The title of today’s blog is copied from the subject line of an email I received today from the Guardian. It sounds like the Guardian has turned into a charity with responsibility for the entire globe. Not just any charity of course, but a very precious charity with a noble history of uncompromising honesty and fair dealing. Their appeal this time round (the words ‘support us’ are delivered about once a week) proclaims:
So far this year, we have published more than 6,000 articles about the environment which have been read more than half a billion times. You recently heard from George Monbiot, Jonathan Watts and Natalie Hanman, writing about many of the pressing issues facing our living planet today and how we report on them. If you have enjoyed our journalism and value it as much as we hope you do, then please take a moment to consider supporting us so that we can keep our reporting open to all. All this writing! All this reading! But when you get the chance to support a politician who might seriously do something about it, you stick a hot poker up their arse (sorry for the vulgarity, my writing is not informed by Guardian writers’ guidelines). The Guardian is not about change, it’s about a form of journalistic voyeurism which translates into a) give me a byline and b) how much per column inch? The opinion writers are the worst, although to his credit Monbiot has stuck his neck out a few times and even Polly Toynbee temped a bit in the low waged economy. But it’s all a form of cushioned ’activism’ and so when their corporate paymasters decide it’s time to call time on a politician who threatens their model, the model wins. No, Guardian, the planet doesn’t need you urgently. One is entitled to ask, on behalf of the planet, what happened as a result of your 6,000 articles? Editorial note and faux apology: The author of this blog is very cynical and we hope no offence has been given. But after all, when they say ’we hope you have enjoyed our journalism’ it rather gives the game away.
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I watched a film ‘Leave the World Behind’ on Netflix last night which has had mixed reviews. It’s an apocalyptic post global cyber-attack tale told in a U.S. domestic setting. I thought it was relatively convincing, if a little preachy in some respects (e.g. addressing whether a black family really could enjoy a luxurious lifestyle in America). The film apparently was made by a company started by Barack Obama, and he it seems gave a shed load of advice about what would be realistic if a major cyber attack took place. Some of what was portrayed when our cyber world fails seemed realistic—no internet, no phones, no TV, planes dropping out of the sky (really?), ships running amok—in other words, and as we’re repeatedly told these days, our lives now depend on cyberspace fully functioning. But here we’re very much in E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops territory. What happens when the back-up system is itself grounded in cyberspace? When the repair person is not a person but another program also subject to either the threat of the hacker or even the much vaunted super solar flare? Anyway, I quite enjoyed the film, especially the scene where Tesla cars blocked a highway in a massive pile-up as they all raced uncontrollably into each other. It seems Elon Musk has responded by saying that his cars can at least all run on solar power. What a wit. Thankfully for the characters (and this has to be a bit of a criticism) the mains electricity to the house they were in seemed to continue long after everything else had packed up. I have to say that I doubt mains power would survive very long, we have seen already major power blackouts in the States thanks to an infrastructure developed without suitable resilience built in.
The basic premise of the film was that a savvy attacker would seek to bring down a government by creating such circumstances of civil collapse that a coup d’etat would become inevitable. In a crisis created by such attackers, one would have to assume that they were capable of e.g communicating with each other and marshalling their forces with or without electronic means. Is this what ex-President Obama thinks is possible? Has the Pentagon war gamed the possibility? Sadly, I think we can be fairly sure that failsafe backup systems these days will mostly rely on the same technologies which are all equally vulnerable. So it was reassuring today to hear on the BBC Today programme an interview with a UK Trident sub commander telling us that one of the key indicators of the destruction of the UK would be the silencing of Radio 4. But would the sub commander learn about this on the Medium Wave or digital? I can see now that I’m beginning to veer off into uninformed, confused speculation. And I haven’t even broached the subject of the mysterious radio signal that excites the interest of the last surviving post-atomic war U.S. sub in On The Beach. Finally on that thought, at least a cyber war won’t unleash a deadly worldwide radiation cloud. Will it? I watched a clip from the Home Affairs Select Committee on Sky News, which was looking into the recent demonstrations in support of Gaza/Palestine. An organiser (of Palestinian descent) of the most recent march was explaining what he thought was meant by the phrase ‘from the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free’ - which some interpret to mean the destruction of the state of Israel. He spoke calmly, politely and unapologetically—explaining that Palestinians, whether resident in Gaza, Israel itself or the occupied territories wanted to live free from oppression. As he continued his answer (in a select committee he would have been asked a question before speaking) the chair, Diana Johnson (Lab. Hull North) rudely interrupted him saying ‘I’m in the chair!’ and expressed her concern that what he had just explained could cause offence and it was imperative to maintain ‘balance.’
If a select committee chair, of all people thinks that witnesses are there to provide ‘balance’ then they are clearly in the wrong job. I’m not going to watch the whole proceedings of the committee, but I wonder if Diana—Dame Diana—will have closed down those who may have been invited along to answer for the opposite and potentially equally ‘offensive’ view. It’s a new twist on the concept of parliamentary privilege protecting free speech. Select committees are supposed to get to the bottom of things—with robust questioning. And if a witness chooses to hang themselves so much the better for getting at the truth. So, once again for Dame Diana to shut a witness up just because she thought something offensive might be said is in itself offensive and I am bloody offended. Given the appalling brutality of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, I am quite prepared to believe that some of the attackers may have felt entitled to rape their victims as well as kill them. But curiously, nothing much of this has been given attention until the last couple of days. I listened attentively yesterday to a BBC news report on the subject, which at length failed to substantiate the accusation that multiple rapes took place. It was impossible not to question the timing of the reports—coinciding with Israel’s offensive stepping up in southern Gaza which it appears has already claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians. Both sides, as in all wars will propagandise, and in the heat of battle the ability to fact-check is severely constrained, so claims and counter claims can get legs before as the saying goes, the truth can put its hat on. At some point both sides will hopefully face a reckoning with the truth, although I guess neither side will volunteer to be scrutinised. This answer provided by good ole’ Bing may offer some hope:
According to the International Criminal Court (ICC), Israel is not a member of the ICC and disputes its jurisdiction on the basis that Palestine is not a sovereign state capable of being a party to the Rome Statute. However, the ICC’s top prosecutor has stated that the court has jurisdiction over potential war crimes carried out by Hamas militants in Israel and Israelis in the Gaza Strip, even though Israel is not a member state. Will this happen? Given how much (purely verbal) pressure is being applied particularly on Israel to follow international law, no doubt the ICC’s ‘top prosecutor’ will get the support of the US to pursue the case. Except that the US itself does not recognise the court. Alternatively, Biden could suspend military support to Israel if he is so concerned. Only joking! Electoral Calculus’ latest prediction gives Labour a majority of 286 at the next general election. This is improbable on two counts—things always narrow in the run-up to the election, and I have to say Starmer’s negative approval ratings won’t help nearer the day. Enough of that. But what could happen if Labour won with a 160-odd majority—as Blair did in 1997? A sign of true determination to shake things up would be to tell MPs that their next two years would be about working overtime to get an ambitious legislative programme through. No more excuses about there not being enough parliamentary time. No more long breaks, endless recesses, early knocking-offs. If you are given such a large majority it might tell you that the people want real change, not a game of political tiddlywinks. The only problem with this approach is if you haven’t got a substantial manifesto— if you were so worried that you weren’t sufficiently perceived as Tory light you forgot to imagine anything could be radically different. Today we hear from our great leader that under Labour there won’t be a magic money tree and the economic conditions will necessitate continued austerity. Not his exact words but near enough. What will happen I wonder to Labour’s improbable lead if the electorate cottons on to the looming reality that not a lot is likely to change?
I can’t say quite how depressing it is to be a member of a political party which is led by such a lazy dickhead like Starmer. I can’t find a more literate way of describing this imposter. He’s written for the Sunday Telegraph that he admires Thatcher’s determination to shake Britain up, some garbage about her ’plan’ to take on the vested interests which had trapped us in a cycle of decay and thus her unleashing a tsunami of entrepreneurialism. He may not recall that Thatcher didn’t get elected in 1979 (when he was 17) with any grand plan, unless of course unrestrained monetarism was meant to cover all the angles, along with tax increases (no mention of them in her manifesto) and a huge waste of the North Sea oil bonanza counted as a coherent reform of the UK economy. Thatcher was washed up until General Galtieri provided a suitably weak ‘enemy without’ to prove her Iron Lady metal on. If throwing millions of people on the dole was a ‘plan’ that Starmer approves of, then God help us. He says (of course) that he doesn’t agree with her policies. Well said Keir, for most people it’s the policies that will have the greatest impact on their lives, not the over rated leadership qualities of whoever’s nominally in charge, so why say anything approving of Thatcher?
Who I wonder were these great entrepreneurs that Thatcher found so impressive? She wrote a three page letter to the widow of one such in 1991: ‘No one will ever replace the energy, vision and resolve personified in Mr Maxwell . . He was and will remain unique. Above all, Mr Maxwell showed the whole world that one person can move and influence events by using his own God given talents and abilities.’ (Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell, John Preston, Penguin 2021 p.252) The last thing we need is another boneheaded meritocrat to claim the mantle of ‘strong’ leadership, employing no doubt their own innumerable God-given talents. Such hubristic politicians, so duty bound to promote themselves are anathema to genuine progress. I can only hope that there is enough residual strength left in the Labour Party to constrain this multiply pledge (i.e. policy) ditching charlatan. Oh Dear. I’m in for it now. Strong words from Michael Crick, writing in unherd about Labour’s parliamentary selection processes. His most recent attention has been grabbed by the goings-on in Croydon East, where mysterious members come and go – even if they’re dead (allegedly). Crick writes ‘I am convinced that many selection contests have been fiddled and fixed by party officials.’ And ‘It is completely unsatisfactory that the [party] investigation into Croydon East should be carried out by the London Labour Party, when there may have been wrongdoing within the London HQ itself.’ Crick suggests that an independent KC should be called in. There is irony here. When Starmer called in an independent KC to review Labour’s disciplinary processes the resultant Forde Report was promptly ignored by Starmer. He’s hardly more likely now to repeat an appeal to independent review over the more sensitive selection process of Starmer ‘clones.’ The party is now operating a system of selection in which the membership is treated
on an industrial scale of irrelevance (unlike in my time as an organiser when it was purely hit and miss.) Given the importance of parliamentary selection processes, and in the light of the evidence Crick is amassing, it is perhaps time for the oversight of the processes (for all parties) to be subject to standard oversight by a body like the Electoral Commission, perhaps with voting to be handed over to somebody like the Electoral Reform Society. Winter appears to have arrived in the UK, with a cold front and what we’re told is a ‘snow bomb’ in train. We can’t just have snow like we used to have, now it has to be a ‘snow bomb.’ Such language is intensely annoying, but there’s no escaping the fact that the popular media has to dramatise everything—to such an extent in fact that nothing is really dramatic anymore. The overuse of drama in storytelling dulls the senses. I guess the same is true of pictures, except now if they’re deemed horrifying they come with advance warnings. Perhaps the overuse of dramatic language should also be preceded by advance warnings like ‘This article contains idiotically exaggerated hyperbole.’ Perhaps this shift to the eye-catching line has been hastened by social media, where it seems complexity is reduced to simplistic assertion. Or perhaps we should blame spin doctors ever competing with each other to coin the perfect soundbite. The simplification—the dumbing down if you will—of language has taken new forms, to such an extent that literacy itself could be threatened. I’m referring of course to emoijis, now so established and endemic I’m almost willing to bet that there’s a professorial chair of emoiji studies at some newly minted university. Not surprisingly a Japanese chap first came up with them, they perhaps have antecedents in a pictogrammatic language, but now they seem indispensable for the lightning fast thumbs of mobile phone users. I can see their advantage as a new form of shorthand adapted to the small screen. Personally I can’t get out of the habit of one finger typing on my mobile phone. This task happily is made easier by having word prompts, so I can often include long words in texts which otherwise would take ages to type. It can’t be long before complete sentences are suggested. Indeed gmail already provides a choice of short responses when it detects e.g. a question in an incoming email.
I’m not going to bother looking, but I imagine there’s an emoiji for an old grump. Since I have started in this groaning grump mode, let me finish off with a fresh round of moans. The first relates to Mountain of Plastic Rubbish Day, aka Halloween. Aren’t we supposed to be reducing single use plastics? How is it that plastic straws are banned, but this extravaganza of tat is permitted? At least pumpkins are biodegradable. But late November is becoming crowded with American imports. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and now Giving Tuesday—all excuses to fill one’s inbox with urgent appeals to get a move on before it’s too late. I’m surprised we haven’t yet adopted Thanksgiving into the UK calendar. In the US it seems some cities have Donkin’ Donut Thanksgiving Parades, or MacDonalds Parades. Here we could have Thanksgiving Food Bank Parades and on the day itself King Charles could reprieve a turkey (though which member of the royal family he would choose is anybody’s guess). In fairness, since the UK has a sizeable veggie population, he might also reprieve a Quorn not-turkey roast. So, in conclusion, let me propose a new day of celebration and commemoration, dedicated to Old Grumps everywhere, when we can bemoan the state of society to our hearts content. And people have to listen. +This is the beginning of a story from the i (24/11/23). It appeared on the very same day that it was revealed that net migration to the UK had reached a new record—something like three quarters of a million. So Brexit took care of that then! The vast majority of immigrants get here legitimately and I therefore feel it safe to assume that they will be net contributors rather than takers vis-à-vis the UK economic cake. The majority of them will be young so stand some chance of helping to pay our pensions (although to digress, the pension triple lock will cease to exist after the 2024 election, dispatched in a flurry of mealy-mouthed obfuscations). Anyway, I am pleased I can identify with people who have sufficient cognitive skills not least to master ‘fluid reasoning,’ which hopefully speaks of a good taste in wine some of which may even be from the EU.
+It would be oxymoronic to suggest that people who get involved in politics generally don’t want to make a difference—towards what they think is better. Yes, there could be a very few who see political careers as purely self-serving (but even here let’s remember the likes of the corrupt architect Poulson’s friend, T. Dan Smith. I don’t have any reason to doubt T. Dan originally thought Poulson’s high rise housing might be the bees knees solution for slum clearance, even if the whole enterprise was lubricated with bribes). But listening this evening to Nick Robinson’s BBC ’Political Thinking’ interview with erstwhile Tory Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace I thought how for some making a political difference is really a rather academic (in this case, over-thought) exercise no matter how much supposed political influence you yield. I’m not thinking of Wallace himself, but am provoked by his remarks about Dominic Cummings, the man who in all probability envisioned but changed bugger all, whilst nevertheless attracting an aura of sophisticated political wisdom which clearly entranced others— albeit for a relatively short period. Did I say changed nothing? Well, if you saw the Brexit film starring Benedict Cumberbatch playing our beloved deep thinker Dom, you might come away believing that the invention of the catchphrase ‘Take Back Control,’ which came to Dom in a moment of unencumbered orgiastic bliss, miraculously convinced one third of the electorate (+1) to translate their innate anti-immigration sentiments into a triumphant economic argument (with hints of self-sustaining Britannic collectivism, like £350 million a week returned to the NHS from the evil maw of Brussels). In retrospect, I am inclined to think ‘bollocks.’ A slogan doesn’t change an opinion, it merely captures it (on this basis the Socialist Workers Party is cram-packed with impotent geniuses). Anyway, anyway Ben Wallace, who sounded perfectly normal couldn't resist sticking his heel into Dom’s overgrown forehead, focussing on his malign cranium a Downing Street locus of bile and shit-mongering. Even for an ex-army officer who had served in Tony Blair’s wars Wallace couldn’t disguise his disgust, which made it clear that metaphorically speaking our Dom was a sort of one person Talibanic cancer at the heart of government. Now, in the Covid Inquiry we are also hearing how some of the rudest, crudest judgements emanated from Dom, and now we know that whilst Dom’s actual achievement record was close to less than zero for some reason he has acquired a residual fame for being at the heart of everything that went on. (All bad, as we now know.) Politically he must be the nearest thing we have today to an animal sacrifice. I wonder, however, if laying into him does anything for the reputations of those who lingered long enough to put up with him? There’s a book in this which might be called ‘The Power Behind The Throne,’ tracing the careers of those who steered Prime Ministers, at least for a while. The only other example I can think of offhand at the moment is Harold Wilson’s Marcia Falkender. Many people might think Blair/Campbell but I’m not so sure about that one. All PMs will have had their advisors primus inter pares and whilst some may have successfully avoided much exposure, in the light of the Bad Dom experience perhaps they should get more attention. This I think will be particularly true of our next (predicted) PM. Recently buying a book online, I got a search result from Abebooks. I used to think this company was independent, but you guessed it—it’s owned by Amazon, so no escape from the ubiquitous grasp of Jeff Bezos there. However, with a few vain, spare minutes to kill I thought I would see what was on offer of my own, slim back catalogue. This can be a disappointing experience, when you find that one of your babies is advertised at a mere 0.01p. Presumably the retailer makes a few bob on the p&p. But lo! Abebooks had some seller in the UK trying to offload The Price of Power—the Secret Funding of the Tory Party (published 1999) for a very satisfactory £67. How they arrived at this price I have no idea, and unlike artist’s resale rights, there’ll be no reward for me here. But if it starts a trend (it won’t) I’ll take a measure of satisfaction from it. It is, after all some kind of afterlife.
+Leftists* have questioned whether it is a good idea to award a £330 million NHS data contract to US ‘spytech’ firm Palantir. Palantir’s founder is Peter Thiel, whose Wikipedia entry has him down as a major Trump supporter, who said “after the September 11 attacks, the debate in the United States was ‘will we have more security with less privacy or less security with more privacy?’ He envisioned Palantir as providing data mining services to government intelligence agencies that were maximally unintrusive and traceable. Palantir's first backer was the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. The company steadily grew and in 2015 was valued at $20 billion, with Thiel being the company's largest shareholder.” What do we know about data mining companies? They always want more. Not only does data make big money, it also feeds the control mechanisms that inevitably comes with all the information they gather. That Thiel is also (according to Wikipedia) a ‘steering committee member of the Bilderberg group’ comes as no surprise. He’s clearly an influencer, but not perhaps in the mould of Kim Kardishan. What of Labour’s response to the award of our NHS data management to this conglomerate? This section from a recent (29/10/23) BBC news report is illuminating: ‘Responding to Mr Karp's [CEO of Palantir] comments, Ms Donelan [Secretary of State for Sceince] told the same programme [Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg]: ‘We're not in the business of damaging people's privacy or rights. We're not going to start selling on people's private data, of course, not without their consent, what we're talking about here is enabling us to utilise the data around the NHS to tackle some of the biggest diseases that people are facing so they can live healthier, longer, happier lives.’ Labour's shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘Labour is completely clear: we will not sell off NHS patient's data. Rishi Sunak must today issue a clear statement that NHS patient data will not be sold to private companies.’” (emphasis added) Wes Streeting is thus on exactly the same page as the government, which is to say ‘we’re not in the business of damaging people’s privacy or rights.’ Now who’s going to own up to doing that? And the only guarantee apparently on offer here is that the data won’t be sold ‘of course,’ ‘not ‘without our consent.’ Are these mortals aware of how data travels these days? Selling it is not necessarily the issue, and the idea that our consent would be required before it was sold suggests that neither of these luminaries has ever given a second thought to, e.g. ‘accepting cookies.’ When was the last time anyone went through the long lists of those innocent sounding things? One might argue that these private tech companies have qualifications governments lack. That should worry us. It means governments also don’t have the skills to keep these outfits in check. *For example Clive Lewis MP, quoted by Open Democracy (23/8/23) ‘people want change under a Labour government and hosting some of these firms [at Labour Party conference] signals that the same palms are going to be greased. I do not think that organisations like Palantir and others are necessarily the kind of organisations that Labour in the year before a general election should be cosying up to, I think they should be saying: ‘Look, we'll deal with you but frankly, some of you are part of the problem’’ + 'Knock, knock.' 'Who's there?' 'Doctor' 'Doctor Who?' Yes, today is the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Dr Who. It was my first memory of TV (the second was the news of Kennedy's assassination - but I must have got this mixed up - Kennedy was shot on the 22nd November 1963, but maybe the TV news I saw was the day after. A curious time for a ten-year old, anyway.) |
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