Monthly Archives: August 2019

Mindless (and wholly hypocritical) climate tokenism

Frances Corner is Warden of Goldsmiths College of the University of London. The College currently languishes as 99th in the Guardian rankings of UK Universities, and Grumpy might have thought that the Warden would be putting all her energies to improve that near to the bottom position rather than indulging in pointless token climate exercises which can have no practical impact other than as a PR project.

She has instigated an initiative in which Goldsmiths are (amongst other things) banning beefburgers (and all other beef products) and putting a 10p levy on bottled water on campus. [The College press release doesn’t state whether this applies to all bottles, including glass reusable ones, or just plastic bottles.]

Goldsmiths have jumped on the bandwagon of declaring a ‘climate emergency’, a meaningless term on which Grumpy has previously written much (see, for example) http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/climate-impotence/extinction-rebels-2/ .

What makes Goldsmiths stand out is that the driver behind this is the new Warden. Corner has spent more or less her whole life associated with the fashion industry (and has penned a book, ‘Why fashion matters’). However, as the United Nations Environment Programme points out, the fashion industry “produces 20 per cent of global wastewater and 10 per cent of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping. Textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of water globally”. Her background in this Goliath polluting machine hardly makes her a poster girl for saving the planet.

Although the fashion giants’ PR machines issue butt covering statements on ‘sustainability initiatives’, the simple and undeniable fact remains that the very business model of many, if not most, of the multi billion dollar retain chains is based on high velocity turnover of essentially disposable clothing to drive constant repeat sales. As the UN also points out, “Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned. If nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget.” Further, the low wage basis of the associated production systems condemns countless thousand foreign workers to a survival level existence.

Corner’s pathetic response to “take urgent action to cut carbon use” is to ban Big Macs. As the link above to a prior post notes, anything they do is pointless in in the sheer scale of its insignificance, and hence the accusation of hypocrisy. She would have far more effect on CO2 emissions if she banned wearing of all fast fashion (rather than fast food) on campus and insisted on a Chinese style uniform of unisex dungarees for all students on campus. This would have the benefit of finding out if students were really prepared to takes steps rather than just paying lip service to climate change and having a spider plant in their flats.

Wining ‘green gown’ awards http://francescorner.com/sustainability/ means nothing if you are still prepared to take Amancio Ortega’s shilling and support the fast fashion business model.

BoJo strikes !

Well, BoJo has played his hand to defeat the forces seeking to revoke Article 50. The final outcome is now very uncertain, but voices screaming ‘undemocratic’ and ‘unprecedented’ seem to have lost their memory of key events over the history of the sorry Brexit saga.

Reminder: BoJo is PM because due process was followed in replacing Theresa May, and he was elected via a majority of Conservative MP’s and a majority of Party members. This is exactly the same process which brought May, Blair, Brown etc into office. That many of those who put him into office are now whinging seems odd.

Further, none of those MP’s or party members can suggest that they did not know what BoJo was about. From the outset of his PM campaign he made it clear that ‘do or die’ he would leave on 31st October ‘with or without a deal’; that’s pretty clear. Compare and contrast this clear message with the vacillation, U turns, opaqueness and duplicity of those opposed to Brexit.

Jo Swinson (see http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/jo-swinson-is-a-confused-hypocritical-flip-flop/ ) as one of the prime drivers behind ‘stop Boris’ has always been clear about her goal – to stop Brexit at all at any cost and revoke Article 50. Given that totally undemocratic goal in face of the referendum, it is particularly hypocritical that she should be leading the shouts of ‘foul’ given her own (and that of her aligned partners) duplicity in seeking to frustrate the real democratic mandate to leave.

Clearly, there are hugely influential voices opposed to this, such as Grieve and Hammond; but they are surrounded by has-beens such as Anna Soubry, who having made a wrong call on her future, is now deservedly inconsequential. She however still seeks to deny the process that put BoJo in power was legitimate, but her most irritating line is the ‘people didn’t vote for’ no deal in the referendum. It’s the sheer mind-numbing arrogance of her claim to know what the populace – all 17+m of them – voted for which sets her out as an unthinking intellectual pygmy. Hammond, despite his probably superior knowledge of the likely after effects of no deal, nevertheless sat in his seat in a cabinet in which his boss had set her stall out by repeatedly saying ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ and took the tax payers shilling and kept the ministerial car.

Well, MP”s – including most of the (re)moaners voted down (with an historic majority) the only possible deal the EU would countenance as being the very definition of a bad deal. Bojo is merely fulfilling May’s strategy and implementing ‘no deal’. Time to do it.

Confused Coveneny

Simon Coveney has reacted to BoJo’s pronouncement on the backstop, but the
former’s brain seems locked in some endless Euro-loop. The Guardian reported him as saying “I think from a Brexit negotiating perspective, it was a very bad day yesterday” and that Johnson’s approach “is not the basis for an
agreement” .

But wait, the EU have consistently said that there will be NO negotiating ; the Withdrawal Agreement is the only one on offer – so what negotiation is he possibly referring to ? He also said that Johnson’s approach to Brexit talks as putting the UK “on a collision course with the EU” .

The position is simple. The EU has said that the Withdrawal Agreement is not
for negotiation and they will not open it. OK, that’s clear. Coveney (and the rest of the |EU) are also aware that the Withdrawal Agreement will not get through the House of Commons, having failed 3 times to be passed. That’s also clear.

Coveney also said that BoJo had set a collision course and “I think only he can answer the question as to why he is doing that”. The reality is nothing of the sort, and Coveney knows this. Simon Coveney can answer this if he thinks for 10 seconds rather than playing PR games. The impasse has nothing to do with Boris.

There is something about the EU which fries the brains of its politicians from grasping simple logic. Someone should explain slowly to him (a) the EU has said the Withdrawal Agreement will not be re-opened to negotiation (b) it cannot pass in the House of Commons. Ergo, the collision course was set long before BoJo got into Number 10. There is no solution if both of these things are true, period. How hard is this to grasp ??

BoJo is simply recognising a reality that May refused to acknowledge. The backstop is the primary reason for the failure to pass the Withdrawal Agreement and Bojo is merely stating what is obvious to all except seemingly 649 people in Westminster (the 650th being Boris). This is what frustrates the general populace so.

The impasse can only be broken by altering one or both of these constraints, which is unlikely to happen, so outwith some unforeseen shift in attitudes by both parties, the law of the UK applies and on 1st November 2019 we are an independent country.

Ignorant EU apparatchik Hogen spouts sophistry

Once again an EU bureaucrat turns to misinformation (aka lies) to try and interfere with UK internal processes – the hallmark of the EU edifice. Again, in common with others (as cited in this blog recently by Grumpy) the theme is to repeat the spurious trope that BoJo has no democratic mandate to proceed with no deal on the basis that he is “an unelected Prime Minister”, adding “the backstop was agreed by a Prime Minister who was democratically elected”.

These are words used in the full knowledge that they are not correct. The difference between him and Trump in ‘fake news’ is only one of degree, and not of principle. To reiterate prior posts, Grumpy sighs as he seeks to correct the record once again (albeit that no-one will actually read it).

British Prime Ministers are not elected. Political parties are elected, on the basis of a public manifesto. The Prime Minister takes office with the mandate of MP’s (and in the case of the conservative party) party members. The labour party has generally skipped this latter element and leaders are put in place over dinner in restaurants qv Gordon Brown.

Contrary to Hogan’s assertion, Theresa May was not democratically elected per se – she took office with exactly the same process as Boris, so there is no difference in mandate. Hogan is therefore either ignorant or a pseudologue. He then tries to conflate the mandate for the Withdrawal Agreement with the (incorrect) assumed mandate of May. Wrong. May came back with an agreement which was contrary to the party manifesto, her own repeated statements, and, critically, contrary to the formal statements of policy such as that made at Lancaster House. Parliament did not delegate to her the right to agree anything, but to bring back a proposal. This she did, after being soundly out-maneuvered by Barnier on every point, and the result was (rightly) defeated by the biggest parliamentary trashing in history.

Hogan is simply wrong on every point he makes, and in doing so merely underlines why the UK needs to leave this bureaucratic nest of autocrats. He also needs reminding that the Taoiseach has no more democratic mandate from the Irish peoples than BoJo, being nominated by the President of the Republic of Ireland , in one of those opaque processes so beloved of the EU. [Where, in the latter case, the appointment of the most senior officials raises the notion of back room deals to an art form.]

Shameless union opportunism

Manuel Cortes, the general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, seized on the recent (August 2019) power blackouts to bizarrely take a Project Fear potshot at Brexit, by seeking to conflate the two. He ranted “As we face the growing prospect of a no-deal Brexit it’s reasonable to wonder if this is a foretaste of things to come”.

This was an asinine attempt to link two entirely independent matters – how is generator failure related to Brexit in any way? Cortes would like to paint the picture of this extremely exceptional event becoming common place as a direct result of a no-deal Brexit.

Cortes, has never added value to anything in his life, having never worked for other than a labour union, and therefore has a had a lifetime of honing the art of doublespeak and twisting words / situations to press home his left wing message. To take two examples, “having our rail network brought to a standstill in this way is totally unacceptable” is rather odd, as surely logically having the network fail in any way is undesirable. He also says “we now seem to be in a country where blackouts happen without warning”, seeking to sow a view that blackouts are now (as a result of threatened Brexit ??) common – union guile-speak. The statement is itself a non sequitur since a blackout is by definition unplanned – so how could there be a warning ? {Grumpy has experienced one short blackout in 20 years}

In October 2018, Cortes wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian lambasting Theresa May and stating that her actions were “no way to do democratic politics”. Ignoring the fact that she was in power (just) as a result of an election seems hypocritical when placed against the fact that Manuel owes his current position to an election in which more than 87% of the members of his union did not vote for him.

Cortes, who accuses the current government as being the ‘hard right’, is very much part of the ‘hard left’. He opposes capitalism (presumably implying adherence to communist ideals) and he is in favour of nationalising the rail network to ‘improve it’, something which history shows would be unlikely to happen. He no doubt thinks that ‘other peoples money’ is the route to funding an uneconomic vision, as Margaret Thatcher once pointed out.

Jo Swinson is a confused, hypocritical, ‘flip-flop’

Jo Swinson, newly elected Lib Dem leader recently underwent an embarrassing ‘flip-flop’ by first announcing (conceptually, a least) that she’d rather have a three-some with John Bercow and Jacob Rees-Mogg than be associated with Jeremy Corbyn’s plans to take over as PM if / when BoJo loses the upcoming vote of no confidence, and within a few hours then offering to consort with said labour leader at his convenience. Not decisive, Jo.

However, the point of this note is however, to record her (not uncommon) dishonest and hypocritical stance on Brexit, and the transparent nature of her weasel words on the next actions.

Swinson pays lip service to democratic participation (after all, she’s leader of the lib Dems) but she is wholly intent on subverting the democratic process. The referendum was clear that the populace voted to leave the EU, and her goal is to prevent that from happening regardless of that vote or (importantly) the nature of any deal. Consider Swinson’s own words, reiterated in the recent leadership competition “We {Lib Dems} believe the UK’s best future is as members of the European Union, and that’s why, as your leader, I will do whatever it takes to stop Brexit”

It’s clear. Its not about stopping no deal, or using the EU ploy of asking the populace to think again. It doesn’t matter how they might vote, she will – read it again – “do whatever it takes to stop Brexit” . She is a committed European federalist and believes in ever closer integration (see their web site)

To obscure the pro-federal and anti-democratic goals of the party, she uses words which are sheer sophistry, which are also without any rational framework. The second referendum ploy will (as it is with Dominic Grieve) be binding if it goes to ‘remain’ and ‘advisory’ if anything else – one assumes her version of any new vote will not include ‘no-deal’ as an option (‘whatever it takes to stop it’, remember?

The Liberals were almost extinct in the early 1930’s, and in spite of their 1989 revamp and subsequent merger with the Social Democrats, have had no real electoral significance for more than 85 years, apart from the brief spell in the Cameron Coalition. (A rather rather shameful example of the lust for power over core principles by Nick Clegg ). This episode demonstrated the fallibility of consensus when strong leadership is required. Ms Swinson, by rejecting any overtures from Jeremy (and certainly from BoJo) , will no doubt consign the party to being an irrelevance in the future.

Brexit rants

From now until E-Day (31st October) this page will contain various rants offering a chronicle of the (doubtless) bumpy road to freedom from EU domination.

It is worthwhile summarising the realities of the current state; There are only, it would logically appear, three possible outcomes, namely (1) the UK leaves without a deal on 31.10.19 (2) Parliament revokes Article 50, or (3) May’s Withdrawal Agreement is brought back for a vote and passes.

However, various politicians have posited that there are other choices; this is nonsense. So what about the EU dropping the backstop ? They (the EU) have repeatedly stated it will not happen. What about Grieve / Corbyn / Lib Dems negotiating something acceptable? Again , the EU have said they won’t change a line of the Agreement and the ERG would block some wishy washy compromise even if they did.

So, for those that advocate a second referendum, their motivation has to be questioned, as does the rationale for such a move. This referendum might offer any or all of the following choices (1) leave with no deal (2) revoke Article 50 and stay in the EU (3) accept May’s agreement, or (4) accept some new agreement. However, based on the preceding paragraph, (3) and (4) cannot be delivered, and indeed no new agreement could in any event be determined prior to 31.10.19. So fundamentally, it’s leave or stay.

Grieve and the Lib Dems might propose pushing back the exit date again by an extension, but to what end? Either the current stasis is perpetuated, or that extension is used to run the second referendum, with the outcomes as above.

This argument is simply about whether the democratic referendum should be honoured, or not. BoJo believes it should be, and Grieve / Swinson think it should not. If the outcome is the latter, it will be damaging for both the public’s perception of parliament (if indeed it is still capable of being damaged) and democracy in this country.

Tourist piffle

Grumpy has written before about the European Tourism Association (a British entity in spite of its name) at http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/more-brexit-paranoia/ and their unsupportable Brexit paranoia projections.

They continue by now suggesting that post Brexit entry to (say) France would take 90 seconds per person longer than currently, and they extrapolate this to say that if there was just one customs officer at entry, it would take 5 hours extra to clear an aircraft landing 189 people.

It would be unusual for there to be just one officer on duty in most European countries for such an arrival, and normally the staff present vary with the expected plane schedules, so their example is (as before) scare-mongering by taking such an extreme example.

Lets assume that it takes 30 seconds to deal with an EU Citizen, then the total check time implied is 2 minutes per person. As a frequent traveller, Grumpy’s experience is that it has rarely taken 2 minutes or more in most countries he has travelled to to be cleared (with the possible exception of the USA, with all the fingerprinting and photographing, but that is not in prospect yet in Europe), so the Association’s projections rank with their previous doom-mongering.

Of course, if visas are involved, there would be extra time, but there is no suggestion that the EU intends to introduce these for Britons.

Of course Brussels may send out some edict to hold up Brits just to punish us, but holidaymakers will vote with their feet and go to Turkey, or Israel or wherever, where they will no doubt be sure to whisk these bearers of imported money through their borders quickly.