tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44111617957983605882024-03-18T03:01:52.244+00:00BorthlasJohn Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.comBlogger2791125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-87315643838626244262024-03-15T12:34:00.000+00:002024-03-15T12:34:00.206+00:00The exercise of forgiveness<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As Michael Gove
demonstrated yesterday, defining ‘extremism’ isn’t as easy as some might think.
He, presumably, thinks he’s got it right, although the range of views and
arguments deployed against him suggests otherwise. But there was also another
aspect to what he said yesterday when challenged about extremism coming from
the direction of his own party’s supporters. Sir Paul Marshall, the man behind
the increasingly misnamed GB ‘News’ which gives a platform to the swivel-eyed
entryist tendency in the Tory Party, has something of a </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/65007/paul-marshalls-hateful-likes-make-him-unfit-to-be-a-media-mogul"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">record</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> when it comes to making or supporting extreme statements
about Islam, LBGQT+ issues and migration. Gove attempted to defend him by </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/15/mps-threat-michael-gove-extremism-parliament"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">referring</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> to his record of ‘educational philanthropy’. The
underlying issue here is whether, and to what extent, ‘doing good’ in one field
is enough to get a free pass to support and promote hate speech in another.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It's not the only
recent example. The Leader of the House of Commons </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68503255"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">defended</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> the Science Secretary over her rash and unwise decision
to accuse an academic of Islamism, which led to a law suit for libel, by
referring to an entirely unrelated matter as an indicator of her ‘character’,
as though that could somehow excuse using public funds to ruin someone’s
reputation and pay the associated legal costs. And then, of course, we had Gove
himself </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/14/gove-hester-remarks-not-extremist-and-warrant-christian-forgiveness"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">calling
for</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> ‘Christian
forgiveness’ for a man who donated £10 million (plus a currently unconfirmed </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/frank-hester-tory-donor-racism-row-b2512748.html"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">extra
£5 million</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">) because he’d
apologised. (The idea that ‘forgiveness’ is a ‘Christian’ trait and therefore implicitly
not shared with those of a different persuasion is a pretty telling remark and
might even be regarded an ‘extremist belief’ in itself.) They haven’t (not yet
at least) gone as far as Trump who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/06/donald-trump-hitler-michael-bender-book">told</a>
his chief of staff that <i>“Hitler did a lot of good things”</i>, although he
apparently didn’t spell out what they were. (Things like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/30/trump-interview-jail-political-opponents-glenn-beck">locking
up</a> or even <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/mark-milley-donald-trump-execution-treason-response-b2420423.html">executing</a>
political opponents, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68266447">invading
neighbouring countries</a> which didn’t spend enough on defence, and taking what
some might see as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-repeats-poisoning-blood-anti-immigrant-remark-2023-12-16/">a
‘hard line’ on people</a> that he didn’t really think were German would all fit
the Trump playbook, but all that’s off the point here.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Maybe it’s true that
there are very few people who never did a good thing in their lives, and that
we should consider the whole rather than just a part, but the question is one
of balance. Which people should be shown forgiveness (whether Christian or not),
and which should not? And for which sins? The very cynical might think that the
de facto deciding factor is just how much help someone has given to the
government or governing party in terms of cash donations or merely a platform
to spout their ideas. The more common or garden cynic might see it as more
generalised – those who promote the governing party’s ideas are allowed to get
away with more than those who don’t. It doesn’t take a lot of observing to note
that apologies by Tories seem to be assumed to carry more weight than apologies
by members of other parties. Genuine atonement and contrition are – or should
be – about more than a mumbled half-apology and a donation to Tory coffers. But
there – I’m just showing the extent to which I’ve fallen for the extremist idea
that people should, as a general rule, avoid hate speech in the first place
rather than atone for it after the event.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-34343215087497151492024-03-14T08:29:00.000+00:002024-03-14T08:29:17.813+00:00Living dangerously<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It was, apparently, </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/emo_philips_128947"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Emo
Philips</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">, an American actor
and comedian, who came up with the joke that, <i>“When I was a kid I used to
pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work
that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.”</i> But it is the English
Conservative and Unionist Party which has decided to adopt a variation on this
approach when it comes to dealing with racism and misogyny. Instead of trying
to eliminate racist language by Tories, their response to the outrageous (and,
to date, undenied) </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://news.sky.com/story/who-is-tory-donor-frank-hester-and-what-did-he-reportedly-say-about-diane-abbott-13093261"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">remarks</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> attributed to their biggest donor has amounted to saying
that a rich Tory donor can say whatever he likes as long as he apologises
afterwards. And pays the party enough money. It all seems a bit reminiscent of medieval
popes selling </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">indulgences</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The linguistic
acrobatics being performed by those who want to keep hold of the tainted £10
million are a wonder to behold. The miscreant himself claims that there was no
racist or sexist intent in the words used as though the words ‘black’ and
‘women’ were meaningless and added nothing to what he said. Then there’s the </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/conservative-peer-party-donor-racism-claims-jamaica_uk_65f04eebe4b032e17a838b00/"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">claim</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> that he can’t be racist because he does business in
Jamaica. On that simplistic basis, neither were the slave owners; they were
simply businessmen trying to turn a penny or two. The suggestion by number 10
that his words were wrong, but he’s given an apology for ‘being rude’ and we
should all just move on sit oddly against a background where the government is
determined to ‘crack down’ on anyone who breaks the Conservative consensus
about what it is to be British. It invites us to consider that being racist is an
entirely acceptable part of their definition of British values as long as an
insincere apology is issued later by anyone whose words somehow leak into the
public domain.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The reluctance to
part with £10 million, especially after it’s already been spent, is, I suppose,
understandable for a party obsessed with the financial value of everything, but
principled it is not. Faced with the obvious car crash which was coming his way
the moment the words leaked out, Sunak had two political options open to him.
The first was immediate condemnation, accompanied by the return of the cash. Decisive,
even if untypical, action would have wrong-footed the opposition, but the story
(as a source of political damage to the Tories) would have gone away after a
few days. Sunak seems incapable of instant reaction, so his default option was
the second. That is to delay reacting as long as possible, and then try to
brazen it out in the belief that the news media would move on. Consciously choosing
the second option inevitably brings a third option into play, but it’s one that
politicians only ever fall into by accident. Starting out by trying to brazen
it out and then buckling under pressure is the worst of all in political terms:
not only does it look weak, unprincipled, and indecisive, it also concedes that
the original decision was wrong and the opponents were right all along. And it
looks at least possible that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/13/sunak-under-growing-pressure-from-tories-to-return-10m-hester-donation">pressure</a>
from his own side from people who have a genuine and entirely legitimate fear
of being brought down along with him may yet push him that way. <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-meets-graham-brady-amid-claims-flurry-of-no-confidence-letters-have-been-sent-2953500">Living
dangerously</a> may be a lifestyle choice for some, but for Sunak it’s entirely
accidental.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-70894114226100563742024-03-11T09:06:00.000+00:002024-03-11T09:06:37.437+00:00Officially unofficial<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/09/boris-johnson-held-unofficial-talks-with-president-of-venezuela-in-february">reports</a>
over the weekend that Boris Johnson has been engaging in some ‘unofficial’
diplomacy by meeting the president of Venezuela raise a number of questions. The
first, but probably least important, is who paid for the private jet to take
him there and back? His spokesperson said that the travel was privately funded
and that neither government contributed to the cost. That might be true
(although we know from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/08/mod-paid-millions-into-saudi-account-amid-bae-corruption-scandal">other
recent news</a> that the UK government is not averse to funnelling funds
through third parties to disguise the source). The one thing of which we can be
certain is that Johnson didn’t pay himself. He is a man who has achieved the
minor financial miracle of earning ludicrous sums of money for doing very
little, getting other people to pay for everything he wants, and still being
perpetually broke.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">A more significant
question is how the meeting came to be arranged. I don’t know whether Johnson and
Maduro had ever met before, but they don’t exactly look like the sort of bosom
buddies who would pick up the phone and agree to meet for a conversation which ‘sources
close to the former PM’ (according to the Sunday Times) described as “one-way
traffic”, with Johnson laying down the law to Maduro. So who initiated the
meeting between a busy head of state and a disgraced former PM with no role in
foreign policy who just happened to be on holiday a mere 1,000km away? Was it
Johnson: <i>“Nicolás, old chum. Boris here. I happen to be staying in the
Dominican Republic just up the road from you, and I have a private jet at my
disposal for the day. Why don’t I nip down to give you a little lecture about
democracy and your role in the world?”</i>. And if that sounds unlikely,
consider the alternative: <i>“Boris, mi amigo. A little </i></span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><i><span lang="ES" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: ES; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">pájaro</span></i></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> tells me that you are staying just an hour and a half
away from here by plane. Why don’t you blag a private jet from one of your rich
friends for the day and nip down to give me a little lecture on </span></i></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><i><span lang="ES" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: ES; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">democracia</span></i></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">?”</span></i></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">. I don’t buy
either.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">And then we’re told
that Lord Cameron of Chipping Bollocks didn’t know anything about it until
Johnson texted him </span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: FR; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">en
route</span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">: <i>“Dave, old boy. Boris here. Just
flying down to Caracas to give that Maduro chappie an earful about his
responsibilities to democracy and the world. Thought that the Foreign Secretary
might want to know about it. Toodle-pip!”</i> None of it adds up – it’s far
more likely that there was some discussion at a diplomatic level to set up the
meeting, implying that both governments are keen for a restoration of some sort
of normality in relations. If Maduro really thought that Johnson had absolutely
no status with the UK government, why on earth would he ever have agreed to
meet him? He can’t have been expecting a friendly fireside chat. In short, this
‘unofficial’ visit looks about as unofficial as a tax demand from HMRC. And if
Cameron really didn’t know about it sooner, then someone in his department has
been freelancing big time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">But, if it was an
official 'unofficial' visit, that brings us to the biggest question of all. Who, in his or
her right mind, thought that it would be a good idea to entrust a disgraced
former PM, who is also a compulsive liar with a predisposition to saying the
first thing that comes into his head, with acting as the conduit for sensitive
discussions with a foreign government? The chances of him accurately relaying
the UK government’s position to Maduro, and then accurately relaying Maduro’s
response to the UK government are not exactly high. He's much more likely to
deliver an insult or three in the belief that it’s just banter and good humour.
And whether Cameron knew about the visit in advance or not, is it credible that
the current PM would not have known that his predecessor but one was being
deployed on an ‘unofficial’ diplomatic mission of a certain delicacy? Jobs for failed
ex-PMs is becoming a Sunak speciality. Next up? Theresa May as head of an
initiative to welcome new citizens? Liz Truss as next head of the Office for
Budget Responsibility? If he’s given up on all hope of turning things around,
Sunak can at least spend the next few months having a laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-5170675510552872142024-03-09T10:44:00.000+00:002024-03-09T10:44:36.997+00:00Cutting out the middleman<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The six week suspension
handed to one of Plaid’s Senedd members has provoked a comparison with the
position at Westminster – in similar circumstances, a Westminster MP would be
facing a recall petition and a probable by-election, but there is no such
sanction available in the case of this list MS. It’s a valid question, but the suggestion
of instituting a similar provision for the Senedd seems to be based on the English
constitutional fiction underpinning the Westminster process, which is that
people vote for an individual, not for a party. In the case of list members,
the vote is unquestionably for the party. And whilst introducing such a
provision for members elected on a closed list is not impossible, it does
rather look like twisting the system, when there is actually a very much
simpler process available.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The recall process
is comparatively novel in the UK’s system, and to date there have only been
five instances of a petition being called. The first of those was in Northern
Ireland, where none of the UK parties operate, and in a constituency which was
not seen then as being particularly competitive – it was widely assumed that the
DUP would win anyway. That petition failed to attract the necessary support of
10% of the electorate. In all other cases, the 10% was reached, and it doesn’t
take a genius to work out why. I doubt that there is a constituency anywhere,
no matter how apparently popular the transgressing MP might be, where a
determined opposition party or parties could not find 10% of the electorate
wanting to get rid of their MP. We can probably, therefore, take it as read
that once a petition is called, it is overwhelmingly likely to be successful.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">To date, only in one
instance has the transgressing member stood in the subsequent by-election
(although in another case, the member managed to arrange for his party to select
his girlfriend, a situation which led to a remarkable lack of external support
for her candidacy). The one who did stand again was defeated in the by-election.
Indeed, the idea that an MP who has either been convicted of a criminal offence
or else suspended by his or her fellow MPs for a serious breach of parliamentary rules
would be presented by his or her party as a suitable person for re-election is a
strange one, a form of political madness. Certainly not something likely to be
repeated any time soon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">So, regardless of
the objective of the recall principles (that the electors should be given the
opportunity to call for a by-election and that the individual should have the
opportunity to stand again), the electors are always likely to say yes to a
by-election, and the party is always likely to disown the previous member and
select a new candidate. It is, therefore, in practice if not in principle, a
process where a member in breach of the relevant rules ends up being expelled
from the parliament and replaced by a new member who may or may not be from the
same party. In which case, instead of trying to come up with a complex set of
rules for list members to face by-elections, why not simply cut out the
middleman, and declare that, on conviction (in the case of criminal acts) or
suspension from the parliament for more than a specified period (in the case of
a serious breach of the parliament’s rules or standards), the seat becomes
vacant and the member is replaced through the normal process which would apply
in the case of death or resignation? For a constituency member, that means an
automatic by-election, avoiding the cost, time and effort of a petition, and
for a list member, it means the appointment of the next eligible member on the
relevant party’s list. It’s both simpler and more rapid than the current
process, which seems to have been designed (with a remarkable lack of
forethought) to maximise the chance of the transgressing member being returned
to the club.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-80985286690417980932024-03-07T10:21:00.000+00:002024-03-07T10:21:53.167+00:00Insanity precedes destruction<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Imagine the glee in
Tory HQ yesterday when the Chancellor sat down. Not only had they produced a
budget which depends heavily on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/mar/07/conservatives-jeremy-hunt-budget-tax-rishi-sunak-kemi-badenoch-labour-uk-politics-live?page=with:block-65e989828f081abe5d1e32d0#block-65e989828f081abe5d1e32d0">entirely
fictitious cuts</a> to public spending in future years, they’ve also stolen
Labour’s clothes on two tax increases which were designated by Labour to fund a
whole load of policies. Given Labour’s ‘cast-iron’ commitment to a
stupid and unnecessary fiscal rule, it means that an incoming Labour government
will be obliged to identify the cuts which Hunt has declined to identify (in
the certain knowledge that it won’t be him making them) and obliged by a
compliant Tory media to explain how they will now fund the various things for
which the cash has now been given away. I’m sure that the backroom staff will
be celebrating the success of their cunning plan to make things as difficult as
possible for the next government. How clever they must have thought themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">So clever, in fact,
that they even issued the press with a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/mar/06/spring-budget-2024-jeremy-hunt-tax-cuts-conservatives-labour-uk-politics-latest-updates?page=with:block-65e88a198f08b10542c9c87c#block-65e88a198f08b10542c9c87c">helpful
briefing list</a> of all the things which Labour will not now be able to do.
The thing is, though, that most of the items on that list appear likely to be
generally popular. Telling people how clever the Tories have been by sabotaging
funding for more NHS appointments, more NHS dentistry (a service which has
reached crisis point), school breakfast clubs, home insulation and so on doesn’t
immediately strike me as being the cleverest of moves. Preventing Labour from pursuing
unpopular policies is one thing; preventing them from pursuing popular ones is
quite another. And boasting about it looks like a form of political insanity.
Still, as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whom_the_gods_would_destroy,_they_first_make_mad">saying</a>
goes, <i>“those whom the gods would destroy…”</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-28311535563060665002024-03-06T10:29:00.000+00:002024-03-06T10:29:33.643+00:00Pétards have their uses<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">A pétard was, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petard">apparently</a>, a small bomb, used
mostly for breaching the gates and walls of fortifications. When improperly
used, it could result in the user blowing him or herself up, or being ‘hoisted’
into the air. But the word originally derives from the Latin for fart, so being
‘hoist by your own petard’ really means being propelled in an unwanted
direction by an expulsion of internal wind. The latter, more literal,
definition seems, somehow, more appropriate for the situation in which the Tories
have found themselves in the last week. Twice.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The first was the fire
being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/05/uks-fiscal-rules-obr-treasury-budget-jremy-hunt">directed</a>
by some Tories at the Office for Budget Responsibility at the way in which its
interpretation of the numbers is restricting the ability of the Chancellor to ‘adjust’
the numbers in order to deliver a fantasy tax cut in today’s budget. Those with
an attention span longer than that of a gnat will remember that establishing
the OBR was a cunning plan by George Osborne to fix financial orthodoxy into
law by having an ‘independent’ group of experts consider proposed budgetary
changes and report on whether they complied with that orthodoxy. It was to act
as a deterrent to any Chancellor who thought that he or she could simply fiddle
the figures. It was intended, of course, to nobble the Labour Party if it
should ever be re-elected – the financial orthodoxy was very definitely a Tory
version of orthodoxy. It was never designed to constrain the actions of a Tory
Chancellor, yet that is exactly what it is now doing. Truss found a way around
this inconvenient obstacle by declaring that her mini-budget was not a budget
(Sunak is not the first Tory to attempt to redefine facts) in order to avoid the
requirement for an OBR assessment but, as things turned out, the absence of
that assessment was an even bigger problem as those in the financial markets
asked themselves just what Truss and Kwarteng were trying to hide.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The second is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/05/senior-tories-criticise-no-10-plans-to-broaden-extremism-definition">backlash</a>
from the extremists in the Tory Party to the proposals by Sunak to try and
outlaw extremism. They have realised something that Sunak obviously did not – that
in outlawing extremism he may end up criminalising a fair chunk of his own
party. Some might call it a form of poetic justice, others might see it as the
law of unintended consequences. Either way, it highlights the extent to which
the PM doesn’t understand the implications of his own words and actions – let alone
how far his party has fallen through the looking glass. Back in the days of
John Major, it might have looked like a deliberate ploy to rid himself of some
of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1993/jul/25/politicalnews.uk">bastards</a>
in the cabinet, but from Sunak it just looks like incompetence and an
astounding lack of awareness.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">So, that loud
ripping noise you might hear from time to time is nothing to worry about. It’s
simply the explosive release of intestinal gases from a Tory Party busily ‘hoisting’
itself into oblivion. Almost reassuring.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-15934529624913041062024-03-04T09:32:00.001+00:002024-03-04T09:32:05.303+00:00Creating new business opportunities?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Entrepreneurialism
is something which just about everybody is in favour of, but which is actually
quite hard to define. In terms of new enterprises, some of the key elements
include identifying a product or service which people want and finding a new
way of fulfilling that want such that the product or service can be readily
sourced and sold at a profit. And often, looking at the history of some of the
most ‘successful’ entrepreneurs, it involves sailing close to the wind in legal
terms or even slightly crossing the line. The more successful the business, the
more likely it is that a blind eye will be turned, especially if exposing any transgressions
might embarrass the relevant authorities.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">If that’s a
reasonable working definition, how do we respond to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/03/alarm-over-suspect-care-agencies-granted-home-office-licence-to-act-as-visa-sponsors">news</a>
that the Home Office has been issuing thousands of care work visas to companies
who provide no care and have no facilities to provide care anyway? Criminal
conspiracy or daring (might one even use that term so beloved of the current
government, ‘buccaneering’) entrepreneurialism? The companies appear to be
properly incorporated, and the visas they obtain, once issued by the Home Office,
entirely valid. And they have an obvious financial value when sold on to
others. One thing that is entirely predictable is that, when any rules or
regulations change, there will be those who will seek out any business
opportunities which might be presented as a result. In this case, the
government’s changes to visa rules have opened up an entire new industry –
trade in legitimate, Home Office issued, visas.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It is by government
decision that there are virtually no checks performed by Companies House on the
incorporation of new companies. It might be a decision taken to avoid having to
employ civil servants to perform checks, or it might be deliberate – the UK
Government seems to be rather proud of how easy it is to set up a company in
the UK. And it’s another government decision (again, probably taken to avoid
employing civil servants to do the work) that the Home Office performs few
checks on the legitimacy of applications for visas. And given the government’s <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/jeremy-hunt-liz-truss-rishi-sunak-dave-penman-prime-minister-b2422435.html">announcement</a>
that the total number of civil servants will be arbitrarily reduced to the
number who were employed prior to the pandemic, we can be certain that there
will be plenty of other circumstances in which basic checks will not be
performed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Every such failure
creates a loophole which someone, somewhere, will find and exploit in order to
turn a profit. Whether we call that someone a dastardly criminal or a buccaneering
entrepreneur is, ultimately, an open question: the difference between the two
isn’t always as obvious as one might think or wish. Arbitrary reductions to the
civil service will even <a href="https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/community/blogs/philip-fisher/civil-servant-cuts-would-be-a-boon-to-tax-evaders">make
it easier</a> for those working in the new market to avoid or evade tax. The failure
to operate proper checks on the issue of visas might initially look like mere
government incompetence. But when similar failures are repeated across a range
of functions, it ends up looking more like deliberate policy. As we ‘know’,
civil servants are a ‘burden’ who add no real value to anything, they just
apply ‘red tape’ and ‘bureaucracy’ which stand in the way of enterprising individuals. Blaming those individuals might be easy, but they shouldn't be the only target.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-7737166284280176782024-03-02T10:11:00.000+00:002024-03-02T10:11:34.426+00:00Sunak channeling Nelson?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The Prime Minister seems
to be more than a little <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/01/extremists-trying-to-tear-us-apart-says-rishi-sunak-in-impromptu-no-10-speech">exercised</a>
about the result of the Rochdale by-election, but equally short on solutions,
unless you count a bit of performative and ritual condemnation and yet more
action against protests. Whilst it’s true that the by-election was hardly the
finest hour for any of the traditional parties, and that most people would
probably agree that ‘extremist’ is a reasonable description of Galloway, the
simple fact is that, under the rules of the game, Galloway won the election. It’s
called democracy and, since democracy is about debate between different
viewpoints, it doesn’t always produce the results that some of us might want. Of course, in one sense Sunak is displaying traditional ‘British’ values; in
this case those of Nelson as he ignores the extremist takeover of his own
party. He seems blissfully unaware of the parable about motes and beams.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Would Galloway still
have won under a system of proportional representation? It’s hard to be
certain, but with 40% of the vote going to Galloway, the second and subsequent
choices of eliminated candidates would have had to break very decisively
against him for the result to change. That isn’t the end of it, though – had there
been a system to allocate the votes of eliminated candidates between those
remaining at each stage of the count, that might have attracted a higher
turnout. ‘What if?’ is an interesting but largely academic pursuit. What we do
know is that Tory and Labour alike prefer to retain the system because it
enables them to win an absolute majority on a percentage of the vote lower than
that achieved by Galloway (meaning, incidentally, that his constituency victory
has rather more democratic legitimacy than the parliamentary majority won by
either Labour or the Tories in five of the general elections in the last
half century).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Most of the time,
the UK’s electoral system works in a way which favours a two-party contest,
with other parties being seen as ‘also-rans’. However, sometimes circumstances
are such that the system can end up favouring an alternative, for example if
the support for that alternative is heavily concentrated geographically. The
rise of the SNP to dominance (a dominance which would have been far less
sweeping under a properly proportional system) is one example. Galloway’s
victory, in what are probably utterly unique circumstances in Rochdale, is
another. In railing against the outcome, either Sunak is too dim to realise
that he is really railing against the UK’s electoral system, or else he is trying
to lay the groundwork for a further assault on that system to rig it even
further in favour of his own party. His words were so empty of content that it’s
really hard to tell.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">One thing on which I
can agree with Sunak is that we face a serious danger from extremism. It’s just
that the extremism emanating from his own party worries me more than any other
sort, because that extremism is actually in power and eating away, from the inside, at the
traditional values which its proponents claim to espouse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-43571947964061184982024-03-01T12:21:00.000+00:002024-03-01T12:21:45.890+00:00Raising taxes to pay for tax cuts<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There is, or should
be, something rather surreal about the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/feb/29/rishi-sunak-lee-anderson-rochdale-police-conservatives-uk-politics-live?page=with:block-65e094438f087a7b82b44b0d#block-65e094438f087a7b82b44b0d">reports</a>
that Jeremy Hunt is considering raising taxes in order to, er, pay for tax
cuts. Even more so when it becomes clear that the two tax increases he’s
considering are part of Labour’s planned financial plan, and that he and his
colleagues have roundly condemned them both, repeatedly. Some might see it as
an example of redistribution in action – although taking money from one group
of well-off people in order to give it to another group of relatively well-off
people (who might as a result feel bribed into voting Tory) is not exactly what
most of us mean by the term ‘redistribution’. For an added twist, it seems that
one of the attractions of implementing these two Labour policies is that it
would prevent Labour from implementing other Labour policies – which Labour were
planning to use the money raised to implement. By raising the money himself in
advance and then giving it away, Hunt’s cunning plan is to force Labour to say
which other taxes they will raise to pay for policies which will thus be left unfunded,
and thus expose Labour as a tax-raising party.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There is, of course,
an implicit assumption in this that everyone will see tax cuts as being preferable
to providing decent public services, an assumption which hasn’t exactly been
validated by <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-voters-tax-cuts-jeremy-hunt-public-spending-b2500578.html">some
recent polling</a>. But then, Hunt probably doesn’t mix a great deal with those
who are most dependent on those decent public services. Perhaps the most
surreal part of all is that Hunt’s cunning plan has been aided and abetted –
not to say directly facilitated – by the stupidity of the Labour Party in
committing not to reverse any tax cuts announced by the Tories, even when all
concerned know that those cuts are going to be predicated on using new money
raised as well as assumptions about unspecified cuts to services at some future
date which have been built into the government’s five year plan. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It is a monumental
act of self-harm by Labour’s foot-shooting tendency which has managed to
convince the leadership that the arbitrary fiscal rules which they themselves
have invented have some magical status which makes them unbreakable. It’s an
act of stupidity which won’t stop them winning the election (although we should
be careful not to rule out the possibility that they will find some other way
of making even more holes in their own feet in the coming months) but merely
mean that they can’t do very much once they’ve been elected, other than try and
implement Tory policies with a little more competence. It’s fair to say that
competence in a governing party has been more than a little under-rated
recently, and a dose of it might be welcome, but those hoping for real change
as a result of a change of governing party are likely to be disappointed.
Rapidly. The biggest danger is that they will simply open the door to the new
English Nationalist Party (although they probably won’t call it that) which is
likely to rise out of the ashes of a merger between the Tories and Reform after
the election. We really do need to make a quick exit from the dysfunctional
state which the UK is becoming.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-15369248628622634682024-02-29T13:14:00.000+00:002024-02-29T13:14:43.678+00:00Cracking down on crackdowns<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">One of the key weapons
in the armoury of a desperate politician is to announce a ‘crackdown’ on something
or other. It’s not unique to the Tories – I seem to remember a certain <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/may/12/politics.society">T. Blair</a>
announcing ‘crackdowns’ on various perceived sins – although it’s more likely
to come from a government which has the power to do something than from an opposition
which does not. It was Sunak’s turn <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/28/sunak-demands-ban-on-protests-at-mps-homes-and-crackdown-on-mob-rule">yesterday</a>,
with his pledge to ‘crack down’ on mob rule. Announcing a crackdown always
sounds forceful and macho – although it doesn’t exactly play to Sunak’s visible
strengths. Or even his invisible ones. The most useful crackdown would probably
be a crackdown on the announcement of crackdowns.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">‘Mob rule’ isn’t
something which is easily defined either – at least, not by someone who wants to
prevent people blocking the streets protesting about climate change or war
whilst also joining in with those who use their tractors to block the streets
in protest against revisions to farming subsidies. Whilst I would describe
neither as ‘mob rule’, in Sunakland it seems that either there are good mobs and
bad mobs or else the definition of a mob is such that protests against a Labour
government in Wales are magically excluded. And that, of course, is part of the
point – it’s really divergence from his own views on which he wishes to crack down.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">I’ll admit that I’m
not sufficiently familiar with the details of farming finances and subsidies to
judge whether the Welsh Government’s proposals are as bad as some farmers are
making out. What I do know is that any Brexit promise to maintain the level of
farm finance was as false as all the other promises, and that a reduction in
funding inevitably leads to replacing previous schemes. George Monbiot <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/28/wales-farming-environment-sunak-protest">argued</a>
yesterday that the differences between the English schemes and the Welsh schemes
are not as great as they have been presented by some, and <i>that “The main
difference is that in Wales, the offer for farmers is better – with more
consistent payments and a smoother transition from the old system”</i>. If that
were true, it would mean that Sunak was busily supporting farmers who are
arguing that a deal better than that which his government has offered isn’t
good enough. An entirely normal level of honesty from the current UK
government. I suspect that the truth is more nuanced. Farming subsidy schemes
are complex and any change means, especially if accompanied by an overall reduction
in funds, that some farmers will inevitably lose out, even if the Welsh scheme
is indeed better overall than the English equivalent. And that will undoubtedly
impact rural communities in Wales, for whom the farming industry is still a key
factor.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The easiest ‘solution’
would be to ensure that the pre-Brexit levels and methods of funding were
maintained, a matter which is wholly in the hands of one Rishi Sunak. Joining
in with protests which are effectively against his own government’s actions is
taking a leaf straight out of the playbook of Welsh Labour members in relation
to hospital and school reorganisations, so there isn’t a lot of moral high
ground for Drakeford et al in this. Although constrained by Westminster
decisions on funding, the Welsh Government does have some room for manoeuvre on
what is still, officially, a consultation process. I really hope that they will
listen carefully and use that room for manoeuvre. It’s doubtful, however, that
they will be able to please everybody and still achieve the aims that they’ve
set out for themselves. Calling on Sunak to intervene and over-ride whatever is
decided in Wales (as some of the protesters have done) is counter-productive
for an industry which has more direct influence over what is decided in Cardiff
than it does over what is decided in London, and is, instead, playing to the
agenda of people whose aims go way beyond reforming farming subsidies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Sunak’s apparent ‘support’
for Welsh farmers is a double-edged sword, and his real agenda is about party
political advantage and undermining Welsh democracy. If English farmers start
protesting with tractors in the centre of London, he’ll soon enough be ‘cracking
down’ on the ‘mob’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-82257034450312805792024-02-28T11:07:00.001+00:002024-02-28T11:07:58.382+00:00Neutering protest<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There is a valid
debate to be had about how much notice should be given to police and other authorities
about the intention to hold a large demonstration and, in principle, planning
to increase the notice period from 6 days, as the Home Secretary is apparently <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/28/home-secretary-mulling-further-restrictions-on-protests">considering</a>,
isn’t a wholly unreasonable suggestion. It does take time to plan the police
presence and make any other necessary arrangements. How much notice is needed
is another question again, however; and the idea is not without other problems.
Firstly, some demonstrations happen as an immediate and almost spontaneous
reaction to events where people wish to express their feelings immediately, and
secondly – more practically – defining a ‘large’ demonstration in advance isn’t as easy as
it might appear. In truth, even the organisers will rarely know how many people
to expect.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Whilst being presented
as a reasonable step to take in terms of practicality and planning, the real
agenda here is to make it harder to organise mass protests and to constrain –
yet again – the right of people to protest. The Home Secretary himself almost
says as much with his comments about the protesters’ aims, telling the Times in
response to protests about what’s happening in Gaza, <i>“They have made a point
and they made it very, very loudly and I’m not sure that these marches every
couple of weeks add value to the argument. They’re not really saying anything
new.”</i> There is, within that, an implicit view that people should protest
once, make their point, and then become silent, even whilst the actions about
which the protests are being held continue unabated. It completely misses the
point that those demonstrating are also seeking to influence events (whether
demonstrations are the most effective way of doing that is an entirely
different question, but they are one of the few ways that people actually have
of expressing themselves). And, as we know from experience, once people stop
protesting, the powers that be will simply assume that the issue has gone away,
and that people no longer feel so strongly. Protest, almost always, needs to be
sustained if it is to have any effect. But the idea that protest might actually
influence events is precisely the reason why authoritarian governments want to
stamp it out. Making it more difficult to hold a protest is just the first
step.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-83383456885581346392024-02-27T14:22:00.000+00:002024-02-27T14:22:35.738+00:00Hair-splitting is just a diversionary tactic<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Maybe there’s a
scholar of English nuance somewhere who can explain the enormous difference between
claiming that Sadiq Khan and, in consequence, London are under the control of
Islamists (© Lee Anderson) and <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24139728.yousaf-slams-braverman-worst-politicians/">claiming</a>
that the whole of the UK is under the control of Islamists and Keir Starmer is
in hock to them (© Suella Braverman). The first is apparently so serious as to
justify removing the whip, whilst the second can be ignored. Number 10 have
been struggling for days to explain what exactly it was about Anderson’s
statement which led to his suspension (and today’s ‘<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/feb/27/lee-anderson-sadiq-khan-conservatives-islamophobia-post-office-uk-politics-live?page=with:block-65ddd5ae8f088d4b8fb18ae2#block-65ddd5ae8f088d4b8fb18ae2">clarification</a>’
has added little to the sum total of human knowledge), suggesting that Sunak
really doesn’t understand what was wrong with both wild claims, and has merely
responded to bad press.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Some, such as the
Trade and Industry Secretary, have decided to try and avoid the question by
getting into a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/islamophobia-meaning-tories-lee-anderson-b2503034.html">semantic
argument</a> about what is or is not Islamophobia. If it weren’t for the fact
that this is a blatant attempt by the hair-splitting tendency to divert
attention away from the substance, she might even have half a point. ‘Phobia’
isn’t the best suffix to use, given its suggestion of fear, and ‘anti-Islamic’
might indeed be more accurate use of language. It is possible to hate something
without fearing it, and to fear something without hating it, but arguing about
that nuance doesn’t actually deal with the essence of the comments, which seem
to display a mixture of both hate and fear.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Essentially, what
both Braverman and Anderson are complaining about is that people have been ‘allowed’
to demonstrate against Israeli actions in Gaza rather than having their
protests banned and the ringleaders rounded up and jailed. And whilst the
subject matter in this case might be the appalling violence being deployed in
Gaza, both of them are using what they assume (maybe correctly, although I’m
not entirely convinced that they are really in tune with even that group) to be
an unpopular cause amongst their target voters as a hook to express their
dislike of any dissent from their own view of the world. And it’s not at all
unreasonable to wonder whether Sunak’s half-hearted disciplinary action against
one of them (make an unapologetic apology with your fingers crossed behind your
back and we’ll let you back in, seems to be the message) and his reluctance to
even consider action against the second is a result of him basically agreeing
with them and not really understanding what the fuss is about.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">If any of them
understood what the traditional ‘British values’ which they all claim to
espouse mean, they would also understand that the right to protest is one of
those values. What their words and actions demonstrate most clearly – and not
just in relation to Gaza – is that they are actually clueless about those
values. It increasingly appears as though the only ‘right’ that they think anyone
other than themselves and the financial interests they represent should have is
the right to do as we are told. And that isn’t really a ‘right’ at all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-24765379709526631962024-02-26T11:48:00.000+00:002024-02-26T11:48:53.394+00:00Painting the economy red, white and blue isn't the same as making it work better<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Labour’s leader is
visiting the West Midlands today, and his <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/business/money/labour-would-run-patriotic-economy-starmer-to-say-on-west-midlands-visit-b1141414.html#:~:text=Sir%20Keir%20Starmer%20will%20talk,Britain%E2%80%9D%20if%20it%20wins%20power.">speech</a>
has been widely trailed in advance. Apparently, he wants to see Labour running
what he calls a ‘patriotic’ economy. It’s an interesting, if essentially
meaningless, turn of phrase, but like most essentially meaningless phrases, it
can be interpreted to mean whatever the listener wants it to mean. Starmer will
probably be happy with that – and wrapping himself in red, white and blue is a
tactic to which he increasingly turns.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It would be nice to
think that what he is trying to say is that the economy should work for the
benefit of all citizens, rather than the wealthiest few. It’s a sentiment that
many, including myself, could readily agree with, but it does imply a
recognition that ‘the economy’ is not some mysterious force which controls us,
like Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, but a system invented by humans, run by
humans and regulated by humans. There are more ways than one of doing all of
that: the ‘economy’ doesn’t have to work well only for some. That isn’t quite
what he is saying though. His speech talks about an economy where <i>“…Britain’s
hardworking families reap the rewards”</i>. ‘Hardworking’ is a phrase which
seems to trip off the tongue of politicians – very few of them seem to be able
to make a speech without using the term. But here’s the thing: every time I hear
that phrase, I hear someone who is also saying that only working people count.
The sick, the disabled, the elderly – few of the people in these categories fit
any rational definition of ‘hardworking families’. It’s as though they really
neither count nor matter.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The speech gets
worse, because he then launches into the trope of what he sees as the <i>“…core
British value of working hard and getting on”</i>. In itself, the phrase sounds
almost innocuous, but it contains within it a deeply unpleasant suggestion that
anyone who doesn’t ‘get on’ is simply failing to work hard enough, with the
implication that poverty is thus the fault of the poor. As Yoda almost said, <i>“The
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic">Protestant work
ethic</a> is strong in this one”</i>. It’s based on the idea which has become
central to Labour thinking – although it’s a long way from the beliefs of the
party’s pioneers – that what is important is something called ‘equality of
opportunity’ rather than economic equality. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It’s true, of
course, that anyone can (theoretically, at least) establish a successful
business and become a multi-billionaire, or walk into a highly-paid job if they
have the necessary skills and attributes, and that education, alongside other
policies, can help to develop those skills and attributes and theoretically
make it possible for more people to ‘work hard’ and earn their fortune as a
consequence. But it’s also true that, even if they have all the necessary
skills and attributes, not everybody can do that. Simple mathematics tells us
that extreme wealth is concentrated wealth, and concentrated wealth for the few
necessarily requires a transfer of wealth from the many. More generally, ‘getting on’ for some
requires that others do not ‘get on’, no matter how hard they work (and there
are many people in poorly-paid roles who work a lot harder than some of those
in well-paid roles). And despite decades in which ‘equality of opportunity’ has
been the stated goal of governments of all parties, one thing we know for
certain is that parental income is still the best predictor of outcomes for children.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Starmer had an opportunity
to say that his government will ensure that the economy works for all, but he
has chosen instead to talk about a few minor tweaks to an economy which is
designed and run to do the exact opposite. That’s not to say that the tweaks
are completely without merit, but transformative this is most definitely not.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-27006990773604420352024-02-25T10:08:00.000+00:002024-02-25T10:08:14.547+00:00Identifying the extremists<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">After several years
of trying his damnedest to get expelled, which led instead to his being promoted
to posts within the governing party, Tory extremist Lee Anderson has finally managed
to get the Tory whips to act against him for his astonishing, not to say
ridiculous, claim that ‘Islamists’ have taken control of Sadiq Khan, and
through him of the imperial capital itself. This has been adjudged to be one
unhinged comment too far. Presumably, his efforts to date have been regarded as
merely obnoxious, something which has become <i>de rigueur</i> in his party
since it has been largely infiltrated and taken over by Farageists. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In response, the man
himself <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/lee-anderson-has-tory-whip-suspended-following-islamists-claims/">said</a>
that he fully understood that <i>“…they had no option but to suspend the whip…”</i>,
but refused to retract or apologise for his remarks. It’s probably just the
excuse he’s been looking for to lead what he probably hopes will be a mass exit
from the Official Farageists of the Tory Party towards the Provisionals of Reform.
In what would, in any rational universe, be seen as a not-very-funny attempt at self-parody, but which appears
to be instead a deadly serious lack of self-awareness, he said that he would <i>“continue
to support the Government’s efforts to call out extremism in all its forms”</i>.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘All’ its forms? It would be nice to be
able to believe that he is the only one who sees any political view which
diverges from his own as being ‘extremist’, but it seems to be becoming the
norm for his erstwhile colleagues, given the number of times he’s made extremist
statements with the apparent consent and support of his now ex-party’s leader.
And despite her own unhinged comments this week about the huge leftist
conspiracy being driven apparently by the World Economic Forum, The Financial
Times, and the Economist amongst others, Truss has apparently managed not to
cross the line between being merely mad and being expellable. Still, given
that the man making the decisions on who to suspend and for what, the Chief Whip,
has <a href="https://borthlas.blogspot.com/2008/07/birdwatching-terrorists.html">previously</a>
suggested that the RSPB is a terrorist organisation, it’s difficult for anyone
to know where the line actually is. If there even is one any more.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-1529728137988019652024-02-23T12:15:00.001+00:002024-02-23T12:15:57.307+00:00Choosing on what to be defeated<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Much of the
commentary surrounding the shambles into which the English House of Commons
descended earlier this week has been either about the extent to which it was
all about party political manoeuvring over what appear to be tiny differences
in wording or about whether the Speaker was being partisan in his decision-making.
Whilst the difference between an immediate ceasefire, a humanitarian ceasefire
and a sustainable ceasefire is indeed important in terms of nuance, the population
of Gaza, who have largely been herded over recent weeks into a giant refugee
camp right up against the border with Egypt, simply want the shooting and the
bombing to stop. Some of the other differences in wording – such as the extent
to which Israel deserves criticism – are probably more significant in terms of
meaning, but even less so in terms of simply stopping the fighting. On the
substance of the issue being debated, there isn’t really much more to say than
that the fighting needs to stop.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The shambles also
revealed yet another aspect of the arcane nature of Westminster’s rules,
something which has received rather less comment. The SNP still hold the
majority of Scottish seats (whatever the current opinion polls tell us about
their prospects for the next election) and under the normal rules of democracy
that might suggest that they have a reasonable right to claim that they represent Scottish
opinion. They are accustomed to losing votes in parliament; having Scottish opinion
over-ruled by the English majority of MPs (and in this context, Tory and Labour
usually seem to act as one) is something which happens on a more or less daily basis.
One of the things that emerged from this week’s debacle is that, on three
sitting days each year, the SNP get to choose the subject on which the English
majority proceeds to over-rule Scotland’s voice. 'They' probably see it as an over-generous concession.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Choosing the subject
on which you’re going to get hopelessly outvoted can’t be an easy matter, and
since the result is pre-ordained, one could argue that it doesn’t matter a
great deal anyway. The wish to be seen to have views on matters other than domestic
Scottish issues is an obvious one for a party which wants to avoid being
labelled parochial, and which wants Scotland to take its place on the world
stage. I can’t help wondering, though, about the wisdom of choosing to lose on
an issue which genuinely is a UK-wide issue for as long as the UK exists. It
doesn’t add much to the narrative of Scottish voices being ignored. On this
occasion, the SNP’s natural desire to twist the knife in a divided Labour Party
seems to have got the better of them, and they’ve ended up joining in the procedural
fun and games which are so typical of Westminster. It’s not the first time that
I’ve wondered what there is about the place which sucks people into its preposterous
norms and practices. It's not unique to the SNP. But then sucking people in is what has made the English
establishment so extraordinarily long-lived. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-54907976348758384252024-02-22T09:25:00.000+00:002024-02-22T09:25:45.719+00:00Quantum voting<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Most of us are
familiar with Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment about a cat in a
box. Not so many realise that the point is not simply that we don’t know
whether the cat is dead or alive until we open the box, but that the cat is,
under the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, both dead and alive until
the box is opened and the cat is observed, at which point the uncertainty
resolves itself into either a dead state or a live state. Until that point, not
even the cat knows whether it is dead or alive, because it is both. It’s a hard
concept to get one’s head around, but Schrödinger’s point was to demonstrate how
foolish it is to seek to apply quantum uncertainty to real world physics, even
if it is indeed odd that such fundamental uncertainty at particle level does
not reflect itself in classical physics. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The UK is on the
brink of running a rather different large scale experiment on the applicability
of quantum uncertainty in the real world. According to Sunak, any vote for a
party other than the Tories is a vote to put Starmer into Downing Street,
whilst according to Labour, any vote for a party other than Labour is a vote
for the continuation of a Sunak government. If both are true, it must mean that
around 30% of the votes cast in the coming election will enter a state of
quantum uncertainty when they are placed in the ballot boxes. At that point,
those who thought that they had voted against both the two largest parties
will actually, under the Labour-Tory interpretation, have voted both for and against
both Labour and the Tories. This uncertainty will only resolve itself when the
ballot boxes are opened and the papers counted, at which point the application
of the Labour-Tory interpretation to voting will be shown to have been as
foolish as the application of the Copenhagen interpretation to that imaginary
cat.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">For those of us who prefer
to live in the real world rather than that postulated by strange thought experiments,
what the observation and measurement will tell us is, firstly, that around 30%
of the electorate will have rejected the idea of both a Tory government and a
Labour government and, secondly, that most of their votes are essentially
worthless because those behind the Labour-Tory interpretation have rigged the
rules of the experiment to allow only two possible outcomes in most
constituencies. If either of them really believed what they say, they would be
arguing for a system of voting which allowed that 30% to express for themselves
which of the two biggest parties they like most (or, perhaps, hate least) by indicating
their second and subsequent choices. The main reason that they don’t do so is
because they fear that, if they did, they might find that an awful lot of the ‘firm’
choices they receive from the 70% or so voting for one or the other are already
concealed second or third choices being made by voters with pegs on their noses,
and that the whole idea of ‘the two biggest parties’ is itself a largely
imaginary construct. Just like Schrödinger’s poor cat.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-2185505264198173572024-02-17T10:21:00.000+00:002024-02-17T10:21:45.925+00:00Making silly assumptions<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Following the
results of the Kingswood by-election, Sirjake came up with what some have
described as a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jacob-rees-moggs-bizarre-defence-over-by-election-disaster_uk_65cf2a18e4b0f7fbe7b24378">bizarre
defence</a> of his party’s performance. It wasn’t so bad, he said, because <i>“If
you add up the Conservative and the Reform Party vote, it’s more than the
Labour Party vote”</i>. The statement is, of course, mathematically accurate,
albeit of limited practical value. I’ve lost count of exactly how many
elections I fought as a candidate when I was politically active, but I think it
was around 20. I won a few, but the victories were certainly outweighed by the
losses. I don’t doubt, though, that if I’d been able to add the votes of
another party selected at random to my own, I could have ‘won’ all of them.
That isn’t the way elections work, though.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Sirjake also took
comfort from the fact that <i>“Labour did not get over 50%”</i>. It’s another
true statement – it just ignores the fact that under a first-past-the-post (FPTP)
electoral system there is no requirement to get past 50%. And indeed, in two of
the four elections Sirjake has fought in his current constituency, it’s a bar
that he didn’t get over himself. Again, it’s not the way elections work,
although it’s possible that Nanny hasn’t explained that to him yet.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The attitude
underlying it is that candidates for Reform and the people who vote for them
are really Tories at heart, and merely temporarily estranged. In fairness, it’s
not an attitude limited to Sirjake, or even to the Tories, many of whom would
agree with him. It’s also an attitude shared by Labour, who frequently talk and
behave as though those who vote for the Lib Dems or the Greens – or Plaid in
Wales and the SNP in Scotland – are really just temporarily estranged Labour
voters who sooner or later will return to their ‘true’ political home. The
Tories and Labour alike see politics as a two-party affair, trying to bring
everything down to the level of ‘it’s them or us’, as though they have a right
to expect that anyone against ‘the enemy’ will vote for them. Sunak was at it
this week, with his <a href="https://www.itn.co.uk/news/rishi-sunak-any-nontory-vote-vote-starmer-0">statement</a>
that anyone not voting for the Tories is voting for Starmer and the Labour Party.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It’s one of the reasons
that they both cling to the FPTP electoral system – it’s a system which
encourages people to see things in such stark binary terms. Traditionally, it’s
Labour which has suffered more than the Tories under this system – the political
‘right’ has long been more united behind one party than the political ‘left’,
but Labour would prefer absolute power for a third of the time than sharing
power most of the time. Unusually, the system is currently working against the
Tories with the splits on the ‘right’ visible not just within the party (where
they’ve always existed), but with another party challenging them for the
xenophobic and English nationalist votes on which they’ve long been able to rely. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Part of Sirjake’s problem
is that he has been unwilling to follow through the logic of his claim. If all
those Reform voters would really have preferred a Tory MP to a Labour one, then
a proportional system of voting would have allocated their second choices
accordingly. Things aren’t quite that simple, though. An unkind soul might well point out that if you add together the Labour vote and either the Lib
Dem vote or the Green vote the total would come to more than the total of the
Tories and Reform, and if all of those voters had preferred Labour over the
Tories, then the Tories would still have lost. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In truth, whatever
system is used, it’s dangerous to assume that all of those voting for Party A
would really have 'come home' to Party B on second or third choices. That assumes
that people’s second and third choices (to say nothing of their first choice) will follow the logic of an analysis of
party platforms and policies. <a href="https://borthlas.blogspot.com/2024/02/missing-opportunity.html">Politics</a>
really ain’t like that. And that is the real flaw in Sirjake’s analysis.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-14702454957508991052024-02-16T11:33:00.000+00:002024-02-16T11:33:22.024+00:00Talk of shields is misleading<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">A good shield is
intended and designed to be a defensive tool, not a weapon. The objective is to
protect the user against offensive weapons being used by others, not to attack
those others. At a pinch, a desperate soldier could probably use a shield to
hit an opponent over the head, but it’s poorly designed for that purpose and
somewhat unwieldy in use. A similar story applies to umbrellas. Whilst they are
good at protecting the user – or the top half anyway – from rain, they are not
much use as a weapon. Again, a substantially made one, properly furled, could
be pressed into service to hit someone over the head if it’s the first thing
that comes to hand, but it’s hardly a weapon of choice.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Both terms are badly
misapplied when it comes to nuclear weapons. It’s at least partly deliberate –
there’s something mildly reassuring about providing protection through shields
and umbrellas in a way which cannot be said about threatening to use weapons of
mass destruction, each one intended and designed to kill thousands of people
indiscriminately. The ‘protection’ provided by nuclear weapons amounts to a
threat to wipe out whole cities in response to any attack. It’s not something
that any ‘shield’ or ‘umbrella’ could ever achieve, no matter how well designed.
Nevertheless, the ‘friendlier’ terms were both in use <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2024/02/16/uk-france-urged-form-nuclear-shield-putin-attack-fears-20291280/">this
week</a> by German ministers urging some sort of joining up of French and UK
nuclear weaponry to provide ‘protection’ for the whole of Europe. Whether
nuclear weapons do in fact act as a deterrent is one of those questions which
can never be fully answered: the argument that they have prevented full-scale
war in Europe since the end of the Second World War depends on an implicit
assumption that a war would have occurred had the weapons not existed. It’s an assumption
which is essentially impossible to either prove or disprove; an impossibility
which only adds to the ferocity of debate on the subject. The clearest direct
evidence for their deterrent effect is that the possession of nuclear weapons
by Russia has deterred NATO countries from more direct intervention in support
of Ukraine, but that makes the weapons look more like an enabler for their possessors
than a protection against attack. To say nothing of an encouragement for
proliferation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It is possible that
Putin is mad enough to believe that he can restore the old Russian/Soviet
empire’s territories by the application of military force (his past words and
statements certainly seem to indicate that he would like to do so), but the
probability that a madman would be ‘deterred’ by anything is low. The whole concept
of deterrence is predicated on the assumption that the actors are all rational,
and that’s an assumption around which there must be considerable doubt. The
second most probable reason for the outbreak of war would be if Putin believed
that ‘the West’ is preparing to strike first and thus decided on pre-emptive
action. Talk of establishing a ‘European’ nuclear strike force doesn’t look
like the smartest way of convincing him otherwise. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><br /><p></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-54892135793727206692024-02-15T11:46:00.000+00:002024-02-15T11:46:54.904+00:00Threats and deterrence<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">If a householder
builds a tall wall around his garden, and tops it with an electrified razor
wire fence, some might think him to be quite mad, but it might reasonably be
considered to be a deterrent against anyone trying to enter his land. It’s
still a deterrent if he lurks behind the wall with a loaded shotgun and puts
stickers on the outside of the wall warning potential trespassers of the fact. If
he then builds a tower just inside the wall and stands on top of it waving his
shotgun in the direction of anyone passing by, he would remove all question as
to his sanity, but has he also crossed the line between deterrent and threat? The
difference between a deterrent and a threat is sometimes, like beauty, in the
eye of the beholder.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Relationships
between states are more complex than that, but the basic point – that whether an
action is considered to be a deterrent or a threat depends on one’s point of
view – is substantially the same. If Russia <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1ec23623-31b3-446d-aa8b-b60684f44cc9">moves
troops</a> closer to the borders of NATO countries, is that a threat to invade
those countries or a deterrent to a perceived threat to invade Russia? If the
US moves <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/26/us-planning-to-station-nuclear-weapons-in-uk-amid-threat-from-russia-report">nuclear
weapons to the UK</a> so that it can strike Russia sooner and with less warning
than by using ICBMs based in the US, I don’t doubt that the US would intend it
to be a deterrent. But I couldn’t blame Russia for seeing it as a threat. To the
extent that people contemplating fighting a nuclear war haven’t already, like
the guy with the shotgun on top of his tower, removed all doubt as to their rationality,
there is a point in the game of deterrent/counter-deterrent (or
threat/counter-threat) where it becomes almost rational to strike first, on the
principle of ‘use it or lose it’. The question we ought to be asking ourselves
is whether those taking decisions, allegedly on our behalf, are bringing that
point closer or pushing it further away. Claiming that ‘he started it’ is a kindergarten
level argument; the issue is not about who started the spiral towards war, but
about how we stop it. There is nothing unpatriotic, and it isn’t being a stooge
for Putin, to try and understand that he might just possibly interpret things in
a different way. And whether that interpretation is right or wrong is
irrelevant – understanding it is a part of the key to any attempt at mutual
de-escalation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There does seem to
be a marked increase recently in the number of people telling us that we must
prepare for war, although their motives may be mixed. I suspect some merely
want to reintroduce conscription in the belief that it will restore ‘traditional’
values, including imposing a sense of ‘British’ patriotism which they think has
got lost. Others probably think that ramping up armament production will be
good for jobs, and that a wartime economy would be good for capitalism in
general. Some, though, are entirely sincere – they really do want to fight an
all-out war against Russia, and all pretence that a war between two capitalist
economies would somehow be about ideology has long since been shattered. Paranoia
even leads some to think about the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/04/russia-china-iran-could-target-uk-irish-backdoor-thinktank-warns">Republic
of Ireland as a potential enemy</a> (almost a case of ‘if they’re not with us,
they’re against us’), and even to talk about the need for England to <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/13/scottish-independence-england-would-bomb-scottish-airports-to-defend-itself_n_1341629.html">bomb
an independent Scotland</a> to prevent the Russians from using its airbases.
That wasn’t only about trying to head off independence – some people really do
think that way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">I can’t immediately
recall any time in human history where huge armies have been built, possessing
enormous quantities of the latest and most potent methods of destruction,
without them subsequently being used. And I’m not currently particularly
confident that we’re on the verge of achieving that for the first time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-54955303644801659902024-02-13T10:12:00.000+00:002024-02-13T10:12:02.592+00:00Missing the opportunity<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The idea that the
way people vote may not always be the result of a careful assessment of the
parties and their candidates is not exactly a new one. Graham Wallas, back in
1908 (<i>“Human Nature in Politics”</i>) argued that political opinions and
actions are largely the result of habit based on irrational assumptions. I can’t
remember exactly where, but another formulation of a similar idea which I came
across in 1970 or 1971 described voting as an essentially irrational act. Not
everybody would agree, of course, but there is enough truth contained in the
statements for us to be wary of those who argue strongly for a position which
implies something different. As evidence, of a sort, I can offer one story from
my own campaigning history in which an elderly couple told me that they were
going to vote for myself and Plaid Cymru<i> “because Labour and the Tories gave
away the Empire”</i>. There are plenty of other examples, and few people who’ve
ever done any serious canvassing will not have similar stories to tell.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The immediate
relevance of this is the debate over the proposed new voting system for the
Senedd, which has aroused the ire of <a href="https://nation.cymru/opinion/our-democracy-is-threatened-in-multiple-ways-and-on-multiple-fronts-its-time-to-draw-a-line-and-work-for-change/">some</a>.
Some of the criticism is justified; some rather less so. Personally, I’d prefer
that the two parties pushing reform (Labour and Plaid) had agreed to implement
STV instead. There are problems with all voting systems, but it's always seemed
to me that STV is the best – or perhaps I should say least worst. For me, the
primary criticism of the closed list system as opposed to STV is that STV
allows second, third etc choices to influence the outcome, whilst under a
closed list, only first preference votes count, meaning that the votes of
people whose first choice is for a smaller party are completely disregarded.
Much of the public criticism of the closed list has, however, revolved around a
rather different issue, which is about the right of voters to choose an
individual to represent them, rather than simply a party.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In small rural
community council elections, where most of the candidates will be known to most
of the electors, I don’t doubt that the personality and history of the
individual is a major factor in the voters’ choice. But the more populous the
area choosing a representative, the smaller the proportion of the electorate
that will actually know enough about the individuals, and the more likely it is
that voters choose based on party rather than person. And whilst some
long-standing MPs and MSs like to believe that they have an enormous personal vote,
my own experience of canvassing at Senedd and Westminster parliament levels
tells me that that is likely to be greatly exaggerated. As a candidate, I’ve
had people telling me that ‘I don’t normally vote for your party, but I’m voting
for you’, and as a canvasser for other candidates, I’ve had people telling me
that ‘I normally vote for your party, but I’m not voting for X’. Candidates
hear the positive messages – their foot-soldiers hear the negative ones. It is
a fiction of the UK constitution that voters choose an individual to represent
them rather than a party, but a fiction that many choose to believe. It's true,
of course, that a closed list effectively allows parties to select which of
their candidates will be the first to be elected, but the extent to which that
ceases to be true under a more open system is somewhat exaggerated.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There is another
aspect to this as well. Some of the critics of the closed list have also been
quite critical in the past of the quality of some of those elected to the
Senedd. There is a certain degree of arrogance behind that criticism, implying
as it does that those making the criticism have the knowledge, experience and
ability to do better. But let us suppose that the criticism is indeed a valid
one. Are electors really in a position to be able to address that, given their
necessarily limited knowledge of the individuals? If the quality of those
elected needs to be improved, the only people in a position to do that are the
political parties themselves. Furthermore, it isn’t just about individuals – if
we want a successful Senedd leading a successful Wales, we need the best team.
And as any sports fan will know, the best rugby team isn’t the one with 15
outside halves, and nor is the best soccer team the one with 11
centre-forwards. A closed list invites the electors to vote for a team rather
than an individual, and that gives the political parties the opportunity to
decide who their A-team is and position team members on the lists in such a way
as to get that team elected in the order it chooses. The problem with that
however is that, in practice, there is no sign to date of the parties
abandoning a selection system based entirely on ambition and popularity and
trying seriously to assess ability and suitability instead. As it is, they seem
to be hell-bent on going for a closed list system which is not as representative
as STV and then ignoring the one big advantage that it does have.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-36968343557916598172024-02-09T11:20:00.000+00:002024-02-09T11:20:05.950+00:00Who cares about an arbitrary number?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There is a
long-standing, but rather odd if you stop to think about it, trend for
organisations announcing new initiatives, buildings, or policies to concentrate
on the cost rather than the substance. It’s as though the PR officers believe
that the most important part of the news is how much is being spent, rather
than what is being done. <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/first-look-inside-colleges-building-070000191.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJlcVAeyNm80A8xt_3G5bB4Qp04CFN6cJ4EmslRK52-cUVCeAukniEdCeudNKJV_yjszOfuhJCNhQWLpdQubCP3GfnwxTuuBBMCPSx04XnOwCxROr3y7NlY1kaJH6Kt-3K87kZpmE-44QO4f4epZxTRxQeFYTql1npXor2JpwYam">Here</a>,
<a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23974479.glasgow-university-leading-7-million-space-project/">here</a>,
and <a href="https://www.bcu.ac.uk/business/blog/university-celebrates-new-70-million-innovation-building">here</a>
are a few random examples. Anyone wanting to know what the story is really
about will never find out from the headline alone. But in terms of the impact,
it’s what is being done that is the real story – and the price attached to it
is often a largely arbitrary first guess rather than a detailed costing. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">That, it seems to
me, was always the status of Labour’s <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/rachel-reeves-labour-climate-change-spending_uk_6151bad2e4b03d83bad5d96a">£28
billion</a> Green Investment Plan – just another headline lacking in real
detail. Just about everyone can tell you how much they planned to spend – few can
tell you what they were actually going to do with it. In that limited sense,
ditching the headline sum is, or should be, a non-story. The question should be
more about what they’re actually now not going to do which they were previously
planning to do. And the answer to that question is far from clear in anything
that they’ve managed to say so far – it’s all been about the number, which was
pretty much plucked out of the air to begin with. Listening to their
statements, one could be forgiven for believing that they are not changing
their plans at all, just stopping all talk about the cost. But doing what they
previously said would cost £28 billion, without spending £28 billion, and
sticking to the silly fiscal rule which they themselves have invented is a
mathematical impossibility. Whether it helps them politically is another
question – switching the debate away from an essentially ridiculous numbers
game to a more complex question which the media can’t even be bothered to
engage with might help them electorally, but it tells us little about what we
can expect from a new government.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The party was, in
reality, pretty stupid to name a figure at all in the first place. It might
have made a good headline at the time as an indicator of how serious they were about taking action on climate change without having to do the hard yards to spell
out the detailed policies, but that’s a very short term consideration. And it
played into the hands of a Tory Party determined to hold Labour to a standard
of fiscal responsibility to which they’ve never adhered themselves. To say
nothing of a lazy media more interested in the yah boo politics of ‘he said,
she said’ than in attempting to explain the seriousness of the situation and
the required actions and consequences, let alone the complexities of public
finances. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">And that brings us
to the real, and very sad, story here. It’s not some superficial froth about
U-turns and flip-flops, it’s not about the detail of government expenditure and
how it is financed, it’s not even about climate change and the urgent need for
action. It’s about the one thing – the only thing – to which Labour is now
resolutely committed. That is to play the game under Tory rules and abide by
whatever constraints the outgoing Tories leave for them. At a time when people
seem to be crying out for change, the only thing Labour are planning to change
is the people implementing the policies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-28944503818226068532024-02-08T08:25:00.000+00:002024-02-08T08:25:24.751+00:00Pressing the self-destruct button?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There was a story
back in the 1960s about a CofE vicar preparing the service for the Sunday after
an election before he knew the result. In something of a quandary about which
hymn to sing, he eventually settled on three alternatives, so that he covered
all bases. If the Tories won, the congregation would sign <i>“Now thank we all
our God”</i>, substituted by <i>“Oh Lord our help in ages past” </i>in the
event of a Labour victory. Just in case the Liberal Party (as they called
themselves back then) were to win, the fall-back option would be <i>“The Lord
moves in a mysterious way”</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The CofE was then –
and still is in some circles even today – regarded as being ‘the Tory Party at
prayer’, and the old joke plays on that view. It’s an association which some in
the Tory Party seem determined to end once and for all, with bishops and
archbishops now added to the list of dangerous enemies of the people, along
with judges, lawyers, the BBC, the Civil Service, foreigners in general and the
EU in particular. Liz Truss and Sirjake seem to have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/feb/06/rishi-sunak-rwanda-piers-morgan-bet-conservatives-labour-uk-politics?page=with:block-65c223d98f085be9f686a6ef#block-65c223d98f085be9f686a6ef">added</a>
quite a few more enemies of the people to the list at their little jamboree a
couple of days ago. The ‘</span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/church-aiding-asylum-claims-on-mass-scale-say-patel-and-braverman/ar-BB1hJ1PE?cvid=f1c6cf51796b4663d36146bf2cfa168f&ocid=winp2fptaskbar&ei=10&sc=shoreline"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%;">crime</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">’ being committed by clerics in this case is to actively
welcome converts from other religions, and Islam in particular. Some may have
laboured under the delusion that proselytizing is a core activity for any
religion, but it seems that the CofE has been converting the wrong people, at
least as far as Braverman and Patel are concerned. For truly traditional
English conservatives, the job of the English state religion is to support the
establishment, and especially the Tories, not to go off and recruit people who
are ‘not quite like us’.</span></span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The bishops are, apparently, not looking deeply enough
into the souls of the new converts to establish the degree to which the
conversion is genuine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There is half a
valid point behind all this. Given that apostasy is a capital offence in some
countries, the attraction of converting to Christianity for an asylum-seeker
who cannot then be returned, under UK law, to a country where he or she might
face the death penalty is clear enough. Thus it’s perfectly possible that some
of those converting are less than entirely genuine. Whether it’s happening on
the scale alleged by the less-than-dynamic duo of former Home Secretaries, and
whether it’s the job of bishops to interrogate would-be converts to establish the
depth and sincerity of an enthusiastically-expressed new faith is another
question. How could the bishops even do what is being asked of them if they
wanted to? Maybe the duo think that we should return to the methods of the
Spanish Inquisition which, with a little bit of torture, managed to extract
confessions of heresy (not all of which would have been entirely genuine) from
most of its victims. The duo both strike me as the sort of people who would be not
exactly averse to the odd torture session and might even find it pleasurable,
as long as it was being applied to someone else. Especially foreigners.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There is something
else that strikes me about this particular duo. I’m sure that both of them have
been quite vocal in demanding that those who move to the UK should do more to
integrate with the local culture and values. Some might see conversion to
England’s official (even if, by now, minority) state religion as a good example
of doing that. That does not, however, fit the political agenda of the English
Conservative Party, which would sooner see it as almost a terrorist act in
itself. As the Truss event showed, they are increasingly in danger of allowing
themselves to be destroyed by their own paranoia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-7508834035512549312024-02-07T08:13:00.000+00:002024-02-07T08:13:35.793+00:00Meeting the objective<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As others have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/06/pm-piers-morgan-1000-tv-bet-rishi-sunak">pointed
out</a>, the Piers Morgan interview with Rishi Sunak a couple of days ago wasn’t
exactly the pinnacle of journalism in the twenty-first century. Or at any other
time, past, present or future. Somehow, however, it managed to tell us a few
things about Rishi Sunak. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">That he’s an inveterate
liar we already knew, but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/06/rishi-sunak-rows-back-rwanda-bet-piers-morgan">denying</a>
that he's a betting man when he’s previously told us about his discovery of the
joys of spread-betting on cricket was never going to work. Even worse - while he was
doing his spread-betting he was also working on his day job as a hedge fund
trader – which means that his paid job was, quite literally, to spend the day
gambling. Just for good measure, that previous interview which he assumed
everyone would have forgotten about also tells us that he sees nothing
particularly strange about doing his personal gambling in office hours using
office IT whilst he’s actually being paid to gamble for someone else.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">His inability to
avoid the trap which the self-styled ‘journalist’ laid for him is also telling.
There are many things he could have said to avoid sealing the bet with a
handshake – if he was going to try the ‘not-a-betting-man’ line, that was the
time to do it, not after the event. His predecessor but one would probably have
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/11/boris-johnson-hides-in-fridge-to-avoid-piers-morgan-interview">looked
for a convenient fridge</a> at that point, but Sunak couldn’t even manage that.
He’s probably just become too accustomed to being bullied into things by his
own party: faced with another bully, he just caved in.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Underlying all of
this are real people, vulnerable people, being treated like pawns in a game by
two men utterly lacking in empathy and understanding, for whom the odd £1,000
here or there is nothing. And in that sense, the interview was an outstanding
success. It showed us exactly who and what Sunak and today’s Tory Party are –
and that was the objective, wasn’t it?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-7610782553150834352024-02-05T10:36:00.000+00:002024-02-05T10:36:57.207+00:00What's the catch?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">A <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/tax-cuts-for-parents-would-revive-tories-election-chances-new-poll-suggests/ar-BB1hIugY">survey</a>
was published last week showing that voters want income tax cuts to help with
the cost of living crisis. Shorn of context, that’s hardly a surprise. To the bald
question, <i>“Would you like more money?”</i>, <i>“Yes, please”</i> is a wholly
rational response. As far as I can see, though, people weren’t asked about how
that should be funded. There is, as has been pointed out many times here, no
necessary direct relationship between tax raised and government expenditure,
but since both Tory and Labour claim that there is and will act on that basis, it’s reasonable to ask how
they would fund it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">If the people
getting the ‘extra’ money in their pockets found that they were also expected
to pay more for school stationery and materials, or that NHS dentistry became
even harder to access, or that cash-strapped councils would raise parking
charges to try and balance their books, or that people would have to pay for
their own bin bags in future, (add to the list as you will: all of these
reflect what is currently happening in various places) would they still want
that ‘extra’ money in their pockets? Because a tax cut only leaves people with
more money to the extent to which they don’t then have to pay for things which
were previously being paid for out of that taxation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It's regressively
selective as well. Those receiving the biggest benefit from any tax cut and
those facing the biggest increase in expenditure as a result of cuts in services
or higher prices for those services aren’t the same people. And those most in
need are the ones who are most likely to find out that the cost of that tax
cut outweighs the benefits, whilst the most well-off bank the cash. <i>“Yes,
please”</i>, is an entirely rational and reasonable response to the question, <i>“Would
you like a tax cut?”</i>, but a more appropriate response would be <i>“What’s
the catch?”</i>. It’s a question to which you will not find an answer in a
survey designed to show that tax cuts are popular. And increasingly it appears
that the colour of the rosette doesn’t tell you which ones are selling the snake
oil.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-82944340417330429072024-02-02T08:59:00.000+00:002024-02-02T08:59:05.164+00:00Mathematics, Pure and Applied<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">In response to a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68172202">question</a> from the
soon-to-be-former MP for Ynys Môn, the soon-to-be-former Leader of the House of
Commons expressed her shock at the plan to increase the membership of the
Senedd. Following a quick sum which demonstrated that she does at least have a
basic command of primary school arithmetic, Mordaunt pointed out that if the
size of the House of Commons was based on the same ratio of members to population,
there would be 2,058 MPs. She should probably stick to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/royal-family/penny-mordaunt-who-coronation-sword-dress-b2335333.html">carrying
swords</a> – at least then she’d only have to demonstrate the limits of her understanding
once every coronation. And silently, at that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Whilst the outcome
of her quick calculation is mathematically accurate, several other things are equally
true based on a similar calculation. If the ratio of elected members to
population in the UK parliament mirrored the Scottish parliament, there would
be 1,591 MPs, if it matched the Legislative Assembly of Northern Ireland, there
would be 3,221, if it matched Portsmouth Council (which covers Mordaunt’s
constituency) there would be 13,569, and if it matched my local community
council, there would be 765,113 MPs. And there are corollaries, of course – if we
take the House of Commons as our starting point, the Senedd should have only 32
members, Portsmouth Council should have 2 members, and Town and Community
Councils should be abolished.</span></span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">As an exercise in pure mathematics, about the only sphere
in which it’s rational to divorce the numbers from all meaning and start
comparing apples and oranges, it’s mildly interesting. But in the real world
it’s pointless and irrelevant.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The question is, or
should be, what is the best number for the membership of a particular elected
body, taking into account the population, responsibilities, demographics and
geography. And the truth is that there is no ‘right’ answer to that question.
Mordaunt’s response – typical of a Westminster MP – is based on the unstated
assumption that Westminster has it right. Of course. The body charged with
looking at the numbers of members of the Senedd considered a number of what
they felt to be comparable legislative bodies across the world, but even doing
that contains an implicit assumption that those bodies might have got it right.
Ultimately, it’s a matter of opinion, and opinions will differ. Mordaunt, like
the soon-to-be-former MP for Ynys Môn, clearly feels that 96 is ‘too many’, but
the cynical amongst us might think that they’d say much the same if it was
proposed to reduce the number to 10, or even 1.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Few politicians –
especially those in an institution which considers itself to have absolute sovereignty
over everything, even to the extent of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-rwanda-asylum-lord-sumption-b2448342.html">declaring
the truth to be untrue</a> – like the idea that some power might be held
elsewhere. Fortunately for them (to say nothing of the rest of us) their ‘soon-to-be-former’
status means that they won’t have to worry about it for long.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.com0