The flawed thinking of the Fallists

I mean its not like anything bad ever came from burning art or books!

As I mentioned in a prior post, I see no reason against taking down certain statues (that frankly were put up for largely racist reasons in the first place). But I worry that if you start taking down any statue that anybody is offended by, you’ll end up taking them all down. Hell, “the statue” is an important landmark in my home town of Cork in Ireland. Its erected to Father Matthew, both a catholic priest and a leading member of Ireland’s temperance movements (so presumably he’s offending at least three groups, atheists, anyone with a grudge against the catholic church and everyone in Ireland who likes a drink!).

But much as there is a lack of understanding of history on the part of those looking to maintain these statues, its not like the right wing have a monopoly on stupidity. There are plenty looking to tear down these statues (and much else as well) who have an equally poor understanding of history.

A good example of this are the Fallists of South Africa. In addition to arguing against university fees (which makes sense given how unequal a society SA is, then again a stopped clock is correct twice a day) but they are also radical decolonisers who don’t just want to take down a few statues but roll back anything that stinks of colonisation.

In short they want to take off the curriculum anything from Western science. This video from a few years ago kind of sums the situation up, arguing Newton’s laws are racist, then arguing in favour of black magic instead and calling for science to be abolished so people can “decolonise their minds”….said while holding an i-phone!

….said while holding an i-phone!

This is wrong on so many levels. Firstly science can’t be racist, its a method, a way of separating out fact from fiction. In short, we accept Newton’s laws, not because he was white, but because the equations are proven to be effective. And they tie into a scientific narrative stretching back many centuries (including the works of non-European scientists…some of them from Africa!). We don’t accept witch doctors, magic and wizardry because they have consistently been unable to demonstrate their supposed abilities in a controlled experiment, even when offered a substantial reward to do so.

The Babylonians and Egyptian civilisations were some of the pioneers of the scientific method, including the study of the stars and planets

Secondly there seems to be an automatic assumption here that science is a European or a western invention. Its not, it has its roots in ancient civilisations such as Babylon (in modern day Iraq) and Egypt (in Africa!). Indeed for most of human history Western Europe has been well behind the rest of the world when it comes to science and technology. While the Egyptians (again….in Africa!) were raising the pyramids (the great pyramid being the tallest building in the world for over 3000 years!), temples and building an extensive irrigation system, they were also studying astronomy, medicine, maths and physics. Meanwhile, western Europe was still getting over the idea of using bronze rather than stone tools (no doubt there were some anti-Bronzers going around claiming that bronze tipped spears gave you cancer, but I’m sure they got the point eventually!).

Ancient Egypt was famous for its large civil infrastructure projects, many of which survive to this day

And the ancient Egyptians weren’t a one off (noting that of course there were multiple Egyptian civilisations), Africa has seen many advanced civilisations over its history, often well ahead of their European contemporaries, the Ethiopians, or the Mali Empire  (who build Timbuktu) to name a few. And of course there were plenty of other advanced civilisations around the world as well, in the Middle east, India, China or south and central America.

Ethiopia is one of the world’s oldest civilisations

Even within Europe, western Europe (the bit that did most of the colonising) has been fairly backward compared to those in the South. Indeed when we talk of the Roman, Greek and Byzantium civilisations its better to look on them as Mediterranean civilisations, rather than purely European ones. As the key “killer app” of these civilisations was their ability to trade across the Mediterranean sea and ultimately with the lands beyond. And often times the wealthier and more developed parts of these Empires were the bits in Africa, Anatolia and the Levant.

The Ptolemaic city of Alexandria. At its zenith in 50AD, it was one of the largest and most advanced cities on the planet

Consider that at its zenith the city of Alexandria (again in Africa) was a massive, wealthy, bustling metropolis with a population of half a million. It included the infamous great library of Alexandria (one of the great centres of learning of the ancient world) a giant lighthouse (one of the wonders of the ancient world), paved streets, running water, etc. Around about the same time London was a small circle of mud huts inhabited by a bunch of slack jawed yokel’s who’d likely try and eat a book if you gave them one (so nothing much has changed then!). Similarly the aforementioned Timbukto was, at its time, another major centre of learning and trade.

Timbukto was an important trading hub and a centre of learning during the early Islamic period of west Africa

Its really only been in the last 300 years that western Europe has had any kind of lead. Put it this way, if we consider all of recorded history as running from the founding of Jericho (about 10,000 years ago) to the present day. And if we were to condense that timeline into a 24 hour period, then western civilisation has been in the lead for about the last 45 minutes (and the way we are going I doubt we will see out the hour!).

So what happened? Well two things, first the west kept steadily advancing while other civilisations stagnated. There were many reasons for this, but a lot of the time its often self inflicted, often slowly over time, be it environmental degradation (likely the cause of the Mayan collapse), the decay or collapse of critical infrastructure (basically they implemented a policy of austerity, failing to account for how vital it was to preserve their infrastructure), civil strife or religious fanaticism. The aforementioned great library of Alexandria was burnt down in 390 AD by fanatical Christians, an event that’s often seen as the trigger for the dark ages. And let’s be clear that’s what “decolonising people’s minds” looks like. Books being burned, scholars killed or driven away.

And of course if one civilisation decides to let the nutters take over (you know like arguing in favour of witch doctors and against established science), while another civilisation does not, that’s not going to end well for the former if those two ever meet. Not that I’m suggesting that this justifies colonialism. I’m simply pointing out it would have never happened in the first place had these civilisations kept listening to the experts and had kept sensible people in charge.

And the only difference today is that you don’t have to take your foot off the gas pedal for nearly as long to fall way behind. The USSR’s collapse was largely down to a period of economic stagnation under Brezhnev that lasted a decade or two. Hence why voting for populists is not a good idea. Other countries who have sensible people in charge (they might not be nice people, but they are vaguely sane) will quickly overtake you. And by the time you’ve figured that out, it will be too late to do anything.

The other factor in the west’s favour was they found a cheat code – fossil fuels. It is perhaps no coincidence that western Europe, and in particular the UK’s rise from a rural backwater to an industrial power house, happens to coincide with the discovery and exploration of large deposits of coal (ironically, it was initially a lack of firewood in the UK that led to increased exploitation of coal).

A single kg of coal has a calorific value of 25 million joules of energy, or the equivalent to an entire day’s worth of human labour. So its perhaps no surprise that, once the technology to fully exploit this resource was developed, western Europe would advanced very rapidly. Of course, if fossil fuels were ever to run out, or we had to give them up for environmental reasons (recall environmental degradation is a common cause of failure of many civilisations), that’s not going to work out very well…unless you’ve devoted the time to developing alternatives.

Not so safe spaces

And another issue I’d raise here is the misuse of safe spaces. In the aforementioned video, when someone tries to point out the obvious fallacies of these Fallists, instead they get shut down and told to apologise! That’s not a safe space. And this is no more a debate than you’d find in the DPRK.

The point of safe spaces is that right wingers will frequently try to shut down debate completely. You want to debate climate change (how long do we have to act? How much warming is too much? should we go for the more free market led solutions or centrally planned ones?) and they will try to deny climate change is happening at all or profess their belief that the earth is flat and the moon’s made of cheese. Debate race relations and they’ll deny there’s a problem (or claim that its racist to bring up white privilege). And they will often be deliberately obstructive and try to be as intimidating as possible (by basically acting like a complete man-baby, good example of Alex Jones doing that here). And these tactics come right out of the nazi playbook, as this was one of the ways they shut down their political opponents.

So the point of a safe space is to say, look if we are here to have a debate and that means accepting certain boundaries, e.g. if we are debating climate change mitigation, we are starting from the assumption that something needs to be done about it (which still leaves a a fairly broad spectrum of options and opinions). If you are debating race relations we are assuming there’s a good reason why ethnic minorities get twitchy every time they see the police. In short, its to ensure there is an actual debate and prevent it being shut down by someone who just wants to act like an asshole (because they knows they will lose once people start bringing up pesky facts).

And I’ve seen numerous examples where this is exactly what happens with left wing groups. E.g. you’ll be debating election tactics for the left and straight away any form of criticism of Corbyn is not allowed, you can’t even bring up facts and figures, such as opinion polls that show how massively unpopular he is with voters, nor can you raise the realities of how the decidedly unfair UK election system works (which requires progressive parties to work together rather than against one another). Inevitably, you don’t get a debate. Instead, you get a group hugging session. And all attendees are then left baffled when they lose to a clown by a massive historic margin (how can Corbyn/Bernie lose when everyone I know voted for him!).

The reality is that as many on the left will take comforting lies over unpleasant truths as much as those on the right. Which can be just as debilitating. For in much the same that right wingers need to realise that infinite economic growth forever (without any consequences) is impossible, we need to remember that civilisations can regress and go backwards. And the surest way to achieve that is by letting ignorance and ideology take over from fact based critical thinking.

How grids will cope with electric cars

A few months ago (in the before times), the UK government’s BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle) taskforce released a report that presented both the benefits and challenges of transitioning road transport over to electric vehicles. Given that the media tended to focus on the more sensational aspects of the report (i.e. in theory, if all of those BEV’s were to be plugged in all at once this could cause blackouts), I thought it would be useful to provide a more balanced review of this report and what it means going forward.

Firstly, one myth that I frequently hear is that electric cars would require a massive increase in power generation to charge all those cars. However, the scale of this problem is perhaps being exaggerated somewhat. As the report mentions, even if we converted all of the UK’s vehicles over to electricity, it would only increase demand by 30%, which matches values for similar reports, such as the one below from the ICCT in 2013.

The estimated impact of BEV’s on the grid is often overestimated (this from a 2013 ICCT report)

We can estimate this figure ourselves by taking the average fuel economy of an EV (say for example a Tesla Model X, which work out at about 36 kWh/100 miles), the number of vehicles in the UK (38.7 million, of which 82% are cars) and the average distance driven per year (7600 miles) . Multiplying all of that out we get a total annual energy use of 106 billion kWh/yr. The current annual energy consumption of the UK grid is about 334 billion kWh/yr. So even if we converted all of the cars in the UK over to electricity, you’d only increase electricity demand by 30%, in line with our report’s estimate.

And if anything I’d argue this is probably an over estimate. For in truth we are unlikely to ever have that many electric vehicles on the road. Vehicle ownership levels and distances driven have been falling for several years now (so likely there will simply be less vehicles in future). Better public transport, cycle lanes and facilities such as car clubs(of which I am a member) are negating the need for individual vehicle ownership.

Furthermore, some vehicles will not be converted to BEV’s for various reasons while electric vehicles might be suitable for many, given that 80% of all vehicle journey’s are under 20 miles, but they won’t be suitable for everybody. Long distance lorry drivers, travelling salesmen, police, emergency vehicles & taxi’s in rural areas, will probably not convert over, as you’d struggle to design a vehicle with enough range to meet their needs (likely instead these vehicles will be powered by a hybrid powertrain, biofuels or Hydrogen fuel cells).

The discharge rate of individual charging ports can be quite high, potentially even higher than needed to power most houses

But what happens if millions of electric cars get plugged in at the same time and go to 100% charge all at once? Well certainly yes that would be a problem, as this paper discusses. Even just 5% of the UK’s current vehicle fleet (1.9 million cars) all being charged at a rate of 50 kW’s would require double the peak output from the UK’s current grid (currently about 60 GW’s). Fortunately, this can be resolved using smart grid technology, which controls and regulates charging to prevent such spikes in demand.

A paper by Adolfo & Perujo (2009) demonstrates the impact on the grid of BEV’s depends a lot on how charging is handled

As noted, the vast majority of car journey’s are relatively short (less than 20 miles), while the range of electric vehicles on the market is between 150 to 350 miles. Thus on average most vehicle batteries will still be almost full when parked up. Given that your average car spends 96% of its time parked, then there’s no need to charge them up straight away (or use a supercharger to do the charging). It would make more sense to charge them at night using off peak electricity. Indeed modelling by the UK national grid suggests closer to a 4-10GW peak in grid demand due to electric vehicles. with smart charging.

Of course, as the aforementioned EV task report discusses, there is the issue of how to implement such a strategy. How do you motivate people to understand you don’t need to keep the car fully charged. We’ll need to tackle range anxiety (you don’t keep a petrol powered car fully fuelled all the time, why should it be any different with a BEV?). This could take the form of rewards for charging off peak or allowing vehicle to grid discharging, with higher charging costs if charging during peak hours. Such policies already exist for large industrial users of electricity (cold storage facilities, steel mills, factories, etc.), whereby they are able to buy electricity at a discounted rate. However, in return they are expected to de-rate or turn off equipment during times of peak demand (if they don’t de-rate, they get charged at a premium rate for their electricity).

In fact the electric vehicles themselves could off a solution, by turning the BEV fleet into a giant energy storage system. Assuming we use just 10% of a fleet of say 20 million electric vehicles (with say an average battery capacity of 75 kWh’s) would yield an energy storage capacity of 150 GWh, five times the UK’s current electricity storage capacity. This could be used to help even out the peaks and troughs of the grid (such as those caused by sudden spikes due to lots of electric vehicles charging, or intermittent renewable energy).

Of course there is the question of how to control all of this and the solution would be some sort of smart charging app, controlled by a mobile phone. But as the report highlights that would require the availability of data in compatible formats, as well as data protection. The charging ports themselves will also need further harmonisation, as there are several competing versions in use. Keep in mind that building regulations may soon require the inclusion of BEV charge points.

There is a wide range of different charging ports, which might need some standardisation

So its not going to be straightforward. An awful lot of infrastructure will have to be build, notably all of those charging points, raising questions as to where will they be located, how their installation is funded and who will be responsible for maintaining them (the vast majority of UK cars are currently parked on private property, typically drive ways, private roads or car parks, rather than in garages or on public streets).

So in fairness to the naysayers, they were right…..several years ago, when the average range of electric vehicles was much shorter (20-30 miles and hence most would need recharging straight away), smart grids weren’t really an option and we all didn’t have wireless internet access via a hand held computer in our pockets. However, technology has moved on considerably since then.

There will also be a need for some additional electricity capacity and improvements to the grid will be needed, particularly if we are using more and more intermittent renewables to power everything. But these are not an surmountable problems. The problem is they require long term planning to be put in place now if they are to be successful.

 

The long emergency

There seems to be still quite a lot of miss-information about the coronavirus. Everyone had a good laugh at Trump asking if we could use bleach to cure the virus. Well India basically just tried that on an entire town.

While yes, the rate of infection is slowing, some countries are easing their lockdowns (perhaps a little prematurely), in other countries (notably Brazil and Russia) the rate of infection is accelerating rapidly. And in others, despite a lockdown (the US and UK for example), they’ve only really managed to go from a exponential rate of growth to a linear one (see John Hopkin’s data for more on that). Of course, this means that once the lockdown measures are removed, within a few weeks you’ll be back to where you started and $2 trillion dollars poorer.

So I thought I might be useful to go over some issues that have arisen recently.

Can we sue China?

There seems to be a growing narrative that Covid-19 came from a lab in Wuhan, rather than a wet market as widely assumed. Hence the logic goes, its all China and the WHO’s fault, so we can sue them for the damages caused, right? Good luck with that one.

Firstly, contrary to what you might read in the conspiracy theories on Reddit, the links between this Chinese lab and Covid-19 are pretty shaky. Certainly nothing that any good lawyer couldn’t rip apart in a matter of minutes. Its always difficult to pin point the exact origin point of any virus outbreak and this outbreak isn’t any different.

The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic is a good example (which didn’t start in Spain, its called that because Spain wasn’t under wartime censorship and its papers reported openly about the outbreak). The official patient zero for the 1918 outbreak was a cook’s assistant in a US army base in Kansas. While its plausible the virus could have started on the base (they kept and slaughtered animals on the base, and this was a form of swine flu), there are other theories suggesting it originally started in China (likely in a wet market or slaughterhouse of some kind), or among British soldiers in France.

The 1918 Spanish flu started in the US…not Spain!

So building a case ironclad enough that could prove a Chinese origin for this outbreak is going to take some doing. Furthermore, I’d argue some of these allegations are probably counter productive. For example, suggestions that the virus was circulating in France in December, well the Chinese can now legitimately argue, oh so its a French disease then.

They are also under pressure to close down their wet markets permanently. And (somewhat ironically), its believed that Chinese efforts to promote their traditional medicines (TCM) instead of, well “real” medicine, might have contributed to the start of this outbreak. Banning (or heavily regulating) both of these would be hugely unpopular within China.

Naturally, being able to take the focus off the wet markets gives them the excuse to shrug their shoulders and say “who knows where it came from”. Its not exactly helping matters. And by cutting funding to the WHO, the US is allowing China to step in and put pressure on the WHO to consider TCM as registered medical treatments.

But even if you could prove conclusively it was China’s fault, how are you going to sue them? They are within their rights to simply give Trump the one fingered salute and tell him to piss off and find someone else to make America’s i-phones. The technical term for countries suing each other is known as “war”.

And how would they pay anyway? RMB? They’ll just run the magic money machine and print off trillions of the stuff, while giving all Chinese a pay rise (so on paper they’ve paid in full, but in reality they’d basically just handed over a lot of worthless paper). Dollars? They would immediately dump their entire holdings of US bonds all at once, devaluing the dollar to the point where they could pay the bill pretty easily in dollars given it would now be worth a fraction of its value.

And in any event, the bulk of the blame for this outbreak lies with the foolish decisions by certain chest thumping populist leaders who failed to act decisively once warnings were given (and the WHO did declare a health emergency in late January, so its not like they didn’t get a heads up). And those leaders (notably Trump) might want to watch their words given the very real risk that a mutated version of the virus could now emerge. this could be similar to the current virus, just one nobody has immunity too and none of the vaccines under research will work against. Or it could be much worse. And where in the world is it most likely such a mutated version will emerge? Wherever there is the most number of case….you know….like the US.

A more sensible strategy (than blame-storming) would be to learn lessons and implement changes to how such outbreaks are handled. Putting in place mandatory international reporting structures (so any doctor ringing the alarm bell, that alert goes out globally to everyone, not via the Amity town mayor who doesn’t want a pandemic on lunar new year’s eve rocking the boat for him). Of course, you’ll get as much opposition to that in the US as you would from the Chinese.

It also means banning dangerous and unhygienic practices, such as the aforementioned wet markets (or some similar practices in US food production) and certain alternative medicines (not just TCM, hell Alex Jones has been peddling Silver pills s a cure for coronavirus, which is just as bad). That’s probably a better long term response.

Herd immunity

Many, in particular libertarians, are outraged at being forced to stay inside. They want as little government as possible…yet still want a government big enough to pay for a massive military, a vast interstate highway network, subsidised fossil fuel consumption, not to mention a government so authoritarian it can tell people what they can do in the privacy of their own homes, whom they can marry and a government that can imprison and kill its own citizens, in some cases without even a trial. As discussed previously on this blog, conservatives don’t understand the concept of irony.

Any resemblance between Trump supporters and the zombie apocalypse is purely coincidental

My view is, if Elon Musk wants to re-open his factory, fine, but only if he agrees to pay for the healthcare of all of his employees (and anyone else they might infect) and they all get to cough on him and his new born baby before every shift change. Because in essence that’s what he and other libertarians are proposing should happen for everyone else. While you’ll hear few who will openly admit it, there are quite a few of the world’s wealthy who just want to let the virus run its course, while they remain safely tucked away in their mansion of course and let the plebs develop a “herd immunity” to the virus.

Well the problem with this strategy is that it will cause hundreds of millions to get sick and a vast number of people will die. In fact, the scary thing is we aren’t even sure how many that could be. But 20-50% of the entire world population getting sick and perhaps 1-10% of those who get sick dying (so between 0.6 to 15 million dead in the US alone) would not be an unreasonable estimate.

In short the economic impact of that would make the impact of the current lockdown seem pretty tame. Except, in a libertarian world, there would be no government bailout money. Musk’s factory would be paralysed as many of his workers would be either sick or absent from work (perhaps feigning illness to avoid picking up the virus), as would many of his suppliers (so his entire supply chain would collapse). Plus, as noted, he’d be liable for the sick pay and healthcare costs of all of these sick workers. And I don’t see many in a hurry to buy a car in the middle of a global pandemic.

Double jeopardy and triple jeopardy

Furthermore, there is a more serious flaw with this “herd immunity” hypothesis – that’s not how viruses work, it may be possible to catch this virus more than once. The antibodies for a particular disease don’t linger around indefinitely. That’s why you need a flu vaccine every winter and booster vaccines for other diseases from time to time.

Plus, if the virus does mutate (and there are signs its already doing that), there is no guarantee that those who had the infection before will be immune to it a 2nd time around. It is also possible to become a host for the virus without actually getting sick or displaying any symptoms (meaning you can unwittingly spread it around without even realising it).

It ain’t over till its over

Similarly, while yes developing a vaccine does sound like a good idea, but I worry many are seeing it as some sort of panacea, when it might be a damp squib. If the virus mutates sufficiently, then it might not be fully effective (or work at all). And remember, vaccination only works if you can be vaccinated before you get sick, not afterwards. Of course there’s nothing to stop us developing another vaccine (as well as better treatments for those already sick) and eventually we’d come up with something that will be widely effective. But that’s going to take time, likely years.

In fact, if we did get a viable vaccine, the sensible thing to do would be to stockpile it rather than issue it straight away. Then, at an appropriate moment, implement mass vaccinations of key front line workers (doctors, nurses, bus drivers, teachers, not politicians or rich people). This is what was done recently to defeat an Ebola outbreak in Africa. Unfortunately, the timeline for being able to do all of that is going to be at least a year from now, Christmas 2021 being a more realistic end date. So this is merely the first stage of a long emergency (as I’ve said before, anyone who tells you this is the end of the beginning of this outbreak, or that the worst is over, do me a favour and slap him for me, we haven’t even started). And it ain’t going to be over till its over…..and the fat lady can’t sing because she’s been told to self isolate.

Of course you can’t keep the whole world in lock down for a year or two, so what governments should be doing is coming up with a long term strategy for how to operate under an extended period of social distancing. The message to business owners should be to start figuring out how you would re-open while implementing social distancing rules, but this simply isn’t happening.

So for example restaurants and bars should have been told to spend the last couple of weeks switching from open plan to individual booths and stalls (by putting up a few stud walls or curtains). Shops could do more of the sort of click and collect service. Airlines could fly again, once they’ve worked out how they can operate and still limit the spread of disease within the planes (compulsory screening of passengers 24 hrs before departure, masks worn at all times, etc.). Musk could re-open his factory, but only when he’s figured out how to open while still implementing social distancing. And, as noted, a guarantee of sick pay and full healthcare coverage for all employees (as well as encouraging all of those who can work from home to continue to do so). Government seems to be waking up this reality yes, but only now, when the message should have gone out two months ago.

But of course, this is the sort of stuff people don’t want to hear. They want to hear nice easy answers, such as it will all blow over and we can get back to normal and forget about it. If so, many countries, including those that think they are out of the woods, might be in for a rude awakening in the autumn.

Why good leadership matters

One way to handle the crisis!

I’ve heard it argued (before this whole crisis) that it scarcely matters who you vote for these days. Presidents and prime minsters have no real power anymore. Like the character Zaphod Beeblebrox (the president of the universe from the Hitchikers guide to the Galaxy, who in truth has no real power or authority), they exist merely to distract the public from who is really in charge (the elites, Whitehall mandarins, the corporations, etc.). Our elections are about as meaningful as those in Judge Dredd (where all real power is held by the judges, even though elections are held for the largely ceremonial role of mayor). In fact, in a classic example of life imitating art, in 2000AD’s “portrait of a politician” (published in the 80’s) an Orange haired Orangutan is elected major of Mega city one….why does that sound familiar!

In 2000 AD’s judge Dredd a Monkey was once elected as Mayor of the city…sound familiar?

Convinced that their vote doesn’t really matter, some have instead taken to voting for leaders, such as Trump and Boris, because they are a bit of a laugh, they find them amusing. And they know it drives liberals and anyone else who cares about politics up the walls. Ya, well I’m wondering how many of those currently dying of coronavirus are still laughing. In a crisis a leader does have quite a lot of responsibility and you want someone competent in the job.

But its not Trump’s fault his supporters say, how can you blame him for a disease. It was the fault of the WHO, China, 5G, the democrats, the gays [insert favourite hate group here]. As I’ve pointed out before, China could have handled the initial stages of the outbreak better. Similar, yes the WHO have probably not done everything they could. But this is to be expected in a crisis such as this, not everything is going to go according to plan (as the saying goes in the military, every plan falls apart upon first contact with the enemy).

That’s the whole reason why the CDC had a panel of experts, ready to spring into action when something like this happens….well at least they did until Trump decided to fire them to fund his tax cuts that is. And in the middle of a pandemic is not the time for this sort of postmortem. Cutting funding to the WHO will only cost lives.

Because in fairness to the WHO, they were working under the assumption that most countries were led by competent leaders. Not leaders so dense and ill informed that White house staffers and other world leaders have had to resort to using brightly coloured cue cards to get across the most basic of facts (such as what’s the difference between a virus and bacteria).

Trump claim’s his travel ban absolves him of blame. However, as I pointed out at the time, it was probably counter productive. It came in after the virus was already in the US and he couldn’t stop US citizens returning home. The ban also left the door open to flights from countries he where he had business interests. Of course this simply meant lots of people got straight on a plane and travelled to (or via) the US from infected areas.

A more competent leader would have stopped short of a complete travel ban (at least initially), advised against all but the most essential travel and reassured any US citizens overseas that the government had their back. In any event, a travel ban is only buying you time. As soon as they saw the WHO notices, the leadership in countries with more competent leadership began preparing hospitals, sourcing medical supplies, preparing testing and alert procedures. They also began testing like crazy in an effort to put a ring fence around the outbreak.

Trump meanwhile did nothing…for 6 weeks! When the time came to initiate lockdowns, other states did so much earlier, even though the number of cases were quite small. Trump dithered, worrying about the impact on his hotels most likely, while making many misleading statements that made the worst of a bad situation, by confusing the public (claiming its a democratic hoax, that its like the flu, or it will go away in the summer, or there was a cure available). And when finally forced to accept the inevitable he took to pilfering medical supplies that more competent nations had ordered weeks earlier.

The UK has not become more dystopian since the start of the outbreak. Any resemblance to a certain George Orwell novel is purely coincidental

And the UK response from the Tory government wasn’t much better. Having run the NHS into the ground prior to the outbreak, they failed to take it seriously, with Boris Johnson missing 5 Cobra meetings related to the risk of an outbreak. Now the NHS is running short of PPE, meaning doctors and nurses will have to chose between saving lives or saving themselves. And as for all those new ventilators we were promised, medical experts have dismissed those build by the likes of JCB or Dyson (a digger manufacturer!) as essentially useless and of no medical use (and you need trained staff to operate them anyway!). Rather than co-operating with an EU scheme to acquire more ventilators and PPE from legitimate manufacturers, they chose instead to rely on their chums from their Eton days (both JCB and Dyson are owned by brexit supporters).

The end result is a stark contrast in outcomes. Countries such as Germany, China, Korea, or Denmark have successfully flatten the curve (I’m told that while it got pretty bad in German hospitals, they never actually ran out of beds). They are now started a phased end to the lockdown and the likely impact on their economy will be reduced. Which is somewhat ironic given Trump/Johnson’s reasons for dithering on a lockdown (or cutting medical funding) was for the benefit of the economy. If you think healthcare funding isn’t a priority, or that the private sector is better off just being left alone, try a pandemic.

And I bring this up because this is only phase one of the virus. Anyone you hear saying that this is the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end for Covid-19, do me a favour and slap them for me. No, this is merely the first stage of the first wave of infection. The second wave (and perhaps a third and forth wave after that) will come at some point, likely in the autumn or late summer. This might be the same virus, a weaker form of it, or it could be a mutated version that’s much worse (which nobody, even those already infected, will have immunity against).

This is the problem. A lockdown is only a temporary measure. Already I’ve seen signs its starting to fail in the UK. Any time I’ve been out exercising or shopping I notice more and more signs that its starting to fail (people holding parties or businesses quietly reopening). Or I’ve heard stories of workers being called back into work (as they are now deemed “essential”, which I take as code word for bosses deciding that if they don’t get production going again soon, they won’t have a company left to save).

And none of this should be a surprise. Yes the lockdown was necessary, to try and flatten the curve. But it represents a temporary pause that should have been used to prepare a long term strategy of dealing with the virus. And again, yes some countries (generally those led by sensible people) have done that and can now start to reopen. Others, notably India, the US or the UK (all led by populists) have squandered their time.

Thus, its likely that when the lockdown ends, a second wave starts in one of these countries, which then goes global. And the leaders might not get to decide when the lockdown ends. If only 20% of a people decide to ignore the rules and break quarantine it will undo the efforts of the other 80%. Run the numbers and it only take a few months after that for the virus to go right through a country’s entire population (meaning tens of millions will be off sick at any one time and between 0.6-10% of those infected will die). And as a recent protest by gun totting Trump supporters shows (who must surely deserve a group Darwin award for stupidity), its possible the US lockdown will fall apart before the curve has been fully flattened.

Candidates for the largest mass darwin award, plan to fight the virus with bullets, because every problem can be solved with guns

Then there is the economic effects to consider. Basically governments can’t rescue every company. You can’t keep a substantial proportion of the workforce forlonged forever. Some firms will fail, but then again some were probably doomed to fail anyway (such as the comic book industry, parts of the oil industry and some of the airlines). Others are vital to the working of the economy and their failure would cause considerable blow back.

Inevitably this means governments will have to pick winners and losers. And what’s the bet that populist leaders will pick the winners from among their own cronies (much as the Tories just did as regards ventilators), or those loyal to them, rather than those that are essential and worth saving. Socialism for brexit/trump supporting elites, libertarian rat race capitalism for everyone else. Recall both Trump and Johnson’s original plan was for boomers to hide in their homes while millennial’s took the brunt of the virus to develop herd immunity for society as a whole.

As this crisis makes clear, the first priority is to insure competent leadership in any government, not those who you find entertaining or whose soundbites you like the most. This is not some Saturday night TV talent show. Not saying you have to vote for neo-liberal friendly leaders (actually I’d advise against that as its generally them who got us into this mess in the first place). It just means picking from among the candidates who are vaguely sane in the first instance and then worry about their politics and manifesto after that. Granted, this can be difficult in countries which lack proportional representation, but that’s exactly why constitutional reform is so important.

Otherwise you end up in the worst of both worlds, a leadership that can’t achieve meaningful change, yet one that is also too inept to handle a crisis (and will likely fold to pressure from lobbyists to roll back workers rights and environmental protections as a “temporary measure“). While there will be those in the government who will try their best to put out fires, its kind of a hard job when the fire chief is a serial arsonists (who encourages his supporters to become pyromaniacs).

So let us be clear, if you voted for populist leaders recently, a lot of the deaths and the economic hardship that has resulted (with more to come over the next year or so), that’s on you. Actions have consequences. Voting is a serious matter. You are picking the person who made get to decide whether you live or die, or end up destitute. If you lack the maturity to make such an informed decision, don’t vote.

Every cloud has a silver lining

The Covid-19 outbreak is a global tragedy that has adversely effected the lives of millions. However as a vlog post I saw recently points out, its not all bad news. Its had some positives as well and it is perhaps worth reflecting on those.

First of all, it has always been a question of when the next global pandemic was going to hit, not if it would happen. The WHO and various other health authorities have been warning of this for sometime. And compared to some of their baseline scenarios (one of which was the basis for the fictional virus in the 2011 film Contagion), we’ve got off rather lightly.

Covid-19 spread has been a lot slower than it could have been. And its mortality rate of 1-3.4% (depending on who you ask) is nowhere near as bad as the 5-10% for Spanish flu or 20-30% for diseases like SARS or smallpox. Also, the world caught something of a lucky break, as the disease was initially localised to one region of China. Yes, the Chinese authorities did screw up their initial response. But enough of a warning and quarantine measures were taken to buy vital time for the rest of the world (of course some countries run by populists chose to ignore these warnings, but at least we got some sort of heads up).

By contrast in the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968, or the 2009 Swine flu epidemic, the virus went global pretty quickly (thanks to international air travel). The end result being that the first most health authorities worldwide knew about these new diseases was when people started showing up at hospitals and dying (the 1968 pandemic would go on to kill over a million people).

This was the basis for the scenario portrayed in the aforementioned movie Contagion, where the fictional disease outbreak starts in a Macao casino and spreads to the four corners of the world within 24 hrs. By the time the health authorities realise what the hell they are dealing with, millions are already infected and hundreds of thousands are already dead. So the current situation, while bad, it could have been a lot worse.

Scene from the 2011 movie Contagion

So we should see Covid-19 as something of a fire drill for a future pandemic. One where we might not catch the lucky breaks we’ve caught this time (and we might be dealing with something a lot deadlier). China came out pretty much okay, largely because this was not their first outbreak. They clearly had some sort of contingency plan to deal with this sort of thing. One assumes that in the wake of this crisis other countries will have the good sense to do the same.

The crisis has also highlighted the importance of healthcare. Countries with well funded national healthcare (such as Germany, Scandinavia, Lithuania, etc.) have weathered the storm better than countries who didn’t provide adequate funding (such as the UK, Italy or Spain). Boris Johnson was essentially elected on a mandate of A) not being Jeremy Corbyn, and B) running the NHS into the ground, so it can be privatised. Now he owes his life to the service. He’s going to find himself under pressure to pretty much reverse the last ten years of Tory policy towards the NHS and fund it more extensively.

Trump (who massively cut back the CDC’s budget early on in his presidency), even if he can get re-elected, is unlikely to be able to get rid of Obamacare, not without replacing it with something else (and from a right wing point of view, particularly post Covid-19, almost anything is going to be worse). It is difficult to see a scenario where healthcare will be given such a low priority in US in the future.

Its likely Covid-19 started in a Chinese “wet market”, which is a PC way of describing an outdoor unregulated abattoir which looks like something out of the middle ages. Indeed, its been suggested that the outbreak’s origin in China might be down to the regime trying to favour alternative Chinese medicine over….actual medicine…. as a cost saving measure. Which, if true, has to count as one of the most spectacular backfires in government policy since Mao’s great leap forward.

For years health authorities world wide have been lobbying China to shut these markets down. Not only for animal welfare reasons, but because they were a likely point of origin for a disease like this. And its likely that SARS, MERS, the Hong Kong flu and perhaps even HIV and Ebola (the latter two probably came from African wet markets) all originated in this kind of environment. The Chinese have now banned wet markets temporarily, so we can only hope the flak they are going to catch over this crisis will eventually make that ban permanent. And that other countries will follow suit.

One of the reasons why Covid-19 is killing people is that it can lead to viral pneumonia, against which there is no real treatment. Well what if I was to tell you there might not be any way to treat regular bacterial pneumonia, or a host of other bacterial infections, in a few years time. This is because we are running out of effective antibiotics.

This is occurring mostly for two reasons, the unregulated use of antibiotics in agriculture and a lack of investment in the development of new ones. One can hope that this crisis will highlight the importance of investing in drug research. If you think vaccines are too expensive, try a pandemic. Which may lead to new vaccines for diseases such as Malaria, HIV or West Nile, which between them kill tens of thousands of people in developing countries every year.

But its not just better healthcare funding which is a fringe benefit of this outbreak. Air pollution, carbon emissions and energy consumption have all decreased. Its estimated that the drop in air pollution in China alone might actually save more lives than people killed by Covid-19 in the country.

And with everyone working from home, I think its becoming obvious that not everyone needs to work in an office 9-5. While some staff will be needed in frontline roles, a lot of back office activity can take place at home. In my job for example, while yes we (and the students) need to be on campus for laboratory work or workshops (hence the havoc this crisis is creating). But a lot of the rest of the teaching, research and admin tasks can be performed at home.

If we were to see a cultural shift recognising this reality, it would have a number of significant consequences. For example, in the UK childcare costs are insane, about £1000 to £2000 per month, per child. So if you are a single parent and you earn less than £40k (assuming you can only afford to spend a maximum of 50% of your take home pay on child care), you can forget about having a career. You are literally better off giving up your job and living on benefits. Similarly for couples, its not unusual for one of them to be forced to give up their job to mind the kids. Naturally, if working from home becomes a more feasible proposition, then that would allow a huge number of people (many of them women) to re-enter the workforce.

It would also mean you don’t necessarily need to live so close to where you work anymore. This would also have a wide variety of benefits. For example, many UK companies feel the need to be based in Greater London. Which means they have to pay their staff a “London allowance” to account for the much higher living costs. This creates a vicious cycle as it tends to concentrate more and more of the UK’s wealth and spending within London. At the same time, the rest of the country is starved of jobs (meaning more people move to London to find work). And with less salaried workers spending their money outside of London, these regions become poorer (which simply encourages yet more companies and people to relocate to London).

And this is by no means a British problem. In France there are (or so French people tell me) two kinds of people, the French and Parisians. Its like something out of the Hunger Games with the districts and the capital, with Paris representing 30% of France’s entire GDP. In Ireland about 40% of the country’s entire population live in the Greater Dublin area. As you can imagine these factors tend to distort the politics and economics of these countries rather severely.

Now imagine a scenario where I could have a well paid job in London, but instead live and work in say, the West Midlands. I could get a much bigger house for the same rent/deposit (i.e. an actual house with a garden v’s a shoe box in London) and would be spending my London salary in my local community, effectively redistributing the wealth of the UK to an economically deprived area. Equally, if companies don’t expect all their employee’s to be in 9-5, you don’t need as big and expensive an office building in central London. It becomes more of a priority that its close to public transport links.

Now granted, not everyone can work from home (then again, if lots of workers move out of the big cities, that pushes down rents for those who have to stay). Employers would need to establish some ground rules in order to make sure employees are working (and not watching cat videos). And there’s various ways you can do that (notably by your boss having some clue what it is that you do and what’s going on in the firm, you’d be surprised how many I find are clueless to any of this). But even for those working at home, there will be times when they will need to come in to work, perhaps at short notice. So they’ll need to be careful where they base themselves.

This might present problems for countries with poor public transport (such as the US). But for those with good public transport, such as most European countries, it means that, thanks to high speed rail, you could get from a house in southern France (or Italy) into the office in Paris (or Milan) in a few hours (so potentially you don’t even need to overnight, you can hop on an evening train and be home for dinner). Certainly not a commute you’d want to do every day (although some do), but if its a once in a wee while sort of thing, that’s bearable. And certainly a damn sight better than pouring yourself into a subway train every morning. And it also creates a strong incentive to expand public transport networks to extend the economic benefits of home working.

And the current crisis does raise the question as to how important international business travel really is. While it is fun to fly out to far away places for work, one does have to question the wisdom of flying hundreds of academics to a conference to discuss how to prevent climate change (by perhaps holding this conference online?). A world where people travel less often, and are more likely to use public transport for long distances, where energy consumption and pollution is lower, is moving very much in the right direction in terms of tackling climate change.

Finally, as I’ve noted in prior posts, the Covid-19 crisis has led to many left wing policies becoming mainstream. A few months back, the Tories were thrashing labour policies as being crazy. Spend money on public services, welfare and healthcare like a sailor on shore leave? Why we can’t afford, you’d bankrupt the country.

Blink and now they are handing out hundreds of billions (mostly to corporations) like Halloween candy, more than enough money to fund policies like a basic citizens income. In fact Spain has indicated they plan to introduce just such a policy. There’s even talk of nationalising large chunks of the UK economy. This from a government who was elected largely because they weren’t Jeremy Corbyn.

And we’ve seen Amazon, a company that thinks Ebenezer Scrooge was a bleeding heart liberal who gave his workers way too much time off. Well suddenly they are now in favour of policies like sick pay. And in the US, the massive jump in unemployment is making it pretty clear that America needs some sort of welfare state (not least because US employees and their families often lose their health insurance if they lose their jobs). And I don’t hear libertarians whining any more about how any sort of state intervention is a form of tyranny (you know like Trump telling GM to stop building cars and build medical equipment instead, imagine their reaction if Obama did that).

But, isn’t their a danger of Trump using this crisis to cancel the election and just remain on as president? There are many ways Trump could end up making this crisis so much worse. However, as one lawyer discusses, there is one undeniable fact (and the US constitution is very explicit on this point), Trump’s term of office ends on January 20th 2021. As of noon on that day, unless there has been another election to give him a 2nd term, he will no longer be president (nor will Pence be the VP). While there is a question mark over who would take over (likely in some caretaker capacity), it can’t be Trump nor Pence (the mostly likely candidates being either Nancy Pelosi or the leading democrat in the Senate!).

In fact I’m not really surprised Bernie’s bowed out of the election race. The way things are going, the virus is going to more or less force many of his policies to be implemented, regardless of who wins the election.

So while yes, Covid-19 is a terrible tragedy, we should try to look at the positives. Every cloud has a silver lining.

The truth about the blitz

Britain underwent a crime wave during the war years

The government is trying to encourage what it calls “the blitz spirit”. However, I think this shows that yet again, many of these posh Etonians have a warped (and dangerous) view of history. If anything the history of the blitz hints at some worrying likely trends, as regards the current lockdown.

One of the often forgotten facts about the UK during the blitz is how there was a massive spike in crime. Rates of reported crime went up at least 57%. And, to be clear, that’s just reported crimes (the worse the police are at catching criminals, the less likely people are to report crime) so the actual rates were probably much higher, perhaps as much as double the pre-war crime rates.

Part of the problem with the blitz was that the blacked out streets made it very easy for criminals to operate (all you had to do was don an ARP warden’s (Air Raid Protection) uniform and you could pretty much get away with anything). And it wasn’t just looting of bombed out premises, more serious and violent crime also went up. And in some cases it was off duty soldiers themselves who were behind these crimes.

The blitz was the golden age of the “spiv”, (well prior to brexit anyway!) who made a fortune selling items on the black market. If it was rationed or banned, you can guarantee there would be someone down a back alley selling it. The first people liberated in world war 2 were criminals (as the government had bigger fish to fry, they paroled or released early a lot of prisoners) and the worst moment for spiv’s was when Hitler died and the war ended.

World War 2 was the golden age of the Spiv

And ordinary people too also got in on the act. For some it would be minor acts, such as cheating on rationing rules, maybe buying some black market food or fuel, or emptying sugar bowls into a purse when in a cafe. Others engaged in looting of burnt out buildings or sunken ships (as in the famous whisky galore incident) or robbing crops and food from allotments.

And the situation wasn’t particularly different in other countries. Ireland for example, despite being neutral, was forced to bring in war time rationing of supplies. And again, yes it saw a rise in crime as a result. Even in totalitarian regimes there were issues. Germany, given how chaotically run it was under the nazi’s, became a nest of crime and corruption. In Russia food theft became so common, armed guards had to be posted 24/7 around farms, allotments and granary’s.

So when Boris Johnson talks about the Blitz spirit, is he suggesting we should all break quarantine, sneak out and go looting? In fact, case in point, there was the art theft of a Van Gogh painting recently, so some are already getting into the “blitz spirit”.

We also have squads of self appointed vigilantes harassing van lifers trying to self isolate in the highlands (telling them to “go home” unaware that their home is their van!), pretty much confirming every negative stereotype of country folk in the process. Then we have the loon’s torching 5G towers (moron logic, made in China = Coronavirus). Which, incidentally mirrors events during the blitz when various self appointed busy-bodies and over zealous ARP’s would break windows of homes if they saw the slightest glimmer of light, or threaten people they saw smoking outside.

But don’t we have boffin’s building lots of new cheap ventilators? Well no, ventilators are a pretty complicated piece of engineering. And they are pretty much useless without trained staff to operate them. This is what worries me about the present situation, we are being led by inept politicians, with a poor grasp of history (and technology), who do not understand what’s going on and are reacting to events rather than planning a coherent long term strategy.

As the crime wave of the blitz shows, people will obey draconian laws only up to a point (and worse some morons will get carried away!). If a law or rule is impractical, or there’s some easy way it can be circumvented, then that’s what people will start to do. This is why the war on drugs has been lost (so long as people want to take drugs, someone will supply them and all you are doing is making criminals richer and funding terrorism).

Already the police in the UK are warning that they doubt they can enforce the lock down for anything longer than three more weeks. And in my opinion, that’s probably realistic. To be clear, I’m not disagreeing with the idea behind the lockdown. I’m simply questioning its practicality and the fact that its time that’s being squandered. If the government’s plan is to keep everyone inside until this all blows over, well that ain’t going to work. This crisis will go on for months, if not a year or more. Instead they should be using the breathing space the lockdown allows to “Covid-proof” the country.

In the first instance, there’s the advice from the WHO’s to test, test and test again. If you know who has had the virus (and the majority of those with mild symptoms haven’t been tested), then you know whose got antibodies and is now immune to it (well until it mutates anyway!) and they can go back to work (subject to suitable precautions of course!). If we assume that say, 5 times the number of officially confirmed cases is the actual number infected, then that’s about a quarter of a million people in the UK (and nearly 2 million in the US) who can carry on as normal.

Similarly, there’s probably a significant body of people who might be naturally immune to the disease (by some estimates at least half the population). Identifying them means they can be released from quarantine too (again, subject to certain precautions). Businesses too, should be encouraged to work out how they plan to operate in a post-lockdown world (as this is not going to end any time soon) and then allowed to re-open. For example, shops putting up a counter between the customers and the stock (not unlike how many small shops used to operate in the old days). Or reintroducing “snug’s” and booths into cafe’s and pubs. Home deliveries and keeping the bulk of back office staff at home are all potential measures that could be taken.

Otherwise, all that’s going to happen is your going to reset the growth rate of the virus back to zero, everyone gets released from quarantine (or the measures fail because a enough people start ignoring or circumventing the rules to render them meaningless). And within a month we’re right back to where we started, just with more cases.

How not to panic buy

And in relation to my previous post, the panic buying of loo roll and such like is an excellent example of Bob’s law (a term that comes up in Judge Dredd comics, that it only takes a couple of loons to kick off before all the other morons join in). I mean at least now they are stockpiling Pasta and tinned food. That’s better right? 

Well not really. I didn’t have to panic buy, because I’ve always kept a floating stockpile of food in the house to cover emergencies like this (the only tins I’ll be opening are the ones close to the use by date and the only time I’ll be having pasta is when I’m having spaghetti bolognaise). I do have some long life food, but that’s as much to support any camping trips, than as an emergency food reserve.

The problem with pasta is that it is useless unless you can cook it (so if the grid goes down, and the odd brown out here and there is a possibility, you’re stuffed). And Pasta is just carbs, not a lot else. Fine if you are going to run a marathon, but its not the sort of thing you’d want to eat every day. Trust me, a week of eating nothing but pasta and you’ll be hugging the first coughing person you come across. Tinned food is a bit better, its handy and easy to reheat, plus does offer a more varied diet. But it has a high salt content and isn’t the sort of stuff you’d want to live off of.

So what should you stockpile? (or perhaps what should people have done several months ago, cos trying to do it now is too little too late!). Well, the same food you normally eat. The idea is to treat this as a logistics problem, rather than going the full Trump voting prepper. The supply chains have become more heavily stretched leading to temporary shortages. So that means running with a larger inventory of items in reserve, to give yourself some flexibility in terms of when you need to restock.

This is a problem we come across in engineering. We don’t want to have to warehouse large number of parts, that’s expensive and if we suddenly discover that some of the parts are defective (because of say a miss-calibrated machine), that a lot of metal to ship back to the manufacturer for rework (or being thrown out). So you try to keep things as lean as possible, ideally holding only enough stock as you need on the factory floor between deliveries. Of course if some of your parts have to come from China, or across the Atlantic, well you are going to have to bite the bullet and just hold more of them in reserve.

As for sensible emergency rations, just in case things go completely pear shaped, well one thing I often have on camping trips is instant noodles. They are compact, light, easy to carry, come in a variety of flavours, and they are quick and easy to cook. Plus you can add something to them (smoked sausage, vegetables, bit of cheese etc.) to make a one pot meal. Freeze dried food and dehydrated foods (some of which can be also eaten cold), or powdered soups are all good choices. Ya, not as good as fresh food, but better than pasta for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And they can be quickly cooked using a single pot and a small gas stove. And of course there’s your humble sandwich, which can be eaten cold at any time (and which you can also freeze if you don’t want to eat it straight away).

While tinned potatoes, veg and fruits are handy, you don’t necessarily need to go that far (not unless you plan to self isolate for several months!). Many types of fruit and veg will keep for quite some time before going off, so long as they are stored properly (how do you think the potato farmer stores them year round?). And on the carnivore side, there’s smoked meats and fish, which also keeps for a several months.

That said, this crisis isn’t simply going to blow over in a few weeks. The best guess is that it will take several months for the virus to run its course and probably about a year before a vaccine is available. So trying to ride it out for the duration is going to require a pretty hefty supply of such rations. Unless you own a warehouse, I’m not sure if that plan will work.

How then do the supermarkets stop panic buying? Well I’d limit purchases to a maximum of 2 of any item and a maximum of 12 items total per person for a few weeks. There is as much a psychological aspect to the panic buying as there is a logistics issue. Retailers would also be advised to cut the number of items they sell (i.e. one or two brands of soap rather than a dozen) and make sure there is plenty of those items on the shelves (perhaps even closing until they can ensure this). If people see empty shelves one day, then some small number of items the next, they’ll try to clean them out (well the selfish ones will anyway, and it doesn’t take many of them to ruin it for everyone). If they simply can’t do that because there’s adequate stocks (and they can only buy 2 anyway), then the irrational forces driving this panic buying will subside and we can then go back to normal shopping behaviour.

That said, a no deal brexit could be a different kettle of fish, as there might actually be a shortages of supplies afterwards, so such tactics might not work. And any sort of delays at the border will make the lean manufacturing model I mentioned impossible (yet equally, the idea we can replace parts from the EU with America, the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is farcical to say the least).

As for loo roll. Well if you run out of that, Rupert Murdoch produces a wide variety of alternative loo rolls worldwide, as does other brands, such as the Daily Mail. Strong long and thoroughly absorbent.

The Coronavirus and the failings of populism

So like me, I suspect most readers have by now been confined by Covid. But I think its important we understand how we got here. I enquired in a prior post as to whether dumb anti-vax, climate change denying populism was more or less dangerous than the Covid-19 virus. Well it would appear both have teamed up to create a complete sh&t show. Italy’s death tool now exceeds that of China’s (that’s what happens when you put anti-vacciers in charge of your healthcare!). Populism in Italy is literally killing people.

It starts off with denial. Be in the local officials in Wuhan Provence who didn’t want to make waves, the racists in Italy claiming it was a Chinese problem, or the likes of Trump claiming it was no worse than the flu (which is simply not the case, there’s a big difference between a annual winter flu bug and a pandemic flu, its still unclear where on that curve Covid-19 sits).

Then when it becomes clear such denial of basic scientific facts has created a health crisis (and given how badly many populists have miss-managed their nations healthcare, the last thing they need is some virus killing off all of their boomer age voters), you get rash ham fisted authoritarian measures being imposed, with not much thought for the consequences or the practicality of such measures. Case in point, Boris Johnson even asked the likes of car and digger manufacturers if they could make ventilators for the NHS (would you want to be rigged up to medical equipment made by a digger manufacturer?).

Hey Boomer!

A big part of the problem is that many are not factoring in human nature or the macro economic effects. The Italians say they are going to lock down entire cities, what does everyone do? Start travelling! I had a whole bunch of students from Italy and other EU states up and leave as soon as they heard this. Trump’s decision to ban flights to the EU (while initially keeping them open to Ireland and the UK) was clearly a vindictive move on his part to have a dig at the EU because he could. And of course this just meant that everyone got on a flight to the US via London or Dublin. And as many were US citizens, its not like they can be bared from entry.

The lock down in Spain has prompted many UK and Irish to head home (personally I’d take my chances with the Spanish healthcare system than the UK’s, but Ireland maybe there’s some logic to it, given how about 50% of the world’s ventilators are made in Ireland). And offering special shopping times for the elderly? Well you end up with lots of coughing boomers in the same shop at the same time, complaining about how the selves are empty since they bought everything on them the previous day.

And also of course, predictably the plutocrats behind these populists are trying to exploit the crisis for financial gain. Trump has laid out tax cuts that clearly benefit the wealthy. The UK governments £350 billion package, is clearly just a big slush fund to the benefit of big business. In fact, you can tell as much by the fact the market crashes stalled (you know how rigged a system is when a government comes out with a policy that is utter nonsense and unworkable and share prices go up rather than down).

In fact, let’s talk about the economic impact. If anything I’m surprised the markets haven’t dropped further. I don’t think people appreciate the economic calamity here. The previous financial crisis may have started in the mortgage market. But it became a great recession because in the immediate aftermath, everyone became Ebenezer Scrooge and stopped spending. That’s pretty much what we are facing now. In Ireland alone, its been estimated that 58,000 have already lost their jobs due to the shutting down of shops and bars and hundreds of thousands more will follow. In the UK the film industry alone we are looking at 170,000 lay-offs.

So its not difficult too see how this outbreak could quickly turn into another large economic depression. What use is mortgage relief to someone who isn’t paying a mortgage. Many small business live pay check to pay check, so without some sort of swift injection of cash, they will go under pretty quickly. And interest rates can go to zero and it still won’t matter if you’ve no cash flow to pay any loans back with. And closing schools means single parents can’t work, which is devastating to their income. Now the plutocrats might well not care about the little guy. But they will when millions of people stop paying their rents, or default on the credit card/student debts.

I suppose the one sliver lining is that the crisis has led to some progressive policies making it into the mainstream. We have for example Amazon, one of the most Libertarian and Talyorist companies in the world, suddenly discovering the benefits of sick pay (no doubt when the bosses realised that they were better off having sick employees stay at home and not come into work and cough on them). Who knows, next thing Jeff Bezo’s might even pay some taxes! We also have the road to Damascus conversion of Fox News going from “its a democratic hoax” to “the biggest crisis in history” in the matter of a week. And the US government is now going to supply free testing kits for Covid-19. Who knows, this could be a step towards a single payer healthcare system.

Hell one could argue the best use for that £350 billion the UK government is throwing around is to just give the money out to people as a form of universal basic income. That’s about £5,800 for every person in UK, about £112 per week. Given to just low income families, you could double or triple that number. That would help to offset many of the economic effects I mentioned earlier.

And with brexit talks in limbo its going to be interesting to see if the government sticks with its plans for a end to the transition period and a no deal brexit in December. Because if you think the shortages in the shops are bad now, wait until a no deal brexit happens and then you’ll know what real shortages look like. Already this is having consequences (as much of the medicines and medical equipment needed to deal with any pandemic come from the EU).

As for all of this “flatten the curve” business, it kind of ignores how these viruses progress. They come in waves. What we are currently seeing is just the first wave. The 2nd will strike at some point, likely in the autumn/late summer period. Possibly it will be a milder form of the virus. Or like Spainsh flu it might even be worse. So the idea that you can keep the country under lock down for the 12 weeks Boris Johnson is suggesting is a little implausible.

Certainly yes, because the populist fu&ked up, we’ve been stuck with the problem and have had to impose the strict measures to contain it. But my point is that the idea that we can all hide indoors until the develop a vaccine is a little implausible (that is going to take the best part of a year). Some sort of middle ground will be needed, whereby some semblance of normality is restored, once the worst of it is over, but with enough precautionary measures to limit any 2nd (or third) wave that emerges. That could allow bars and restaurants to re-open, but you’d still discourage large public gatherings and advise companies to allow employees to work from home where possible.

And finally, there is the elephant in the room, which nobody’s talking about. Its now considered very likely that the virus, much like several other pandemics, emerged in one of China’s “wet markets”. Aside from the horrible animals welfare issues surrounding these markets, they are a potent breeding ground for all sorts of viruses, as you’ve many different animals being stored and slaughtered in close proximity to one another.

Yet the Chinese government has done nothing to ban these markets. When asked they claim, oh we’d just drive them under ground if we banned them. Are you kidding me? China is one of the most scrutinised and watched populations in the world. You’re seriously tell me that you can find someone comparing the leader to Winnie the Pooh, yet you can’t find someone walking around with the cages of several wild animals. But it just shows you that even the Chinese government is a slave to populism at times.

But this crisis also shows, that when push comes to shove, even the most right wing or libertarian governments will take action. Which is what worries me about climate change. Eventually action will have to be taken to contain it. Not taking action today, will mean more disruption, deaths and economic cost further down the line, until it becomes a massive threat to the survival of entire nations (and the wealth of its ruling elites).

But at this stage the more free market friendly options will not be available, so governments will have no choice but to go for the more extreme and authoritarian measures (in other words, today you can do your bit by buying an electric car and sourcing your energy from renewables, but if we delay too long, then governments will simply ban private car ownership and strictly ration energy supplies). In fact its worth noting that the shutdowns due to the Coronavirus have already decreased emissions significantly. This is the trap that right wingers are falling into and they need to realise it sooner rather than later.

The chickens come home to roost for populism

I’ve not talked much about the Coronavirus as I was waiting until it was clear whether or not it would go viral (if you’ll pardon the pun). Outbreaks like this do happen, we had SARS back in 2002, MERS in 2012 and there’s been one or two Ebola outbreaks in Africa. All were ultimately contained. While there has been a large outbreak of the Coronavirus in China, the authorities there seem to now have the situation under control. The death rate from the disease is also relatively low (3-4%, at least in China), much lower than with either SARS or MERS. However, there’s been some worrying developments that do give cause for concern.

Firstly, we need to remember that this isn’t China’s first rodeo. They’ve seen outbreaks like this several times now (notably SARS) and are much more experienced at dealing with them. They have been able to take draconian measures no western democracy could even consider. At the start of the outbreak China built two entire prefabricated hospital in Wuhan in ten days (clearly part of some sort of national contingency plan to deal with something like this). I mean the UK takes ten years to build just one hospital!

By contrast, some of the responses outside of China have been ham-fisted, amateurish and downright foolhardy. Take the quarantine of a cruise ship in Japan. While yes, it has been common practice for centuries to quarantine ships in harbour, but this was generally intended for small cargo ships with a crew of a few dozen. Imposing such measures on a cruise ship with over 4,000 on board is practically ringing the dinner bell for this virus. Even confined to their rooms it can (and did) spread easily via the air conditioning ducts, the staff (as they handed out food or serviced the rooms) and the ship’s open balconies.

Then we have the rapid spread of the virus in Italy, with a death rate ten times higher than in China. Not really surprising, Italy is under the control of Five star and the affected provinces are controlled by the Northern League, both anti-vacciers. They’re policies have already led to measles outbreaks in Italy (the irony is one of those five stars stands for better public health!). And in Iran too (run by Ayatollahs who aren’t exactly well known for their faith in science) we’ve seen the numbers climb alarmingly. This is what happens when you put cranks and nutters in charge of your healthcare system. Populism is literally hazardous to ones health.

The Populist solution to a virus, send in the Army, who can hopefully shoot the microbes

It is for good reason that the WHO is warning that the world simply isn’t ready for a Coronavirus outbreak. Here in the UK, the NHS is at breaking point. Treating people on trolleys in corridors is now the norm. Its been revealed there’s only capacity to treat 15 patients with severe breathing difficulties across the entire country and doctors have declared the government’s strategy and advice as regards the virus as clueless. Can you imagine what would happen if UK hospitals suddenly had to face a surge of patients due to this virus. As in Italy the likely outcome would be a death rate much higher than in China (SARS and MERS for the record ran closer to 10-30%).

The status of the NHS is no accident, its been a deliberate strategy by the Tories to run the NHS into the ground just so they can privatise it. However, that plan could now backfire. It could lead to a backlash against them, such that they’ll have to retain it, the bits already privatised might fail and the country will be left with an expensive bill (which means putting up taxes). Quite apart from the problem that the most likely victims of any outbreak are going to be Boomer’s, who mostly vote Tory. Killing off your own voters is not a sensible long term political strategy.

And in America, the Trump administration has been up to something similar. Aware that they can’t really get rid of Obamacare, as then they’d have to replace it (and almost anything else is worse from their point of view). So they’ve been trying to run it into the ground. Rural hospitals have been closed down, services withdrawn, the costs for medical services has soared. And who has Trump picked to lead the fight against the coronavirus? Mike Pence, a believer in faith healing. I hope Trump voters feel so much safer knowing that!

All of these chickens will come home to roost if the Coronavirus makes it to US shores. Aside from the potential for many deaths from this virus, there’s the enormous economic damage it could have. And one wonders about the financial future of America’s private healthcare industry after millions of Americans show up in hospital and begin demanding expensive medical treatments at the vastly inflated prices charged state side. It could easily cause the entire private health insurance system to unravel. Which, irony of ironies, could lead to single payer healthcare system.

So does this means the populists are all going to learn their lesson on the value of taking science and experts seriously? LOL. Ya and in other news a Leopard changed its spots. No, pesky little facts don’t matter to populists. The explosion of conspiracy theories and misinformation regarding this virus shows that. They will blame it all on immigrants and poor people, same as the do for everything else, in fact they’ve already started.

I mean just look at Ireland and the recent election, where Sinn Fein did rather well. It is a known fact that Sinn Fein and the IRA have worked closely together for years and that the IRA is still active. Yet you can have people in their 60’s, who saw the troubles first hand denying these facts, even when a leading member of SF celebrates their election success by shouting “up the RA”. Apparently its all media bias against them (yes the media shows they are biased against SF by accurately reporting what they say).

SF did well in the election, probably in no small part to their buddies in Moscow (they’ve failed to back sanctions against Russia and have made various pro-Kremlin noises & send delegations to Moscow from time to time), where a campaign was pushed on social media focusing on hospital beds and high rents effecting young people (the irony of course is that the last government introduced rent controls and build more hospitals). But since when have populists let the truth get in the way of an election campaign. And yes SF includes some of the usual anti-vacciers, conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites and other wacky crankery. Just the sort of people we need in charge in the middle of a pandemic.

This is what you are dealing with when it comes to populists. Facts don’t matter to them, only whatever opinions happen to match their own. Their minds are capable of undertaking feats of mental gymnastics that would make Simone Biles dizzy. And the left wing populists are just as prone to this as the right wingers. Populism is a delusionary disease of the mind. And I’d say the jury is out as to which is more dangerous, populism or the coronavirus.

More News

6095 days since mission accomplished and the US starts another war

Its being argued, ironically by some on the alt-left (the so-called anti-anti Trump left), that Trump isn’t so bad, Hilary would have been worse, after all he’s too incompetent to start any wars. Well that theory just got blown out of the water last week, with the assassination of a high ranking member of the Iranian government by Trump in Iraq. Too say this is going to lead to blow back is to put it mildly. Already the Iraqi parliament has voted to request all foreign troops leave the country.

Trump may be choosing to follow the standard play book of many US presidents, if in trouble at home, bomb somebody. However, the problem for Trump is that attacking almost any of the likely Trump targets comes with severe blowback and repercussions. And Iran has to be the worst of them all to target.

Firstly, the US and Iran were essentially allies in the war against ISIS (as well as America’s former allies the Kurds). The worse thing Iran could do is down tools and let it be known to ISIS (and the Kurdish militia in Turkey) that they have a free hand and suddenly all the work of the last few year is undone, bombs start going off and US servicemen start disappearing (yet he can’t attack the Iranians in retaliation as all the evidence will point to them not being involved). And that’s before Iran, or their allies (HAMAS, Hezbollah, etc.) start attacking US, western and Israeli interests around the world.

And the most likely target would be oil tankers passing through the straits of Hormuz. Indeed the mere threat of this is causing all sorts of problems for the global economy, both pushing up oil prices, while pulling down the value of oil companies, notably Saudi Aramco, which may not go down well with one of Trump’s key allies in the region.

Oh, but if they attack the US I’ll bomb them says Trump. Ya, that’s kind of the Iranian plan! The Iranians have acquired a number of advanced weapon systems recently from Russia, most notably the S-300 air defence system (known to NATO as the SA-12). The US has the military capability to overwhelm these defences, but now without taking losses. In other words, some US aircraft will be shot down, US pilots will end up in Iranian custody, provoking a damaging hostage crisis in an election year (assuming they don’t get lynched by an angry mob before the Iranians can arrest them, footage of which will of course appear on social media).

Worse still, given that much of this new hardware was acquired from the Russians relatively recently, its reasonable to assume that Russian military personnel and/or contractors will be on site. Its also well known that China and Iran are co-operating on a number of industrial projects, as well as some military cooperation. Meaning there will be some Chinese citizens (including potentially some military personnel) in Iran. If any of them get killed in a US bombing campaign (which will of course be an illegal act under international law), then events could escalate quite quickly. There’s a good chance of retaliation from them in some way.

This could be either economic measures (such as a mass sell off of US bonds), or military (as in an attack against a US ally, Estonia, Kuwait or Taiwan and basically giving the US an embarrassing bloody nose)…or they could just release a certain pee tape. Either way, it just shows how events could very quickly spiral out of control.

And where was the UK in all of this? Well nowhere, Trump didn’t even give the UK a heads up. The UK was left to meekly cheer from the sidelines, even thought its quite possible they might be the target of Iranian (or Russian) retaliation. In fact, UK warships are having to be rushed into action to protect UK oil tankers. As one newspaper puts it, the UK post-brexit has gone from being America’s poodle to being its lapdog. That’s taking control alright!

Paradise lost

Meanwhile bush fires rage out of control in Australia, in no small part due to climate change. And one of the towns destroyed happened to be called Eden. Paradise has literally been lost to climate change. And least we forget, the current Australian government does contain more than a few climate sceptics, most notably the Australian PM himself, who once even once took a lump of coal into parliament to complain about “coal-phobia”.

Does this mean people have woken up to climate change? Ya and in other news a leopard has changed its spots. No, the Australian PM has refused to answer any such questions and the media instead has focused on dealing with the immediate problems caused by the fire, or the short term factors that led to them starting. I mean who could know that plants will burn when they get extremely dry. And who could’ve anticipated that Australians might have barbecues around Christmas time.

Like the soviet union after Chernobyl exploded, the climate change deniers will stick to the party line. Climate change can’t cause bush fires, you didn’t see burning kangaroos, take him away he’s delusional, its only 3.6 Roentgens (which is technobabble I know, but its become something of a meme now), not great, but not terrible.

For the same reasons, conservatives are utterly incapable of accepting the reality of climate change. Because much as Chernobyl exposed how rotten and dysfunctional the soviet system was, climate change would mean deniers having to accept the need for urgent action. Which given the atmosphere is a global commons, would mean international co-operation and government intervention….which means putting the coal companies who bankroll their campaigns out of business.

Of course, much as I warned in a post a few years ago, the downside to all of this is that the politicians themselves end up taking the blame. And quite rightly the Aussie PM has found himself being heckled as a result of these bushfires. And this should come as a warning to all right wing politicians. Ignore climate change and you’ll end up in a scenario where you will be completely out of your depth. The public will throw their support behind your most extreme opponents on either the left (Extinction rebellion types) or the extremists on the right (who will blame climate change on migrants, foreigners and poor people).

The assassination of Jess Philips by the coward Jeremy Corbyn

Speaking of ideologue’s who can’t handle the truth, much as I predicted, any opponents to the golden child, who’ll succeed Corbyn and lead labour to the socialist workers paradise, will be vilified and condemned, regardless of their suitability for high office, nor how left wing they are. Rebecca Long Bailey is the chosen one, endorsed by the supreme soviet Corbyn’s advisers (you know, the ones who’ve led labour to historic defeat after defeat).

And sure enough, Jess Philips announces she’s throwing her hat in the ring, mentions the possibility of maybe labour maybe campaigning to rejoin the EU at some point, post-brexit (the one thing Corbyn absolutely doesn’t want), and the labour/momentum blogs come alive with negative messages against her.

Too be clear, I’m kind of neutral on who should be the next labour leader. My guess is that either Scotland will be a separate country, or I’ll likely be back in Ireland, or somewhere else in the EU (taking advantage of the privileges being an EU citizen grants me!) by the time who is the leader of the labour party becomes a relevant issue. But yes, Jess Philips strikes me as one of a number of potential candidates who could reverse labour’s fortunes. And not because she’s anti-Corbyn (she’s actually fairly left wing in truth), but because she’s from a working class background, she is able to connect with working class people, she’s shown herself quite capable of taking on the Tories and (unlike Corbyn) she had a proper job before becoming a politician. But yes, there are others in labour who fit this bill as well (just nobody who Corbyn is backing!).

However, as the opposition to her should show, this is not what the Corbyn faction want. A sensible politician who will oppose the Tories and might actually win an election, hold a 2nd referendum and re-join the EU? Don’t be crazy! We want someone who is ideologically pure…and a secret brexiter (leading a party whose 90% remain supporting), who’ll make a tit of themselves for the next 5 years, provide no effective opposition to the Tories, lose the next election and become another martyr for nihilism, but who’ll still be celebrated by the Corbynites for “winng the argument” (ya like that will be a great comfort to all those screwed over by the Tories).

Changing trains

I happened to be out on a post-Christmas walk, when I saw a train go past, clearly an ex-Virgin Pendolino, but without the Virgin logo on it. For those who don’t know, Virgin lost the contract to operate, after they were forced out by the Tories for political reasons.

Now too be clear, I’ve never been a fan of Virgin trains and had my fair share of bad experiences on their trains. However, I fail to see how changing the logo on the side of a train changes anything. This is the problem with the Tory privatisation policy, its a game of pass the parcel from whichever billionaire bribes them the most, or commits the latest act of politician patronage.

And the rail users be damned. In the same week another fare rise is announced, we hear that Deutsche Bahn is slashing fares by 10% to help fight climate change. Of course, the counter argument is that the reason why the Germans can do this is because they have spent many decades investing in their rail service to provide a better more efficient service. This is something the British simply haven’t done.

And yes privatisation certainly hasn’t helped, but its not like Corbyn’s plan to spend several billion buying out the railway companies, just so he could peel off those same Virgin train stickers and put a British Rail sticker in their place isn’t going to magically change everything. Only investing large amounts of money to offset decades of under investment will change things for the better.

Chaos reigns at Disney

Disney likes to claim their theme park is the “happiest place in the world”. Well it seems like the production of Rise of Skywalker certainly wasn’t a very happy experience for many on set (some of the actors are saying they don’t plan to come back for any future movies). And we’ve had more leaks coming out, as attempts are made to pass the buck for what went wrong with the new trilogy. In fact, somebody has run the numbers and concluded that overall Disney may have lost over $2 billion on the Lucasfilm purchase, once you add up all the costs and subtract from revenue.

The latest leak, which seems to come from someone close to director J.J Abrams, claims that the previous plot leaks came from Disney management, not a disgruntled staffer, as part of some effort to paint Abrams in a bad light (while the leaks are undoubtedly true, as they match the released cut of the film, I find it dubious that Disney would undermine their own box office just to make Abrams feel bad). It also claims that a 3 hr long directors cut exists, which was allegedly co-written with George Lucas himself (again, I’d take that one with a pinch of salt), which was dropped by Disney at the the last minute (just weeks before the new movie hit theatres).

To me the key point here to take away is, there was no plan for how the new trilogy should unfold, no management nor oversight, everybody was just winging it as they went along. By contrast other franchises (such as Marvel) will plan several movies ahead, years in advance, before they even start filming. Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy was too busy being a Hollywood icon to bother even goggling her own job description, Disney CEO Bob Iger was to busy writing his own book (and apparently he wants to run for president!) to monitor what Kennedy was up too. Meanwhile J. J. Abrams and Rian Johnson were in boat pulling oars in opposite directions, leaving them spinning in circles, while George Lucas looked on in horror.

I mentioned before, the the recent Cats movie might be a good case study of the dangers of groupthink. But the new star wars trilogy might well be textbook example of what happens when you design something by committee. Having people with overlapping responsibilities but nobody in overall control (and no forum for them to sort things out) is never a good idea. Rather than several people doing the same job, instead nobody does the job. In short, too many cooks spoil the broth.

Arise lord Poverty

The Tories assumed they won’t have it all their own way, prior to the last election. After all, it was reasonable to assume they’d catch some blowback from everything. Hence several veteran MP’s in vulnerable seats didn’t stand. Well, now Boris Johnson’s simply made them lords, giving them the ultimate in golden parachutes. Some have even been invited to join the cabinet.

Chief among them is Ian Duncan Smith, whose system of universal poverty credit has thrown many in the UK into dire poverty of the sort you’d normally associate with developing world countries. More than 247,000 people signing a petition objecting to the award for a man “responsible for some of the cruellest, most extreme welfare reforms this country has ever seen”.

And Johnson ally Nicky Morgan, has been made a life peer and asked to join the cabinet. Yes, they’ll be deciding who get medicines and food after brexit and not a vote cast in their name. But apparently we had to leave the EU because it was so undemocratic.

My solution, how about we the public get to vote on their new title, which they will be required to use at all times. So IDS could be come Lord Scrooge. Nick Morgan can become Lady Arse-licker, etc. Can you imagine the Queen’s next garden party “I announce the arrival of Lord and Lady Taxdoger, Sir steals-a-lot-from-disabled, Dame Priti Racist and Sir Jeremy Cunt”

The Boris bridge

We’ve been warned that Boris Johnson can be prone to indulge in megalomaniac obsessions with big ticket vanity projects, which he tends to railroad through without proper oversight. There’s the infamous garden bridge, which fortunately never got built (but still cost the taxpayer £37 million). Or the £60 million cable car system that unfortunately did get built (and is hardly ever used). Or “Boris Island”, the planned new airport for London (which would be the wrong side of London, as everyone else in the country would have to travel through London to get too it, in an estuary with a large bird population and thus high risk of bird strikes and the small matter of a World War II munitions ship with a few thousand tons of unexploded bombs on board).

However, as PM he now seems to be planning on the ultimate folly, a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland…presumably so that, once both are out of the UK and back in the EU, they can trade more easily with one another. I recall joking how the DUP would be looking for an extension to the giants causeway off Theresa May. Well it would seem they are actually going to get one off Boris. Reality is out-running satire in brexit Britain.

Naturally, this ridiculous idea has been widely criticised by many experts. It would cost at least $15 billion and face numerous technical challenges (as in there’s a massive hole  in the middle of the Irish sea…which the British have been chucking munitions, chemical weapons and nuclear waste into for decades!), quite apart from a big question mark about its economic feasibility.

For those not from this part of the world, there are a host of good, high speed ferry links between Ireland and the UK. And the most popular is the Wales to Dublin route, which is served by multiple ships (including both one of the world’s largest ferry’s and one of its fastest). If you are travelling from England to Ireland (north or south) its simply a lot easier, quicker and cheaper (plus it burns less fuel) to take this route across, rather than drive all the way up to Scotland, and then down the B roads to Stranraer and take the ferry across from there.

And this apparently is one of a number of ways that Westminster aims to get powersharing back up and running (still deadlocked over the Irish language). Basically it looks like they plan to simply start bribing politicians up North with promises of loads of dosh.

Now the problem with this is that Northern Ireland’s parliament is one of the most corrupt, dysfunctional and incompetent bodies in the whole of Europe. This is largely because Stormont is split on ideological lines. Its completely tribal. The primary goal of politicians on both sides is to grab as much money for their community as possible (which will of course be squandered) and rub the other sides face in any mess and try to score political points. And the end consequence is NI is an economic black hole, with a GDP much lower than either Ireland’s or the rest of the UK’s. The UK’s GDP per capita would actually go up if they could get shot of NI, while Ireland’s would go down significantly.

However, what perhaps what this does demonstrate is that Northern Ireland might well be the template for future Westminster governments, which too is becoming little more than a similar tribal body, focused on scoring ideological points, rather than actually fixing the mess the country is in.

Musk v’s astronomy

I’ve mentioned Musk’s Starlink system before. But one aspect of its operation, which does not seem to have been considered, is its impact on light pollution. It threatens to make astronomy, both the professional kind and the amateur, nearly impossible to do, given the large number of satellites with their large solar panels. Even the small numbers launched so far (a few hundred out of the 12,000 he wants to launch) are enough to cause problems.

Musk has suggested, he’ll make the satellites less reflective, perhaps even paint them black or something. However astronomers have pointed out that that’s not how astronomy works. That density of objects in a low orbit is going to cause all sorts of problems, there’s really no way around that without changing one or other of those parameters (i.e. less satellites or move them to a higher orbit, neither of which Musk can do).

You may enquire well where is the US government on all of this. Asleep at the wheel of course! The FTC rushed through the application without any sort of proper checks, or even talking to astronomers first. Such is life under Trump. And while this libertarian approach might seem to benefit Musk, he might feel differently if people start boycotting his services (or stop buying his cars) until he de-orbits these satellites. Sometimes companies do want big government on their back.

Trump’s wall

Of course Trump’s number one priority was going to be his wall. How’s that going? Well to date under a 100 miles has been built out of the 2,000 needed! And most of that is fencing, covering areas which already had a fence. In fact the main component he’s added is some addition vehicle barriers (so they’ll mildly inconvenience someone looking to cross for a few minutes maybe). And all of this after the massive tizzy he pulled early last year shutting down the government for weeks just so he could get his precious wall. And recall that Mexico isn’t paying for it, he’s funding it by robbing money out of the pension fund for US veterans (how very Patriotic!)

What Trump promised….

But at least once its there (and at this rate it will take over a decade to complete) its done, right? Well ya if we ignore how much it would cost to maintain and staff it…..so they can watch helplessly as migrants come in, with the wall making little real difference. Because far from being impenetrable, people have already managed to climb over it, or cut truck sized holes in it, and in some cases its actually being cut up and stolen by locals!

….reality

Does this mean it will be abandoned? You’re joking right! Republicans don’t care if it works or not, nor how much money gets wasted. Its all about ID politics. Its a big totem symbol as to how racist America has become under Trump. Frankly they’d be just as happy if he blew tens of billions planting a line of burning crosses along the southern border. Facts do not matter to republicans anymore.