SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: The Slow Slide into Dangerous Practices, by Wiggia

You will obey………………...

On a trip earlier this week, taking the wife to the supermarket for the weekly shop, I saw one of the saddest sights it has been my misfortune to come across.

An old boy alone with a stick and a shopping trolley was walking along on the other side to the road wearing a WW1 style double respirator and what looked a lint pad beneath as it protruded slightly round the edges. As he shuffled along stooped over his trolley it was a moment when you asked yourself, what have those bastards in government done to a small percentage of the population with their and the compliant MSM continual scare stories?

The government doesn’t deny the existence of a ‘nudge’ unit: the Behavioural Insights Team was founded in the Cabinet Office in 2010 under David Cameron's leadership, now owned by the Cabinet Office, NESTA a charity, which does not show any leaning towards behavioural insights but must have some input or take out for it to be involved, and employees; makes it sound like a well meaning mutual!

BIT now operates across the globe. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud, he never managed to establish that sort of unit outside of Germany.

The Department of Health has been complicit in working with the nudge unit in applying items that will ‘encourage’ practices that promote cleanliness during the coronavirus such as the hands-face-space jingle and the use of the word 'disgust' to make people adhere to the cleanliness practices. All well and good as far as it goes, but it has gone further than that.

It is about making people make the right choices, as seen by the unit, in their own interests. An earlier example of their work was this little gem which, small as it seems, resulted in many prescription drugs being taken off the GPs' lists and the patients having to purchase them privately; despite the words in which the action is couched I know from first hand experience it is not about having to buy your own Paracetamol, it actually eats into necessary drugs that have to be taken on a regular basis:

'The unit’s successes include sending letters to British GPs who were prescribing more than their peers, cutting unnecessary prescriptions by 3.3%.'

The percentage is now higher than that.

There is also the question of how and why this was floated off from the Cabinet Office and who gained. Nothing is revealed; an old comment from the Guardian, of all places, asks the same:

'Rather than just publishing this uncritical puff piece, the Guardian of old would have at least mentioned something about the questions raised (eg in Private Eye) about how the unit was privatised, its funding, and the benefits that have accrued to its former civil servant staff.'

Its initial funding was a Lottery grant of £250 million; I always thought Lottery grants were for good causes, but that finished long ago.

The BIT has had success in several areas, such as getting in tax revenues due on time, and getting ten million to sign up to pension schemes, if you can call our state pension schemes good.

The coronavirus was a different beast and early on the head of BIT mooted 'a policy of "cocooning" groups of people who are most vulnerable to coronavirus' in an interview:

He said: "There's going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows as it will do, where you want to cocoon, to protect those at-risk groups so they don't catch the disease.

"By the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity has been achieved in the rest of the population."

Dr Halpern suggested that volunteers might be enlisted to work in care homes.

"There's a lot of active work going on at the moment about what is it the volunteers could do," he added.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51828000

About how to protect care homes, didn’t actually do too well there, did they? but they ploughed on with their radical suggestions.

From  a Tribune article:

'For them, public policy is about changing public behaviour without the public even realising you are there. This seemed a clever approach to their devotees in the early days, before the government wised up to the scale of the threat. Now we know it is exactly the wrong way to deal with the massive social changes the coronavirus pandemic requires.'

Naturally in this age the nudge unit use machine learning, the study of algorithms and statistical models.

And again we know how well those have panned out during the pandemic in all quarters, yet still they are allowed to influence policy.

The coronavirus nudging has worked:

• the carrot and stick approach, lock down now for an earlier release 
• then stay locked down and give dates into the future that have no relevance to any data that will give the populace something to look forward to
• the use of the 'you will infect someone else if you do not (fill in the blank yourself) have created for many a real fear. 

This virus is made to seem akin to the Black Death, yet it fails to kill more than 0.3% of those that get it and of those the average age at death is actually higher than the current life expectancy. All of this has been oft repeated over the last year and still it goes on despite a virtual nil rate of deaths now.

It is noticeable that certain supermarkets after dealing with the virus very successfully for this past year have suddenly ramped up the restrictions: more notices about using the provided sanitiser (it had disappeared earlier), more notices about not being allowed in without a face mask, and now more staff are wearing the things where previously many did not, the distance markings have reappeared and as with our visit to Waitrose today the announcements on distancing from the announcement system are endless, resulting in the Morris dancing in the aisles coming back with a vengeance.

This can't be a coincidence. The road map out of the virus as portrayed by Bojo contained all the carrot and stick caveats of previous announcements and the nudge unit would be behind it all, but what they have done to some older folks of which I am one, though not affected,is shameful if not downright cruel; in the case of the old man at the start of this if you told him to turn right for the ‘showers’ he would have gone - as Goebbels said, 'if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth.'

BIT may have its uses but as with all these attempts to change people's behaviour there is always the risk of overreach and it becomes the norm. Subliminal advertising was the same and they banned it years ago; this nudge unit is practising the same psychology, and the temptation for immoral and dangerous usage with this type of operation is always there and it will be used for such purposes as sure as night follows day.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Sackerson adds: 

This October 2020 speech by the former Lord Chief Justice should be read by anyone concerned at the sudden and increasing loss of our civil liberty:
https://resources.law.cam.ac.uk/privatelaw/Freshfields_Lecture_2020_Government_by_Decree.pdf

FRIDAY MUSIC: Mark Knopfler, by JD

 Mark Knopfler is probably best known for the Dire Straits record called 'Sultans of Swing' but there is much, much more to his musical output than that very melodic and memorable song. A song which has an amusing back-story as Knopfler explains -"The lyrics were inspired by a performance of a jazz band playing in the corner of an almost empty pub in Deptford, South London. At the end of their performance, the lead singer announced their name, the Sultans of Swing; Knopfler found the contrast between the group's dowdy appearance and surroundings and their grandiose name amusing."

His Wiki entry lists his 'style' as being Rock, roots rock (Whatever that is), Celtic rock (actually more Celtic than rock), blues rock, country rock. I'm not sure why Wiki feels the need to add 'rock' to everything.om that it is a fair assessment of the music he has produced in his solo career.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Knopfler

Irish faeries for St Patrick's Day, by JD

The Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939) https://poets.org/poem/stolen-child

"For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand."

"The greatest contribution that fairies have made to our culture is in music. Many traditional country dance tunes were copied by local musicians from music they heard played by fairies. That same music is believed by some still to be played, but modern life is no longer attuned to it."
- John Michell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michell_(writer)

'The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries' is a book written by A. E. Evans Wentz in 1911. The book is based on his Oxford doctoral thesis, it includes an extensive survey of the literature from many different perspectives, including folk-lore, history, anthropology and psychology. The heart of the book is the ethnographic fieldwork conducted by Evans-Wentz, an invaluable snapshot of the fairy belief system taken just on the cusp of modernity.
https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ffcc/index.htm

SOMETHING FOR THE WINE CELLAR: Organic tastes better? by Wiggia

An article in Drinks Business raises the organic biodynamic approach to winemaking to a different level by quoting research? That shows…….

 “Wines produced from organic or biodynamically produced grapes do taste better, according to two separate studies analysing the scores of 200,000 wines given by independent critics in both California and France.”

You have to read the whole article to be able to form an opinion on what is contained therein

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2021/03/study-of-200000-wine-scores-shows-organic-wines-taste-better/

If you read the article nowhere will you see if the wines were tasted blind, the rhetoric suggests they were not, which begs the question are the judges all jumping on the same bandwagon? Organic and biodynamic is increasingly part of the sales pitch in the food industry along with veganism and the increasing pressure from climate change activists that we should eat ever less meat among other ‘life’ choices they have chosen for us.

When couched as ‘saving the planet’ it is easy to express an opinion that will go unchallenged so the movement gathers momentum regardless of any side effects such as increased retail cost and bigger profits for the manufacturers and even God forbid another valid and substantiated opinion.

The problem with the article is yet another example of critics being the arbiters of taste. As with all tastings they are subjective, so I find it hard to believe, unless they knew what they were tasting, to believe the results. I defy anyone to taste two decent wines blind and state categorically that one was organic or had its grapes picked under a full moon and the other was not.

There have been enough examples of research to prove that wine critics are no better than the general public at getting consistent results when tasting wine blind and that means no clues to cost origin etc., taking that into account it beggars belief that they can add 4-6% increase in rating figures for wines that are organic or/and biodynamic; the no rise in percentage points for wines that are organically produced but do not mention the fact on the label rather gives the game away re tasting blind, and the latter biodynamic section seems to involve a lot of what can only be described as witchcraft grafted onto organics.

“Cow horns are stuffed with manure compost and buried into the ground all through the winter, then later excavated. “please………………..or……..

““Ideally, when I can, I try to harvest my grapes during fruit days; in other words, days when the moon travels in front of a constellation of fire from the zodiac calendar. For example, Lion, Aries or Sagittarius. These are more propitious days for a more expressive wine.”

Fruit is picked when it is at its best, early morning for freshness, before the rains come etc. Man or woman decides when that moment is, it has nothing to do with where the moon is at any given time, other than by pure coincidence; if you believe that you believe in Tarot cards, mediums, lucky heather and rabbits feet and being able to cross the M1 blindfold during the rush hour and live.

This article from the same publication has a group of wine makers, all organic, wanting any wine that isn’t to have a label stating the fact as though it is some sort pariah wine; well they would, wouldn’t they, it is to their commercial advantage.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2019/10/put-chemgro-on-wines-produced-using-pesticides/

What they fail to say, as does the organic movement in general is the vast majority of pesticides and fertilisers are from organic organisms or derived from. The only thing that is wrong has been in certain areas a gross overuse of the same products, yet even now organic producers are allowed to use copper sulphites in certain cases, though to a lesser extent in Europe, and still be organic.

The communities' own Steve Slatcher did a very good piece on the subject a couple of years back:

http://www.winenous.co.uk/wp/archives/12670

I know two agronomists, one is a vineyard consultant the other is working in the more general agriculture field and both believe much, not all, of the organic movement is purely a marketing ploy, as many of the practices that are labelled organic have been part of farming for years without the label.

As stated in Steve’s piece many are of the opinion that cheaper wines are only possible because large scale producers use inordinate amounts of pesticides and fertilisers, but that is no longer true as with farming in general those amounts have through legislation been reduced dramatically over recent years, it is not a claim that can be levelled at those producers any more, as much as the organic movement would like to.

Another piece here…

https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2019/05/organic-wines-deadly-carbon-footprint

... includes evidence that organic farming produces more Co2 which is not in line with organic thinking, yet again as the organic movement starts to get more scrutiny there is now also evidence that just maybe Co2 is not the evil it is made out to be, so we now have contradictory viewpoints.

Which is backed up by this….

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2019/05/carbon-footprint-significantly-higher-with-organics/

Words in the context of organic are used in a way that implies that nature is part of the winemaking process; ’natural’ wine gives the impression it made itself, no human being was involved in the process, that of course is nonsense, man is the reason wine exists from the beginnings to now. 'Sustainable' is another hijacked word, there is nothing sustainable about energy production using windmills, they are about the least sustainable production method of them all but that word is attached as a badge of ‘good credentials.’ We have to be very wary of a movement that wants to be taken seriously on the strength of a green backed headline, there is on all levels huge amounts of public money being pumped into green technology which is hidden from public view. ‘What is good for you’ is not to be taken at face value, but it is also very good for them the producers; the truth is emerging on all fronts, but a juggernaut is not easy to stop.

By coincidence as I was putting this together the Times published an article about another research carried out by Jens Gaab whose main job is a placebo researcher at Basel University, who says he is interested in context effects, ‘if you reframe something’ what happens?

His study involved offering 150 people three different wines and asking them to rate them.

All were 2013 Italian reds but that is where the similarity ended. One was a £25 a bottle, one was £8 a bottle and one - La Pupille - £50 a bottle.

The first tasting was blind and all came out on an equal footing re taste. Some were told the £50 bottle was £8 and the £8 was a fine £25 wine; the results then showed the £8 wine being judged the best of the three. You can make of it what you will, similar tests have been done before and with ‘experts,’ with the same results.

As Gaab says, wine companies are clever, they know that if they make wine more expensive it tastes better- and they aim for that, because it is a huge market.

Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at Oxford said the findings fitted in with a growing body of research showing that price feeds into perceptions of quality, including a study in 2008 that showed increased activation in the brain's reward centres when people were told they were drinking expensive wine.

All of this can be extrapolated into the 'organic is better' push we are seeing now. Organics make people believe they are making a choice for the good and don’t mind paying for it, their comfort zone is expanded.

The Times wine critic, Jane MacQuitty defends the experts' stance by saying it takes years of practice and training to sort the wheat from the chaff, yet studies with experts when tasting blind have proved to be little different from the average wine drinker.

She then attacks the promotion of wine in heavy bottles back label hype, overly ornate labelling, with gold medals galore, ah gold medals a large part of the wine critic's folio of work.

She finishes with Caveat Emptor, let the buyer beware, and I thought it was the critic's job to assist the general public in their decisions; obviously not.

On the matter of taste, again, the truth is not told, anyone who grows their own veg will claim rightly that the produce tastes better. It does; not because you are following organic practices, that part has minimal effect, but because you are growing varieties that taste better but are uneconomic for the commercial grower - yes they could grow them but no one unless they were in a higher income bracket could afford them. Organic produce from the same varieties that are grown commercially fetch a much higher retail price and taste the same,  taste is incidental to the cause.

Much of the higher retail price, and that will apply to wine as all other foods, is the extra labour involved in production: modern farming has reduced labour costs, organics increases them.

For many organics is a lifestyle choice, it is also a choice many cannot follow for financial reasons. If all goes organic many will struggle to put food on the table. The average increase over standard commercial farmed products is around 45%, some items are the same cost, but not many.

The advances in vineyard management and winery production techniques has seen enormous strides made in the quality of wine production from the humble supermarket red to the Cru-classed Château, but the organic gravy train is to good to not jump on. As the article says, it puts retail prices up as buyers perceive the statement that a wine is organic means a better tasting product and worth the extra cost; that remains unproven but peer pressure will ensure all follow that path, but not necessarily for the reasons stated.

The trouble with the green lobby it is never enough, the zealots would have everything going back to subsistence farming if they had their way.

Organic wine production promotes a similar vision: horses with ploughs in vineyards makes a wonderful-feelz advertising picture, any addition to the quality of the wine is purely coincidental.

After all that what do I buy? What I like is the simple answer, and that is a pretty broad church. If you take everything said that is bad about wine we all might as well drink Yellow Tail and forget everything else. That of course is not what it is about, but a more forensic and balanced view on all we are fed is not going to do any harm, a little cynicism never did any harm either, and the way to deal with all this bullshit is to buy what you like, drink what you like and ignore almost everyone. As Arthur Daley would say, “The world is your lobster.”

FRIDAY MUSIC: Carl Perkins, by JD

One of the architects of rock & roll, Carl Perkins is best known as the writer and original singer of the rockabilly anthem “Blue Suede Shoes” (#2, 1956). Along with Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins was one of the seminal rockabilly artists on Sam Phillips’ Sun label in Memphis.

https://www.sunrecords.com/artists/carl-perkins

"Blue Suede Shoes" is one of the first rock-and-roll records. In its style it incorporated elements of blues, country and the pop music of the time. Here is Perkins with Scotty Moore (Elvis Presley's guitarist) performing the song as a Tribute to Elvis:

Meghan distracts us from our loss of civil liberties

I don't care what the weatherman says, as Louis Armstrong sang. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQBfYZcBSPA Even Piers Morgan can't be wrong about everything, and when weathermxn Alex Beresford attempted to lecture him on his failure to collude with the mythology Meghan is trying to construct around herself he walked off set (see below - had he planned to do so all along?), dogpiled with 41,000 complaints from the gullible public.

The Duchess has been tapping into the Dianolatry that subsequently shook the Monarchy on the Princess' death in 1997. This photo collage doing the rounds on Facebook makes the point:

Not only does this 'mess with the heads' of the sentimental among the populace but it may serve as an extra hook into the psyche of Prince Harry, who aged twelve lost the beautiful mother that Meghan has been mimicking.

How much further will she take it? She has already driven a wedge between Harry and his brother, and cost him the Captain-Generalship of the Royal Marines (earned not least by his brave service in Afghanistan.) Heaven forbid she continues Diana's trajectory into marital difficulties, but we have already seen Oprah Winfrey cast as Martin Bashir, interviewing the poor, put-upon victim of alleged Palace bullying. 

In Meghan's case, the 'third person in the marriage' has been the camera, starting long before the ceremony; I could wish that when filmed and photographed she looked at her husband more than, and with at least as much love as, at the lens.

Mention of the ceremony leads us to the couple's claim to have been married clandestinely three days before the Windsor Castle celebration; a claim at first passively reported in the news media passim - perhaps another example of how much journalism has become internet copy-taking by cub reporters:

'... We called the Archbishop and we just said, look, this thing, this spectacle is for the world. But we want our union between us, so the vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury...

'Added Harry, 'Yeah, just the three of us.''

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a35757534/meghan-markle-prince-harry-secret-married-before-wedding/

Pace Oprah's uncritical complicity with her interviewees, this assertion bears on the Duchess' truthfulness and so lends weight to Morgan's assessment; for the 'pre-wedding wedding' cannot have been valid.

In this country (excluding Scotland) a wedding must take place in an authorised location and inside a permanent structure (not, for example, in a marquee); no such outbuilding appears to be in the 'backyard' of Kensington Palace's Nottingham Cottage. The public must have access to the venue, and there must be at least two witnesses; neither requirement appears to have been fulfilled. Also, where was the advance declaration?

The Arhcbishop of Canterbury has maintained silence on this matter, presumably unwilling to be seen to contradict the Duchess, though this has not prevented her father from characterising her as a 'liar' https://www.newidea.com.au/meghan-markle-dad-letter-sue-documentary-court-case or her half-sister Samantha from calling her a 'narcissist' and 'sociopath.' https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/meghan-markle-unloads-on-fathers-betrayal-and-unknown-halfsister-samantha-markle-fires-back/news-story/536199aab9dd492c2e1e28ab92fea484

Let us be charitable and say it was a 'stretcher' - a misinterpretation, deliberate or unintentional, of some rehearsal or blessing - rather than a complete fabrication; but in a courtroom it would damage the credibility of her evidence generally. 'Recollections may vary,' as the Palace's depth-charge phrase has said. https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1407379/Royal-Family-latest-Queen-response-meghan-markle-prince-harry-interview-end-of-monarchy However, the Prince was ready to back her up - a readiness guyed by Black Country comedienne 'Doreen Tipton':

I would pay good money to see the pair interviewed again, but this time by the mercilessly interrogative Judge Judy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Judy

Meghan won't win in her attempts to destroy the Monarchy, though, if that's what she's after rather than a Tinseltown career as 'wronged woman.' 

Among the many reasons why is the existence of the Privy Council, that secretive and autocratic organisation to which the real power of the country has been devolved for centuries and of which all Prime Ministers and Cabinet ministers are automatically members. No Crown, no Privy Council.

No outsider will be allowed to throw a spanner into the engine, with its almost unlimited potential for arbitrary power; a capacity explored by an unscrupulous Tony Blair and his accomplices as soon as New Labour hit the ground running, starting with the meeting on 3 May 1997 that gave the PM the right to nominate three people to give political orders to the Civil Service https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/247039/response/605821/attach/3/3%20May%201997%20Civil%20Service%20Amendment%20Order%20in%20Council%201997.pdf?cookie_passthrough=1.

Tony Benn warned many years ago - and I'm sorry not to have the link - that our freedoms could be swept away in an afternoon by Order In Council. That magic wand, plus Blair's Civil Contingencies Act 2004 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/36/contents and the increasing use of secondary legislation has seen a coup against British civil liberties that has led - under an allegedly Conservative PM - to the entire country being held under open arrest and a prey to overempowered uniformed prodnosing and bullying. 

The Hollywood Princess has no idea what she has taken on, and she can save all her posturing and bloviating for the mirror, mirror on the wall. For our part, we need to turn away from this frivolity and address the loss of our habits of liberty that we misunderstood as our inalienable rights.

FACT CHECK TIME: Meghan and Harry's secret pre-marriage marriage

"... We called the Archbishop and we just said, look, this thing, this spectacle is for the world. But we want our union between us, so the vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury and that was the piece that...

"Added Harry, "Yeah, just the three of us.""

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a35757534/meghan-markle-prince-harry-secret-married-before-wedding/

Here is guidance on marriage under the law of England and Wales:

The marriage must take place in a registered building. Not all buildings are registered, so it is important to check first with your local authority. If the building is not registered then the marriage will not be legally recognised.

The ceremony itself can take any form, provided that:

1. it is in public
2. there are at least two witnesses present
3. either a registrar of the district in which the ceremony is taking place or an authorised person is present
4. both parties make the necessary declarations, for example, declaring that there are no lawful objections to the marriage

https://rightsofwomen.org.uk/get-information/family-law/marriage/#The%20marriage%20ceremony

I don't know whether the garden of a 'cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace' is/was a registered building, but clearly the Archbishop of Canterbury is authorised to conduct marriages.

However:

(1) To be valid, a marriage has to be in public - i.e. the public must have access to the place where it is to be contracted; and

(2) There must be at least two witnesses to the marriage

As I've said in the madhouse that is Facebook:

Now let Meghan be interviewed by 

Judge Judy. Oh please, oh please!

There are exceptions - for example, where one or both of the contracting parties is very ill and cannot be moved; but even then two witnesses are required, even if the ceremony is carried out by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Am I wrong? Put me right, somebody -  but not the newspapers who, right up to the Telegraph, have repeated this seeming bilge unquestioningly.