Food banks ‘Fake News’

Not anorexic …

Grumpy has opined before on how certain institutions with otherwise entirely laudable objectives (and which do contribute to society) nevertheless resort to hyperbole, and intentionally misleading and often disingenuous statements to promote their political messages. ( http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/numbers-that-dont-add-up/ ) One of the common ways this is done is to conflate topics (often easily done with the ‘flexibility’ of the English language) to deliberately leave an impression with the reader which is removed from reality.

Grumpy’s eye was caught by a headline on the website of US based CNN, ‘holiday hunger is haunting British Families’, driven by the statement that ‘31% of children in Coventry live in poverty’ from a UK Community Trust. It goes on to say that ‘millions of parents … face stress over whether they will be able to provide food for their families’. One can forgive a US reader getting the impression that that vast swathes of UK citizens are on the point of starvation. Poverty = poor; the authors know exactly what they are doing in this conflation.

The data stems from data issued in a leaflet by the ‘Coventry Partnership’, which also stated that 18.5% of residents of the City are living in circumstances of multiple deprivation. Oddly, it also says that over 24% of Coventry children are obese, and that this is increasing – giving the image of a third of the population being anorexic whilst one quarter are wobbling about as flesh mountains. [Incidentally, the picture at the top of the page is of a family who use a food bank because they are unable to otherwise feed themselves. However, at the risk of being cruel (but Grumpy at least deleted the word ‘porky’ from this post), neither of the two women depicted have any obvious signs of food deprivation, so the food bank clearly provides copious calories.]

This piece of lexical sleight of hand comes from a favourite trick of the many agencies vying for more government monies, which is to conflate relative poverty (which is what the 31% was based on) with being poor; it is not. One can construct a scenario where people ‘living in poverty’ by this definition all drive BMW 520 cars.

The same article has links to another current bandwagon on which Grumpy has previously written (http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/news-round-up-july-2018/ ) is about ‘period poverty’ i.e the cost of feminine sanitary products. The Salvation Army food bank stated that with Tampons costing £3.14 for 20 at Tesco, and women using 11,000 tampons in their lifetime, they would have to work 38 days to afford this.

This is using a 1950’s advertising trick of quoting usage by lifetime to maximise a quoted cost and by the hour / day if it is wished to minimise it (“only 50p per day”). However, setting aside that tired cliche, it is clear that based on reputable figures (e.g. from the Office of National Statistics) this is more inflation. Do the math.

No-one can doubt that a considerable number of people have a relatively miserable life from a material perspective (which doesn’t mean that they do not find value and happiness in life nevertheless). However, Grumpy is of the view that the constant inflation of statistics and disingenuous conflation of topics by various agencies to deliberately obfuscate reality and promulgate false impressions to gain political and general visibility is not necessary; if the truth were known, it probably hardens the heart of the more fortunate towards charity.

News round up July 2018

May fails the vacuum cleaner test big time : Grumpy posed the question [ See http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/eu-vacuum-test/ ]as to whether after an exit agreement with the EU it would be possible to make a vacuum cleaner in the UK with a 1 kw motor complying with US regulations and export it to the US. The answer seems to be a resounding ‘no’, since EU regulation will apply to goods.It is little short of pitiful to see Johnson, Gove, and others on TV trying to convince the UK populace that black is white, up is down, and that 2+2=5. It’s the sheer arrogance of these failed politicians after they have been humbled and humiliated by May, that they cannot admit to having had their wimpish butts comprehensively kicked at Chequers.

Period fantasy – put a sock in it: MP Danielle Rowley announced to the House of Commons that she was having a period and had spent £25 that week on sanitary products. Now, if these were Tampons, the supermarket cost is about £2 for 20, so that would imply using 2.2 every waking hour. As a male, Grumpy is ignorant on these usage rates, but simple observation would dictate that either she needs to see a doctor or that she was using hyperbole. Why? She was publicising the latest feminine band wagon of ‘period poverty’, pushing (at its extreme) to free universal sanitary product provision. Without analysing the merits or otherwise of this movement, the element that has baffled grumpy is the picture painted of women going to school and work with socks in their panties (as claimed by this movement) because they can’t afford a 10p tampon. Where do they get all these socks from, given that they (if like Ms Rowley) they would have to use 36 per day ? Or do they traipse home from work on the tube with 25 soiled socks in a bag awaiting washing for the next day ? A mystery.

4D boobs : The Daily Mail reported that a new “4D augmented reality” system had been developed to allow women to see what they might look like after cosmetic breast surgery. The accompanying photo showed a woman looking at a representation of herself on a flat 2D screen. This is the sort of drivel written by junior members of staff who did a course in Media Studies at a small town Technical College. Setting aside the fact that only a 2D system was shown, we humans can only spatially experience three dimensions, and there is no physical humanly detectable manifestation of four dimensions – pure fantasy marketing hype. [For simplicity, I’m ignoring the relativistic notion of Minkowski Space with time as the 4th dimension, which we are all part of, or the 11 dimensions of Calabi-Yau structures of string theory.]

Female quota harridans again : Feminist activists have been apoplectic that the Bank of England chose the only man on a shortlist of 5 as a new members of the monetary policy committee. This was presumably either because (a) a woman should have been chosen regardless of merit – the quota argument – or (b) that the selection board was biased against women. Setting aside the first as being morally dubious, the second is an outrageous slur on the selection board. In fact, the Chair was Clare Lombardelli and the female majority on the board was completed by a previous MPC member, Kate Barker; both have impeccable credentials and experience, and they presumably chose the best candidate. MP Rachel Reeves said this was “truly staggering”, and so she gets the Grumpy Harridan of the Week Award.

Execution first, trial afterwards; the #MeToo baying mob

Once again, the lunatic harridan fringe of #MeToo has sought to undermine a basic foundation of due process in England. This was because Jeremy Corbyn had failed to take action against a male MP who had been accused of wife beating. Notice the word ‘accused’ – an allegation, as yet unproved by due process.

However, the hysterical Labour harpies screamed “The allegations against the man are horrific. There is no way he should be an MP and the party cannot just sit on its hands and do nothing.” In old movies, the Wild West state of law in those days was characterised with the cliche “we’ll give him a fair trial, and then we”ll hang him”, but these female tyrants have updated this to “we’ll hang him, and then investigate to see if he was guilty”

Sitting in the middle of this pack of hyenas was the odious and despicable hypocrite, Harriet Harman. She is a lawyer by training, but in matters concerned with ‘Womyn’ (sic) she is happy to put the edict from the Digest of Justinian – “Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies” – to one side.

It’s too tedious to list the full panoply of Harman’s hypocrisies, including her abandonment of the concept of due process for males, her disgraceful action on FOI requests (especially as she was fraudulently pocketing tax payers money), repeated law breaking at the wheel of a motor vehicle, and dishonesty or incompetence with expenses. Grumpy can only earnestly hope that any vestige of influence she may have on British life is eroded or extinguished as soon as possible.

The Philippines Rodrigo Duterte has received global opprobrium for sanctioning the extra-judicial execution at the hands of the police and the community where they suspect an individual might have had involvement with drugs. Grumpy sees Harman in the same light; those accused or suspected of any impropriety against women loose their livelihoods and reputations at the hands of an ugly, baying mob, made worse by the acquiescence of males in authority too cowed and too terrified to ensure basic justice.

TV play rejected as “too fantastic”

Writer : “I’ve got a script for a new play which combines, political intrigue, sex and threats to world stability – it’s a real corker”

Producer : “Ok, run it past me…”

Writer : “Well, there is this sexy heroine called Kim K with an incredibly enormous butt who in spite of having no discernible talents except physical assets, teams up with son in law of POTUS to revise prison reform in the country even though neither have been elected or have any political experience.”

Producer : Hmmmm… go on

Writer : “Well, POTUS is under investigation for colluding with a foreign power, and being sued by a porn star who alleged that he slept with her whilst his wife was pregnant. He also has threatened nuclear Armageddon on another country, and, oh yes, appointed his daughter into various positions.

Producer : You’re going to tell me there’s more …

Writer : This is just the tip of it. The FBI (who illegally spied in him) and the Department of Justice are corrupt, and he appointed a climate change denier to be in charge of environmental protection, and …

Producer : Whoooaah ! I know it’s fiction, but there has to be some level of credibility in the underlying story. This is way too over the top, sorry, no rational viewer would take it seriously. Sorry, no go.

UK should play tit for tat with Barnier

This is the first of a series of ‘tit for tat’ posts in which Grumpy plans to highlight how threats from EU bureaucrats seeking to influence the outcome of Brexit negotiations, can be turned round to be ‘foot shooting’ on their part. So here is one to start.

(UK) Officials have insisted that it was not the government’s intention for UK drivers to need IDPs in Europe, but in an EU notice issued last month, the European commission said: “A driving licence issued by the United Kingdom will no longer be recognised by the member states.”

Fine. There are about 2.9m EU nationals in the UK, and (tit for tat!!) they had better start applying for a UK driving licence if they don’t have one; right now they can use a licence from another EU member, but if the EU ceases to recognise a UK licence, two can play. There are about 900,000 uk nationals living permanently in the EU, so that’s 2 million more of their own get hit than UK citizens. To quote from “Startrek IV : the Voyage Home” in Spock’s words ‘ a double dumb ass on you’.

Visitors driving on either side will both need to get IDP’s ; fine. However the EU’s move is both pointless and spiteful, and David Davis needs to take a leaf from the Trump book here and play rough.

Lammy Paranoid

Home Secretary Sajid Javid was reported as saying that illegal immigrants would be subject to a ‘compliant environment’, which triggered David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, to erupt into a paroxysm of hyperbole and bizarre conflation which exceeded even his normal tendency to extreme interpretation of the English language. He replied by saying (according to the Huff Post)

“Slaves having to nod and smile when they were being whipped in a cotton field or a sugar cane field were compliant. Watching your partner being tied to a tree, beaten or raped, on a plantation, is compliance.”

What ? The various meanings of ‘compliance’ as per the OED can essentially be summarised as “The state or fact of according with or meeting rules or standards”

Grumpy lives in a compliant environment. If he breaks the speed limit and is caught the law applies sanctions for his non-compliance. Every citizen has to comply with the laws and rules of society without exception, including one assumes, David Lammy himself. But Grumpy doesn’t see this obligation (imposed as a social consensus to avoid anarchy) as somehow harking back to the days of the stocks and disembowelling, and those days of yore of English serfdom are not ‘written deep into our souls’. It was not passed down from our ancestors.

The Windrush immigrants – British citizens and legal immigrants – have been treated disgracefully, and that current wrong should be righted. But Savid Javid didn’t include these in his statement – he talked of illegal immigrants, which valid Windrush individuals are not.

What Lammy seems to be saying is that seeking to hold illegal immigrants – not to mince words, criminals – subject to the same the standards of compliance with the laws of the land as the indigenous population because of events which were abolished in the Empire in 1833 is somehow abhorrent. The guy is as harmless as he is ineffectual, but he does need to reign in the wilder excesses of his associations, or he simply looks stupid.

The Oxford English Dictionary has of ‘paranoia’ “.. mental condition characterised by delusions of persecution”. His hyperbolic, irrelevant and patently unsupportable statements seem to meet that definition well.

EU vacuum test

The picture shows the Nace HD14 Vacuum Cleaner, which Grumpy rather likes. It is sold by Walmart in the US, and presumably after the UK is free of the bonds of the EU, might conceivably be available in its UK subsidiary, ASDA.

Importantly, the (hypothetical) situation provides a key test for the post Brexit structures. If the UK decided that it was happy to have this imported (and why not?) and a ‘Customs Partnership’ applies. what would stop Grumpy from taking this over to the his holiday cottage in in Ballylickey, Eire, since there is no border ?

The issue here is that the HD14 has a 1000 watt motor, which is banned under EU legislation, so how is this anomaly to be resolved ?

The test for Brexit is whether we take back control of (amongst other things) our Laws and Borders. If the UK decided to allow 1000 watt cleaners, how could this possibly work? It’s clearly, to quote the Mogg, a ‘cretinous’ concept.

This could only be resolved by aligning UK standards with EU standards, over which parliament would have no control – and this doesn’t seem to pass the test. The likelihood is, however, that Theresa May has left this minor detail out of her rhetoric, and hopes to slide it in under the radar.

So, citizens, whatever comes out of the tedious discussions, the simple check to apply is whether they would be free to buy a product which didn’t comply with EU rules – the vacuum cleaner test. So far, it fails.

Guarantee nonsense

For some reason, Grumpy has a ‘thing’ about Emma Barnett, a new(ish) BBC Newsnight presenter. No, not an ‘old man drooling’ thing, but that he finds her intensely irritating. For example, she asks a question to establish a context, and then moves on without allowing the interviewee to answer (e.g. with Matt Hancock, 03.06.19); an allegation without opportunity to refute. She (and she is not alone in female presenters – listen to Radio 4 Today) is also a serial interrupter.

However, the underlying source of Grumpy’s annoyance is that the questions she asks are mainly inane, biased to an assumption of her perception of the ‘desired ‘answer, and frankly, carping. Barnett seems merely to want to ‘get one over’ on her subjects to burnish her credentials as a tough presenter, whereas she actually comes across as a bullying harridan. Grumpy bemoans the rare presence of Andrew Neil on political programs because of his impeccably prepared research and generally neutral questioning.

However, the foregoing is a digression from the main point here , which is about the phrase’must never happen again’ and the word ‘guarantee’ (a favourite of the aforementioned lady) . Both are generally meaningless and annoying when applied to other than a small number of discrete and limited states of events, but doubly so when combined together and uttered by the logically and statistically challenged Barnett.

Now if she is referring to situations with an indeterminate set of out outcomes (the norm) which also include those over which the interviewee cannot possibly control, a binary outcome of a future state cannot be ‘guaranteed’. That’s merely statistics, which the logically and numerately challenged history graduate either cannot grasp or ignores. Indeed, Barnett uses this ploy as a win-win question, because a binary answer is not valid and anything else can be triumphantly picked over as a refusal to respond.

“Can you guarantee” she starts, “that this event will not happen again?” If the hapless interviewee seeks to inject some rationality into the response, Barnett jumps into gleeful action “It’s a yes or no, Mr X! Answer the question – can you guarantee it?” {It’s the equivalent of a witness in the dock being asked “Was the rope long or short? yes or no?” The offered choice of response has no meaning.]

Similarly, the hackneyed expression “this must never be allowed to happen again” where there is a continuous spectrum of possible outcomes is also meaningless. Of course it can (the option of a zero probability here being not valid if that spectrum remains unchanged), but it allows the opposition politician (for such it normally is) to score points, whilst praying that nothing similar happens on their watch.

Come back, Andrew !