Category Archives: News and Politics

Current affairs, madnesses of government, politics and politicians

UK repression

The recent furore about China’s introduction of “new” legislation for Hong Kong (albeit agreed in principle by the British for over two decades) dealing with Treason, Sedition, Secession and other national security measures and the anguished squeals from many in the West about the destruction of democracy there, simply reminded Grumpy that the UK has one of, if not the, most repressive state regimes in the world for a supposed democracy.

As Grumpy has noted before, Britain ruled Hong Kong as a colonial power, resulting from acts of war by the UK state to allow lethal narcotics dealing by a private company. From that point, in over a century and a half, no Hong Kong subject ever had the opportunity to vote for his/her leader, who instead was imposed by edict from 6,000 miles away by their overseas masters. It must have surely irritated the Chinese in recovering their own illegally annexed territory to then have the the UK government seek to enforce on Chinese subjects a regime with suffrage (albeit limited), having themselves denied this to the citizens for 150+ years.

As part of the hand back of the territory, Article 23 of Basic Law (the Hong Kong ‘constitution’), placed an obligation on the Hong Kong Legislature to enact laws to sanction and prohibit any act of “treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organisations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organisations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organisations or bodies”. When The Hong Kong Legislative Council failed to do so for 17 years the Chinese government stepped in to enforce the agreed laws.

It surely cannot be unreasonable that the Chinese government sought to fill the gap in legal structures following the handback of Hong Kong to protect itself – as every state does – against those citizens who seek to usurp or overthrow legitimate government. Any objections must surely therefore be matters of implementation, and not of principle; but for political reasons the USA and UK have seized on this to undertake a bout of China bashing.

Much has been made of the key elements of “treason, secession, sedition, subversion” and the fact that, amongst other things, some offences carried life sentences. Grave warnings have been given that the City / State would be subject to surveillance, random searching, and property search without warrant. Right leaning conservatives huffed into their copy of the Daily Telegraph either ignorant of, or unconcerned by, the equally repressive structures of British law, subjecting citizens to a controlling and surveillance regime which not even the USA of Donald Trump would even dare to contemplate. A few examples might serve to highlight this.

As an example, ‘Treason’ under the new laws has been made an offence and has a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. <gasp!> But wait, Treason is an offence in UK law and carries the same penalty. Lest it be thought that wartime Lord Haw-Haw was the last person charged, as recently as 2014 Philip Hammond (as Secretary of State for Defence) considered charges of High Treason against UK citizens considered to be islamic extremists. In July 2020, Safiyya Amira Shaikh was sentenced to life for planning a terrorist attack on St Paul’s cathedral; the simple fact is that the British penalties for seeking to attack or overthrow the state are no less severe than those introduced into Hong Kong.

In Part II of this post, Grumpy will highlight how ignorant, disinterested and cosseted politicians allowed repressive legislation to be introduced – some of which was twice struck down for breaching human rights by either the High Court or the European Court of Justice.

Brexit is done – drop the term

Politicians and the press are still using the term ‘Brexit’. Brexit referred to the process of withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union; that has now happened, and the UK is no longer a member. It’s done. The UK has left. Brexit per se is over; it is as the Norwegian Blue. There is no reason for anybody to use the term, as it is irrelevant.

The process now taking place is a transition under the framework of the Withdrawal Agreement and the non-binding Political Declaration. So why is the ‘Brexit’ term so widely used by not only the Westminster cohort, but the representatives of the EU, and in particular M. Barnier ?

Grumpy takes the view that there are two basic reasons for this persistence, The first is the obvious one of conflating the current process with the divisions and traumas of the Brexit tussle; it helps to make it easier for those that wish for the outcome to be a closer relationship than is now likely, to build opposition. Secondly, although more speculative as an assessment, there are those who still harbour that alternative outcome wish, and search for a mechanism to reverse what they perceive as the ‘no deal’ process being followed by BoJo. This is harder to do if it accepted that the process is over and the debate terminated. Casting it as a continuation of the Brexit battle might foster rebellion to whatever is brought back as an agreement.

This slightly delusional attitude is shown in a much more unadulterated form in M Barnier. In week 2 May, he complained that ” The UK did not wish to commit seriously on a number of fundamental points” and that “failed to engage substantially” in the negotiations. What he actually means is that the UK has refused to roll over and accede to their demands.

In the Brexit negotiations, the EU sought, and succeeded, because of the weakness and complicity of the then negotiators, to set the agenda – the enemy of a balanced negotiation. Now the UK is an independent state, the EU is still seeking to do the same, and it is hoped that this rather arrogant ploy is rejected comprehensively. The approach of the UK shouldn’t be a surprise to Barnier; he merely has to read May’s Mansion House speech, although they were under her leadership hollow words.

No more. The EU has no leverage to dictate to the UK, and the current process should be what it always should have been before – a negotiation, not a capitulation, and a recognition of the UK’s not negotiable principles, just as they demand a recognition of theirs.

High UK death rates

Coronavirus has (as at 12.04.20) infected some 1,784,300 people round the world, and killed some 108,900 of them; a mortality rate of about 6%. What requires some explanation is why mortality rates have been so much higher in the UK than in other countries.

In Portugal, Canada, Austria, Germany, and South Korea, for example, rates are significantly lower. A German contracting coronavirus has a 1 in 45 chance of dying, whereas in the UK it is more than 1 in 8 – more than 5 times the rate in Germany (see footnote for numbers)

These are pretty terrifying odds, and even more so when the distribution of mortality with age is factored in. The above are averages for all ages; so for those of Grumpy’s age, the statistics are far worse, and pushed it to the level more often associated with more ostensibly malign infections.

This disparity may be due to differences in levels of preparedness, better funded and equipped health facilities in the countries with lower rates, age distribution of the population, or the timing and nature of the political decisions taken as the scale of the pandemic unfolded.

Postmortems don’t help the corpse, and “if only we had …” conclusions are pointless. What is essential is that the reason for the disparities are determined, and (to use the hackneyed expression so beloved of politicians before they do precisely nothing) “lessons learned”. This time, however, the economic rubble left in the broken businesses of voters might just be the catalyst for a more meaningful review of ‘rare event’ planning.

Country	Cases	Deaths	% deaths
Italy	152,271	19,468	12.79
UK	78,991	9,875	12.50
Belgium	28,018	3,346	11.94
Netherlands	24,413	2,643	10.83
Spain	161,852	16,480	10.18
Sweden	10,151	887	8.74
Switzerland	25,107	1,036	4.13
USA	525,559	20,304	3.86
Ireland	8,928	320	3.58
Portugal	15,987	470	2.94
Canada	23,195	648	2.79
Austria	13,799	337	2.44
Germany	123,878	2,736	2.21
S Korea	10,480	211	2.01
Israel	10,743	101	0.94
World	1784331	108962	6.10

Virus realities

Politicians of different persuasions, academics (both reputable and not so) and journalistic hacks are weighing in on their perspective of the only way to deal with reducing the spread of COVID. Not only can they not all be right (many of the views are diametrically positioned between the extreme isolation and herd approaches), the simple fact is that none of them can be right; they can hypothesize, but epidemiology is actually irrelevant. Most of them know it, but cannot mention the very large elephant in the room – peoples’ behaviour.

The current lockdown (November 2020) is based, as have been previous attempts, to seek to reduce transmission by minimising disjoint incidents of personal contact, to drop the key R ratio below 1. However, the plan is predicated on the populace at large actually complying with the procedures and restrictions and it’s patently clear to them that this has not (and probably will not) happen. Boris and chums just have to bite their tongues and take flak.

The Daily Mail frequently print pictures (see above as an example) of drunken, maskless young people (often students), not socially distancing, willfully violating governmental edicts seeking to protect the populate in general. Although that is the case (and partially driven by the fact that they perceive the risk from COVID to them is low), they nevertheless are potentially likely to transmit this to more vulnerable members of society that they come in to contract with.

However, Grumpy understands their hormonally driven dismissal of the pandemic, but there is another driver; that is that they see all levels of the establishment, ‘celebs’ and others choosing to demonstrate their disagreement with the ‘reduce R’ approach. At the top of this list (ignoring the deranged Peter Hitchens), in Grumpy’s mind, is the selfish, arrogant, geriatric Lord Sumption. As Grumpy pointed out elsewhere, somebody has to drive the bus and make decisions, and everyone else is a passenger. What Sumption has chosen to ignore when he excoriates the Executive (in a manner which is extreme hyperbole) is that they were elected as the bus driver.

Devolution farce

COVID has exposed the idiocies from the delusion of areas of the UK being capable of operating with a degree of autonomy associated with a state. If ever there was a time for a unified policy of pandemic management across the whole nation, it is now. However, rather than rising to the challenge of coming together for the good of all UK citizens to combat a common threat, the devolved ‘nations’ have used it as an opportunity to grandstand their imagined independence, grind their own particular axes, and extort taxpayers money.

Nichola Sturgeon in particular, it seems to Grumpy, has implemented alternate procedures for COVID management firstly because she presumably couldn’t bring herself politically to accept any policy coming from Westminster, and secondly as a demonstration of her irrational contrarian independence.

The idea that there can practically be one government edict in the Newcastle Arms in Coldstream, Scotland, and another in the Cornhill Arms, Cornhill, Northumberland (1.5km away) is bizarre in the current times. Even more so with Sturgeon’s floated plan to restrict travel across the River Tweed… it’s not exactly the border between the US and Mexico.

Wales followed a similar “to hell with simplicity and conformity for the populace, we’ll show our independence’, which is even less rational. In 1997, the majority for setting up a Welsh Assembly (a sort of neutered parliament) was less than the capacity of the Burton Albion football ground. (And if, dear reader, you have never heard of Burton Albion, that proves the point.)

The Welsh, at great cost to the taxpayers in duplicating government papers in Welsh, would have us believe that a majority of the population greet each other with “bore da, Taffy”. One can Imagine the SNP playing catch-up with the Scots language, and indeed, the evidence of a push to embrace this officially is clear.

What next ? A push to make Pictish, spoken by 7 goat herders on the island of Pabbay a government official language?

The fact is that to survive outside of the EU, we need to think in terms of 67m citizens of the UK, not 3.3m Welshmen, 5.4m Scots, 1.9m Northern Irish and 56.3m English. Consolidation, integration and evolution, not devolution is what the country needs.

Pure Guardian

The Guardian today (03/04/2020) had a ‘long read’ by an author, Bee Wilson. Without wishing to focus on her in particular, it did typify this series in the paper by exhibiting Guardian characteristics of (a) seeking a target to demonise (b) being long on anecdotes of extreme and unrepresentative examples, pop-psychology and short on rational analysis and logic, and (c) accompanied by sounds of axes being ground / bees buzzing in bonnets in the background. See https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/apr/03/off-our-trolleys-what-stockpiling-in-the-coronavirus-crisis-reveals-about-us

The issue here was about the tendency of part of the population to ‘stockpile’ at times of crisis (such as the present one), and how it was practised by (without explicitly saying so) uneducated, irrational,’chav’ types that presumably don’t live in the area where Bee resides.

What this and other articles have not addressed is how ‘stockpiling’ is not only rational, it is the inevitable outcome of the Government’s own policies. Grumpy is old, and at the behest of the Government is ensconced in his bunker, and being in a high risk group, relies on deliveries to the door for food. Previously, Grumpy did his weekly shop, and purchased a weeks’ worth of food. However, as demand soared for home deliveries as a result of Government policy, so did the lead times for getting deliver slots – it any were available at all.

Her flawed article extols the virtues of local shops (presumably selling the sort of edibles that foodies such as her eat) saying that plenty of food was available, but they, in the main, don’t deliver. What part of the word ‘isolation’ does Ms Wilson not understand ?? Let me help her – the OED defines it as “Cause (a person or place) to be or remain alone or apart from others.” .. you can’t go out shopping, dummy.

Assume that it takes 3 weeks to get a slot on average. Buyers were faced with a choice; either (i) buy a weeks worth of food to be delivered as before and starve for the next two week waiting for the next slot or (ii) buy three weeks of food to line up with the extended lead times. The combination of self-isolation and extended delivery lead times inevitably logically results in an initial tripling or more of consumption on a transient basis. This is 101 procurement / queuing theory. (One assumes that Bee Wilson sends her secretary down to Tesco to risk COVID to get her supplies, so is spared this reality.) Nowhere in her tedious article was this scenario discussed, notwithstanding the psychology-lite explanations from the usual ‘hire a pundit’ experts. There is a comment from one contributor about risk resilience, but that was related to additional consumption of 30% because people were no longer eating in their Notting Hill restaurants, but there was no mention of the underlying delivery issue.

In fact, as Grumpy writes, there are NO slots available at Asda, Morrisons (a 45,000 user queue), Ocado, Tesco, or Waitrose; so how is he to get food without going out, which is not what self-ISOLATION is about? So if a slot appears, and it is clear that he might get another in delivery in May, how many tins of soup is he to buy? The rational answer is the logical one – as many as he possibly can. It’s not stockpiling, and he is not panicking. He does want to eat, and not starve. Grumpy can do the math and understand probability and expected outcomes far better than Ms Wilson seemingly can. So if she wants a target, attention should be given to the organisers of delivery logistics when responsible citizens follow the Government edict to stay at home. The people responsible, Priti Patel and Matt Hancock (the former being completely invisible of late), should sort out the mechanisms (using the army if the Supermarkets wont do it) to get food delivered to those they have imprisoned.

Political duplicity

In the first week of November, 2020, Foreign Secretary of the UK issued a statement about the Chinese disqualifying a number of legislators from the Hong Kong parliament, saying it was breach if the Sino-British declaration on the status of the Special Administrative Region post the expiry of the UK lease on certain territories there. “With our international partners, we will hold China to the obligations it freely assumed under international law”, Dominic Raab said.

Really ? How short Raab’s memory is. Just one month before, Brandon Lewis, Northern Ireland Secretary, admitted in parliament that the Internal Markets Bill broke the UK’s freely assumed obligations under international law.

Grumpy is struggling to understand the difference in principle here. He also wonders how Raab is going to square his distaste of countries that break binding agreements when he and Liz Truss are trying to persuade Joe Biden that it’s fine for the Brits to do just this because it’s essential but the Chinese are being oppressive to the would be democratic legislators.

Ever heard of Oriol Junqueras? No ? Well he is languishing in prison serving a 13 year sentence (along with a dozen colleagues) for Sedition in Spain. The action of the Spanish government in these and other sentences was fully supported by that bastion of liberal government, the EU – including the UK. They were pushing for independence, just as the Hong Kong agitators have been doing.

But wait ! Wasn’t the fact that the Chinese government introduced a Sedition law (which the Hong Kong LegCo had failed to do for 13 years (in spite of an obligation so to do enshrined in the Basic Law) the triggered for sanctions by the USA, and an offer of British Citizenship from the UK ?

Amongst other things, the banned persons had refused to acknowledge Beijing’s authority, something Western hypocrites also lambasted. Here in the UK, however, anyone who is elected as an MP has to swear an allegiance to the Crown under the 1868 Promissory Oaths Act, or they cannot take their seat in parliament – just like in Hong Kong. This runs through establishment English life; every Freeman of the City of London has to make a solemn declaration in GUildhall to “be good and true to our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth II” and even that they “will know no Gatherings nor Conspiracies made against the Queen’s Peace but will warn the Mayor thereof…” Wow, just like the East German stasi in snitching on one’s fellow citizens.

Grumpy carries no banners for China, as he had frequently said here; but what he finds repulsive – and yes, that is a good word in this context – is that politicians like Raab are happy to voice such obvious inconsistencies of sanction without a twinge towards their own integrity as individuals.

As a footnote, Grumpy would add that many of the ‘democracy’ advocates in Hong Kong have been openly canvassing support against their government with enemies of the State. It’s called treason; this was something that the UK and others also railed against. when it was introduced into Hong Kong law along with Sedition. However, there is (of course) a law against it in the UK and USA (Trump wanted to jail Obama for it) – it’s just morally justified in the West but not with those dangerous commies.

Italian politicians condemned to die

The Daily Express reports (23/03/20) that doctors in Italy have been directed not to provide ventilation facilities to anyone over 60, thus probably condemning them to death, given respiration was needed.

Grumpy notes that this means that, should he contract coronavirus and require such treatment, the President, Sergio Mattarella (born 1941) would be left to expire, gasping for breath.

Similarly, the same fate would be visited upon Elisabetta Casellati (born 1946) and President of the Senate.

Really ? Even assuming that they were not (as would be expected ) to be treated in some elite private hospital, it’s hard to believe that the decimation of of the most senior politicians, judges, clerics, celebrities and business titans would be allowed, which would otherwise be the result of this edict.

Grumpy had a surge of indignation that such a coarse judgement involving life of death would be issued. Ther are probably many 60 year old who are far more healthy and likely to pull through than some drug or alcohol addled 20 year old. Their health professionals have almost certainly had to make life or death decisions based on the reality of resources, COVID or no. So has the NHS. It just happens that such judgements will be more likely as a result of the pandemic.

But a more underlying reason for Grumpy’s indignation wave is that they patently don’t mean it to be universal. The edict really means that it will be applied to the poor, the uneducated, the inarticulate, the unconnected and all those to whom society owes an equal duty. Grumpy is starting to feel empathy with the OpEd writers in The Guardian …