Don’t worry, we are getting a laser

The UK is the middle of a cost of living crisis (increasingly becoming a cost of survival crisis), the economy is in the toilet. But don’t worry, according to the Tories, we are getting a laser. The army can’t recruit enough soldiers to maintain current staffing levels, let alone increase numbers. So much so that they are talking about decommissioning certain ships early. But don’t worry we are getting a laser (we’ll just have to hire someone from Poland to fire it).

Why is the army having trouble recruiting? Well put it this way, would you be willing to lay down your life for Fishi Ri$hi and the rest of the Tory ghoul’s? Plus they subcontracted recruitment out to a private company (likely after payment of a significant bribe…sorry campaign contributions!). Obviously they are going to be more interested in collecting their fee than actually finding suitable candidates. Plus look how badly veterans have been treated by this government. Would you sign up?

Its also worth noting that the UK is little more than a cheerleader in the conflict in Yemen (ignoring the question as to whether attacking the Houthi rebels is counter productive). As Tory cuts to the Royal navy means many UK warships now lack any form of land attack weapon system. In fact some don’t even have the ability to fire at other ships. So they are limited to the gun at the front (which is really a sort of last resort weapon system), or the use of bad language. But don’t worry, we are getting a laser.

Millions more in the UK are now in dire poverty thanks to the Tories. Retail theft is up 32% in a year (my store down the road is like a bloody fortress these days!), as are muggings and petty crime. In fact supermarkets are not only steeply raising prices, but shrinking the size of portions, or using inferior ingredients. Loan sharks and other criminals are taking over neighbourhoods. Simply “getting a better job” isn’t always an option. In fact there’s now trend of young people turning down jobs because they can’t afford the commute or the relocation costs. But don’t worry, we are getting a laser.

You may have heard that we are getting a laser. Well the thing is, while laser weapons have their uses, they also come with serious limitations. The square cube law limits their range to a few tens of km’s. Overcoming this requires a massive up-scaling of the weapon as well as its power requirements. For example, the US Airborne Laser system of the 2000’s morphed from something that could be carried by a fighter, to taking up an entire 747. And even those would have such a limited range that they’d have to operate outside of US air space (or in some cases over enemy territory) to get within range of the missiles they were expected to shoot down.

The laser also has to maintain the beam on the target for several seconds, which limits the number of targets it can engage, which risks it being overwhelmed by shear weight of numbers. It may prove useful at dealing with threats like drones. But there are alternative ways of downing those, using close in weapon systems, electronic jamming or EMP. The Ukrainians have used a combination of these tactics to develop an increasingly effective defence against drones, without the need for fancy lasers.

But this is the problem, much like Hyperloop, flying cars or solar roadways, things like laser weapons seem cool and sexy. Most journalists don’t have a clue about science and thus make it out to be some sort of massive new development. When its really just rehashing an old idea from the era of Reagan’s star wars program. While this laser system might have some future value (e.g. v’s hypersonic missiles), life is about priorities and right now the government could have achieved a lot more by just investing the same money in conventional forces (you know like having warships that can shoot at things!). Or maybe using the cash to fund the NHS or something useful like that. But that won’t have generated tabloid friendly headlines. Which tells us a lot about the government’s real priorities.

The Americanisation of UK politics

Some of the UK government policies in recent weeks have seemed baffling. Not just the usual cronyism (with Cummings drinking buddies getting lucrative no-bid contracts for stuff they aren’t qualified to do) and incompetence….and that’s before we even consider the Russia report. (recall that Cummings who led the brexit campaign also worked in Russia for several years). But we also have out of touch policies, such as stamp duty cuts (great news for anyone who can afford a house, not much use to someone who can’t pay the rent). Or vouchers to middle class people so they can go to dine out.

Think about that, we have thousands of people dependant on food banks, people dying after their benefits were withdrawn, an NHS in crisis (but don’t worry it will all be over by Christmas!), essential workers struggling to make rent, and the government’s response is to spend millions so that people who can afford to eat out, can have that experience subsidised (they also seem to forget that what the Scots & Irish will do is take the voucher to a gastro-pub, order a bowl of chips and then drink the rest of the money, so basically they are handing out porter vouchers!).

Or we have the other obvious contradiction where they are going to sign a US trade deal which allows low-quality US food to be sold in the UK, but not lower the UK’s farming standards. This means that the middle and upper classes will still be able to get their farm fresh organic food, for a higher price mind, while its poor people (or those dependant on food banks) who’ll be forced to eat the GMO modified, chlorine washed American food.

This unfortunately is the shape of things to come, for we are seeing the Americanisation of UK politics. Which was in fact what the last election was really about (if you voted Tory last election ,well this is what you voted for,, its a little late to complain). For those unfamiliar with American politics if America had a tagline it would be along the lines of “if you are poor, you can fu*k off”. Its not just minorities who are discriminated against in the US, its poor people in general. The US government frequently brings in policies that subsidise middle class lifestyles at the expense of those on low incomes.

So for example the entire healthcare system in the US is an absolute mess. The US government spends more money per capita subsidising its private healthcare, than some European nations spend on their entire healthcare system (which covers everybody). And the US citizens have to chip in thousands each of their own money on top of this. Meanwhile there are millions of American’s left without any healthcare cover.

America spends almost as much public money subsidising its private healthcare system (which doesn’t provide universal cover) as other countries spend on their entire healthcare system (which does cover everybody)

The US government subsidises car based lifestyles rather than investing in public transport, even thought the latter would be better for cities (or those on a low income) and produce less carbon emissions. And, as I’ve discussed before the US policies towards climate change amount to spending billions to defend the properties owned by the wealthy, even if it diverts the floodwater downstream and floods out a load of working class people.

Hell even America’s military policy has an element of this. Defence company’s are owned by wealthy donors to the major parties. Much of the staff in these firms are well paid middle class professionals. The only losers are the poor working class saps who have to go fight in the foreign wars and deal with the mental and physical scars afterwards.

The reasons behind these policies are quite easy to understand when you look at things through the eyes of a cynical Washington insider. US elections are bankrolled by the rich. And its the rich and the middle class who effectively decide the outcome of all elections. The poor, frequently don’t vote (indeed they are discouraged from voting) and even those who do vote often vote against their own interests.

If you are white, wealthy well educated or a boomer you are far more likely to vote in US elections

Like much of America, many in the working class are socially conservative, but lean to the left politically. It is a myth that low income Americans put Trump in the White house (hence why he doesn’t mind tens of millions of people getting evicted, if this prevents them from voting, it could be his best shot at re-election). In truth Hilary won the popular vote among low income voters, although a significant minority did vote for Trump for ideological reasons. By contrast higher income voters were more likely to vote for Trump the wealthier they were, presumably because they knew he’d screw over poor people and give the well off a tax cut.

While low income voters voted heavily for Obama (one of the few recent US president’s whose actually given half a crap about the poor) but they then crippled his administration by backing republican congressmen and governors. This is the problem, low income Americans aren’t a consistent voting block. Yet lawmakers know there are large blocks of voters in the middle to upper income level who will vote for them if they back certain policies (e.g. tax cuts, middle class subsidies). And they will also vote against any politicians if they propose certain policies (e.g. tax increases, increased social welfare spending or anything that stinks of changing the status quo).

As far as US politicians are concerned its a case of mind over matter. They don’t mind if the working class gets screwed because politically, they don’t matter. And this also explains why the Bernie or bust brigade are never going to get anywhere. Firstly, there is no way they’d ever get the nomination. Even if they got the nomination there’s large blocks of people who will come out of the woodwork to make damn sure they will never win. And even if they won, their opponents will just filibuster everything or use the Supreme court to run down the clock.

This is not to say the situation is hopeless. Obama did managed to sneak through a few progressive policies, most notably Obamacare. But it frequently means watering down those policies to get something that will pass (and which will be difficult to repeal as soon as the other side is back in power). It also requires playing the long game, relying on keeping someone vaguely leftwing in power to continue the legacy and gradually chip away. Yes Hilary and Biden are fairly right wing (they are to the right of many centre right parties in Europe), but they ain’t going to repeal Obamacare and they could probably be pushed (by a suitable band of left leaning democrats) to extend its provisions to ensure universal coverage. Not a single payer system granted, but an important step in that direction. Hence why it was so foolish for the Bernie or bust brigade to vote against Hilary in 2016.

But either way, we are now seeing the same sorts of politics play out here in the UK. The working class towns who voted Tory because of brexit are likely to be the ones most severely effected by it, as well as the upcoming Covid related depression. And inevitably when the next Tory wave of austerity hits, the Tories aren’t going to take money posh people in the home counties (where most of them live). No they will screw over the poor up north. Sure they’ll make positive noises, stick a lick of paint on a hospital and claim it a new build, replace infrastructure (using private finance) that should have been fixed years ago. Their media allies will play their role in hiding everything. And ultimately they know that half of the public are mugs who will still vote Tory again after the play the race card.

Now I could be wrong, the Tories might have miscalculated. We should get a good indication in next year’s local elections. If labour wins convincingly, then the Tories are in trouble. Doubly so if labour runs on a fairly left wing platform. But if labour only returns to its pre-Corbyn levels of support, then labour are in trouble. They will likely have to play the same game as the democrats and start shuffling over to the right in order to have any chance of winning.

There is of course one similarity between the UK and USA. They both use a decidedly unfair system of voting known as First Past the Post (FptP), which creates this two party system. Hence voters are forced to choose between Tweedledum or Tweedledee, with many MP’s or congress members who are so safe they cannot be unseated, no matter how badly they screw up. By contrast many European states work on the system of Proportional Representation. This allows smaller parties to break the two party duopoly, as it means individual MP’s can be more easily unseated if they piss off their constituents.

This means parties can’t simply abandon a large block of voters, not unless they want to catch a whole pile of political blowback. For example, I discussed before the differences between how Germany phased out its deep pit coal mines (with not one involuntary redundancy) as compared to the US and UK (after a suitable foto-op, miners have pretty much been thrown to the wolves). The Germans did this because no party could afford to piss off that many voters, as it could make all the difference in an election. By contrast West Virginia or North Dakota (two key coal mining states) are pretty solidly republican.

So if there’s any single policy that the left or the centrists should be uniting behind, its reforming the voting system in both the UK and US. Such an unequal voting system inevitably leads to massive inequality, corruption and the squandering of taxpayers money.

Covid news roundup

The room where I hid

So the big news of the last week is the book out by Papa smurf who broke bad John Bolton, that makes various allegations about the abuse of power and incompetence in the Trump white house. It appears to verify the claims regarding the Ukraine scandal as well as the Mueller report. The book suggests Trump tried to do a deal with China just to get re-elected, and discusses his vulnerability to pressure from Putin (plus his closeness to dictators around the world). The book portrays a Trump white house that is so dysfunctional they’ve essentially abandoned routines such as the daily intelligence briefings (as Trump would spend most of the meeting talking about himself).

Of course given that the book also reveals that Trump is so dumb he thought Finland was part of Russia and didn’t realise that the UK has nuclear weapons, it is no wonder they’ve given up. And ultimately the book confirms that Trump is placing his own personal business interests ahead of those of the country, even in the middle of pandemic.

Now the White house will claim its all the lies of a disgruntled former staffer. And Bolton (a war hawk prominent during GW Bush and the Iraq war) can hardly be considered a reliable witness. However, there seems to be an awful lot of disgruntled Trump staffers right now coming out with tell all books. And their stories are confirmed by what we do know does go on in the white house from FOI requests (such as the fact much of Trump’s diary is blank “executive time” where he sits around raging on twitter).

Quite simply put, even if the book was fiction, the very fact many are willing to believe it should tell you everything you need to know about the chaos in the white house. Bottom line, back in 2016 the US voted to not have a president for a few years, but instead let some racist swampy don sit in the white house and pretend to be president, while looting the US treasury.

And the democrats are furious because of the fact Bolton chose not to testify against Trump at his impeachment before the senate, saving it all for his book. Had he said under oath what’s in this book, it would have been very hard for the GOP to let Trump off without any consequences. Which should tell you why he didn’t testify. The Republicans know full well how dirty and dysfunctional Trump’s white house is. So likely there was a deal done, he doesn’t testify, but gets to publish his book (a bit of kicking and screaming from Trump not withstanding) and no doubt he’ll get back into power and some point next time they get back in (or he’ll get some cushy job as an adviser).

Out of control

Meanwhile, the cases of Covid in the US have begun to surge upwards. Last time I checked its up to nearly 40k a day, not far off its previous peak back in April. It could be a 2nd wave, although Antony Fauci reckons its just a continuation of the first wave. But with numerous super-spreading events (political rallies, demonstrations, etc.) this is hardly surprising. What it shows is that the virus isn’t under control and the US squandered the lockdown.

The whole point of a lockdown was to flatten the curve and give countries the time to covid-proof their economies. This is what China, Japan, Korea or Germany succeeded in doing. So even if this is just a dead cat bounce, it indicates that the US hasn’t gotten the virus under control. Hence if and when a 2nd wave happens it will burn through the US unchecked. In effect Trump has taken $2 trillion dollars and squandered every penny. He may as well have spent it on his precious wall for all the good it would have done. Yes you could try another lock down, but will people obey it? And that means another $2 trillion in costs. Can the US afford that?

Trump might get his wish, a wall around the country, but one to keep Americans in rather than foreigners out. Already the EU is considering banning travel from the US due to its failure to get the coronavirus under control.

The hypocrisy of the right

Consider that the current US death toll from Covid stands at over 120,000. That’s more than have been killed in every war the US has fought since the end of World War 2. And a large number of those causalities are directly down to the inaction and incompetence of Trump. The only thing I find surprising is that he’s only 9 points behind. Then again, US politics is now completely tribal. At least 40% of the country are committed followers of the cult of Trump. Its their new religion and he can do no wrong.

A Trump death clock showed up outside his rally in Tulsa

Consider that Hilary’s worse crime was Benghazi (which she had nothing to do with and was in no way responsible for) which saw 4 people killed, sending the right wing media into an 8 year tizzy, even to the point of making a Michael Bay action movie about it. But Trump gets 120,000 people killed, and silence. This is the hypocrisy of the right.

So for example, a largely peaceful BLM protest in London, during which ONE out of tens thousands tried (but failed) to set fire to the UK flag on the Cenotaph, is apparently the worst crime in history (and should carry a sentence longer than you’d get for rape or violent assault), which to the right wing media, turned the whole march into a riot. Yet a few days later a bunch of neo-nazi’s fighting with police is instead branded “a scuffle”. And when one of the skinheads decides to urinate on a memorial, well when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. The mental gymnastics Tory voters brains must go through, its a wonder it doesn’t make them dizzy.

The biggest losers

Meanwhile in brexitland, if Trump does lose in 2020, the biggest loser will likely be the UK. It is very unlikely a trade deal could be signed off and ratified by Congress before the election. As I’ve noted before any deal that screws over Ireland will be politically unacceptable to the Irish American community.

And frankly only a complete moron would negotiate a deal under the present circumstances. Just look at the situation with the proposed Japan trade deal, where the UK has essentially been given 6 weeks to sign one or else piss off. The much heralded CANZUK deal will have zero benefits, might actually leave the country worse off and require the opening up of the UK’s borders to immigration. Which might be just as well, because without more farm workers much of the UK’s harvest for this year will be left to rot in fields.

And while the government claims there will be no border checks, certainly not in NI, actually they’ve quietly sent out letters to the relevant port authorities advising them to start setting up customs posts. Of course they’ve left it way too late, in fact one report seen by Bloomberg suggests they seem to have forgotten about these big things called “trucks” which go through UK ports rather often.

And this is just for openers. If Trump loses, then being such a close ally to him will put the UK at a distinct disadvantage. Consider that the Tories ignored intelligence warnings about Trump’s closeness to Russia and has hampered efforts by the democrats to investigate him. And there will almost certainly be some sort of congressional investigation into Trump if Biden wins. Trump might even face charges over his lack of action over the Coronavirus. The UK will likely face a US government far more hostile than it has faced at any time since the end of world war 2. The UK will likely be sidelined as the US focuses more on improving its relations with the EU. We will go, as Obama warned, to the back of the queue.

The Summer of Covid

And, much like in the US, with major super spreading events such as the recent crowded beaches, its possible the UK too could also soon see a resurgence in Covid cases. The government, against all scientific advice plans to lift all restrictions on the 4th of July, including scraping the 2m rule. But to be fair, given that since the real prime minster a certain special adviser’s  500 mile jolly with no consequences, the public simply don’t believe the government any more. They’ve lost control of the situation.

Boris asks Brit’s to apply common sense…and everyone goes to the beach!

Again one must contrast the UK’s situation, with 65,000 dead and counting (the worst per capita in the world so far) and the experience of EU countries like Germany. And like I’ve said before, if a 2nd wave does start, this will be far more damaging to the country than a few extra weeks of lockdown. And they will have a window of a few weeks at most to re-impose the lockdown and make sure everyone sticks to it. Which I’m doubtful will be possible.

Meanwhile Scotland and Wales have adopted a different policy towards lockdown, with a more gradual relaxing of measures, even thought the number cases is already much lower per capita than in England. This threatens to undermine the policy of both, not least because it looked like the Tories forgot about Scotland and that they have a different policy.

Naturally this means that if a 2nd wave does happen it could be a lot more destabilising. Johnson could well be making the case for Scottish independence.

Wrong failing sacked

Another story over the last week was the sacking of Rebecca Wrong Failing Long Bailey by Keir Starmer over a tweet she sent regarding an article, which included some anti-Israeli material. Now I thought this was a little harsh, but then again it was an unforced error and she was likely on a yellow card already and under orders not to do anything dumb.

Whether or not the article contained anything anti-Semitic is not the point (it included some unverifiable claims about US police copying Israeli military choke holds). The point is it demonstrated she’s politically inept. Labour now have the Tories on the ropes. Under Corbyn PMQ’s was more like gardener’s question time. He’d ask a question along the lines of “I have a Tim from Sevenoaks who has problems with his NHS services….and his Azaleas”, the PM (either Boris or May) would give some generic canned response that didn’t answer the question “the NHS runs hospitals, Azaleas should be planted in the spring” and rather than follow that up or probe a bit deeper, Corbyn would move on to something about rail services…and Juniper bushes.

Now instead, with Starmer, its like a cross examination in the old bailey. Its been rumoured Johnson is resorting to using an earpiece to communicate with Cummings (aka the real PM) and that doesn’t seem to make much difference. His approval ratings have collapsed and the Tories are tanking in the polls. Its considered only a matter of time before labour pulls ahead.

Naturally, the right wing media are desperate for any angle they can use to attack labour with. And her tweet threatened to give them their old favourite anti-Semitism and pin that on Starmer the way they did Corbyn. I guarantee you, if Starmer hadn’t fired her, the right wing media would have gone on about it for months, or until she resigned. And you can bet Johnson would bring it up in PMQ’s.

In short, it was a massive political error and shows how she’d have made a hopeless labour leader. And the hard left of the party can hardly complain. They picked her as Corbyn’s successor. There were other candidates on the left of the party (such as Angela Rayner, who is so left wing she wants to ban private schools), but they were sidelined. Long Bailey was chosen precisely because she was considered to be weak minded and easily manipulated, much as Corbyn was, by the cabal of toxic advisers around him, such as Len McCluskey, Jon Lansman and Karen Brady.

So no, its not a Blairite plot, actually quite the opposite. Starmer does seem to be taking on board a recent report into labour’s loss which says people do want the sort of change labour stands for, but the problems last election were two fold. Firstly, the public didn’t believe labour could deliver on all its ambitious promises. And secondly they just didn’t like Corbyn and didn’t see him as capable of delivering such change.

Corbyn and the hard left prepare to leave labour and form their own party

So the hard left have a choice, accept this reality, get with the program and get behind the new labour leader. Or go off and found your own party…no doubt called the Judean people’s front, before promptly splitting in multiple smaller factions.

The cult of the Punisher

I came across a video regarding the proliferation of police using the punisher symbol on their uniforms or vehicles. This includes some of the cops engaged in violence against peaceful protesters in recent weeks wearing punisher symbols. For those who don’t read comics, the Punisher (aka Frank Castle) is a vigilante anti-hero who hunts down and kills criminals. Which is hardly the sort of thing cops should be trying to emulate.

Furthermore it could be seen as a neo-nazi coded symbol. In much the same way racists use coded language and dog whistles (which may seem innocence enough to outsiders, but they will know the actually meaning), they are also aware that they can’t go around in nazi uniform or wearing their hoods. So instead they used coded symbols, such as an 88, or a Celtic cross as a substitute for a swastika…or a punisher symbol as a sub for the nazi death’s head symbol.

As a result, in most other countries the cops would at least get a telling off for this, if not a suspension or sacking. The police represent and protect the public trust, and you undermine that when you wear symbols unrepresentative of the values you are supposed to be upholding (such as vigilante justice!). I mean how would conservatives feel of a hard left supporting cop when around with a hammer and sickle on his car, or wearing one of those soviet style bearskin hats. The right wing pundits would likely crack a rib screaming about it.

So its a massive disciplinary issue, yet nothing is being done about. Which should just show you how out of control the US police forces have become. They’ve become a law onto themselves. And you would have hoped they’ve have the self awareness to realise that anyone going around with pictures of skulls on their uniforms means you are probably the baddies.

Boris Sats

We have the makings of yet another Tory tax payers money burning party brewing with the UK government planning to try and buy its own satellite network. Officially this is due to brexit, as the EU are refusing access to their Galileo system. Not true, the UK will enjoy access, as will every other country (much as we currently have access to the US GPS system). The trouble is that the EU (much like the US) will reserve the right to scramble or turn off signals at certain times. Which could impact the UK’s ability to operate its nuclear deterrent.

Initially the Tories were planning to build their own “world beating” system…but given that there is zero chance of that happening, so instead the Tory plan is to buy their way into the proposed OneWeb satellite constellation system. However, this service is in the bargain bin because it went bankrupt.

It did so because its up against competition from the SpaceX and their Starlink system, which is far more advanced. Not to mention the fact that Musk has the means to launch his own rockets rather than buying someone else’s. Then there’s the existing Iridium sat-phone network, which is upgrading its satellites to handle data.

Its probable there is only room for one such network, although its possible Iridium and Starlink could carve out their own independent niches. And its far from proven that satellite based data transfer can be competitive with ground based fibre optic networks. However there is certainly no way two networks such as OneWeb and Starlink could compete against one another….and I think you can guess which one is most likely to fail!

So the Tories are going to have to not only spend a significant amount of money buying and then subsidising this network, but there’s the small detail of how to launch it. The UK lacks the facilities to do this, so they’d have to rely on the either US or EU based rockets. So the Tories are concerned about not having an independent data and navigation system and their solution is to ask the EU and the US to provide one for them, WTF? What could possibly go wrong!

Well aside from the fact that these satellites are intended for data transfers not location information. You can piggy back the relevant signals, or use the data streams to trace locations of users, but that’s not really going to work when it comes to guiding nuclear weapons….unless you are planning to send Putin an email before you launch and hope he stupid enough to open it!

Why does this remind me of Cummings track and trace app (that drained phone batteries due to all the spyware and won’t work on certain types of phones) or the ventilators contracts gifted to Tory donors that turned out to be useless, or the no bid PPE contracts to a Tory donor who doesn’t sell any PPE! Like I said, its another Tory money burning party, a trough of swill for their donors to stick their snouts into and gorge on public money. I hope those who voted Tory are proud to see their taxes well spent.

Gone to the Dogs

And speaking of money burning parties, I mentioned before the story about how a UK minster unlawfully approved of a development on the Isle of Dogs, to the benefit of a Tory party donor, such that he could avoid paying £50 million in taxes to the local council.

Well now, he’s been forced to disclose emails and text messages, which includes an exchange by one of the investors, who just so happens to be Richard Desmond, the former owner of the Express newspaper, and the minster in question. During this exchange they are both fairly matter a fact about what they are doing is certainly dodgy and corrupt.

Plus Desmond does not hide his contempt for the local council referring to them as “the Marxists“ and his strong desire to avoid the payment of taxes. Recall, he used to run one of the UK’s leading newspapers, a strongly Tory paper. Keep in mind there is a rule in UK law saying you need to be a “fit and proper” person to run a newspaper. Does this sound like a fit and proper person? Is Jenrick going to resign? LOL! Ya sure when pigs fly maybe!

The global bike drought

I was considering buying a new mountain bike recently. Long story short, but my current bike is unique, in that there’s something else wrong with it every day. I’ve taken it to bike shops before and they’ve told me that they so much as pumped up the tires I’d be in negative equity. As a trade in, I’d get a slap in the face with a soggy set of bike shorts in exchange for them taking it off my hands.

Now granted, it has its advantages. Notably its never going to get stolen (I once left it for a month chained up outside a Glasgow railway station and nothing happened to it, I’ve previously left in unlocked in public and it was still there when I got back). But I’m probably due a change. Its getting hard to source parts (they just don’t make those oversized front wheels and wee back ones anymore) and mine doesn’t have suspension (so I’m shaking for several minutes after a downhill section).

So I go online and try to place an order and I’m promised my bike will be delivered…in late August….maybe! I try somewhere else, order date will be guaranteed, your bike will arrive….in November! It would seem one of the effects of Covid has been to spark a worldwide bike shortage. This is due to both an increase in demand (as many are now trying to cycle everywhere rather than rely on public transport) at the same time production is down due to Covid restrictions.

So I’m thinking I’ll just have to keep my bike in service. Although I am thinking of getting an out of service, but more modern bike, hopefully with suspension, stripping it down and restoring it to working order.

Trump’s broken America

The protests in America should not really come as that big a surprise. They represent an outpouring of pent up rage and repression. We’ve seen the US police use tactics that would not be out of place in a totalitarian regime. And its also worth noting the violence against journalist, with a CNN reporter even arrested live on air. One has to draw a parallel between this police harassment and Trump’s constant attacks against the media.

Yet the so-called “libertarians” on the right are nowhere too be seen. An unarmed citizen is murdered by the government, no reaction. Government forces drive vehicles into protesters, no reaction. The president threatens to take away the right to protest and put troops on the street, no reaction. President steals money off veterans, no reaction. State officials ask non-essential businesses to maybe close for a few weeks due to a disease pandemic, Tyranny!

But it does raise the question about how to solve the problem. Some states are talking about banning certain forms of restrain or making police more accountable for their actions. But I’d argue this doesn’t really solve the underlying problem. Its like proscribing a few aspirin as a cure for cancer. The problems here are much more deeply rooted.

First of all we need to acknowledge that racism in America is a very real thing, its not the exception its more the norm. The reality is that in some parts of the US, segregation ended in name only. America is a melting pot under which the fire was never lit. And this makes ending inequality very difficult. Its all too easy to lavish funding on a schools and public services in a white neighbourhood, while neglecting those in poorer districts. The statistics for covid-19 deaths, where BAME fatalities are much higher, speaks volumes as to the extent of this inequality. Hell, there’s even been times they’ve build flood barriers that protect a wealthy white suburb at the expense of flooding the poorer neighbourhood downriver.

However, its not quite this simple. After all, there are racists over here in the UK, or in the EU, including some racist cops. Just look at any recent election result! Yet we don’t see the same volume of violent arrests and racist incidents nearly as often this side of the Atlantic. While a black person is significantly more likely to be shot by the police than a white person in the US, Americans are 70 times more likely to be killed by the police than UK citizens.

Then again, as I’ve pointed out in a prior post, cops over here don’t have to worry about guns as much. While in the US, thanks to the NRA, every tom, dick and harry has an assault rifle (because having more guns makes everyone so much safer…we’ll just ignore all the evidence that says otherwise). Thus US cops can justify going in with guns blazing and using excessive force (we thought he had a gun), while its a little harder for a British cop to get away with that. Yes it has happened, but not nearly as often as in the US.

So the problem does go a lot deeper than simple racism. Gun culture is part of the problem. But its also the mindset it has created in the police, who have been increasingly militarised, with military style equipment (much of it on display in the last few weeks) as well as military style tactics. To be clear, while yes there were some looters taking advantage of the protests, the protests themselves were mostly peaceful. Using anti-riot equipment and tactics is completely out of proportion (again, can you imagine the outcry if they used those tactics against Trump supporters protesting the lockdown).

It is indicative of an attitude that has developed within the police, where they seem to think that they are above the law and they know best. And many of the policing methods used by the US police are outdated and discredited. Let’s start with the matter George Floyd was murdered/arrested over. He was accused of passing a counterfeit bank note. Most other police forces in the rest of the world would argue that not only is that not grounds to conduct a violent arrest with guns drawn, but probably not even grounds for an arrest at all.

You don’t have to arrest people for non-violent offences (generally you have to pose a threat to public safety, property or be otherwise acting in a disorderly manner and even in the later case you’ll usually get a police caution first). Its a waste of police time to do so (you have to cuff him, drive him down the station, book him in, put him in a cell, have someone guard him, interview, etc.). Its far easier to just pop a letter in the post and issue the suspect with a court summons, or issue a fixed penalty notice (which basically means you get a letter offering you the choice between paying a fine, going on a course of some kind, or doing some community service or you can take the matter to court and dispute the charges).

Similarly, the so-called zero tolerance policy is discredited. When NYPD got the hump over a previous Mayor’s efforts to reform the service and staged a “slowdown”, crimes rates instead went down. And research suggests that aggressive policing for petty crimes, or punishing poverty can ultimately lead to more crime. An end to NY’s “stop and frisk” policy did not see any rise in crime.

In fact, that’s another problem with US justice, the frequency with which people are locked up. America has a prison population of 2.2 million, the highest in the world (equivalent to the populations of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham all behind bars) and the highest  prison population per capita (beating out many totalitarian regimes!). And again, yes blacks and latino’s are far more likely to be banged up in the US. But Americans in general are 5 times more likely to end up in jail than people here in Scotland (and if you’ve ever seen Sauchiehall street on the night after an old firm game, you’ll know that’s not because Scot’s are a bunch of law abiding teatotallers).

And as, with the issue of arrests, there are many good reasons to question whether prison is the best form of punishment. After all if prisons were so effective, surely crime rates in the US would be significantly lower (and isn’t the point of lax gun laws to lower the rate of crime as well?). Yet the opposite is true. They are basically the university’s of crime.

And part of the problem here is how US policing  is organised….or should I say disorganised. In a lot of cases positions such as prosecutors and sheriff’s are elected. Which sounds like a good idea, until you see some of the wackos who have been elected over the years, the poor management of taxpayer funds and the corruption that has resulted .

But even the competent ones can struggle to change things. Crime figures in the US have been falling for decades and its questionable if you need so many officers. In most other countries its recognised that you don’t need large numbers of officers on patrol (we have CCTV cameras and all sorts of electronic evidence gathering methods), not least because crime is increasingly moving online.

US crimes rates have been falling…..

But when your job is dependant on votes from a bunch of illiterate Karen’s (who want to speak to the manager), who “feel” less safe (cos you are getting older, nothing the police can do about that), statistics ain’t going to cut it. These voters, and the police themselves, put pressure on US cities and districts to provide the police with more and more funding. And it has now run completely out of control. Consider that LA spends nearly half of its city budget on policing. NY spends about $6 billion to police one city, yet England and Wales spends about double that to police the entire country.

….over the same period police spending increased substantially

Put a whole army of heavily armed and bored cops on the street and tell them to go looking for trouble and guess what, they’ll find it. Not with criminals, who one assumes are smart enough not to break the law while a police cruiser goes by (and in any event thanks to the NRA they are heavily armed, the cops won’t go near them, way too dangerous!). No instead, like any bully, they’ll pick on someone who can’t fight back. Like a man relaxing on his mom’s porch, or another picking up rubbish outside his apartment block, or a fireman sitting in his own car, or even the state attorney on her way to work! (what links all of these people? I think you can guess!).

In short, America has spent the last few decades running a massive version of the Stanford prison experiment, with the same predictable outcomes. And that experiment was terminated with the advice that nobody should try to run it again.

Finally, we need to acknowledge the lack of a social safety net that exists in the US. If you are poor you likely have little to no access to healthcare or social welfare. Getting seriously ill can mean dying. Losing your job can mean going hungry (and losing your health care coverage!). And this isn’t just at the federal level, but also the state and country level, as all of the cash has been hoovered up to pay for police forces. Which in itself makes the problem worse, as it means the police are often the only social service available for some communities, meaning they get drawn into things that are none of their business (what the UK police refer to as FATDOB, or Fu*k All To Do wt Old Bill).

And with the ladder pulled up some time ago (by the boomers, aka the worst generation), this state of affairs has created a whole host of massive social problems in the US, ranging from drug abuse, the opioid crisis, gang culture and of course racism. And these social problems are self reinforcing. If only a handful of rogue police treat the local community like they are the enemy, well pretty soon that community aren’t going to trust the police, they won’t call them if they see a crime (a factor with regard to those falling crime figures I mentioned earlier, they could in some cases represent people less likely to report crimes because they fear the cops will show up and shoot them or some innocent bystander). At this point the police cease to be a police force, but instead, an occupying military force, not unlike what you’d find in a totalitarian regime.

Which is why some are calling for pretty radical reform, such as defunding police forces entirely (which appears to be the fate of the Minneapolis police department at the centre of this crisis), disbanding the service, rebuilding a force from scratch while diverting funding into community projects. This may seem extreme, but there isn’t really many other options that would realistically work. There has been attempts at reform before, but institutional resistance from the police themselves makes it impossible.

Case in point, officers in Buffalo nearly killed an elderly man and were suspended from duty, prompting 50 of their snowflake fellow officers to resign from the riot squad, but still stay on the force and draw their salary (to draw a comparison, suppose one of my colleagues nearly beat a vulnerable student to death, left them on the ground bleeding and when the uni fired said lecturer we all refused to do any work, but continued to draw a salary, how would the DailyFail/Fox news react to that?).

Meanwhile in Washington, there is of course zero chance of any help from Trump and the democrats just voted to extend the Patriot Act, expanding Trump’s powers as regards policing. Meanwhile Mr Vanilla’s reaction to all this was to have a brain fart about how maybe the cops could shoot people in the leg rather than the head (hate to break it to you Joe but even a leg wound can be fatal & what if they miss and the bullet buries itself in the skull of a nearby child?).

It should be noted that there is some precedence here. The Royal Ulster Constabulary was reorganised as the PSNI as part of the NI peace process. The city of Camden in NJ, after a major scandal, disbanded their police force and replaced it with a reformed service. But doing so with a service as large as the NYPD would be a bit of a challenge to say the least.

But of course, without the right measures in place to stop the same rogue officers simply re-applying for their old jobs, you’ll only be changing the sign on the door. If the same morons elected in the past as sheriffs keep getting elected, nothing changes. And I’d argue that there needs to be a complete change of attitudes within the police. I’d suggest a rule that if they are caught breaking the law, they should get double the punishment a citizen gets (so if the penalty is 5 years, they get 10). A policy I’d also extend to politicians (and their special advisers).

A policy of collective responsibility is also needed. The police can’t just shrug the shoulders and blame a couple of bad apples, they need to take responsibility as a force for the short comings of all officers (and thus encourage them to report rogue, incompetent or racist officers). And that also goes for companies as well, notably Fascistbook Facebook which is making no effort to reign in racists spread miss-information on its platform (personally, if I had a Facebook account, I’d have deleted it by now).

But, as I’ve pointed out, this goes way beyond a couple of crooked cops. It cuts right into the heart of a whole bunch of deeply rooted social and economic problems many in the US have chosen to ignore for many decades. So long as you have these massive poverty traps, you will have all of these social ills and the crime that results.

And to bring things back to the UK, this is the scary truth. The post-brexit end state the Tories are aiming for is basically the mess we see in the more deprived parts of the US today. Meanwhile, the rich in their gated communities and home counties estates can just plug their ears and ignore all that. Hence why the removal of the statue of a slave trader in Bristol is probably a positive signal that this policy will go down like a lead balloon.

The statue of a slaver is dumped in the sea by protesters in Bristol

But in America, resolving this crisis means a change of policy nationwide. It will not be easy, it will take time. If there was a quick and simple solution, someone would have already tried that. But certainly at least the first step is acknowledging there is a problem here and everything is not okay.

The truth about the blitz

Britain underwent a crime wave during the war years

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

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

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

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

World War 2 was the golden age of the Spiv

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More News

6095 days since mission accomplished and the US starts another war

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paradise lost

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

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

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

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

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

The assassination of Jess Philips by the coward Jeremy Corbyn

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

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

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

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

Changing trains

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

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

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

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

Chaos reigns at Disney

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

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

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

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

Arise lord Poverty

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

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

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

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

The Boris bridge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Musk v’s astronomy

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

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

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

Trump’s wall

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

What Trump promised….

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

….reality

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

News roundup

The Pedo party

Is it just me or does it appear like the major qualification you need to get ahead in the Republican party is to be a pedo, kiddy fiddler or sex offender of some form or another? Since Trump took over we’ve seen a long line of dirty old men going into the white house. I mean they even set up a dating site (for straight blue blooded republicans) and the male model they chose in the ads turned out to be a sex offender. Its like Trump is some sort of magnet for this sort of thing.

Consider that evangelicals, who overwhelmingly vote GOP, have gone from being 80% likely to say that a president should resign for having an affair (and quote a bible verse), to being 80% likely to say, ah it doesn’t matter, the bible? Well that says lots of things, I mean its not as if we have to take it literary!

At least it does go to prove my theory of conservative flip flop syndrome. In essence the Republicans, much like the UK Tories, aren’t really a political party anymore. They have no actual policies, no direction. They are just a cult devoted to follow which ever random nutty sex offender/tax cheat happens to be in charge at the time. And once he loses power in disgrace, they’ll shrug their shoulders and say so what, then forget about him. Recall how back in the Bush days, or Romney in 2008, they were the true messiah, failing to support them was treason again the US….until they criticised Trump! Of course, like any cult, the GOP needs funding, so they’ll happily sell their services to whichever random billionaire can afford to bribe them.

What this shows is that the democrats need to take the gloves off. The GOP won’t fight fair and you won’t win a fair fight when they’ve stacked the system against you. I’d propose that as soon as they get power back, prioritise shoring up the checks and balances. I’d federally mandate how electoral districts are organised (the states draw the line, but according to rules set by the federal government, overseen by non-partisan officials) and introduce proportional representation. Both would guarantee that the party that wins the most votes gets the most seats (the only reason why the GOP get so many seats is gerrymandering). It would also open up the possibility of smaller parties getting representation.

As for this Brett guy, once a democratic president is in charge, I’d give him and any other Trump justices a choice, resign or we stack the supreme court. There’s nothing in the constitution that stops a democratic president/congress either setting term limits on supreme court justices (which would force all but two to resign and be immediately replaced) or say appointing a few dozen twenty something women (and card carrying members of the ACLU) to the supreme court (this incidentally is what FDR threatened to do). Suddenly its likely he’ll remember some important yard work in needs to catch up on and retire.

Jacinda and the peacocks

At the UN there was controversy when some delegations showed up with babies, but at least the NZ PM’s baby didn’t make a speech and crap all over the place….unlike America’s baby (who got laughed out of the room).

Much was made of the NZ PM’s speech and the contrast between it and Trump’s. She spoke of unity and fixing global problems, he spoke mostly about himself and blaming others for his problems. I was reminded of something a military officer once told me about the traits that the military look for in a good officer (good judgement, leadership, team player, etc.) and there are red flags which signal that this guy should never be given command, as he’s likely to become a dangerous liability (who’ll march his unit into a minefield and get them all killed).

Well we see a lot of those red flags on display at the UN summit. Selfishness and putting oneself first is always a worry (note to Trump, there’s no “i” in team….although there is a “u” in c*nt!). An officer like this is likely to send in his boys, then take off in the other direction when the shooting starts. I recall Oliver Stone once mentioning that on his first day in Vietnam his officer put him out on point!

Other worrying red flags include impulsive behaviour (Trump again, he who dares….usually walks straight into an ambush), or equally bad, indecisiveness (Theresa May). Its important for a commander to be aware of what’s going on around them, so a detachment from reality (Trump or the brexiters) is very dangerous. And a good commander needs to listen, a bad one ignores advice (Trump again) or even punishes (Corbyn) those who offer it.

However of all of the traits you want to avoid in a commander, its one who blames others for his misfortune (such as foreigners). He berates his own men for disloyalty (have you given them reasons to be loyal, or plenty of reasons to question everything you say?). Or worse, blaming the enemy (if the enemy isn’t co-operating with your plans, well that’s kind of supposed to happen!). In short, the buck stops with the commander and any who is unwilling or unable to accept that is unfit for command.

All in all, this populist wave has left us a world led by strutting chest puffing peacocks, all of whom won’t be so much as put in charge of anything more dangerous than a stapler if they joined the military. All we can do is hope there isn’t some sort of crisis in the next few years, because I have very little faith in the majority of the world’s leaders. And its no wonder NZ is becoming the bolt hole of choice.

Hilary would have been worse

How different it would have been if the person who got the most votes had won. Mention this of course to Trump voters (or the Bernie or bust brigade) and they’ll mumble something about “Hilary would have been worse”. Really?

Would Hilary have appointed a long list of sex offenders to senior positions? (granted she’d have had to lock Bill in the basement or put him in a chastity belt). Would she have appointed a bunch of incompetents (purely on the basis of loyalty rather than ability to do the job) to senior government positions? Would she have left hundreds of important posts vacant? Would her aides have to brief her using cue cards and take stuff of her desk in case she did something stupid? Would she have gone to Russia and buried her tongue up Putin’s a*s?. Would she have started rolling back environmental protections and workers rights, or given a massive tax cut to the super rich? Would she have started a trade war for no good reason? Would Chelsea Clinton be jetting around the world acting as the defacto foreign secretary? Would she have started to use the US treasury as her own personal piggy bank, striking deals with countries on the basis of what most benefited her personal businesses? Would America have fallen from the world’s most respected nation to the butt of the world’s jokes?

As I said from the beginning, Hilary would not have been my first choice as President. But in the election you had a choice between her and the pus*y grabber in chief. I know which of those two is the lest worse scenario. This is why I do worry about the mid terms. The democrats seem to be at war with themselves. The only condition that should apply is are you willing to oppose Trump and if possible get him impeached? Anyone who meets that criteria gets my vote.

On which point btw, I strongly advise voting for republicans, even the moderate ones critical of Trump. As recent events have shown, they can be leaned on by the party and made to toe the line (probably because having had their snout in the feeding trough for so long the GOP and its donors have a lot dirt on them that they could easily leak to the media).

To draw an analogy its like the US was this town out in the old west and the position for sheriff was open. The choice was some guy in a black hat, who had a English accent (despite being German), a large scar and an evil laugh (and when he laughs birds drop dead out of the sky). Or some other guy (the man with no name), who while not being necessarily a good guy, he clearly ain’t the baddie. But no, some of the town want to vote for old man Bernie, despite the fact he’s been pushing up the daises up on boothill for the last couple of months. Well now they’re getting bull whipped by the black hat, while he burns down the church (with the preacher inside) and they are trying to console themselves that might have been worse.

Musk out at Tesla

So Musk managed to get himself banned from running his own company. Well to be honest this was a train wreck that was going to happen sooner or later. There’s a certain discipline that comes with being a CEO, not unlike some of those qualities I mentioned earlier. However, they are really only optional. There is in fact one key skill which a CEO must have above all else – keeping your big mouth shut!

A CEO is the face of his company. Anything he says is going to have an impact on the share price. This is why most tend to be fairly guarded about what they say, often taking the view that if you don’t have anything good to say, then don’t say anything. Hence why some of the statements from CEO’s regarding brexit should be setting off alarm bells.

Musk got himself in trouble thanks to his efforts to stop short sellers driving down Tesla’s share price. Yes, this was unfair, but on the other hand, he was kind of making it easy for them. What with calling a British diver a pedo, refusing to answer questions at a press conference because “they weren’t cool” or smoking pot live on the internet. As his downfall should show, the markets are decidedly unfair. They are a bit of a wild west. Yes the corrupt sheriff can send out his one spurs to rob your farm. Yet when you set out to take revenge its you who ends up swinging from a rope, regardless of whether or not you shot the deputy.

Which is slightly ironic given his, and other tech billionaires, affinity for libertarianism. In a libertarian world it would be even worse. Ford and GM would in fact have likely crushed him along time ago, same as Standard oil would destroy its competitors. So I suppose what goes around comes around.

Minister for starvation

Its difficult to avoid talking about brexit. Firstly we have the story than given the difference between where the UK would be if we hadn’t voted for brexit and where we are now, the UK is now 500 million a week worse off (you’ll recall those ridiculous promises of an extra 350 million a week!). The UK has been forced to appoint a minster of starvation supply (for the first time outside of a war).

Meanwhile, back in fantasy land, at the Tory party conference, they were trying to outdo each other with their different brexit fantasies. It was less a conference and more of a unicorn horn measuring contest. Brexit to the Tories is more about who they want to be the captain of the Titanic as it sinks and whether or not they should burn the lifeboats before anyone can use them. Meanwhile, a bunch of young Tory activists got caught with racist and classist slogans on their T-shirts, but of course that’s allowed, yet a labour supporter did it, the newspapers would be wanting Corbyn to be hung.

On a positive note, it was noted that Theresa May never mentioned her Chequers plan in her speech, which could hint that she’s going to roll over and accept whatever the EU offers her….Or it could be because she knows that if she so much as mentioned that word, it would be like playing the rains of Castamere at a wedding. Within seconds they’ve have all started stabbing one another. So probably more of a survival instinct than anything.

Increasingly it looks like we’ll just have to wait for all the brexiters to die off and vote to re-join the EU….which probably won’t take too long, ironically thanks to brexit. The NHS (which again the bus ads promised would be better off) is already in crisis, with a Breixtus of EU staff leaving, not surprising when brexit threatens to turn them into 2nd class citizens. The government’s solution? Oh, we’ll just have the nurses train as doctors or shorten their training time. I mean its not as if people die if hospitals make a mistake or something.

Making rent

I’ve come across quite a few stories over the last few months about homelessness in California, one of the largest concentrations of wealth in the world. And we’re in many cases talking about people with jobs who are homeless, as its become difficult if not impossible to make rent in California, to the point where some are sleeping in their cars or living out of campervans. Let me repeat that, we’re talking about people with jobs, who work hard, who have kids and a family living in their cars. Welcome to Trump’s America.

Now too be fair, this is part of the hangover from the financial crisis. And we really have to pin the blame for that on past US presidents (notably G. W. Bush). And of course Obama’s recovery was a rising tide that didn’t lift all ships. Governors of California (who have come from both parties since the crash) also have to take some share of the blame. That said, Trump has cut federal housing aid, and who did he appoint in charge of housing? Ben Carson (the first person to conduct brain surgery on himself).

So there’s plenty blame to share out, the question is how to fix it. Well clearly a lack of rent control is part of the problem. If you let landlords charge $2000 a month for a flat (with a two month deposit on top), then nobody except the better off will be able to pay that. And there’s a lack of good affordable social housing. In Europe for example, try to get planning permission for a hundred luxury condos and you’ll be told nope, not going to happen, unless you add in a few dozen affordable homes or council houses.

Of course there’s an elephant in the room here we’re ignoring, one you can clearly see if you’ve ever flown over California and looked out of a window – urban sprawl and low density housing. While we’ve got problems with urban sprawl in Europe yes, but never to the same extend as it occurs in the US. Developments that would be refused in Europe are routinely approved in the US.

In fact, government policies intended to promote car ownership are a major contributory factor, by for example legally requiring large parking lots everywhere. By contrast, getting planning permission for car parks in Europe is tricky and will often be refused (we’ve a long standing issue in my block with parking, long story but the bottom line is the council will routinely turn down applications for parking lots, unless you’ve got a damn good reason for having one and even then they’ll insist its underground).

The end consequence of this is vast spread out cities where you need a car to just get around. Case in point, the population density of LA is around 1,000 per sq km, while in London is closer to 5,000 and Paris 21,000. If the oil ever runs out LA is going to starve to death, given in some LA neighbourhoods you can literally get picked up by the cops for just walking. The US has legally mandated a country full of vast parking lots, now its got them filled with homeless people rather than apartment blocks.

And, as always, this highlights the shortcomings of the libertarian politics of the tech billionaires. Their lassie-faire approach amounts to them amassing vast fortunes and living in huge mansions, while the serf’s who toil away making all that money have to steal food from work, then find a quiet parking lot to catch some sleep in and hope they don’t get mugged. This is what a libertarian world looks like.

A real magic money tree, scientific publishing

An interesting article here from George Monbiot about the racket of scientific publishing. If you are an academic, in almost all cases you have to publish your research in a peer reviewed journal. Many academics will in fact have it in their contract of employment that they must publish a certain number each year, often in specific journals.

However these journals are owned by private companies, notably Elsevier, which was the brain child of Robert Maxwell. So in essence we academics use public funds to generate intellectual property that we are then obliged to hand over to a private company, who then charge our own university library a small fortune to be able to access it. In essence we are being contractually obliged to participate in a wealth transfer scam from the public sector into the pockets of media billionaires.

This situation could be solved relatively simply. Either the government just nationalises these firms and makes their data publicly accessible free of charge. Or it puts in place a rule prohibiting uni’s from setting targets for staff based on for-profit journals. This would mean we publish in open access journals more frequently. Faced with the risk that the intellectual property they own would quickly become worthless (scientific data tends to get obsolete pretty quickly), the private publishing houses would then likely be forced to go open access themselves……

Comcast buys Sky, Murdoch on suicide watch

….So why you may ask, aren’t governments trying to move towards open access journals? Well because they don’t want to upset media tycoons like Rupert Murdoch of course. The media is something of a closed shop, a forbidden lawn onto which politicians dare not tread….or the Sun will publish an article calling them gay.

However, in amongst all the other stories recently, a little story slipped through that’s actually of significant importance. For many years now Rupert Murdoch has sought to take full control of UK broadcaster Sky. However, while the UK’s politicians are a spineless lot, they ain’t stupid enough not to see the danger with letting him have full control of all the newspapers and half the TV audience. So they’ve been obstructing that process, although more about going through the motions than any real opposition.

Well the phone hacking scandal forced those plans to be kicked into the long grass for a while. Brexit provided good cover to resume the process, but the chaos it unleashed slowed things down somewhat. However now at the moment of truth, what’s gone and happened? A rival firm, Comcast, has swooped in and bought Sky right out from under Murdoch’s nose. And if to make matters worse, its CEO while republican, is more of a moderate (read a greedy rich as*hole, but at least one whose vaguely sane). So its likely he’ll start to shift Sky more towards the centre ground of politics, rather than constantly supporting the Tories.

Keep in mind that for much of recent UK politics this has been going on in the background. Murdoch has supported this candidate or that and got his newspapers to sing their praises regardless of how nutty or ludicrous what they were proposing was. He’s more responsible for brexit or Trump than probably anything else. And now suddenly, in no small part thanks to Trump and brexit, he’s been pipped at the finishing post. Well, what goes around, sooner or later, it comes around. Karma can be a bitch!

Not so cool news

I had a bit of a rant before about Game of Thrones season 7. However my main bone of contention was with I’d call the “cool dude” school of film making, that seems to have taken over. This brand of film making views the plot and the script as secondary and merely a way of stitching together various epilepsy inducing CGI sequences (the point of which seems to be to get the audience to say “this is cool dude”).

The trouble is that this is a style of film making that gets boring very quickly. And as its necessary to throw away much of what makes any particular genre appealing to its fan base, it tends to piss off the fans. A situation not helped by hiring directors or producers whose knowledge of say, star wars/trek is limited to whatever they managed to google while in the cab on the way to the studio.

Well it would appear the wheels are starting to come off. On the back of poor box office and bad reviews several leading actors in the latest Star trek film have quit, reportedly over pay disputes (if the film ain’t making as much they need more of those dollars for the CGI budget, which the actors seem unwilling to accept). Its possible the next star trek film might be cancelled. There’s even a crazy rumour going around that the studio is so desperate they’re going to hand it over to Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Romulans? The hateful Klingons? Vulcan fiction? Kill Kirk?).

Also on their way to the job centre are the actors playing superman, batman and Cpt. America. Meanwhile, the star wars franchise is in such disarray after the Solo movie flop (that was a train wreck you could just see coming!), that it looks like any further movies (bar the ones too far into production to halt) are also going to get canned.

In short, the customer is always right. Piss off your fans, they’ll vote with their feet. I mean I’ve not been to say very many of these movies recently because, to be blunt I’d be as well off shining a strobe light in my eye for two hours.

Ultimately the problem is these major studios have a monopoly on the story lines, nobody else can make a star trek film without the risk of being sued, even though its a genre that’s over fifty years old and its original creator has been dead for twenty years. If you left any other company (cars, laptops, washing machines, etc.) with the exclusive rights to produce a product and they’d never innovate, their products would become increasingly bloated and over priced.

So this is probably one situation where we should let the markets sort it out. Let anyone who wants to make a superhero/sci-fi movie do so. Yes some will be dire and laughably bad (the Russian film Guardians for example), but others might well be much better than anything the mainstream studios can come up with.

Katla is isn’t going to blow….for now!

If you are a tabloid reader, you might have heard that the Icelandic volcano Katla was about to erupt. For those who don’t know, Katlia is the bigger brother of the big E volcano (I ain’t even going to try and get its spelling right!) that erupted in 2010 and disrupted all of those flights. Well Katla is many times larger (with a Caldera 10km’s across) and it erupts about every 100 years. When was the last eruption? About 100 years ago! So an eruption from Katla would be far worse and could last for much longer (possibly months).

However, before you start digging a shelter or stockpiling food (a sensible idea perhaps, but for other reasons!) no, that’s not what the scientists studying the volcano actually said. In fact they pointed out they could see no signs the volcano was in imminent danger of eruption. The study did reveal a lot more about the potential impact of its eruptions. For example, in one past eruption it created a flash flood with a flow rate the Nile, Mississippi, Amazon, and Yangtze combined.

So while its unlikely to go off tomorrow, the warning is that we probably won’t get a huge amount of warning prior to any future eruption. Which given how disruptive this could be, it would seem to make sense to put in place some contingency plans for how we are going to cope, if say transatlantic flights had to stop for a few months…..so not really something the British have to worry about after March 2019 then!

NATO Funding

Trump, in between insulting his hosts and committing several diplomatic faux pas, criticised other Nato members over their defence spending, most notably Germany. However, the situation is a little more complicated that he suggests. If anything this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Firstly, Germany has a very short coastline, and thus not much of a navy (which means they don’t need to but expensive kit like nuclear subs or aircraft carriers). And they also don’t have nuclear weapons. Both of these factors reduces their military spending considerably, as well as the number of personnel required.

Overall, Germany has the 5th largest military in NATO. And with the exception of Turkey all of the other 3 are both nuclear powers with a large navy. It also has the 4th largest military budget (in terms of overall spending). And again, all of the 3 ahead of them are nuclear powers, with a large navy.

One could argue that while the Bundeswehr is quite capable of defending Germany itself, they lack in terms of numbers and stockpiles of equipment. This means that in the event of a shooting war they’d struggle to cope with high attrition losses for very long. And they’d be only be able to provide limited help to their neighbours.

However, that said, if there’s two headlines nobody in Europe wants to read over their Sunday breakfast its “Germany rearming” or “German troops in Poland”. So we need to apply some political realism here.

Also the German’s would probably counter by pointing out that they have a large industrial base and build almost all of the military hardware that they need. In fact they are the leading supplier of equipment to Nato when comes to things like tanks, military vehicles, artillery and heavy weapons. Indeed, even US tanks use the German made Rheinmetall 120 mm gun. So in the event of a shooting war, so long as Germany can keep those factories open, they’ll simply be able to build replacement equipment for anything they (or their Nato allies) need.

The German made Leopard 2 equips many Nato armies, with nearly 3,500 in service

And ultimately the German’s are very efficient and stereo-typically Teutonic when it comes to their military budget. That is to say, they don’t waste a lot of money on stuff they don’t need. And they manage military spending very carefully to reduce waste.

By contrast, as I’ve mentioned in prior posts, the UK are hopeless when it comes to managing their military budget, with a litany of overspends and foolish projects that should never have gotten funded.

And across the pond, a significant proportion of America’s $700+ billion budget is wasted. Aside from simple poor money management or incompetence, the US has lots of military hardware it simply doesn’t need. E.g. 11 aircraft carriers, more than the rest of the world combined (at a time when its widely accepted that they are vulnerable to long range missile attack or submarines). Plus they’ve got over a dozen amphibious assault vessels (basically a mini-carrier) as well. And they’ve got large numbers of military bases in the centre of the country which don’t really serve any useful purpose (what do they think is going to happen? Chinese paratroopers are going to drop in and invade Tennessee? And don’t all the locals own guns? Isn’t that the whole point of the 2nd amendment?).

American defence procurement is littered with examples of projects that were ill-conceived from the start (e.g. the Skybolt missile), badly mismanaged (the Sgt. York), overly ambitious (Reagan’s SDI) or with no clear idea about what role the weapon system would perform (e.g. the Zumwalt class). Meaning Congress sometimes just refused to buy the finish product (if you ain’t planning on buying it, why bother wasting billions developing it?).

At a price of $1.5 trillion, the F-35 is the ultimate example of wasteful military spending

Part of the problem is that Congress has long treated the US defence budget as basically a jobs program. Republicans know that if they actually practised what they preached (small government, low taxes) that would mean the economy of many Republican voting states (who are net receivers of Government money) would collapse, sending millions fleeing for the more prosperous (and often democratic voting) parts of the country. In short, US military spending is the biggest act of socialism on the planet. One which republicans can support, yet still keep a straight face when whinging about Obamacare or the deficit.

And the brass in charge of the US military are well aware of this fact. Its something which they exploit to get their way (and thus further their careers, both in the army, or as a “consultant” for a defence contractor afterwards), even if the end result is billions of tax dollars going up in smoke, as this clip from the satirical film “the Pentagon wars” illustrates. And of course US military contractors can be some of the most aggressive lobbyists in Washington. Which probably explains why the US defence department has never been audited.

All in all, when it comes to the swamp that is US government spending, the US military budget occupies the deepest and dankest part of that swamp. And clearly by trying to hawk American ware’s overseas, Trump shows he has no intention of draining it. Quite the opposite in fact!

The trump whispering warmongering yahoo

Israeli president Netanyahu released a dodgy dossier, which accuses Iran of breaking the terms of its nuclear deal. Now there might be some substance to it yes, some investigation might be necessary, indeed one or two experts pointed out this is the whole reason why the Iran deal existed. However, call me sceptical, but I’d be little suspicious of the words of a president who has an ulterior motive to provoke a war. And it is more than a little ironic Israel lecturing Iran, when its an open secret that Israel has an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The style of the presentation however indicated that it was directed at an audience of one. With prop’s and cue cards, this was clearly all laid on for the benefit of Trump. Netanyahu knows that Trump wants to have a war to help deflect from the whole Russia investigation. His original plan was to have that war with North Korea. However, as I discussed before, both Korea’s decided to make a show of peace talks to thwart Trump’s plans. Given the clear blue water between what both sides in Korea want, a lasting peace is unlikely, but they can at the very least keep up the charade until Trump’s impeached.

So basically Netanyahu may well have just come out with a big map of Iran with a bullseye on it. The situation with Iran is particularly frustrating for Israel because previously it was assumed that Israel would actually do the bombing (with US help and approval), sparing America from the not inconsiderable blow back that would emerge if it were to attack Iran. However, the installation of Russian S-300 air defence missiles has effectively rendered Iran “Israel proof”, quite apart from the risk of Russian retaliation against Israel if they attacked. Hence why he needs the US to do his dirty work for him.

Now I could try and explain how, even if these allegations are true (and they stink of what we heard in the lead up to the Iraq war), the US would still be well advised not to attack. However, that would involve using logic and reason. So my advice to those in the region is to adopt the Jung-Moon gambit. Basically they engage in their own bit of Trump whispering.

Firstly we have some neutral party propose talks. This ideally should be someone with a bit of leverage over Trump. Egypt, Azerbaijan, Turkey (countries Trump has business interests in) or of course Russia could be the ones to do it. In short Trump will either have to agree to this or risk his businesses losing out financially….or a certain pee tape finding its way onto the internet.

Now if you were Iran and a little naive, they’d bring in Hans Blix this very week, have him do some inspections and report back by the end of the month that the Israeli’s are talking bollix. But again, you’re being too logical. There needs to be lots of talking first. You’re not stalling for time, you’re stalling for impeachment. And even Trump has admitted that could happen as early as December.

Given how inept some of Trump’s people are, there’s all sorts of diplomatic traps that can be set for them. E.g. Iran agrees to inspections of its facilities, but only on conditions that other nations undergo similar inspections. Or it suggests we make the whole of the Middle east a WMD free zone, and it becomes a war crime to install such weapons in the region. Obviously this would be unacceptable to either Israel or the Saudi’s (who also have a WMD program nobody talks about, even thought they may have used them recently in Yemen). But Trump might actually be persuaded to go along with it, then hastily have to back away from the idea when his allies hear about it.

Even when the inspections go ahead, it would be better to conduct them slowly. Anything that doesn’t get inspected, you can bet the hawks will claim is where the nuke’s are being hidden. If Hans Blix looks like he’s finished, suggest there’s an oil refinery down the road, maybe he should inspect that too, just to be sure. On the way there you pass a farm, shouldn’t he inspect the septic tank? (you never know!). Hell he could go and give all of the country’s nuclear scientists a colonoscopy just to be on the safe side. The point is drag the process out and by the time the all clear comes back, President Pence will be too busy trying to pass the Handmaiden’s Act to care about foreign policy.

But jokes aside, there are many who support Trump because the subscribe to the greater fool theory. In that they think he’s an idiot who can be conned into doing things. But that works both ways. It also means he can be manipulated into doing things you don’t want by other people as well. And, if the Iraq war showed us anything, its that starting wars for narrow short terms reasons (with a moron in charge), is likely to have serious long term consequences. Any idea that’s so crazy it requires either a madman or a moron to implement is by definition a bad idea.

Taming the Trump

The decision by the North Koreans to seek “peace” with the south and meet with Donald Trump, isn’t quite as unexpected as the media will have us believe. Actually, its a pragmatic solution to tame the Trump….at least until he’s impeached or leaves office by other means (his Russian employers have something of a firm “no witnesses policy” as we’ve learnt recently in the UK).

The standard play book for most Republican presidents is crash the economy with a massive tax cut to their billionaire buddies. Then boost one’s poll numbers by bombing some 3rd world dictator. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Trump has been banging the war drum, hinting at a show down with North Korea, for some time. Its quite clear that he’s chosen the DPRK as his Iraq.

Of course there’s plenty of good reasons why previous presidents haven’t intervened in North Korea, or indeed why the South Koreans haven’t used their military superiority on the peninsula to take over the north. It would be a bloody mess that would make the chaos of Iraq or Vietnam seem tame by comparison.

And the North Koreans for their part have long adopted a tactic to deter invasion, what the CIA refer to as “the crazy gang” gambit, often expressed using the acronym CFC for Crazy, Fearsome and Crippled. The logic is that nobody will attack them because, while there is little doubt the NK army can be defeated, the cost of that victory will be high and the winner will face the enormous costs of essentially rebuilding the country from scratch.

However, the CFC gambit only works so long as everyone else in the room are the grown ups. So with the boss baby in the White house, the threat of millions of deaths aren’t going to stop an egomaniac from starting a war. Hence they’ve had to change tactics. And the South Koreans, also don’t want a war. Much as they dislike North Korea, their long standing policy has been one of containment and wait for the inevitable collapse. This has largely worked, the North is increasingly isolated and estranged, even from China. But they could not run the risk of Trump intervening unilaterally and screwing everything up. Hence, the plan on both sides is to start “talks” even though they know those talks will go nowhere. They then bring in Trump, massage his ego and tie him up in dialogue until his time in office times out.

Will these talks achieve anything worthwhile? Probably not. What both sides want is so far removed from what the other would consider acceptable, its difficult to see a compromise that would please both parties. North Korea wants to be left alone to putter in its sandbox. However, that means the South Koreans (and the west) tolerating them running several of the biggest Mc Mafia outfits on the planet, selling missile technology to 3rd party states as well as pointing thousands of artillery pieces at Seoul.

The North giving up its nuclear weapons is one possibility, however its important to remember why they have those in the first place. Its a legacy of the Iraq war. 5,427 days since G. W. Bush declared mission accomplished (yet the war continues, now the longest & costliest in American history) with WMD’s yet to be found, its pretty obvious the reason for this war wasn’t that Saddam HAD WMD’s. No it was that he DIDN’T have them, but he did have oil. The lesson that Iran and North Korea took away from that war was, if you want to avoid a US invasion, build a nuclear bomb.

But of course, nuclear weapons are only a deterrent to sane people who will place the lives of millions above their own ego. However, giving up its arsenal would leave it open to attack by a future US president, who while vaguely sane, is also republican and looking to boost his poll numbers.

They could do what Iran has done and retreat under the protective umbrella of another nuclear armed state. However, that assumes they trust their neighbours, in particular the Chinese. As I mentioned in a prior post, if North Korea has a motto it would be “with friends like ours, who needs enemies”. And from the South Korean prospective it means instead of them staring across the border at a half starved army equipped with 50’s vintage equipment half of which probably doesn’t work. They’ll instead be facing off against the world’s largest land army equipped with the latest weapon systems that almost certainly do work. So hardly an outcome that they’d go along with either.

So my guess is these talks will be long and drawn out. They might produce some meaningful discussion on key flash points and thus de-escalate the border. The North might even offer to think about giving up its nuclear weapons over a lengthy period. The South might ask the US to withdraw its troops.

But on the whole, the main point of these talks is to prevent Trump from starting a war to save himself from impeachment. Once he’s out of the picture, its possible the talks will break down and normal service will resume.