Admittedly, my previous post wasn’t me in the best japester mode you’ve never come to expect.
So who better than the Dark Lord of comedy, Chris Morris, and the occasion he asked John Selwyn-Gummer to help him record the news in advance, to help lighten the mood?
Several large hats off!
Even though it was 1994, Europe was still an issue….
I’ve just this minute found the time to share a thought that struck me at 5am this morning and I know that you’re gagging like an excited gimp to read.
But before we get to that, a confession. The title of this series of blogs is ‘My Election Notes 2019’ and I measure off the days until election day with what I imagine to be entertainingly idiosyncratic observations. No matter how delusional that might be, it struck me this morning that I’m a day presumptive, that in fact my timeline is wrong. This got me thinking. What days would we like never to have happened?
For some inexplicable reason I thought of Grenfell Tower and the appalling loss of life, the reasons why the tower refurbishment had used that cladding, the scandalous way the survivors have been treated – some are still living in ‘temporary’ accommodation – and the general lack of any political urgency bought to bear on avoiding a repeat. We know, for example, that a number of similar blocks have been covered in that cladding, but has anything been done? Did the government immediately seek to identify other premises so affected and insist that the work be done, with the threat of prosecution a very real possibility? We know the answer and we also know that if a similar tragedy had happened at Glyndebourne, then there would have been a greater urgency by the authorities, swifter action and less inertia.
And then I thought of Legionnaires Disease and Randy Shilts ‘s powerful account of the early days of HIV/Aids in America ‘And the Band Played On’. He draws the comparison between the American political and medical establishments reaction to Legionnaires Disease and it’s response to HIV/Aids. It only got its name because a few – 25 – attendees of an American Legion convention died. Lots more fell ill because of this medical mystery. That was July/August 1976. Six months later, the Center for Disease Control had identified the cause, a form of pneumonia, spread through poorly maintained air conditioning units. Legislation was passed to prevent this happening again. At about the same time young men were dying of a mystery illness. But in this case, it took years before a comparably urgent response was forthcoming, indeed the first time the US president Ronald Reagan mentioned the word Aids was when he spoke of Rock Hudson. By then thousands of young American men had died.
But they were the wrong sort of Americans, just like to victims of Grenfell were the wrong type of victims. Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others?
US President Donald Trump has called Justin Trudeau “two-faced” over a video in which the Canadian leader appears to mock him at a meeting of Nato leaders.
Firstly, isn’t he doing a good enough job of it himself that he needs help?
Secondly, Justin has form for having two faces…
For any reader who thought my yesterdays post was unduly pessimistic, here is something I spotted in yesterdays Guardian,
Decade of ‘exceptional’ heat likely to be hottest on record, experts say
World Meteorological Organization says 2019 is likely to be second or third warmest year ever
The last decade has been one of “exceptional” heat around the world, and was almost certainly the hottest on record, while the oceans have also warmed to record levels and grown markedly more acidic, the World Meteorological Organization has said.
Am I shocked by this? In a word, no. Because this is a wholly predictable effect, one that happens when you take a problem of hydra like magnitude and first ignore it, then claim more research needs to done, and then when the research is done, debate what the research actually means.
The article abounds with bad news. It ends with this nugget,
During the past year, the upper levels of the oceans, measured since the 1950s, have exceeded previous records so far this year, and the ocean experienced about 1.5 months of unusually warm temperatures, with large areas of the north-east Pacific showing severe heatwaves. The Arctic sea ice minimum in September was the third smallest on record. The final version of the report will be published in March.
Ah. Just what we need. Another report telling us something we already sort of know, but confirms it with details, examples, graphs, experts. Grim, to be sure, yet provides the faintest glimmer of hope that we can avoid the inevitable.
One question though. If we didn’t do it then, why do we imagine we’ll do it now?
Oh good, the irony police have been out in force again these last few days, valiantly attempting to prevent dangerous amounts of pollutants making people sick. Climate change has presented them with a huge challenge, not just because of the fact that polluting countries are doing the very opposite of what need to be doing, but because of all the hot air generated at conferences like COP25 taking place in Madrid right now, it gives people false hope, making them prone to virtue sickness.
As proof of this, I offer the news that,
Putin and Xi oversee launch of landmark Russian gas pipeline to China
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Monday oversaw the launch of a landmark pipeline that will transport natural gas from Siberia to northeast China, an economic and political boost to ties between Moscow and Beijing.
The move cements China’s spot as Russia’s top export market and gives Russia a potentially enormous new market outside Europe. It also comes as Moscow is hoping to launch two other major energy projects — the Nord Steam 2 undersea Baltic gas pipeline to Germany and the TurkStream pipeline to Turkey and southern Europe.
That’s right. We know we should be divesting ourselves of fossil fuels; the one’s that do all the damage, those one’s, the one’s that they properly belong in the ground. But this, after all this the China whose
Appetite for coal power returns despite climate pledge
Capacity rose by 42.9GW in 18 months, far outpacing global efforts to cut use of fossil fuel
China’s growing appetite for new coal-fired power stations has outstripped plant closures in the rest of the world since the start of last year, data shows.
Mind you, not wanting to be outdone, Ursula van de Lyen, Europe’s Commisoner for Hot Air increased the amount of hot air to dangerous limits when she made the bold announcement that,
“I want Europe to become first climate neutral continent” –
That would be the Europe that has Poland and Germany in it? Two economies massively dependent on coal. That one. To be fair, she at least had the good manners to announce this at COP25, which has as one of its sponsors one of Spain’s largest energy suppliers. A conference where everyone can agree something must be done, and be done soonish, but no-one can agree on what that something is, only that someone else needs to do it first.
I was thinking about this last night, how humanity is doomed, doomed but still futilely believes something can be done, in much the same way that anyone who votes Conservative next week imagines that Brexit will be done. Driving through London, with countless office blocks lit up, new one’s being built next to one’s standing empty, all modern and shiny, and I thought ‘Yeah, switching off a light in my house will do as much use as a fart in a hurricane.’
As I pointed out on this blog before, I think the best thing now for the good of the planet is the extinction of our species. Had we acted much sooner, possibly the worst effects could be mitigated. But no, we didn’t and now it’s too late. Well that’s how I see it anyway, unclouded by sentiment or emotion.
Tragic and needless, the deaths of the two London Bridge terror attack victims have dominated the election campaign, with all the parties seeking to apportion blame anywhere else but on them. The news too has been consumed by it, detailing the victims lives, their friends and families shock and devastation and tales of acts of selfless bravery by onlookers that subdued the attacker, preventing an even higher death toll.
It must be because I’m brain damaged that I think of the173 mainly women last year who were murdered in acts of domestic violence. That’s more than 3 a week. But because their deaths occur in different parts of the UK and at different times to each other, they don’t get the same level of attention. I’m not suggesting that one death is more deserving of our attention than another, because sudden bereavement, the overwhelming grief and sense of loss is the same no matter what the cause.
What I am suggesting is that the London Bridge terror attack fits fits into an easier to explain media narrative than domestic violence deaths. There is the dead terrorist, the victims and the heroes. We get their backstories. Politician’s blame each other. This we know. because it follows a pattern after such atrocities. But after a death caused by domestic violence? Too difficult to explain. Yes, there is the killer, but so might there be other factors; difficult to explain, because the causes are unique to the crime. Relationship problems. Relationships ending. Custody disputes. Mental health issues. So called ‘honour killings’. And so on.
But such factors can impact upon each other and don’t lend themselves to easy to understand narratives. They require effort from us, at at time when we don’t want to give it. Added to this, is austerity and cuts to public services which exacerbate all of the above.
We all want answers, just not difficult one’s.
At the moment I’m watching ‘The Leaders Debate -Election Special’ on ITV, and one thought above all others strikes me, namely would someone please throw the host a lifebelt, as she’s so clearly out of her depth.
In the film ‘Kramer versus Kramer’ where a marriage is ending in a bitter divorce the father, facing losing custody of their son, asks the court to, ‘Show me the law that says the is the mother the better parent by virtue of her sex?”
In much the same way, it has always baffled me is how is it, that just by dint of someone being a woman or B.A.M.E, that they are in somehow imbued with greater insight into the concerns of the electorate, than a white male?
It seems to me that other factors play a far more important role. What did their parents do? Were they affluent, or did they claim benefits? As a child what were their parent’s aspirations for them? What school did they attend? Was there an expectation that they’d do to university? Indeed, if they did they go to university, which one was it? What was their peer group there and what is it now? Have they ever had a job outside of politics and if so, what was it? And so on.
Factors such as this – social one’s – I would contend, could have more of an influence on one’s outlook than mere gender or skin colour alone. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that sexism or racism aren’t daily experiences faced by millions of people everyday, in countless ways, and these can and will have an influence. What I am saying is that that the one’s life chances are massively helped or hindered by the womb you happen to pop out from. That’s luck, nothing more. Everything that happens to one from that point on depends on that random act of chance. Someone born into life of comparative privilege, comfort and ease, will not, I contend, by dint of being a woman or B.A.M.E, be a better candidate for election solely on that basis.
I was struck by this truism on Friday night, whilst watching ‘The Leaders Debate’ on the BBC. Consider please Rishi Sunak, who was standing in for the interview averse Boris’s Johnson. A look at Wikipedia tells us,
Rishi Sunak was born on 12 May 1980 in Southampton Hampshire to Yashvir and Usha Sunak. His father Yashvir was a GP and his mother Usha was a pharmacist who ran a local pharmacy. His early education was at the independent school Winchester College, where he was head boy. Sunak then studied Philosophy, Politics, Economics at Lincoln College Oxford. After graduating, he obtained an MBA from Stanford University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
All that tells us is that his parents instilled in him the importance of academic achievement as a means of improving one’s life chances, and had made some lifestyle choices in order to send him to private school. Isn’t that what a parent should do, want a better life for their child then they had for themselves? His parents might have managed to get him a bursary or he could have earned a scholarship? Well done them if they did. Going to a public school and then Oxford doesn’t in and of itself necessarily provide any clues as what his future might be.
He worked as an analyst at investment bank Goldman Sachs. Sunak then worked for hedge fund management firm The Children’s Investment Fun, becoming a partner in September 2006. He left in November 2009to join other former colleagues at new hedge fund firm Theleme Partners which launched in October 2010 with an initial $700 million.
How is his background, education and employment history is in any way markedly different to any other Conservative Cabinet Minister? When I listened to him on Friday night, he sounded just like all the other posh boys who think that inexplicably they have an inalienable right to govern. That isn’t to doubt him to be fine and decent chap, but does a life of relative ease and privilege – relative to that endured by most people – give that much of an insight into the everyday concerns of everyday people? I’m not suggesting it precludes it, but I am suggesting it makes it much more unlikely.
We do not live in an egalitarian society, one where talent will out. A disproportionally small amount of the population go to a public school or to a Oxford or Cambridge, but of those that do, a disproportionally large amount of them will become MP’s, Cabinet Ministers and Prime Ministers. The irony is that even as we’re told we do live in an egalitarian society and that where you were born and to whom needn’t affect ones chances, state schools will see their funding cut even more, even more parents will turn to public schools for their children. Well those who can afford to anyway.
One might argue that as a white, heterosexual male, I’ve been the recipient of white privilege and therefore know not of what I write. Certainly there hasn’t been much white privilege in my life, but then am I best placed to judge?
In 1919, Max Weber, the social and political theorist helpfully defined the state as.
“As the sole grantor of the ‘right’ to physical force. Therefore, ‘politics’ in our case would mean the pursuit for a portion of power or for influencing the division of power whether it is between states, or between groups of people which the state encompasses.”
Essentially it means that only the state has the legitimate use of violence within it’s borders and therefore in return for obeying the laws the state makes, the state has to keep it’s citizen’s safe. It’s a trade off. We surrender our individual right to use violence, and give that right to the state.
For the most part this works. Last night it didn’t. Some might say that its too early to apportion blame, but they’d be the same people who helped create the conditions that facilitated the attack on London Bride. Precisely in an election campaign is when we should be looking for the ‘whys’, when our minds are focused on the loss of life. ‘Our thoughts and prayers’ are of scant comfort to the bereaved if the same ‘whys’ create yet more bereaved families in the future.
So it is all well and good for Boris’s Johnson to pay tribute to the police and emergency services for their quick response, but that would be the same Boris’s Johnson, who now Prime Minister of a Conservative government that has cut police numbers by 20,000. Actually, they haven’t, the police forces have, but that’s because their funding has been slashed.
Same too with other, more indirect factors, no-one of which in isolation caused this, but when added together helps create the mindset that makes someone think that such an act is justified. If years of austerity, and underfunding have made cuts to council services, schools, housing, the welfare system an inevitability, then why should someone feel part of a society that has shown little regard for them?
Littered throughout the Brexit party contract there is this phrase, a Clean Break Brexit’ which they use time and time again, without ever once explaining what it is, or more importantly, what its implications might be. But they do, however, make sure that the really important matters are addressed, such as this are,
Make the Civil Service more accountable to the public – we would require civil servants to sign an oath to act with political neutrality.
Does this remind anyone else of those ‘Loyalty Pledges’ that American’s had swear to in order to prove they were not Communists, during 1950’s McCarthy Era America? Just me then! And just to be clear, this wasn’t some tiny detail that’s buried deep in their contract, one that I had to search for. No, it’s contained as one of their primary ledges!
Anyway, moving on! If civil servants had to sign such a thing, then possibly they wouldn’t have a written a document like ‘Yellowhammer’, which sets out in grim detail just how unprepared the UK is for leaving the EU without a deal. Which is what a ‘Clean Break Brexit’ (CBB) really is. It means no deal whatsoever. Nada. Nish.
The reader of this blog with long memory will remember the BBC’s ‘CrimeWatch’ prorgramme and it’s re-enactment of chilling crimes that hitherto stumped police, forcing them to make desperate appeals for witnesses. Of course in its heyday, it was a hit with the viewers, so the presenter Nick Ross would always end with an earnest spiel about the rarity of the crimes they’d so lovingly recreated, adding ‘Please don’t have nightmares’ If you want a nice and relaxing read, something to read in bed before you turn the lights off and which doesn’t give you nightmares, this so isn’t the read for you.
Admittedly, ‘Yellowhammer’ is predicated on worst case scenario’s and, as the government admits, it was written before measures to negate some of direst predictions had been implemented. As an aside, I just have to mention that I once had placement as a copywriter with an advertising agency called ‘Yellowhammer’. Didn’t end with a job offer though, which is spookily redolent of the bleak warnings that litter the government document. Lets compare the outlook that ‘Yellowhammer’ envisages with the rather more optimistic view of the effects of a CBB contained in The Brexit party (TBP) contact shall we?
Well to begin with they start this rather bold claim,
A CLEAN-BREAK BREXIT IS THE KEY TO CHANGING BRITAIN FOR GOOD
And certainly, Yellowhammer (YH) reinforces that claim, though not methinks, in the way TBP would want
TBP claim that,
A Clean-Break Brexit can also shape the future of our economy and society. It will give us the freedom to shape our future by taking immediate control of our own laws, borders, money, fishing and defence.
It will give us our freedom, to be sure. But to what end will that freedom be put? Freedom in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing, for a society to function, to prosper, it requires other functions to be carried out.
YH paints a different picture,
When the UK ceases to be a member of the EU in October 2019 all rights and reciprocal arrangements with the EU end.
Because,
The UK reverts fully to ‘third country’ status. The relationship between the UK and the EU as a whole is unsympathetic, with many MS (under pressure from the Commission) unwilling to engage bilaterally and implementing protections unilaterally, though some MS may be more understanding.
Those trade deals that were so piss easy to negotiate – to para-phrase Dr. Liam Fox – were not so piss easy after all, it seems,
No bilateral deals have been concluded with individual member states with the exception of the reciprocal agreement on social security co-ordination with Ireland.
So this much-vaunted freedom, is essentially a chimera, because we’ve exhausted what little goodwill the EU felt to us. Three years of bitter divisions and squabbling have got us worse than nowhere.
According to TBP,
With a Clean-Break Brexit, we can start changing Britain for good from day one. There will be no extended ‘transition period’, no more years of wrangling with Brussels, no further entanglement with the EU’s controlling political institutions. We will be free to start building our future immediately, to change politics and Britain for good. And that’s a promise.
Hang on? Does this seem to anyone else like the same schtick that the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign were spouting three years ago. You know, when we imagined that if by some act of terrible luck they won, then the morning after the result was announced, a well ordered and well thought through plan would kick in right away? That one! If it had, would we be here now? I know the blame isn’t all the Brexit’s party fault, but Nigel’s Farrago was a key mover in getting a referendum held in the first place, so why anyone should believe anything he promises now is beyond my understanding.
Here’s a particular favourite of mine. Much has been made over protecting our fishing fleets. To the SNP this has been especially fertile ground – or water.
TBP pledge that they’ll ,
Invest £2.5bn in our Fishing and Coastal Communities: with a Clean-Break Brexit we recover control of a 200 mile exclusive economic zone (or the median line), creating the opportunity to regenerate our coastal communities with new investment, jobs and tourism.
However, YH doesn’t wear those same rose tinted spectacles
Up to 282 EU and EEA nations fishing vessels could enter illegally, or already be fishing in UK waters (Up to 129 vessels in English waters, 100 vessels in Scottish waters, 40 vessels in Welsh waters, 13 vessels 1n Northern Irish waters) on day one. This is likely to cause anger and frustration in the UK catching sector, which could lead to both clashes between fishing vessels and an increase in non-compliance in the domestic fleet.
That “Day One’ they mention? It’s everywhere in YH. It means on day one of no deal, so if a CBB becomes an unfortunate reality, at one minute past midnight the day we exit, none of the EU laws will apply. Yes, of course, it will create ‘ the opportunity to regenerate our coastal communities with new investment, jobs and tourism..’ But the thing with any opportunity is – rather like freedom – it isn’t always necessarily a good thing. It can either way.
If it is an opportunity for already hard hit coastal villages that have seen their fisheries industry decimated by EU fishing quota’s, how exactly are they going to see it is as an opportunity if EU boats can fish in British waters with impunity? An opportunity to overcome health problems associated with obesity by living on benefits and not being able to afford to eat? The opportunity for women to make new friends by engaging in ‘survival sex’ to supplement those benefits to buy food? Those kind of opportunities?
YH abounds with similarly grim tidings, to which the Brexit party would no doubt counter as ‘doing Britain down’
TBP also pledges to
Increase police numbers — more visible policing, ensure focus on combating violent crime, robbery and burglary rather than enforcing restrictions on free speech.
Which is just as well, because one effect of a CBB could be, as YH suggests
Protests and counter-protests will take place across the UK and may absorb significant amounts of police resource.
I might return to the YH document again in the light of Boris’s Johnson’s claim that to ‘Get Brexit Done’, all that’s needed is for a sufficiently large number of credulous fools to believe him, vote Conservative and for then sunlit uplands to beckon.
the brilliantly leaping gazelle 