Bitcoin crackdown

Inevitably, a push back against crypto, by several goverments, seems to be starting. China is planning to outright ban several crypto currencies, starting with Bitcoin. While the US DoJ, in the wake of the colonial pipeline attack, has started a crackdown against crypto. They have shutdown crypto exchanges and are making efforts to recover funds stolen by hackers and scammers. The FBI & Europol even set up an elaborate sting operation using their own dark web encrypted messaging service. (Can only imagine the google reviews for this service won’t be great…then again I don’t think you get access to google in prison!).

But then we have news that El Salvador wants to make bitcoin legal tender. So what gives? Well firstly I think we need to understand that most crypto currencies, bitcoin in particular, aren’t really currencies as we’d define them. The price volatility and the lengthy time to process transactions (60 minutes to a day or two…long time to wait for a coffee!) means its not really a convenient currency that could ever be used by the majority of people. It would be more accurate to describe them as a sort of digital bearer bond.

Now while yes, you can pay for goods in services with bearer bonds, but generally you don’t, as they likely won’t be accepted and the costs on your end (not to mention the processing time) means its not practical. Similarly, given the issues with crypto, only a few companies are willing to accept payment in crypto and then only really for ideological reasons (as the boss is libertarian bitcoin bug). If more customers actually used crypto as their main means of payment and companies were forced to bare the financial costs of delayed/fraudulent payment & price fluctuations themselves (which would become exponentially worse with more transactions), they’d quickly abandon it. This is pretty much what happened with Musk and Tesla recently. Causing Musk to go from libertarian hero to Bernie Sanders socialist in the eyes of bitcoin bugs (and as if to aid insult to injury a recent bitcoin conference has turned into a covid superspreader event).

The other problem with bearer bonds is that you are going to get more than a few odd looks if you try to use them. While there were some legitimate uses for them, notably as regards investing and money transfers between countries. But an awful lot of the time they are used to launder money or help dodge taxes. And similarly, while yes there is some use of crypto is for legitimate investment purposes. But they have also become increasingly the tool of choice for criminals looking to launder cash, move it overseas or as payment for extortion (bitcoin being used 95% of the time).

So you certainly understand why this crackdown is ongoing. As for El Salvador, well its one of an number of offshore hubs who profit from the more shady aspects of offshore financial activity, crypto being a particular speciality. So you can see why they wants to try and give bitcoin some legitimacy and avoid it being banned completely. Although one should note, they just want to make it legal tender, they are not adopting it as a national currency or anything like that.

Now crypto advocates would say that this shows why banning it will never work. Ya, until being in possession of bitcoins, or accessing a digital wallet, becomes a crime in of itself (similar laws with regard to cash, jewels, bonds or other assets means that if you can’t prove they were acquired legally, they can be confiscated under anti-money laundering legislation and you can be prosecuted as well, just for being in possession of them).

But suppose a country actually tried to use bitcoin as its national currency. What would happen? Probably several months of chaos and then collapse! The government’s ability to borrow, issue bonds, or control its money supply would be effectively impossible. And the rapid and volatile swings in its value would result in all sorts of problems. e.g. you pay the public service in bitcoin, but in between collecting taxes on a Friday and paying them on a Monday the price drops 20% so either you have to cover those costs out of the state coffers or the workers would have to be happy to accept an effective pay cut.

Now libertarians would say, but this is the point. We don’t like central banks (and there will be no public sector employees in the libertarian workers paradise) and we want to stop banks just printing money and borrowing recklessly. While I’d agree governments have gone a bit crazy with the money printers and borrowing over the last few years (you should be saving in the good times for a rainy day). But the pandemic (a rainy day!) shows why this is sometimes necessary.

Without central bank intervention, the response to covid would be very different. No lockdowns to flatten the curve (meaning hospitals get overwhelmed), no furlonging of workers (so mass unemployment, means massive claims for unemployment benefits) and no money to pay for medical PPE or the fast tracking of vaccines. In short you’d be looking at millions of extra deaths and a far more serious level of economic damage.

In fact, somewhat ironically, crypto being backed by a major government would be the last thing libertarians would want to happen. The first thing the US, the EU or China would do, is acquire large amounts of this digital currency, enough to allow them to gain control over it (either individually or collectively via the IMF). And note that when I say “acquire” I don’t mean buy. They’ll just confiscate it off criminals (about half of all bitcoin transactions involve criminal activity). Or pass some law allowing them to seize privately held accounts and set the price for compensation (if the bother paying compensation at all). This is pretty much what happened to US private gold reserves in 1934 and in other countries on various occasions (one of those pesky facts libertarian gold bugs tend to ignore, the gov’mint can just take your gold…and bragging about it online btw makes that alot easier, or they’ll make its sale or transfer illegal/heavily taxed).

The banks would join in and you’d be left with a monetary system even more under the thumb of the regulators, the government and the banks than the current financial system. Which is probably wants going to happen eventually. There are already proposals from various financial institutions to launch their own crypto currencies. Given that these will have the backing of the banks and, eventually governments, they can offer a level of convenience, security and price stability that existing crypto’s cannot.

Bitcoin and other crypto’s might survive for awhile, as a sort of digital gold, but only if they can clean themselves up. Crypto advocates need to accept that this criminal activity is going to result in unwanted attention. They need to start taking measures to contain the problem. You fight the law, the law tends to win.

More brexit betrayals and the rise of the brexitbots

Brexiters gave many reasons for voting leave, but immigration was certainly the main reason. However, its now quite clear that if you voted leave over immigration you are about to be betrayed by the Tories, much as you were warned would happen.

Firstly there are many myths and falsehoods about immigration, as I’ve discussed before. But the main one is the false belief that British workers are in competition with migrants for a fixed number of jobs. The number of jobs available in a country or region depends on a host of factors. For example, the ease by which businesses can get access to credit, government policy (if there’s lots of big infrastructure projects going on, there will be more jobs) and also the availability of workers (as an employer will prefer to set up where they can more easily hire employees). In short, migrants can help create more jobs than they take. And thus immigration restrictions can act as a pretty significant trade barrier and can actually decrease the total number of jobs available, leaving less for the locals.

To give an example, you are run a fruit farm. You need 100 workers to pick the fruit over the harvest season, but post-brexit restrictions means you can only find 50 British workers. Which means you’re only going to be able to harvest half the amount of fruit, which could mean the cost of paying their salaries plus overheads (e.g. the cost of growing the crops in the first place) won’t be enough to yield a profit. In which case you’re better off sacking the 50 British workers, leaving the fruit to rot and doing something else with the land that’s less labour intensive.

Similarly, in academia some specialist courses in a number of universities are being pulled due to brexit. As without the EU students, its not worth our while running those courses. This is leading to staff being laid off and the choice and options for UK students being reduced (oh and without those EU students, fees will probably have to go up too!).

And we are seeing further examples of this in many parts of the economy. There is a shortage of truck drivers post-brexit, which could lead to some businesses shutting down, higher prices and risks a shortage of food items like chilled meats. Building projects are being put on hold because of supply shortages (due to extra delays at Dover) and a lack of workers (so British builders are losing their jobs because there ain’t enough Polish plumbers).

And as mentioned farmers are struggling to hire enough workers to meet demand. Plus, they can no longer effectively export, which is decimating some parts of the agricultural sector. This could lead to a reduced harvest (leaving the UK more dependant on food imported from Europe) and probably eventually some farms closing, as they won’t be able to compete with foreign competition in places like Australia.

This was the lie that was told to those who voted leave. We’ll turn back the clock to a time when many UK industrial towns had full employment and Britain had an Empire. But that was always a fantasy. It only worked back then because of a lack of automation (industry was still fairly labour intensive, requiring a larger work force), much of the UK industry was state owned (who tended to treat them as a welfare to work scheme), there was little to no overseas competition (as Asia had little industrial output & half the world economy was the other side of the iron curtain), with massive trade barriers and protectionism to defend UK trade.

But that was then and this is now. Imposing such measures now would just render the UK uncompetitive, meaning they’d be lose out to foreign competition. Its not immigrants coming over here and taking your job you need to worry about, but them staying at home and your job simply moving somewhere else. And smugglers will just find a way around any trade barriers anyway. That is after all one of the reasons why such polices were largely done away with in the first place.

And its pretty clear the Tories ain’t going to help, given that they are running around signing trade deals with every Tom, Dick and Harry in the world. Trade deals which often favour the other country at the expense of the Uk. For example, while UK traders have to fill out dozens of forms and go through customs checks, EU lorries entering the UK typically get waved through, as the UK dare not impose more complete checks knowing it would probably lead to empty shelves in supermarkets. Which should not come as a surprise, as trade deals tend to benefit the larger trading block or the country who can just walk away from the table (something the UK can’t really do).

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Brexit: Rise of the Machines

Furthermore, what is the governments response to businesses complaining about how brexit red tape is hurting their businesses and risking unemployment for workers? Oh, just move to the EU and set up there (i.e. sack all your UK workers and hire foreign workers instead). And when the aforementioned farmers complain about a lack of seasonal workers, what is the government’s response? Oh just switch to using robots to pick fruit instead (British jobs….for robot workers?). Let’s just unpack that one.

Automating a process cost a lot of money and its questionable if any, but the very largest of UK food companies, can afford that (certainly not small farmers). There is also a long learning curve because when robots screw up, they tend to screw up in a big way (e.g. crash, smash, burn down the factory, weld something together they weren’t supposed to do).

But ignoring the obvious practical obstacles, if farmers could switch to robots, they’d aren’t going to simply replace the 50 or so they can’t hire from Europe. No, they’ll sack ALL their UK fruit pickers as well. They will still need some workers yes, but generally these will be people with an education to program the robots (a college or university diploma), which generally most of the sort of people who work in farming will lack (and I’d also further note most college graduates voted remain rather than leave, so this is a move that benefits remain voters at the expense of Tory leave voters).

This is pretty much what happened in Japan, where strict immigration laws combine with automation to eliminated a whole host of working class jobs and entry level jobs. This created a “lost generation” of Japanese who haven’t worked for many years (if ever), creating a sort of underclass within society. And as this impacted on tax revenues ( unemployed people claim benefits…and robots don’t pay income tax) it led to the land of the rising sun, becoming the land of the rising debts, a trend we are likely to see replicated in the UK’s finances.

Post-brexit we could see something similar happen in the UK, particularly in those northern brexit voting towns. You see, there’s another thing about immigration. Most migrants tend to head for the larger cities (which voted overwhelmingly remain and where support for the Tories is at its lowest) where there are employment shortages. They tend to shun areas with high unemployment (which tended to vote leave).

Post-brexit these trends will continue to become even sharper. What foreign workers and foreign investment does come in will mostly go to the major cities, which should continue to see some job growth (though just not as strong as it would have been without brexit). While in rural or ex-industrial towns, the job market will collapse. This will lead to further inequality in the UK and more people being driven into poverty. And already poverty in some parts of the UK is already so bad the UN has had to give involved. But, much as they were warned, brexit and immigration controls aren’t going to help these communities. They are going to make an already bad situation even worse.

The Dumb-Dom effect:

Dominic Cummings is billed as Boris Johnson’s “idea’s” man. However there’s a problem, most of his ideas are sh*t. We need only look at the satellite fiasco, where they bought a company that makes the wrong kind of satellites for GPS. His track and trace app that didn’t work because of all spyware it came with. And his original plan for covid was herd immunity (i.e. let hundreds of thousands die to save Pret). And this is before we bring up his involvement with both the leave campaign, and the Scottish referendum, his connections to the Kremlin, nor his little trip to Bernard’s castle, which has produced a recognised “Cummings effect” that is in part responsible for a 2nd wave worse than the first wave.

I’ve heard Cummings and Boris compared somewhat unfavourably to pinky and the brain (the difference being that Cummings thinks he’s a genius… and he’s also insane). In truth, he hasn’t got a clue, he’s yet another point on the Dunning-Kruger scale. While yes at the extreme end you’ve got the likes of Trump, but a little further along we meet Cummings. And you could argue he proves that a little bit of intelligence (what I’m calling the Dumb-Dom point), combined with an overly inflated ego and an posh upbringing, can be a very dangerous thing.

Moscow Dom

Take for example defence, with word that Cummings has been visiting UK military facilities as part of a Tory spending review (yes, its considered ok to let someone with connections to Moscow into UK military bases, go figure). Although I should perhaps call it a what not to spend review. Already there’s rumours that the UK is going to cut out all of its Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior IFV’s and replace them with Cyber warfare. Ya, to Cummings the way we’ll stop Russian tanks rolling up the M2 is by having a team of nerds posting meme’s. Good luck with that one.

Cummings was also seen going into Downing street with a copy of a Reagan era letter related to defence research. As I mentioned in a prior post the Reagan administration funded all sorts of hair-brained schemes and squandered vast sums of public money in the process. Of course, unwilling to admit they’d made a mistake, republicans came up with the retroactive argument that ya we knew none of it would work, but we were trying to get the soviets to spend themselves into bankruptcy (in truth Russian military spending did not increase significantly during Reagan’s tenure, it was only 7% of their GDP and it was what was going on with the other 93% that was the problem).

Either way, the UK just doesn’t have the defence budget to finance these sorts of programmes. As I discussed in a prior post, previous efforts by the UK to compete with the major powers during the cold war failed, the TSR2 being a good example. Only with European co-operation can the UK hope to keep pace with the US and China. And a hard brexit is pretty much going to scupper that.

I’d also note that we need to factor in the UK’s geography. The whole reasoning behind trident (which is an American weapon system, one they can withhold support for and effectively disarm the UK…if say the UK were to break international law for example), is that anything else (no matter how advanced) is vulnerable to a sneak attack. This is less of a problem for Russia, China or the US as they can position their facilities well in land and they have vastly more conventional forces with which to guard them.

In some respects, I get the impression that Cummings and the Tories have latched onto a defence spending theory that basically says you don’t need conventional forces if you’ve got nukes. However, this is not true, it ignores certain geopolitical realities. It could leave you vulnerable to Salami tactics (where the enemy gradually weakens your position by engaging in a series of acts that would not constitute grounds for war, never mind threatening a nuclear attack), as this skit from the satire Yes Prime Minster discusses.

In reality its a choice between the UK having conventional forces, plus maybe trident as an optional extra. Or if you want to save money and cut military spending, then trident is the first thing you’d ditch. Its one or the other. But for the Tories trident is a phallic totem. If they give it up they will be abandoning their dreams of empire 2.0. Hence the conventional army must too be sacrificed on the high altar of brexit, even if this ultimately compromises the UK’s actual defences.

And we have to consider the international consequences of such a policy. Given that the Challenger 2 tanks are really more designed for large scale tank engagements (such as in the Middle Eastern deserts or the Fulda gap) even proposing to get rid of them could be interpreted as a signal that the UK will not be getting involved in such conflicts in future.

Now while that might actually be a good thing (no more being America’s lap dog), it could mean allies (such as the US) are less supportive (i.e. they take back their missiles). And enemies may decide to make a move against a UK ally (or nationalise a UK company’s holdings), as they will be assuming the UK will not take any action. This is pretty much what caused the Falklands war. Tory cuts to the Royal Navy convinced the Argentine Junta that the UK wouldn’t try to retake the island. And the UK almost lost that war (something even the British commanders have admitted), they only didn’t because the Junta hadn’t really planned very well for how they’d defend the Island (largely because they were so convinced the UK wouldn’t take any action!).

Hell, Cummings military policy is so bad it would only make sense if you were a Russian agent looking to deliberately sabotage the UK’s defences….oh wait!

Speaking of nukes….

Cummings has also proposed that we solve unemployment in northern England by building lots of nuclear reactors in the North (I didn’t know there were loads of unemployed nuclear engineers in northern England!). As I pointed out in a prior post one of the consequences of brexit on the energy industry is that it will make it harder to recruit new workers. Industries like nuclear or fracking will need EU workers to come in and make up for skill shortages.

So we have a load of working class communities in the north, who voted leave because they are xenophobic about foreigners and feel threatened by technology (as its reducing the number of blue collar jobs). And Cummings plan is to have a load of white collar workers move in, some of them from overseas (mostly from France & China for nuclear and Romania for fracking), pushing up house prices and living costs. How’s that going to go down? And leaving the EU means leaving Euroatom, who is going to certify and supply the fuel?

In all categories the UK’s readiness to manage its own nuclear industry post-brexit is still in category red

Also, nuclear projects take forever. Hinkley C was proposed in the 2000’s with construction starting 15 years later and power production will be a good ten years after that….so Cummings is proposing jobs in the 2030’s & 2040’s. By contrast we can start building renewable energy systems, council houses, hospitals, etc. tomorrow. But of course while the Tories will happily shell out a small fortune for anything nuclear (empire 2.0 and all that), but they won’t spend a penny on anything that might actually help people.

UK house building, most notably of social housing fell under Thatcher and has never really recovered, likely because home owning Tories prefer their to be an artificial shortage, pushing up prices and rents

Dot Dom bubble

And according to Cummings the real benefit of brexit is how the UK can become a hub for the next trillion dollar IT company, once we are free from burdensome EU regulations. Why is that all the big IT firms are set up in the US?

Well the thing is the UK WAS the centre of an IT revolution, back during the dot-com era of the late 2000’s, at the start of the Tony Blair government (the most pro-EU PM the country has probably ever had), when London and Dublin saw themselves at the centre of the European tech revolution. These were heady days. You could go to a “first Tuesday event”, put on a green badge (indicating you were an IT person looking for funding) or a red badge (indicating you were a venture capitalist) and do a deal for several million over a handshake and a glass of bubbly.

So what went wrong? The dot-com bubble burst. While silicon valley caught a cold, London came down with pneumonia. It boiled down to market size, the UK is a very small pond compared to the US. And back in 2000 not everyone had access to the internet in the UK (or the EU for that matter) and many that did were still using dial up (which made internet shopping tediously slow). The end result was that while Amazon made enough money to keep the wolf from its door, its UK competitors (boo.com or handbag.com) went bankrupt.

And this still applies today. After the US, the other major hub for IT companies these days is China, which is got to be the most un-libertarian country in the world. They are practically taking tips and pointers out of black mirror episodes. Yet, they have far more IT companies in China than in the UK or the EU and they may well overtake the US in this field. Why? One billion people with mobile phones. How exactly Cummings thinks that shrinking the UK’s potential market is going to help I do not know.

Case in point, Ireland wasn’t as badly effected by the dot-com bubble as the UK. It took a wallop yes, but weathered the storm a lot better. This is because Ireland had focused more on the hardware side of things. There was a big drop in demand for computer parts after the millennium, but the market soon recovered. And this was largely driven by demand from the rest of the EU, to which Ireland could export tariff free, thanks to the expanding single market.

And contrary to what Cummings says, the problem in London back in 2000 (then again he was in Russia at the time) is it became a bit of a wild west. A lot of the dot com firms were operating fairly dubious business models, some were badly run and government oversight was lacking (as the Blair government was terrified of the “old labour” label and would run a million miles if the tabloids brought that up). The aforementioned Boo.com being a good example. This meant a whole generation of investors got burned and swore off tech investments for some time.

Boo.com demonstrated everything that was wrong with dot.com “unicorns” in the early 2000’s, and serves as a case study in why investors need to do due diligence on tech stocks

And how does Cummings propose to get around this? Why we use UK government money to found and start these tech “unicorns“. Well firstly, tech start ups are pretty risky investments. A lot of them are just regular companies who call themselves a “tech” stock to attract money from moron’s who don’t know any better (like Cummings!). And, like during the dot com bubble, some have fairly dubious business models. Its questionable if this is sensible use of taxpayers money (particularly if we are so hard up we can’t afford to fully fund the NHS!).

Secondly, he does know that, as part of the EU, UK firms and universities were part of many collaborative projects which benefited from matching EU funding (a sort of public private partnership), which the UK used to do very well out of. Indeed any money the government comes up with will struggle to plug the gap. The only difference is, the EU was very careful about who they gave money too. While the Dumb-Dom approach is, to throw bags of cash at anyone who can bamboozle Cummings & Boris with a flashy presentation.

Again one is forced to conclude that Cummings proposals would only make sense if you were a foreign agent attempting to sabotage the UK economy.

The failed state of Dumb-Dom

Finally, one has to acknowledge the undemocratic nature of how Johnson and Cummings operate. The whole point of democracy is so that any proposed idea gets subject to proper scrutiny. Politicians, from both sides of the house, are allowed to ask awkward questions and seek professional guidance as well as public opinion. There have been plenty of other times in the past where a government has proposed something that would be a really bad idea, which has been killed off once its been subject to proper due diligence.

However, instead the UK government now operates under a model whereby a small cabal come up with policies (that may well be unworkable, illegal, break international law or squander public money), there is no scrutiny or due diligence, no bidding process. And anyone who asks awkward questions (even if you are an expert, or a Tory MP who voted leave) is accused of being “an enemy of the people” and a remoaner for daring to suggest we should like you know read the bill before voting on it.

If you ever wondered how totalitarian regimes can get away with say, building a gold statue of the leader that always faces the Sun, this is how. Their policies, like Cummings, aren’t subjected to any sort of rational scrutiny or oversight, which is why these countries tend to be poorer. Hence Cumming’s risks turning the UK into a failed state.

But fortunately for us (and unfortunately for Cummings), you live by the sword you die by it. Sooner or later he will be forced out of office (either Boris will be forced to sack him, or Boris will be forced out and Cummings will follow). And the new PM will immediately issue instructions to cancel or reverse everything Cummings. Anyone he employed will either be sacked or re-organised (put in charge of stationary supplies or made cultural attaché to North Korea).

Much like how the golden statues of dictators can be airbrushed out of history, so too can Cumming’s legacy. And while a Tory government probably won’t reverse brexit, its entirely possible that a future labour one (or an independent Scottish one) will do so.

The rise of the Contrepreneurs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Property scams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cult of MLM’s

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

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

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

Scrubbing the internet

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

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

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

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

The reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

The flawed thinking of the Fallists

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

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

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

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

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

….said while holding an i-phone!

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

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

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

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

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

Ethiopia is one of the world’s oldest civilisations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not so safe spaces

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

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

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

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

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

How grids will cope with electric cars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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.

Every cloud has a silver lining

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

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

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

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

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

Scene from the 2011 movie Contagion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfit for office…or opposition!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dragging the queen into brexit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The channel hop

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

A flying foreigner, every brexiter’s worst nightmare

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

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

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

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

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

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

UK College goes bust

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

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

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

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

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

A most convenient death

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

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

Loosing sleep

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

The Caledonian sleeper works its way across Rannoch Moor in winter

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

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

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