Reflections on a Piece of Bullshit PR

The National Grid, upon whom we all depend, glories in a comfortable statutory monopoly with its more-or-less guaranted rate of return and a very cosy relationship with government and regulators alike.  Still, it feels the need to boast.

OK, they posed the question and, given the monopoly thing, it's a very important question.  Intuitively the answer of course is - well, your being a monopoly and all, we confidently expect you are inefficient - it's just a question of scale.  As it happens, a lot of the old CEGB inefficiency (which was grotesque, BTW) was kicked out of the system in the decade or so following privatisation.  But it's been creeping back, courtesy of the renewables upsurge.  The aforesaid authorities rely totally upon the Grid to facilitate their manic policies, and don't feel inclined to question them particularly closely on how they go about it.** ++

Anyhow: having posed the fateful question, the Grid declines to answer it, relying on the usual PR sleight of hand.  Are we efficient?  Well, it's all very difficult as we hope you understand.

And - boy, oh boy - are we effective!!  99.9999% reliable!!  Six nines!!  Go Grid !!

This raises some interesting issues.

1. Effectiveness has minimal bearing on efficiency, even if the first 3 letters are the same.  I assume, however, that loads of suckers are focus-group proven not to notice the difference.
2. The whole matter is one of Gold Plating - the old CEGB disease.  We know you can be staggeringly effective if you throw money at it.  Our money.
3. WTF does six nines mean in this context anyway?  One hour's unreliability in 120 years?  The Grid hasn't been around that long.  One second in 12 days?  (Incidentally, 'grid reliability' isn't what most people would associate with continuity in supply of their electricity.  Blackouts happen all the time, of course: but almost all of them occur at the distribution level - storm damage, pneumatic drill through cable etc - for which National Grid is not responsible.  'Grid reliability' is more to do with 'quality of electricity'.)
4. Most weightily:  what is the optimum degree of reliability?  Thoughtful people realise that the cost of going from, say, five nines to six nines is many times greater than going from four to five.  Who needs six?  There may be an answer to that question: it will probably be the manufacturers of ultra-high-tech electrical components.  But they typically modulate their power supplies themselves, so as to be even more sure.

Yup, this is a big question, and one the politicians leave to the Grid to decide for themselves.  But there are potentially massive efficiencies to be had from a true optimisation of reliability.  Suppose hypothetically it was noticed that no-one drank tap water, but bought their own in plastic bottles.  What, then, would be the point in treating all mains water to be potable, as at present?  It's obvious that for some overwhemingly vast percentage of all usage of mains-water, its costly potable quality goes to waste.  It's the same with grid reliability: who really needs six nines?  Maybe they should get what they need in a different way.  Maybe the Grid should even pay for the cost of their doing so ...

Not something we can solve on a Sunday morning.  One more observation on the Grid, though.  Just a very few years ago they told us we needed a capacity margin (i.e. excess of power generating capacity over peak demand) of 20%.  Funnily enough, now that it's negative, they tell us that we only need 6% (and they procure the top-up in various costly ways). 

Yeah, funny that.  Efficient?  Effective?  Eff ....  Lay off the bullshit PR, eh, boys?

ND
______________
** although one-time Energy Secretary Amber Rudd - remember her? - announced this was going to change ...  We can but hope.

++ UPDATE: now here's a thing, from today's DTel.

National Grid’s ‘unnecessary’ power reserve cost £180m - and wasn’t used. In the winter of 2014/15 National Grid paid £23.5m to form a reserve bench of 10 power plants which could be used if cold, dark weather caused demand for power to surge higher than the UK’s power market could meet. The payment later spiralled because the rate per unit of generation capacity doubled, the report found. In the first winter of the scheme the rate averaged £15.57 per kW but by the third winter of the scheme National Grid was paying £34.21 per kW. 

(Of course, the Grid makes the obvious point about insurance payments ...)

Bring me Sunshine

The children pay almost no attention to mainstream TV. I'm not entirely sure they ever use the remote's TV guide. My teenager watches what little TV she does on catch up. On ever smaller screens. My 8 year old watches Netflix/Sky. Kids TV whatever, whenever.

Both do consume an awful lot of Youtube.

For me YouTube is a DIY godsend. I was lucky enough to find a video of 'how to drain and fix your dishwasher' that featured my own, exact make and model. Piece of cake. And when I needed a pump to get the water out there was another video showing how to use your fish tank filter as a makeshift pump! And another video showing how to repair the fish tank filter and crack in the fish tank glass you have just made by incorrectly removing the filter.

I watch the documentaries. The hard to find and largely forgotten old films I like. I have a few youtube music videos saved. Old TV comedies. Bits of news. Sport clips.
It can be annoying that sometimes its a recording from an old TV. Or its all in Russian. Or off frame or whatever. That prevents me watching more.

But the children don't much care.

The content on YouTube has become all consuming. Its the greatest free resource outside of the actual internet. They watch every nonsense thing on it. Concerts clips. Music videos. Film reviews. Comedy clips. Cartoon segments. Mad stuff. Mentals. The terminally self-centred.
Huge following Youtube bloggers. Make-up shows. Toy commercials. Toy reviewers. Sport. And always, always, someone parodying the whole lot.
The fact they watch the Tonight Show in mini segments doesn't bother them. They didn't want to watch the boring bits anyway. Its per-edited TV.

Ms Quango showed me that film comedy review YouTube channel above that has 6 million subscribers. Her and her friends watch YouTubes while on their phones to each other - Are you watching this? I'll send you the link- its awesome!
They appear to have much narrower focus than we did. Much narrow and more finely defined tastes. Not a certain genre of music - new wave, heavy metal. More, just a playlist. Here's all my favs. Pick yours out of it.

The comedian Stewart Lee made the observation that 20 years ago when he referenced the Morecambe and Wise 'Singing in the rain' sketch, he could rely on 90% of the audience knowing who they were to understand the cultural reference and maybe 75% having seen the sketch. And of those a very high percentage would have seen it all at the same time. At the original TV showing on Christmas day 1976. 18-25 million Britons watched it.

Lee observed that back then we pretty much had to watch the Morcambe and Wise Christmas show.
There were only three TV channels. And one of them was showing only the test card.
No Videos. Dvds. Phones. Video games. Consoles. Social media. The shops were shut and the pubs were closed. It was M&W, monopoly or a 33'' Val Doonican.

By contrast today, the most watched television series in the USA for 2016, Game of Thrones, gets 24 million on its live USA TV showing. Which is epic in modern TV parlance. Bearing in mind its a cable station. Smash hit, Downton Abbey, managed 10 million US viewers on a freeview. But its still only the same as number as the number of people that watched Morcambe and Wise, just in the UK, all those years ago.
The decline of print media is another loss to comedy. Jasper Carrot made a career out of  'Sun Readers'. Daily paper readership has given way to social media. Which is often provided by a much, much larger number, of much much smaller providers.

So, Lee said, its hard to do shared experience. A Game of Thrones joke, the most popular TV show in the world, remember,  might be understood by just 15% of the audience.
Something I can appreciate just from here. Where Cersi Sturgeon, King of the North Miliband, The ice wall, White walker, You know nothing Jon Snow C4 news,  mentions during the Scottish independence referendum were met with bafflement by most. .. Well, I can't help you. Winter is coming. Deal with it.

However. We do, recently, have a new shared experience that we can all relate too. Young or old. Rich or Poor.

And that is Brexit and Trump. 

These may not exactly be shared experiences, but are at least polarising moments for our age. People chose a side and engaged in a way that they haven't for decades. 

Like the Christmas day light entertainment, its not all consuming for most of us. Its just something that we can all share because we all witnessed it together and were aware of the significance.

I'm not saying that a much loved comedy duo performing a song is as important as a world shaping political event. But that, for probably the first time for us in the UK, since 9/11 we can all have a strong opinion of a shared event.

Education wanted re NIC & self-employment

OK - So I get the furore in the newspapers about this 'awful' Tory budget. A big part of me thinks the papers just see budget now and go looking for disaster, after the omnishambles budget of 2012


But genuinely, some of the readers here must be self-employed. How much is this hit going to actually cost you? I just can't see the hit outside of taking away egregious tax benefits.


How big is this storm - a teacup or a hurricane.


As pointed out yesterday, the issue is we cannot trust the press as they are made of many people who are affected by this change directly to the sense of proportionality is lost in a way that say a change on capital allowances would go totally unnoticed.


For example, Business Rates has been a big theme running pre-Budget - but as soon as journalists income is potentially hit, out this goes an in comes RAGE (as written by Sarah Vine).


Personally, many people I know earn a living through self-employment. They try optimize their earnings to around £40k per year. Between expenses and dividends, make their wives/husbands directors etc, contributing to pensions etc, they manage to pay no tax at all, bar NIC's which they need for their state pension entitlements. Their is no contribution at all to the state in real terms.


In a PAYE job to net £40k you would need to earn £63k. This gap at a base level is c.57%.


5 weeks holiday (which the company pays for, not the Government) is worth 10% of wages, so that would take the PAYE earnings needed down , plus pensions contribution from employer perhaps another 5% and other bits add can on another 1 or 2%. So being generous let us say it is worth 20% overall to be employed.


That still leaves a huge gap and also, not unimportantly, a big hole in revenues for the Government. We have not even considered employers NIC here. No wonder employers are keen to get everyone onto consultancy and zero-hours contracts. Self-employment, even up to a mid-level of income is a huge issue for the Government. As the gig economy kicks-in I can quite see why the Government is going to make a stand on this issue.


If only MP's would think of the numbers rather than the headlines.

Media budget reaction shows why paradigm has shifted to an unstable political scene

I went to buy a newspaper today, probably because like most people I wanted to read about how Barcelona had done it!


In fact, what struck me was the horror show of a reaction to the budget. I watched the budget yesterday, nothing was said. The Government was talking about small £16 million improvements to roads and such like. No mention of £55 billion on HS2. It was a non-budget.


The one small thing was  1% change in NIC's for the self-employed - this would only impact to the tune of around £160 a year to a relatively small number of people. This is not 2p on income tax for all.


Yet the papers behave (because they are stuffed full of "personal service company types") as if the world has ended. Not only that but Labour rail constantly against the current do-nothing Government as if they are literally murdering babies and are the most evil Government of all time.


Truly, we live in a time of mass hysteria - there must be good reasons as to why, but perhaps that will take longer to figure out than a blog post.


In this environment though I see clearly why Trump and Farage are successful. Firstly they play the exaggeration game which helps fill the medias' need for sensationalism, then they top it off with very radical change.


Given the reaction to a non-budget, I can see why there is a need to go for radical change; minor steady-as-she-goes policy is shouted down as if it is a declaration of war. So, instead, you may as well go the whole hog on immigration bans or whatever floats your boat. The mass hysteria generated can only reach a pitch of 100% - so go for it, do crazy things, it can't get any worse.


I am not yet convinced that this will improve matters in the country as a whole, as it may result in much more extreme governments going forward. Perhaps this is a reaction to all Governments being  more or less the same in most areas during my adult life; it could come with a high price if we end up with McIRA as Prime Minister!

2017 Budget - a comedic pause

Well, as predicted, that was not very exciting. It is amazing that in a near £2,000,000,000 economy the Chancellor finds time to talk about £16 million here and £7 million there.


Perhaps there are some nasties lurking unsaid in the Red book that will be unearthed later.


However, much more interesting was that Philip Hammond made some funny jokes, I mean, that really is entirely unexpected. Who would have thought....


"there is a reason it is called the last labour Government" and more!


Then in response to this entirely unexpected bout of bonhomie, Jeremy Corbyn stood up and did a fankly epic live re-enactment of a Citizen Smith sketch.


All very puzzling, this outbreak of comedy and humour in of all things a budget statement. George Osborne must be turning in his grave!

Fracking Across The Globe

Been a bit busy of late but a couple of Grauniad headlines still caught the attention over the weekend, starting with the latest update from the increasingly active northern shale gas drilling scene:

Shale gas firm Cuadrilla brands anti-fracking activists 'irresponsible'  -  CEO Francis Egan complains about protesters ‘harassing’ contractors supplying Preston New Road site in Lancashire

Yes, after a very long hiatus the North of England Shale Show is back on the road!  Or being hindered by a roadblock, as it would seem, because there's plenty of pesky opposition - the usual combination of genuinely local nimbys, misinformed 'ordinary people' with too much time on their hands, and itinerant swampies now trading as Reclaim The Power.  (You'd imagine the hyperventilating hoards of Momentum wouldn't be far behind, except that they are fully occupied with fratricide just now.  And I'm guessing t'unions may have told Corbyn to keep out of it, based on how they made him support nuclear in Copeland.)   An enjoyable line in outdoor relief for all concerned (plus overtime for Old Bill) - except for the local contractors.

But shale in the UK never looked to be a near-term phenomenon (we've discussed this all before).  Even if the reserves are as big as Cuadrilla believe, in broad-spectrum practical terms they just ain't particularly accessible.  A far cry from the USA, where the recent OPEC-driven rise in oil price is, though rather modest by the standards of 2010-2014 prices, more than enough to re-ignite the mighty shale-drilling activity there, oil and gas.  This comes as a big shock to legions of idiots who consoled themselves with the thought that shale needed a price of $100 - or was it $80? - or $60? - to be viable.  Sorry, but technology doesn't work like that: it gets better and better, cheaper and cheaper, and always surprises idiots.  If in doubt, go short - because there's always more stuff out there than anyone thinks. 

This leads to another mighty quandry for all the antis who thought they could put moral / financial pressure on big companies and pension funds etc, to effect some kind of investment boycott of the fossil fuel industries, and force the authorities to mark down oil company oil reserves as stranded and worthless.  Why, the Grauniad itself even tried to run a campaign along these lines. Which brings us to the second headline:

Environmentalists urge French bank not to finance Texas fracking project Activist points to ‘hypocrisy’ in BNP Paribas’s involvement in south Texas export terminal, given bank’s claimed commitment to the environment

Well, sorry guys but shale in the USA is 100% mainstream now and you won't actually find a major bank or indeed any other financial institution that isn't already 'in'.  Because, as we know, shale is going to make the USA self-sufficient in energy as far forward as anyone can see, with momentous geo-political implications.  And that's before Venezuela lets rip, because they have more accessible shale oil reserves than Saudi has 'conventional' oil.  And (when they need the extra reserves) Russia has more gas than the world will ever need.

And the IEA - which is seriously schizophrenic on this issue, BTW - thinks we need much, much more oil ... (well, that's what it thinks this month).

Anyhow, Swampy and Cuadrilla will no doubt continue to slug it out in Lancashire.  But they are a sideshow of such small proportions, it'll make Paul Mason's head explode one day.

ND

No Election budget

It is budget day tomorrow and as with all budgets since 2008, there are only likely to be thin pickings to be had.


Governments make a big deal of £500 million of spending on schools or whatever is their fancy for the year. Then they re-announce big already budgeted infrastructure spend and also re-announce normal spending commitments made over years as if they are new.


All not very exciting. Worse is that invariably the tax take goes up and up forever. That NHS keeps needing spending and the low wage subsidy economy is a very expensive thing to run.


So it seems taxes can never go down and all budgets are declared 'AUSTERITY' budgets by the left as spending can only ever be increased.


Personally, I find this depressing. The NHS is very important but clearly a machine that sucks in so much money needs looking at. The huge government spend on pensions sticks out even more to me though. These commitments need to be vastly reduced if future generations are to survive or even draw their pensions.


But as every Chancellor knows, problems more than 3 years out are someone else's problems....

Normal Service may be resumed shortly...

Remainer Lords try to create new constitutional crisis...sigh

I feel sorry for Theresa May. Stuck with a job at the worst time to get it in fifty years, she nonetheless has to just plow on.


Brexit this, Brexit that, NHS crisis here there and everywhere. Better her than me.


On top of all of this is the fifth column of remainers in every area of the liberal elite determined to wreck any attempt to get a good Brexit.


Today it is the turn of the Lords with the most mind-numbingly stupid proposal yet. Basically, they are saying let all EU people stay as that is a nice thing to do. Give away any bargaining chip we have with countries we know are going to take a hard line like Poland.


Doing this will ensure we have a crap Brexit negotiation. So back the Commons the amendment will go and it will be voted down. The Lords know this is a stupid and puerile game- but it is a cosy piece of virtue-signalling by the remainers.


If they stick at it, then there will have to be a Royal Commission into the role of the unelected Lords. Which is necessary but could be left to the next decade after we have sorted out Brexit and re-conquered Scotland in the next civil war. Sometime in the mid-2020's. Of course, this is their game as such a distraction is exactly what they want as they try to stop Brexit altogether.

Whatever happened to EU Financial Transaction Tax?

One of the oft quoted pieces when we discuss where companies may move to in Europe after Brexit, is that the incoming Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) will impose future costs. These costs should therefore be set against the benefits of re-locating away from the UK. Overall, the FTT will act a counter-weight to the loss of financial passporting.


So far, so good. The one interesting fly in the ointment is that FTT shows every sign of having been quietly forgotten by the EU.


The last activity on the EU website is from, er, 2014. Whilst in 2015the EU won a court case that meant the UK could not opt-out of any future FTT , nothing more has been seen or heard of it since.


All the initial proposals seem to have been passed, but then countries started withdrawing. Last year, they were down to the nine which would be the minimum required.


Nothing has happened since last year, strongly suggesting with event moving so quickly in Europe that this is now a dead duck. Certainly for the foreseeable future.


Which from a Capitalist perspective is great, as this is a very expensive tax on finance. From a UK perspective a shame, as this would indeed make plenty of firms think twice about the costs of taking on EU domicile only.

Endgame for Drax?

Drax is a great name for a villain:  and for anyone who gives a toss about the way 'green' subsidies are thrown about, Drax plc can certainly be cast as one of the villains of the piece.  Drax and its fellow industrial-scale wood-chip burners receive nearly £1 billion a year in subsidies for generating electricity that way, and are not required to proffer CO2 emission permits or pay the carbon tax - on the pretext that wood-burning reduces CO2 emissions.

Except, it doesn't - it increases them, even by reference to coal (which is the obvious comparator, since it is coal-fired power generating capacity that is essentially being replaced by biomass-burning).  It's basic physics, plus a little logic.  A perfect example of crass policy-making at its most perverse - whatever view you take on (C)(A)GW.  The way they get away with it, BTW, is under the utterly demented 'carbon accounting rules' which allow them to account only for the CO2 emitted in the manufacture and transportation of the wood-chips - and to ignore the CO2 emitted during actual combustion, which is nowhere recorded.  To repeat, wood-chip burning generates more CO2 than coal burning: and in answer to the riposte that eventually, if you replant the forests, it all balances out, the answer is that 'eventually' is several decades at best, but maybe 100 years or more.  Meantime, all this is happening by the many millions of tonnes of mostly North American forest per annum.

There have been a number of people saying this patiently for quite some time, mostly from the green side; although of course the hatchet-faced subsidy-farmers and their 'green' lobby the REA are all in favour.  Well, after all, a billion is a billion ... 

Yesterday, the fairly universally-respected Chatham House has published what everyone knows to be the truth (here and here).  Even the Beeb has picked up on it (though silence from the Grauniad at the time of writing).  The REA's response is risible.

Why does the government (which, by the way, knows all this too) continue to load up our electricity bills with these subsidies?  Easy.  (a) the UK depends on biomass to meet its 'binding' EU renewables targets; (b) in a world of windfarms and ever decreasing coal, it depends on the reliability of biomass (inter alia) to keep the lights on in winter; (c) Drax and its smaller confreres are up shit creek without the subsidies, which greatly exceed their profits.  I don't know whether Drax - a FTSE 250 company - would go under without the subsidy (and remember, if that is withdrawn then by the same logic Drax should also be paying the carbon tax which would compound their woes).  But withdrawal of the subsidy would certainly impact massively on its fortunes.

I can't see the status quo continuing indefinitely.

ND

Where should you flee Brexit too if you are a Capitalist Corporation?

So this is easier than you may think to decide. There are five major considerations that any company has to take account of:


Regulatory Environment, Tax, Employment, Language, EU exit potential


For the first, this is how seriously a country takes enforcement or regulatory rules and therefore how much time and effort you will have to put into pretending your company is operating there.


This is quite a hurdle, Ireland for example are saying you have to have significant operations in-country to count. This is not surprising, given how close to death Ireland came in the 2008 Financial crash.


What this means is that very few countries are able to offer the light regulation (this means a brass plate address a la the Cayman Islands). The EU Countries that do are Malta and Luxembourg. Neither of these places really wants large movements of people to them.


Of the other major Countries, Germany, Ireland, France, Holland, Iceland and Lithuania  offer a more challenging regulatory regime, but at least you could actually move people there. Here though both Employment and Language come into play. Ireland apart language is a real issue and notably in France employment issues too - not point being a capitalist company if you can't sack the staff or only hire contractors. The employment element rules out most countries.


Then of course, France and Holland may exit the EU themselves, so why move there for only a temporary escape.


So when it comes down to it, there is only really Luxembourg, Malta and Ireland as serious places to go. Luxembourg ins hands down as many financial services funds are already domiciled in Luxembourg to pay no tax. of course, if you have actual people and business to move then there is Ireland but there regulations mean that is a long process that you really should have started already.


For how long though will the EU put up with Luxembourg offering its companies and UK companies a no-tax jurisdiction within the heart of the continent? Also, when the Financial Transaction tax hits, how much will that hurt the EU trading companies - why bother moving now only to come back later?


As a final thought, due to the above I fully expect to see Luxembourg and Malta veto any moves towards allowing UK passporting or other deals with the EU. They will push for hard Brexit all the way as for them it is a one-way bet.

That Exodus from the City to Europe

As we tremble in our boots at the prospect of all those City firms upping and offing, the runners and riders for the Wannabe European 'Capital' City stakes are bimbling around somewhere near the starting line, bumping into each other, in the mud.  It looks like heavy going.

And here is what the tip-sheet says:

From Paris to Vilnius, Milan to Madrid and Frankfurt to Valletta, regulators, local authorities and sometimes national governments are clearing a path for the exodus many feel is coming ... or even Amsterdam ... Dublin is a serious contender ... Appealingly low-tax Luxembourg ... Milan is also making a pitch, particularly for technology and financial firms, with ambitious if probably unrealistic plans to turn the Expo 2015 space into a global tech hub.  Small, user-friendly Valletta, in Malta, fancies some insurance business, while Lithuania’s Vilnius and Riga in Latvia, want a share of fintech and support activities.  “We have the talent and we have the infrastructure,” said Latvia’s finance minister, Dana Reizniece-Ozola. “Everyone wants to put themselves on the map.”

Jolly good stuff, chaps.  Nice to see a united front.  And we all certainly fancy a bit of business.  By the way, I've been to Latvia, and Riga is very nice.  If you like little old Hanseatic League towns.  A bit like Lübeck.  Or King's Lynn.

Already on the map, really - for a nice bit of tourism.  Good luck with the global finance.

ND

PS, to be fair, that Grauniad article also gives a list of good reasons why it ain't gonna happen.  And they didn't even mention Civil Code and FTT.

PPS, the other day I watched Luxembourg's promotional video clip.  You know the way that in TV ads for BUPA private hospitals, the word CLEAN swims in and out of the picture, subliminal-message-wise?  Well for Luxembourg, the subliminal onscreen message-word was SAFE ...

By-Elections - the end of the populist surge?

There are 2 by-elections this week. One in Copeland and one in Stoke.


The Copeland one is about as uninteresting as it gets. A safe Labour seat, Labour are running their traditional 30-seconds-to-save-the-NHS campaign. It is a slam dunk hold for Labour. I doubt many of the people there even know what a Tory is, some kind of baby-eating animal their parents used to scare them with when they were angry. For reasons of needing to fill newspaper columns there seems to be a move to suggest the Tories might win...I mean really. Even when the Tories were led by William Hague and IDS they were not losing seats in Surrey.


As for Stoke, it could have been a bit more exciting if UKIP had a decent candidate, instead the new leader seems as error-prone as previous UKIP candidates and thus is not making much headway. Plus the Labour candidate is also poor meaning the net result will be a very low turnout and thus a likely Labour hold too.


You can get 3-1 for both seats to be holds. At least it means we get to keep Mr Corbyn as our commie-entertainer in chief for a few more months at least. But the likely press angle will be that this is the end of the Populist surge - hhmmmm...that we will have to wait and see about.

"Rationing Police Services" - A Shot Across The Bows

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has delivered himself of the opinion that the Police will need to start "rationing" their services if budget contraints continue.  "Cuts meant police would have to pick and choose more often what they prioritise, and, more controversially, what they will not", in the Grauniad's paraphrase.

One's responses to this range from "statement of the bleed'n obvious", through to "could be pretty sinister".

• All resources are finite and anyone who imagines there isn't some kind of prioritisation going on, in respect of any service provision, is deliberately kidding themselves.  The NHS gets fairly close to undiscriminating non-prioritisation in the way GPs and A&E are fairly much forced to deal with whatever fetches up in their system.  But after forced entry through the unguarded gate, the patient rapidly gets triaged and filtered and rationed, even if only in ways that are never articulated
• As BH-H notes, the military and more recently the NHS have forced a bit of recognition of this into the public debate: and maybe the Police should be making matters more explicit in their own manor.  More openness in strategic decision-making has advantages over unaccountable private policy-making, which we all know is what happens
• I could draw his attention to the situation at a cafe of my acquaintance which, every weekday morning, is home to three and sometimes four patrol-cars' worth of coppers enjoying an exceptionally leisurely morning coffee-break ...

But:

• How much openness is wise?  It's one thing for the military to state: we can no longer patrol in the Pacific Ocean; or for the NHS to say we can't afford this new cancer drug.  But what happens when the Police say: we can't patrol after midnight?   (Our local force has already unilaterally declared it will not enforce the new 20 mph speed limits the council has imposed.)
• What happens when 'rationing' get really political?  When (say) a mayor with strong community affiliations tells the local police chief that laws he reckons aren't congenial to his community mustn't be enforced? 

What do we think?

ND

Robotic Cars - The driver-less future.

 

America is So ready for robotic cars.

There are already adverts on the television along the lines of "Your insurance local, friendly, family run insurance provider .. securing you yesterday, today.. and with the autodrive cars of the future."

I've been driving in the US recently. I was pleased that the rental car options are two grades above our UK ones. Order a midsize and get a Jeep Cherokee. Fuel is still half UK prices. Despite everything else now costing European amounts of money with our currently worthless overseas currency.
Its about ten years since I've been to the USA. And the 99c hamburger is now $3.99

 Its a much calmer driving experience than in the UK. Much calmer and easier. The cars may be bigger but the roads are wider.The speeds are much lower. Motorway 65. Country 40-50mph.
That doesn't look on paper much different. But many more roads are dual carriageway. Many , many roads, even through the centre of cities, towns and villages are three lanes wide.
Three lanes wide and often with an  emergency lane on both sides. The median guardrail that is within touching distance of a passenger in the fast lane in the UK is a lane and a grass strip or run-off sandstrip away in the US.

The roads tend to be straighter. The traffic lights wait for longer and the signals are above each lane. Three lanes of traffic tend to move at the same speed. A speeding car is quite easily spotted. I saw plenty of highway patrols. A few accidents. And despite what seemed to be every single road in every state I traveled being worked on  by orange clad construction crews with orange and white barrels reducing lanes, traffic flowed exceptionally well.

The USA is ready for the driver-less automobile.

I thought maybe ten years away before we start to see them. But that was with my narrow roads, roundabouts, single lane, farm track, heavily congested, impatient, high speed Euro-UK driver eyes.
It will be much easier in the Americas..

People in the know say on the technology required front, we can have driver-less cars right now. The systems are all ready. The testing has been done. It all works. Its all ready. Millions of accident free miles already put in.
Its the legal issues that are holding the whole thing up. 

What do we think about this new invention?

 Its going to change our lives and our commerce as radically as the internet did. A change to the existing order and the existing structures and systems. With huge cost savings and huge job losses. Winners and losers. With the law and the governments panicking and obstructing and lagging a fair way behind the technology rush.

Are we happy about the driver-less vehicles?

Will you be getting one?

Not content with ruining the Middle East, Mr Blair comes home....

This time, its revolution on the UK on the menu.


Lovely man, oh how we missed him!

Turnbull: Not-so-much Wizard of Oz

Reports coming from the other side of the world are not so bright these days.  For whatever it is worth, Turnbull didn't seem to hit it off with Trump - even if that's now being spun as a Good Thing.   More concretely, Australia looks set to be the first major nation to screw up energy policy so badly that blackouts are increasingly the result  (most people had Germany down for that honour).  Its mining policy looks to be a mess, as well - and highly dependent on Chinese demand.

I've been surprised that Malcom Turnbull hasn't been a more immediately successful Prime Minister.  Our paths crossed briefly when he was at Oxford but not so much as I could form a proper assessment of him.  But a friend who knows him well and whose judgement on people and politicians tends to be excellent, reckons him the most dynamic, ambitious and purposeful getter-of-things-done he's ever met.  Turnbull's CV rather bears this out; and reaching the top of the greasy antipodean pole seemed a natural career progression.

So what's up down under?  Turnbull's Oz should be one of our best and most useful friends in the post-Brexit world - and perhaps even more importantly during the extended phase of pre-Brexit diplomacy.  Perhaps it will still be so.

Any C@W readers who can offer some good perspectives?

ND

We Have Heard Enough from Justin Welby

As a conservative I am apt to giving the benefit of the doubt to figures of authority.  At the same time I expect them to merit respect:  and if they prove otherwise ...

Which brings us to Justin Welby.  Who started in the oil industry like, errr, me - so he already had a couple of credits in the bank.  And I've long had a benign tolerance towards the naive leftism of the many clerics I know.

I see Welby now considers Brexit et al to be "in a nationalist, populist or even fascist tradition of politics"; oh, and from other recent news items, that taxes should be increased.

And we have also seen Welby featuring in other headlines recently: his (tangential?) historical connection to the boy-thrashers of the Church of England, and his leadership of the same organisation over the past four years when it has been not exactly eager to see this scandal properly dealt with.

Here he is, blustering (check the second clip embedded in the story).  Nothing to do with me.  I was only young at the time.  Hardly know the chap, apart from the odd Christmas card.  Petulant stuff - no sign of leadership, responsibility or authority. 

So - benefit of the doubt withdrawn.

Which brings us to Shami Chakrabarti...

ND

Eight years of banking pain and still no end in sight

Co-Op bank has put itself up for sale today. Ouch, even after a big bailout from new shareholders, there seems to be no way for it to actually turn a profit on its customer base. Frankly with low interest rates and non-banks piling into the market, there is not much to be said for retail banking. They never did get there way on charging for current accounts...


Add this to RBS, being denounced in the press for being about to launch another mass redundancy round to try and cope with its 9th annual multi-billion loss. Again, similar to Co-Op, it can't make money from its business - certainly only a couple of billion from what it has left after shutting down investment and international banking. This  two billion is dwarfed every year by payouts for the sins of the past misdemeanours.


2007/8 feels like a long time ago, but many of the problems in the banking system are still working through. The medicine of Quantitative Easing, which was hard to argue against at the time, has persisted long past its use by date. The Bank of England has always found a reason to keep the taps on to help the economy.


However, the underlying system is now very screwed by this approach. With no interest rate differential in the markets, banks struggle to make money. The regulatory burden, necessarily increased after the great crash, is expensive. Instead of the Banks making good, new entrants, with lower costs have come to the market and started to feast. This is good capitalism and as it should be, but will make for a big taxpayer write-off on the RBS investment.


Perhaps we should just do it and move on, rather like Co-Op group did with Co-Op bank.

OPEC's Oil Price Fix - Is That All You've Got?

So - OPEC finally came up with its production-cutting deal last November, and sure enough, up went the price of crude.  Members' discipline has been OK (Iraq and Venezuela excepted) but, needless to say, it's been heavy going for the Saudis, who have needed to hold back rather more than agreed to achieve even this ...

Pretty feeble for a price-hike, huh?  And US oil stocks are high right now: and the hedge funds are holding record long positions in oil (nearly 900 million barrels) - whatever you think that means.  But $55 is quite enough to get the great shale-oil venture back on the road, and the US 'rig count' has been climbing since its low of May last year.  A bit of a cyclical upswing, to be followed by a cyclical production response ...

In case anyone doesn't know, as this new(ish) development in fracking technology really gets into its stride the Middle East is living on borrowed time because (a) the USA now knows it has all the oil it will probably ever need; and (b) should there be the slightest error in that calculation, it now transpires that the world's largest reserves belong to ... Venezuela.  As for gas, if Russia can ever get to grips with the fracking technology (shouldn't be beyond them), they have so much more gas than everyone used to think, it's quite off the scale.  Enough of all these hydrocarbons to make a Green weep.

Venezuela, eh?  The politics of the western hemisphere may get quite interesting down the road.  A good job for them President Trump doesn't need to go looking abroad for US supplies.

What price that slice of Aramco then?  The 'risks' section of the prospectus should make interesting reading.  Remember, anyone caught lying in a prospectus for a Wall Street flotation goes straight to gaol, do not pass Go.  It's taken very seriously there.

ND 

Will Brexit Kill off the House of Lords?

As a Republican, as ever an unpopular position, I was musing that the paradigm shift which Brexit has cause may find new victims this week.
The House of Lords has long been an anachronism in the UK system. There has of course been some attempt to reform it with Tony Blair getting rid of the hereditary Lords.

Hilariously, this reform has probably made the Lords even worse than it was. The hereditary's were at least independent, whereas their replacements have been retiring and failed politicians. The Liberal Democrats, long-since abandoned by the voting public, happily have 109 of our 807 Lords positions.

Today they are going to try to amend the Brexit bill which was handily passed by Parliament, they may have more success and be more blinded than is the common thinking. Remainers are nothing if not strident and the Lords is full of Remainers who owe nothing to the public and who face no prospect of election or losing their remuneration or position, thanks to the unwieldy constitutional convention that we have inherited.

Lords reform will be fully on the agenda for the Tories and UKIP together if there is too much resistance. At a push I can see the SNP and Plaid Cymru also spying a chance to make mischief with the constitutional set-up.

In reality, this will all take time as if there is not enough for the Government to do with Brexit over the next few years. However, planting the seed if the first step to growing a new garden.

UK in Housing Crisis according to the Government

Really, Sajid Javid has a reputation as a high flying City Banker, lowering himself in service of his country by taking a Government job.


Allegedly, his ego remains that of a City High-Flier.


However, coming out today to say there is housing crisis, young people can't buy or rent and the Government should do something about it is pretty thin. Rarely these days do the labour opposition make any good points, but to say the Government is complicit in not doing anything serious about housing for 7 years is spot on. Allegedly there were some ideas about planning reform floated last month, but these do not seem to have seen the light of day.


Actually, now is a good time to get building. The higher end property market has gone for a burton, freeing up labour and companies to look again at more mid-range projects where prices are more inelastic (as are the profits though..).


A good old house building boom is long-overdue. Indeed if this comes alongside falling immigration and falling household formation then more is the better - we could see a real improvement in the situation.


Of course a real improvement also means house price falls (or, no nominal increases) for the foreseeable which will be very unpopular with our Banks and Lenders. But suffer they must, jus don't buy any shares in them.


The real issue though is the Government has not really committed to anything as per usual, so not doubt I will be re-writing this post again every year for the next decade. I somehow doubt prices can go beyond 8x income ration which is where they have reached, but then again I thought that at 6x Income and 7x income!

Money For Old Rope

Little-noticed by the MSM, last week saw an event that neatly demonstrates two interesting British governmental phenomena: one of tremendous strategic incompetence, the other of impressive tactical prowess.  

Recognising that the 'capacity margin' (of reliable electricity supply over peak demand) has become perilously low - probably negative, in fact - the PTB (technically the National Grid, but it is of course government + regulators + grid in cahoots) ran an unscheduled, one might well say panicky, capacity auction for next winter's cover.  More on capacity auctions below. 

The first thing this demonstrates is the astonishing failure of policy that results in an 'advanced' nation getting itself into the position where there could be blackouts arising from lack of generating capacity - a situation that could well arise even this winter if February turns out to be as cold as some forecasts suggest**; and next winter will be worse.  (Note: any blackouts would be for industry - governments will do absolutely anything to keep lights on in homes and hospitals.)  This state of affairs has been evolving in slow motion, in plain sight, for 10 years with no shortage of warnings from many sources (e.g. this blog, for the whole of that decade).

On the flipside, it demonstrates just how technically capable the civil service (incl. regulators and grid) still are in this country.  The Capacity Mechanism was designed to provide an incentive for firms to build new power plants with a 4-year lead time: so the first auction more than 3 years ago was for the period starting winter 2018-19, and there have been two more of these annual 4-year-ahead auctions.  For various reasons to do with the stupidity of ministers and economists, the 'wrong kind' of power plants have been winning these auctions.  They were hoping for new ultra-efficient gas-fired plants: they got old coal plants on life-support, creaking old gas plants coming out of mothballs, cheap-and-cheerful inefficient gas plants, and banks of diesel generators instead.  Anyone could have told them this would happen (specifically, I did). 

However, as a purely technical exercise in running a complex auction - and 'discovering' the cheapest way of solving the problem - they have been a great success: a credit to the team that devised the Mechanism.  To be fair, they had several pre-existing examples of auction designs to consider frm around the world, including some that have been a fiasco.  Nonetheless, to get it right first time is creditworthy.  Several continental countries whose energy policy is just as bad if not worse than ours - oh yes, it is possible - gaze in awe at how well we do these technocratic things, and wish they could emulate us.  (I was at a 3-day technical seminar in the Netherlands in December - the only Brit there.  On four separate occasions, concerning different aspects of energy policy, someone said "they've done this already in the UK" or "they do it so much better in Britain".)

So - when in 2016 ministers contemplated the dire prognostications for winter 2017-18, and the dreadfully inefficient way the Grid struggled through 2015-16 and this winter, they readily concluded the answer was to run an emergency 'early' auction.  As a piece of sticking-plaster, it's probably worked.  The clearing price that we all shall pay in our electricity bills was way, way lower than the commentariat forecast (enabling the government to crow); and of course 97% of the winning capacity is ... already-existing power plants.  Less old coal-on-life-support has succeeded; more gas-coming-out-of-mothballs.  Oh, and of course, the 3% that will be new-build plant will all be little diesels: what else can you put in place inside 6 months??

This being the case, for 97% of the winners they are being paid just for being there - which they already are.  I can report that in the industry, these payments are routinely referred to as 'money for nothing'.  Dire Straits indeed.

ND

UPDATE - bit of a PR campaign going on here: and there have been other self-congratulatory pieces over the past few weeks.  You might argue some of my text above justifies their preening.  But there's a political agenda here too - don't worry about renewables, everything's fine.  Trouble is, National Grid are not a neutral judge on this: they get a guaranteed rate of return on investments they make that are required to accommodate, e.g., windfarms in the north of Scotland.  Nice work if you can get it  -  or moral hazard, as professors of ethics say.


-----------------
** because we may run out of gas, owing to an unforseen problem with storage: and gas-fired power generation is now absolutely critical with so much coal plant having shut down.

Iconic UK rock and popsters. Bowie and friends.

Royal Mail are continuing with their sometime series of pop icons on stamps with a David Bowie set.
The previous UK popular beat combo that RM chose was Pink Floyd. Before them, the Rolling Stones and The Beatles.

Despite the Uk's view of itself as a world leader in popular music. Rivaling the USA for talent and sales, it is quite difficult to point to Tier 1, superstar, internationally renown musicians.

In the girl band pop group category The Spice Girls are undeniably the world's best selling all girl band. A UK hit who would easily claim a set of stamps on all measures except longevity, which was mercifully short.

But the next most successful ever all British, all female line up, is Bananarama. Who are still going after their formation 37 years ago. But have under half the sales the Spice girls managed, even though they existed during the easier to rack up volumes, peak vinyl sales era.

So, Dave B aside, and allowing that Posh and co are a definite, which British music artist is successful enough to warrant their very own fame sticker?

Who is known throughout the globe? Has had their music played in taxi cabs from Mogadishu to Montpelier. Has sold tens of millions of records and played packed out stadiums? Who is so well known, so iconic, that they can carry the UK flag around the globe on our new Post-Eurovision age?

Its harder than it seems. We have, and have had, many, many good musicians. Many well known. Many successful. far more than our island population should warrant.
{That WORLD language we own, helping us out yet again.}

But Headliners?

Madonna - Sprinsteen  - Beyonce - Michael Jackson -  level front rankers.

We do have them. But trying to get another ten, has proved quite hard for the BQi offices.

So - Given Bowie, Floyd, Stones, Beatles are already taken, can we agree another batch?

I have pitched in with Spice Girls {I'm no fan..its just that they fit the criteria!} and Elton John.
70s superstar. 80's star and multi-million selling artist, Still performing, still selling out stadiums, still with his original albums on sale in shops and digitally.

Anyone else worth a lick ?

5 reaons the Markets will turn in February

1. After a US election, the historically most common trend is for a rise in anticipation and also as loose monetary policy is a given prior to any election. This has tended to cause a hangover the following year.


2. The US markets have touch all time highs recently - despite not particularly stellar corporate returns or signs of massive growth potential. The Price/Earnings ratios are well above the long-run average of 12.


3. Trump, is, err, mad. Whilst some of his policies are going to be good for growth in the US, like investing in infrastructure and trading off environmental protection for economic expansion, they are also going to be implemented badly - after all, few of his advisory picks are getting put in place quickly.


4. The over-blown reaction to his immigration executive order has made some large US corporates very jumpy - confidence is a key thing in the markets and this already has taken a knock. Yes, some of them are lefty-hand wringing types, but still, they run some very important companies for the US economy. Look at Brexit, all the big companies against and the FTSE regularly takes a kicking when they come out with the woe-is-me-shtick.


5. Protectionism - this is a two way street, good for US jobs potentially, but at the expense of international companies also probably inflation and slower GDP growth. These latter issues will be priced in before the former. Reducing trade won't be good for US markets.


All in all, the Trump bounce does not feel that sustainable in 2017, even if over 4 years things do work out for the best.


And finally, the old phrase is worth a mention., when the US sneezes the UK catches a cold...

The Brexit Bankers' Dilemma

This piece in the FT last week is very revealing about the state of Brexit.


At Davos, the Chief Exec of Goldman Sachs was joined by the other Chief Execs of US Banks in warning that a Hard Brexit will see them move their European Operations into EU jurisdictions.


As a reminder, Goldmans actively financed Greece to the point of bankruptcy, shorted the CMBS and RMBS bonds that created the Great Financial Crash and then begged the Fed (run by an Ex-Goldmans alumni, natch) to bail out AIG which owed it billions of Credit Default Swaps such that its collapse would have taken down Goldmans too. There are newer scandals over Aluminium and other commodity hoarding, but the charge sheet is long enough.


So, anything told by a Goldmans CEO is every time and always talking their own book. The US Banks have a big dilemma, none of the Execs they send to Europe want to work or locate their families anywhere but London. At the moment, strikes are threatened and even enacted every time Paris is mentioned.


This is a big headache, one might have thought the Banks would do well to lobby the cause of the problem, the EU, who after all are the ones insisting on Hard Brexit, thanks to their overblown commitment to the four freedoms.


Anyway, the Banks whine on in the article how about how tough life is for them and why they are annoyed that their special pleading is being ignored. Then right at then (this is an FT article after all), they note how Prime Minister May understands their issues perfectly and is quite aware of the real impacts upon them of Brexit.


That must have both killed the journalist to write but also must have ruined the day of the US Bankers - how can they square the circle of not firing their friends and colleagues (read cousins etc)and replacing them with work to rule French people?

Mr Whippy - The Brexorcist

A single whip is simply a guideline, while a double whip (or two line whip) is stricter - and attendance at the vote is required. The three-line whip is a 'vote with the party or get out'. The number of lines comes from the number of times that a vote is underlined by the Chief Whip in the parliament's schedule.
-WIKI

THE BREXORCIST

 Corbyn told Sky News: “It will be a clear decision that we want all of our MPs to support the article 50 vote when it comes up next week. It’s clearly a three-line whip.”

Corbyn may the worst leader of the labour party since ..well... the last one, but he does possesses a low cunning.  A Kremlin politburo apparatchik  like ability to plot his way through the beloved arcane rules and obscure minutiae of the Labour Parties rule book. 
The workings of the process that allowed him and his entryist followers to infiltrate and usurp the positions of power and influence within the structures of the byzantine cult of the left.

For decades Labour have enjoyed the Tory parties discomfort at being unable to reconcile the two opposite wings of their pro and anti European MPs. Europe has been a topic so toxic that it has fractured the party on more than one occasion. And ended the career of more than one leader. 
UKIP arose from Tory members dissatisfaction with the decision to always back the EU all the way towards the ever closer political union and eventual federal superstate.
The Referendum on Europe occurred as a direct result of David Cameron trying to stop the UKIP insurgency from stealing 15% of his natural supporters.

For a long while now, Labour has been very happy with the evermore socialist embrace of the EU. Evermore regulations and unlimited free movement have been seen as a wonderful opportunity for the labour party to  bask in its virtue, top up its voter base, occupy the metropolitan cities and call anyone they don't agree with a racist. 

The science was settled. 
The EU was lovely and all bar a tiny percentage of its MPs and fellow travelers on the progressive bandwagons agreed.

Sadly for Labour, one of their minuscule number of anti-European Union MPs was lifelong backbencher, anti-corporation, anti- the disallowed state investment and anti-tax rise restricting Jeremy Corbyn.
And he now, and always has, wanted to leave the EU. 

Corbyn has told his Remainer MPs that they MUST vote to leave.

It is a golden opportunity for the newly launched Post-Truth-Pre-Trump agitator.

He is a disastrous leader whom most Labour MPs would like to get rid of. But he has won an overwhelming popular mandate not just once, but twice. Much of his Northern heartland voter base would like to leave the EU. His chief opponents are staunch remainers. He forces them to choose between backing or sacking. Most of his very pro EU supporters within his Shadow Cabinet have now said they will obey the leader, after originally suggesting they would not. 
Jeremy's whips and Comms will have told them that if they vote against, with the Labour's-Red Tories, Jeremy will fall, and the Communist-Socialist-Trotsky-Stalinist project will fall with him. The Blairites {spit} will have won and will take back the labour party from the people!

Some will quit his cabinet. But not enough to worry him, he's enough supporters if they all manage two or three roles each. 

A great win for Jez. An epic fail for Labour who within just 6 months have gone from Europe being the sole issue that united the warring factions, to itpossibly being the crisis that finally breaks the labour party.

Meanwhile, the 'broken Tory party' have mostly united around their Brexit leader and can safely watch the meltdown that will engulf their opposite numbers.

And reflect how very fortunate they are that, just for once, it isn't them tying themselves in knots over Europe.

UK GDP for last Quater estimated at 0.6%

#Despite Brexit


Be fun watching this get spun all day by remoaners, I expect to see;


- Brexit has not happened yet


- Inflation will kick-in to kill us all


- Article 50 will be the start of the crash


- Trump effect creating a false economy (funny, the same people said Trump would wreck the economy and the Dow is at 20,000)

Don't forget the flying Unicorns there, Mr Starmer

Labour's Keir Starmer on Labour's wishlist - the great white hope as he is known - on Brexit in The Gaurdian today:




• Jobs and the economy must come first. That is why we have insisted throughout on the importance of tariff- and impediment-free access to the single market – which is crucial for our manufacturing sector – and a deal that works for services as well as goods
• All rights enjoyed because of our EU membership over the past 43 years should be preserved in full and without qualification. Those include all workplace rights, and environmental, consumer and human rights
- Any new agreement should promote the continuation of collaborative working between the UK and the EU in areas such as science, technology, medicine, crime prevention and counter-terrorism, among other things
• There can be no question of implementing the prime minister’s threat to destroy our social model and turn the UK into a tax-haven economy if she fails in negotiations. That would completely undermine social protection and workplace rights.


The UK  is such a weird place at the moment. The above list effectively insists we do not leave the EU - all rights enjoyed must remain. These are guaranteed by the European Courts, so in effect we must stay under the jurisdiction of the ECJ and also have free access to the single market which means compliance with the four freedoms and payments to the EU.


This is literally EU membership in all but name. A much worse outcome than we have now or indeed, as Hard Brexit will create.


Not that this matters, the EU WILL DECIDE what we get, not the UK. As has always been the case, hence the Leave vote in the first place. Saying Parliament can have a wishlist is meaningless. All Parliament can do is remoan about how badly talks go with the EU (they will go badly, the EU have been consistent here at national level and in Brussels).


You can add Unicorns, Happiness and Universal Peace to the list - none of that is on the table. Only Hard Brexit is on the table - FROM THE EU.


Of course, perhaps these Labour types are just playing clever and looking for the long-game where they see Hard Brexit as an opportunity for themselves to regain power in 2025. I doubt it, as they have shown to date only pavlovian remoaner responses to all issues re the EU.


Indeed, they should be careful what they wish for, a difficult Parliament ad House of Lords will result in a massive Tory majority at a snap election and much needed reform of the House of Lords by popular mandate.

Government loses Brexit appeal...oh happy days

Hey nonny-nonny....


This will be a fun day now because:


- Remoaners will think there is some sort of victory


- Lot of Lefty hand-wringing about the sovereignty of parliament


- Threats from the Lords about not playing ball as Article 50 is not in the Tory manifesto and so lots dark threats about not passing a Government bill.


- The Lib Dems will declare a need for a new referendum and an end of hunger globally.




All the while, the bullet is already shot. The EU already hate us and want us out; there will be no going back to them as the terms have been changed already.


Furthermore, May is in a great position, if Brexit is blocked by the Lords or Parliament then a snap election it is, with a 100-Seat majority as Hard Brexit as clause one of the manifesto.


Still, as they say of remoaners, its the hope that kills.....

Cold, Hard Reality Check

Check that top left-hand dial.  I think we all know this, but it bears repeating:  often, during the coldest periods of winter, the wind just doesn't blow. 

                                               http://clivebest.com/rgraph/wind.html

It's been like this most of the week, BTW.

ND

Two Autopsies and a Funeral

May and her clever GCHQ buggers eclipse Corbyn and his daft buggers
 
(1)  Corbyn's Relaunch

The political relaunch is always a soul-destroying exercise, forever associated with doomed leaderships:  IDS, Brown, Miliband (several times) ...  One supposes the corps of political hacks must get a sort of professional kick from it - they, after all, are the primary target, it being the sole aim of the exercise to get just the faintest soupçon of a favourable review out of them.

March to the gallows

D-Day will be announced;  a speech will be carefully crafted; a bizarre venue, supposedly of deep symbolic significance, will be chosen;  a fake audience will be invited (on terms of bewildering secrecy);  the speech will be rehearsed, then re-crafted; focus groups will be hastily convened;  sound bites will be trialled, then trailed;  should we brief Michael Crick? - but he'll just remind us of when we said the exact opposite fourteen months ago?;  packages will be prepared for the Sundays;  every broadcasting studio will be awarded an exclusive interview in a logistical plan requiring SAS precision to deliver the leader hither and thither across London over a six hour period; the speech will be re-crafted (again);  big packs of Tena-pants for grownups will be procured and distributed;  favours will be exchanged with news editors (OK, how about if you are the only paper to be given the full text in advance?);  pre-spun headlines and gobbets that it is hoped will command the airwaves on D-Day are issued in strictly embargoed press-releases;  the leader's best suit is dusted down and his shoes polished (do I really have to wear a tie?);  the pre-spinners make their final calls to maximise the chances everyone gets the message on Jeremy 2.0 (sic) ...

And then - the sun rises on D-Day and HMS Corbyn (Corbyn the corvette: there is no battleship of that name) heads for the beaches.  Carnage!  He runs ashore miles away from the intended target and Oberst John Humphrys is well-prepared.  The leader forgets all his special training and looses off a clip of non-issue ammunition that misfires.  By midday he is well off the intended track and his staff are obliged to hatch a new plan from scratch and insert a lavish retraction in the afternoon's speech - thank the Lord they are all former journalists and can turn out that crap at 500 words to the hour - and pretend they are delighted with the outcome:  "am told Team Corbyn pleased" - (Norman Smith, BBC).

Yes, that's what they did alright: a classic reverse-ferret.  You know it, because "Mr Corbyn's office are said to be relaxed about his unscripted early-morning remarks on capping pay, and are pleased that it dominated the headlines".  That's relaxed as in senna-pods and syrup-of-figs.  *Said to be relaxed* is code for chewing the carpet, sobbing.

And how did it go down with the political hacks?  Pretty much the best Corbyn's office could muster was "all publicity is good publicity".  Anyone taking comfort from that is way too easily satisfied - and clearly didn't read the actual write-ups.  "Still a coherent message on Brexit eludes him"; "his proposals flipping around like a dropped hosepipe"; "Corbyn could no more approximate Trump-esque barnstorming rhetoric than he could fly".  And that's just the Guardian writers.  The fragrant Laura K summed it up in her closing words on the 10 O'clock News: "doomed to fail".  

And since the re-launch?  More of the same, including mockery of the utterly contrived parrotting of Trump's "rigged system" meme in the desperate belief Corbyn can ride the anti-establishment wave that is deemed to sweep all before it.  It's hard though, isn't it, to associate that dynamic metaphor with the man whose instinctive posture when riding is ... crouched on the floor of the train.  Behind the lavatory.

(2)  May's Speech

Bit of a contrast here.  Nicely trailed; everything kept tidy; pretty respectful write-ups.  Nine-out-of-ten.  Contrasted pointedly and favourably with Corbyn everywhere, in fact.  And actually revealing something worthy of note: she's concluded (as have we all) that by their churlish demeanour over the past several months the eurofed-leadership leaves us with no alternative but to plan for Hard Brexit.  Hurrah (or YAY!, according to choice.)

A couple of other highly encouraging things.  (i) P.Hammond properly onside - at last, but hey, he got there in the end - and coming onto the dancefloor with a nicely choreographed and plainly worded newspaper interview for German consumption.  (ii) That fantastic story in the Guardian that had me so happy last weekend.  The one with the leak from a briefing for MEPs by M.Barnier, where he said they badly needed a special deal with the City.  How very convenient - and so beautifully timed.  Leaks like that put the bastards on notice that if they reckon to hold any planning meetings in nice, comfortable offices in Brussels or Strasbourg, or use telephones, or email ... GCHQ will have 'em for supper. 

Grown-ups - 3.  Kindergarten - nil  (points deducted for fielding a player out of his league)

(3)  Rick Parfitt RIP

Anyhow, it's the weekend, and a proper C@W tribute is long overdue to the great Rick Parfitt of Status Quo, whom we lost last month.  Take four minutes out and enjoy this.  Sorry, I know the pic below is not of the man himself - blame the blogger/youtube embedding function.  But the song is one of his.  A great intro - and quite a lot more than 3 chords ...

ND

Mischief in The Gambia: The Remainer of Banjul

                                                                                                Map:  Wiki

Politics in the UK and the USA, it has to be said, are pretty interesting just now: but meanwhile, in the rest of the world ...  As Gambian president Yahya Jammeh plays his post-election game of Will He, Won't He (go without a fight), his neighbours steaming across the border to offer menaces against him and tourists reluctantly coming home on FCO advice, the Army declares itself a non-participant.  “I am not going to involve my soldiers in a stupid fight. I love my men” said Ousman Badjie, chief of the defence staff

... stopping to pose for selfies with admirers. “If they [Senegalese] come in, we are here like this,” Badjie said, making a hands up to surrender gesture.  

Sounds about right, from my modest experience of this strange little country on business 18 months ago.   (This boosted my stock of crazy third-world anecdotes, which I may relate in some future Saturday post if it's quiet one week.)   His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr Yahya Jammeh Babili Mansa - el presidente for a few more hours perhaps - was always a bit flaky, e.g. his recent declaration that The Gambia was going to become an economic superpower a few years from now.   His electorate were evidently sceptical about this; and to be fair, there were no outward and visible signs of superpower-type things happening.  Or anything, really. 

I couldn't help noticing that the locals in this longtime British Commonwealth country spoke English and French equally, and the explanation I was given (plus a glance at the map) makes it obvious enough.  The lengthy border with francophone Senegal is totally porous and bears no relationship to the tribal boundaries: people drift in and out between the two countries all the time.  Not a propitious basis for armed resistance against the local heavyweights of the country that surrounds them on three sides, plus Nigeria. 

The majority of the population are Muslim in an easygoing sort of way (hey, for years before ebola it was a major-league holiday destination for scantily clad, boozy westerners); but there is no shortage of Christians either.  The entertaining local newspapers devote the front page to obsequious coverage of the president's latest witterings, but inside the crime reports are colourful, and a page each is given to an Imam and a Catholic priest, from which columns I learned several worthwhile doctrinal points.

The beaches are stunning (my pix, not a brochure).  But my "4-star hotel"  - a household name global franchise - had an extremely dodgy electricity supply (no fun in a hot conference room when the OHP and the aircon die on you)  and no telephones ... 

Jammeh has been offered exile in Nigeria, but at the time of writing he hasn't taken it up.  The whole of the dark continent is watching this one closely as it might still represent an exceptionally rare event - an African dictator giving up power without bloodshed.  And with a strategic position as weak as the one conveyed by the map, I think we must assume that'll be the eventual result.  Hopefully so - for all concerned.

ND