Friday 8 July 2022

The beast that is Boris

From Clive, BTL on yesterday's Boris post, expanding on a short comment he'd been picked up on:

Re: "The energy inputs for creating and sustaining media (and political) momentum are much higher here..." ... What I was getting at, tricky to explain, was it only took a Howe resignation speech, a leadership contest and some cabinet members talking Thatcher into resigning. All mundane stuff. The merest hint from a few, largely behind closed doors, and Thatcher resigned. There wasn't any inclination in her to keep fighting through the second round of the leadership contest. Contrast with what it took to get Johnson to go (not that he's actually gone yet, but we have to -- stifle a guffaw here please -- take him at his word he really will go, really he will), literally every, bar a few exceptions, cabinet minister to tell Johnson, in public he must go and/or resigning. Plus a great gaggle of PPSes and junior ministers. It was touch-and-go whether the 1922 Committee might have to blast him out of Downing St with heavy artillery. Both the parliamentary party and the mainstream media had to throw everything at him, 27x7, for weeks. Months, even     [my emphasis

Interesting.  Yes, Boris is unusually obdurate.  In fact, he's a pretty extreme case in many dimensions, a fact easily forgotten when he's in smiley, jokey-witty-banter, all-out charm mode.  That "really rather good" resignation speech with it's nicely crafted phrasing.  Lots of 'extreme' politicians can do that to people, particularly in the flesh ...  And what will it still take now, actually to get him out of the door?  Oh yes indeed - another big input of energy still needed, to drive the stake home.

Here's a thesis.

Most people in societal contexts (and also many people even when they are cast adrift from company) are not much under the sway of any kind of inner primordial beast that knows only the urge for gratification, the Will to Power (Wille zur Macht), survival in all circumstances and against any odds; never say 'die', only 'attack': the cornered alpha predator, wounded but still fighting.  Most people recognise social constraints: the price we pay for the benefits of living in a society. 

Those who are thus possessed of the demon, but who still partake of society to some degree (and are 'successful' enough to be prominent), are generally to be found in the ranks of callous and bullying corporate warriors, big-swinging-dick traders, sportsmen in the fighting arts, ruthless lords of organised-crime, aggressive soldiers, manic artists, ambitious politicians.  With a few constraints still being observed - on a good day.  But if completely beyond the pale, they are Johnny-Byron wild men of the woods, pirates and bandit chiefs ... or the occasional politician leader who hacks his way into a position of outright dictatorship.  Not much social inhibition with William of Normandy, Peter the Great, or Kim Jong-un.

Boris Johnson famously knows almost no social restraints on his hedonistic and status-seeking pursuit of personal gratification.  Lying?  No problem.  Loyalty?  Never heard of it.  Family responsibilities?  None that he can think of.  Consistency?  Don't be daft.  Integrity?  No interest.  Shame?  You're kidding.  Respect for the rules?  They don't apply, he was given a permanent pass at birth.  Modesty in lifestyle?  Gimme gimme gimme.  Fellow feeling?  ... etc etc.  As he apparently told Cummings when musing that he ought to be his own chief of staff and head of communications: so I'll fuck it up - so what?  What's the point if I can't do whatever I want?

And then look at the face, whenever he's in any kind of sporting endeavour - even with children.

That's naked aggression, unabashed will to win.  'King of the World'.  Will to Power.

And now ask why it took what it did, to get him to resign; more even than Thatcher or Gordon Brown.  And consider that, if he isn't forcibly defenestrated right now, he'll still be plotting ways to hang on during whatever process the Tories will now go through to find a successor.

You might think what follows a little extreme; but if you want a graphic portrayal of the animality of the Will to Power in its rawest human form, read Robert Harris' Archangel.   The historical backdrop is Stalin's reign of terror but by the time of the action of the novel, that's at one remove; it's the past.  What's chilling, truly chilling, is the appearance in the book of Harris' most menacing creation** - the long-lost Son of Stalin, a beast of pure, undeflectable Will to Power.  It's through this device that Harris conjures up what it must have been like, even to think about dealing with Stalin, let alone opposing him.  Lenin knew he was too dangerous for power.  Probably everyone did.   Much good did it do them.

OK, 'personable' Boris also has the buffoon about him and is not (so far as we know) given to personal violence, even if he was famously willing to facilitate it.  But his will to win, to survive, to prevail in all circumstances and on his own terms, is not, errr, easily deflected.

Why are high inputs of energy needed to get him out, Clive?  That's why. 

ND

___________

** Even more chilling than his Cherie Booth in The Ghost 

67 comments:

Elby the Beserk said...

"Those who are thus possessed of the demon, but who still partake of society to some degree (and are 'successful' enough to be prominent), are generally to be found in the ranks of callous and bullying corporate warriors, big-swinging-dick traders, sportsmen in the fighting arts, ruthless lords of organised-crime, aggressive soldiers, manic artists, ambitious politicians"

Clinical Narcissists in other words. Some arenas more appropriate for such than politics; the arts for example, let a Narcissist loose on a stage and you may have high drama. In positions of power, you see the chaos we have witnessed for some two years, of a government out of control and apparently deranged. NetZero, for example, is an extraordinary fantasy that in a sensible society would never have seen the light of day.

Lord Frost for PM. Else another God Help Us.

Elby the Beserk said...

PS. Nick - re Stalin, HUGELY enjoying the Overy book, a masterpiece and unique in its approach. Been my downstairs reading, whilst bedtime reading is Beevor's Magnum Opus on the Russian Revolution. Warfare, here, there and everywhere

DJK said...

The personality faults were all known two years ago when Conservative MPs were elected on a platform of supporting Boris as PM. Anybody who thinks that sensible government and better times --- let alone a Conservative win at the next election --- anybody who thinks this will follow from a new PM is going to be sadly disappointed.

dearieme said...

A realist new PM should accept that, sans a Deus ex Machina, he's going to lose next time. He (or she or it) should therefore spend his time in office introducing lots of recognisably anti-socialist, anti-EU, anti-Green policies.

I don't go so far as to suggest a punitive tax on heat pumps and Teslas, tempting though it be. But I would like to see legal and executive action to make it clear to the electors how much all this baloney is costing them and will cost them in future.

Nick Drew said...

So you'd be a Steve Baker man, then? (+:

Jan said...

There seemed to be a complete turnaround from the bunker mentality to the cheerful resignation speech yesterday which makes me suspicious. What has he got up his sleeve we don't know about? What's he been offered to get him out? Something in the WEF? King of the World??

Otherwise I agree Nick and he's got a cunning plan and isn't going at all unless he's carried out kicking and screaming.

Anonymous said...

You never know, he might have a cushti American sinecure lined up a la David Miliband which will allow him to pay all his exes and keep Carrie happy.

Alternatively he may live in the hope that a crisis arrives which means he MUST stay at the helm. IIRC Chamberlain argued that he should stay on when France was invaded. The man in grey suits of the day told him that made his exit all the more urgent.

I wonder if MI6 or the Cabinet secretary are having a quiet word at Northwood or wherever our nukes are controlled from these days?

(Mind, I still think we'll miss him)

Bill Quango MP said...

No special, secret plan
He isn’t the type.

T.May need have offered him nothing. He became foreign secretary.

Boris summed up his sunny outlook best himself. When booted out for fibs to Michael Howard.
Caught by journalists, unable to find his key to his front door. Or perhaps the locks had been changed by a furious lover?

Johnson tells the press pack. . . Something along the lines of,

“I have been sacked. It’s been a bit of a disaster. But one must look to the future. Look forward to fresh opportunities. And the opportunity for fresh disasters.”

Caeser Hēméra said...

Boris' big weakness isn't that he lies, but he lies by default and isn't very good at it.

A good lie clings to the truth as much as possible, until it needs to deviate, that way disproving it becomes a forensic effort and most will quit long before finding the untruth. Boris' tended to unravel after the first phone call.

I've no doubt he expects something to come along - and with Ukraine that is always a possibility - that means he stays, or that he can extract a nice price to leave in autumn with little fuss. I'm sure Carrie would appreciate him in ermine.

djm said...

So, what you're saying is, ND

Boris, having recently watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, channelled his inner Black Knight whilst writing his resignation speech ?


Nick Drew said...

Just so long as Carrie isn't channeling her inner Carrie!

[some of you will get the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_(1976_film) ]

Clive said...

Yes, I have to agree with ND here. I'm not the winning-is-everything type and I don't know any ruthless people -- not Johnson's calibre of amoral determination anyway. So it's hard to see it in others if you're not familiar with it.

I suspect it's something which can only be -- learned? instilled? -- in childhood or your formulative years. It has to be deep-seated anyway, to be able to distort reality around oneself like that. As the cosmetics commercial tag-line has it (sort-of): Maybe he's born with it... maybe it's make-believe.

Anonymous said...

Think of the government's vital legislative programme! As I understand it, they're currently working hard on a bill which makes it illegal to put a pic of someone's face on top of a pic of another person's naked body. And pictures "down blouse" will also be illegal, which may possibly put a lot of Daily Mail Sidebar Of Shame photographers out of business.

OK, we have decided to cut off a major energy supplier at a time when we're desperately short of energy, but they're concentrating on the important stuff.

Seems odd to kill your own voters this winter to spite Russia, while simultaneously making Russian oil producers richer than ever... but I guess I can't see the big picture.

andrew said...

The bigger picture is that the ratio of people working to not working is likely to change for the worse (less workers more old people) over the next 20y or so to the extent we get to choose between really stonking tax rises or no nhs or lots of young immigrants.

We are losing out on world trade because we keep upsetting the Europeans

We are not training people properly (adult ed has been run down for the last 20y or so)

Houses cost too much (because no one has the nerve to face down the nimbys)

Public transport outside london has almost ceased to exist so workers cannot get to jobs

Some moron decided that 'take back control' was the right thing for the uk but not for scotland or ireland or the regions or councils.

Net effect we are getting poorer compared to europe by about 1% pa
So by now about 6 to 7%.

And we cannot blame any of this on anyone other than the current govt.

andrew said...

Who we collectively voted for.

dearieme said...

"Net effect we are getting poorer compared to europe by about 1% pa
So by now about 6 to 7%."

But since the Brexit referendum our GDP growth has equalled or exceeded that of the big countries in the EU.

Don Cox said...

Boris is perhaps like Henry VIII, who was a pioneer of Brexit. (Or England exit in his day.)

But I voted for him and I would vote for him again.

Don

Matt said...

@ andrew

And the young immigrants we're importing all have large salaries and pay lots of tax (medical doctors and engineers)?

They are definitely not goat herders with an extended family they'll bring in to raise on the public teat once in the country (and being denied a right to a family life)?

If you believe that, I have a nice bridge to sell you...

Sobers said...

"Houses cost too much (because no one has the nerve to face down the nimbys)"

Stopping importing an extra 250k people every year might just have some effect on house prices......just sayin'........

Diogenese said...

@Andrew @Matt

About these ex-pats/immigrants. It's not really a secret as the ONS publishes data on trends in age. It's our collective lack of a grip on the reality that is numeracy.

We can't spend, spend, spend and cut taxes at the same time.

We can only offer some of the lowest pensions in Europe due to the fact the pension pot was spent years ago and is now paid out of current taxation. See how other countries do it.

And it is not only pensions. The gerontocracy that is the current Conservative Party will insist that the young will pay for their upkeep despite doing everything they can to restrict the countries ability to pay for it.

As the song goes, things can only get better (but only after we realise the shit we are in). A few ex-pats/immigrants won't make much difference.

lilith said...

I don't think we are going to have a lot of elderly needing care. The NHS is seeing to that. Curiously, after ignoring her for 2 years (apart from 4 clot shots up at the racecourse), my mother's cardiologist wants to send a district nurse to take some blood. To ANALYSE HER GENOME. Cardiologist says it would be of no benefit to her, but might help her descendants! They just took her off the medication I fought against them giving her four years ago because they realised it is inappropriate for her! Gone are the blue lips and freezing hands and feet....

So now the district nurse is suspect as well as the cardiologist and GP...

lilith said...

Our local hospital has several rainbow crossings now (because that makes everyone feel better). They are labelled "Cross with Pride!" which seems appropriate although I am tempted to add "Very" with a sharpie.

lilith said...

Sorry, off topic as usual. Boris. So wrong. But at least he supported Brexit. We will be taken back into Europe and enjoy the new laws that prohibit anyone talking against experimental "sex change surgery" for children. The Devil is around and I don't even believe in the Devil.

Matt said...

@ Diogenese

A few ex-pats/immigrants won't make much difference.

That might be the case, if it were only a few. However, it's 6 million (from https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06077/) people that we have imported so your point is void.

The same report also goes on to say that until the early 90s we had a net outflow of people. So the 6 million have come in during the last 25 years.

That's a large change over a short length of time!

Elby the Beserk said...

"andrew said...

We are not training people properly (adult ed has been run down for the last 20y or so)"

Far far longer. My generation - Corbyn's generation, and by God I knew a number of proto-Corbyns in Oxford at that time - started the Left wing colonisation of teacher training colleges, hence the Left wing colonisation of education in toto.

I may well be of the last generation to be taught in the classical manner. Not just the classics, but a deep dive into grammar, Latin and English. Without proper grammar (and mine has lapsed, for sure) how can one be sure that what one says or writes is WHAT YOU MEANT?

Employing someone semi-literate in any job that requires literacy would be an act of folly. Just as one would not employ a brickie who did now know how to mortar bricks together so they strengthen each other.

We are an illiterate country.

This is from 2011

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8819425/British-graduates-not-fit-to-start-work-say-majority-of-bosses.html

"British graduates not fit to start work, say majority of bosses
A growing number of British students do not graduate from school with adequate or basic skills to join the workforce, a survey of bosses has found."

If paywalled, go to arhive.vn and paste the URL in.





Elby the Beserk said...

lilith said...
I don't think we are going to have a lot of elderly needing care. The NHS is seeing to that. Curiously, after ignoring her for 2 years (apart from 4 clot shots up at the racecourse), my mother's cardiologist wants to send a district nurse to take some blood. To ANALYSE HER GENOME. Cardiologist says it would be of no benefit to her, but might help her descendants! They just took her off the medication I fought against them giving her four years ago because they realised it is inappropriate for her! Gone are the blue lips and freezing hands and feet....

So now the district nurse is suspect as well as the cardiologist and GP...
8:59 am
==========================================================

Just so you know, my darling Lils has spent much of the past 25 years or so saving old people from what the NHS were doing to them. Utterly inappropriate prescriptions. Mixed with other inappropriate prescriptions. Never reviewed. Ignored by the medical profession.

Then we saved the NHS. Which destroyed Lil's business. And whilst I was astonished to hear Ken Clarke say on the radio that the had had £1,100 hardship grants from the government (must be on Universal Credit I guess. Fair play he did say he didn't need it and had two houses). Our hand out so far, £150 from the local council to ease council tax. Contacted my MP who basically said to get anything off the state you need to be dependent on the state.

No thanks. Too much bloody state as it is already thank you very much. We're conservatives, we don't like Big State.

Elby the Beserk said...

Off topic, but from one great beast to one great nobody.

If anyone can tell me what this feller means, I'd be grateful


https://twitter.com/KyleMartinsen_/status/1545453047551328257

Elby the Beserk said...

And start your day with a laugh, and ... repeat this line....


https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1545441526133788673?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1545444891609776128%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fbiden-comms-staffer-lies-about-extremely-senior-moment-teleprompter

andrew said...

I dont think the eu would have us back on any terms (despite telegraph headlines warning of the resurgence of remain)
Our use to them is to act as an object lesson of all the bad things that will happen if you leave.

The use of our leaders is to show that things can actually work better outside the eu. Boris was pretty useless at everything.
Brexit clearly is not done.
This govt is not solving the nations problems.
Levelling up ... funny how that involves building a 120bn train line from london to birmingham and then 4 buses in grimsby.

Clearly hard choices need to be made. Something the current political class do not seem able to do.

Anonymous said...

In fairness to Boris, he had less than a month between our leaving the EU on 31st January 2020, and the arrival of Covid at the end of February. Inevitably that knocked him and his government off course for almost two years, and it has left us with colossal debts and economic dislocation, exacerbated by Putin's war in the Ukraine and its ongoing consequences.

Attempts to get the manifesto legislation through Parliament have been, and continue to be, held up or stymied by an intransigent House of Lords.

Furthermore, Boris himself has been relentlessly impugned by the Remainer media, notably the "impartial" BBC. We all know that the BBC are nothing but a collection of public-sector leftist Euro-toadies, but their vindictiveness has been sharpened to frenzy by the current government's proposal to abolish the TV licence fee in 2027.

It is obvious that the Corporation will do everything it can to bring about a Labour/Lib Dem coalition government before then, which they know will save them from that fate -- long-deserved though it would have been.

Nick Drew said...

Attempts to get the manifesto legislation through Parliament have been, and continue to be, held up or stymied by an intransigent House of Lords. Furthermore, Boris himself has been relentlessly impugned by the Remainer media

Can't agree. The man has (had) an 80 seat majority - he could have done whatever he wanted on manifesto-based legislation vis-a-vis the Lords, if he had half a Parliamentary wit.

He is relentlessly impugned - and rightly so: because he is a corrupt and incorrigible shit and behaves like one, including on matters of public importance as well as personally. Carrie threw his government off track as much as Covid did - and that's down to him as well, because he let her

Nobody should take their eyes off those balls, however witty the man is at after-dinner speaking.

In retrospect (easy, I know) we paid too high a price for crushing Corbyn (which was indeed a vital business). In retrospect, Jeremy Hunt might have done it, too: because in effect, Corbyn had done it to himself.

lilith said...

"He is relentlessly impugned - and rightly so: because he is a corrupt and incorrigible shit and behaves like one, including on matters of public importance as well as personally. Carrie threw his government off track as much as Covid did - and that's down to him as well, because he let her"

Very well said Nick.

I don't trust Hunt (Remainer) but my brother met him before he got rich (at a weekly dance class) and said he was quite likeable/normal back then fwiw....

Bloke in Callao said...

The Corbynator may be an aging trot and a fool but the country would have been in better shape after three years of him as PM than it is now.

Don Cox said...

It's interesting to compare the process of getting rid of Boris with the process of getting rid of the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.

And the impossibility for the Russians of voting out Putin.

Don

dearieme said...

Cherie Booth: did you know she's a member of the same Booth family as the chap who assassinated Lincoln?

There is no end to how demonic Toni Blair is.

Anonymous said...

'The Ghost' is certainly a helluva way for Harris to repay his onetime tennis bud Tony!

E-K said...

A good (millionaire) friend of mine took me to a Pearl Jam (VIP class) concert last night. He's known me from childhood and we were police officers together - he a Fraud Squad detective who now freelances as an anti money laundering legal expert to the biggest banks.

Joy.

But he informs me of YET another friend (under sixty) who has terminal cancer not spotted in lockdown.

Let me meet Anon who calls me the 'whinger'. Preferably in a darkened place.

Then I'll do this (and 'Karate Kev' won't be his problem) ... I'll let the silly tart hit me as many times as he likes until he exhausts himself - then I'll break his wrist, then his elbow and then I'll choke him out .. in exactly that order.

I will come out of it completely unblemished.

Anonymous said...

"exacerbated by Putin's war in the Ukraine"

Russia's war in the Ukraine is a defensive war, reluctantly undertaken after all else had failed. The US organised the 2014 coup and Zelensky's rise to power, after he'd been paid in advance.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-oligarch-ukrainian-president-offshore-connections-volodymyr-zelenskiy

Russia doesn't want US nuclear missiles, with their newly improved targeting, 500km from Moscow, nor does it want the Black Sea Fleet base in the gift of a country allied with the US, a sworn enemy of Russia.

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

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

E-K said...

Boris.

Made and shafted by Putin.

Do you not get it yet ?

Troll factory said...

Defensive war after all else failed.

What bollox

lilith said...

I love you E-K. Not in a way that would upset our respective spouses, but truely, I love you.

Nick Drew said...

@ Russia's war in the Ukraine is a defensive war, reluctantly undertaken after all else had failed

"defensive", only in the sense that Russia has periodically attacked and invaded its European neighbours, when faced with social / political developments it doesn't fancy taking hold within its own borders: Poland and Hungary in the C19th (Nicholas 1 "defending" church, state and absolute monarchy against atheistic European radicalism); Hungary in 1956 & Czechoslovakia in 1968 (Communist Party defending the Communist Party, errr, sorry, the International Brotherhood of Man, against western liberalism). At least they had a cause that could be framed and believed (by themselves) as noble.

Putin's cause? "Russia isn't even a top-ten economy but it wants to be a top-three superpower" Being defended against, well, proof that it isn't. Their neighbours, who know them best, all recoil from that one: they want to be firmly in a different camp - and do you blame them?

Don Cox said...

What Putin is defending is his personal grip on power. Nothing else.

Plutarch's "Lives" are full of such characters.

Don

Anonymous said...

ND you are better than this, "what Russia did in c19 or Soviet Union did in 68". The Communists aren't there any more. You may as well criticise BoJo because of C19 Brit imperialism. We have a pretty impressive history of invading and attacking our neighbours, every European country does.

The US has IIRC 823 worldwide military bases. How many has Russia got? A couple in Syria, at the invitation of the Syrian Government?

"Russia wants war - just look at how close they put their country to our military bases!"

DJK said...

"Defensive" in the sense that Russia is defending the Russian minorities in Donbass and Luhansk from attack by Ukranian forces, and providing forward defence for Russia itself from a United States that has a declared goal of regime change in Russia. As anon says, no country is perfect here.

For a neutral overview of events leading up to the present war, see the articles by Jacques Baud, who was a colonel in the Swiss army, attached to NATO in Brussels.

Anonymous said...

And given that the UK have attacked Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria in the last 30 years, none of whom have attacked us, maybe we should be in the dock, not Russia. What did the US do when Cuba hosted Soviet missiles?

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

After several days of tense negotiations, an agreement was reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev: publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement to not invade Cuba again. Secretly, the United States agreed with the Soviets that it would dismantle all of the Jupiter MRBMs which had been deployed to Turkey against the Soviet Union.

(and we in the free and democratic west were not informed about the missiles being withdrawn from Turkey, and believed for decades that Kennedy had made the Soviets back down, when the Soviet Union actually came out best.)

andrew said...


Is this the same Jacques Braud who said on Russian state TV in 2020
there is “no history of poisoning by the Russian secret services”, that the Skripals simply had a bad case of “food poisoning” and that Alexei Navalny was poisoned not by the state but by some “mafia” people around him

In which case not so sure about neutral

andrew said...

dearieme said...

But since the Brexit referendum our GDP growth has equalled or exceeded that of the big countries in the EU.


You may be right if you pich the right country but comparing GDP per capita in EU and UK
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?end=2021&locations=EU-GB&start=2008&view=chart

Sitting down with a calculator
2008-2014
UK 0.990*0.950*1.013*1.007*1.008*1.012*1.022 = 1.000
EU 1.003*0.954*1.021*1.020*0.991*0.997*1.013 = 0.997
1.000 - 0.997 = +0.003
2015-21
UK 1.018*1.015*1.014*1.010*1.011*0.904*1.070 = 1.034
EU 1.021*1.018*1.027*1.019*1.018*0.940*1.055 = 1.098
1.034 - 1.098 = -6.400

so an individual's earnings on average is underperforming cf the EU by about 6-7% since brexit (unless my calculator is wrong or the world bank is wrong)

That is in local currency terms. in 2015 GBP:EUR was around 1.35 and is now around 1.18.




DJK said...

Andrew: French Wikipedia says (in translation) "Jacques Baud, born April 1, 1955, is a former colonel of the Swiss army, strategic analyst, specialist in intelligence and terrorism. However, he is the subject of criticism for having relayed several conspiracy theories." so maybe. That said, he did have a ringside seat in the events leading up to the war, looking into proliferation of small arms, from NATO HQ. (Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you, etc.)

Bill Quango MP said...

Jacques Baud in 2020 he went on Russian state TV to say there is “no history of poisoning by the Russian secret services”, that the Skripals simply had a bad case of “food poisoning” and that Alexei Navalny was poisoned not by the state but by some “mafia” people around him.

There are other examples of the Pro-Kremlin colonel’s misrepresentation in the article.
https://dailysceptic.org/archive/how-accurate-is-jacques-bauds-analysis-of-the-war-in-ukraine/

He is about as credible as George Galloway. It’s not hard to find people who want to believe Putin and condemn the west.
Jeremy Corbyn, for one.

Anonymous said...

The guy puts the entire country under house arrest for the better part of a year and gets attacked for being too libertarian, but resigns because of a couple of people getting pinched at the Carlton Club.

What a vaudeville clown-world freak show.

Graeme said...

For the last 10 years GBP/EUR has mostly been around 1.10 to 1.20. Andrew is probably not a reliable statistician

andrew said...

I make no claim to be a statistician.

Looking at the exchange rates in 2015, most of the time you would have got over 1.35
https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/GBP-EUR-spot-exchange-rates-history-2015.html

Looking at exchange rates in 2021, most of the time you would have got under 1.18
https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/GBP-EUR-spot-exchange-rates-history-2021.html

but I do claim those values in those years to be reasonably representative, and have provided links to the source of my information.

Anonymous said...

Lynn Truss is standing. I'm assuming the Capitalists will be backing her in order to Stand Up To Putin ;-)

If she gets in, potassium iodides all round! (The NHS apparently has stocks, but if covid preparations are any guide they'll all have gone off during a change of warehousing provider)

Diogenes said...

Since those that are standing (apart from Hunt) are simply continuity-Boris, there is not going to be much change in political direction. Given the absolute divorce from reality shown during Boris's reign, can't see the successor lasting as they really don't have an answer to the UK's underlying issues of skewed demographics, low productivity and commercialising innovation.

But a point to consider, given the track record of the Party's voters, is whether Boris will make a comeback next time? And like Trump does he hope to have the chance of a comeback?

Anonymous said...

These Leader pitches as something to behold.

Who would have thought in reading them, Boris was the only sane one in the government.

Anonymous said...

More potential evidence that Tory candidates only get selected if they have skeletons...

A Conservative MP was wearing a “black leather mini-skirt” and “high heels” when he was involved in a late-night car crash, a court has heard. Jamie Wallis, who has represented Bridgend since 2019, is on trial accused of failing to stop, failing to report a road traffic collision, driving without due care and attention and leaving a vehicle in a dangerous position. Wallis denies the charges.

https://www.keighleynews.co.uk/news/20270166.tory-mp-wearing-leather-mini-skirt-high-heels-road-crash-court-told/

dearieme said...

"comparing GDP per capita": worthless really. It may be different on the Continent but I doubt whether our govt knows our population to better than 10% accuracy. Plus, of course, different countries (e.g. us) define GDP differently to others (e.g. Them).

Anyway the point is that Operation Fear said we'd have an economic collapse starting the day after the referendum if "Leave" won, that our children's hair would fall out, our wives' breasts would sag, and our todgers would shrink.


Didn't turn out anything remotely like that, did it? What do we conclude? That they were cretinous, ignorant, or lying counts? Or all three.

Anonymous said...

Off topic but relevant to everything... the chairman of the Lancet's covid commission, Jeffrey Sachs

https://covid19commission.org/jeffrey-sachs

has published an article

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202769119

stating that the covid virus could be man-made

US research funding agencies, including NIH, USAID, DARPA, DTRA, and the Department of Homeland Security, could shed considerable light on the experiments undertaken by the US-funded research team and on the possible relationship, if any, between those experiments and the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. We do not assert that laboratory manipulation was involved in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, although it is apparent that it could have been. However, we do assert that there has been no independent and transparent scientific scrutiny to date of the full scope of the US-based evidence.

and calling for an investigation into a possible American origin

much could be learned by investigating US-supported and US-based work that was underway in collaboration with Wuhan-based institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), China. It is still not clear whether the IC investigated these US-supported and US-based activities. If it did, it has yet to make any of its findings available to the US scientific community for independent and transparent analysis and assessment. If, on the other hand, the IC did not investigate these US-supported and US-based activities, then it has fallen far short of conducting a comprehensive investigation.

Much of the work carried out in Wuhan was actually funded by the US.

Anonymous said...

"I chaired the commission for the Lancet for 2 years on Covid. I'm pretty convinced it came out of a US lab of biotechnology, not out of nature... We don't know for sure but there is enough evidence. [However] it's not being investigated, not in the US, not anywhere."

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1543259218995687424

Anonymous said...

Mr Sachs is one of the economists who helped destroy Russia in the 1990s, but was obviously considered competent enough to chair the inqiuiry. This is the co-author

Neil L. Harrison
Department of Anesthesiology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032
Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032

andrew said...

"comparing GDP per capita is worthless"
I suppose you could tour round Europe and make a number up based on how you feel, then do the same for the UK.
Or you could look up what people who get paid to measure these things think the answer is.
None of the people collecting these numbers care about brexit, and indeed before 2016 even know about it.
It is very unlikely that they decided to measure the values differently pre and post 16.
It is clear we performed in line with the EU for ~7 years pre 16 and since then have under-performed by 6-7% cumulative since then (so far).
This ignores currency conversion changes which do not benefit the UK's relative performance.

That decline is pretty close to the central treasury estimate of the impact of a hard (WTO) brexit that was published in the referendum.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-treasury-analysis-the-long-term-economic-impact-of-eu-membership-and-the-alternatives
(Page 8)
They estimated a 5,200 (8%) annual loss per household after 15 years

We are at 6-7% after 7 years.
That bunch of counts did get it wrong - so far it looks like they underestimated the loss.



Matt said...

@ andrew

It wasn't a loss, but rather a reduction in growth, such that after 15 years might mean people had £5,200 less than otherwise.

If I go to the bookies and put a £10 bet at 2-1 where earlier I might have got 5-1, does that mean I've lost £30?

andrew said...

If you had the full and informed choice and deliberately chose 2-1 instead of 5-1 and bet 10 then yes you are 30 worse off.

What I was waiting for dm to say was that the relative failure of the uk compared to europe could be for reasons other than brexit.
Being led by a lying toad like johnson drives people to mistrust the whole of the govt.
I would not underestimate the real cost of having someone like him in power.
Or it could be really bad luck (doubtful)
Or something else I have not thought of



Matt said...

@ andrew

You had no idea (at 5-1 or 2-1) whether the bet in question would pay out until after the event. Therefore, your only actual loss that might be incurred was the £10 wager you placed.

The predictions of doom & gloom of Brexit had no more science than the bookies odds. They didn't take into account the massive pandemic costs foisted upon the economy by the government nor the rampant inflation we are experiencing cause by the BoE.

The latter being something most lay people could see coming, due to money presses running full tilt for the last 15 years, whereas it came as a surprise to the same sage characters in the Treasury/BoE who forecast the Brexit household loss.

andrew said...


The BoE did/does its best to be as accurate as possible (yes, they frequently fail), or there are some politically motivated people who were/are constructing numbers to fit their narrative.

Given that, we all knew the most probable outcome or chose to deliberately ignore the knowledge because the answer was not welcome.

There is no way of avoiding the fact it is a relative loss.

It helps my narrative that the BoE looks to be right (so far).

Rather than trying ignore the facts I was hoping someone could explain what the UK govt should do to make the UK catch up / overtake the EU.
Doing nothing will just mean we get even further behind.


Matt said...

@ andrew

Three words (sort of) - Singapore-on-Thames

Slash regulations/red tape, bonfire of the QUANGOs, reduce tax burden under 30% of GDP, remove trade tariffs, a new National Health System based on the model in Europe/Ireland, put a halt to unskilled immigration suppressing wages.

I'll give you 1000-1 odds on that allowing the UK to beat the EU (assuming we're behind already).