Warning - Trip Hazzard

It strikes me that the Far Right, Culture Warriors and Brexiteers have a penchant for tripping themselves up at every conceivable opportunity.

Culture Warriors excoriate people traffickers today, but seem indifferent to the same trafficking in the 17th century - and those trafficked then weren't gaining liberty, but going into slavery. They say slavery was perfectly legal then, but so is landing on our shores today and claiming asylum. 

"We don't mean those traffickers!"

They hate refugees, but they go on about Britain's contribution to WWII (if you listened to them, you wouldn't believe the USA and Russia contributed anything to the victory) and the way in which we took thousands of German Jewish refugees.

"We don't mean those refugees!"

One of the pillars of Conservatism is the rule of law, but the right seem intent on undermining the rule of law at every conceivable opportunity and subverting it to its own purposes. Even trial by jury is now in their headlights, which is enshrined in Magna Carta. So much for changing history!

"We don't mean those laws!"

As for statues, they're quite happy for the statue of the paedophile philanthropist, Jimmy Savile, to be removed from its spot in Leeds, but not a statue of a mass murdering philanthropist in Bristol that took over 30 years to be taken down because of right wing intransigence.

"We didn't mean that kind of statue!"

The right loves freedoms, but our government is currently engaged in the biggest grab of our freedoms since Cromwell. Bullying of regulators, stacking of boards, challenges to the independence of the media, criminalising civil protest, restricting the right to vote, attacking the independence of MPs, challenging the judiciary, curtailing its powers and reversing its decisions, abandoning the Convention on Human Rights and, more recently, complaining about jury verdicts.

"We don't mean those freedoms!"

Right wing (they're predominantly right wing) climate sceptics wax lyrical about; "All the money people are making from green tech, renewables and subsidies," when in reality fossils are given billions in government subsidies every year.

"We don't mean those subsidies!"

Brexiteers are no better. They claim record employment shows how well Brexit is going, but we also have record vacancies that can't be filled due to Europeans leaving the UK in their droves, and every vacancy unfilled reduces pre-Brexit GDP.

"We don't mean that GDP!"

Brexiteers also respond with Remain Lies. Remainers in the media came up with high projections, but the high magnitude was based on a hard Brexit, which was expected, but has not happened. The direction of the vector has nevertheless been 100% accurate, as evidenced by recent headlines in the Brexit house journals, the Telegraph and Express. Once harsh realities come to light as incontrovertible facts, the term of the argument change so as not to have to confront those uncomfortable facts. Hence we have Rees-Mogg and Gove moving the goalposts for the Brexit benefits to at least 10 or 50 years hence. If you stick with the original terms - a bonfire of rules and regulations and an immediate surge of competitiveness - it's been a colossal failure.

"We didn't mean that immediate!"

The cry of Sovereignty was loud. Sovereignty to to whatever we want. Like allowing water companies to continue polluting our rivers with sewage?

"We don't mean that kind of Sovereignty!"

They love freedom of speech, except when you challenge them, when they maintain they can no longer say what they want anymore, despite them clearly doing so. The truth is that what the Culture War Warriors are really fighting for is a right to espouse their views without dissent. They are not arguing for free speech, they are arguing that you should not have the right to challenge it by using your own right of free speech.

"We don't want that kind of Free Speech!"

Normal Weather For The Time of Year

You won't sell many papers with the above headline so, because a very small part of the country, predominantly the more hilly areas, is going to get snow, which is not abnormal at this time of year, we get headlines such as "Britain to Freeze in Blizzards", etc.

It's the same hunt for sensationalism that led to accusations of Covid modellers being rubbish for having the temerity to publish an upper limit to Covid cases, as well as lower limits bases on action being taken (which was), and certain media outlets focusing solely on the upper limit so as to sell more papers. 

Political Provocation

 Just a quick few observations about yesterday's post on the Colston 4:

1. There's a constant refrain from those defending Colston's statue that slavery was legal at the time, while ignoring that those who profited from it bought parliamentary seats to ensured its legality and why it took such a long time for abolition to come to fruition, and only then with massive recompense to the slavers. However, it certainly wasn't legal at the time the statue was erected - it was 1895, some 88 year after slavery had been abolished. 
2. It's probably no accident (cue my own conspiracy theory) that Colston's statue was erected only a year after the nearby statue of Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol from 1774 to 1780, who had criticised Bristol's role in slavery. Burke proposed a bill to ban slaveholders from being able to sit in the House of Commons, claiming they were a danger incompatible with traditional notions of British liberty (thus reinforcing the fact that while slavery was legal, it was considered repugnant at the time by many). 
3. Colston's statue was conceivably a deliberate act of political provocation by 19th century Culture Warriors who took exception to Burke's Woke attitude. How better to respond, than by commissioning a laudatory statue of a mass murdering slaver. As an aside, as an MP, Burke said; "Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

When you get shit like the following image and ministers criticising trial by jury - which is enshrined in Magna Carta as one of our basic rights - then you know there's something rotten at the core or the right-wing media and their ministerial puppets.

Much as I detest Rees-Mogg for his cherry picking of data to support his preconceptions, at least he has the decency to voice support trial by jury. 

It's starting to feel a lot like Weimar, as the song goes. We live in dangerous times for freedoms.

Parallel Universe Proven

Although he doesn't realise it, Boris Johnson, from his comments about the case of the Colston 4, has proven to science the existence of a parallel universe.

What he said is; "Statue protesters can't change history." On first reading he's correct, but it depends on which history he means - the one contained on Colston's plaque, which I believe is what he means, or the real, documented history. 

It seems he hasn't read the plaque on the Colston statue, which reads as follows:

That's rewriting history. 

The Colston statue was put up by fans of Colston, primarily in response to the erection of a statue of Edmund Burke, who had criticised Bristol's involvement in the slave trade. It was therefore a political statement and a provocation. As for the inscription, that's simply wiping Colston's history clean.

We already knew Johnson inhabited an alternate reality where lies are perceived as truth by him and his followers, but this is the icing on the cake.

For an excellent analysis of the case of the Colston 4, read the blog of The Secret Barrister. 

Christmas Detritus

Anyone else got a box of Quality Street chocolates from which you've eaten all the ones you know you like, leaving well over three quarters of the box, which will stay there till gone Easter and then be thrown out.

I seek out the flat, round toffee ones and the thin, long chocolate covered toffee ones. Both are in yellow/gold wrappers and are easily identifiable. 

I do tend to choose my choccies by wrapper colour, meaning I have no idea whatsoever as to what the ones in a purple wrapper taste like, but they're bound to be vile, as everyone in the household believe too. It's the power of the colour of the wrapper.

Surfing Safari

 Well, the surfboard seat is now full painted and branded. 

I'm quite pleased with the result - a silver-grey with a hint of metallic sparkle when it catches the sun - nothing too bling. All that's required now is to site the stumps at the static caravan and glue the board to them. 

The logs have been in the engine room for well over a month now to dry out, but they're still not 100% dried. What I may do is pour some polymer resin over the top end to prevent additional water ingress. 

I was toying with the idea of fixing the board to the decking railings, but Hay thinks it detracts from the sophisticated decor of the caravan. Cool is OK, but not so close to the entrance, and I get where she's coming from, it's not a surf shack, after all. On the grass below the decking, facing the lake, is fine. 

Pesky Sheep

Spotted yesterday while on a walk in our beautiful, South Glos. countryside:

These damned sheep just don't keep their dogs on leads and some have even been seen to hang their dogs' poo bags on fences and bushes.

Mask Weather

I have a slight problem with Boris' new mask 'recommendation' for schools.

Masks are undoubtedly effective at preventing the spread of Covid and even a slight efficacy is multiplied by the laws governing a small effect on an exponentially rising cohort (take the number 1 and double it, and keep going; 1 becomes 2, then 4, etc; after 10 doubles, you get 512 and after 10 more doubles, you get 262144. Now instead of doubling, multiply by 1.9 instead of 2 - a tiny reduction in growth rate; after 20 cycles, the total is only 104127); however, they're mainly effective under the right circumstances - in well ventilated spaces with a low people to cubic space ratio.

Now supermarkets are generally spacious areas in terms of the volume of space and the number of people. They also have ventilation as they're relatively new buildings. I've yet to hear of a school that has ventilation, other than windows (they're mainly old buildings) and, while throwing the windows open in our current weather may not be a problem, it is when the temperatures nosedive, which they will within the next couple of days as kids go back to school. Have you ever tried to work in a cold room? Getting them to an adequate temperature with the windows open ain't going to do their heating bills any good either, what with the energy prices what they are.

OK, the government has promised to provide 7,000 space ventilation units, but at one per classroom and 20,000 schools, that's hardly scratching the surface of the problem. If their plan all along has been for kids to go back to school, regardless (and as it seems), then why weren't a sufficient number ordered ages ago?

However, if kids' education isn't going to suffer, what other solution is there? In the longer term, and bearing in mind there will be another pandemic at some time in the future, perhaps we should build more resilient schools in order to lower pupil densities but, the advice to overcome staff absences is to actually double up classes. Reducing class sizes also has a positive effect on educational outcomes. Perhaps we'll hear Boris announcing 40 new schools this year as a start - just like his 40 Schrodinger's hospitals.

I keep hearing about talking heads with no scientific background going on about how kids don't like to wear masks and they harm their mental health. Kids don't like being told what to do at the best of times, to eat their vegetables or to be in at a certain time - they'll have to learn to live with it, which is a popular phrase. A mask is a piece of cloth, not a landmine. School holidays result in a spike in child abuse, but no-one suggests we cancel them because of that. 

There's too much emphasis on the possible harm of things that benefit us, with little to no evidence backing it up, and not enough on the benefits, which far outweigh possible harms (remember being part of the EU?). However, the media never misses a chance for a sensationalist headline, especially when it's inexplicably supports the government.

The airborne nature of SARS-CoV-2, now acknowledged by WHO, is a game-changer - both generally and in relation to masks specifically. Generally, we need to avoid close contact (airborne spread occurs mostly within 2m), prolonged time indoors, and crowds.

Given ministers' track record on pronouncements, I have no faith whatsoever in their assessment that nothing in the data currently warrants further curbs on the spread of infection, especially when hospitals in Lincolnshire are already declaring critical incidents due to staff absences. They continue to argue that the best course of action in the face of empirical uncertainty is to do nothing, and we've seen where that leads, repeatedly.

Don’t think about the virus as what it is today but what it might become. The virus has a very large space of possible options. Omicron has 60 mutations, another combination of 60 mutations will result in very different properties. If we don’t want more possibilities there is one sure way that will prevent it: reducing the amount of virus that is transmitting. We are doing the opposite so far - there is more virus not less. Will Omicron mutate? Well, we're already more than half way through the Greek alphabet, and each variant came from one of the previous strains - that should tell you all you need to know.

Talking of the weather. I don't know where the media gets its forecasts from, but we've been threatened by blankets of snow, blizzards and hurricane gusts for over a week now, yet it's the mildest start to a year in 100 years and there are only light winds in the south.

I think it's perhaps time they ditched the bloke with the pinecone on a string and Mystic Meg as their forecasters and went to a more reliable source. All these false flags allegedly come from the Met Office, but even they have contradicted some of the media stories. 

Take yesterday, for example. The local rag was predicting 30mph winds and traffic disruption, but both the BBC (MeteoGroup) and the Met Office were saying winds of no more than 15mph. Must have been a slow news day.

Vintage

I'm an inveterate Facebook Market and eBay buyer; however; you know when you're getting on a bit when you see things that you remember well from only (what you believe to be) a few years ago being advertised as 'vintage'.

Talking of vintage, I snapped up a 1970s Georgia Jacob Ophelie lamp the other day on eBay:

Your sense of dress being shot to hell and gone is another sign you're getting on a bit. Whereas it wasn't that long ago that I'd look through my wardrobe and seek something stylish to wear on an average day, I now favour comfort and practicality over style. I must have about two pairs of trousers and 3 tops that I wear regularly - the rest may as well go to the charity shop. Yes, I'll keep one decent set of clothes and shoes for wedding and funerals and I'll even keep the dinner jacket for the once a year outing at the Old School Dinner, but beyond that I regularly look like a homeless person - although, to be fair, a lot of homeless people look better dressed than me.

Yet another sign of getting old is realising that when someone says; "100 years ago," like the previous record for a warm New Year's Day, that they're not referring to some date in the late 1800s, but 1922 - the year your mother was born and nearly a decade after your father was born.

Faking

It has been observed that while Russia fakes democracy, China fakes communism. Of the two, China at least has better decision making than Russia. China is willing to experiment on a regional level and does not hide incapacity, whereas Russia hides incapacity and experiment is a dirty word there. 

China allows dissent at the local level but, once the Party has made a decision, no dissent is allowed; in Russia, no dissent is allowed before or while a decision is being made, let alone after. 

China has a succession procedure, with no leader being allowed to remain in power for longer than 10 years; Russia is haunted by the succession question and the chaos that will ensue.

Happy New Year.