What’s up with Scientology?

Scientology isn’t something I talk about too often, but its worth checking in on what’s going on with them. The cult is now beset by multiple challenges, most notably a high profile MeToo case, which they’ve just lost. And there’s been an exodus of members, both regular folk and celebrities. So bad is this problem that most Scientology bases now have a “blow team” ready to chase down any would-be escapees (nothing says faith in your religion like a razor-wire fence, armed guards and sniper’s nests).

While its always been difficult to get reliable numbers for the exact number of Scientologists, its now believed the actual number is in the order of a few tens of thousands worldwide. (this ex-member estimates around 30,000). Certainly miles away from the millions of followers they claim.

In part this exodus is due to more media exposure, notably films like “going clear” or Leah Remini’s TV series “Scientology and the aftermath”. In another example, a group of Vloggers, who’ve been harassed for years by Scientology (including going through their garbage and having PI’s camp outside their homes) have teamed up to produce “SPTV” (SP standing for suppressive person, basically anyone who criticises Scientology…which I’m assuming now includes me!). All of these exposé’s (which ironically, have only come about due to the cult’s attempts to suppress its former members) has revealed the reality of life within the church, with allegations of slave labour, the systematic harassment of Journalists and public officials, emotional torture and false imprisonment, etc.

There’s also been allegations of Scientology being involved in crimes such as sex crimes (as already mentioned), credit card fraud, real estate fraud or running ponzi schemes. Now they will probably claim this has nothing to do with them, its the fault of a few individual members. But when members of what is supposed to be a church start developing a pattern of criminal behaviour, which the church just happens to profit from (and the church actively seeks to hide this activity), well there’s no smoke without fire.

Meanwhile the church’s one remaining ship (which is the only place certain upper level courses are taught), is believed to contain blue asbestos (which might explain why so many high level Scientologists end up dying of cancer). They have also been accused of breaking several international laws, notably maritime labour laws. In fact quite a number of the remaining church staff, both on board this ship and in the US, are increasingly from overseas (so possibility they are only staying in the church for fear of being deported if they leave). This raises the possibility that they are engaging in the trafficking of foreign workers. Wait till the Republicans hear about this!

So why are they risking the wrath of Uncle Sam? Because while the church is asset rich, it is cash poor. They own lots of buildings and valuable real estate, yes. But with so few members, even if some of those members are very wealthy (e.g. they are attempting to grab ownership of the Presley estate), they can’t afford the upkeep on those properties or to pay their staff. In fact there’s been cases of their buildings having the electricity cut off for non payment of bills.

And while the federal authorities aren’t doing much to reign in this criminal empire, they are facing a wave of lawsuits and private prosecutions from former members. Church leader David Miscavige is essentially on the run, hiding out at various church properties as he seeks to avoiding being subpoenaed in multiple lawsuits. In fact a judge recently ruled that he can be considered to have been served with regard to one of them (as it was judged he was deliberately trying to evade justice). This mirrors the situation at the end of Hubbard’s life, where he had to go into hiding to avoid the many legal actions and indictments he and the church were facing.

Which again raises the question, why is it falling to activists and former members to take action against Scientology? Why isn’t the US government doing anything? I mean anybody else even thought about committing any of the crimes Scientology seem to do on a daily basis, they’d be bundled into the back of an unmarked van the following morning. While one can understand why there was inaction under Trump (that would be the pot calling the kettle black), much as he allowed a crypto crime wave to run out of control. But the Biden administration has had several years now to investigate matters and yet so far, not a peep.

Well I think the reason why isn’t too difficult to explain. In one word – politics. After all, its not like Scientology is the only religion that engages in criminal activity. Plenty of other churches have been caught stealing from their members, or minsters caught in bed with minors, or engaging in fraud. The issue for the government is, if they take action against Scientology, then why not take action against these other churches too? Where do they stop?

In a scenario where the fed’s did come after them, Scientology would likely try to portray it as an attack on religion in general, rather than just them getting caught doing dodgy illegal things. They would attempt to circle the wagons (and they already have something of an alliance with the Nation of Islam), getting other churches to believe that today its Scientology, tomorrow its the Westboro baptist church (and you can bet Scientology has a dodgy dossier on other religions to leak to the media in order to pressure them into joining in). That would be crippling to either political party.

So for now at least, they get to putter in their sandbox. But personally I wouldn’t count on it lasting forever. At some point something will happen that will force the government’s hand. Hard to say what that will be (this case they’ve just lost might well be it), but we’ve been here before with other preachers and cults. At which point their virtual get out of jail free card, and their tax free status will disappear. It is after all, what’s basically happened to Scientology in other countries, notably France. Alternatively a major celebrity backer could leave (such as Tom Cruise, who like something out of the Simpsons they had to create a fake award ceremony and help him find girlfriends to keep him in), prompting the few wealthy backers keeping the church afloat to all leave too, finally bankrupting them.

But all in all, while I don’t think they are going anywhere any time soon, I won’t count on them being around forever. Now if you’ll excuse me, the PI in the car across the street must be getting thirsty, I might bring him a nice cup of tea.

Roe v’s Wade being overturned is a symptom of a wider problem: American democracy is broken

So it looks like the conservative majority in the Supreme court is about to overturn Roe v’s Wade, sending abortion rights in America back to the 1970’s. But this is about way more than abortion rights. If those can be overturned, then so can pretty much anything else, such as LGBT rights, freedom from discrimination (back to the Jim Crow days) and freedom of speech and the right to protest.

And while some on the right might not see the problem with that, the issue is it cuts both ways. A precedent is being set. If the left ever get control of the court again (and a few dead justices is all that takes), they can also overturn gun rights (until the last few decades the Supreme court viewed the 2nd amendment as provisions for civil defence not personal defence). Or the right of corporations to incorporate. So this is crossing a Rubicon into very dangerous territory for the US. It could well mark the point where the US ceased to be even a partial democracy and instead became more autocratic. And it might not always be the right who are pulling those autocratic levers. Particularly as overturning Roe v Wade will likely radicalise the left.

Consider that in Ireland, we recently resolved the abortion question via a public forum followed by a referendum. Why don’t the republicans just do the same? Because they know they’ll lose! Support for Roe v’s Wade runs at up to 77% nationwide and even 60% among republicans, although support does drop to closer to 60% overall if you phrase the question differently (such as allowing abortion, but applying more restrictions). And, given that there’s lots of other things the republicans know the vast majority of Americans are in favour of, but they and their corporate masters are against (such as paid maternity leave, higher minimum wages, free college tuition), the last thing they want is to set a precedent (the people? What have they got to do with how the country is run!).

So instead they are using an undemocratic approach by perverting the supreme court. And thus undermining its authority as a supposedly unbiased and politically independent entity. In short, the republicans have just crapped on the US constitution and are using the bill of rights to wipe their ass.

In contrast to this most other democracies have gone out of their way to stop this happening. In Ireland for example the careers of politicians have been ruined and governments have fallen over attempts to get an inappropriate justice onto the high court (Ireland’s version of the Supreme court). And said justice’s have generally resigned pretty quickly (as in less that 48 hrs), as they understand the risk they run in destroying the reputation of the court, quite apart from the potential damage to their own career (in Ireland you aren’t allowed to serve as a barrister in a lower court in which you’ve previously served as a judge. Meaning an ex-high court judge is essentially disbarred. The bar association can overturn this, but they are unlikely to do this for any judge whose brought the entire legal system into disrepute).

So the republicans are crapping on the constitution and the democrats are angry about it. To which I have to ask, why? I mean its not like they’ve been quiet about it. They’ve been openly talking about subverting the supreme court for decades. It goes back to a point I made before, about the main reason why the left is failing in America, the complete and utter political illiteracy of so many progressive’s who don’t seem to have a clue how politics works.

Recently they tried to force a vote enshrining abortion rights into US law….why didn’t you do this sooner, like decades ago, when you had a majority in both houses in favour of it? It sounds like you are trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. Or we have the fact that Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who must have surely known she wasn’t long for this world, arrogantly remaining on the bench, when there was an opportunity for Obama to replace her. And how the republicans refused to replace Scalia and Obama just sort of went along with that, rather than trying to force the issue.

Then we have the Bernie or bust brigade….who ended up getting a bust….of Trump! Yes Hilary was never my cup of tea, but once it became obvious it was a choice between her and a Putin wannabe, it was pretty clear who everyone needed to get behind. If you voted against Hilary in 2016, well this is as much on you as it is on the republicans.

Then Mr Vanilla comes along….and falls asleep at the wheel. Sleepy Joe had many options, ranging from packing the supreme court, to launching an investigation into the justice’s appointed by Trump and seeing if they could be removed from office (likely they’d jump before being pushed). But he did nothing. And why they hell is Trump, who tried to launch a coup on January 6th, still wandering around and not in an orange jump suit. Do you know what would happen to any democrat who tried to launch a coup? They’d have been wired up to old sparky by now.

This is as much a consequence of democratic ineptitude and incompetence, as it is the undermining of US democracy by the republicans. How can this happen? Because neither side in congress really cares about it. Do you think the sons and daughters of GOP or democratic politicians are going to be personally effected by the overturning of Roe v Wade? Of course not. Much as in Ireland “taking the boat” became a euphemism for going overseas for an abortion, they same will be true in the US…only it will involve a private jet to a Swiss clinic for most of the elites. This judgement only effects poor people.

The only reason the democrats are even pretending to care is because they have to for the sake of appearances (if they really cared they’d have done something about it sooner or be threatening to organise an Irish style referendum on it). Its the unfortunate reality of America’s broken political system, where politicians can royally screw up, or commit the most awful crimes and not only get away with it, but not suffer any consequences.

Case in point, its often not understood that support for abortion rights isn’t a simple matter of democrat v’s republican, red state v’s blue. There is stronger support for abortion rights in Alaska (63%) than in California (57%). Have a guess which way the two republican senators from Alaska voted in the recent vote in congress. Similarly Susan Collins was shocked to discover that Brett Kavanaugh (a sex offender) or Amy Barrett (a pro-life wacko), would lie under oath during their confirmations (I mean if you can’t trust a rapist or a religious fanatic who can you trust!). Again, even thought she represents a state that is 64% in favour of abortion rights, she voted against the abortion bill (and after some protesters scrawled a message about this outside her house, she called the police, so she ain’t too keen on freedom of speech either).

This happens because of the ridiculous US two party system that means the vast majority of US members of congress are in extremely safe seats, with virtually no chance of being unseated, regardless of what they do in office. I mean do you honestly think Alaskan’s who’ve just been screwed over, their abortion rights crapped on (which, as I mentioned, raises the risk of other rights, such as gun ownership rights, going eventually), that they are going to go and vote democrat? They’d sooner pull out their own teeth!

On the other hand, what would get a senator fired would be going against the party (who will inevitably have dirt on them). Hence why so many in both parties often toe the line, even when its clearly goes against the wishes of their constituents (in other words, they are more loyal to their party and corporate sponsors than they are to voters). Similarly there is no real system in place to investigate corrupt congressmen or judges (who’ve been known to go out and buy shares in a company before granting a favourable ruling) and punish them for their misdeeds (they investigate themselves, which is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house).

By contrast, in Europe, any politician who behaved like this would be committing political suicide. There’s no way they could hope to survive re-election under a PR voting system after pulling a stunt like this. And there are mechanisms in place to investigate political corruption. Case in point, Denmark’s former immigration minster was recently jailed for separating migrant families (something that routinely happened under Trump). And France jailed its former Prime minster, for a job’s-for-the-boys scam (again the sort of thing that was been practically routine under Trump).

So perhaps the real lesson from all of this that Americans need to learn is just how dirty, corrupt and undemocratic America truly is. Its not the shinning city on the hill, its a shotgun shack in swamp filled with alligators.

Debunking right wing myths: Ancient aliens

I once caught a programme called “ancient aliens” on the History channel (given that they seems to show nothing but pawn stars and sensationalist nonsense, I’m not sure why its called “History” anymore). Anyway, I thought it was a hoot (I’m laughing at you, not with you), but I was unaware until recently that this wasn’t merely a couple of episodes, that they presumably show on the 1st of April, but that there’s actually been 16 seasons of this rubbish! Thus I was completely unaware than anyone, other than a few tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy wackos…..or Musk…..took this seriously.

“Ancient Aliens is some of the most noxious sludge in television’s bottomless chum bucket. Actual experts are brought in to deliver sound bites that are twisted and taken out of context while fanatics are given free reign. Fiction is presented as fact, and real scientific research is so grossly misrepresented that I can only conclude that the program is actively lying to viewers….” —Brian Switek, Smithsonian

The basic punchline of “ancient aliens” is to simply connect aliens to every event that has ever happened in human history. Who built the pyramids? Ancient aliens! The Nasca lines? Ancient aliens! Great wall of China? Ancient aliens! The great flood? Ancient aliens! The Bronze age collapse? Ancient aliens. Rinse and repeat.

Well needless to say this falls into the category of “not even wrong”. How do we know the pyramids were build by the ancient Egyptians? Well the short summary would be: because they are in Egypt, they are shaped like a pyramid and they are made of stone.

Given the building technology available at that time this was pretty much the only way to build something that tall. The problem with any building is that the taller you go, the more weight presses down on the foundations and the bricks towards the bottom have to carry a heavier load. Eventually either the building starts to subside and sink (essentially being pushed into the ground by its own weight), or the blocks at the bottom start to crack and fail. So you angle the structure, such that each layer of blocks occupies a smaller area than the next, reducing the load on the blocks at the base and spreading out the weight of the building over a larger area.

Or in other words, you end up with a pyramid. And accounts from the time, evidence from numerous archaeological digs and modern day experiments corroborate historians theories of how the pyramids were built. The AA brigade, chose to ignore all of this evidence in favour of contrived and biased studies that set out to provide the answer they want. Not unlikely climate change deniers or young earth creationists.

So we are being asked to believe that these ancient aliens, despite having the advanced technology to get to the earth, would choose to use an extremely slow, inefficient and expensive means of pyramid construction. And this has to be contrasted with what can be built using modern building techniques (nevermind those available to ET). It is theoretically possible, using existing concrete and steel to building structures several km’s tall, although there are practical reasons why you probably won’t want too (e.g. most of the structure’s interior will just be stairs, lift shafts and service risers).

Imagine the conversation at ET’s Egyptian HQ. We can build a massive 4 km tall pyramid out of something cheap like concrete & steel, which we can throw up in a few years….or we can build a piddly little stone one which will be a fraction of the height, take decades to build and cost many times more. Seriously, you think they’d choose the latter option?

Furthermore different pyramids build before the great pyramid show signs of a learning curve. So we go from the step pyramid of Djoser (one of the oldest surviving pyramids), to the so-called bent pyramid (which was built at too steep and angle, resulting in a change in construction plans half way through building process), before the first of the great pyramids at Giza was raised.

Of course when pushed, the ancient aliens brigade will say, ya but you see the aliens were trying to cover their tracks. Why? There are uncontacted tribes here on earth, the occupants of North Sentinel Island being a good example, and while we are trying to avoid interference, its not like we are going out of our way to hide from them. They have witnessed large steel hulled ships passing by the Island (or even crashing into their Island), seen helicopters hovering overhead, etc.

Aliens would be no different, not least because they’d know the impossibility of actually hiding in this universe. We already have the technology to pick up any alien radio traffic from nearby star systems and can determine the orbits of nearby planets. Within a few decades we’ll be able to study the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets. So its basically impossible to hide, short of building an entire Dyson sphere around your solar system (and even that’s not guaranteed to work, as it would have a gravitational effect that would be observable, plus a heat signature which would show up in infrared).

But why did the practice of pyramid building change after the great pyramids? For the same reason such practices changed anywhere else in the world – times changed. Egyptian civilisation lasted for the best part of 4000 years. The date of Cleopatra’s death is closer to the present day, than it is to the completion of the pyramids at Giza. Egypt went through periods of collapse, when ancient knowledge was lost, or where afterwards the culture was very different (and building a massive pyramid as a rulers tomb was considered excessive and impractical).

But what about all these other pyramids build around the world? the Maya, Aztec’s, Angkor Wat. Well firstly these were built many thousands of years apart. Secondly, they faced the same engineering challenges the Egyptians faced. And, given that the laws of physics hadn’t changed, its no surprise they came up with a similar solution. And thirdly, these are very different structures with only a passing resemblance to one another (e.g. the Mayan pyramids tend to be smaller and more steeply build using smaller but more precisely cut stones).

Also why is it that we ascribe ancient aliens to having built the pyramids, but don’t question that the Romans built the Colosseum, or question that the ancient Greeks built the pantheon? There is a certain element of cultural racism at play here, which seeks to undermine the achievements of ancient peoples. Its like trying to claim NASA didn’t go to the moon, they hitched a ride from a passing Vogon. Or that D-day never happened, its all just fake news.

If you want to destroy a civilisation you erase the truth about its past. And that is effectively what this whole “ancient aliens” madness is doing. Its unscientific nonsense that promotes many racist and dangerous ideas. While undermining the achievements of past civilisations and their people.

Lock him up….in Holland!

Let’s be clear with what’s going on in Washington, the GOP and Trump know damn well that they lost the election. Most of his supporters know that too (save a few of the Qnon nutters). What this is really about is intimidation of the democratic and legal process. Its about making the democrats reluctant to push the issue and prosecutors afraid of investigating or arresting Trump and his cronies. Its the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a tin pot autocracy.

And it also served to show how massively biased US law enforcement has become. The FBI have been warning for years that US law enforcement has bee infiltrated by far right groups (which explains why the police just stepped aside and let the crowd in). Consider that after the Portland protest Trump sends in a unmarked and masked militia to conduct a brutal crack down and mass arrests (some were arrested for just putting a chalk line on the pavement to let other protesters know the boundaries of the protest area so weren’t bothering anyone). During the BLM protests they deployed an army airborne division to the capital. His little photo op with a bible saw 400 arrests and the tear gassing of thousands of peaceful protesters. Yet, so far there’s only been a handful of arrests with what amounts to an insurrection, if not a terrorist act (they have recovered a number of pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails).

And Trump calls himself a law and order president, yet he has now incited a riot (which last time I checked is a crime, if this lot can do it, anyone else is allowed to break into the offices or homes of GOP politicians or their wealthy donors). Ya, him and his supporters want to be a law unto themselves. It was the ultimate expression of white privilege. Consider what would have happened if they’d been black or Muslim, do you think any of them would still be alive?

Certainly removing the anarchist in chief from power immediately, via impeachment or the 25th amendment would be advantageous, but would require finding an honest republican in possession of a spine. Longer term (after the 20th of January) Trump needs to be brought to justice and if his supporters are going to try and make that difficult, there is an alternative. Put him and his allies on a plane and bundle them off to the Hague.

What’s that you say, but the US isn’t a member of the International Criminal Court. Yes, but there’s nothing to stop them joining and furthermore the ICC isn’t the only court in the Hague. There’s also the much older (as in 1900’s era) Permanent court of Arbitration (which acts as a sort of legal advice entity), the International court of Justice (ICJ, which rules on disputed between nation states), as well as various temporary and semi-permanent tribunals dealing with various war crimes or disputes, e.g. the tribunal related to Genocide in the Yugoslav war.

Probably the case most relevant to Trump however is that of the trial of the Lockerbie bombers. This represented a complex legal situation, as the suspects were Libyan, the actual planting of the bomb occurred in Germany, which detonated over Scotland (Scot’s law being different from English law remember) in the hold of an American plane. So the trial was held in Holland, on an ex-US army airfield, with Scottish judges presiding.

Sending Trump to the Hague (either the ICC or some temporary court jointly set up by the US and the ICJ) presents several advantages. It gets him out of the country and away from his supporters for one. And even if we use US judges, they will be free to conduct their work without intimidation from Trump’s bigot brigade. Given that these trials tend to take awhile, to be very technical and well frankly, boring, your average Trump supporter would sooner gnaw their own leg off than listen to more than an hour of such deliberations. So they’ll quickly lose interest, forget about Trump and go back to watch NASCAR, pro-Wrestling or committing unspeakable acts of depravity with farm animals.

Furthermore, it would allow other counties to file charges against Trump. For example the Kurds for him conspiring to assist in a Turkish invasion of their territory, the Iraqi’s and Iranians for various unlawful killings of several people in Iraq. At the same time it would avoid political interference from Congress, should the GOP regain control in the mean time, as well as avoiding accusations of the court being bias by those on the right.

And for Trump himself, a Dutch trial would be some sort of personal hell. A spoiled little brat used to bullying those around him to get his way, would suddenly find himself in a venue where he gets talked down too by judges (and some of them might be black or Asian and we know his views on race). He’ll be expected to sit up straight, pay attention and only speak when spoken too (if he speaks out of turn, they’ll just cut his mic, and they’ll also likely take away is phone and stop him from tweeting). And no doubt once a Dutch prison doctor gets a look at him they’ll put him on a diet of salads, so no more junk food, pill popping, fake tan or whigs.

But either way it does highlight what the agenda has to be for Mr Vanilla Biden, forget about the usual left wing policies (plenty of time for that later). There’s not much point passing such legislation if the GOP can take over again and wreck it in a single term (just look at the damage Trump has done, the largest deficit in history, a 9/11 death toll every day, more people killed from covid than died fighting WW2). Instead political reform should be the priority. That means packing the supreme court, it means adding new states (so more senators and electoral college votes to tip the scales back towards the democrats), it means declaring the Trump supporting movements Qnon, Proud boys, etc. terrorist groups and then purging the security forces of their members (personally I’d take all the DC police on duty the other night and force them to draw lots and then randomly fire 1 in 10 of them and strip them of their pension benefits).

Bi-partisanship? LOL. There’s no point appealing to republicans better nature, as they demonstrated last night (by continuing to pander to tinfoil hat wearing nutters) they don’t have any morals. Until the republicans demonstrate they deserve such treatment I’d freeze them out of the political process completely. In fact I’d quietly let them know that further misbehaviour will have consequences. For example, if republicans dispute Biden legitimacy of being president, simply cut any federal programme that benefits those who funded their campaigns (they want to whinge about federal spending, fair enough practice what you preach, in fact just to piss the MAGA lot off, spend the money on Obamacare or planned parenthood). If the GOP don’t play along with the reform of the supreme court, remind them it can be packed with moderate justices, or a bunch of 20 something left wing loons. The choice is up to them.

In short the democrats have a busy schedule, as they’ve got 2-4 years (they should pick up more seats than they lose at the mid-terms, but I won’t risk it and try to get everything passed before then) to save the country from fascism.

The sneaky plan to save America

Reblogged from my other site:

If there is one thing this election has made clear is that Republicans cannot be trusted. They are a crazy death cult of the Trump and the Karen’s. And a threat to America’s survival as a democratic state. The poll defying margin came about because Biden made the same mistake Hilary did, he appealed to the republicans better nature, hoping that he could win them over. Well it didn’t work, they dithered and voted for Trump anyway.

The RNC meet to discuss the election results

Which just tells me that any talk of bipartisanship is wasted breath (other than to lay a trap for the republicans and force them to expose how fanatically crazy they now are). If the democrats want to save America from lurching towards some dystopian future (Handmaiden’s tale, Man in the High Castle, Black Mirror, take your pick), then they need to act quickly.

Packing the Supreme court…or more precisely unpacking it of nutters

Predictably the republicans, having spent 2016 arguing that under no circumstances should a supreme court justice be sworn in during an election year, while complaining about the ideology of Obama’s picks. Then, being their usual hypocritical selves, they go and appoint an wholly unsuitable nut job as to the supreme court in the dying days of a Trump administration that’s going down in flames. This will leave conservatives with a 6-3 majority and raises the risk of policies such as Roe v’s Wade being overturned or Obamacare being undone in the middle of a pandemic.

And to be clear, this is a very deliberate strategy on the part of the American right. They know that demographics are against them. The GOP represent an ageing and ever decreasing pool of angry racist boomers. By contrast, a significant proportion of Americans actually support many left wing policies. The GOP can only hold power in the US due to the decidedly unfair way its election system works. Trump finished behind Hilary by 2.5 million votes and still won. And few thousand votes here and there he could have finished 5 million votes behind Biden and still clung to power. The republicans have gerrymandered congressional districts to make sure they can similarly gain control of congress with a minority of votes. Rigging the supreme court ensures they can block unfavourable legislation even after their voting base has shrunk to the stage that they can’t hold onto power anymore.

In most countries politicians vet and/or veto supreme court justices, they don’t pick them (a panel of legal experts do that). Indeed one of the situations where they are supposed to veto a justice is if its clear the nominee holds particularly strong political views on a controversial topic such as abortion. In Ireland for example, government’s have collapsed and the careers of leading politicians have been ruined by efforts to get an inappropriate justice on the bench (because its understood by all parties that this is beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour).

Now granted Biden Mr Vanilla could look at impeaching some of the justices Trump has appointed (they have pretty shady pasts) or otherwise force them out, but frankly that takes too long and could get messy (they’ll run down the clock hoping to get enough control on the senate at the mid terms to stop it). It is a case of fighting fire with fire. Straight out of the block in January, I’d pack the court with new justices, neither liberal nor right wing, but some sort of genuine commitment to law and order, 4 more should do it, that would make it an even 6-7 split (between sensible people and nutters).

FDR famously used the threat of court packing to convince several biased justices to resign and restore balance to the Supreme Court

And too be fair, its a fool’s errant to repeal Roe v’s Wade. What would be the outcome? Some states would ban abortion yes, meaning back alley abortion clinics would open the next day (you’d be going from a regulated setup to an unregulated free for all, who’ll give an abortion even after a mother’s waters have broken). And legal ones will pop up just over the state line, in the nearest blue states or across the border in Canada.

Worst still by re-opening Roe v’s Wade would set a dangerous legal precedent. It means any other ruling can be re-evaluated. And while the democrat’s don’t want that, the republican’s really don’t want that. Have they considered what would happen should the court ever return to liberal control? For example we have Santa Clara v’s Southern Pacific (which establishes the person-hood of corporations) or various rulings that allowed the carrying of firearms in public (as I mentioned in prior posts, in the old west many towns had strict gun laws, indeed open carry laws are really only a recent phenomenon). If Roe v’s Wade can be overturned, so can anything.

And I’d say the democrats should make it clear, they won’t spare the rod, if Roe v’s Wade goes, then as soon as they’ve got control again, every other ruling will be up for review, especially if it relates to conservative sacred cows like gun control.

Also there could be procedural benefits to having extra justices. It would mean that the court can hold more cases, with smaller groups of justices presiding, only referring the case to a full sitting as and when needed (and my guess is that as this involves a lot of hard work, and many of Trump’s appointees are dangerously under-qualified, they’ will quickly be out of their depth and retire early).

Subverting the electoral college

Longer term the priority for the democrats should be reform. Once the court is balanced again, take away the president’s power to nominate justices (he/she is reduced to simply vetoing an unsuitable candidate on the advice of the senate, as is the case in most other countries). And swap the US electoral system to one using proportional representation rather than First-past-the-post. Plus henceforth the person who gets the most votes (as Hilary did in 2016 and Gore did in 2000) gets to be president, no more electoral college.

But of course, that would require constitutional amendments, which the GOP will block at the state level. And, like I said, there’s no point appealing to republican’s better nature, they don’t have one. So again we fight fire with fire. There is for example a sneaky plan to subvert the electoral college (NPVIC) and turn it against itself (as states are free to vote for whomever they want as president, it means a controlling number of states can simply agree to all vote for the winner of the popular vote, regardless of which way the vote goes in each state). Democrats should make it a priority to drive this through.

NPVIC does actually enjoy some bi-partisan support, which will likely be enhanced by the recent election results, of course the RNC will still oppose it!

The more the merrier….and less crazy!

Next we could look at adding more states. DC could be granted state hood, along with Puerto Rico. But why stop there? What about American Samoa, Guam, or the Virgin Islands? In short you could add 10-12 extra senate seats that will almost always go democrat (or at worst a sensible republican). This would mean that the natural buoyancy of the senate, which is currently tilted towards the republicans, would instead now tilt in favour of the democrats.

Of course the GOP can still filibuster certain bills. So we might need to add a couple more senate seats. There was a proposal to split California into 6 separate states. A perhaps less radical solution would be an even split down the middle mid-way between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This would basically create two California’s, which both predominantly still vote democrat adding two extra senate seats.

A lot of red states have the strange situation where you’ll have a large liberal leaning city (Kansas city or Austin Texas being good examples) in the middle of red-neck Trump country. How about encouraging those cities to secede from their states and become their own mini city-state? And the supreme court trying to overturn Roe v’s Wade or Obamacare would be the perfect excuse to do so (as such cities could argue they want to allow both of these policies within the city limits).

Kansas city, which represents nearly half of the state’s population (including those technically in Arkansas its actually closer to 70% of the state’s population) tends to vote democrat, but gets drowned out by the rural red voters, so all of the electoral college votes and senators end up being republican. How is that fair?

This could create another few dozen senate seats, pushing things towards a default two-thirds majority for the democrats (or more accurately a 2/3’s majority of sensible people v’s nut jobs). Meaning the democrats will not only control the appointment of supreme court justices (and if the GOP block attempts to reform it with sensible justices, then I’d recommend appointing the youngest liberal left wing loonies you can find just to wind them up). And the democrats will also be able to override filibusters and pass bill after bill without delay, undoing several decades of republicanism in a few short months.

And adding more states, some of them quite populous and left leaning, means that the natural buoyancy of the electoral college will also change. While, as noted, republicans can now win without a majority of voters (well short of one in fact). In this scenario, there will be far more electoral college votes in the safe democrat column. Meaning the GOP will have to get a majority of votes to win (and pretty much take all the swing states too), while the democrat’s won’t have too.

No more Trump’s

Of course, all this would mean, soon it would be republicans scrambling to pass NPVIC, judicial reform and pushing for proportional representation. Which is precisely the point of all of the above – get the GOP to sabotage their own dirty work. But that only gets the GOP back to a level playing field. Which is the problem for them. They can’t win on a level playing field, not if while fielding extremist candidates that only appeal to angry racists and boomers.

The only way they’d stand a chance after such reforms would be with moderate republican candidates, who have enough broad appeal to win (you know like the candidates they used to field before the southern strategy). In other words, there will never be another Trump, nor any other alt-right or religious right candidate.

The rise of the Contrepreneurs

The lockdown and economic impact of the pandemic has left a lot of people bored, out of work and desperately looking for a way to get out of debt. And inevitably on the internet, you’ll find plenty of scammers looking to exploit desperate people. We are after all, living in the post-truth era and the golden age of the snake oil salesmen.

There’s now a whole industry of fake guru’s (or Furu’s) and contrepreneur’s looking to sell you the dream. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads online, get rich quick, financially free, passive income, have more time with the family, work from home, be your own boss, get the fast car, the mansion and the yacht. And these guru’s will teach you…for a price of course. And such guru’s and their cult like following has proliferated recently.

If you have a friend or family member who has fallen under the sway of one of these contrepreneur’s, I’d recommend the youtube channels of Coffezella and Mike Winnet, as both have been investigating these sorts of scams for quite sometime. Another vlogger Munecat (aka Georgie Taylor) has also done some deep dives into a number of furu’s and MLM’s.

Strangely enough, while the scams business ideas the furu’s use may vary, they all seem to follow a similar formula and sales pitch. It combines all the worst elements of manipulation and high pressure sales tactics (e.g. saying the course will cost £10k, but will make it available for £3k if you sign up now, which btw is illegal in many countries). Seriously, Mike Winnet even has a bingo game you can play along while watching these pitches.

But in all cases, the goal is the same, get the marks (and if you attend such courses, you are a mark) to commit to buying more and more expensive classes for yet more money. And they will keep milking you until they bleed you dry. And worse still, if anyone actually tries to implement any of these formula’s for success, they’ll milk you some more. And this can have tragic consequences. A ex-soldier in the UK killed himself after ending up heavily in debt after paying to attend several of these expensive seminars.

How likely is it you can actually make money off the back of these get rich quick schemes? Well you never know, you might win the lottery! In many cases theses courses are just a mishmash of amateurish hearsay (this property furu for example doesn’t even know what a timber framed house is, nor that students don’t pay council tax) and the business ideas they pitch are often dangerously flawed. Of course they sound plausible to someone who isn’t an expert, which is the whole point of scam, and why they are pitched at a certain vulnerable people (rather than people with money or business experience who’d spot the scam straight away).

Property scams

Some contrepreneurs will sell you on the idea of property investment as a way to get rich quick. However as this BBC investigation on on property Furu’s shows, its basically a fraud. Shaf Rasul from Dragon’s Den (and an actual property investor) picks apart such scams here. The reality is that property speculation is a potentially a high risk investment, especially if you are borrowing heavily, or you simply lack the experience about how the property market works (and you ain’t going to get that advice from a furu).

It only takes a small fluctuation in property prices to put you into serious losses. Buying property involved a significant number of expenses, at least £20k+ to cover your deposit, legal fees, mortgage costs, taxes, stamp duty. The average cost of owning and maintaining a home in the UK is estimated at around £9-10k per year. And those maintenance bills tend to come in fits and starts (case in point, I recently had to have a boiler replaced at the cost of several thousand pounds).

Unless you can sell the property for substantially more than it was originally purchased (plus any repair & renovation costs, which can be hard to estimate in advance), you are all but guaranteed to lose money. And recall the point here is to earn enough income to replace your job, so you’d need to be profitably selling several properties each year to earn a living (which is going to require an awful lot of starting capital or an insanely good streak of luck).

And if that weren’t bad enough, some of these contrepreneur’s, aware that their mugs clients have blown their savings on these courses, instead encourage them to borrow the initial stake money (which means you are paying very high interest rates), or proposes the use of risky buying strategies that carry much greater risks of failure. So much so that your losses can easily exceed 100% of your investment (you lose every penny, the house and still owe the banks money, potentially leading to you losing the home you live in as well).

Similarly with buy to lets, the mortgage and ownership costs (again £9-10k per year) have to be less than the rent in order to provide a monthly income, which isn’t always the case. Rents are driven by supply and demand and its all to easy to find yourself in a situation where its not covering your costs. This is a particular problem when it comes to schemes such as rent to rent. or Air BnB’ing property. As I’ve discussed before, this isn’t the cash cow its portrayed to be. If you aren’t careful you could find yourself running an illegal hotel (in violation of planning laws, building codes, while simultaneously committing tax, insurance and mortgage fraud).

All in all property investment is a bit of minefield. There’s also sorts of laws and regulations, as well as lending rules set by the banks and insurers. It is not the place for amateurs who are cash poor to start gambling in.

Day trading…or perhaps that should be called daily losing!

Another popular pitch is day trading of stocks, share, currency, crypto, etc. Again, this seems to rely on the ignorance of most people about what goes on in finance. I know people who work in the industry and no they do not spend all day screaming buy, buy, buy into one phone, while shouting sell, sell, sell into another. The reality is very different (in fact here’s an interview with an actual trader).

Instead, they spend most of their days with their noses buried in ledgers, spreadsheets and reports that are so dry and boring they’d put an entomology professor to sleep. And the traders aren’t alone, they have an entire building full of staff backing them up (data miners, analysts, computer geeks, risk management, lawyers, accountants, vampires, ghosts and ghouls, etc.). I mean why do you think banks have those massive tower blocks for?

Either way the pitch from these fake guru’s is that you in your pyjamas and a laptop can take on these massive wall street firms (with an army of staff, supercomputers and a near infinite supply of cash behind them) and win. Good luck with that one. How many day traders actually make any money? 50%?, 30%? Actually, its closer to 3% according to this paper, with only 1% producing significant returns (i.e. enough to earn a living).

In fact another point I’d make is that financial companies tend to be extremely secretive about their strategies. After all, if every body knows your strategy, they will copy it (or try to bet against you), in which case why are we paying you this huge mark up? Anyone who claims to be a successful investor who is willing to tell a couple of bozo’s on youtube his secret strategies for a fee (rather than just using that strategy to make more money) is to be treated with suspicion, as he’s either gone a little nuts, or he’s a fraudster (or a failed trader like Nigel Farage).

Amazon FBA: Helping Bezo’s get richer…while you get poorer

Another common pitch is Amazon FBA, whereby you set up an online store via Amazon. You’ve probably seen the pitch, “I sold hundreds of thousands of units for $20 which I originally bought for just $1….”Well, even if that were true, you are an awful excuse for a human being and little short of a thief. What you are doing is called “price gouging”, which is not only unethical, but also illegal in many countries (several hoarders of sanitisers & loo roll got caught for this during the pandemic).

And its a toss up as to whether the authorities or Amazon shut you down before your customers figure out what you are up to (if you can find it online for $1 so can they!). Upon which, you’ll get a load of awful reviews (drawing the attention to past and future customers) and you will never sell anything to any of these people ever again. Or your competitors figures out what you are up to and begin selling the same item for $10 or $5 (that’s sort of how capitalism works!).

But ignoring all that, there are are a number of problems with this pitch, most notably overheads (the costs of getting Amazon to fulfil the order, postage, taxes, etc.) and sales volume. The overheads eat into your profits (if any), such that, at best you are making maybe a few pence per item (or losing money with each item you sell). Which means that your sales volume would have to be huge in order to give a reasonable income. And again, there is a risk factor, what if the products just don’t sell (and given that these guru’s have every tom, dick and harry trying their hand at it, there is going to be massive market saturation).

Yes, there are companies with successful Amazon FBA stores. But they tend to be using Amazon to supplement an existing business (i.e. they have a real store in the real world), providing a way for those who can’t physically get to their store to shop, as well as assisting them in meeting customer demands in store. Ultimately this means that even if they aren’t making a lot of money, its still worth their while, if it means more traffic and a higher overall sales volume.

I mean seriously do you think Jeff Bezos, one of the most ruthless capitalists since the robber baron era, is some sort of hippy looking to let various bozos ride on his coattails and get rich quick. No, Amazon FBA its another way for Amazon to make yet more money, while discouraging anyone from trying to establish a rival online service.

The cult of MLM’s

Finally we come to MLM’s. Now, there are some MLM’s who are genuinely trying to distribute a product that would otherwise be difficult to sell by conventional means (that said, you have to question the viability of such a business model in the interney age).

However, an awful lot of MLM’s are little more than thinly disguised pyramid schemes, where the emphasis is on recruiting more members, with the bulk of sales going to new members rather than genuine customers (so it ends up piled in members attics unsold). And some MLM’s are prone to dangerous and controlling cult like behaviour (so much for being your own boss!), as discussed by John Oliver back in 2016.

A legitimate MLM would instead try to limit the number of sales people, to avoid market saturation. Bottom line, if you know someone else in your area who sells for the same MLM, its probably a pyramid scheme, in which case only those at the very top (i.e. not you) will actually make money, while everyone else will lose massively.

Scrubbing the internet

And speaking of which, there are various red flags to watch out for with furu’s, the obvious one being when they constantly showing off their expensive cars and wealth (if Bill Gates did that would you be more or less inclined to buy MS software?). But a foolproof method is to put the furu’s name into google along with a search term such as “…… is a fraud” or “……exposed”. And if the first page of hits you get is just links to the guru’s own site, or shills saying “is ….. a fraud?”, not at all! (hilarious one here where one furu get’s caught out shilling for himself under a fake name).

This indicates that our furu has gone to great lengths to manipulate the search algorithms (probably by hiring an IT expert), in order to bury any genuine feedback and criticism. Likely because most of the real feedback is almost entirely negative. They are also prone to being fairly litigious often threatening people with lawsuits, or using NDA’s to gag their victims. In fact, the one skill contrepreneur’s won’t teach is that of due diligence, probably because they don’t want you conducting due diligence on them.

And it will probably come as little surprise to learn that when it comes to politics most of these furu’s are libertarian objectivists (which is basically a nicer way of saying you are a selfish thieving bast@rd), or admirers of the prosperity gospel (god wants me to be rich…by stealing off the poor, that’s what the bible says, doesn’t it?). And yes some of them are promoting the usual Covid conspiracy theories. In fact one of them got arrested recently for using money from a Covid relief fund to buy a Lamborghini.

And if they do get caught or exposed by the media, they claim its just haters who are jealous (presumably because these haters prefer to be poor), or its all a big government conspiracy….so the government, currently run by snake oil conmen, is apparently against snakeoil con men like these furu’s. Go figure!

The reality

Setting up a business isn’t easy. A significant proportion of business ventures ultimately fail (75% of them by one estimate). And I’d argue that this is likely because many people simply lack the experience to undertake such a venture, or they underestimate the amount of work that’s involved, not to mention the capital requirements (as any business will initially run at a loss for sometime).

“Being your own boss” sound good, but in reality bosses are very busy people. I recall sending my boss an email once, then bumped into him in the corridor and we spending about five minutes in his office talking. During which I could see on the screen behind him my email went from the top of his inbox to disappear off the bottom of the screen. Similarly, there’s no free lunches, passive income isn’t really something most people should aspire too.

And you need a unique selling point. For example, when I was growing up, we had a neighbour who was very musical and so he ended up starting a business which re-furbishes, tunes and sells pianos. And, given that he’s got all the gear to move them safely, he also hires out roadies to music festivals. I know someone else who started off in his hippie days installing renewables (generally on the homes of other hippies), who now runs a renewable installation business. Then there’s Louis Rossemann, a right to repair advocate, who also runs a computer repair business in NY, as well as a YouTube channel (where he describes some of his struggles to get his business off the ground).

You will probably notice the trend, all of the individuals above are operating in a field where they enjoy what they are doing (and are thus willing to commit to long hours). And they have a unique set of knowledge and experience, allowing them to carve out a niche. Indeed, the advice we give students before embarking on a PhD is pick a field you enjoy doing research in, because while you might end up hating the subject at the end of your PhD (which stands for Piled higher and Deeper), you will at least have the resolve to finish it. Its no different in business. Hence the lunacy of the contrepeneur’s pitch (high risk business ventures, in a field where a penniless amateur is all but doomed to fail).

If you do want an education on running or starting a business, I’d advise checking out your local college, who will probably run professional courses (typically short P/T evening or online courses) on a variety of related topics. There also MOOC’s run by the world’s top universities. You will be taught by qualified experts and many of these courses will be accredited by an outside agency (so you’ll be getting a recognised qualification you can put on you’re CV). While some will include fees, these are often subsidised (plus there’s a long list of free MOOC courses). You’ll be paying a fraction of what a contrepeneur would charge you and getting a much better service. They might not sell you the dream, but you will at least get something for your time and money.

As the saying goes, in a gold rush the only people making money are the people selling shovels. In the post-truth era, it seems the best way to make money is by selling lies.

The problem with cancel culture

Trump deploy’s his own version of the black and tans to a US city and nobody seems to mind, when you ignore the lessons of history you are forever doomed to repeat them

It is true there’s a lot of racism about. We need only look at events in Portland, where Trump has deployed his own version of the Black and Tans (the Black and Tans were a paramilitary force sent to Ireland after World War 1 to quell the revolt, but only ended up provoking it further, which is exactly what’s happening in Portland). And of course, there is silence from the right. How would they have reacted if Obama sent unidentified federal agents into white neighbourhoods to take down far right groups? They do realise that if Trump gets away with this, that’s exactly what a future hard left US president could do?

There has been some much needed revision of past history, particularly if you live in the UK. Its suddenly dawning on a lot of people over here that when we talk about such and such a family having made their money via “trade” in the 18th century…that generally means slavery or the proceeds of slavery, or some other criminal enterprise. That the British Empire was one founded largely on racism and brutal exploration. And fighting wars for “king and country” means poor sods dying so the rich can get richer (by “trading” some more!).

Alex Baring, banker, politician, philanthropist…slave owner!

Its true racists these days often talk in code (so called “dog whistles”) where certain seemingly innocent symbols, gestures and words have an entirely different meaning to them. But some on the left have gone the full Joe McCarthy and are started to see racists hiding behind every bush. Hence they’ll deride someone as a racist for wearing a cowboy costume. Or a white person going out to do charity work overseas makes you an apologist for colonialism.

Hence, I worry its starting to go a little too far. I certainly see why statues of Cecil Rhodes or Confederate generals should get pulled down (particularly when you know the history of why and when they were put up). But I think Columbus and Churchill is taking things a little too far. Similarly banning Orcs and Drow from fantasy (because apparently they are racist) is just silly (they are fantasy creatures who don’t actually exist, it is worrying when a gamer like me has to point this out).

The two peaks in the erection of Confederate statue’s just happen to coincidence with the two main spikes in racist incidents, not any particular date related to the civil war

And its also counter productive. Already Trump’s team seems to planning to weaponise this (as they know that they could shift key demographics, e.g. Italian American voters or the Fandom menace over too their side in the upcoming election). Recall he only needs a 5-8% swing in his favour to win.

There are two versions of many historical figures, the tabloid version of them and the historic reality. Columbus for example, didn’t discover America (I suspect the first native American to look down at the ground discovered the place!), in fact he went to his grave disputing its very existence. The size of the earth has been known for thousands of years, first estimated by the Greek’s in around 200 BC (other civilisations probably made earlier estimates, but this is the first recorded attempt at its calculation). Columbus was basically a crank who didn’t believe these estimates and thus that you could get to Asia quicker by sailing Westwards rather than East. Even when he found the West Indies he was still convinced this was Islands off the west coast of Asia (hence the name).

America gets its name from Aermigo Vespucci, who through careful study of the facts concluded that all of these lands were part of some new continent. Ironically Columbus claim to fame is mostly down to to anti-catholic propaganda from the early 20th century, as it annoyed the piss out of right wing baptist southerners that they owed their country’s existence to a bunch of catholic Europeans. Italian Americans (who were immigrating to the US in large numbers at this time) then latched on to these myths and hence why we have Columbus day for all of the wrong reasons.

Similarly “great leader” and Churchill are two things that rarely appear in the same sentence. Its more than usually “Churchill” and “disaster”. Churchill was in truth a high functioning alcoholic, whose bluster and snobbish views contributed to the destruction of the British Empire. As I’ve mentioned in a prior post, his world war 1 record included getting a British squadron sunk  because he was too busy trying to help a German friend  keep his job at the admiralty (who kind of didn’t like the idea of German being in such a position during a war with Germany). Then there was his involvement in the disaster at Gallipoli (the less said about that the better!). While in the 2nd world war the misadventure north to Norway was Churchill’s idea (which ironically led to him becoming PM). His constant talking down of independence groups, or his support for brutal policies in the colonies (such as the aforementioned Black and Tans in Ireland being one of his ideas) ultimately hastened their independence.

So frankly if they want to have statues up this incompetent pair of twats, I ain’t stopping them. Though don’t be upset if I decide to laugh my ass off or point out certain uncomfortable truths. Its just I’d question whether those defending these statues would be so keen if they knew a bit more history. But equally we have the problem that the cancel culture lot, who want the statues taken down, are themselves also a little ignorant of history.

So for example, if we take down Churchill’s statue, why are we leaving up Gandhi’s statue? He’s got more than a few skeleton’s in his closet too (let’s just say, its just as well they didn’t have twitter in those days, he’d likely get banned) and maybe a little bit racist. And its also worth remembering that while there was a lot of violence initiated by the British forces against his protests, the real fireworks started after the British left and the country was partitioned, with massive ethnic cleansing and rioting breaking out (estimated 14 million refugees and 0.2 to 2 million deaths).

The Partition of India ended up creating some of the largest acts of ethnic cleansing and violence in history

My point is that if we are going to start taking down statues because someone’s offended by them (and there’s plenty of Muslim’s who’d want Gandhi’s taken down), then pretty soon you are going to have to take down all of them….even Lobey Dosser’s statue in Glasgow.

Presumably this cartoon character (the only 2 legged horse in the west) has to be taken down as well

As for cowboys, well the actual historical evidence is that cowboys came from a wide and diverse range of backgrounds, many were Hispanic (ironically enough, the Cowboy hat is likely to be of Mexican origin), black, Irish and with quite a few women too. And no, they didn’t regularly fight with native Americans (that genocide was the responsibility of the US army!). Many Cowboy’s didn’t even carry guns.

So are Mexicans who wear Cowboy hats also racist?

And to this day there’s still plenty of people working on horseback managing their herds, both in the US, but also down in central and south America. Cowboy dress (cowboy boots, spurs, poncho, chaps, etc.), while it does looks kind of silly, its actually quite practical if you are spending all day out on the range on a horse. So surely this must mean that dressing up as a policeman, or a nurse, or a fireman is also equally racist?

A Vaquero (basically cowboy in Spanish) watches over his herd. Despite appearances, his dress is actually quite practical for a day on a horse, brightly coloured, so he can be easily seen, big hat & long sleeves to keep the sun off, wools to keep warm at night, but loose fitting for when it gets too hot under the mid day sun.

As for this “white saviour” business, so you’d rather people don’t do charity work if they are non-white? Which means, assuming we can’t find anyone of the right ethnic group to do the work (crises can start in one country, then another, so having a small army of people of the correct ethic groups is going to be problematic), you’d rather people just starve or die of treatable diseases? And I’m going to assume for the sake of fairness that anyone who subscribes to this view is going to refuse treatment from a nurse or doctor during the current pandemic, who is not of the correct ethnic group.

Like I said, the left is at risk of going the full Joe McCarthy and driving people into the arms of Trump. Just because someone occasionally says something that might possibly be racist, doesn’t automatically make them a grand wizard of the KKK. They might just not know that this is a racist code word (that is after all, kind of the point of such codes). Hell, large crowds march through city centres in Spain (and some south American countries) during Easter week dressed in what can only be described as KKK costumes, that doesn’t mean all of the Spanish speaking world are racist!

An Easter parade in Mexico, the hoods are an old Spanish tradition, worn during Holy week, to represent shame and a form of penance

One cannot tell if someone is a racist because of one gesture, statement or a tweet they’ve sent (or liked) at some point. Anyone disputing that, give me access to your entire social media history over the last 10-20 years and I’ll pull out something (one action out of thousands) with which you shall be judged on, now and forever more, even after you’ve deleted it. That’s not how you out racists.

If someone repeatedly makes racist statements or gestures, even after there attention has been drawn to this fact. If they consistently criticise one group over another (e.g. they go into a twitter frenzy over 2 people dying of Ebola during Obama’s presidency, but Trump’s just doing his best when 140,000 dead and counting). If they associate with known racists, or the refuse to criticise them (or defend the indefensible such as slavery or the holocaust), then you can legitimately argue they are a racists. But otherwise no, you can’t.

In short, go woke and get ready for many more years of Trump.

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.

News roundup

Unfit for office…or opposition!

I would argue that that there are two problems with British politics right now. Firstly a radicalised Tory party, whose broken every one of their pro-brexit promises, that seems to be committed to some sort of pointless and unconstitutional brexiter banzai charge. Which they will of course blame the EU for (as well as migrants and anyone who voted remain). But part of the problem is also a lack of effective opposition.

Labour have been facing the biggest open goal in politics for 3 years now, but have actually gone backwards in terms of support. And this is largely why we’ve gotten to this stage where no deal could be seriously considered. If labour were providing effective opposition, going up in the polls and largely seen as a government in waiting, there is no way the cabinet and Johnson’s ghoulish minions would even be considering no deal.

Case in point, given that an election after a vote of no confidence isn’t guaranteed to work, as there might not be time remaining to hold one (or time afterwards to form a government and do something). And that’s assuming labour’s poor poll ratings don’t see them get annihilated. So the sensible solution proposed by a number of pro-remain MP’s is a government of national unity to sort out brexit one way or another (revoke article 50 or a 2nd referendum) then dissolve itself and call an election.

This government would be led by an interim PM, likely a veteran politician with some prior ministerial experience (this would reassure allies and businesses that there was a safe pair of hands at the helm who wasn’t going to do anything crazy). Such a unity government would have a very narrow mandate beyond brexit. All they can do is slap a few band-aids on public services to undo the damage the Tories have done. Anything more radical (re-nationalising the railways, major tax or welfare reform, etc.) won’t be possible as they’ve have no electoral mandate, no guaranteed support in parliament, insufficient parliamentary time and the lords would just block it anyway. So it would be something of a thankless task. Likely candidates for this role include Dominc Grieve, Anne Soubry, Vince Cable or Tom Watson.

But no, instead Corbyn is insisting that he’ll be PM (why? ego one assumes). Indeed he’s implied that labour won’t even negotiate with the other parties, but try to force through a minority government. His deputy McDonnell even suggested (and I’m hoping he was joking) that Corbyn would go to the palace and demand to be made PM if they win a no confidence vote (so basically he’s going to launch a one man coup d’etat…presumably armed with a cucumber from his allotment). It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

Basically this means one of two things. That Corbyn and his cabal really are so deluded that they think that they can just walk in and take over the government, wave a magic wand and put everything right in the world….while ignoring completely the impending crisis of brexit and its aftermath. Honestly Trump seems to have a better grasp of politics than Corbyn et al. And they are ignoring polling which suggests they will at best lose dozens of seats, or worse, potentially finish 4th behind the lib dems and brexit party. The last thing he wants now is an election.

The alternative theory is that Corbyn is really so desperately anti-EU that he’s willing to put the country through a no deal brexit shredder and scupper his chances of ever becoming PM to achieve it. If he sabotages any effort to form such a unity government then a no deal brexit will have his grubby paw prints all over it. And you can be guaranteed this will be pointed out to voters next election.

And in another facepalm moment, McDonnell also suggested that labour won’t block a 2nd indy ref in Scotland. While this is a sensible strategy, it was a grave error last time for labour to whip its members and MP’s into backing remain, but its the sort of position that needs to be rolled out tactfully. You’d only want to adopt it once it was clear a referendum was imminent and use it as a bargaining chip to make sure the SNP behave themselves (i.e. they don’t go the full Cambridge Analytica).

Inevitably the right wing media reported it as labour is in favour of Scottish independence (no they aren’t that’s not what he said). And because he’d not cleared this with the Scottish labour party leadership first, it got a very angry reaction from the Scottish wing of the party.

All in all it shows us that Corbyn’s cabinet is as dysfunctional, factional and chaotic as the one in the white house. He’s completely delusional, has no clue what he’s doing and seems to have no real goal other than making sure brexit happens at all costs, even if it destroys his party to achieve it.

Dragging the queen into brexit

In another example of how utterly dysfunctional both the main parties have become, there’s the fact that both seem determined to drag the queen into the debate about brexit. Either by getting her to intervene in the selection of who is PM, the date of any election (till after brexit happens) or by asking her to suspend parliament (i.e. suspend democracy) and force through a no deal. This is politically very dangerous. The queen, like any head of state (America being the exception) is supposed to stay out of politics (and this I’d argue is the flaw in the American system). As it can get very messy very quickly if she does get involved.

For example, let’s suppose she backs Boris and a no deal brexit. That is going to upend the lives of millions of people. Families will be split up, millions of jobs will be lost, the UK’s GDP will go down but 6-10%, there might be food and medicine shortages (we might even run out of bog roll!). And any issues with the NHS or medicines means people will die. And all of that the Queen will now be responsible for, with it all played out on the 24 hr news cycle.

So the royals will now have millions of angry voters who’d be wanting a referendum alright. But not on re-joining the EU, but on whether to packing her off back to Saxony. We’d be in the same situation the royals were in after Princess Diana died. And the only got through that thanks to Tony Blair. Boris by contrast will quickly toss her under the first passing bus to save his skin. And Corbyn has co-signed bills looking to remove the queen. And such a train wreck could re-invigorate the republican movements in Canada, Australia and NZ, who might also have similar votes.

So the trouble is that once she makes one decision she’s going to have to make more. This is exactly the sequence of events that led to past royal dynasty’s failing or kings loosing their heads (recall it was proroguing parliament where Charles I troubles started).

So for example, what if Scotland wants independence? Let’s suppose she backs Boris and blocks an official referendum. The danger is that if SNP can demonstrate enough support in an unofficial poll, then they can force their way out of the union by just making themselves such an pain in the ass that the rest of the UK throws them out (e.g. they could ask Scots to refuse to pay UK income taxes, refuse to hand over oil or VAT revenue, run up massive debts on the UK’s credit card then refuse to service those debts, organise wild cat strikes which lead to power cuts and gas shortages in England in the middle of winter, etc.).

All the queen will have done is ensure that Scotland becomes a republic (as Ireland and India did) and it increases the chances of a disorderly Scottish exit. Or worse, the Scots might take a leaf out of Norway’s book and invite some member of the royal family to take the crown of Scotland. Meaning there would be two British monarchs and allies (such as Canada, Australia and NZ) will have to decide who to back. The one whose kingdom is let by racists and disintegrating largely due to actions taken by her (and her heir apparent is Charles remember). Or some dashing new Scottish king (Harry and Megan maybe?), whose kingdom sits on lots of oil, has whisky galore and is applying for EU membership.

The sensible thing for her to do in such a situation would be to either respect the poll but ask the SNP to negotiate an orderly exit (which would be a bit rich given how she supported no deal with the EU), or ask for a 2nd official poll (after she helped Boris block a 2nd EU referendum) or call for some sort of compromise (Devo Max). Of course while this would preserve her crown, it would put her on a collision course with the PM and the cabinet.

Or how about a UK-US trade deal? If that goes through after brexit, farming and manufacturing will be devastated, the NHS sold off and we’ll be eating chlorinated chicken (meaning more people die). So she might have to get involved in that or block it entirely. Putting her on collision course with the government. And the same equally applies if she backs remain. She ends up with lots of angry people beating down her door.

My point is that both Corbyn and the Tories seem to think the queen is some sort of jack in the box. They can take her out of the box, get her to sign a national death warrant and they climb back in her box and stay there. But of course, she can’t. Its impossible to predict what way she’d go (and my advice to her would be, stick to protocol, throw it back at parliament and if they can’t decide, put to some sort of public vote). And once she gets involved in politics its very difficult to untangle her from it.

The channel hop

A French man recently demonstrated a flying platform (basically an enlarged drone) and flew it over the English channel. As Trevor Noah pointed out, you can imagine the reaction of brexiters, they got brexit to keep out the foreigners and next thing you know some flying Frenchman lands on the white cliffs and starts chasing after their daughters.

A flying foreigner, every brexiter’s worst nightmare

But jokes aside, and while this flying platform does have certain limitations, it does show how quickly technology can change. And how that change has many consequences. For example, we can make multiple criticisms of Trump’s wall and the ease with which it can be breached. But its one fatal flaw is it can’t stop planes and aircraft. Yes, you have some chance of stopping illegal migrants at airports….assuming they are dumb enough to tell you they are entering on a tourist visa with no intention of leaving.

Now we’ve gotten to the stage where drones can carry people, that opens up all sorts of possibilities. Notably of Mexican people smugglers at the border offering migrants an air taxi service into the US. Such a drone could carry people several km’s into the US (i.e beyond the zone currently patrolled by border agents), drop them off and then flying back and pick up somebody else. This would negate the wall completely.

This is one of the problems with conservative governments, their inability to see future trends and changes in technology. Hence why they tend to get blind sided by them and their knee jerk reaction is to try and get it banned.

Case in point, when mp3’s and online file sharing first came out the entertainment industry tried to get them banned. They poured millions into anti-piracy ads that were often parodies of themselves. How can we make money off a service that we just give away for free they said?…to which Google, Facebook and You-tube responded, hold our beer….Now streaming is a massive multi billion dollar industry and the main means of distributing media.

The oil industry and its vested interests, promote climate change deniers, even despite the fact that the oil industry is losing money hand over fist, with 50% drop in oil stocks over the last few years, while renewables are a growing industry. The brexiters want to bring back Britain’s trading empire, ignoring how globalised trade in the 21st century works. They also want a 3rd runway and a new terminal at Heathrow, which will involve demolishing several nearby historic villages and subjecting London to more noise pollution. This despite the fact that airlines are ditching their large planes and abandoning the hub and spoke model in favour of smaller planes and more direct flights, largely due to the availability of newer more fuel efficient aircraft (such as the Airbus A350).

This to me just serves to demonstrate the fatal flaw in conservatism. You’ll get a lot of kicking and screaming. They’ll tell you that television, flying, rock and roll music, gay marriage, abortion, gun control or acting on climate change will be a slippery slope to the end times. Yet in the end they are forced by circumstances to adopt it anyway, upon which they’ll conveniently forget their opposition and move on to the next artificial controversy.

UK College goes bust

The UK government has spent quite a bit of time recently promoting private colleges and universities as it attempts to emulate America’s heavily commercialised higher education system. I’ve long opposed this because I know how ridiculously unfair the US system is. It means large sections of the population simply can’t go to uni as they can’t afford it. And even those with better off parents often still leave uni with massive debts that cripple their finances for life.

Of course the other problem with the US model is the frequency at which their universities go bust. Something that’s practically unheard of in Europe. And such bankruptcies have very real and serious consequences, as this news piece on one such failure discusses. Not just to students, but to local businesses and employment. There are some small towns or neighbourhoods in the UK whose economy would implode if the local uni shut down.

And inevitably one of these new colleges, GSM London has now failed. Fortunately, it doesn’t look too bad…suspect any students or staff caught up in this will have a different view on that! But I’m talking about the wider impact. Its in London, so the impact will be dampened somewhat. Hopefully they can all find alternative employers or courses to enrol on. However, it is a worrying sign of the times.

While the UK government has shown a willingness to quietly bailout uni’s in trouble. Much as I predicted, that’s not always possible. They might be in such a state to be beyond saving. Or the creditors, anxious to get their greedy paws on the valuable city centre real estate the uni owns might refuse any bailout and force through a bankruptcy.

And its also worth keeping in mind that government’s plans are to cut tuition fees. Which would be a good idea. Only they aren’t planning to provide any additional funding to universities (so they are expecting that they can just cut their funding by 30%, on top of the drop off in student numbers from the EU and loss of research funding and expect the uni’s to cope). Naturally its been pointed out that this would be disastrous and almost certainly push many universities over the edge. So we might not be so lucky next time.

A most convenient death

Word is that the alleged sex trafficker to the rich and famous, Jeffrey Esptein, has apparently killed himself in his NY cell. Now call me a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, but when someone that well connected (Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew, you name it) magically happens to die, just days before he can be put on trial and such connections were due to be subjected to legal scrutiny (which could have involved said individuals being required to testify in court under oath), well its a little bit suspicious.

Which probably explains why his victims are arguing for the investigations to continue. Perhaps even try him posthumously. And there is a legal precedence for this. But of course, fat chance of that happening! I mean why do you think they killed him/let him commit suicide for in the first place? So they can brush the whole thing under the carpet of course.

Loosing sleep

The Caledonian sleeper is (or perhaps I should say was) one of those hidden gems of UK transport. Its a train service running from London to the highlands of Scotland, with stops in the central belt (and Northern England) along the way. So you can literally go to sleep in London after a night on the town, wake up in Fort William the next morning, grab some breakfast and be on the summit of Ben Nevis before lunchtime.

The Caledonian sleeper works its way across Rannoch Moor in winter

However, the rail companies have long hated it, as it means keeping lines open at late hours, screwing up their maintenance schedules. So they’d like noting better than to cancel it. Unfortunately, as its quite popular, plus its also used by MP’s to travel between their constituencies and London, any talk of cancelling it has been thwarted. So instead they tried to let it whither by not investing in it or just making the service poorer. For example, you used to be able to book half board and share a cabin with somebody else, but they’ve tried to did away with that due to “customer demand” (we are too believe there are customers out there who prefer to pay double for their tickets!).

Well now it seems they’ve figured out a solution. Invest money in the sleeper service. Because nothing in British transport will royally screw something up and make things worse than investing millions of pounds in it. Since this £150 million revamp the service has been dogged by complaints of late or cancelled trains (keep in mind, you are showing up to the station at 23:00, you can’t just wait for the next service, that’s not till the following morning!). Others complain about poor catering, lights being left on all night (which can’t be turned off) and noisy air conditioning.

So it seems like the rail companies will finally get their wish and do away with the sleepers…by trying to make them better! To them their own incompetence is now an asset.

Populists, corruption and disaster capitalism

If I was to tell you about a newly installed government, whose minsters and party donors were making millions betting against their own country via offshore firms, who openly earn large sums in kickbacks for a few hours of supposed work (e.g. after dinner speaking fees, “consultancy fees”, etc.), a government that was now using a crisis to give out sweatheart deals to its cronies, you’d probably assume I’m talking about some tin pot dictatorship in the developing world. But no, I’m talking about the UK under Boris, which has got to count as the most corrupt in the country’s history. But its actually the new normal (you think this is bad, wait till they are in coalition with Farage!).

Recently Channel 4’s dispatches did a piece on “brexit millionaires” and how many in the Tory party, or their donors, were cashing in on brexit and making millions. Front and centre was Jacob Rees-Mogg, aka the right honourable member for the 18th century, the new minister for silly walks leader of the house of commons. In between being a grammar nazi (he’s set a whole bunch of grammar rules for civil servants, rules he has himself broken 700 times), he has been profiting from brexit. His offshore investment firms have racked in millions since brexit started. With him personally profiting to the tune of at least +£7 million. So much so he can afford to buy a a multi-million town house in London (to go with his country estate) and pay for it in cash. This is corruption, pure and simple.

Rees Mogg’s little country cottage

And he is by no means alone. Boris is going for a no deal brexit, not because its what people voted for (he and his ministers have been challenged to provide an example of when in the referendum they suggested the UK might have to leave without a deal, we’ve yet to get an answer). In fact polls show the public would rather just cancel brexit all together than except no deal. Even Teresa May is warning no deal threatens the union (pity she didn’t say that while in office!). But the cabinet backs it because they know its the best way for them and their mates to make a quick buck. Food and medicine shortages! millions loosing their jobs! civil war in NI! Scottish independence! how is any of that their problem?

In fact here’s a good one, from a young Tory whose whinging that Boris can’t ignore him and implement no deal against the wishes of parliament and the country. LOL, the naivety of youth. He can, he is and he will. If you have a problem with that you shouldn’t have voted Tory.

And in other countries we are seeing similar trends. Trump hasn’t drained the swamp, he’s made it deeper and released alligators. In Italy, the horseshoe government of populists are now literally surrounded by steaming piles of garbage as the cities public services have collapsed. And corruption is as bad as ever (if not worse), so much so some are thinking of voting for Berlusconi. And if that sounds unlikely, well consider that in Greece, the populists there made such a pigs breakfast of things that the very party who got the country into a massive mess in the first place have just been voted back in.

Rome is now in such a mess, tourists are been giving advice about the risks to their health while visiting

Many people voted for populists because they were appalled at self serving politicians divorced from reality. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, voting for even more corrupt and incompetent populists has just made the situation worse. The very same elites these voters hate, just took to bribing and manipulating the populists. And guess what, they are even dumber than the regular politicians and cheaper too! In fact they’ll do things the regular politicians won’t dream of doing (because the latter are prone to rare moments of clarity where they actually giving a shit).

Angry desperate voters, voted for the most extreme option on the ballot paper thought they were sending a message. But the message that arrived in elites HQ was that these voters are even more naive and stupid than we thought, so let’s take full advantage of them (I mean they could have voted for some established third party candidates, or others who can’t be bought, then we’d be really screwed, but instead they vote for some complete idiot whose in our pocket). The elites can basically do whatever they want now, just so long as their boy remembers to make the odd racist dog whistle and some vague promises that they’ll never have to keep.

The fact is that populists leaders know that they aren’t held to the same standards as other politicians. It used to be a politician made the slightest gaffe, that was it, game over. Remember how Ed Miliband lost because of one photo of him looking awkward for a second eating a bacon roll, or the whole plebgate business. It used to be a politician said something to the media that was inaccurate, or broke the ministerial code and they’d be gone within a week (a good example, Brian Lenihan and the 1990’s Irish presidential election, he went from odds on favourite to being sacked and losing by a landslide over one phone call he made back in 1982).

Now they can get caught in a lie live on air and nobody bats an eyelid, because its one in a string of so many lies nobody can keep up (well unless you are a member of the labour party of course….or black….or worse both). Its understood that voters will ignore this, they are voting based on anger and tribal loyalties, not facts and policy. So long as said leader stays on message and keeps them angry (i.e. they have absolutely no good incentive to help these voters in any way, because then they might calm down and start acting sensibly) he can get away with anything.

Consider for example how both the Tories and the GOP have abandoned their long term commitment to balanced budgets. Both came to power talking about the dangers of deficit spending and how they would be pro-business. Now the policy is bollix to that and fuck business. Like Trump, Johnson seems to be planning to spend like a sailor on shore leave. But not on hospitals, schools or helping the poor (Tory policy here has been branded by the UN as ‘mean-spirited and callous‘), but instead on no deal preparation, tax cuts for the rich and big infrastructure projects than can be farmed out to Tory donors.

The Tories new motto

I mean seriously, why do you think Boris gets paid over a £150,000 to show up and give an after dinner speech? You think they like the sound of his voice that much? No its a bribe and now they’re going to cash in. And its hardly as if any of this should be a surprise, given his past performance as London mayor and foreign secretary.

Of course the fact these policies, combined with the economic impact of a no deal brexit (or Trump’s tariffs), will make a mess of the economy and wreck the public finances doesn’t matter to them. They’ll get rich, who cares. In fact they’d even see a silver lining to that. They can use such a crisis to sell off state assets (such as the NHS) to themselves and their allies and dismantle the welfare state.

Its a strategy the rich have been applying in developing world countries for decades. They’d take advantage of the country’s naive or incompetent populists/autocratic government, to swoop in and wreck the economy on purpose, knowing they and their allies (juiced in local elites) would be able to take advantage of the chaos. Now they’re just doing the same in western countries (what goes around comes around I suppose).

And furthermore, even if some leftie such as Corbyn or Bernie ever gets into power, so what! They’ll not be able to afford to implement any of their policies or even reverse the mess the current government is making. In fact, the conservatives can just blame them for everything (as they did with Obama). What’s that? the lefties might putting up taxes? So what! let em! all their money is offshore….course if the UK was only part of some big pan-European club which was determined to do something about such tax avoidance …just a thought!