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.

Boris and the mysterious Ms Acuri

MP Barry Sheerman in reasoned debate in the Commons

Boris is now being called to answer questions about … well it doesn’t matter. The way of the world appears to be that some non-entity makes an accusation about a public figure (normally involving sex, money or both) who is then required to respond, not by due process, but to trial by media, and as often as not, some self serving politician who seeks an opportunity to gain exposure by feigned outrage at the ‘allegations’. ‘Questions to answer’ … ‘held to account’ … ‘goes to character’ – the lexicon of mud-slinging is rolled out for personal and political gain.

Grumpy had no interest in an artificial furore about whether BoJo had somehow been involved in ‘influencing’ a grant to a company called Hacker House, a director of which, Jenifer Acuri, he is said to have had a ‘relationship’ with (another coded word full of innuendo and allusions to something illicit and sexual). However, Grumpy discovered he had multiple connections in LinkedIn to Ms Acuri (although he has never met her) and other people associated with Hacker House, so his ears perked up.

Layla Moran stated in the commons “We now know that Hacker House is not based in the UK”, presenting this as a ‘fact’ to support the allegations that BoJo was complicit somehow in facilitating a grant to a foreign organisation, and thus demonstrating yet again for his disregard for the rule of law.

She could have checked Companies House and determined that it is a UK Company, number 09678695, with a registered office in the UK in Ludgate House, a commercial office block on Fleet Street, London. It has a British director (although there is no impediment to prevent ALL the directors of a UK company being located overseas), and submits accounts to HMRC. In what way can the Company be described as not being based in the UK ? This is plain sophistry. Moran told an untruth to assert white is black, and from that perspective she is a guilty as others in using language to deceive and smear.

In the febrile atmosphere of the commons on 25th September, both sides sought to diminish the other in an astonishing display of the breakdown of government. Whilst Geofrey Cox (Attorney General) and Johnson did so fairly directly, Labour and Lib Dem sought to do so by innuendo and false conflating of issues. (Although Boris has also been also called a ‘dictator and ‘tyrant’ by opposition MP’s). Anna Soubry attempted to make a ‘joke’ about pole dancing, a snide reference to the aforementioned Ms Acuri, who is said to have indulged in same, again with the implication of a salacious character, five pound notes in knickers, and that sort of thing. As an ex-barrister, she is well versed in the art of smear.

On a broader front, Johnson was accused (by MP Paula Sherriff) of using “pejorative language” in referring to the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill as the ‘Surrender Bill’. As ever, the Oxford English Dictionary helps to interpret this; it defines ‘pejorative’ as “expressing contempt or disapproval”. Boris may be said to be not unreasonable in this regard, as he was of the view that it tied the hands of the government in negotiating with the EU, and hence his disapproval. The reality is that this approach is meat and potatoes to all MP’s – the tags ‘poll tax’ , ‘bedroom tax’ were all used by Her Majesty’s Opposition to convey negative connotations to the electorate about Bills in the House. At another extreme, Grumpy is also reminded of MP David Lammy referring to Brexit supporters as ‘worse than Nazis’, which did not generate even the slightest condemnation from the likes of Paula Sherriff in particular or the denizens of Corbyn’s benches in general.

Grumpy, and he suspects the ‘common man’, views them all equally; petty, backbiting, and mud slinging, with a focus on trying to do down the other side and ignoring the serious motes in the eye of the nation which need so desperately addressing.

A short reign

It rather looks like it’s 1649 again at the Palace of Westminster, and a blonde head is about to roll in a few days or weeks time. The parallels with that time are rather interesting. In seeking to try Charles I, parliament declared itself being able to legislate alone, as has just happened. The charge against the King was that of treason against the good of the country by ac ting to further his own personal interests, which has also been the mantra of the 21 rebels and others.

And so, the events of January 30th 1649 seem about to unfold again, albeit metaphorically. Thoughts of those days were triggered by Grumpy wondering who will be taking the role of Oliver Cromwell in this story. [ As an aside, the painting by Paul Delaroche (most known in the UK perhaps for the evocative depiction of the “Execution and Lady Jane Grey” in the National Gallery) entitled “Cromwell and the corpse of Charles I”, 1831, shows Cromwell as having to Grumpy’s eye an uncanny likeness to one John Bercow.]

It will not, of course, be the revered speaker. However, having spent the last few days castigating BoJo for setting aside the constitution and tradition, the various players will seek to do just that in selecting his predecessor. The convention for appointing a PM when the incumbent has lost a majority is that the role is taken by the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition; but the ‘no Brexit full stop’ rebels, having used the Labour Party as usefull idiots to remove Boris cannot now countenance letting loose Corbyn/Macdonnell to wreck the country even more comprehensively than the worse of their Project fear Brexit projections.

Interesting times.

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.]

Hong Kong hypocrisy and self delusion

Jeremy Hunt has been chiding the Chinese on issues of freedom and democracy following the June 2019 demonstrations which saw the seat of government in Hong Kong, the ‘Legco’ building, occupied.

In fact, the Chinese authorities response was very muted, and there were no broken heads amongst the protesters. Onc wonders how Hunt would respond if a group of Brexit supporters (or some other group) broke into and occupied the Palace of Westminster – one suspects there would have been a much more robust response by the British police.

However, that is merely incidental. The fact is that UK government has shown monumental gall and hypocrisy about the Chinese reaction (albeit muted) and given tacit support to the demonstrators, citing their right to seek freedoms, backed by reference to the 1997 agreement to return Hong Kong to the Chinese, and a 50 year commitment to maintain a ‘one country, two systems’ framework.

In 1840, the Chinese sought to prevent William Jardine, a UK business owner, from importing Opium and killing thousands of citizens. Jardine persuaded the then Foreign Secretary, Palmerston, to go to war to enforce Britain’s rights as a drug dealer on a continental scale. In the face of overwhelming odds, the Chinese capitulated and in 1841 Hong Kong became British under the Treaty of Nanking. In the later second Opium War – also fought to maintain drug dealing rights – Britain gained a lease to Kowloon and the New Territories which was to expire in 1997.

So check list the outcomes here. Jardine Matheson – founded by men who turned to drug dealing and war to grow their company – is now a 20bn organisation, with a board full of the great and the good. A win.

Hong Kong became a colony, with its citizens subjugated and ruled from afar by dictat; the very definition of a dictatorship. In 156 years of rule by the British, no Hong Kong citizen ever had a vote, or any means of democratic representation in the structure imposed by their masters. Big time losers in the game.

In the run up to 1997 and the handover, Britain then had the almost unbelievable shamelessness to lecture the Chinese on freedom and democracy and demanded to impose on the Chinese – regaining their own territory taken by force in acts of war – an English template for law, and at the same time sowed the seeds that the citizens should expect under their own countrymen precisely what the British had denied them for more than a century and a half.

There is an element of the old Empire which runs deep in the Civil Service, the aristocracy and certain of the ‘ruling classes’; a mix of arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and a belief in some ‘natural order’ amongst men. It is a mindset of the end of the 19th century. The reality is that certain old conquests will at some point (and quite soon) turn the tables in the global pecking order.

In his book ‘Empire’, Niall Ferguson (ISBN-13 978-0-141-00754-0) posed (and largely answered) the question as to why an archipelago of rainy islands of the coast of north west Europe came to rule 25% of the worlds population {Answer: mostly by a mixture of force of arms and greed} . However, the book is a history book, and it is now the 21st Century. With no material indigenous resources of its own (except maybe coal and intellect), perhaps Britain should look in the mirror to see what it now is, or it really will become just a small, rainy and inconsequential group of islands disconnected physically and in most other ways, from Europe and the world.

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.