the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I wrote yesterday that Labour’s proposal to insulate every home in the UK to make them more energy efficient would cost £250 billion. This was incorrect, but then, if I cite a figure and don’t provide a credible source from where that figure hails, then where does the blame lie? It’s not as if this blog is in any way reputable source. But then, this isn’t my first rodeo, as an American would say, and the older you are, it isn’t yours either. We know all politicians make implausible spending pledges to get our votes, which they’ll then conveniently forget if they attain office. We know, for example, that you can’t cut taxes while increasing public spending. It’s nonsense, we know it’s nonsense, but politcians still make such improbable claims. But who is more delusional, those who make the claims or those that believe them?

 If this government was serious about democracy, it would make the 12^th December a public holiday, to ensure that as many people as possible have the opportunity to vote. I can sort of understand the government’s dilemma here. On the one hand there’s the economic cost, and as the Conservatives are pro business – and in an election campaign will wish to avoid doing to damage that impression – the last thing they’ll want to do is give everyone a paid day off work, which business won’t be happy about, as not only will they have to pay for it, they’ll also have to absorb the cost of a loss of a days productivity. On the other hand there’s the consideration that by doing so, it’ll boost the Conservative vote among traditional working class Labour voters, who might otherwise stay at home after getting in after a days work.

Also the weather is a factor. If it’s quite mild and sunny, then people are more likely to venture out than if it’s cold, wet and gloomy. And given that a fair proportion of Conservative voters are coffin dodgers – again, this blog is not reputable – it’s not unreasonable to pre-suppose that it’s in the Conservatives interests to make it a public holiday. After all, there’s no point in being pro business if your not the government, now is there?

We know the election is here because politicians are promising to a massive financial giveaway. The Conservatives have announced an end to the freeze on in work benefits – which they’d announced in the last budget – in April, whilst Labour have pledged to insulate every home in the UK at a cost estimated to be £250 billion. The Lib Dems may have announced something, but really, who cares?

Anyway, it was just on the news that the government will, if re-elected, raise the national minimum wage to £10.50 an hour over five years. Whoopie-fuckin-do! I don’t know what sort of percentage increase that is, but I’d wager something on the fact that its far less than an increase in food and energy bills over the next five years, far less than transport and housing cost will increase, with an increasingly more disproportionally effect on one the lower their wage is. If the government was serious about alleviating the financial hardship that years of austerity have created, it could pass put before parliament legislation to cap energy bills, reduce the fuel levy, bring back into public ownership the railways, reverse to cuts to local authority budgets, consider what the effects of an ageing population on our society might be and how best we plan for and fund the changes that’ll be needed for adult social care. These things and more besides should have been the proper responsibility of government these last few years, but no.

Brexit has been more important. So what will change with a new government, possibly a hung one, that will be in any way less Brexit obsessed than this one?

As with the last general election, I’m going to try and post every day and much like 2017, this will mean my posts won’t always be as polished as they might be, the thoughts and the ways in which they are expressed might not be as coherent as they might otherwise have been, had I not been labouring under a self-imposed deadline.

As evidence of this, my post today was going to about something else, but upon writing out ‘E-Day-39’ another thought struck me. Given how our unloveable rogue though ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ was a metaphor for Brexit. might I suggest that ‘The 39 Steps’ is an even better one for this election.

The film based on a potboiler of a rabble rousing thriller with the express intention of promoting a jingoistic sentiment by  pitting a plucky Englishman against beastly Germans. I must confess to not having read the book, but in the most recent adaptation of the book by the BBC, the Liberals were portrayed as well meaning but ultimate gullible fools. So no change then.

As polling day is Thursday 12^th, then the it follows that election results come in on Friday 13^th. And given that our unliveable rogue has likened Brexit to the film ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, perhaps there might be other, more suitable films to identify with. After all, ‘The Shawshank Redemption was a box office flop upon it’s initial cinema release and although Boris focuses on Andy’s crawl through a sewer to escape prison as something of a metaphor, it is worth noting that whilst Andy was innocent of the double murder that put him there, as he himself says ‘it took coming to prison to make me a criminal.’ Specifically facilitating, if not making possible, the prison wardens fraudulent activities by his money laundering skills. Perhaps then not the best choice, despite some morons calling it a classic. It isn’t, and is only considered to be so by cretins who persist in the deluded belief that somehow the ‘Star Wars’ films are anything but children’s films.

Now ‘The Third Man’ is a classic but I can’t say why I think it more suitable a metaphor for Brexit than ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ as I’m going to recommend it to a friend and I don’t want to give away any spoilers. Thinking about it, Boris’s choice of “The Shawshank Redemption’ perfectly encapsulates his whole political outlook. Most people have heard it hailed as a classic, but despite not having seen it, think it must be. It’s an easy win for a political chancer. He wants us to think he has the common touch, but his well-documented horizontal gymnastics suggest his touch is more Casanova than common

So the news today is that the EU has announced an extension of the first extension which takes us up to the 31st January.  Whoopie-fucking-do! If Boris Johnson was just a regular Joe, chancing his arm with sneaking in another building extension under the noses of the planning department and applied retrospectively, he’d have to tear it down and possibly be prosecuted.

But our unloveable rogue isn’t an ordinary Joe, he’s the Prime Minister and this extension of an extension paves the way for a general election. Apparently. Don’t ask me how exactly, but somehow this becomes a very real possibility. Except, of course for one tiny detail, that might unravel the whole enterprise – or underline how much of a hostage to fortune it is.

It isn’t the by now well rehearsed arguments that places that would normally be used to count the votes – civic centres, sports halls – and other places essential to a smooth running of a general election, are already booked for Christmas events. Whilst financially challenged councils might at a pinch be able to reimburse to hire charges, would they be able to stump up the loss of earnings that a Winter Fayre might generate. Oh, savour if you will, the delicious irony of a Conservative PM being unable to call a general election because of market forces! But does Boris want to be like Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham in ‘Robin Hood; Prince of Thieves and cancel? Christmas’ Of course not!

No, for me the problem is the pesky ‘Fixed Term Parliament Act’ which requires that MP’s will have to pass a bill allowing it to happen. Given that many MP’s face the very real prospect of losing their jobs, are they really going to vote for it? Just a thought.

I know that in and of itself its not exactly the most thoughtful of reasons in favour of Brexit, but that extra hour of glorious sunshine we’re having – well here in London anyway – but under EU proposals that would end.

Because in March 2019, the European Parliament approved a proposal that would put an end to twice-yearly clock changes altogether. If it’s passed by member states and becomes law, it means that we’ll all be changing our clocks for the final time in either March or October 2021. You can get more details of this here.

Of course the EU have tried to dress it all up as somehow having health benefits for citizens, but as is almost always the case when it announces proposed legislation that is claimed to have health benefits, the main beneficiaries are businesses. Shock.

There’s spurious guff about our circadian rhythms – you know, the 24-hour cycles that determine when we feel sleepy, hungry or need to go to the toilet – those one’s. Apparently when the clocks change, this knocks our circadian rhythms out of whack, making us feel more tired and distracted than usual. So our nothing whatsoever to do with the fear of employers hiring cheaper foreign labour to do you’re job and you being forced to work more hours, for less money, because now your being all competitive like. Not that at all.

But the real reason is economic. A study from US think tank the RAND Corporation – not exactly a bastion of of workers rights –  found that inadequate sleep costs the UK economy £50 billion a year in lost productivity and sickness. Oh how my heart bleeds.

And we already know from a study of US workers between 1983 and 2006 that the Mondays after clocks go forward employees tend to sleep 40 minutes less, which is associated with 5.7% more workplace injuries and 67.6% more lost work days. Or was it 8.6% more workplace injuries and 71.3% more lost work days. I may have made that bit up, although it may be true. Who knows? Who’s going to check anyway? But if it seems true, then it must be, right? Doesn’t it feel like it might be true?

Simplifying time also makes a lot of sense from a trade perspective., which is the abiding concern of the EU here. At the moment, the EU is currently spread across three time zones and depending on whether different states opt to stick to their summer or winter times, we could see the UK move into the same time zone as mainland Europe, which would make trade a lot easier.

As I wrote at the start that I know that in and of itself its not exactly the most thoughtful and considered of reasons in thinking that there might just be some wins in Brexit, but as daylight saving was first introduced because of the need the keep our factories as productive as possible during the First World War, it does seem a bit something for the EU to want to change it. I mean, I’m going to be lied to anyway, but I’d much rather be lied to by politicians without a foreign accent!

The Democratic Unionist Party (D.U.P) have made a huge deal out of the fact that they will not accept any Brexit deal which treats Northern Ireland differently to the rest of the United Kingdom, as they believe it might undermine the union.

Fair enough.

But if someone could explain to me how this is in any way compatible with opposing abortion and same-sex marriage legislation which applies throughout the rest of the United Kingdom, then please, do.

The Stormont Assembly met for nearly the first time in three years today to discuss plans introduced by Westminster to change the law at midnight to allow the citizens of Northern Ireland to enjoy the same rights as everyone else in the United Kingdom. They haven’t met for any other reason – such as health, education, housing, the environment, the economy, transport, etc – in short undertaken any of the functions you’d expect a devolved government to be focused upon.

Arlene Foster, the leader of the D.U.P, made a speech denouncing this change in the law – which is only taking place because Northern Ireland is in breach of Human Rights law and Stormont hasn’t acted to rectify this – claiming that this was a bad day for the unborn. Mmm. That would be the unborn who haven’t been born yet and ould love to be born into a society clinging to out-dated and bigoted idea’s, that just because they are rooted in some nonsensical belief system that have spurious legitimacy?

Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m a little fucked up in the head – as Joe Pesci so menacingly said in ‘Goodfellas’ – but has anyone else noticed the similarity between the Boris’s Brexit deal and an iTunes agreement?

By that I mean that Apple know that users of iTunes aren’t going to spend the time needed to read, digest and then make an informed decision whether to install iTunes on their computer. Of course, if you already have iTunes, then you’ll just click ‘Agree’ That’s why its on the front page of the terms and conditions agreement. You don’t even have to scroll all the way to the bottom to do so. They count on our apathy.

In much the same way, the Brexit deal currently before parliament will next to no detailed scrutiny, no careful line-by-line examination, and no considered amendments in committee, before bringing it back to the House of Commons for ratification. In fact any scrutiny, such as there is, is going to be as rushed as a cheating husband hurriedly putting his clothes back on when he hears the front door closing when his wife comes back early.

Something Boris can relate to.

One of the problems with all of this – just one – is that is has the risk of something buried deep in the text, that no-one pays attention too, until it is enforced. Then everyone is wise. Oh yes. After the event. There have been a few real examples of this, where people agreed to hand over their first-born child for free wi-fi or to join a social networking site. Of course these hoaxes were designed to prove a larger point, namely that dangers are often hidden in plain view.

Remember ‘The Maastricht Treaty’ on closer European intergration? That had incalculably less effects and longer-term consequences than this Brexit deal, but had 20 days of parliamentary time. ‘Get Brexit done’ is the favoured soundbite of the unlovable rogue that is our Prime Minister but if this deal passes without proper scrutiny, it’ll be this and future generations that’ll be done up like a kipper.

Oh alright then…

Yesterday was momentous day of incalculable significance for this and future generations but one that resulted in…what exactly?

Now I like to flatter myself that I’m slightly more politically aware than the average Josephine, capable of understanding some of the basic concepts of political posturing and gamesmanship. That I can hold my own with. Good. But for everything else, a bit a sunshine to burn through the fog of bullshit and spin is needed and so, it was with no little sense of high expectation, I watched BBC2 ‘Newsnight’ special yesterday that ambitiously promised ‘Newsnight dissects Saturday’s vote in Parliament on Brexit. What exactly just happened? ‘

It didn’t, and if anything, made it more confusing for the vast majority of people watching. There was the slanging match of an interview between arch Brexiteer Steve Baker MP and Emily Maitless – which is where the title comes from – followed by two interviews with people who had taken James Browns dictum of ‘talking loud and saying nothing’ to extremes. I reflected on the fact that one of the reasons for Nigel Farrage’s appeal is that he gives straight answers to questions, doesn’t seem to give stock responses and communicates in an easily understandable way.

This is a huge bugbear for me, the way that political reporting is unnecessarily complicated, when actually there is a responsibility to the viewer or listener to make it less so. Anyone who can understand the dynamics at work in a large family, the shifting loyalties and temporary alliances, the pursuit of competing interests and grievances, achieving one’s own goals whilst thwarting others, has all the intelligence needed to understand politics. Noam Chomsky makes a similar point using sport.

And there’s more political reporting onanism to cum, with more votes, more legal wrangling and yet more obfuscation in the next few days.

But will there be in the any clarity in it’s reporting? There’s about as much chance of that as there is a sudden outbreak of peace and harmony in the country about Brexit!

Earlier on today, I was faced with a dilemma, namely to smash the radio I was listening to to smithereens, or to simply turn it off. Whilst the option I chose was undoubtedly quieter and less messy, it was also much less satisfying. I was listening to ‘The World at One’, and the main item they were discussing was the language used in parliament yesterday. You can guess the angle they took, a rather censoriously superior tone, the kind Radio Four does so well, so much so that sometimes you’d be forgiven for thinking the Guardian had taken the airwaves.

At no point did anyone think that after sustained hectoring and personal attacks on his motives and character, the Prime Minister might crack. By all accounts, he was subjected to this for nearly three hours and he is human. If I’d’ve been subjected to that level of vitriolic abuse, I’d’ve used much more earthy language, much more often and much sooner. Anyone who has listened to the recent exchanges about Brexit in Parliament knows they can get heated, it’s not the Oxford debating chamber. It’s Brexit, and Brexit arouses strong passions. In fact, if anything, I thought the Prime Mister was remarkably restrained. ‘Well done him’, I though yesterday, as I listened to the ill-tempered cacophany on yesterdays ‘Today in Parliament’.

Anyway today hasn’t been a good day for me, not that any day is good per se, but more that some days are less worse than others, and that today is one that is far worse than in quite a while. It’s a day when I really question the point of getting up, and then I have to make a conscious effort to stop that train of though before it derails. Perhaps that’s why I’ve got no time for perceived slights, manufactured outrage and hyperbolic bolics.

Or perhaps not.