Faux: a lifestyle for many, by Wiggiatlarge

The recent faux outrage in the House Of Commons over a word, ‘humbug’ is in itself not worth talking about but the moronic MP who pursued the claim and demanded an apology is symptomatic of what has become an almost instinctive reaction to something that they believe will have a positive effect on the general population in their favour.

It took me back to thinking: when did all this start? Whenever it was it has been exacerbated by the massive spread and the use of the internet and social media, enabling the latest slights to become ‘news’ in minutes and back up comments from those who want to prosper from this nonsense to appear almost immediately.

When did it all start? Politicians have been using various forms of malfeasance since time immemorial to get their point of view across, but before the internet it had to be from a main player who had the ear of the press not the use of a smartphone which gives all and sundry access to their five minutes of fame or disgrace.

Much of it stems from the increasing use by those big players of spin doctors and advisors. A whole army of them now advise everyone on when and how they should use the media. For those people it is more a case of promoting an image, and the one that for me epitomises it perfectly was the sight of Tony Blair emerging from No 10 after the election in 2000 wearing a casual shirt, no tie and holding a mug of tea; he then crossed the road as a man of the people would, to speak to the press.
I remember watching this and saying to myself how utterly staged it all was and it was confirmed, not that it needed to be, by his never actually taking a sip of the tea, certainly whilst on air anyway, so false, so staged and so actually of the time. They have never looked back.

In ‘97 we had of course the mass outpouring of faux grief from the public themselves, proving if nothing else it wasn’t the preserve of the political class. Princess Diana's death sparked a nationwide epidemic of not wanting to be outdone in the grief stakes by tens of thousands who had never met her and knew precious little about her apart from what was seen in the tabloids. The British do State occasions well and the public were not going to let this one go without emptying the flower merchants in Amsterdam. Somehow those involved never saw the cringe side of this but everyone to their own.

The pattern was set after that. Blair exploited his man of the people profile, 'I’m an ordinary kinda guy’ and ever since the stakes for moral outrage have been set lower and lower.

Certain words and phrases go with the look that has been honed to perfection in the mirror and under the tuition of the personal PR aides. ‘Concern’ is top of the list, trotted out at the drop of the hat for every thing that veers from path of normality. It can be used in conjunction with the appropriate look for anything from too many road accidents, hurty words from a foreign power and anything else that seems appropriate. Nothing in the material sense ever follows up the concern though, even after a suitable inquiry is launched.

Inquiries themselves have proved to be nothing more than a faux response to concerns. When did anything of substance last happen to right the wrongs found after a lengthy and costly inquiry? 'Lessons have been learned': another phrase bandied about with no intention of learning anything.

What we are now seeing and which has been much promoted since the Brexit vote and Trump becoming POTUS, is an increase in faux outrage against both by those who wish to derail the two. This has reached levels of absurdity in faux statements, remarks and intent from people who in some cases one thought better of, but when it comes to retaining or regaining power all bets are off and lies upon lies are trotted out with the full knowledge of what they are. But as any marketing outfit will tell you, repeat the lie enough and many will eventually believe, so as with the constant emails and postal fliers that bombard you with anything from funeral plans to '50% off windows this month only', enough bite to make these approaches however fake worthwhile for the companies involved. The fake discounts are a classic example of marketing to the naive: we have a chain of bathroom retailers who have a permanent 50%-plus reduction on everything it has been doing it for years; many other examples exist.

Yet more worrying today is that the faux concern used by politicians and NGOs has spread to the public at large. The recent XR demos have shown a new twist to demonstrating: no longer content with being a bloody nuisance, the demonstrator has added faux emotion to his public face in an attempt to curry favour with even more vulnerable people. Anyone who saw the man crying under the car with the picture of his children in his hand, repeating 'their future is being taken away' while crying for the camera, can be in no doubt that faux emotion has reached a new level. Anyone believing that display needs a reality check.

What next, who knows? Most of these fads blow over with time, but not in this case, too many politicians and their ilk have this whole fake PR act embedded in the way they now approach the public. The Twitter feeds from the likes of two prime examples, David Lammy and Stella Creasy (picked, I might add, because they are two prime examples, not because of their party loyalties} are just fake in what they say and what they purport to support. It is amusing to read, if you can be bothered, and I have included Lammy’s now infamous “haven’t seen a policeman since we have been here picture” but worryingly they get that percentage they are after who support their inane utterances and that of course is what it is all about. So the whole thing goes full circle, faux emotions and image supported by people displaying faux loyalties to in many cases something they have no grasp of other than a misguided fake belonging to a false narrative.

We now await what could be the biggest fake announcement of our time, the leaving or not of the EU. If we end up with the PM declaring we have left with a version of Theresa May's agreement (which means we have not left), expect levels of faux euphoria in the political classes that will put them in the running for Olivier awards; or alternatively if we leave without a deal, armageddon and threats of people eating their babies will be the mantra from the other lot - all fake, of course !

Greta Thunberg: Little Girl, Big Business

The Columbo moment - the telling detail - was when she said “Thank you.” Greta Thunberg had just finished telling the UN that they were useless hypocrites set on killing her generation with their greed and complacency; and then she thanked them - and got applause and cheers.

What a performance!

Nothing like a young girl for melting the hearts of us crocodiles. Think of cute little Olga Korbut.

Still - why “thank you”?

Because it WAS a performance. I’m not sure what if any help she got with writing the speech, but her delivery came within a whisker of earning that political Oscar, the Nobel Peace Prize - even though she hasn’t had anyone killed, unlike some previous winners.

Yet how many of us realised that her first line, “we'll be watching you” wasn’t just juvenile rhetoric?

Who, in fact, are “we”? And how could Greta be propelled in such a short time from a lonely vigil outside the Swedish Parliament in August last year, to world prominence?

Turns out, it’s a corporate thing. There’s not just money BEHIND greenery, there’s money IN it. Less than six months after Greta’s first one-girl school strike, Canadian journalist Cory Morningstar was exploring the business nexus that has been using this child as the tip of its spear. Morningstar’s objection? It’s not nearly green enough.

The Left are happy to discount Richard-Littlejohn-ish bottle-throwing at look-at-me SJWs, labelling common-sensical sceptics “far right”; but it must be very disconcerting for them to hear the whizz of bullets from behind: from the real Left, not from the sort that used to stencil Ho Chi Minh images on Oxford college walls in the 1970s before easing themselves into soft jobs in the arts, broadcasting and politics.

Try this “deep green” statement for size:

“The environmental heroes in the West are NOT the Richard Bransons or Leonardo DiCaprios of the world. The real heroes for the environment, due to their almost non-existent environmental footprint, are the homeless – despite the scorn they receive from society as a whole.”

Well, up to a point, Cory. If you want all humanity to be nomadic, you’ll want the world’s population to shrink to prehistoric levels, though the high murder rate in those times might put you off the idea. But San Francisco’s homeless aren’t nomads, except in the sense that many of them have been attracted to the area by free food, a thriving drug market and deliberately lax policing, a hospitality they have rewarded with toxic litter, faeces and communicable diseases, all of which is very costly to deal with.

Not for Greta’s handlers, such grungy right-on-ness. “Work is of two kinds,” said Bertrand Russell. “First, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first one is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.” The Thunberg crew put a big tick in Box B. For Morningstar alleges that their goal is to set themselves up as Olympian judges – prizegivers, examination markers - of corporate greenwashing:

“The main sources of revenue come from commercial players who have received high climate rating and confidence in the We Don’t Have Time’s member base. … The revenue model will resemble the social platform of TripAdvisor.com’s business model, which with its 390 million users annually generates over $ 1 billion in good profitability…We will work with strategic partners such as Climate Reality leaders, climate organizations, bloggers, influencers and leading experts in the field.”

Doubtless their fundamental agenda – and Greta’s – is well-meaning; but it’s going to be a very good life up there among the Gods. When you become the Standard & Poor’s of eco-ness, the schmoozing will be epic.

And, argues the Canadian journalist, fundamentally the project is conservative: it is there to sustain our current rapacious big-business model, to give the machinery a coat of green paint as it roars around the world ripping out whatever it needs to maintain shareholder returns.

“Little Sister will be watching you.” So don’t forget to take us out to lunch.

Thank you.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Pink Floyd, by JD

Pink Floyd are probably one of the most famous 'rock' bands in the world so no introduction is necessary from me as more than enough has been written about them already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd

Among the videos below is an excerpt from the film "Pink Floyd - The Wall" (1982). Bassist Roger Waters wrote "Another Brick in the Wall - Part 2" as a protest against rigid schooling, particularly boarding schools but it also reflects Aldous Huxley's views on the education system and I am sure Waters was familiar with Huxley's writing.

Huxley was well aware of the fact that the "Pharisees of verbal orthodoxy" often dismiss those who advocate the cultivation of our perceptual skills as "cranks, quacks, charlatans and unqualified amateurs."
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Educational-Prophecies-Aldous-Huxley-International/dp/1138832499

The final video here was written in memory of founder member and inspiration Syd Barrett who left in 1972 due to his mental illness. He died in 2006.

On This Day

President Nixon' sets up a "madman" nuclear alert, 50 years ago. For three days, B-52 bombers circle over the North Pole to scare Russia and indirectly North Vietnam:

https://www.businessinsider.com/that-time-nixon-wanted-commies-to-think-he-was-crazy-enough-to-nuke-them-2015-8?IR=T

My latest article on The Conservative Woman

A version of the post immediately before this one was published yesterday on The Conservative Woman. The comments are interesting and some informative.

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/where-dawkins-gets-it-so-wrong-about-leavers/

Grumpy McGrumpface: Dawkins on Brexit, democracy and God

Here is part of Professor Dawkins' "Diary" in this week's Spectator magazine:

I hate the very idea of a referendum. Referendums are capable of naming a ship ‘Boaty McBoatface’. We are a parliamentary democracy. We vote for representatives who have the time (and salary) to examine complicated economic and political issues thoroughly and give an informed vote. Nevertheless, having got into this mess through David Cameron’s cowardly folly, the only way out is another referendum. If Leave wins again, we should accept it with good grace and make the best of it. But it’s hard to imagine that Leave could possibly win again, now that we know — as we did not in 2016 — what Leave really means. A connoisseur, too, of religious faith, I detect it in the fanatical zeal of Brexiteers: those for whom the 2016 vote has become unchangeable holy writ; those who are prepared to force Brexit through at any price, even if the price is the obvious and undeniable disaster of no deal. Boris Johnson’s bullying, threatening bluster, when he should be apologising if not resigning, may betoken cynical ambition, but the ill-mannered cheering-on by his barmy supporters surely stems from blind faith.

The kitten of his argument is eaten alive with polemical fleas. Washing these off, we see that he says referendums sometimes give answers that those in charge don't like, which is true, but trite; and that we should have a second referendum because Leavers didn't know what they were voting for the first time, which is not trite and not true.

If anything, during the pre-vote campaign the Leave-inclined public had an unduly bleak picture of economic consequences painted for them by the PM, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Governor of the Bank of England, CBI and all the other panjandrums riding Tom Pearce's grey mare towards Widecombe Fair and their downfall.

One could also argue that Remain-inclined voters were insufficiently informed of the likely consequences of staying in the EU: the military buildup, the legal seizure of control over UK Armed Forces, the aspiration to Empire, the dangerous fiscal imbalances in the Eurozone, the growing regional inequalities that are feeding social unrest, the threat to the UK's Welfare State of unlimited Schengen "free movement of people." Professor Dawkins may find it hard to imagine Leave winning again, but his view is coloured by the knowitall Oxford milieu in which he lives, and which prevents him from understanding - perhaps he has never even met them - the "fanatical", "barmy" and "blind" majority of his fellow subjects.

You may also care to de-flea his preceding paragraph, which is equally tendentious and oratorical:

I would normally not mention Brexit in a diary such as this. But the humiliation of our sick-joke Prime Minister has dominated the week and cannot be avoided. I expected a good verdict from the Supreme Court, but its unanimity and decisiveness had me whooping and thumping the table with joy. It really deserved a standing ovation and I sensed one rising up from decent people all over the country. Whether you voted Leave or Remain, you are surely revolted by the unashamed manipulation of the Queen for partisan political ends. Ends, moreover, that have no sensible connection to ‘the will of the people’. For when ‘the people’ expressed their will in 2016, ‘Leave’ most certainly did not mean ‘Leave with no deal’. It meant, as we were repeatedly assured, an orderly and amicable separation.

One reason he will have been given this space to air his views is that he has just brought out another theological tome, "Outgrowing God." The review in Private Eye magazine (issue 1506, p.36) is unsympathetic and identifies, I think correctly, a weakness in him: an inablity to appreciate alternative points of view. He seems to be the sort of person who "knows what he knows" and that is not a quality to make the best sort of university teacher, I should have thought.

But then the professorship he held from 1995 to 2008 was not for scientific research and teaching per se - though he is a highly distinguished geneticist evolutionary biologist (corrected - please see Bruce Charlton's comment below). The chair of "Public Understanding of Science" was created specifically for him by the billionaire Microsoft applications developer Charles Simonyi, who will not have been unaware of Dawkins' views on religion. Dawkins was given a position that required him to communicate with the public; though under the circumstances, one wonders what is the gist of the messages Simonyi wished him to convey.

In any case, such is the Professor's "fanatical zeal" that he is in danger of undermining his own credibility. Philosopher and Christian Peter Williams says "far from being a disinterested advocate of truth, Dawkins spends his time preaching the gospel of atheism using a raft of fallacious arguments dressed up in an obscuring cloak of science" and gives examples of Dawkins' logical weaknesses here:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/44/Darwins_Rottweiler_and_the_Public_Understanding_of_Science

Returning to "Outgrowing God": the Private Eye reviewer says

... Worse still is the book's lack of empathy. There is no acknowledgement, let alone understanding, of the fact that, for some young people, science and reason may not offer the same degree of emotional comfort provided by the notion of God and, what's more, this does not necessarily make these individuals wankers. [...] There remains a coldness at the heart of Dawkins' writing that is as self-defeating as it is wearing.

I am sure that when discussing matters within his scientific field Dawkins makes perfect sense. But he may be blind to science's - and his own - limitations.

The philosopher AJ Ayer used to maintain that meaningful statements were only about what could be proved, a position from which he resiled later on. I suggest that one of the unprovable ones is Leibniz's question; "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

It seems to me that any scientific attempt to explain the origin of the Universe can only refer to things we observe in the Universe itself - time, space, matter, energy - and so the explanation will be circular. If the universe had a beginning, we cannot know how it started, even theoretically (references to a multiverse merely raise the question of how that started.) Alternatively, if there was no start, the brute fact of the Universe's existence is equally enigmatic.

I accept that by itself this conundrum goes nowhere near justifying all the tenets of religious dogmas; but I think Professor Dawkins should temper his assertions with a little humility and empathic understanding. He lays about him insensitively, like someone playing Blind-Man's-Buff.

"It's time for votes at 16" - Labour Party (UK) - oh, really?

The latest Labour Party proposal is to add 1.5 million 16- and 17-year-olds to the British electorate, presumably gambling that they are more than averagely ignorant, gullible and excitable and so will vote for the cost- and trouble-free Utopian visions given them by the backroom people who steer the "narrative." https://labour.org.uk/latest/stories/time-votes-16/

Dropping the voting age didn't work for Harold Wilson and wisely, many young people refrain from balloting on issues and parties about which they know next to nothing.

But some can be wound up to a pitch of melancholy hysteria and used as disposable spokespersons. Their 15 minutes of fame may cost them dear personally in the long run, but they will have served their purpose as far as the political chessplayers are concerned.

Here's 16-year-old Greta Thunberg at the UN Climate Action Summit, 23 September 2019:
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit?t=1570181143532

"My message is that we'll be watching you.

"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!

"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

"Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.

"To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

"How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.

"There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

"You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.

"We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

"Thank you."

If we take protesters like this seriously then we need to get down to the Chinese embassy and tell their government to shut off all China's coal-fired power stations.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement 196 nations made a collective undertaking to reduce global warming to "1.5 to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels" and each country is to do its part - known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/nationally-determined-contributions-ndcs

But China, trying to raise its people's standard of living above the mire in which it was stuck for thousands of years, is determined to continue with its industrial development and it sits on a vast coalfield. Accordingly, its CO2 output is assessed as consistent with global warming in the 3-4% bracket - a "highly insufficient" commitment, according to climateactiontracker.org.
https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/

Of course China is aware of problems connected with burning fossil fuels. It is concerned to reduce the atmospheric pollution that concentrates in the geological basin containing Beijing, for a start. But it won't commit to rigid targets that entail an economic crash. Still, they have a strong incentive to act, in their own way and on their own timescale, without a tearful lecture from a child/woman with Asperger's, OCD and selective mutism.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-beijing/chinas-capital-beijing-vows-air-quality-improvement-but-gives-no-target-idUSKCN1Q90TU

As to the underlying science of "climate change", despite the threats to their careers and reputations some scientists are beginning to poke their heads above the parapet and call into question the facts as well as the pros and cons:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/28/global-climate-intelligence-group-founded/

It is always good not to be wasteful and messy. There's a lot we can and should do to manage our material needs in a more efficient and less unsightly way. Just don't ask the poor to stay poor to suit our Marie Antoinette toy-farm fantasies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hameau_de_la_Reine

But we should deplore the use of youngsters for propaganda purposes who have limited understanding of the issues and are encouraged to make emotional rants. Or allowing (accompanying, leading!) placard-wielding, slogan-chanting children to take time off school to tell us simplistic nonsense, as I saw in Oxford a few months ago.* If their political education is "gob open, ears shut" then we need to raise the voting age to allow them time to outgrow the indoctrination of their stupid teachers...

... some of whom may have learned all the wrong lessons themselves. I remember the sit-in at Oxford's Examination Schools in 1973, and the marches ("Thatcher! Thatcher! Milk-snatcher!"). Not being a natural joiner, I just watched as nondescript men halfway up lampposts took telephoto shots of the ninnies for the Press and/or the Home Office. What the crowds didn't realise is they were just being used by the self-selected leaders of tomorrow, as sheepdogs practise penning flocks. Then the few worked their way into organisations so they could take charge of the many, for real.

There's much to do; and much to undo.
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By the way, one of the the slogans I saw there, "There is no Planet B," is plain wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b

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UPDATE: originally, after the "Marie Antoinette reference", I wrote the following, which Sobers' comment below informs me was a subversive stunt to upset AOC's meeting:

And we can do without insane certainty and crazy, desperate proposals like this one from a young town hall meeting attendee who wore a T-shirt with the slogan "Save the planet, eat the children."

[video was embedded here]

She is well-informed in the modern sense, i.e. knows everything she wants to know. For she is right up-to-date in referring to a Swedish professor (Magnus Soderlund) who recommends cannibalism as a greener form of nutrition.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7443707/Swedish-scientist-says-humans-cannibals-fight-climate-change.html

Since that intensely embarrassing outburst, Democratic Party Congresswoman  Ms Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez correctly tweeted, "This person may have been suffering from a mental condition and it's not okay that the right-wing is mocking her and potentially make her condition or crisis worse. Be a decent human being and knock it off."

But in that case, we should also deplore the use of other youngsters for propaganda purposes who, like this one, have limited understanding of the issues and are encouraged to make emotional rants...