Bias

May the best team win, but COME ON, ENGLAND!

Will I be accused of bias?

Contextual Herd Instinct

I think I may have mentioned this a long time ago, but context is everything. For example, a woman may think nothing of walking a long a crowded beach in a bikini, but wouldn't walk through a shopping centre in one. Similarly, a bloke would also walk along a beach in nothing but a pair of swimming trunks, but would balk at doing this in Tesco in a pair of boxer shorts (unless you're this bloke and his Mrs).

Perhaps it's also to do not with just context, but the herd instinct - if most of the people around you are doing something, then it becomes normalised and you're not standing out.

Analyse and discuss.

Shenanigans

The sad thing is that there's no need for a General Election given the Brexit Bill is moving through Parliament as we speak and is likely to be approved, just not as quick as Boris would like. 

Boris is against scrutiny - that much is evident by his refusal to be questioned by the Liaison Committee. l think it likely that, despite him saying a hard Brexit is off the table, he wants a slim majority in order to push through a hard Brexit after a GE. It's what his millionaire and speculator backers desperately want and a GE is the only way left for him to achieve this. It's a desperate, last bid gamble. Why else delay the Bill's passage through Parliament? He blames Parliament for the delay and then goes and delays it himself by 6 weeks - rank hypocrisy! The man is not to be trusted. 

1. With a deal, any worker protection legislation would stay the same during the transition period, although Boris has moved that from the binding part of the agreement to the non-binding, which speaks volumes but, of greater impact on him and his backers, 

2. the EU Anti Tax Avoidance Directive legislation, most of which is already in place (but another few rules come into effect in January), would also continue for the duration of the transition period, but 

3. with a hard Brexit, any ATAD legislation would be binned immediately, much to the delight of his backers. 

The LibDems and all the smaller parties are going to benefit from this enormously and could easily become kingmakers at the expense of disaffected Tory and Labour supporters who are fed up of the two main parties drifting to the extremes of the political continuum. The Tories have no friends outside of the Tory party - even Führage of the Brexit Party Ltd. has turned against Boris. However, Labour could work with virtually any other party, except the Brexit Party Ltd. and its unelected leader, who can't be removed because it has no members, only paying subscribers.

One polling pundit believes there could be as many as 100 non-Tory / non-Labour MPs after this election - a very high percentage and would make Parliament look more like the legislatures of continental countries, possibly hastening proportional representation. 

The irony is that the Tories are relying on climate change to reduce the Labour turnout... 

Cadw Attire

Well, my new hoodie has arrived!

Can't say it's warm, but there again, chainmail never was...

At least I now have the correct attire for visiting Welsh castles with our Cadw membership...

Sleepy Rose

From a previous post, you'll have gleaned that we're watching the new TV adaptation of The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco.

Of late, I've been having trouble keeping awake in the evenings - probably to do with getting up at 04:40 to go and do my unicycling practice. It has been exacerbated since the weekend with the clock change (I had to go to bed at 8pm on Sunday evening).

On Monday evening it was time to watch episode 3 on catch-up, but given I'd fallen asleep for a bit of episode 2, I suggested to Hay that we watch episodes 1 and 2, back to back, and then watch episode 3, just in case I'd missed anything.

We duly proceeded to watch 1 and 2, but I once more fell asleep around two thirds into episode 1 and only woke up to the end credits of episode 2. Hay suggested we went to bed.

Last night Hay thought we'd watch episode 3 and I suggested we watch all three episodes back to back. You can imagine what the response was. We launched straight into episode 3. 

After about 20 minutes I must have inadvertently nodded off, as I woke to the end credits...

Becalmed

I'd planned to test fly the surfing kite on the common yesterday. It's strange, but the elements conspire against me every weekend - not a breath of wind all day.

At least I managed to understand the principles and check all the lines. The only problem is inflating the leading edge and getting it taut enough - the valves are just simple ones like on a child's rubber ring, rather than the fancy, non-return ones on the paddleboard. It is 10 years old though.

Uncertainty - Honest

I was listening to a phone-in radio show about Brexit, as one does, and a lot of callers were business people and farmers. They were virtually unanimous that Brexit was bad for them, but the uncertainty is particularly bad from a psychological perspective.

Now, the narrative from Boris is that the uncertainty will disappear once, and if, his Brexit Bill is passed by Parliament, but that is only the first hurdle and there will be years and years of uncertainty while an FTA with the EU is negotiated (if Boris doesn't string it out and become so obstreperous that we default to No Deal after the transition period, much to the delight of his Vulture Capitalist backers) and then all the 70 odd FTAs we have with the 'rest of the world', but lose through Brexit, have to be renegotiated from a position of fundamental weakness - the major and very obvious one being the fact we're a much smaller market than the EU.

All uncertainty would disappear in an instant if Article 50 were simply revoked. The answer is staring us in the face, but no; Boris is determined to ruin the country for the benefit of his mates because Leave had the narrowest of wins in an advisory referendum that was an object lesson in how not to run a referendum - Remain has only one option, but Leave has a myriad, being just one of the multiple problems.

Politics in the UK is broken, but the solution is also simple and the very large elephant in the room. It doesn't require proportional representation or changes in parliamentary procedure or anything complex - all it requires is for MPs to be honest. It's rather ironic that Boris, who is reluctant to submit himself to scrutiny before parliamentary committees, not to mention being a proven serial liar, is calling on Corbyn to man-up. Boris is an utter charlatan, a disgrace and the perfect exemplar of what's wrong with British politics.

I'd add Führage, the unelected leader of his Brexit Party Ltd. to that, but he doesn't have any MPs. He is, nevertheless, a disgrace to European politics.

Perfect Crackling

I may have accidentally stumbled on the perfect method of cooking crackling.

The microwave at work gave up the ghost this week (as did the washing machine), so I went down to the Indesit factory outlet shop in Yate and got one of those Hotpoint microwaves that combines a cooker into it. Brilliant little thing for only £99.

Hay hates it when I make pulled pork, especially when I make crackling, as the smell gets all over the house - open plan with two minstrel galleries does have its drawbacks (we normally put a moratorium on any cooking after 8pm for that reason). I therefore decided to make the crackling at work in the new microwave, using the oven setting. 

I started it off at 175 degrees (not realising I could turn the temperature up) where it languished for about an hour and a half while very slowly starting to crackle, if somewhat half-heartedly and only at one end. Once I read the manual (doh!) and discovered I could increase the temp, I whacked it up to 200 and, within about 4 minutes, it had puffed up beautifully as if I'd deep-fried it.

Perfect. Next experiment is to repeat the experiment at home in the Redfyre. The problem at home, though, is that the oven tends to retain moisture, whereas the microwave dispels it immediately. The Redfyre (AGA lookalike) should have a stovepipe chimney, but we never fitted it - guess we should have to help draw the moisture into the cooker hood..

Sun Tzu

There's a story from Art of War by Sun Tzu, the famous, Chinese general and strategist of the Warring States Period, where a man had to race his three horses against the King's three horses in three separate races, 2 horses at a time. His horses weren't quite as good as the King's, but not that far behind.

Sun Tzu advised the man to race his best horse against the King's second best horse, his second best horse against the King's worst and his worst horse against the King's best horse. That way he stood a good chance of winning two races and losing only one.

It strikes me that the Remain camp has to remove Johnson's best horse, which can only be done by voting the current deal off the table. The objective then is to force a second referendum comprising No Deal vs Remain. Johnson's deal has the advantage of persuading more people to vote for it than for No Deal, if purely through attrition; however, if the deal is removed, then Remain is more attractive to the moderates who are then split from the Tories. It has the added advantage of taking the Ultras away from the Tories too and back into Führage's arms, once more making him relevant and weakening Johnson. It would probably even find favour with Führage.

No Deal was never a serious threat to the EU, as events have proven, but it is a threat to Parliament, and that's how it was used.

Rapture

I think, from experience of arguing / debating with Brexiteers, the mistake most of them make is trying to justify what is essentially a gut feel with a rational, logical reason, as this results in using any argument that bolsters that gut feel, regardless of whether it's based in fact or not. They will tenaciously cling to these beliefs, even if soundly and roundly debunked, as virtually all of them have been. The; "We've had enough of experts," mantra is a result of this.

This is futile when the desire to leave has very little to do with logic, reason or calculations. It's a visceral decision that's tied up with a feeling of identity, or even lack of it. If they could just say; "It's just something I simply feel," then there's no argument.

However, when they turn to reasons, that's where they fall down. The Leave campaign was very successful at leveraging a visceral and emotive reaction - the Remain campaign failed because it used rationality, to which faith is generally immune. Try converting a Catholic, for example, and try watching a Catholic explain the Trinity in rational terms - they can't, as it's a matter of pure faith and they'll tie themselves into all manner of logical knots.

This is also why Boris, despite proven lie after proven lie, still enjoys enormous popularity - he's the preacher who merely has to repeat the mantra of; "Get Brexit done," to generate paroxysms of adulation. Despite the overwhelming evidence that Brexiteers are being taken for a ride, they are willing to martyr themselves for an irrational belief that defies definition.

The miracles of Jesus spread in exactly the same manner as the miracles of Boris (and the fake Lisbon Treaty memes, etc/), despite Boris' constant losses in Parliament and his very obvious disregard for truth and honesty - irrational belief born of an identity crisis in the face of an increasingly global world where nationality is an irrelevance/

The world's global problems can only be addressed through co-operation and a global outlook, not though a parochial, nationalist agenda based on competition. Globalism is here to stay.