Kinnock is a byword for arrogance

Neil Kinnock has said that Jeremy Corbyn will commit a “serious evasion of duty” if he does not change course on his current Brexit policy. He also described anyone who did not agree with his views as being guilty of “infantile leftist illusion”.

In doing so, he joins a growing band of politicians, including Osborn, Cameron and others who, rather than present a rational argument, seek to close it down by attacking the intelligence or sanity of anyone who does not subscribe to their view of life – it’s an old ploy of ‘attack the man and not the ball’, perfected by the current incumbent of the White House (remember ‘little Marco’ ?). Apart from being an intellectually bankrupt approach, it displays breath-taking arrogance. Grumpy is of the view that, when politicians told the populace in the run up to the 2016 referendum that citizens would be stupid to vote leave, they went out and did just that out of sheer bloody mindedness.

His injection may have had more weight if Kinnock himself was not such a abject loser and serial failure. Remember, the man has never been in government, and presided over two defeats for his party (of which he was leader), and the 1992 conference in Sheffield demonstrated his tendency towards self-aggrandizement. He has no possible qualification to make such proclamations.

Following what should have been a humiliating experience in electoral defeats, he was appointed to various lucrative sinecure posts, and entered into the privileged and tax-payer funded European gravy train structures that he purported, in earlier times at least, to despise. However, he was presumably enjoying the excesses of the EU lifestyle too much to allow principles to stand in the way of taking the citizens shilling.

In 2005, he further demonstrated his lack of any principles when he was ‘elevated’ to the upper chamber, an institution of which he had been a critic for most of his life – he had said earlier in life “The House of Lords must go – not be reformed, not be replaced, not be reborn in some nominated life-after-death patronage paradise, just closed down, abolished, finished.” Once asked to join the club, however, he grasped he daily allowance and subsidised lunches earnestly – hypocrisy incarnate.

Kinnock’s characterisation of those who disagree with his Brexit views as committing a serious breach of professional standards, and indeed, being ‘infantile’, shows his self-indulgent myopia. Given the intellect, experience, standing and dedication to public life of many in government of the opposite view, it is an insult Kinnock should be ashamed to voice.

However, he is not and if readers want to see “infantile left wing illusion”, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TOgB3Smvro at the Labour Party election convention, fittingly held on the 1st April 1992; he hasn’t changed.

EU needs a history lesson

The BBC reported that EU diplomats ‘demanded’ that the UK should adopt a ‘one state two systems’ approach with Northern Ireland – keeping the province in the customs union while the rest of the UK quits it. They said this would copy what happened in Hong Kong – which Margaret Thatcher agreed would be handed back to China on condition it kept its own institutions and laws. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41901294

Setting aside the bizarre notion of the EU having any right to ‘demand’ how the UK treats its territories, they clearly need a history lesson.

Hong Kong and its hinterland were never part of the UK, China being invaded by the UK in a war asserting its ‘right’ to be a state heroin dealer. In spite of the ‘holier than thou’ position on most topics adopted by the British establishment, the UK was undoubtedly the largest state sponsored and supported drug dealer in history, causing misery to millions whilst generating wealth for the British aristocracy.

To the point : Although as part of the spoils of war Hong Kong island was ceded in perpetuity to the UK, the hinterland – the new territories – were not, and were leased for 99 years from China. When the lease expired, Chinese sovereignty had to be reinstated and as retaining the island as an entity without the hinterland was not viable, the UK was forced to abandon the agreement extracted by force and withdrew. Mrs Thatcher was in no position not to agree to its return, and was lucky to extract any concession from the Chinese at all. Whatever, she was probably overjoyed to be rid of the pompous and odious Chris Patten, Governor at the time.

Attempting to conflate this situation with Northern Ireland is pathetic, desperate and ignorant, and should be dismissed without discussion by David Davies.

Numbers that don’t add up

According to the Guardian newspaper (or more precisely Dr Frances Ryan opining therein)

“In 2018 Britain will be on the cusp of a new era of child poverty. As universal credit, “two-child limit” tax credits and child benefit freezes set in, the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts the next five years will see the number of children living in poverty soar to a staggering 5.2 million (or 37% of all children). That’s the highest percentage since modern records began.

It’s grim enough that a wealthy 21st-century nation has children diagnosed with rickets because they haven’t got enough to eat. But unless something is done this country will lose hard fought for gains: the IFS calculates that, as Conservative cuts set in, all the progress made over the past 20 years will be more than reversed”

However, the Guardian (in another article) states “On average, children are given a {phone} handset at the age of 11 but nearly one in 10 has a phone at less than half this age”, whilst according to the Daily Mail,

“… with 90 per cent of Brits aged 8-14 now owning a mobile phone. Nowadays, over half (52 per cent) of children under the age of 10 also have mobiles, with 10 being the average age that kids get their first phone“

These numbers plainly don’t square, unless a large number of children have an iPhone 7 in one hand and the crust they just foraged from a dustbin in the other.

The issue is almost certainly with on the one hand questionable definitions of poverty and on the other (in the case of phones) with what statisticians call ‘selection bias’. But the responsibility for determining this is left to the reader – the author sees no responsibility to do so in the determination to promote their subjective perspective.

The problem with reporting in most newspapers today is that objectivity, transparency and accuracy has been lost to conveying a message, inevitably spun to suit the biases of the author. Journalism is no longer about facts.

Lyin’ Gove and plastic bags

Loath though Grumpy is to borrow one of Mr Trump’s epithets, he feels that after a broadcast by Michael Gove on the Today Program on 19.04, “lyin'” is the only accurate description of certain of his statements in an interview.

Gove, whose career seems to have taken progressive steps downwards since the Department of Education, is probably bored at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA); the simple fact is that there is very little to do there, since more or less every aspect of its activities is determined in Brussels.

To give some illusion of usefulness, he has now announced a consultation (as opposed to action) on plastic drinking straws and other minor items (hardly world shaking stuff) , but the pinnacle of his political career at DEFRA thus far has concerned plastic shopping bags, in that it was an ‘action’ as opposed to a ‘consultation’ (oh, how managing such trivia must sting…). It is on this topic that this post is concerned.

To the point: Lyin’ Gove repeatedly stated in the interview (available on www.bbc.co.uk) that he had introduced a ban on plastic bags. In fact there is no ban on plastic bags; there is charge per bag in the UK levied by all shops with more than 250 employees, this charge going to the shop. It is inconceivable that the Minister in charge of DEFRA was somehow under the illusion that he had introduced a ban. Hence, it must be concluded that Gove deliberately lied repeatedly on National Radio, presumably with the goal of making himself sound more positive having just been lambasted by the interviewer for merely setting up a consultation (the old ‘long grass’ ploy) on straws.

What is galling is that Gove chose to make these untrue statements betting that they wouldn’t be picked up by either the interviewer or listener. To do that sort of lyin’ requires a certain type of arrogance and disdain for electors. ‘BAD!!!!’, as Trump would tweet.

The mystery of the non-selfie selfie

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a ‘selfie’ as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media”. Although countless millions are taken every year, the ‘selfie’ is also a tool widely used by the internet self-publicists of the Kardashian variety.

The vast majority of these women (a significant proportion of which have what might be called a feminist bent) one imagines would typically empathise with #MeToo. However, the photographs invariably involve themselves in various states of undress, showing as much flesh as possible without showing anything which would otherwise require (in the US at least) a black blob of modesty.

This exhibitionist behaviour (can it be anything else??) is normally described by the actors as ’empowering’, whilst presumably they would simultaneously denounce any male slavering over them as the spawn of Weinstein. Anyhow, that inherent contradiction of the feminist agenda (about which Grumpy has previously pontificated) is not the purpose of this post.

Rather, the contradiction here is that these ‘selfies’ show the (invariably) woman holding the very device which – if it were truly a “selfie”- would be taking the picture. They thus cannot be selfies (as the camera would not be in shot), and rather than being the impromptu snap the taker wishes to convey, there is clearly a photographer invited into the lady’s bathroom (and it always seems to be bathroom or bedroom, possibly to rationalise the state of undress) to take the unashamedly self-promotion shot.

Although one has to admire the Kardashian women’s commercial acumen for making million of dollars for merely displaying their infeasibly large arses, it gives Grumpy some satisfaction to imagine the presence of the photographer is because these vacuous (and generally less than beautiful) women are too thick to operate the phone themselves.

BBC fake news

In a piece on the BBC web site, Daniele Palumbo & Clara Guibourg, calling themselves ‘Data Journalists’ have undertaken analysis published on this premier news channel of the UK about male and female pay.

However, neither appears to have had any solid grounding in numeracy (both having studied ‘journalism’, ‘humanities’ etc.), which probably accounts for the wording of the article. In spite of the fulsome descriptions of the roles they have undertaken since graduating (per LinkedIn) , neither has managed to hold a job for much more than a year. In fact, Danielle (a male) has managed 25 jobs listed in 7 years, which must be something of a record, and might have the agent at the Job Centre raising his eyebrows should he find himself on the dole.

To the point: the headline in the article is “The vast majority of firms pay men more than women“. This is either deliberately calculated to deceive or very sloppily worded, in spite of Danielle having had an astounding number of jobs as a journalist.

What does it mean? Any rational semantic analysis would conclude that the firms do not pay men and women equally, and this would surely be the interpretation of the casual reader. This is simply and patently nonsense; the law has required equal pay for men and women in equivalent jobs for the last 40 years, and the majority of firms in the land conform with that law.

Lefties (and particularly a group of harpies on the labour benches), Momentum members, feminists and journalists who never progressed beyond kindergarten arithmetic (like the pair in question) all seize this issue to make a point by conflating the Gender Pay Gap with companies somehow having a deliberate policy to short-change the fair sex.

For many reasons, but mostly not of corporate’s own making, the gap is driven by current social structures and norms, in that companies employ more women in lower paying jobs than they do men. It’s nothing to do with “paying men more”

Companies can only do so much. Airlines can employ more women pilots (if they can encourage them to follow the profession), and government (probably the worst offender) can employ more female judges. But in spite of their best efforts, women will have to choose to not have part time jobs, and seek jobs where they might not find the sacrifices needed for greasy salary pole climbing unattractive; then so be it. Ultimately, the Gender Pay Gap will be in the hands of women themselves.

But to the article ? I suspect deliberately worded to be disingenuous, and to send the anti-corporate message so increasing pushed by hacks and politicians. We should expect better of the National broadcaster.

Mumsnet and trans issues

Mumsnet took issue (on 1st April – significant?) with Serco, who provide the Caledonian Sleeper train from Euston to Scotland. Apparently, Serco had said that passengers who were born male but ‘self-identify’ as female could sleep in cabins reserved for women.

Mumsnet members immediately lambasted poor Rupert Soames, CEO of Serco, as they saw it as an open invitation for pervert and rapists to don a dress and share a dual cabin with a woman.

Poor Rupert was caught between a rock and a hard place, and was presumably equivocating between whether to offend the Mumsnet fraternity or transgender rights supporters.

He presumably he came down on the side of the later, as Mrs May, Jeremy Corbyn, parliament and others have all supported removing the requirement for medical evidence of any transition and allowing self-identification by a man that he was in fact a woman. (Yes, the concept baffles grumpy as well, but he hasn’t looked closely into this – TMI)

Theresa May has pledged to press ahead with plans to let people officially change gender without medical checks, as she said “being trans is not an illness and it should not be treated as such”.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and cabinet minister David Lidington have both stated that their parties believe transgender women are women; This included those who self-identify as women.

Women’s Aid has begun the process to allow trans women to work in their refuges based on self-identifying as a woman, rather than requiring a change to their birth certificate.

Finally, Hansard reports the results of a debate on the topic were that “this House notes the UK’s status as a pioneer in legislating for equality for LGBT people; welcomes the Government’s announcement of a new trans equality action plan; and calls on the Government to review its response to the recommendations of the Women and Equalities Committee’s report on Transgender Equality to ensure that the UK leads the world on trans equality rights, in particular by giving unequivocal commitments to changing the Gender Recognition Act 2004 in line with the principles of gender self-declaration and replacing confusing and inadequate language regarding trans people in the Equality Act 2010 by creating a new protected characteristic of gender identity”

I was surprised that Rupe merely didn’t cite these as evidence that Mumsnet members were behind the times, and tell them that they should bring themselves into line with the new mores in society; instead he waffled and got fried.

However, Grumpy’s point is that this is clearly a complex area which arouses strong emotions on both sides, with huge potential to create all manner of unintended consequences. Politicians, however can’t resist jerking their knees (as well as the electorate), pushing populist themes without real thought, and in the case of Corbyn, jumping in so as not to appear regressive and illiberal. Such is the stuff of future problems and presumably cutting the legislation will inevitable mean a few late nights for Civil Servants.

Karen Brady celebrates her dumbness and government spin

The Mail on Sunday allocated column inches (appropriately on 1st April) to Karen Brady, who proclaimed she “cannot be a victim of the BBC gender pay gap – because it’s written into her contract”. She told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I get paid the same as Claude Littner, who does exactly the same role as me.’

She revealed in a new TV documentary that she is presenting this week that she has a clause in her contract for pay guaranteeing parity with any man or woman with the same role.

Someone should tell Karen Brady she should have kept her legal fees, because that right has been guaranteed by law for the last 40 years.

Grumpy is rather tiring of writing on the ‘confusion’ (why ??) between the “gender pay gap” and “equal pay”, but it has been skilfully manipulated by the harpies and harridans of both political parties who want to make a feminist, anti-male, point. By conflating equal pay and the gender pay gap, they exploit people like Karen Brady and millions of others who don’t read more than headlines; they can present a facet of the current social structure (as manifest in the gender pay gap) into an example of the domineering unfairness of the ruling male class (equal pay).

It underlines the increasing extent of distortion in the communication of news and policies, made worse by deliberate issue conflation, as in this example, and others in this blog. Ultimately it leads to the usurping of democracy when a political party can no longer win an election through truthful presentation of its policies, but instead is forced to spin, distort, obfuscate and plain lie to gain power.