Good news about bookie lookalikes, U-turns, intelligent millionaires and climate action

12 April 2025

Lots of cheering news this week, including that wonderful picture of Donald Trump holding up his tariff board and looking exactly like a bookie on the hill at Epsom on Derby Day.

Amy Coney Barrett, a Republican member of the American Supreme Court has, for the second time in recent months, voted against her Republican colleagues in a ruling against Trump to put justice before politics.  Who’d have guessed she still had the integrity to do that.

Trump did a Liz Truss by imposing a 10% levy on imports from Ukraine and the UK, and 20% on imports from the EU (and 0% on imports from Russia), financial markets worldwide crashed and he was forced into a humiliating U-turn, which just goes to show that if you say “Boo!” to a bully, they’ll chicken out.

Jaguar Land Rover had immediately suspended all further exports of their cars to America, thereby boosting the owners of ones already over there by increasing their second-hand values.

Trump’s tariffs also provided a wonderful excuse for our Labour government to rethink its economic policy and Keir Starmer has said “old assumptions should be discarded” so they can forget their crazy undertaking not to raise taxes.

All over America, there were demonstrations against Trump’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda” with an estimated 500,000 people taking to the streets in Washington, Florida and about 1,000 other places, including state capitals.

There have even been rumours that Elon Musk will be leaving the Department of Government Efficiency, possibly because people have sussed that he thinks cutting expenditure must automatically improve efficiency.

Both Trump and Musk were started in business with inherited capital but, while Musk has increased his with some successful businesses, Trump has lost a large amount of his inheritance with his unbelievable incompetence in running businesses – remember his casinos were bankrupted, beating the odds that were stacked in his favour by the rules of the games.

Another millionaire who inherited wealth is Abigail Disney, one of my heroes, who has acknowledged she is rich “only because of some quirks in the tax system, some good luck, and some very loving grandparents. But nothing else.”  She has for many years been giving large sums of money away and a member of The Patriotic Millionaires, an American organisation dedicated to changing the system so that its members and others with even more money pay more tax.

Last year, she wrote that “Extreme wealth concentration in the hands of a few oligarchs is a threat to democracy the world over.”  She accepts that instituting a global minimum tax on the very rich will be complex, but not impossible, and she pointed out that, four years ago, 136 OECD countries “joined an accord to enact a 15% global minimum tax on multinational corporations”.  She added that “If we can institute a tax floor for the world’s largest corporations, there is no reason we can’t do the same for the world’s wealthiest individuals”, pointing out that a 2023 survey found that even millionaires in G20 countries support the idea.

More good news over here is that the planning application for a deep coalmine in Whitehaven, Cumbria has been withdrawn after the High Court ruled that the permission granted by Michael Gove when he was in charge was unlawful.  This follows another, earlier decision by the Supreme Court that quashed planning permission for an oil well at Horse Hill in Surrey on the grounds that the impact of burning coal, oil and gas must be included when the climate impact of a proposal must be included.

The Labour government is also proposing to extend restrictions on the burning of peatland which has led to the degradation of 80% of them in England.  They are comparatively uncommon but, when they’re allowed to remain undisturbed, they store huge amounts of carbon – an estimated 3.2 billion tonnes in the UK alone.  The Conservative government started with a small step in the right direction by limiting the burning to areas of ‘deep peat’ (over 40cm deep) in Sites of Special Scientific Interest in conservation areas and some even smaller sites.

Labour’s plans include reducing the definition of deep peat from 40cm to 30cm and would do away with the limitation to conservation areas, increasing protected areas by two thirds to a total of 368,000 hectares, but this still leaves almost half the total area unprotected. 

Needless to say, organisations like the Countryside Alliance are up in arms.  They don’t care about the wildlife, such as adders, toads, and ground-nesting birds, that are killed when land is burnt but they’re horrified that this will restrict the land where otherwise relatively normal people pay a lot of money for the sheer delight of blowing the heads off the grouse that live there bringing up their families.

I have no real problem with somebody shooting something to take home to eat (actually, of course, picking up and eating roadkill avoids the slaughter and is much cheaper, but remember fresh blood is good, maggots aren’t) but shooters don’t even get to keep the birds they killed without paying for them;  and what worries me more is the thought that some people actually get pleasure from killing, and are willing to pay to be allowed to do it.

Still on the subject of corpses, I’m always fascinated by the facial reconstructions of Neanderthals and other people who have been for tens of thousands of years just from a skull that’s been dug up by an archaeologist.  I know pictures are sometimes drawn using similar techniques in attempts to picture the faces of bodies that haven’t yet been identified but I wonder whether any research has been done reconstructing the faces from the skulls of people who’ve died more recently, and of whom there are photographs, to see how accurate they are? 

They’re welcome to use my skull for a test when I’ve finished with it because I find it hard to imagine how they could guess where my wrinkles are from the underlying bone so it would be an interesting test of their system.

More extremism in America, and the Buddhist alternative

16 November 2024
In the last week, we’ve seen some post mortem analyses of what the Democrats got wrong. A lot of people are (too late) trying to explain Donald Trump’s victory and anticipating what it could mean for women, migrants, political opponents, the climate, democracy, international relations, his criminal convictions and the objectivity of the American justice system. There is also real concern about how he and his dearly beloved friends, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Kim Jong Un, will work together to achieve world peace.
The unpredictable ego of Elon Musk, who bought himself a place in the next president’s inner circle, adds an extra dimension of uncertainty …
It feels as if there is an ever-increasing distance between the political right and left, with the centre being marginalised (lesser mortals can only dream of producing a metaphor as daft as that). It matters less whether the right and the left dislike each other because both extremes despise the centre ground and the centrists often don’t have extremist convictions about what is right and what is wrong, believing that normal people can usually find some middle ground.
There have also been unattributable reports of concerns from moderate Republicans who are just as worried as the rest of us about another 4 years of Trumpism, but their jobs are at stake so they’re rendered powerless.
Remember a red shift is what proves the light has been bent.
The same shift to political extremes is also being seen in other countries, including what were the more moderate countries in the EU, and I’ve been wondering if the problem stems from a redefinition of ‘the right’ and ‘the left’ as ‘the right’ and ‘the not right’. This view seems to be enthusiastically supported by the far right.
The trouble is that’ all over the world, the far right produces wonderful slogans that offer nothing specific (think ‘MAGA’ and ‘Stop the Boats’) but attract the support of unthinking masses who rarely read beyond the headlines. Give them labels and badges and baseball caps and they’re happy feeling part of groups that become their extended families and they all march together with banners and placards, chanting the latest slogans.
And they want to believe the slogans mean something even if, deep in the heart of the more intelligent people, there’s a suspicion that an over-defensive, shouty, criminal liar in a baseball cap – and a tie so long it inevitably invites Freudian interpretation – might not actually deliver his promises.
(I was once given a baseball cap in a goody bag but the only use I’ve ever found for it was as a sun visor but, since I already had dark glasses, I’ve never worn it. They don’t even stop bald spots developing sun cancer but I suppose they do stop dodgily coiffeured combovers blowing away in the wind and, of course, ‘merch’ is a brilliant way to make people pay you money to advertise your products for them.)
The far left’s response can be just as extreme but tends to be negative, using anti-right slogans (think ‘Stop Oil’ and ‘Britain Deserves Better’) rather than producing positive and active slogans offering a society based on peace, kindness and mutual respect.
Sadly, these wishy-washy idealists in the centre don’t have the same power to influence the gullibles as the approach taken by the American right who love rally cries like ‘Make America White Again’, ‘All men have a right to carry machine guns’, ‘Women should stay in the kitchen / bedroom’, ‘Kill the Commies’, ‘Rid America of Jews and Disabled People’, ‘Outlaw LGBT’, ‘All drugs should be illegal’, ‘Except Nicotine and Alcohol’, ‘Abortion is a Crime’, ‘Burn more Coal’, ‘Strengthen our Borders’ and so on.
This all sounds powerful and macho and positive and attracts people who want their lives to be better and think these sloganistas will improve things for them. By comparison, slogans like ‘Be Kind to Others’ just sound feeble.
Imagine if Adolf Hitler and Jesus had a debate: Hitler would be foaming at the mouth and Jesus would be offering him a hanky to wipe up the spittle.
At a more mundane but just as manipulative level, the far right first label then ridicule attitudes like ‘wokeness’; then they criticise people who are only trying to make sure that everybody has a fair chance in life.

In the end, they just come over as believing that only the strong deserve to survive and the weak and unlucky should be allowed to fall by the wayside.
Meanwhile, the far left claim to support the working classes and are determined to bridge the gulf between the Haves and the Have Nots. Momentum, for example wants to “transform the Labour Party, our communities and Britain in the interests of the many, not the few.” If we disregard their limiting their aims to the Labour Party, this is laudable but still feeble compared with the enraged rhetoric of the right: it’s easier to wind up the right by the emotive shouting and prejudice (that led to the invasion of the Capitol building) than it is by peaceful demonstrations of the quieter but just as well-intentioned left.
In America, the John Birch Society still exists and invites people to “Be part of the patriot movement to protect and restore American freedom, independence, and our God-given rights.” They are convinced there is a national conspiracy that encompasses the Biden White House, the Federal Reserve and Covid vaccines and starts with the indoctrination of children attending public (state-funded) schools. Bob Dylan wrote a song called ‘Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues’ in the early 1960s but they’re still there!
In a way, the Society is the natural successor to J Edgar Hoover who was (the first) Director of the FBI from 1935-1972 whose particular form of paranoia convinced him there were reds under every bed. He was also a racist with a dubious personal life and there were persistent rumours of his own homosexuality and his predilection for cross-dressing (both of which lifestyles he publicly persecuted).
What’s wrong with the Buddhism’s “middle way” that eschews both extreme asceticism and sensual indulgence?
Peace be with you all.

New Zealand v UK, NHS, taxing billionaires

21 January 2023

SHOCK!  TRAGEDY!  New Zealand’s prime minister is stepping down.  Jacinda Ardern thought about this over the summer break and concluded that, to be a good prime minister, one needs “the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice.”

For 6 years, she’s led the country’s housing, child poverty and climate change policies, interrupted only by a global pandemic, a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, the White Island volcanic eruption and the international economic crisis;  and she had a baby in her spare time.

Of course she wasn’t perfect but she tried;  what an example to other world leaders (and would-be leaders) including, from west to east, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinpin who need to be forced out when they’re well past their sell-by dates.

When asked how she’d like New Zealanders to remember her, Ardern said “as someone who always tried to be kind”.

Wouldn’t it be nice of all UK politicians had to make kindness their foremost duty when doing their jobs, either at constituency or national level.

But what do we have?  Rishi Sunak now wants to broaden and ‘clarify’ the legal definition of “serious disruption” so that, in Downing Street’s words, police “will not need to wait for disruption and can shut down protests before chaos erupts”. This of course means that people could be arrested for planning or thinking about demonstrations to draw the public’s attention to things like the government’s forked-tongue approach to reducing carbon emissions (we pledge to reduce … / we’re going to open a brand new coal mine …).

A TV journalist reported that Sunak’s desire to change the new public order bill would “give the police the power to intervene [to prevent] disruptive behaviour before it becomes disruptive”.  Goodness, gollygosh, I exclaimed, Orwell’s Thought Police really are here, and I was relieved to see this report immediately followed by a specialist lawyer saying that it was potentially very dangerous to arrest people on suspicion of what they might do, rather than on the facts of what they have done or are doing.  Imagine their being able to arrest you because of what they think you might be thinking.

This was, coincidentally, on the same day as a police officer pleaded guilty to multiple charges of rape.  He’d been known to his fellow officers as ‘Bastard Dave’ and his file had several red warnings on it, like that of the police officer who raped and murdered Sarah Everard, but nobody did anything about him.

Here I should admit I’m generally an admirer of the UK police.  I think the majority of them do a difficult job extremely well but there obviously are, at least in some forces, problems with recruitment and an unwillingness to report colleagues for racism, sexism and other inappropriate behaviour.  This shows that existing ‘quality controls’ and support systems for whistleblowers don’t work;  and that their superiors should now be held responsible.

Surely Sunak should be putting this right with national rules rather than giving them extra power to arrest people for what may or may not be going on in their heads.  I’m now thinking about how best to organise peaceful demonstrations that will disrupt parliament, and am planning how to do it – surround the palace of Westminster with protestors, at least three deep everywhere, who just mooch around exchanging pleasantries about the weather, from the Westminster Bridge balustrade round to the embankment wall at the upstream end.  It’d start at low tide so the more intrepid peers, MPs and staff could provide media fodder by squelching through the mud on the riverside of the buildings.  Then I’ll sit back and wait to be arrested so, if this blog doesn’t appear next week, you’ll know why;  come and whisper at the grates, and bring my divine Althea.

Sunak’s lack of common sense and forethought was demonstrated all too clearly this week, the former when he failed to put his seatbelt on in the back seat of a car, the latter when he filmed himself without it on.  He’s since been fined (his second fine since he’s been in office – shouldn’t this be treated as gross misconduct?)

He’s also been criticised for flying short distances oin a private plane three times this week to Lancashire, Leeds and Scotland.  His defence at a public event was:  “I travel around so I can do lots of things in one day, I’m not travelling around just for my own enjoyment – although this is very enjoyable, of course. I’m travelling around so I can talk to people in Accrington this morning, then I’ve talked to you, then I’m going to get over to Hartlepool because I’m working on all of your behalf.”

Leaving aside the syntactical problem, just think how this would compare with a 4-hour train journey to Scotland during which he could have walked the full length of the train and talked to people and sat down with them to get their views, rather than preaching from a script to public meetings of the converted;  and then coming back on a scheduled flight so he could meet and talk to more people.

The Health Secretary joined in with another particularly stupid thing on Wednesday when he said they can’t afford to give the nurses what they want or they’d have to give teachers more, and then the rail workers, which is why they’re aiming to close the NHS.  Well, he didn’t actually use quite those words but that was the gist of it.  Nor did he say the reason they can’t afford it is because they squandered so much over the last 13 years (remember prime minister Wossname who lost £50+bn in six weeks).  About the only thing Britain has left to be proud of is the bits of the NHS that remain unprivatised, and they’re now going to sell them.

Sajid Javid, a former health secretary has even said in an article in the Times today that patients ought to pay for visits to GPs and A&E.  Downing Street has said Sunak is not currently considering the proposals.  Note the “currently”. Javid is not standing in the next election.

Meanwhile, a group of 205 billionaires round the world have said in an open letter “Defending democracy and building cooperation requires action to build fairer economies … The solution is plain for all to see.  You, our global representatives [at Davos], have to tax us, the ultra rich, and you have to start now.”

To be fair to my Conservative friend who I mentioned last week, I’m giving him a right of reply. Taking my comments personally rather than as a key to how people on the right generally think, he said my views were based on my claiming to be “centrist and unbiased” even though the very top of my webpage explains my position.

He went on to say “It [the blog] is full of truths, half truths and misleading comments.  I will pick on only one, as it is the shortest to point out – I do not hate Biden …”  In fact, I never said he (or others on the right, except perhaps in America) did hate Biden, I just said he disliked him. And he’s too modest to have commented on the bit where I said “he’s actually a good and kind man”.

(I know this all sounds very impersonal but I never use the names of my wife and friends and other ‘real’ people I write about unless they’re already a public figure and widely known.)

Do you want the good news or the bad news?

10 December 2022

The most frightening news last week was hearing that thousands of police across Germany had arrested a whole bunch of people from the far right, including some armed police and military officers, and a prince, who had been planning to overthrow the German state.  The 71-year-old prince is descended from Reuß family that used to rule over parts of eastern Germany in the 12th century.  This is tremendously impressive since (like all of us) he had well over 4 trillion ancestors in the 12^th century, which is an estimated 1,500 times as many people as lived on earth at the time, so he’s probably our umpteenth cousin.  If there’s a knock on your door, don’t answer it.

The coincidence of the week came when Matt Hancock MP, who’d just been on ‘I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here’ eating unspeakable parts of wild animals, probably without garlic.  Out of the final three contestants, he was only beaten by two others and, having already lost the Conservative whip, he announced that he wouldn’t be standing as a candidate in the next election.  The coincidence was that his local constituency association appears to have decided not put him forward as their candidate at the next election.

Encouraging news came when Rishi Sunak U-turned again and reallowed the creation of new onshore wind farms but, unfortunately, it came in the same week as Michael Gove, the recidivist levelling-up secretary approved the digging of a new coal mine in Cumbria, estimated to produce 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year, even though the world teeters on the edge of the abyss of climate catastrophe.  Even the chair of the Climate Change Committee and former Conservative minister Lord Deben has described the decision as “absolutely indefensible”.  How can the UK ever again criticise countries like China and India for their contributions to Armageddon?

By the way, if you want to see what an open-cast coal mine looks like, find a picture of Ffos-y-Fran opencast coalmine in Merthyr Tydfil.

Keir Starmer came up with some new old news and talked about ending VAT exemption for private schools (which is neither new news nor wholly accurate).  It’s already been Labour policy for 5 years and even Gove has suggested the same thing;  and anyway some charities can recover some, but not all, of the VAT they pay.  Still, the sheer effrontery of the policy inflamed the Daily Mail for a couple of days.

The Mail also pounced on Starmer’s children going to a state school which they said is actually a “state-run prep school for the middle class”.  Oh, for heaven’s sake.  No wonder the Mail has the reputation it has.

(Did you know Eton College is a registered charity?  It was founded in 1440 as “The Kynge’s
College of our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore”, which is still its official name.  Its income in the year to 31 August 2021 was £85m.)

The least surprising news is that Michelle Mone also lobbied ministers in an attempt to get the government to give huge contracts to yet another company (LFI Diagnostics) that was a secret entity of the office that manages the wealth of her husband, Douglas Barrowman, for which she was formally rebuked by a health minister.  She has – wait for it – denied all the allegations but will be taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords “in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her”.

The most predictable news involved the number of people who are going on strike.   Privatised railway companies that are mostly owned by foreigners who don’t use British trains cancelled well over 300,000 trains in the last year, more than double the number in 2015, but the companies are still claiming huge bonus payments from the government.  The staff are going on strike basically because they think they should be more fairly rewarded even if it does have to come out of the money that would otherwise go overseas to the owners.  It’s beginning to look like one of the UK’s biggest exports is the gift to foreign countries of profits earned in the UK.

Postal workers are also striking because they don’t think it’s fair for them to be fired and replaced by lower-paid ‘self-employed’ and casual workers which cost less and increase Royal Mail’s profits. 

Even nurses are going on strike, which shows how little the government cares about keeping the real value of wages of some of Britain’s most essential workers up to date.  These people keep most of us well and alive, though probably not Conservative MPs who can afford private treatment, and the government treats them like dirt.  I wonder if the Conservative governments’ increasing privatisation of NHS services over the last 10 years might be significant?  Surely adding the extra costs of paying directors and managers and giving money to shareholders of private companies to make them richer couldn’t possibly be reducing the money left to keep the real value of the wages paid to the people who provide the service?

The worst news this week was that some 6,000 children are born in the UK with undiagnosable medical problems, known as SWAN, Syndrome Without a Name, and the parents have to go the same thing over and over with different medics, and never get an answer, or a cure.

The second best news this week was that the American state of Georgia, the Democrat Raphael Warnock won a 51^st seat in the Senate for the Democrats and the Republican candidate Herschel Walker conceded gracefully and made it clear that he was happy with the way the election had been managed.

The best news was that a jury in New York has found the Trump Organization guilty of criminal tax fraud and Donald Trump’s own lawyers have found two more classified documents in a storage unit in Florida.  Where did the saying ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall’ come from?  (Actually it seems nobody knows – suggestions vary from boxing to empires by way of large businesses – but it possibly originated from the prolific composer of folk songs, Trad.)

The most idiotic news also involved Trump who said the US Constitution should be “terminated” so he can move back to the White House.

Possibly the most intriguing news is that people can often get an idea of how some animals are feeling just from their vocalisations.  The animals ‘tested’ include dogs, pigs, horses, cows and goats.  Our Labrador certainly has different barks for “someone’s at the door” and “come on, hurry up, stop chatting, I’m bored, throw the damn ball”.  It is of course easy to anthropomorphise animals’ actions and noises but researchers at the University of Copenhagen also measured less subjective things like heart rates and have published their findings in the Royal Society Open Science journal.

But the most enjoyable news is that a girl in Los Angeles has, subject to some conditions, been granted a permit to own a unicorn.  The conditions include finding one, feeding it with watermelon at least once a week, giving it access to sunlight, moonbeams and rainbows and polishing its horn every month with a soft cloth.

Choosing a PM, a short history of UK politics, a moral gulf as described by Leonard Cohen and another greedy pig

17 July 2022

People who desire power are, by definition, unsuited for it.  Last week, 11 Conservatives admitted they wanted to be prime minister and have, within a week, been whittled down to five by those who know them best.  Three more will now get excluded, leaving two who will now have to wait for 7 weeks before they know which one of them the party’s 175,000 members vote think won’t do quite as badly as the other.

These 175,000 members are, of course, the same people who, last time they were asked, got the answer so terribly wrong and elected the worst prime minister in living history.

One of the things that worries me is that Boris Johnson filled his umpteen cabinets with incompetents so he wouldn’t look as stupid by comparison.  Wouldn’t it therefore have been more sensible to exclude anybody who’d ever been in one of his many cabinets from the process so there’s at least a chance of finding someone who can take a new look at the future?  (I realise this cuts both ways but could they do any worse that they have in the last 5 years?)

Anyway, of the 11 original applicants, three didn’t get enough support to enter the race.  Rishi Sunak was the clear winner in the first round with the support of 88 of the 358 Tory MPs who remain after various resignations, dismissals and by-election defeats.  This means that, if he does ultimately win the members’ vote, he will know that 270 of his party’s MPs didn’t actually want him as prime minister.

As I write, five people are still in the race but, by the time you read this, there’ll only be four, then two more will have been excluded by the end of next week, leaving just two to use their summer break to big themselves up and slag the other off. 

What a palaver.  Why didn’t they just put all 11 names on a ballot paper and let all party members put a X against their favourite?  Other elections are done on that basis and it would have let the Tory MPs blame the membership if they picked the wrong person again.  

(Isn’t it sad that, after Johnson, I don’t really care who wins because I don’t think anyone could do worse.)

Actually, I have a slight preference for Tom Tugendhat since he was apparently the only one of the five contenders at Friday’s debate who unequivocally admitted that Johnson tells lies (one of the others said he “sometimes” did and the others, including Rishi Sunak, just waffled).  And the bookies love it when an outsider wins so let’s keep our fingers crossed.

But no, I don’t think Tories have got the bottle for that, especially not for a person who’s willing to be that honest about the failings of another on the same side.

I rather like the name Kemi Badenoch, not because I know anything about her politics but because she accepted what sounds like a Scottish name from her husband.  They appear not to pronounce it in Scottish but say Bayder-Knock and 30-seconds of detailed research on the internet doesn’t show Hamish’s ancestors as having any links to Scotland – though ‘Hamish’ isn’t a common name in Merton – so the Wolf may not be one of his ancestors.

In order to understand why modern politics is so confrontational, it’s interesting to look back at its origins.

In the beginning – and I oversimplify things slightly for the benefit of those with short attention spans – anyway, in the beginning there were monarchs and barons and squires and serfs.  Then there were the Tories.  Then, in the 17^th century, there was trooble at t’ court and differences over the constitutional (or not) role of the monarch based, naturally, on religious differences, and the Whigs formed an opposition party which gained the upper hand in the ‘glorious revolution’* in 1688 and sidelined the Tories for more than a century.

As the Whigs’ original motivation became increasingly irrelevant, the party fell apart in the mid-19^th century and most members merged with the new Liberal Party, though some joined what became the Conservative Party.

So far, so good, but things got complicated by the industrial revolution that led to the creation of large-scale enterprises and the days when Lady Squire would do the rounds every Christmas, pat their estate workers on the head and give them a plum pudding faded into the already murky depths of the past.

As factories and mines and canals grew and James Watt invented the steam engine while preparing a cup of tea, the division between the people who ran them and those who did the work became increasingly obvious.  At about the same time, there was increasing pressure not to send young children down the mines to hack at coal seams by candlelight and some people came to realise that the profits are not made solely by the owners but depend at least as much on the people who processed the raw materials and that they too should get their fair share of the profits.

Having depended on slave labour, adults and children, both home-grown and abducted from other countries, the owners were none too pleased about this and, because there was (is) no way to measure the value of the labour force against the cost of the resources provided by the owners, refused to consider a fair allocation of total profits between the two.

The workers became increasingly pisst orff and restless and, at the end of the 19^th century, Keir Hardie started the movement demanding fair pay and conditions for everyone that became the Labour party.  This was of course at the same time as people were urging more representative government and ultimately gained votes for all men and, for the first time, women.

The Labour movement grew and became powerful enough to introduce things like the NHS and free education that were run and paid for by the state for several decades, until the Conservatives gained the upper hand and started selling public services and charging for university education.

Hence the confrontation we have to live with today. 

Politics is now polarised between those on the right, who think money is the most important thing, and how much profit is made is the only way success can be measured, and the those on the left, who believe people are the most important thing and success can only be measured by the well-being of everyone in society (including the bosses).

This is of course terribly over-simplistic but it illustrates the vast moral gulf between people who think underpaying staff, moving money and shares around to pay less tax and trousering as much money as possible are justifiable, and people who are happy to sacrifice income, give money away and pay more tax to make to make things better for those who don’t have enough money.

Leonard Cohen summarised the contrast neatly when he wrote “When it all comes down to dust, I will kill you if I must, I will help you if I can.  When it all comes down to dust, I will help you if I must, I will kill you if I can.”

Which inevitably leads to another Greedy Pig Award.  Prêt à Manger (which doesn’t use the accents in English) lost £255m last year despite demanding another £200m from its shareholders and being given £31m in rates relief and £100m in furlough payments by the government during the pandemic.  It also cut staff paid breaks in half so they now get 6% less for the same 8-hour shift.  All of which would have been OK if its chief executive Pano Christou hadn’t taken a 27% increase in his salary so, with a share bonus, he extracted £4.2m from the company last year.

I don’t know how he votes.

Meanwhile the Resolution Foundation, a charity (which means it must not take any political position), has found that the average British household gets £8,800 less than those in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands.  Their report coincided with calls from the Confederation of British Industry and the Treasury select committee for the government to produce a coherent growth strategy, but who cares about them?

*          Never mind how many people died, it was definitely glorious

Stupidity of Post Office, a prince, NFTs, Trumps, politicians, TV police, HMP and CIPD

20 February 2022

The most shameful news of the week is that it’s taken 20 years to set up the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry after more than 700 post office workers were wrongly convicted of fraud, theft and false accounting.  Some of them went to prison, some lost their homes, families and friends, some went bankrupt and some died or killed themselves before many of the convictions were overturned.

What beats me is that the Post Office management was faced with a sudden increase in cases of false accounting and lots of workers complaining about it after they introduced the new Horizon IT accounting system (installed and maintained by Fujitsu) but they chose to believe computer geeks who’d just written a new system rather than people who’d blamelessly worked with them for years. 

Didn’t it occur to anybody to test it on some volunteer post offices or two for a year or so?  (Nobody who actually was fiddling the books would have volunteered so reports of irregularities would have led to a check on the new system rather than prosecutions.)

The biggest unsurprise of the week is Prince Andrew’s agreement to settle with Virginia Giuffre for a very large amount of money.  How can anybody say what amounted to ‘Yes, that’s me in the photograph but I don’t know whose hand that is on the waist of that woman I have no recollection of ever meeting’, and then agree to pay the woman he doesn’t remember meeting such a large sum of money.  I’m thinking of writing to him saying I have no recollection of ever meeting him but could he please send a cheque.

In the agreement, Andrew neither disputes the allegation of sexual assault nor admits it, which will probably have moved the decimal point in the amount he’ll be paying one place to the right.  He does however now claim he “regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others”, something he forgot to do while Emily Maitlis was letting him humiliate himself in their 2019 BBC interview.

But back to computers and gullibility.  Non Fungible Tokens seem to be the thing at the moment with Rupert Murdoch reported to be considering selling NFTs for front pages from his archives of the Times and the Sun.  Last month, Julian Lennon sold some Beatles stuff as NFTs.  What this means is that people pay money (often a lot of money) for a digital ‘token’ confirming that they ‘own’ the original work (and can sell it on), while Julian retains the original physical items.  Talk about having your cake and eating it.

By the way, if anybody’s interested in buying an NFT for some snake oil I happen to have, don’t hesitate to contact me at #IveBeenConned.

I don’t know how much energy is consumed creating an NFT but cryptocurrencies work in a similarly intangible way and their ‘mining’ use a lot to ‘produce’ something that doesn’t even exist except as a computer code which is so secure that one person reportedly threw away an old computer before realising it was the only place holding the code, and his bitcoin was lost.

In southern Montana, a coal-fired power plant had been failing for years, operating on just 46 days in 2020.  Then Marathon, a bitcoin ‘mining’ company, became the saviour of the plant / destroyer of the planet (your choice) and bought all its output.  In the first nine months of 2021, the plant worked for 236 days powering the new data centre Marathon built next door and emitting 187,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

But, no doubt, a lot of people will be getting rich so that’s all right then.

Thinking of which reminds me that Donald Trump’s legal troubles increase by the day (no sniggering at the back please), the latest being the discovery that he illegally removed historical records from the White House. 

In one of the financial cases against him, he and two of his children, Ivanka and Donald Jnr, have been ordered to appear for a disposition in the next three weeks.  Trump Snr’s response included the claim that “We have a great company with fantastic assets that are unique, extremely valuable and, in many cases, far more valuable than what was listed in our Financial Statements.”  Jimmy Kimmel, the American broadcaster, writer and comedian, said “Only Donald Trump would defend himself against charges that he overvalued his assets by re-overvaluing his assets.”

With parliament on its half-term break, the UK’s biggest problems this week were caused by two storms.  The second, fiercer storm was called Eunice, which is such a delicate and sensitive name it was surprising how violent it was.  We escaped scot-free except that my wife refused to let me pop down to the beach to look at the waves, or even to the top of our nearest hill to lean on the wind.

The most unusual (at least to me) beneficiary of the storm was a YouTube outlet called Big Jet TV that livestreams aircraft movements and sets up cameras by airports during storms so viewers can watch the skills of the crew in landing safely.  A record 200,000 people were watching at one point yesterday but not, I’m sure, hoping to see a plane crash in real time.

At this point, I must make a confession:  we do sometimes watch ‘fly on the wall’ police documentaries but at least they’re edited and cut out all the blood and guts involved in crashes. 

My favourite piece was when a Lamborghini (or a Maserati or a Ferlinghetti or some such overpriced car) was stopped for not having a numberplate on the front.  It was bright red with teeth and could take a short-cut under an average lorry.  The driver climbed up out of it and stretched.  The police officer asked if he was OK and he said yes, this car goes very fast and reaches 62 mph before breakfast time yesterday but it’s unbelievably noisy and bloody uncomfortable (I’ve paraphrased what he said slightly but you can get the gist of it).

We now have dashcams in both my wife’s wheelchair accessible car and the proper car and I’ve been surprised what comfort it gives me to know that what’s happening on the road is being recorded (police will prosecute dangerous drivers on the evidence of dashcam recordings if you send them in).

This morning, Boris Johnson was interviewed at a time when all sensible people are still in bed and said the world is apparently poised on the edge of the biggest conflict since the second World War.  However, he appears not to have considered the alternatives such as the whole thing is a massive wind-up by Vladimir Putin who’s got all his perceived enemies needing frequent trouser changes while he chuckles to himself about the success of his manoeuvres.  

Michael Heseltine, a former Conservative deputy prime minister, has come out as yet another of Johnson’s heavyweight critics.  Heseltine pointed out the gap between what the Brexit campaign promised and how little has actually been achieved while the new Brexit minister started by asking Sun readers what they thought he should do.  (65 of the first 68 replies said they didn’t care as long as he didn’t outlaw pictures of semi-naked women;  the other three asked what a Brexit was.)

In Lincolnshire, Paul Robson, who is serving a life sentence for attempted rape and indecent assault and is judged by the police to be very dangerous, absconded from HMP North Sea Camp, an open prison.  He was recaptured quite quickly but we still have to hear which idiot approved his transfer to an open prison.

According to a CIPD survey, there’s good news and bad news.  British employers are expecting to increase pay by 3% this year – good news for the NHS and teachers but bad news for bankers and directors.  Or might the CIPD’s sample have omitted to include any of these groups? 

If you now need cheering up, remember that yesterday was World Pangolin Day.

And that a new slogan has been offered for use on T-shirts in America:  “If you don’t need a mask because God will protect you, why do you need a gun?”

Dylan v Springsteen, Boris humiliated, trade deals and carbon emissions, good(ish) news, a pome and kindness

19 December 2021

Bob Dylan wuz robbed. 

Last May, he sold his song-writing catalogue for $300m while Bruce Springsteen sold his for $500m last week.  I’m not saying The Boss hasn’t written some great songs – about as many as Dylan in total – but I discovered Dylan before Springsteen and know more of his work.  Perhaps all of Springsteen’s songs are good – Dylan has written some utter crap in his time.

Still, I suppose Springsteen is some 7 years younger than Dylan so he’s got to make the money last for longer and it seems more sensible to get a lump sum instead of annual income as death looms on the horizon like a raven with a broken wing.  (Boris Johnson’s reluctance to admit how many children he’s fathered – he admits to seven but might have forgotten some – pales beside Dylan who’s so pathologically private nobody’s even quite sure how many wives he’s had.)

Given the choice, Johnson would probably have been happy to miss last week.  More of his lies about illegal parties last Christmas kept crawling out of the woodwork, Sir Simon Case had to hand over his independent investigation of the parties after he was discovered to have hosted one himself, 99 Conservative MPs voted against the government’s Covid Plan B proposals which were only passed because Labour MPs had undertaken to support sensible government proposals on Covid and kept their promise, and then the Conservatives were humiliated by the North Shropshire byelection and lost the seat for the first time in nearly 200 years, after a 34% swing to the LibDems.

Since Proportional Representation remains a pipe-dream, why don’t all the opposition parties agree who stands the best chance of beating the Conservative and just put up one candidate who would stand as Labour / LibDem / Independent / whatever and describe themselves as “The Not-Conservative candidate”?  (Curiously enough, after I’d written this, I saw a TV pundit say something very similar this morning about opposition parties working together to oppose the Conservatives.)

The most interesting thing about the Conservative revolt was that the Plan B vote wasn’t actually that significant but it was a wonderful opportunity for Johnson’s own MPs to show the leader they elected just what they thought of his lying and narcissistic self-satisfaction.  Nor did he do well at PMQs and some of the less sycophantic papers published pictures of him actually snarling in parliament (the more sycophantic papers just used a smaller type-size in the headlines commenting on his failures).

Johnson suffered another blow yesterday evening when Lord (David) Frost resigned from the Cabinet, not because he’s a great loss (which of them would be?) but because he’s yet another who’s realised Johnson is an increasing liability to the party.  Mind you, Frost had also been forced to make concessions over Brexit, leaving the European Court of Justice as the ultimate decision-maker over trade rules in Northern Ireland, and ‘our’ government failed to support his threat to suspend parts of the trade deal he’d previous agreed with the EU.

Johnson now seems to be on a final written warning from his party.  He took responsibility for the byelection disaster but said it was actually the fault of the public (aka voters) and the media for looking at “politics and politicians” instead of the real issues, which encapsulates his problem rather well.

But the UK and Australia have signed a new, post-Brexit trade deal which will allow them to send us their surplus camels in exchange for our criminals, all tariff-free.  At least, that’s what it probably says – I haven’t actually read it.  Anyway, the International Trade Department reckon it will save British households £1 per year on all the Australian products they buy in British shops and could add 0.08% to the UK economy over 15 years.  There’s comforting.  Next, a new trade deal with Tierra del Fuego, sod the two difficult North American countries.

(I wonder if the carbon costs of transporting stuff to and from the antipodes have been factored in.)

While an enquiry has been looking into opening a new coalmine in Britain, Joe Biden chose to auction 80m acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, just four days after the UN climate talks.  Donald Trump bought himself a can of Nehi to celebrate.

Since this is Christmas week, let’s finish with some random bits of good news.

On the other side of the world, China, South and North Korea, China and America have agreed “in principle” to formally end the Korean war, in which the fighting finished in 1953.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that South Korea thinks talks are being impeded by North Korea which has objected to “US hostility” and said this must end before peace can be declared.

I don’t know whether China has any reservations but they may be too busy killing, sorry, re-educating Uighurs to have found time to consider this yet.

Prof Adam Winstock, the founder and director of the Global Drug Survey, an independent research company based in London, reports that a 2021 survey shows there’s been a shift during the pandemic towards recreational drug users microdosing on psychedelics to improve their mental health, either to supplement or replace psychiatric drugs.  (The longer-term effects obviously aren’t yet known.)

Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial continues and she seems to be losing the optimism she had at its start as the prosecution destroys her defence witnesses.  One of them, Cimberley Espinosa, worked from 1996 to 2002 in Jeffrey Epstein’s office in New York.  The prosecution witnesses said nothing had ever happened there and much of their abuse took place in the Palm Beach house he shared with Maxwell.  In cross-examination, the prosecution asked Espinosa if she’d ever been to Palm Beach.  “No,” she replied.  “No further questions” said the prosecution.

Now an epic pome about my troubles for people who can’t read my writing (which often includes me):

‘Tis a week before Christmas, my cards are still on the shelf

The only one to arrive in time will be the one I send to myself.

The actor Susan Sarandon has said ‘I tell my kids the most important thing is to be kind.’

If somebody is kind to you, it doesn’t mean you need to return the kindness to them, just say thank you and, if you want, pick a daisy for them.  Then, when you get the chance, be kind to somebody else.  Spread it around.

Doing voluntary work is always good, especially at Christmas when a lot of people feel especially alone so I hope that, when you’re not working, you have a relaxing time, celebrating whatever you normally celebrate around now.

With love to you all, and hopes for a peaceful new year.

Broken promises, Taliban, sleazocracy, UK dictatorship, Scottish coal, guns, camels and kindness

12 December 2021

My Brexiteer friend objected to last week’s reference to his defensiveness and said he “could say that a defensive remainer friend of mine still refuses to take positive action by starting a movement to rejoin the EU”.

I replied that, while I’d love the UK to rejoin the EU, the pandemic should be focussing countries’ efforts elsewhere and, anyway, I would be worried that “any request to rejoin would now be met by a refusal … because we are apparently a chumocracy riddled with sleaze, corruption, lies, U-turns and a refusal to honour a legally binding document.”

The worst broken broken promise was to the “tens of thousands” of Afghan soldiers, politicians, journalists, civil servants, feminists, aid workers and judges who we’d promised to evacuate after the Taliban re-took control.  A whistleblower has blamed bureaucratic chaos in the Foreign Office and, in the end, we only managed to bring back a planeload of dogs and about 15,000 people (filling an aeroplane with dogs instead of people was allegedly cleared by the prime minister).

America gave such short notice of their withdrawal that the FCDO didn’t have enough time (or, apparently, the will) to deal with thousands of applications and, when the then Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, was asked to give his personal approval of individuals, it took him “several hours” to get down to it but, when he did, he delayed things further by demanding that the files be reformatted because their presentation was “not quite right”.  Quite?  He had the power of life or death over real people and very limited time and he thought the formatting wasn’t quite right.

When challenged last week about why so many had been abandoned, Raab said 15,000 was quite a lot of people, which was a huge comfort to the friends and relatives of all the people who were no longer alive enough to cheer him because the Taliban had, as promised, amnestied them and freed them from reprisals but they had then died suddenly of a bullet in the back of the head.

One of Johnson’s better reactions was to demote him.  Raab has since justified his downgrading by saying the police wouldn’t investigate an illegal party that took place a year ago.  People who actually know about these things say there is no legal reason to prevent prosecution and it was the Metropolitan Police who decided not to investigate.

A former head of the Met said the police seemed to be acting as judge and jury which is, of course, exactly what the government wants as it tries to introduce a law that would allow the government to overrule judgements of the Supreme Court.  Still, we could save a fortune on lawyers and just get the prime minister to decide who’s guilty – it works in Afghanistan and Myanmar – though I’d rather cases were judged by experienced lawyers and not the government.

Johnson’s own problems include the 2020 Christmas party in number 10 and the still unanswered question about who paid to redecorate his flat.  He actually offered parliament his apologies at PMQs for the party that he said didn’t take place and Keir Starmer went for the jugular, to Johnson’s obvious annoyance.  If only Starmer could be so forceful for more of the time, Labour might win some more seats, particularly with their current showing in the polls and Barack Obama’s help.

In the North Shropshire byelection next Thursday, the Conservative candidate has been ordered not to speak to the media because he lives in Birmingham and knows very little about the area.  His attempts to replace Owen Paterson, who resigned after being outed as a member of the sleazocracy wing of the Tory party, might not have been helped by the Conservative MP for Walsall North, Eddie Hughes, saying how the people of North Staffordshire should vote for him.  Well, Salop, Staffs, what the hell, they’re both north of Watford.

A number of less traditional candidates are also standing, including one for the Official Monster Raving Looney Party and Drew Galdron, a Johnson impersonator, who is standing on a ‘Boris Been-Bunged, Rejoin EU’ platform.  An amusing 2:19 minute interview with Galdron, dressed in the union jack and little else, has been tweeted by Richard Hewison of the Shropshire Star.

Thank heavens there are still some people willing to lose £500 to entertain others.

The redecoration problem has been going on for months but Johnson’s now accused of misleading his own ethics adviser, Lord Geidt:  he sent a WhatsApp message to Lord Brownlow asking for more money for the refurbishment and later said he didn’t know who had given money for the work, which lie could lead to his suspension from the House of Commons. 

After the UK’s commitment to cut carbon emissions, Nicola Sturgeon pressed the button that demolished Scotland’s tallest freestanding structure, the chimney at the former coal plant in Longannet, Fife.  The power-generating plant had been closed in 2016, but the tower’s destruction symbolically ended of the nation’s coal age.

South of the border, England is still havering over opening a brand-new coal mine in Cumbria!  The Planning Inspectorate’s report hasn’t yet been published but the final decision will be made by the Communities Secretary, Michael ‘The Shiv’ Gove.  To his credit, Boris Johnson said at the Cop26 climate conference that he is “not in favour of more coal” but one wonders how much Gove needs his support.

Another problem has been voiced by Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, who said recreational drug users, such as casual users of cocaine, are “the final link in the chain” fuelling the international criminal business.  He then announced an additional £780m of funding (over ten years) for the drug treatment system.  Presumably, police will now go round busting middle-class dinner parties offering lines of coke bought with bankers’ bonuses.  Punishments being considered include removing their driving licences (seems sensible) and passports (well, it’ll stop weekend tours of the poppy fields of Afghanistan).

But there’s good news from America where the last president has finally admitted he’s “very stupid, or very corrupt” or, of course, both.  In a statement last week Donald Trump said “Anybody that doesn’t think there wasn’t massive election fraud in the 2020 presidential election is either very stupid, or very corrupt!”  (His exclamation mark, not mine.)

And the usual bad news.

According to a National Public Radio study of deaths per 100,000 people since May in 3,000 counties across America, people living in counties that voted for Trump by at least 60% are 2.7 times more likely to die of Covid than those who voted heavily for Joe Biden.  Keep it up you Democrats:  if you die, you take three Republicans with you.

Shortly after a 15-year old in Michigan shot and killed four teenagers and wounded seven more, Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, tweeted a Christmassy picture of himself and (presumably) his family in front of a decorated Christmas tree.  All seven of them are wearing happy smiles and cradling automatic weapons;  the message sent with it says “Merry Christmas! PS: Santa, please bring ammo.” 

I’m not alone in finding this frightening:  Bob Dylan wrote almost 60 years ago “I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children” …

Priorities are different in Saudi Arabia where more than 40 camels were disqualified from a beauty contest because they’d been botoxed.  Why do I find seeing ‘camels’ and ‘beauty’ in the same sentence as disconcerting as I do seeing ‘Boris Johnson’ and ‘integrity’ in the same sentence?

But there are still kindnesses in the world:  the actor Michael Sheen has said he’s now a “not-for-profit actor”.  He founded the End High Cost Credit Alliance to help people find more affordable ways of borrowing money in 2017;  two years later, he organised the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff and, when the £2m funding fell through at the last moment, he sold his own houses to pay for it.

Sheen told the Big Issue he’d be “paying for it for a long time” but he realised he could do things like this and still earn money from acting.  A new hero.

Covid testing, signing ‘HELP’, climate change, government sleaze, a bunch of good news and autocorrect

14 November 2021

It’s amazing where these mutterings seem to reach!  Having written a fairy story about Grenfell Tower last Sunday, the Housing Secretary (Michael Gove!) announced on Monday that he planned to “pause” government plans to recover cladding restoration work from leaseholders.  Giving evidence to a Commons committee, he said “I’m unhappy with the principle of leaseholders having to pay at all”.

A friend also pointed out that I’d omitted from the list of the culpable the building regulations people who approved the dangerous cladding.

On Tuesday, I had to go to London (for the first time in almost 2 years) for a medical appointment.  Despite being double-vaccinated and boosted, I decided to travel first class and keep my mask on for the whole journey.  Despite a lot of signs saying that masks should be worn and people without them might not be allowed to travel, about 60% of passengers weren’t wearing masks and even more weren’t in the crowded streets.  There’s nowt so queer as folk.

I’m now testing myself for Covid for another 10 days or so, not because I’m worried about getting Covid but because I’m a carer and can’t risk being incapacitated.

(Did you see that Jeff Hoverson, the Republican state representative for North Dakota, organised a rally to oppose vaccinations, and then couldn’t attend it because he’d got Covid-19?)

This is the first time I’ve self-tested so I read the instructions, something my wife claims I never do, and was taken by the bit that says “Open your mouth wide and rub the fabric tip of the swab over both tonsils … (use a torch or mirror to help you do this) …” 

“Or?”  Did they mean “and”?  Why don’t people get proof-readers to check what they’ve writted?

Much more usefully, I discovered there’s a discreet and unobtrusive “Help me” signal you can give if you’re in trouble, whether it’s abuse or harassment or anything, which will alert people who see it to call for help.  It can, for example, be discreetlyused during a video call or conference, or through the window of a house or a car.

What you do to show you need help is:

1 Hold your hand up with palm facing the other person

2 Tuck your thumb into the palm

3 Fold your fingers down over the thumb, rather like a peace sign.

Everybody should know this so they can use it if they feel threatened, and they can act if they see someone else using it.  What you should do if you see the sign obviously depends on the circumstances but ringing 999 is generally a good way to start.

It saved a woman in a car in America when somebody saw her sign and called 911; the driver is now in custody.  Tell all your friends if they don’t already know.

This week’s news has mainly been about the Cop26 conference on climate change.  Some sort of agreement was reached although China didn’t send anyone and India said it couldn’t reach the target in time.  These two countries together contribute 60% of the electricity generated by coal worldwide, and America produces another 11% (the EU produces 5%). 

But we all make their controls more difficult:   just think how much of the stuff we buy is made in China or India.  Should we boycott them and refuse to buy their goods?  What would this do to their economies?

Boris Johnson was stupid enough to fly 400 miles to the conference in a private jet.  In fact, of course, he had to do this because he absolutely had to get back to London for a booze-up with some old mates, but the outrage was so great that, second time, he went by train.

Other headlines exposed even more sleaze in the Tory party and Johnson was forced to reverse his plans to take over control of the independent cross-party group overseeing the maintenance of parliamentary standards. 

Even the Tory-faithful papers were outraged by his original proposal.  The Daily Mail’s leader said “So now we know the lengths to which a venal political class will go to protect its own” and the Times’ leader said “It would be good for parliamentary democracy if this time [the prime minister] were made to pay a price.”

Then we learnt that Sir Geoffrey Cox, MP for Torridge and West Devon and the former Attorney General, has been given nearly £6m for moonlighting (I refuse to say ‘earned’ – nobody can ‘earn’ that much), which included spending time in the British Virgin Islands where he’s been defending their prime minister and other government figures during an enquiry into claims of misgovernance and abuse of office.  Poetic eh?

(Remember that this is the man who included a 49p bottle of milk and £2 of tea bags in his expense claims in 2015.)

Meanwhile, Richard Ratcliffe’s hunger strike has gained a lot of publicity for his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment in Iran for the last 5½ years, reputedly as a result of a comment by the then Foreign Secretary, one Boris Johnson, who had failed to read his briefing papers or just forgotten that she was actually on holiday visiting her family. 

Her confinement is, of course, linked with the £400m that the UK has owed Iran since 1979.  The good news is that the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, was officially authorised (when he was still a back-bencher) to write to Richard Ratcliffe to confirm the UK acknowledged that the debt had to be paid.  However, it still hasn’t been paid and Ministers and officials refuse to say why.

Then the Queen sprained her back and couldn’t attend the Remembrance Day commemorations in Whitehall this morning.  (One wonders how a queen can sprain her back.  Picking up corgi poo from the royal carpets?  Or sneezing perhaps?)

But there is more good news:

• Boeing has admitted responsibility for the crash of its 737 Max model in Ethiopia in 2019 after an investigation found faults in the sensors and that the new flight control software had not been explained to pilots;
• America has set a precedent with new defence for first degree murder:  the Pentagon has said that the US drone attack in August that killed 10 Afghan civilians was “an honest mistake” and no laws had been broken;  killers can now say “it was a genuine mistake, I meant to kill someone else”;
• Julia ‘Hurricane’ Hawkins has set a new record at the Louisiana Senior Games by sprinting 100 yards in 1:02:95 minutes, the fastest time for women aged over 105; 
• music can calm dogs frightened by fireworks and a study by the Scottish SPCA and the University of Glasgow found reggae and soft rock worked best; 
• the world’s youngest winner of the Nobel peace prize, Malala Yousafzai, who survived being shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for blogging for the BBC about increasing Taliban activities in Pakistan, married her partner, Asser Malik, on Tuesday in a small ceremony in Birmingham – long life and happiness to them both.

And a final tip:  it helps if you imagine autocorrect as a tiny little elf in your phone who’s trying very hard to be helpful but is in fact quite drunk.