Author Archives: grumpy

Tony Blair relinquishes sovereignty at the point of a gun

Bishopsgate bomb 1993

Tony Blair warned during the EU referendum that  leaving the EU in a manner which would create a physical border  in Northern Ireland could disrupt peace on the island, but it appeared that people were willing to “sacrifice peace on the altar of Brexit”.

George Hamilton, the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland  has said that any physical border “would becomes a target for violent dissident republicans”. He noted that the threat from  “hard line factions still engaged in violence, such as the New IRA”, was severe. He pointed out that last year there were five serious attempts by dissident republicans to kill his officers, including a gun attack in north Belfast that left two policemen wounded.

This is an acknowledgement that twenty years after the ‘peace agreement’ terrorist groups prepared to usurp the state still exist, and moreover, that governments of various political persuasions have been prepared to  accept this position for more than two decades.  He also noted that many of these groups  used the political aims as a “protective cloak” to engage in drug dealing, loan sharking and prostitution i.e. major organised crime.

Blair’s argument for avoiding a border appears to be a response to the threat that unless the democratically elected government of the UK as a whole arranges its affairs in a manner which satisfies a small number of terrorists then the latter will resort to force of arms to murder citizens and destroy infrastructure of the land.

His approach appears to be to capitulate to this threat of murderous violence, rather than suggesting policies which eradicate such threats from armed terrorist groups on our soil. This is in accord  with the line taken in the original ‘peace agreement’ process.  The Epistle to the Galatians 6,7 comes to mind “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”, with Blair having largely originally cast the  grain – no wonder he wishes to obscure the source of this dilemma.

 

 

Swiss libido

I’ve never really thought of the Swiss as a race with a tendency to indulge in the sort of spontaneous naughties one might imagine of the French and Italians, but a sign spotted in Interlaken, Switzerland might give lie to that opinion. The Jungfrau is a mountain which is one of the several located close to the town, and there is a railway which goes to the summit.

It’s hard to envisage someone being caught short of toys, lube  or prophylactics (as the case may be) on the relatively short trip up the 13,000 foot peak, unless some amorous couple saw it as an opportunity to join the 2.5 mile high club in a toilet at the summit. The words ‘Alpine horn’ come to mind here.

Band wagons and paranoia; men only clubs

Social media has created an environment in which some single topic encapsulated in a hashtag gains disproportionate news coverage by the ‘band waggon’ effect, and results in ill-considered shifts in societal norms.

The #MeToo tag, which does have valid elements in seeking to bring attention to male abuse,  has resulted in the extrapolation of the febrile dialogue to an ‘anti-man’ polemic driven by mostly feminist pedagogues to a range of unrelated issues.

Amelia Gentleman (yes, such an oddly inappropriate name!)  – see https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/25/men-only-clubs-and-menace-how-the-establishment-maintains-male-power – rages against the ‘pay gap’ and demonstrates not only a poor grasp of logic, but an even weaker understanding of basic statistics. However, she reserves  her principle invective against ‘men only’ clubs; space precludes listing the ills she concludes they bring to all aspects of society.

This theme is taken up by  her Guardian colleague, Robert Verkaik, who even argues – bizarrely – that such clubs are a threat to the very democratic fabric of the country – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/27/to-drain-the-swamp-of-men-only-clubs-there-must-be-a-public-register . Clearly, the environment of the Guardian ferments paranoia.

Clearly, the move is to condemn single gender clubs as being irredeemably bad, and such a threat that regulation and legislation is required to control them. If they do represent a threat to democracy, they are singularly feeble in attempts to usurp it, since (for example) White’s has been operating in this mode since 1693, since when it would seem democracy has flourished – this month is the 100th anniversary of  the Representation of the People Act 1918.

But wait; less visible in the news is the rapid growth of female only clubs, whose goals are remarkably similar to those of the men’s clubs; as just a sample thereof

http://kitkatclub.co.uk/about  http://londonladiesclub.com/   http://www.theallbright.com/

Where is MP ‘gobby’ Jess Phillips ? Where is Amelia Gentleperson (note grumpy’s PC credentials here) or Robert Ver-whoever who doesn’t even warrant an entry in Wikipedia, but seeks to pontificate on threats to the very fabric of the country and society ? Why are they not condemning the existence of these single gender clubs ?

Grumpy feels that the real threat to society driven by the followers of #MeToo is a transition to a culture in which due process is abandoned. Some Twitter subscriber accuses a prominent person of some often vague ‘abuse’ (many of which such incidents would have simply no chance of legal redress, not being crimes per se), whereupon trial by social media hysteria forces their dismissal and public humiliation. Meanwhile,  those more rational pillars of the establishment, who should insist on proper procedures, capitulate to avoid being labelled as complicit.

The real threat to society is the return to a sort of 21st Century version of the collective madness of the Salem Witch Trials, with the pitchfork of Twitter and the stocks of Facebook.

When women are assaulted, the law provides a framework for the trial and if relevant the punishment of the offender. If the law is inadequate to address some scenarios, then the it is the role of Jess Phillips and her ilk to push for change, and not to join (or lead, in the case of prissy Yvette Cooper) the mob.

EU might ground UK planes ? Bring it on !

The airline industry and political remoaners have repeated stated that Brussels might ban British planes from flying to the EU post Brexit,  accompanied by much wringing of hands at this threat.

If this is intended as a threat, it’s a pretty weak one – bring it on! If Europe doesn’t  accept UK planes because they no longer have EU certification (just like a plane from the US!) , then the UK should do the same with theirs. It would be a rather odd stance, based on the notion that UK planes are safe today, but tomorrow they would seemingly threaten carnage as aircraft plummet onto French cities.

In this game of poker, the UK has got a pretty strong hand.

For example, British visitors dominate tourist statistics to Spain; twice as many as the next largest group, Germans. In Tenerife, 80% of their tourists – 3.2 million in 2016 – arrive from the UK. In this war,  the Spanish would lose out big time, and they may as well shut Tenerife South airport.

On the mainland, the busiest route (for example) into Barcelona’s airport is – you guessed it – to the UK. Long live the stag party.

Meanwhile, the Turks, Tunisians, Jordanians and Israelis would no doubt be very happy to accommodate  additional millions of money spending Brits; one sunny beach is much like another.

Brexit negotiators need a bit more spine and aggression. They talk of ‘our European friends’, but but that doesn’t tie with the language of Michel Barnier, the EU’s  chief hatchet man.

It would be a test for Mariano Rajoy, Prime Minister of Spain, as to where his interests might lie.Would these be with the collective will of the 27 to punish the UK, or to to contemplate the huge blow to the Spanish  economy in freezing the Brits out ? He may well choose to have a word in Barnier’s ear if this irrational, foot shooting, idea takes off, so to speak.

Meanwhile, if it’s floated to the UK negotiator David Davis, he should fold his arms, call Barnier’s  bluff, sit back, and say “Bring it on”.

 

Out of work ? Ask a farmer for a job

In 1999 ‘duty free’ shopping in entry to the UK came to an end. All manner of vested interests loudly vocalised the end of a £4.5b market and forecast mass redundancies in cross channel ferry companies and the like, and massive rises in fares to compensate.

None of this came to pass, but it highlights how organisations seek to leverage their vested interests by latching on some vaguely related topic in the news, in that case the EU.

According to the Guardian (09.02.2018) the National Farmers Union is using Brexit and the EU  as a whipping boy to forecast a repeat of labour shortages last year, “with food left rotting in the fields”. Blaming brexit, and consequent uncertainties about whether EU citizens will be able to provide the necessary manpower, the NFU is citing a possible shortfall of 4,000 people.

Coincidentally, at around the same time, the Office of National Statistics published unemployment  figures for Q4 2017, which were 1.4m.

The confluence of these two things is puzzling to Grumpy. Farmers have jobs to fill, and 1.4 million people are looking for jobs, and presumably drawing some benefit paid for by tax-payers whilst doing so. So the question arise why farmers, government agencies and those without work can’t join the dots here? 

If less than 3% of those unemployed were to take up these jobs, there would be no problem. Instead, we have to ask why farmers would prefer to have the hassle of recruiting and managing foreign language speakers from Bulgaria and Romania to do this? Just how long does it take to train someone to pick fruit or other crop ?

Could it be anything to do with the fact that these immigrant workers would be happy to work hours which breach EU limits,  live in tents or multi-bunkered sheds, and take less than the minimum wage for cash in hand?

None of this adds up, but whatever the equation is, the government ought to be asking why there is no-one in more than 97% of those unemployed – 1.36m people –  able to provide this labour.

 

 

Governments are the biggest purveyor of Fake News

Grumpy gasped as he read the missive from the thought police who now figure in the Government, and their hapless leader, T May.

When he looks back to the lies told by Governments ranging from outright porkies (U2 incident, Windscale, first (non) UK H bomb etc., through to the endless stream of disingenuous, planned to deceive, spin from Blair, Cameron and now May, he is dumbstruck.

“We are living in an era of fake news and competing narratives,“said Mrs May’s spokesperson.

Governments are way the largest source of fake news, as defined by themselves.

Narratives are competitive because some objective fact is presented in multiple ways – just listen to any Prime Ministers Question Time for proof. (“We are putting more money than ever into the health Service – fact” (May) or “Funds in the NHS have been reduced in real terms – fact” (Corbyn). So will May’s apparatchiks be deleting Corbyn’s Blog ?

The same side-kick also  stated that they would be creating a “dedicated national security communications unit” would be charged with “combating disinformation by state actors and others”.

Students take note – you are young, and you are being dragged  into  a security state  without realising it, of which the Stasi (check it out) would have been immensely proud to have constructed. Get TOR and PGP, scrap Facebook  and keep off the grid.

Footnote: The only glimmer of hope  is that like most politicians in power, May has to respond to events, normally in an ill-considered, knee jerk way. They have to ‘Do Something” to avoid attack by the opposition and opprobrium by the masses.

Fortunately, most of it never turns into reality, when either they realise it won’t work, it’s too expensive or the public focus has moved on. Immigration in the tens of thousands ? £350m a week for the NHS ? , a 7 day GP service  ? (Grumpy can wait 3-4 weeks for an appointment) less than 4 hours in A and E?

All headlines , the illusion of a plan, and all fail.

Yvette Cooper wishes to abdicate government responsibilities

 

Grumpy has previously made arguably unfair comments about Yvette Copper, who in spite of being very smart, makes proposals that might be viewed as both authoritarian and unworkable.

An example might be her current war (as Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee) with the social media companies.

YC effectively wants Facebook and their ilk to ‘police’ social media and remove (presumably) illegal content from their systems. By what right does she seek to abdicate the role of government and outsource policing to a private (and indeed, foreign) corporation ? It’s breathtaking in concept.

If something is ‘illegal’, it’s up to the police and the CPS to prosecute the publisher, not Mark Zuckerberg. Anyway, that’s down to Home Secretary Amber Rudd, and not YC. ‘Illegal’ means that something has been held to be such in a court of law, and not at the behest and judgement of Facebook.

When YC says that she doesn’t understand that some content (which she presumably believes breaches the law) has not been taken down, surely she should address that question to Ms Rudd, who seemingly is not doing her job.

YC asked a Facebook employee in Committee  “I’m kind of wondering what we have to do. “We sat in this committee in a public hearing and raised a clearly vile anti-Semitic tweet with your organisation.”

Yvette, the issue is not whether you (or grumpy) thinks it is vile, but whether its publication broke the law. If is was illegal, report it to the police and the law of the land will take its course. If it was not illegal, and just upsetting to a class of the populace, that’s democracy and freedom of speech. People can and do say things with which others disagree and possibly find upsetting – but banning that is censorship, possibly by a minority and possibly by the Executive … and then we are in China, not the UK.

The whole  approach raises many thorny issues, about which there needs to be an informed and not hysterical debate.

Is Facebook a ‘publisher’ or a communications company, like BT ? It moves data from a source to a destination, and generates no direct content.

There is a short step to seeking to remove content which cannot be held to be illegal in a court of law, but which which some entity (Facebook, or the government) doesn’t like. Maybe pro-Brexit content might be banned because it clearly (In YC’s view)  harms the economy?

Like all politicians, YC loudly vocalises (generally topical) problems for political purposes, and proposes solutions which possibly sound convincing but have insurmountable technical or economic barriers, and generally potentially serious unexpected side-effects.

James Joyce in Ulysses had the expression for this … “all wind and piss”.

 

Why the gender pay debate is misguided and meaningless

The headline pay gap published by companies mandated by regulation is essentially meaningless. It is almost certainly misunderstood by the populace at large, and a depressing soapbox for a certain class of feminist  MP harridans  who make me groan whenever they appear on TV.

{See http://www.equalpayportal.co.uk/gender-pay-gap-reporting/  Now imagine a company which employs 1000 female widget packers at £10 per hour and no men. The board however, is comprised of 5 men and 5 women who receive equal pay of £100 per hour. They all work the same full time hours. The average female wage under metric 1 of the regulations is £10.45, and the average male wage is £100 – enough to cause apoplexy; one can hear Caroline Harris, Welsh Labour MP repeating her tweet mantra ” This is astonishing and immoral. Shocking.” Well, Caroline, no it isn’t, they all get the same rate.}

However, Grumpy takes issue with the figures even when the goal of equal pay for equal job specifications  is promoted. How does this make sense ?    Just because a woman and a man get a different salary for the same role does not mean that this is either unfair or unequal.

This nonsense stems from the public sector, union supported concept of pay for a role, regardless of the capability of the role holder; it is a notion which fosters mediocrity and kills productivity.

Individual  people in the same notional role can perform quite differently in both their output and contribution to team productivity. [Try sitting at the next desk to a mediocre moaner for 8 hours, supposedly doing the same ‘job’, and see how that pulls down all around them.] They may also have vastly different experience in the role, which may well justify differences.

When Grumpy used to  set salaries, there could be several people with the same ‘role’ (job description, grade etc.) but each of whom made a markedly different contribution to the organisation. Since there were no ‘salary bands’, their salary was set on the basis of that contribution – and the gender was not a factor.

For those not performing, reviews and assistance sought to get them to improve, so there was a chance to do better, and receive better reward.

This also meant that people were rewarded and had a career path by doing what they were good at, rather than false promotions to some other task  to which they were wholly unsuited, and being hemmed in by ‘role based’ salary bands.

Finally, if there is one thing guaranteed to motivate good people to start reading the job ads, it’s spending their days with unproductive, negative slackers who got the same pay as them; equal pay for different capabilities  is bad for job retention.