Was it Bill or was it Ben?

Tweet

 

In an age where there are hundreds of television channels, coupled with the ability to watch most of the programs at a time of our choosing, most of those alive today have no memory of the time when there was only one channel, broadcasting for limited hours, with viewing restricted to the actual time of broadcast. Like others who were around at the time that ITV started in 1955, I can remember our tiny television being sent away to have a tuner fitted so that we could watch both channels – although I never really understood why it had 13 numbers on the dial, only two of which actually did anything.

Anyway, in those halcyon single channel days, pre-school children’s television consisted largely of a 15 minute slot (weekdays only) under the generic label ‘Watch with Mother’. (Fathers were assumed to be out at work.) One of the slots (Wednesdays, as I recall) was given over to the Flowerpot Men, two talking assemblages of flower pots called Bill and Ben, who were always up to mischief. The denouement always consisted of a little ditty about which of them had committed this week’s mischief – “Was it Bill or was it Ben?”.

What brought it back into the mind this week was the deliberate action of someone in turning off the Starlink system used by Ukraine as a key part of its defence against Russian drones and missiles. Reports say that Bill Trump denied all knowledge and said it must be Ben Musk, who in turn said that the order can only have come from the White House, so it must have been Bill. Subsequent reporting has suggested that Ben pitched the proposal to Bill who, at the least, didn’t demur. Ben then took the nod and wink as an instruction and ordered the slowdown. Both the co-conspirators have enough leeway to have a degree of plausible deniability of ultimate responsibility.

This isn’t, though, about a childish prank which the gardener might not like. This was a real world decision which led directly to real world deaths in a country under relentless attack from Bill’s current bestie, who is considerably more malignant than Slowcoach the tortoise. It’s a world in which neither Bill nor Ben have, or are able to develop, any sense of morality or empathy with the lesser mortals whose lives their decisions impact or even end. Sucking up to Bill, and allowing Ben to continue to acquire ever more wealth and power are not a basis on which to build anything. European states can, of course, do little about what happens in the US, and reducing our dependency on both the US and the services provided by Musk and others like him is a medium to long term project rather than a short term one. But recognising it as an essential project, rather than a short term holding operation until a hoped-for change in 2029, would be a good start.

Should we demand the abolition of the USA?

Tweet

 

Annoyed at being fined for failing to comply with EU regulations, Elon Musk has demanded that: “The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries”. Perhaps the EU should respond with the counter-demand that: “The US should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual states”. Actually, Musk might even agree with that in principle, if he had any principles – but it looks as though his real beef is about any state, or co-ordinated alliance of states, being big enough and strong enough to stand up to what he regards as the natural order of things: rule by billionaire. The difference, though, is that the US federal government has already been captured by the billionaires, and doesn’t need to be broken up to facilitate their rule.

There are, and always have been, questions over how much sovereignty (and in what fields) the EU’s member states should exercise individually and how much they should share; but acting jointly on some issues and agreeing rules which all members must follow is undoubtedly advantageous in a world where some corporations and individuals wield excessive power. It’s easy to understand why monopolists would prefer to deal with a host of weaker individual states on which they can impose their power. The real issue, though, and it’s not one which the EU seems minded even to consider, let alone tackle, is about how we collectively free ourselves from the increasingly oppressive rule of kleptocrats and billionaires. There is nothing natural or inevitable about the accumulation of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands; it happens because the laws and rules under which the economy operates have been written to allow and facilitate it. But those laws and rules are made by humans, and humans acting collectively could change them. If enough of us wanted to do so.

The brightest and the best

Tweet

 

One of the developing fault lines in the Trump world is over the question of selective issue of visas for certain individuals regarded as being exceptional – the usual term used is ‘the brightest and the best’. The billionaires funding Trump, including the official First Buddy, Elon Musk, want to continue issuing such visas, whilst the MAGA purists want a complete halt to immigration and see every such visa as denying a job to an existing US citizen. At the moment, Trump seems to be siding with the billionaires (‘billionaire supports billionaires’ would hardly be a surprising headline), although history shows that he eventually falls out with everyone, and sooner rather than later in the case of anyone who might distract attention from himself.

There’s a similar, albeit not exactly parallel, debate here in the UK. By and large, businesses want more visas whilst politicians believe that the public wants fewer. Talk about attracting ‘the brightest and the best’ is the compromise adopted by those politicians who want to try and appeal to both sides of that debate, although they generally end up satisfying neither. But whether in the US or the UK that term, ‘brightest and best’, could do with more detailed scrutiny than it’s getting. Why are some people considered ‘brighter and better’ than others?

In the case of Musk and Trump, their position is clear and public – they genuinely believe that ability is first and foremost genetically determined. It’s a core belief which underpins what they believe is their inherent right to rule over the rest of us. Trump even seems to believe that his uncle’s career as a professor somehow shows that Trump himself is a genius. A stable one, of course. That belief in genetic pre-determination is less obvious in the UK, but it still underpins the argument. It’s a convenient – and ultimately lazy – belief, which saves its adherents from having to explain why one of the richest countries in the world, with one of the historically most well-regarded systems of higher education, is incapable of producing the same people, and needs, in effect, to outsource their production to others. Reluctant as I am to agree with the MAGA purists on anything, they may have a point here.

I’m not arguing that the people concerned should not be allowed to migrate to the UK (or the US, for that matter); on the contrary, at the level of principle, I believe that people should be able to choose freely where to pursue their lives and careers. But there’s something dishonest about an advanced country like the UK with its 67 million inhabitants (and even more so the US with its 335 million people) claiming that it is unable to train and educate people to the highest level and needs to attract them from elsewhere instead – unless they truly believe that nature (genetics) plays the key role and that nurture (environment, education etc.) is always secondary. The evidence to support such a categoric belief is noticeable primarily by its absence.

Loopholes and principles are not easy bedfellows

Tweet

 

The ill-starred romance between Farage and Musk didn’t last long, which presumably means that the enormous donation which had been mooted might not arrive after all. It turns out that a mega-rich man actually expects something in return for his patronage. Who’d have thought it? In this case, the expectation was slavish support for his views on issues of the day (including the immediate release of a convicted criminal) however unfounded in mere facts and evidence those views might be. It leaves Farage with a difficult choice – stay in post and beg for money elsewhere, or make way for his Musk-anointed successor. Farage is claiming that he would “never sell out my principles”, but telling us that he won’t sell something he has never possessed doesn’t actually tell us a lot about his next moves.

The real debate about political funding should be examining the mysterious process of transubstantiation, during which profit generated elsewhere and then funnelled through a UK-based company magically becomes British money and therefore a legitimate source of political donations in a state which theoretically only allows such donations from UK sources. Interestingly, it only becomes British money for the purposes of political donations, and apparently doesn’t also become liable for UK taxes. As I say, it is truly a mysterious process. It’s a loophole, of course, and one which a party committed to eliminating sleaze and dubious funding might be seeking to close, particularly if the sums are so large as to completely tip the scales. However, a party which happily accepts a large donation from a company registered in a tax haven will inevitably find itself more than a little compromised on the issue. Dodgy funding is only an issue when other parties benefit from it, it would seem. In the meantime, all is well as long as ‘no rules are broken’, the only basis on which most politicians seem to consider the issue of morality, rather ignoring the fact that it is they who make the rules in the first place. Those who deliberately leave loopholes in rules from which they can benefit themselves can’t really complain if someone else uses the same loopholes.