normal amount of taxpayer support they’re getting. Their sole source of income is the taxpayer. And the houses. Their houses are houses in the same way that a tiger is cat, Concorde was plane or Boris’s Johnson is faithful.

Normally, “The Daily Mail’ is nothing but fawningly differential to the whole criminal enterprise, except of course for Harried and Dan, who have jacked the whole thing in and turned their back on wealth and privilege here by deciding to try and attain more wealth elsewhere and to do that by re-inventing themselves as leaders in the battle for virtue.

Anyway, the article had vanished from the front page of the online edition this morning. If one were suspicious, one might think that Baldie’s media team had intervened, had a few words with 4th Viscount Rothermere, the ‘Mails owner and had the story pulled. Indeed, so too were two other stories pulled about Baldie and his move, his children going to a public school, although none was as critical – meekly, it has to be said – as the one described. That a deal had been done, whereby in return for removing the story, Mail hacks would be given special access to them on their next foreign jolly or something.

Aren’t you glad that you live in a land with a free and fair press!

One thing that unites all Conservative politicians is their belief in the free market and that the freer they can make the market by reducing regulation and thereby incentivising greed, resulting in a necessarily beneficial effect on their profits. Without profits, so the thinking is, the less taxation can be accused by the state, and the less tax revenues the state has to spend so reductions in public services will be a regrettable consequence. This, of course is, is bollocks. But the Tories think that they all say this often enough, eventually people will believe it and forget about changes to tax law that favour business coupled with staff cuts in HMRC investigation units.

This was proved once again by MC Hammer, who at a Conservative Party hustings in Cheltenham a few weeks ago said’ I absolutely don’t support a windfall tax (on the energy companies) because it’s a Labour idea and it’s all about bashing business. It sends the wrong message to international investors and the public.” This says a lot about her and none of it is good.

Firstly, just because you didn’t come up with the idea doesn’t in and of itself make it a bad idea. On the contrary, it makes you look petty, as if any idea that doesn’t match ones own ideologically rigid dogma can be easily dismissed. Secondly, what message is opposition to a one-off windfall tax sending out?Well to international investors it’s essentially saying ‘Fill your boots, because if I become PM, nothing will change, it’ll be business as usual.”

And to the public it says “We really don’t care and why indeed would we? Do we use the NHS? Send our children to state schools? When was the last time any of us used public transport? We don’t live where you do, so crime isn’t a worry for us. Nor do we have to concern ourselves with social services. I mean as far as we’re concerned are social services are things like Glynebourne, grouse shooting and dominatrix’s but apart from that, not so much. Care for the elderly? You’re joking, aren’t you? They’re a revenue burden whilst doing nothing but complain while coffin dodging. Housing? Farming? The environment? Inequality? Now you’re just taking the piss.”

So perhaps today wasn’t the best day for a study to report that that average pay for FTSE 100 chiefs had risen by 39% since 2020, meaning that their average salary was £3.4 million or 109 times more than the average working person. And their bonuses increased too, from £828,000 in 2020, to £1.4 million.

Carry on filling your boots because it’s business as usual!

It has become an unfortunate political truism that politicians, especially Conservative Cabinet members, are out of touch with the day to day reality of ordinary peoples lives. This most especially true when, as MC Hammer demonstrated today, that despite being within touching distance of winning the Conservative Party leadership contest, she felt the need to prove this with what she thought was an innovative and creative solution to the help with the cost of existing crisis.

Maybe it’s her estimated £8.4 million fortune, or maybe it’s her £155,000 parliamentary salary that causes her to think that her idea that, as ‘The Guardian‘ reported today

“GPs could write prescriptions for money off energy bills for the most vulnerable under a plan drawn up by the Treasury, as Liz Truss’s team signalled more help with costs now forecast to top £6,000 next year.

The unusual proposal would mean people could consult their doctor for an assessment on whether they are struggling enough to require help with their bills.”

Has she tried to get a GP appointment lately? In London getting a GP appointment involves having the perseverance of a snail combined with the patience of a saint and loads of free time. And I bet GP’s are thrilled with this, not having enough to do as we all know, for having yet another layer of bureaucratic nonsense to contend with.

But in the deluded mind of MC Hammer, this idea makes perfect sense, until of course it doesn’t, and is quietly dropped like the flaming turd it is and forgotten about.

This week two news stories, which are on the face of it wholly unrelated, to me represent some of the things that are wrong with modern Britain, symptomatic of the cultural bandwagoning to which it seems we are tethered. Or perhaps it is me that having failed to keep moving with the times, finds himself a values dinosaur, stubbornly clinging to outmoded attitudes, which grow ever more outmoded with every passing day. I think not, but in the famous words of Christine Keeler, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

‘The Guardian’ among other news outlets carried the story that an advert for Crown Paints had resulted in 215 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority because it tells;

“The story of Hannah and Dave who met at an illegal rave four years ago, have settled down and are expecting a baby. It features them painting the spare room with a chorus of two dozen imaginary singers on their paint roller telling the couple’s story.

Dave wanted a baby and Hannah did not but then “one day out the blue” she did, throwing herself at Dave. The song continues: “Now the baby’s coming and they don’t know what it is. Hannah’s hoping for a girl, Dave’s just hoping that it’s his.”

Of course people were angry about this. Of course they were. They were so immediate with their complaints, with so many of them claiming the advert was ‘misogynistic’, suggesting that it implied ‘Hannah slept around’ and was ‘sexist’, ‘in poor taste’ and generally did something they found worthy of complaint, a cynic might imagine they were all members of the same Facebook group. Or being superbly over-vigilant in their interpretation of what ‘sexism’ was.

Maybe they’re not, maybe they feel that the advert devalues what it is to be a woman in todays Britain. If so, they might’ve been cheered by the response from Crown Paints, which said Hannah was “an empowered female character, comfortable in making her own decisions and in control of if and when she changes her mind”. Bear in mind that this is an advert for paint and that people are complaining about the portrayal of someone doesn’t actually exist in the real world. What does exist in the real world, is actually worthier of the charge of misogyny was the news, as widely reported as it was criticised, that a council had appointed a man as period dignity officer.

No, I didn’t know what one was either or indeed why one was needed, but recently the Scottish Parliament has passed the Period Product Act, which means in very simple terms, that every toilet in a building receiving public funds is now legally required to make period products as freely available as they do toilet paper. So it’s a good thing and when one pauses to think about it, long overdue.

But appointing a man? Really? The BBC reported that

‘Mr Grant is expected to lead a regional campaign across schools, colleges and wider communities to raise awareness of the new law and ensure that Scottish government funding is allocated appropriately.

The job advert said the suitable candidate needed a “successful track record of engaging and empowering a large range of people from a diverse range of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, in particular young people who menstruate”.

Let’s ignore the nonsense of ‘young people who menstruate’ because we know that it’s any woman who hasn’t yet had the menopause who do that and instead consider what were the qualities that made him the best man for a job that should’ve gone to a woman. According to the BBC, he worked as an account manager at Imperial Tobacco, before becoming a personal trainer with his own business prior to being a wellbeing officer at Dundee and Angus College. And that’s it. Wow

If that isn’t an insult to women then I’m Henry VIII.

Although it seems various news outlets and politicians struggle with the idea of yes, there is a cost of living crisis causing hardship and misery to millions of people and that something needs to be done about it, but no, that something isn’t some of those same millions wanting better pay and conditions and withdrawing their labour until their employers do so. To them, the workers should ask nicely and being told no, should know their place and shut up about it.

The Daily Mail, which always takes a stance of principled neutrality in these matters, chose to sum it up in a headline that fulminated;

Fresh woe for passengers as train workers strike AGAIN and Grant Shapps blasts union bosses who are ‘hell-bent on causing as much misery as possible’

Not to be out done, with an almost weary predictability ‘The Daily Telegraph’ claimed,

Rail strikes: Britons face fresh travel chaos with only 20pc of train services running

Before helpfully putting the boot in by quoting Transport Secretary Grant Shats, who said: “It’s clear, from their co-ordinated approach, that the unions are hell-bent on causing as much misery as possible to the very same taxpayers who stumped up £600 per household to ensure not a single rail worker lost their job during the pandemic.

“Sadly, union chiefs have short memories and will be repaying this act of good faith by ruining millions of hard-working people’s summer plans.”

Am I missing something here? Of course the strikes should be co-ordinated. Indeed there should even more strikes, more co-ordination, until employers and the government realise that a pay offer well below the rate of inflation is effectively a pay cut. Those ‘millions of hard-working people’ who Shats cares about so much are realising that the strikers of today are themselves tomorrow. They’re in the same boat. And with timing that seemed impeccable, if not actually clairvoyant, today came the news that P&O Ferries will not face any criminal charges relating to the mass sacking, some by text, others by email, of 800 staff in March.

So while people will no doubt take to Twitter to detail the hardship endured by having to do this, or missing that, they might also reflect on the fact that everything isn’t always about them.

In fairness to The Daily Mail, not something I thought I’d ever write, it did add this from Shats. Although as it did come at the bottom of the piece, the word ‘buried’ leaps to mind,

He told Sky News on Friday: ‘What I do know and I can say for sure is if we can’t get this settled in the way that we are proposing, which is, ‘Please put the deal to your membership’, then we will have to move to what is called a section 188; it is a process of actually requiring these changes to go into place so it becomes mandated.”

Hats off Shats, cometh the hour, cometh the charlatan.

Once in while, I learn of something that re-affirms my faith in human nature. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t happen very often, which makes it all the more joyous when it does.

Earlier in the week I saw a headline in ‘The Guardian’ informing me that the supermarket chain Iceland was going to introduce loans to help their customers to buy food and so help alleviate some of the pressures posed by the cost of living crisis. Being a tad cynical, I immediately imagined this to be yet another example of capitalism at work, but didn’t realise I was both right and wrong.

Wonderfully wrong, as it turned out.

In an an interview on Radio 4 on Wednesday, the CEO of Iceland explained that this idea had been three years in the planning, had been piloted in some of the most deprived parts of the UK for eighteen months and was designed and run in conjunction with a not for profit, government supportedcharity. Yes, he admitted, that when they ran the pilot interest was charged, but Iceland had subsequently decided to absorb that cost themselves. Yes, the loans would have to be repaid, but if customers struggled with repayments, the debt wouldn’t be sold on, but instead the customer would be helped and not harassed he said. With the truism ‘if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is’ running around my brain, I did a quick Google search and found this on the ITV news website:

“Customers can only take out one loan at a time, during six windows throughout the year that coincide with school holidays. 

This is to help parents keep cupboards stocked at a time when children on free school meals are at risk of hunger during the holidays.

By limiting loans to these periods, the supermarket hopes the scheme will allow customers to use them to smooth out incomes, rather than rely on them year-round.”

It just got better and better. I must confess to feeling a sense of optimism, that this might be a portent of a new way of doing things, that business would finally realise that it is a part of society, and not think of society as a revenue generator. This idealism lasted for all of less than a day when I learned of the tariff deficit scheme.

Ostensibly a way of keeping energy bills at current levels and avoiding the eye-watering price increases which are coming, it turns was soon revealed to be a scheme dreamed up by schemers. Energy companies and banks, whose motives were pure. Pure greed, that is. One website clarified exactly what it actually did

“ScottishPower and Eon discussed plans with ministers for a tariff deficit fund, supported by banks, that would be underwritten by a government guarantee.  

Such a fund could freeze the cap on annual energy tariffs at £1,971, which analysts forecast could otherwise rise to £4,000 next year, for two years. 

The cost would be paid back over a decade to 15 years through surcharges on bills or taxes under the latest proposals. “

So, instead of a windfall tax or any other socially responsible undertaking, banks and energy companies, in collusion with the government, have maintained their own self-serving greed, and trying to con us into thinking they’re the ones doing us the favour into the bargain. I know, shocking right?

That would be the banks who the taxpayer bailed out after the global financial crisis. That would be the energy companies that post obscenely large profits. That would be welcoming plans for yet another government bailout when faced with the Covid crisis in the form of the furlough scheme, a furlough scheme moreover that has saddled the taxpayer with huge debt, but when faced with a crisis that threatens their bottom line, they have concocted a fix whereby the everyone except for the taxpayer benefits. Fix it certainly is.

Talk about having your cake and eating it.

Well can they? I’m mean, I’m not so stupid as to try myself, but I’d certainly contribute to a fund to help pay for someone else to launch a private prosecution. I’ve grown up both hearing and believing that no-one is above the law, and if indeed that is the case, then shouldn’t that apply just as much to the police as anyone else? Additionally we’re meant to take some comfort in the assurance that we’re policed by consent, although quite when that consent was ever asked for or given escapes me. And given that the claim is made by both the police and the very people who make the laws the police enforce, it’s not exactly a comforting thought, is it? Well, maybe to you it is.

I was ruminating on this point this morning to try and focus on something other than the noise one of the neighbours was making as he was sweeping up his patio’d garden at 7.30 am. Thankfully, I was already awake. His daughter, who I presume is a toddler based on the fact she utters no sounds that could be interpreted as words, compensates for this by sounding like a very loud and very angry Donald Duck. She began her animated ear bothering at 7.20, her parents having thoughtfully opened their garden doors, clearly unaware that other people might have a tinsy-winsy problem with this. But as she’s be doing it some months now, and no-one has yet succumbed to the temptation to record their daughters dulcet tones and play it back to them at midnight, they must think not.

Anyway, I wasn’t thinking of infanticide. Instead I was thinking about Darren Brady, who was arrested for sharing a meme on social media that had caused someone to feel anxious. Even though it isn’t an offence in England and Wales yet, the police did what they always do – in my experience anyway – when challenged to legally justify something for which there is no legal justification, they simply made something up. So basically, someone had reported this, and instead of the police not saying ‘go away’, they dispatched two officers to visit him twice, the first time to tell him someone had complained, the second to arrest him. Between those two visits you would’ve hoped that sense would prevail, that the police would see the trumpery moonshine for the trumpery moonshine it was.

But no. It was either a slow day or it was nearing the end of the month and someone hadn’t reached their arrest targets, but either way, the police were wasting their own time. It got me thinking of angry Donald. She makes me anxious. If I wake up and if it’s early morning and I can’t hear her, I know it’s a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’.

One of the ‘whens’ being when I’ll hurl the contents of my chamber pot at her.