National economic salvation: the task before us

Free trade of the sort the new government has vaguely encouraged us to welcome is potentially ruinous. The severe competition from globalism is made worse by a modern monetary system that cannot act as a self-correcting mechanism. As a result, we in the West see growing debt, inequality, creeping economic ruin and the potential for major social disorder. Instead of leaving the market to regulate itself, the political class must exercise control; Brexit is their teething-ring for learning to tackle the new world economy. Are our leaders sufficiently skilled, educated and motivated to save us?

In classical economics, free trade can be mutually beneficial even when one party is more competitive in all the things the other can do. David Ricardo illustrated his 1817 ‘theory of comparative advantage’ with a theoretical example of England v Portugal and the making of cloth and wine. When each country shifts some resources to the item it produces more efficiently at home, overall output is increased and the surpluses can be traded. Win-win!

But what if your competitor nation can make all your goods with labour costs 47 times lower – not to mention far cheaper land and equipment, currency-adjusted? Sir James Goldsmith spelled it out in a 1994 interview with Brian Walden:



Here is what he said about the effects on workers of two decades of trade liberalisation within the EU:

‘In France you had in 1973 420,000 unemployed. Between 1973 and 1993 the economy grew by 80 per cent, eight zero, almost doubling; and the number of unemployed went from 420,000 to five point one million. What can be the purpose of an economy which by doubling goes to 5.1 million?’

Globalisation and the GATT talks that enabled it threatened even – far – worse. Sadly, it was good for the blue suits and bad news for the boiler suits; the comparative advantage is now that of capital over labour. But “What,” asked Sir James, “is the purpose of the economy? It is to enrich us and therefore how do we have an economy which can provide jobs and prosperity?”

Yet even an enlightened employer may not be able to protect its workforce. In his book on the plight of the white American underclass, ‘Deer Hunting With Jesus’, Joe Bageant related (pp. 75/76) how a plastic goods manufacturer, the main employer in his home town of Winchester, Virginia was forced to succumb to globalism:

‘Wal-Mart sells by far the greatest volume of Rubbermaid products of any retail chain. Given such an advantage, in 2001 Wal-Mart’s executive management team heavied up on Rubbermaid, demanding ridiculously low prices despite an 80 per cent increase in the cost of raw materials and personal pleas by Rubbermaid CEO Joseph Galli.’

Forcing the issue, the retailer found an alternative supplier that made cheaper ‘knockoffs’ of Rubbermaid’s lines. The latter lost 30 per cent of their sales and caved in to Wal-Mart, sacking eleven thousand employees nationwide for the sake of survival. (And, I suppose, if Wall-Mart hadn’t done it, somebody else would have.)

However, when a company lays off employees, the costs (and there are many ramifications) are borne by society generally; the boost to the company’s profits and taxes may be outweighed by the burden it has thrown onto the community. And in a world where firms can reincorporate abroad, they can escape more completely (a move HSBC is rumoured to be contemplating.) Perhaps we should worry less about CO2 and more about UB40 (aka Jobseeker’s Allowance) - and PSNB.

Theoretically, the currency exchange market could help correct trade imbalances, as Investopedia explains. But China cemented its cost advantage against the USA by pegging the renminbi to the dollar in 1994, preventing the former from rising in value which would have made its exports pricier; even since 2005 it has allowed only a limited appreciation. Since the US dollar is also the world’s trading currency, the effects are not limited to America.

The wealth-sucking has continued, abetted by Western money-makers who are now beginning to fear for their own safety as society starts to collapse - some have started to buy boltholes in the Pacific.

China has recycled some of its surplus in massive purchases of US Treasury bonds, though it worries about the value of its holdings and the Americans worry about the plug being pulled suddenly (which could see damaging interest rate rises on the crippling amounts of US public debt.) She has also invested c. $180 billion in US assets, though again Americans fret – perhaps too late – about the security implications. Longer term, China is looking to urbanise fast and under President Xi has more than doubled electricity production, whatever Greta (our Joan of Aaargh!) may witter. They seem to be working on ‘endogenous growth’ of their economy in preparation to move out before the West’s roof falls in. When the dollar ceases to be the global means of exchange the flood of cash returning to the US could be greatly inflationary.

Traditionally, gold has been a hedge against inflation. The old saying is that an ounce of gold buys a handmade suit, and that’s pretty much true now. But it’s funny how while China and Russia have built up their stocks of gold, Canada has been selling off its own to the retail market and Britain’s stock, once 2,500 tons, has fallen to 310. Maybe we are going the way of Toronto, for – did you know this? - a recent (6 November) Privy Council meeting has authorised designs for a range of gold coins including one worth £7,000. I suspect that gold sales are to stop us – for a while - seeing inflationary reality. When the slowing velocity of money (how fast the cash turns round affects GDP) stops offsetting the money-printing by central banks, we may be up a gum tree in a forest fire.

That money-printing proceeds apace. The banks are still zombies, and in the US the Federal Reserve has been providing life support by hundreds of billions in the overnight lending system known as the ‘repo market.’The Global Financial Crisis is not over, it’s been monetised.

If we are to have a stable and just society, we need to get our people working. And since the money system can’t correct for globalisation, governments will have to intervene. Not that we should put down the shutters on international trade, but we should at least try to control the rate of change, to give our economies time to adjust. Otherwise many of us will have our enterprises disrupted as British weavers experienced two hundred years ago when the new spinning machines abruptly cut their livelihoods from under them.

The challenge is already daunting. The Daily Mail’s Alex Brummer wrote eight years ago about the growing foreign ownership of British businesses, and guess where the axe will fall when global recession bites? Not in the home countries of those overseas owners. Also, we are losing the capacity to rebuild: one of my clients was a firm whose business was exporting toolmaking machines from closed-down factories – selling our family silver, as Macmillan said, but not even to private British hands.

I hope Dominic Cummings’ think tank-cum-Civil Service SAS can work out a credible detailed plan.

The Electrification of China, by Nick Drew

Somebody (Lenin?) said that communism is soviet power plus electrification.  Or something like that.  And there's no doubt communist Russia and communist China have historically placed vast importance on electrification, along with developing heavy industry in general.   (It's not just them, of course: India feels it's got a lot to do in this respect, too.)

And ... why not?  As Lovelock says, civilisation is energy-intensive (with electricity increasingly the primary delivery-means of useful end-user energy).  Who doesn't want the material benefits of civilisation?  Who's to tell them 'no'?

So: only internal factors are going to stop China (and India) (and one day, Africa) electrifying to the full.  By which I mean: China may pause, if it chooses, when excess coal-smoke is literally killing their people by the thousand.  India may struggle because of its massive political and economic inefficiency.  But they ain't asking permission of anyone to carry on with their electrification (etc) plans.  Particularly not the Chinese who need not bow, and have no intention of bowing, to anyone else ever again.  When they say the Chinese Communist Party recognises no higher authority than itself, they really do mean it.

And that includes Greta.

Today the Beeb ran an item on how China's coal-burning capacity - and concomitant CO2 emissions - continues upwards ("Is China Addicted to Coal?").  They didn't really sermonise about it; just a little wistful, I guess.  Oh dear, look what's happening here; oh well ...

They said "China's economy is slowing" - which is bollocks, of course, it just isn't accelerating as much as heretofore -  which they offered as the reason why coal remains in vogue.  We can put it more simply (as I have been for more than a decade):  when it comes to GDP vs GHG, GDP will win every time.  And of course that's not just China, BTW - though we well know what's at stake for them, specifically: their tacit political settlement is that the populace will shut up and let the Communist Party have its way, provided the populace gets wealthier all the time.  And the CP has no idea how they'd keep the lid on if they fail in their side of the bargain.

As the Beeb notes, China now effectively accounts for the whole globe's annual increase in CO2 emitted.  So - to the extent you worry about these things - you could say: if we all go to hell in a handcart, it'll be because the Chinese CP is afraid of its own people.

ND

Sackerson adds:

Readers might also like to read this piece by China-watchers, about President Xi, his recent purging of a million allegedly corrupt bureaucrats, and the drive to urbanise China as fast as possible and reduce her dependence on the West for trade profits:

https://www.quora.com/What-terrifies-you-about-Xi-Jinping

Sale! Sale! Sale! by Wiggiatlarge

Some years ago the Advertising Authority drafted new regulations in regard to the promotion of goods with big discounts in the title: they had to be on sale for a specific time at what was supposed to be the ‘normal’ price for a fixed period before they could be offered at discount.

All that seemed fair, after numerous complaints over many years of items being permanently on sale that actually never had a price other than the sale price.

When the regulations came into effect there was a sort of lull in the promotion of goods with big discounts but little by little this all disappeared as they found ways round the ruling. A revolving catalogue of products is the easy way to side step the regs; that is if they are ever enforced at all - when was the last trader to be taken to court for flouting them?

And in many cases endless sales still seem to be the norm. The recent demise of Bathstore is a good case in point: the local branch of Bathstore said - and I imagine all the others never had a window display that said different - 'Up to 70% off.' 70% is not really a feasible figure for any product unless a genuine clearance and you see little of those these days. This is really misinformation: an invented retail price that is then discounted, making the product appear cheap. Household fixtures seem to be at the forefront of this ruse: bathrooms, kitchens, bedroom built-in furniture, all are in a permanent state of 50% off this January, followed by spring sale of 50% off and summer stock clearance of 50% off, ad infinitum.

Fortunately most of us are fully aware of what is going on and shop accordingly. The problem with this sort of marketing is that there is no benchmark in pricing to gauge by: all prices are false so what is the real retail price? In effect the real retail price is the discounted one; it has to be or the firms would be out of business.

The only time I purchased a new kitchen from one of these firms I was told the ‘offer’ would only last another two weeks, the usual marketing ploy to make you believe you could be missing out. When I stated I had other firms to consider first, which I had, they came back the following week with a further discount, all of course under the guise of a special special offer. Make of that what you will.

Even supermarkets use a form of this with items that almost permanently have an offer sticker or if they don’t they will next week, so in reality no one buys unless the item is on offer. The tactics are so wide spread that it is with some cynicism that you see these prices and believe they are real discounts; they aren’t.

More cynical is the approach of many non-material products such as insurance and things like breakdown cover and broadband,. The latter I have always managed to get down in price from the quote, so either the quote is bumped up or they take a median figure and expect a percentage of customers to barter down and those that don’t, don’t pay the difference.

When I phoned to get my broadband quote down, and succeeded, the girl the other end then said laughingly they would be doing the same thing next year, so the chances of anyone paying the upfront price are pretty slim, except for those who don’t bother to haggle.

Recently “Which” said this about supermarket offers….

“Which?'s Natalie Hitchins said: “Many of the big supermarkets are clearly still in the wrong, with numerous examples of dodgy discounts and never-ending offers.

“These retailers must stop tricking shoppers with deceptive deals and spurious special offers - if not, the CMA must intervene to ensure that pricing guidelines are followed.”

This has of course been said before yet nothing happens and I doubt anything will this time. Which? themselves did a similar report in 2014 !

Absolutely none of this is new. However as most are aware, subtle changes to marketing to get round selling real bargains still crop up. The days when stores had January sales with genuine products being cleared for new year's stock have almost disappeared; the ‘special purchase’ has taken its place - items purchased cheaply that are not a normal stock line so no there is retail price of previous sales to go by, but you are asked to accept that the product is a bargain.

Electrical goods change models almost by the month so sales there can be a be genuine bargain as the spec rarely changes, just the outer shell, but you still need to know the original price to be able to compare.

Online buying is slowly killing the high street shop but again all that glistens is not gold: online retailers are having a huge problem with free returns, something that is necessary as faulty goods have to go back somewher. And sizing in the modern world is a huge problem as the Chinese and other Far East sweatshops seem to make up their own version of standard sizes, so customers are buying several items, keeping the one that fits and returning the rest; some returns are not fit for resale and the seller then cops for the lot.

This returns issue is costing £6 billion a year in the UK alone so the situation is slowly changing. A tighter returns policy for most is on the horizon and eventually (as the high street maybe fades into obscurity) online forms will start charging for returns. When that happens of course online shopping will no longer be so convenient or cheap; but just as smaller shops were driven out of business by the supermarkets' use of loss leaders, the sellers will be in the same position online. Personally I have never seen the sense in buying clothes whose quality / colour you cannot judge accurately and more importantly which you cannot try on; but it appears I am in an dwindling minority.

With all purchasing it is 'caveat emptor' - as it always has been.

The Universe is stranger than we can imagine

On Thursday night BBC4 screened a programme about how the distance between things may be an illusion; maybe there is no such dimension as space.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000db95/einsteins-quantum-riddle

The idea sprang out of a scientific conference in 1927 that looked at the then-new quantum theory - the behaviour of subatomic particles.

Implicit in a later 1935 paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen - and teased out by Erwin Schrödinger - was the idea of 'quantum entanglement', the possibility that a pair of photons might be intimately related even when separated from each other. When one particle is observed, so the theory goes, its characteristics are instantly - no waiting time - reproduced by the other, even if the particles are separated by galactic distances that light would take millions or billions of years to cross. This appeared to break all the rules and Einstein hated it.

Yet a scientific project in 2018 supports this impossible notion. A team studied light - billions of years old - from two widely separated, very distant objects and found much higher correlations between the qualities of the light particles from them than would happen by chance.

The implications are mind-bending. If nothing travels faster than light, how do these particles know immediately what their 'partners' are doing across unimaginable gulfs of space?

We know a lot more about the universe than we used to, but we may perhaps never know everything. As Haldane (a biologist, so not at the 1927 physics conference, but writing in the same year) said, 'I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.'

TV programmes about deep science can only do so much for us - they tend to use visual analogies that give us the illusion of understanding, but we have evolved to deal with reality at our level of the universe and there's no reason for us to be able to visualise subatomic interactions. For example. when I was at school electrons in atoms were explained in terms of solid balls orbiting a central mass, but apparently it would be closer to the truth to say they are clouds of unborn possibilities that only become real and fixed when we observe them.

And we laugh at mediaeval theologians arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

Which brings me to a different analogy. The programme reminded me of a kids' book I read many years ago, 'A Wrinkle In Time' by Madeleine L'Engle, in which the characters are able to travel across space and time. L'Engle compares their journeys to a pin put through the gathered pleats of a skirt: when straightened out, the material appears to have a series of unconnected holes; yet from the vantage point that sees the universe as folded, all the holes have been created by a single thrust.

So maybe when understood properly, the photon pairs are not separated; there is no such thing as distance or space.

And maybe our perceptions of space and time are illusions, as though we are 3D holograms projected from a 2D ground.

Perhaps we are ready to visit Vedic philosophical ideas of reality and unreality, existence and non-existence. Perhaps we are not separated from one another or the Godhead (is this where the theology of the Holy Spirit has its roots?)

Perhaps we are not meant to understand. Perhaps the attempt is impious, like the Tower of Babel. Perhaps our imagination cannot cope with the challenge and runs out like a river into a desert.

Kurt Gödel's theorems showed that even mathematics (or that part that can generate natural numbers) will always be an incomplete system of proofs.

Similarly, I think there can be no scientific explanation of the coming-into-being of the universe, because everything we use in our scientific explanations relates to things within the universe itself, and so such accounts must be using circular logic.

Which brings us back to the ancient Hindus, with their contemplation of being and unbeing.

We know so much, and yet virtually nothing.

FRIDAY MUSIC: John Coltrane, by JD

The incomparable music of John Coltrane!

John Coltrane; 1926 - 1967

Instead of trying to summarise Trane's music and his legacy I have shamelessly borrowed Wiggia's introduction from his post about jazz saxophone a couple of years ago....

"John Coltrane was way out in front when it came to pushing the boundaries in jazz, so far out he completely lost the plot in later life but fortunately the bulk of his work remains where it should be, at the top of the pile. Influenced by Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins and later Charlie Parker he was playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostik and Johnny Hodges before his late fifties association with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, a glorious period; but his debut album as leader, Giant Steps was a seminary album, it blew me away when I first heard it and the melodic chords on this were not just very difficult to play but constituted a new sound in the saxophone, much imitated later."
http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2017/02/music-great-tenor-sax-by-wiggia.html

I have been watching recently the PBS series on Jazz by film maker Ken Burns. In the section about Coltrane the voiceover said that he was listening to a solo by another musician when he had what he called 'a divine revelation' which prompted him to give up heroin as well as alcohol and even cigarettes. He then began to explore other styles of music, mainly from India and Africa.

This from Wiki -

"In 1957, Coltrane had a religious experience that may have helped him overcome the heroin addiction[46][47] and alcoholism[47] he had struggled with since 1948.[48] In the liner notes of A Love Supreme, Coltrane states that in 1957 he experienced "by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. " The experience and his subsequent interest in music from other cultures eventually led to his album A Love Supreme in 1964
If you don't have the album the liner notes from A Love Supreme are here -https://web.archive.org/web/20110608155911/http://www.jindustry.com/xtra/coltrane/html/saintjohn.html

The history of music has seen fans hero worship their idols, often being driven to hysteria: in the 1930s there was a 'battle of the bands' between Benny Goodman and Chick Webb which required Police to control the crowds trying to get in to see the 'contest' (from the aforementioned series by Ken Burns), riots in the early 1940s among the young bobbysoxers 'in love' with Frank Sinatra and the more recent mass hysteria in the US among audiences for The Beatles. But Coltrane must be unique in that a religion was spawned in his name!

Saint John Will I Am Coltrane. http://www.coltranechurch.org

"For there is nothing in this world which can help one spiritually more than music. Meditation prepares, but music is the highest for touching perfection." -Hazrat Inayat Khan

Long or short?

It's my feeling that American readers prefer essays, articles and blogposts to be longer than we like in the UK, where we seem to appreciate brevity and conciseness. I casually explain it to myself as Americans liking to 'get their money's worth' but more seriously wonder if there may be a couple of other factors at work.

1. Although both the UK and the USA are slightly below the international average in literacy rates, those Americans who do read, read more - about 12 books per capita p.a. compared with 10 in Britain.  Also, this infographic places the USA 7th globally in terms of 'literate behaviour characteristics', behind Nordic countries and Switzerland; we rank 17th on the same basis.

2. American attendance at Christian churches is double that in the UK. Maybe they're more used to long sermons - remember Meghan's preacher starting to let himself go at the wedding? On the other hand, the most religious may not be the most well-read.

So is my impression correct and if so, what are the reasons?

Clownworld: the advance of minority rights, by Wiggiatlarge

In the last few years claims from minorities have become a deluge in the advancement of perceived rights that should apply to the majority regardless of the miniscule size of the claimants' groups.

The Equalities Act has a lot to answer for; not for the fact that equality in many areas should be enforced, but in its backing of absurd extensions of what most people would consider not worthy of discussion. let alone the implementation of laws.

Consider the vegan who won a case against his dismissal for saying funds used by the League for Cruel Sports were invested in firms (among others) involved in animal testing, I have no idea to what percentage of the League's funds were used that way but knowing the way they operate it could only have been an oversight, not a deliberate act.

His case was upheld and being an ethical vegan is now philosophy or so the judge in this case has decreed. How he arrived at that is anyone's guess (unless he himself is a vegan !) but surely being a vegan is simply a lifestyle choice.

If it is not challenged it opens yet another Pandora's box for every minority belief to have the same rights as everyone else in banning, refusing, demanding all those items that affect us all.

We already have Pastafarians: the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is awaiting a European Court decision on their being a legitimate religion , and they have already gained the right to wear a colander in their driving licenses and passports. This ‘religion‘ is of course a joke but only to a degree, it was formed to show that those who can claim special rights for their  religion are simply no different or should be to any other group claiming the same. It has to be read to understand where they are going with this…….
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/18/documentary-follows-pastafarians-strain-for-recognition
In the world of minority rights they have a very good point.

Back to the vegan. I have no problem with anyone who wants to eat the way they do, most of us eat vegetarian meals without a thought that they contain no meat, that’s fine. But vegans - and the same goes for them as for Pastafarians - have a lunatic fringe that (like the eco fascists) want to impose constraints on the eating habits of everyone else. And that is where this ruling becomes problematic, as it gives license to believers to change e.g. workplace habits and company trading practices, even when they are in a very small minority - often just one, as in this case.

As can be seen here they have already tried and are trying to have the plastic banknotes removed because a minute amount of tallow is used in the finishing process. Tallow contains beef and pork extract so you have a double whammy there with Muslims wanting a change as well. Will it happen? In our current clownworld climate anything is possible, as no-one in authority these days ever seems to stand up and say enough is enough; apologies and repositioning are the form of the day.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/03/vegans-could-legally-fight-unethical-banknotes-following-landmark/

Yet in nearly all of these legal challenges, such as in the "Christian bakers" case, it is nearly always those on the fringe of these beliefs/fads/lifestyles that want to push for their beliefs to become mainstream regardless of any logic; in fact logic, common sense, listening to valid counter arguments are never ever contemplated, it seems.

The vegan is typical of that group described above. His regaling of his private life and the way he lives it should be a matter for himself, but no, it becomes part of his agenda to promote how serious he is about his beliefs.

The downside for him is that it reveals  he has not thought through what he says. In most arguments one can pick out discrepancies in another's logic, but when you act and talk total cobblers it totally shreds what you are trying to put across, which makes this case even more worrying in the pattern it is setting.

Apparently, as well as wearing clothing that contains no animal by products, he also will not travel on a bus because of the number of insects and birds that are killed by vehicle strikes; taking that to its logical conclusion all forms of transport are bad, including walking as each square meter of land contains on average 2700 insects; and I suppose houses are out for living in because of the number of birds that commit hara kari flying into them. Why does anyone give people like this the time of day? If he and his ilk want to live on a remote island rubbing sticks together to keep warm (though I imagine in their world the fire created is polluting so that is out) then please do so and leave the rest of us out of your plans.

The banknotes case brings more nonsense to the fore, though I should not give extra material to these devotees of the absurd: the tallow involved that is their target for objection is of course used in many other things: as an additive in fuels and lubricants, in salves and ointments, soap candles (think of all those vigils they lit up using evil animal by-products), plastic bags - they are evil anyway, make-up, bike tyres and ‘crayons’; so even Angela Rayner is toxic as well as dim.

What is worrying is that these people continually get traction for their ideas in the press as in this (where else?) Guardian piece, ‘We are all vegans now’ (not really just 1% of the population are vegetarian)...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/04/were-nearly-all-vegan-now-but-lets-still-honour-the-original-radicals

And the politicians love to hang their hats on a perceived new popular trend, especially if it can however tenuously linked to climate change - there's big bucks in climate change.

The current Australian bush fires show how taking notice of Greens can have serious repercussions. Already we are seeing the negative consequences of decisions taken because Greens promoted and pushed forest management measures that ensured fires could start and spread more easily. The fireman who was fined for clearing a fire break round his house against the new laws had the last laugh, as his was the only house in the neighbourhood still standing after a fire swept through it.

We can only hope these fads - for that is what most are - and the misinformation that goes with them do the right thing and die an early death, as one thing's for sure: if all these ‘requirements’ are met, and approved products and food and sustainable energy come to pass, we will become impoverished. The costs are breathtaking and for what? The climate will change if it's going to anyway; culling all the cattle will not make a shred of difference and those that propose we should re-forest all of Britain or try to grow crops on land fit only for those now absent animals are deluded.

The culling of of many of those constantly pushing for these measures would be a better bet and it would reduce the population at the same time, which is a much bigger problem than all their perceived ones.

Still we all have the now obligatory Pride Parades to look forward to as an annual event in a town near you and can gasp in wonderment at the explicit displays and the Police engagement, something that the few gay people I know view with horror and have nothing to do with; anyway, penis socks are ‘so’ last year!

FRIDAY MUSIC: Asturias, by JD

Think of Spanish music and most minds turn immediately to Flamenco, the music of Andalucia. But as we have seen in this series, other regions of Spain have their own very distinct styles of music; Galicia has a very strong connection musically with the music of the Celtic nations.

But the neighbouring province of Asturias also has that same strong connection. Because Asturias is or was the coal mining heartland of Spain there was a parallel musical choral tradition. So enjoy this selection of music from Asturias.

My Job Application To Dominic Cummings

Dear Mr Cummings

I have seen your blog advertisement for corkscrew thinkers and wish to apply for the post.

First, I should like to get a couple of possible objections out of the way. I note that in other categories you want ‘recent’ economics graduates, and ‘VERY clever young people’. I am in my sixties and think that we have had enough of the enthusiastic, brilliant, thrusting types that burdened us with New Labour and have very nearly destroyed our financial system (the silly quants); perhaps it is time they made way for an older man.

Also, you say you ‘don’t want more Oxbridge English graduates who chat about Lacan at dinner parties.’ I did read English at Oxford, it’s true; but before the impenetrable nonsense of post-structuralism hit the subject there. Besides, you yourself read History at Exeter College and as with many other arts graduates (think of Douglas Adams) the wooliness obviously stimulated your interest in science, philosophy and anything else that might actually seek objective truth.

And so, from objections to objectives. Although your advertisement betrays impatience and ruthlessness, it’s still not clear what exactly you wish to achieve. Apart, that is, from a ‘seismic’ shakeup of the civil service and the ‘merry-go-round’ of ministers.

As to the first, the Civil Service is suffering from ‘shaken baby’ syndrome, having been politicised under Mrs Thatcher and then virtually radicalised under Tony Blair - you’ll remember how he used the Privy Council one day after the 1997 General Election result was declared, to give up to three spads executive power over permanent civil servants. Now, when you concentrate the levers of power in that way you have to look carefully at the hands manipulating them. I do hope you don’t plan eye-catching initiatives of the ‘abolish the Lord Chancellor’ type that our British Pol Pot came up with to drive away boredom one weekend in 2003. I’m sure Sir Humphrey can seem maddeningly obstructive sometimes – but maybe there is a need for brakes and steering in even the fastest car?

The revolving-ministers bit I can appreciate. It was fun to see John Nott walk out of Robin Day’s interview in 1982, after the latter had called him ‘a transient, here-today and, if I may say so, gone-tomorrow politician.’



Of course, that may have helped shorten Robin Day’s Newsnight career, just as (imho) Jeremy Paxman was binned for continuing to be too good on the same programme when New Labour got in; never forget where power lies, and don’t speak truth to it too frankly, not to say rudely. But why should ministers give up the best of their lives in relentless work, if not in the hope of further advancement? And isn’t it the role of Cabinet government to set the policy framework for its interconnected ministries, whose continuity and detail work is provided by the Bernards and Humphreys  – or do you have your eyes on a sofa-based inner-Cabinet ‘den’?

And what is all this redesigned machinery going to fix? Will it address a political system in which the majority of people directly in the 2016 Referendum, and indirectly but overwhelmingly via the manifestoes of most MPs who were returned in the General Election that followed, instructed Parliament to recover its own authority from the EU, yet saw three and a half years of delay and subversion instead?

Not that it’s over, necessarily. Minutes after Bojo’s landslide was adumbrated by exit poll results on 12 December, BBC’s Naga Munchetty (or was it our own dear Laura K?) was optimistically spinning it as an opportunity for Boris to ignore the troublesome extreme Brexiteers in his party; and I have a sick feeling that she was right. For the Brexit promise is driven more by deadline than results.

A friend told me he’d voted Conservative ‘for the last time’ (and I think the first) just to get it over with – ‘to make it stop,’ as I suggested and he agreed. Now let’s see what happens to the barely-altered Withdrawal Agreement and still-a-surrender-terms of the Political Declaration that Johnson seems set to push through, bish-bash-bosh. As the Americans say, ‘he could care less,’ meaning he couldn’t. After all, he voted for those landmine-salted agreements in October.

I understand the tone of haste in your advert, perhaps better than you. For unless there is radical systemic action – and I don’t mean tinkering with the bureaucratic gearwheels and oilcan – it will be Labour next time, and the time after that.

I wonder whether you know how much the Conservative Party is hated. A Welsh friend recently told me his father had joined the Tory Party late in life, so that it would lose another supporter when he died. Johnson’s delight at the extent of his victory was mingled with justified surprise. Only the weedy incompetence of Corbyn, Softy Walter to Boris’ Dennis the Menace (that would make you Gnasher, I suppose), drove the Northern Reds to break their wall. This government is on appro, and if the betrayal I fear becomes reality the blowback will be savage.

And structural, which will make sense to you as a systems thinker. For decades, the two major parties have colluded to undermine the working class, the Tories because cheap offshoring and low-wage inward migration suits the blue suits, Labour because the more paupers we have the more the Santas in the red suits can lay dingy benefits under the tree while mortgaging the house to pay for them. But just as differential birthrates in Northern Ireland may eventually see the Province join the Republic, the short-sighted greed of English businessmen may be the demographic death-knell for conservatism. Already 3.4 million Britons have never had a job, and there is a limit to how much further education can paper over the unemployment figures. Add to that the threat to white-collar workers of AI and the arguments of the future will be about the distribution of wealth rather than its creation.

Getting out of the EU is only a battle in a much wider theatre of conflict. Unless we work hard and fast to stem the national outflow of money and the decay of skills, uncontrolled globalism will end with us broke, overpopulated and at each other’s throats. You have an Oxbridge Classicist and Oxford Union talker as your boss; your first task is to give him the Odyssean education for which you have argued so long and eloquently.

That corkscrew enough for ya? I can start Monday.

My latest on The Conservative Woman: 'AV, not PR is the way to vote'

Published on Friday here:

https://conservativewoman.co.uk/av-not-pr-is-the-way-to-vote/

- interesting arguments from commenters about alternative voting systems.

The Dormouse, by Wiggiatlarge

I have often thought that animals which hibernate are onto something. The idea of gorging oneself ! and then going into a semi-conscious state for a few months when the weather is at its worst does have an appeal.

Especially in a winter like this one that has seen, if you can see in the permanent gloom, incessant rain drab skies cold winds and everything to make going outside something to be shunned. Yes, I know that in my youth challenging the elements, standing on the top of an exposed hill in a sixty mile an hour wind with driving rain could loosely be called bracing, even giving one the status of a hardened go anywhere anytime in any condition man, it is good for you etc etc. Luckily today I have a very different view.

As we approach our later years a sense of perspective creeps in, some sanity at the expense of reckless youth, and I would no more want to repeat those times in my youth when such things were commonplace and lose the comforts of warmth and a cosy environment than the Dormouse would. Hibernation does have attractions in the same way as pulling up the bedclothes in the morning after having seen snow falling, or going back to bed with a cup of tea/hazelnut upon seeing how inclement it was outside. 

Why have I mentioned the Dormouse? It is simply that we have a resident one: he has been with us for a few years, a solitary little chap that occasionally makes a foray into the left-over bird seed area and then darts off to the shed where he has exited when I enter. But  his main habitat is in my large compost bins; fortunately the first time I saw him there when removing compost in the early spring he moved so no harm could come to him through not knowing his presence, and now I am wary.

The little nest he built in the compost bin was warm, dry and under the cover of the tarpaulin over it, a perfect little winter retreat; I almost envied him in a sort of Wind in the Willows way. Whether he will be there this spring I have no idea, they live roughly five years and he has been seen here for about four to my knowledge so his life span is nearing its end. They are very solitary, I have never seen another one and they are on the endangered wildlife list; I can only hope the little chap has found a mate and produced some offspring - it would be a shame to lose the line and the presence of a Dormouse now very rare.

Even writing about the Dormouse has a soporific effect, sleep slowly overcomes one...
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

FRIDAY MUSIC: Neil Innes, by JD

Neil Innes 1944 - 2019

We have featured Neil Innes previously in this musical mini series -

He was a founder member of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band in the 60s; worked with Eric Idle in the series Rutland Weekend Television; created (again with Eric Idle) the 'tribute' band The Rutles, an affectionate parody of The Beatles.

But of all the things he did, his best work was undoubtedly in the great British Music hall tradition of the comic song. By using film/video he added a wonderfully surreal visual imagery to the very clever lyrics. For that alone he deserves this second tribute.

https://spinditty.com/industry/British-Music-Hall-Comedy-Songs
https://neilinnes.media

New Year's Eve

Shown every year since 1963 on German TV:



and JD offers this from Bob Dylan on the latter's Theme Time Radio Hour:



A happy New Year to you all. May this be the year that we come out of dystopian dreamland and work on making a real, better world for each other.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Jehosophat and Jones, by JD

... aka The Two Ronnies (UK comedians Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett) - and appropriately enough, presented to you today on National Fruitcake Day (U.S.) - introduced by JD...

From the Comfy Music Hall of Fame we present Gnashville's favorite(sic) sons: Jehosophat & Jones two of the finest Gnashvillains who ever lived. Plus a special guest appearance by Lightweight Louis Danvers, yee-haw!

Brexit Sprouts

The supermarket chain Morrisons is denying renaming Brussels sprouts to appease Brexiteers, according to 'newspaper' the New European:

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/morrisons-deny-renaming-brussels-sprouts-due-to-brexit-1-6440344

It's a bit cold for the silly season, but if we're going to bang the patriotic drum let's do it properly, with a round of 'Britons, strike home':

"Following the collapse of the First Coalition, on 10 November 1797, the British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, announced to the House of Commons that his efforts to make peace with Revolutionary France had failed and that he was now determined to fight the war to its conclusion. In response, the whole House rose to its feet and sang Britons, Strike Home!. The result was the War of the Second Coalition."

Britons, strike home!

Revenge, revenge your Country's wrong.

Fight! Fight and record. Fight!

Fight and record yourselves in Druid's Song.

Fight! Fight and record. Fight!

Fight and record yourselves in Druid's Song.

Or perhaps we should sing the full-fat adaptation written during the Napoleonic invasion scare of 1803 - 1805, the chorus to each verse being:

Britons, strike home! avenge your Country's cause.

Protect your King, your Liberties, and Laws

(full text here)

- liberties and laws that many of our politicians, journalists and influential entertainers have failed to defend, to say the least.

For now, eat your Brexit sprouts with pride.

O Come All Ye Faithful Jacobites, by JD

I didn't know this! (Ed.)

"O Come All Ye Faithful" (Adeste Fideles) is thought to be a Portuguese hymn for Christmas Day (the earliest manuscript bears the name King John IV and is held in the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa). The English lyrics are attributed to John Francis Wade (1711 - 1786).

The authorship of both the music and the lyrics are open to question. The English lyrics have been changed several times and the Wiki entry goes into some detail but I selected the above interpretation because it suggests that Wade's lyrics were actually subversive.

The words of the hymn have been interpreted as a Jacobite birth ode to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Professor Bennett Zon, head of music at Durham University, has interpreted it this way, claiming that the secret political code was decipherable by the "faithful" (the Jacobites), with "Bethlehem" a common Jacobite cipher for England and Regem Angelorum a pun on Angelorum (Angels) and Anglorum (English).

Wade had fled to France after the Jacobite rising of 1745 was crushed. From the 1740s to 1770s the earliest forms of the carol commonly appeared in English Roman Catholic liturgical books close to prayers for the exiled Old Pretender. In the books by Wade it was often decorated with Jacobite floral imagery, as were other liturgical texts with coded Jacobite meanings.

After the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite rebellions, support for their cause gradually faded and was largely forgotten, to be replaced by an acceptance of Unionism (the Union of the Crowns).



Ref:
https://www.dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/?itemno=7328
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Francis_Wade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Come,_All_Ye_Faithful
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_rising_of_1745
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_the_Crowns

P.S. JD adds: I am not a Jacobite by the way and I don't know of anyone who is. Occasionally the 1745 becomes the quarter to six rebellion in barroom conversations and nobody is offended :)

MUSIC FOR CHRISTMAS, by JD

A further selection of music, some old favourites and some new....



















Merry Christmas!

Driving Home For Christmas - In Circles... by Wiggiatlarge

A recent excursion onto our new but flawed Northern Distributor Road reminded me of the inadequacies of the Highways Department and planning, this built on the cheap, not in a monetarist way I might add - after all this country specialises in overpriced and late infrastructure - but in the final delivered article.

All junctions are roundabouts even when it is obvious a flyover was the answer, but we don’t do flyovers and tunnels as they are too costly despite the fact our near continental neighbours would not dream of building a decent road without either.

The first thing you notice when entering the roundabouts, and they are all the same, is an extra lane appears on your inside before you exit as can be seen in the image below:

Naturally this has caused both confusion and accidents plus a vocal lobby to change the markings, all to no avail as nobody in the Highways Dept would ever want to admit they made a mistake and they speak of ‘safety is at the forefront of all we do’ and drivers will “adjust” there has been quite a lot of adjusting but accidents still happen and here you can see why.



The driver is at fault but you can see the problem coming from two lanes to three and needing to get into the outside lane to exit. What was the Highway Code ruling? You do not change lanes on a roundabout, although here you have to.

Another local gem is this traffic calming scheme that the jobsworth in the video claims is worth the money as they had to spend by the end of the financial year. Shame that someone didn’t bother to see it spent wisely.

The obvious fault and the one causing accidents (something else that is claimed is because it is new to drivers and they will get used to it, though they haven’t) is the fact there is no right of way, no red arrow, white arrow and signage showing who has the right of way, so it becomes a free for all and the speed limit supposedly imposed by the traffic calming goes out of the window as drivers, idiots, speed up to be at the chicane first.

The mini roundabout is another winner at the start of this chicanery. In the video you can see it is so offset as to be almost invisible and impossible to actually negotiate so drivers either cut off part of it or ignore it completely, and no, despite spending more money it hasn’t improved it as they still have no right of way signs. The dept must be run by someone with the foresight of Diane Abbott.

When we lived in Suffolk Colchester was not that far away and exiting the town on the bypass north they decided to put in this little number - I believe Swindon has one as well, known as the ‘magic roundabout’:

Now amazingly it can work rather well. The problem is two fold: not being something that is universally built, for those coming upon it first time it can be daunting to put it mildly, and it also has no obvious right of way so you hesitate, often without reason but with that sense of survival and it also fails when there is a lot of traffic i.e. rush hour using just two exits as the flow is non stop and it is difficult for any other user to get in so to speak. Another complicated solution on the cheap that a flyover would have solved permanently.

You don’t have to go far to find these engineering wonders. Chelmsford solved a problem forty years ago at the Army and Navy roundabout that was a nightmare in the rush hour: you guessed it, they did the right thing and built a flyover crossing it, only this was a cheap one-way alternating temporary structure, like a Bailey bridge, that forty years later is still there and falling apart. In the meantime traffic has increased and the one way at peak times usage no longer works very well; any chance of the permanent structure promised forty years ago? Nah.

I have featured roundabouts but I am sure anyone could do the same with many other worthy road items such as the many badly-marked and -constructed exit lanes; the world is your omelette, as they say.

For example, we have just had a £5.6 million scheme to widen a road near us to twin lanes both ways to make it easier driving into the city. Only they apparently forgot that they had just finished a scheme on the same road nearer to the centre that has been reduced to one lane as a bus lane has been incorporated at great expense. You know it makes sense.

I will finish this rather joyless piece with another miracle of the road designers' art. This is on the A40 at Cheltenham: there are no words needed to describe this piece of failed logic: those that have to circumnavigate it have marked the offending section. Marvellous.

Happy motoring.

AV, not PR

Writing for Briefings for Brexit, Ashley Walsh says the Labour Party should scrap its policy on the EU and abandon its call for voting reform in the form of Proportional Representation.

As a 'former Labour councillor' he is concerned to save the Labour Party. I'm not - and I also loathe the Conservative Party and the 'Liberals.' Political parties are what's wrong with politics. Like flesh-and-blood creatures, organisations have a will to live quite apart from any justification for their existence. The disconnect between Parliament and the people is owing to the absorbing, insular in-fighting in Westminster.

PR would worsen this: it turns voting for a representative into voting for a party, and the latter then decides on who will be your named representative. Many MPs are already too focused on what their Parliamentary bosses and pals want; we really don't need a system that makes the party the unit of political currency.

But as I wrote here long ago, First Past The Post is a terrible arrangement and suits the databank psephologists and strategy managers of the parties, for whom only 'the swing voter in the swing seat' matters. Though I have always voted, throughout my adult life, my vote has had effectively no power at all, with perhaps one exception when the constituency boundaries changed again (and by which time New Labour had thoroughly outworn its welcome) - thanks to the 'safe seat' where I live. The consequence for me and my fellow voters was to be taken for granted.

I suppose Labour likes the idea of PR because according to numbers of votes cast in the latest General Election the Tories would not have gained a majority and Labour would not have had the scale of cull that they have suffered. Result: a hung Parliament, again?

But I'm not convinced that AV would have had the same result. Under AV, you list your preferences so second and third options can come into play if there is not a clear 50%+1 majority in the first count (and two-thirds of seats in the Commons - including the one for my constituency - are gained on a minority of votes cast). The winning candidate is likely to be the one who has tried hardest to win over the centre ground - a centre that will be different in each constituency.

Had AV been the system ten days ago, I think the Conservatives would still have won, thanks to crossover voting from Brexiteers. Let's also not forget that there could be others for whom the Tories might have been a grudging second preference - after all, think of the Northern Labour voters who even held their noses and plumped for Boris as a first choice!

A version of AV is what MPs themselves employ when deciding on a new Speaker - in that case, it's done by a series of rounds in which the lowest scorer is eliminated each time, so the voting behaviour is influenced by who is left in the competition. It doesn't guarantee a great Speaker, but what could?

AV is also the system that the National Government wished to introduce in 1931; the Bill passed the Commons but the government fell before it could pass through all of the other stages. (The Lords wanted PR - why?)

In an extraordinary General Election, we've had the 'second referendum' that the subversatives wanted; perhaps the other second referendum we should have is a rerun of the 2011 one on AV - this time, with balanced media coverage for a change, as we had in 2016 (I still puzzle over how the latter happened). And this time, Labour might go for it.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Christmas Box, by JD

Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells" is not meant to be a Christmas song but it sounds as though it ought to be so I have included this excellent cover by Sarah Jarosz.

"The Holiday Blues" and "Longfellow's Yuletide Poem" come from Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour - https://www.themetimeradio.com The much maligned BBC used to broadcast this on Radio2 and I enjoyed listening to it; the Beeb is not all bad you know!

Longfellow's poem was turned into a Christmas Carol in 1872 with music by John Baptiste Calkin and there have been two other musical versions since then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Heard_the_Bells_on_Christmas_Day

The NHS: an alternative, by JD

In response to the recent post on NHS failings, Nick Drew commented:

It's a ghastly story, Sackers, and very saddening. But my observation is, that the NHS is really only for delivering a broadly-based, rather undifferentiated 'mass average service', which on average will do quite a lot of good - a kind of "hygiene plus" - mass inoculations are a prime example.

If what's wrong with you can be (a) recognised fairly easily, and (b) improved or cured with simple measures - drugs for the most part, but other things like re-hydration and rest - then chances are, you'll see the benefit. Anything requiring subtle diagnostic detective-work, or a highly-trained eye, or an ultra-tailored course of treatment ... and you're back in the lap of the gods. Only the Queen is guaranteed to get the very best that medical science has to offer

The parallels with education are strong: take an illiterate population and impose compulsory, fairly decent basic schooling, and you'll raise the average level quite markedly - indeed, you'll effect a trnsformation. Will every child get exactly the customised teaching etc that would absolutely maximise their life chances? No.

To which I replied:

In principle, agreed; but the f-ups here were down to lack of basic skill (hoist usage), care and attention (reading X-rays, monitoring drug combinations, noticing when the patient isn't sleeping) and not following the sugeon's after-care plan (not the only case I've seen).

Ticking boxes is no replacement for vigilant, shop-floor-walking management.

Now JD offers his perspective, based on his own experiences:

**************

Have you heard of Henry Willink's 1944 proposal for a National Health Service?
https://www.conservativehome.com/highlights/2018/01/profile-henry-willink-the-conservative-who-proposed-a-national-health-service-before-bevan-created-one.html

As I understand it from various other references, Willink would have retained the many Cottage hospitals in the country. Most have now been closed in the name of 'efficiency' meaning 'customers' are obliged to travel to the nearest big shiny new hospital. This is an example of the 'bigger is better' approach to health care which in reality is nothing more than an extension of Henry Ford's production line with doctors and nurses instead of car builders. We already see it on a smaller scale with your local GP allocating ten minutes only to each patient.

Now that I am old I have had the opportunity to enjoy(?) the experience of our sanctified NHS. It doesn't work, it serves only to hand out coloured aspirins (my grandfather's phrase for the pills and tablets handed out for anything and everything).

The medical profession accept the reality of psychosomatic illness. Why then do they not encourage the equally valid concept of psychosomatic well being?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychosomatic-Wellness-Candace-Pert/dp/B0010R3ZR2

"Candace Pert, Ph.D. is a research professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Dr. Pert is best known for her discovery of opiate receptors in the brain. She was a featured expert in the highly acclaimed Bill Moyers PBS series Healing and the Mind. In addition to her research efforts, Dr. Pert lectures and teaches about how our minds and feelings influence our health and well-being. She is the author of the bestseller Molecules of Emotion."

I read about Dr Pert a long time ago and I have discovered for myself that psychosomatic wellness does work after doing the opposite of what my epilepsy doctor told me to do: instead of increasing my tablets, I reduced them. She was not amused when I told her which is understandable but I have had no seizures since that time. It's all in the mind!

....and yes, it is the management which is in urgent need of reform, starting in Whitehall!

Boris Johnson: are we in trouble already?

This morning the news is that PM Boris Johnson intends to get the Article 50 deadline enshrined in law - but Classic FM also reports that he is referencing the Political Declaration as the basis for the dealmaking he is to do.

I discussed the changes to May's (or rather, Barnier's) version of the PD in this article on The Conservative Woman - and at the end there's a spreadsheet of the alterations in it.

Unless BoJo goes through his revised version with a thick black censor's pen we will (in my view) continue to be horribly entangled.

More haste, less speed?

My latest on 'The Conservative Woman' - can Boris fight globalism?

In which I argue that Boris Johnson has short time to start changing the system or it will go down:

https://conservativewoman.co.uk/get-cracking-boris-theres-no-time-to-lose/

Boris Johnson's 'One Nation'

A landslide victory is not enough. Tony Blair had one in 1997 and even many of those who hadn’t voted for him were prepared to give him a chance; a chance he threw away with both hands, preferring to fight the next election from Day One. His student-ignorant ‘eye-catching initiatives’ didn’t tackle the roots of our economic malaise – for a touchstone, just remember the meretricious stupidity of scrapping the Royal Yacht, that floating trade mission for the UK.

Johnson doesn’t have the luxury of a honeymoon period: the malcontents have already started their civil disorder in London. He’s ‘on appro’ and we’ll need more than fast talk to retain the nervous new Conservative voters in the North and other long-suffering working-class areas. Mess this up and it’s ‘après soi, le deluge’.

In fact, it could already be too late, if the banking debt in the Eurozone brings the temple down around everyone’s ears before we can get out. BoJo’s vow to work around the clock had better be sincere. And he’ll have to work at the right things. It’s no good fixing the roof when the foundations are cracking. It’s structural and it’s not going to be a quick job, so he’ll have to start straight away.

The late Sir James Goldsmith clearly saw the threat back in 1994, at the time of the GATT talks – the first part of the interview is here. His argument was that sweeping trade liberalisation sets workforces across the world against one another and tips the capital-labour seesaw savagely in favour of the former, inevitably causing growing social tensions in the developed world. It may seem odd that a billionaire should make such a case, but that is to forget that his moral roots were in one of the three Abrahamic religions, all of which impose an obligation to care for the less fortunate.

We are in a secular doctrinal crisis, because the two principal political parties have long since become institutionally globalist. For the party of the CBI, Institute of Directors etc there was just too much money to be made from undermining the British workers (many of whom now have to claim benefits even when working); for New Labour it was too much fun being ‘intensely relaxed’ feasting with oligarchs and too easy to get votes for flinging bones to the dogs under the table while pursuing the neoliberal agenda. Man, what a party that was, and ‘I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.’

What a stroke of luck it was for the Tories this time to face Corbyn, who traduced his own beliefs about the EU and tried to win popularity with a commitment to providing more bones; that, and his propensity for rubbing shoulders with people who shoot dogs. For I’m far from convinced that the life experience of our latest Etonian, though he is undoubtedly bright, has equipped him to understand the need for radical reform. I fear he feels it’s just a matter of ‘think pos’ and another dose of what’s made us sick, get it down you, mate.

If Boris is to prove me wrong, he needs to aim at what Sir James intended when setting up the Referendum Party: getting us completely free of the Lilliputian entanglements of the Berlaymont. If Gray May  and Bullneck Robbins had negotiated with the French after Waterloo we’d have ceded Kent and Essex and paid compensation to the Grande Armée; yet Johnson still clutches the awful Withdrawal Agreement and the even worse Political Declaration (that love-letter from Josephine to Napoleon) with only a few of the more compromising passages redacted.

The current system, globalism, is designed to enable a concentration of wealth and power, which is deflationary: the money boosts asset values rather than being recycled within the economy. So the velocity of money slows, ordinary people find it harder to make a living, the tax base shrinks even as the demand for financial support increases, and austerity eats itself like the worm Ourobouros. It’s great for the winners, until suddenly it isn’t – where are the rich Mayans now?

For all its talk of brotherhood, the EU is a scale model of globalism. Its ‘four freedoms’ allow companies to trade goods and services within the Union, challenging smaller businesses with both the costs of universal regulation and also their bigger competitors’ economies of scale (though, so I understand, discriminating against the financial services where the UK has an advantage); the free movement of capital allows companies to incorporate in the cheapest tax regimes while smuggling out profits from their foreign subsidiaries under the guise of internal transfers to pay for training and other services; and the freedom of movement of people is their liberty to go wherever work is to be had, racing to underbid their fellows.

We have to escape both the frying pan of the EU and the fire of unfettered global ‘free trade’. We can’t abruptly start a trade war with the developing world, but we have to manage the rate of change, compensating via tariffs and trade agreements for the unfair disparities in hourly wage rates that have turned the British working class into claimants.

Perhaps then we can become once again what Napoleon so despised, a nation of small shopkeepers; a nation of modest prosperity, self-reliance and the love of liberty.

Is Johnson’s mercurial mind up to such a detailed and sustained campaign?

Saving the NHS

Retail is detail, as the great shop managers say. So is medicine, but I’ll come to that in a moment.

In the latest GE campaign, the Left tried beating the Tories over the head with the NHS, again. That photo of the boy on a hospital floor was a good one, wasn’t it? Accusations of fake news from one side, of trolling on the other. All I’d observe from this report is that the hospital only apologised for having nothing but chairs to sit on rather than a trolley, so why the lad was on the ground is a puzzle.

I am also mystified by the empty gravity-feed drip bag lying uselessly across him - and tubes not attached to the nose in the second photo:

... especially since he was still waiting to be seen?

Yes, the NHS is under intense pressure. Partly because it can do much more than it used to; partly because demand then rises even faster than supply; partly because of drugs, drunkenness, quarrels ‘getting stabby’, self-harm and all the other symptoms of a country in moral crisis. And I certainly hold no brief for the chirpy Jeremy Hunt or his hapless successor, but the job description of Health Secretary appears to include ‘scapegoat’, as the Bethany case shows.

And yet, however much you spend, you still have to mind the shop. Let me give you an illustrative case history.

My good friend Jim (name changed) was driving a couple of family members somewhere when an idiot in a window-darkened fast car shot out of a side street at him. Having quick reflexes, Jim swerved clear but then hit a series of three unfilled potholes, jarring his spine. Though in his late seventies, Jim was fit and active – a keen archer – and so it was some time before the back pain intensified to the point where he was X-rayed and vertebral displacement discovered.

When you are old, the system writes you off. Jim told me his GP gave him three plan options, all of which amounted to palliative care. He was to slide bedridden down the helter-skelter into the slot, with painkillers to ease the way.

But Jim wasn’t a quitter, and was highly intelligent. He scoured the internet and found a surgeon able to do the operation to fix his back. It succeeded; now for the physio program to get him back on his feet. Jim was moved to another hospital for the recuperation phase.

The first thing was, Hospital Two took his bed – a highly specialised one – and swapped it for another that was shorter, so that his feet were constantly pressing against the end. There was a hoist next to him, to get him to a chair for a couple of hours each day as part of the rehabilitation program. A couple of times, the staff managed to bump his toes painfully in the process; and increasingly it seems, they just didn’t get him out of bed at all.

Jim had suffered from sleep apnoea for many years, and had a CPAP machine to pump air at night. But nurses tidying busily disturbed the mechanism, which then got blocked with its water. So when I first visited him in hospital he hadn’t slept for four nights. The nurses, often clustered around the workstation outside the ward, hadn’t noticed. I got that sorted, and in subsequent visits kept Jim supplied with newspapers and magazines to keep his active brain occupied; and a squeezy ball to exercise his slowly wasting arm muscles.  They were eventually tidied (thrown) away.

Jim didn’t feel safe there, and wanted to go home – and no, he wasn’t demented. So a fresh home care plan was made and he had an adjustable bed delivered, plus a hoist. But soon after that the family were told not to use the hoist, since they weren’t expert and his wife was about his age. Flat in bed he lay, muscles weakening and even a slight angling up becoming more challenging for him.

Then there was the drugs program. The first painkillers tended to have constipation as a side effect, so Jim was also given laxatives to counteract this. But then the pain prescription was changed yet the laxatives continued, causing constant and strength-sapping diarrhoea until the foul-up was realised.

Speaking of pharmaceuticals, there were some he had never had, and should have had. Jim’s X-ray from the year before had also shown a shadow on his liver; but the technician hadn’t noticed. This was the ‘cloud no bigger than a man’s hand’ that was heading his way. I asked Jim what they were giving him to fight the cancer: nothing.

I last saw him in the hospice – he lasted only a few days there. His passing was peaceful. But long premature.

I don’t think money alone would have solved all this. It needed the close attention of a Stuart Rose, or a Philip Green; detail managers. Semi-ignored plans and responsibility sign-offs aren’t enough.

Money, of course; but money employed to best effect.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Juletide Yazz, by JD

A Christmas selection for jazz lovers. Please note that the last video might be offensive to the puritanical youth of today as well as those who have had the statutory humour bypass (available free on the NHS):