Parable of the Flood

I’ve been thinking of this lately. You know it from the West Wing: man hears news the town will flood – “God will save me”. Waters rise, someone rows past in a boat and offers help – “No thank you, God will save me”. House is flooded, helicopter drops a ladder to him on the roof – “No. I pray. God will save me”. Man drowns. Standing at the gates of heaven he demands to know why he wasn’t saved. God says “I sent you news, a boat and a helicopter. What the hell are you doing here?”

We’ve known for thirty years we have to stop using fossil fuels or the world will become unlivable. We’ve done the research, we don’t have an option in this. We do have options in how we make that change, and how fast. It can be rapid and expensive, or slow and very very very expensive with lots of collateral damage. But there will be huge business opportunities in all the wrenching and money spending, especially to the first movers.

It’s going to need serious rewiring of our economies and some hefty societal change. It’ll take much research and engineering to power ourselves without coal, oil and gas (this is the Where to Move To). It’ll take the same to protect or move our vulnerable population centres (This is the What’s left Over). Both need government lead and investment. As for The Moving to a low-carbon world, the easiest way is to make carbon expensive. Tax it. People don’t like spending too much, they’ll find – and economies will provide – alternatives.

We’ve had thirty years of research. Mostly we’ve denied or procrastinated.

We’ve just had a pandemic that caused previously unthinkable economic and societal change. We stopped travelling and we shrivelled our energy usage. We saw that we could make big changes. Our leaders and betters decreed we’d Build Back Better.

We built back the same.

Now there’s a war with a nutcase who controls the world’s second biggest fossil fuel producer. The best way we can slap his wrist is to stop buying his exports, thus he won’t be able to fund his war and the economic distress may drive him from power. We’re not making a bad job of that, but to do it properly we (the world) need to ignore his fuels.

We’ve been having a bit of a heart-wrenching process with that however, because of how much it will cost. All prices for you and me have gone up a lot recently, and governments are worried about how much we’ll put up with. But isn’t this exactly what they need to do? Unpleasant yes, but necessary. The hard-nosed capitalist in me says let the price rise, the market will provide alternatives, and in the mean-time use benefits and rationing to make sure those who can’t afford it don’t freeze or starve.

To put it in perspective gas is now the most expensive it’s ever been, purely because we haven’t planned to move away from it. In real terms oil is now 80% of its 1980 (post oil crisis) peak, and 60% of what we put up with fourteen years ago.

Today Shiny Rishi, the UK Accountant in Chief, cut fuel duty by 5p per litre.

When billions of us are lining up for salvation after being drowned by rising sea levels will an Almighty be saying “I gave you science, I gave you an example pandemic, I gave you…”?

Hello Again

Sorry for the radio silence. Maintaining a consistent observation of policy stupidity in this part of the world couldn’t be called a hard task. But trying to write something interesting when our elected goons keep coming at us with the same idiocy day in day out is.

In general the great and the good continue to trumpet their vision while staring at their navels.
Saint Nicola continues to demonstrate our un-Englishness by spending English money.
In their twelfth year the Tories have gone beyond surprising us with incompetence, yet occasionally still do.
The oppositions in all bits of the UK maintain a studied invisibility.
As for Boris the Clown and his merry bunch of snarling nobodies, well what could you be bothered saying?

I can’t promise to be as persistent as that bunch, but I’ll have a go.

Tories Rebel Against Johnson – Who’s the Good Guy?

Last night Honest Boris Johnson scraped a parliamentary victory only with Opposition Support. The most incompetent and corrupt UK Prime Minister of the modern era was opposed by 100 Conservative MPs voting against measures to protect people from infection and death from a pandemic.

I’m not quite sure where you begin with that.

More Dead People Looking for a Better Life

An estimated 27 people died trying to cross the English Channel in a rubber dinghy yesterday. Who’s fault is it? Theirs, for being so stupid? The evil people smugglers, for taking their money and giving them a high-probability death sentence? The French government’s, for allowing them to go to a beach and get in a boat? The UK government’s, because everything else is anyway?

The blame doesn’t really matter. The question is how do you stop it happening?

Honest Boris and his Merry Men (narrowly) won the 2016 Brexit Opinion Poll (it wasn’t a referendum) with a proclamation to “Take Back Control” from some unelected foreigners. This tragedy is a perfect example of how that claim was false.

Why do people subject themselves to such danger and misery to come here? It’s not for any of the Daily Mail reasons (and no, we’re not a top destination, we’re way down the migrant target-list). It’s because they think they’ll have a better life. Their lives must be pretty awful to think life-savings, debt to criminals, years in squalor and finally high risk of death is a worthwhile price to pay for getting to the west. Yes, there are some pretty awful places in the world.

Why do they come in rubber dinghies? Because there were too many coming in trucks, it didn’t look good in the papers so we tightened security on those. Obviously if you don’t like a river flow you block it completely, of course it won’t find an alternate route.

So how do we stop them? Make their homes better – safer and wealthier – places to live.

But we, just one country, can’t possibly do that to all the awful places. Quite right. But as a significant part of a half-billion-people largest economy in the world we could. That we didn’t very well isn’t the issue. We don’t have that chance to any more. Paring our international development spending to the bone doesn’t help much though.

And what about the mechanics? The right-wing populist media keep telling us they should all be sent back (to somewhere). While part of the EU we had arrangements for doing just that. Now that we’ve taken back control those arrangements are gone. We can ask, but why would any of our EU ex-partners, who are busy integrating more refugees that us, be bothered with our whines? We could ask very very nicely? We could. Who would be our chief asker: David Frost? Priti Patel?

We could always just throw them back in the sea, or turn their dinghies around (much the same thing). Interestingly, Mrs Patel has proposed that. It being in direct contravention of our international law responsibilities to refugees is obviously not an issue. Boris and Team have form on their approach to treaties. The irony can’t be lost on Honest Boris that these responsibilities to refugees were enshrined in law after the catastrophe of the NAZIs, from which his hero Churchill gained his fame – and British forces spilled so much blood – defeating.

So, in summary: there is a problem. Its cures can only be strategic, they must be done in concert with many nations, and the power to initiate them and manage the intervening details requires scale. By leaving the EU we’ve blown the chance to initiate cures, direct or manage any cures, or manage any symptoms of the problem.

Well done Boris.

COP-OUT26 – Git Yer Fingers Oot

Before the leaders of the world descended on Glasgow to discuss saving the world in the 26th COP Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of All Bits of the UK and Some Former Colonies was overheard saying “It’s really irritating when they talk, but they don’t do.”

Her Majesty’s irritation was justified. The largest delegation was from a newly greenwashed fossil fuel industry. But they wasted their tickets, they weren’t needed. The leaders of the world (or those that turned up) had no intention of doing anything other than talking anyway.

The sum of the fortnight’s achievement was that the nations of the world agreed to mention that fossil fuels were a problem in writing. Imagine if it took the crew of the Titanic 30 years to mention a hole in the hull was a problem? China and the US agreed to talk to each other. There was a bit of talk about giving money to poor countries to deal with the catastrophe that awaits us. We’ve made promises on that before, but not kept them. There were a few promises on trees. We can put them in the bag with the other promises.

That Xi Jinping didn’t bother to turn up at least saved his plane’s exhaust.

The impending disaster to the world is plain to see. What we need to do to limit (we can no longer avert) global warming is plain to see. What we need to do to limit its damage is plain to see. Why are our great leaders so incapable of doing any of it?

Maybe they’re not so great.

This isn’t new. Romans argued amongst themselves while Hannibal destroyed them, Europeans gave Hitler all he wanted while the future was writ large – “Peace in our time” anyone? The issue seems to be small imaginations and fear. Bizarrely it’s scarier for Modi or Xi or Biden to face domestic displeasure in the next three or four years than the end of the world as we know it for their children and grandchildren.

The takeaway is that our current bunch are incapable of strategic thinking. Our children and grandchildren will curse us for putting them there.

In a perverse way it may almost be good that nobody did anything useful. Imagine the global lesson if western democracies were unable to write their own name, but China and the bullish autocracies marched in and saved the world. Which system of government would be proven the most effective? That remains a hypothetical question.

That the Johnson administration put so little effort in hasn’t helped. Anyone who’s been to a meeting knows they’re not for deciding things, meetings are for approving things that have already been worked out and decided in the corridors and bars. The French put their former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius in charge of COP21, he spent a year negotiating and came up with the Paris Agreement. Alok Sharma’s one of the better Tory goons, but not in Fabius’s league. Nor any of his peers.

The BBC interviewed locals on the street as the party wound down. Given the location I have to assume this gentleman, who summarised proceedings so well, was unwitting in paraphrasing the Queen:
“Yes there’s an answer!
Git yer fingers oot yer arse an’ stop talkin’ bout what yer gonna do and do-at”

Parliamentary Standards – and Government – Remain

This November morning was looking to hint at the first signs of spring for UK politics. It all came to naught. That might sound counter-intuitive to anyone reading the chaos of UK news, but here’s the logic…

Conservative MP Owen Paterson broke some clear rules. The House of Commons Standards committee – which polices these things and includes most parties as well as outside expertise – found him guilty and recommended his wrist be firmly slapped. That can lead to him being fired. There are mitigations to his case, and he argued the punishment process is unfair because it has no chance of appeal. This is rubbish, but he’s well liked among the Tory hardline (as a virulent Brexicideer).

Lo and behold our Dear Leader Honest Boris decreed any system punishing such a golden boy must be broken. Lets chuck it out and get a new one; in fact a system with a Tory majority and no pesky outsiders. And let’s do it now instead of punishing the Golden Boy.

This is corruption par excellence. Putin would have approved: the rules don’t suit me, get new rules.

It’s the sort of thing eleven-year governments incline to; they get arrogant, feel like they own the job. It’s unsurprising from a character like Johnson, a man with no thought of country, democracy or anything beyond his own curtains. But the degree of it was a bit shocking.

Unsurprisingly (and mercifully) there was an uproar. Media, political parties (his and the quiet ones) kicked up a fuss. The Corruptative Party backed down with a screeching U-turn.

But here’s the issue: Johnson’s a lying charlaten surrounded by a bunch of toadies. A gullible electorate picked him and hasn’t been cured of its delusion in two years. Yesterday’s outrageous arrogance looked so far beyond the pale that it finally let the media and Conservatives teach what the opposition has failed to do.

But a twelve-hour U-turn might let the country forget it.

It will be interesting to see which happens: public outrage or public amnesia.

Frost, EU and Tactics

Order of events:

  • December 2020: (Honest Boris’) UK Government signs a deal with the EU over trade and Northern Ireland
  • Every minute since: Same government jumps up and down about the deal being unfair and threatens to walk away
  • 08/10/2021: EU announces that on 13/10/2021 it’ll offer ways to make the deal work easier
  • 12/10/2021: David – the cavity concrete block – Frost (large, unsubtle, but not quite filled UK Minister of Brexit Bluster) announces unfeasible answers to problems of our own making… OR ELSE we’ll walk away from our deals (again)
  • 13/10/2021: EU does as it promised

The EU’s proposals are practical and reasonable. Neither adjective applies to our approach. Frost’s – and effectively Johnson’s, but he probably doesn’t know or care much – are ludicrous. The idea that anyone would let access to the Single Market of 31 nations be outside the control of the European Court of Justice beggars belief.

The question, which may indicate the future, is what’s Frost going to do now?

My view is this is all about politics. Frost jumped in and larded up and down to sound like a reasonable compromising diplomat when the EU came half way.
Good God, we couldn’t let the blighters come half way by themselves. What?
Daily Telegraph columnists (like in Downing St) might moan, but he buys their moral high-ground. Better still the circus can stop and we get on with dealing with stuff for a while.

The alternative is that Frost &co stick to their guns and demand no ECJ in the deal (think: “I don’t like the law, I want a separate legal system just for me”). This would indicate they truly are disconnected from reality, and any UK/EU relations can’t be solved under the current administration. A government disconnected from reality and unable to make mutually beneficial compromises with long-time allies and major trading partners would be a Bad Thing.

It should be expected that he’ll grumble and keep a bit of this up his sleeve for later Daily Mail populism. It’s unlikely to be clear tomorrow whether we’re finally associating with the real world, but the direction should start to make itself clear in the next 48 hours.

There is no doubt Honest Boris and co will renege on whatever they agree to in due course. That’s in his nature. As I said before, my only first hand expert describes him as a “lying charlatan who thinks his ability to get women into bed somehow qualifies him to run a country”. However let’s hope this can be put off for a while.

I think… hope …that this will prove to be boorish arrogance rather than boorish arrogant UK-destructive incomprehension of the world. Let’s see.

Teamwork – UK Foreign Policy

Tobias Ellwood, Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee said after the Afghan debacle “We should be clear that Britain’s leverage is negligible as an individual country”…”The only means of influence we now have is if we pool efforts together with the international community”

Quite right. Perhaps he should let his boss know that right next door there’s a club that makes up one of the top-3 economies in the world and hosts the world’s second largest reserve currency. It’s the most populous democratic group in the world, and has firm stuff about democracy and the Rule of Law written into its core: nothing to be ashamed of.

If the global influence game is of interest this club is of note. It focuses on soft power, with fourteen times more diplomatic missions than us, indeed four times more than UK, US and China together. It avoids hard power, but still has a combined military budget only slightly smaller than China’s, each being one third of the USA’s. Each of those is four or five times ours.

If we want influence we could join a club like that. We’d pack a much bigger punch. That’s not their raison d’être however, they’re principally there for a myriad of other things, so the other benefits to us would be enormous. You could tell your boss, Tobias. You could.

Ah, Tobias Ellwood. Let’s see your CV… Hmm, maybe you were.

Observations On An Afghantastrophe – We Don’t Learn Very Much

Yesterday was a day for collecting quotes.

John Bolton, one of George Bush Junior’s crew, a neoconservative icon who was there at the start of this Afghan adventure, was interviewed on Radio 4. There was much truth in what he said, such as Trump and Biden being equally to blame for the current palaver. Can’t argue with “It makes us look like we’re suckers”. But one big thing stuck: “We weren’t in Afghanistan to do a favour for the people. We were there… to protect America and our allies”.

Are we really that ignorant? People don’t wilfully allow lunatics to set up shooting ranges and bomb factories next door; it takes social disorder, and that can’t be solved when the peoples’ lives are too desperate to. They need to have the time to think about and believe in their future. When people are wealthy and comfortable they don’t elect dictators or start civil wars, or allow their society let these things happen. If you want there to be no failed states where terrorist groups base themselves you need to make sure the states work. This isn’t a quick and easy job, it takes time and it takes money. Twenty years to educate generations, build the institutions of a civil society and an economy to support them seems optimistic. But is it worth it? The US reckons it’s spent $1 trillion fighting in Afghanistan. But estimates for the September 11 attack costs start at $2 trillion (without the wars).

Thirty minutes later Major Richard Streatfeild, who kept an audio diary during his stationing there, was on. He demolished Bolton by quoting Sun Tzu to ridicule his argument that “they didn’t defeat us, we walked away”. When a superpower’s National Security Advisor has a Major quote Sun Tzu against him you know he’s beaten.

Then I read the FT. Muhammadu Buhari, Nigerian President and no advocate of freedom and democracy, had a column. He argued that terrorism follows from poverty, and that poor countries don’t need arms they need infrastructure to support economies to protect against it. “Africans need not swords but ploughshares to defeat terror… the boots we need on the ground are those of constructors, not the military”.

Then in the evening Joe Biden told us “Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building”.

Oh dear.