No more nice babies?

 

How to poach a democracy

Delia Smith, on last Sunday's Food Programme, said that her "big moan at the moment is: I think party politics is long, long past its sell-by date". "We have a politician that makes a decision about what's needed and we have no say in it at all, none of us. You know, we have a vote once every four years. It's absolutely ridiculous. We're intelligent. And then I'm told you can't. [...] You don't know about politics. You can't change it. Well, I'm saying that 'can't' isn't a word. And at this very moment people in Iran are leading the way."

There are many things wrong with the UK's current politics, but surely the answer is to remove the malign features, not to throw over the whole system which has served us and other free nations reasonably well for over a century-and-a-half. Which people are showing the way in Iran? The primitive religious thinkers who are at present in control? Or the people on the street, protesting the perverted view of Islam which has led to gratuitous state killings? In theory, demography is on the side of the growing younger population of Iran against the ageing ayatollahs, but what would victory consist of, and would people have to go out on the streets every time they wanted to change a policy? For a time, the Arab Spring looked as if it might put more decision-making in the hands of ordinary people, but now Tunisia, where it started, is now back in the hands of an authoritarian politician. Egypt after a brief period of a freely-elected government is now a dictatorship again. Admittedly, it is the army rather than party politicians which is in control.

Perhaps the idea of replacing decisions in parliament with referendums appeals to Delia. She may not be aware that this system has been implemented in Europe twice in history. The two instigators were Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. 

Return of the bubble-car

 One of the more attractive designs emerging from the bubble-car revolution of the late 1950s/early '60s is being revived. The Isetta design originated in Italy, but spawned a movement in Germany, clearly as a response to a demand, especially from young people, for individual cheaper motoring. (There is a photo-parade of the more prominent designs at https://www.oobject.com/category/bubble-cars/)  The best-known incarnation of the Isetta is the series of developments by BMW.

A cheaper way into electric motoring seems to have been the aim of the Swiss brothers who designed the Microlino, inspired by the Isetta. Initial news reports (like this one) are under the impression that four wheels constitutes a break with tradition. However, both BMW and Iso produced four-wheel versions, although these would not have been seen much on British roads, considering the tax advantage which the three-wheeler brought.

Political imbalance

 I have just heard Baroness Anne Jenkin and Harriet Harman MP whingeing on Radio 4's PM programme about the deficiency in female representation across their respective parliamentary parties. To Baroness Jenkin one should point out that while David Cameron - as on so many things - said the right words, his actions sent out the opposite signal, that women should not expect promotion within government. His first major reshuffle (in which Nick Clegg was disgracefully complaisant) saw an actual reduction in the number of women holding key positions. To both, and to the PM editor, attention should be drawn to the Liberal Democrats who have actually achieved a complete reversal of male domination in Commons representation.

Two rail set-backs

 Railfuture reports:

ORR [the Office of the Rail Regulator] has approved a new Grand Union train service between London and South West Wales from the end of 2024. As well as a choice of operator and more price competition, it will offer new direct journey opportunities. Passengers travelling between London Paddington, Bristol Parkway, Severn Tunnel Junction, Newport, Cardiff, Gowerton, Llanelli and Carmarthen will benefit from five more return services each day. Grand Union proposes to build a new Parc Felindre station on the Swansea District line that would bypass the city itself.

This will be good news for Llanelli, which is not best served by rail at present, but not so good for Swansea City centre or, presumably Neath.

Founded in 2013,battery and hybrid train manufacturer Vivarail has gone into administration. Class 230 trains are no longer being maintained, so the Bletchley –Bedford service is suspended. These were also set to enter service next year on the West Ealing -Greenford branch, using Vivarail’s Fast Charge system to re-charge their battery in just ten minutes

Belarus import scandal

 The Belarus dictator is President Putin's closest foreign ally. Only recently Putin flew to Minsk for talks with Alexander Lukashenko who has allowed Moscow to use his country as a staging ground for its offensive in Ukraine. So it is surprising that the UK continues to import timber and timber products from Belarus, at least £2m worth since Russia's "special military operation" was launched against Ukraine. Even worse, Cahal Milmo of the i newspaper reports that "the country's authoritarian regime uses forced prison labour to supply customers who include Western furniture companies".

You would expect this revelation of the 3rd of this month to have raised questions in parliament before honourable members broke up for the holidays, but there was not a word in the Commons. It may not be possible to debate the matter before the new year. However, a ban on Belarus imports is surely in the spirit of sanctions already applied to Putin and his supporters and should be accepted by parliament. Would an Order in Council do the trick?

“We Seek No Wider War”

[Phil Ochs, born 19th December 1940, a folksinger and more]

And the evil is done in hopes that evil surrenders
But the deeds of the devil are burned too deep in the embers
And a world of hunger in vengeance will always remember
So please be reassured, we seek no wider war
We seek no wider war
[Full lyrics, recording]

Thanks to Anu Garg and his correspondents for this.

Media vita in morte sumus

 Just as I was about to compose this message, musing on the significance of this time to people of the northern hemisphere, of celebrating the turning of the season, of rebirth, news came through of a criminal incident which took away the life of a young woman on Christmas Eve. The crime scene was the Lighthouse, which I remember as a cosy little pub in my teenage years, lived barely a stone's-throw away. Perhaps I even went to school with the girl's grandparents, an even more sobering thought. 

It is hard to be objective, but one person's death in a comfortable town, which has seen no destruction from the air since the Nazi bombing raids on Merseyside of the early 1940s, pales into insignificance compared with the suffering of the people of Ukraine. Our thoughts must be with them this Christmas as well as hopes for the end of a campaign of destruction, which if not ended soon, will be a disaster for two nations, both Ukraine and Russia.

This is still a time of hope. I intend to celebrate Christmas with members of my family, either in person or at the end of a telephone line. We will look forward to better prospects for our younger members in the year to come. I have lived long enough to know that things do get better. Let us hope that it happens soon for the sake of suffering humanity everywhere.

Journey into Christmas

 It must be the lack of both snow and trains that curiously cast my mind back to a set book at secondary school. "Die Fahrt in den heiligen Abend" was a novel as far as I can recall describing a group of passengers on a train battling through snow on Christmas Eve. The only other thing I can remember about it was that I was affected by it at the time. Nothing else remains and it has been difficult to find even a synopsis on the Web.

However, I believe I have discovered why our half-Jewish, probably Communist, German master gave the book little attention. It turns out that the author, Wilhelm Schäfer, had been a favourite of the Nazis. While never a member of the NSDAP (Nazi party), he subscribed to the nationalistic, ultra-conservative, aspects of the Hitler message and was happy to propagandise for them. He was important enough to the Nazis for Goebbels to put him on his "heaven-blessed" list of crucial artists.

All that back-story must, ten years after the end of the war, have been clear to the board who had set the book. One wonders if the community of Nazi sympathisers whose views survived the conflict was rather larger than was obvious at the time or even in retrospect. I should emphasise that I do not remember an overt nationalistic message in the book, merely a conservative religiosity.

 

Sunset clause threatens onshore wind

At least one survey this year has shown majority support for wind-powered electricity generators based on land. So it was with some concern for supporters of green energy when they were informed earlier this month that a "repowering" rule built into the planning legislation in respect of wind turbines puts some installations in jeopardy starting next year. The rule requires that local authorities must renew permission for each wind farm after an initial 25-year life. At least two come up for renewal in 2023.

The main opposition to onshore wind comes from within the Conservative party. A previous Tory administration imposed a moratorium on new onshore development. The current prime minister is said to be in favour of removing this, but is facing considerable opposition from cabinet colleagues. Their motive is officially concern for rural amenities, but clearly pressure from the fossil-fuel lobby plays its part. 

If this influence percolates down, we could see the anomalous position of a Conservative local council refusing to permit a wind farm to continue while the voters who put them in power are practically all in favour of its staying.

Six Conservative MPs opened the side-door to £32bn worth of business

 For over a year, [the Good Law project has] worked to uncover the identities of those treated as VIPs under contracts awarded as part of the Government’s £37 billion pound Test and Trace programme. 

In September, following a long-standing Freedom of Information battle, we finally forced the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to come clean and publish the names of the firms who benefitted. 

But, one crucial piece of information remained missing – the names of the ministers, MPs or officials who won VIP treatment for the firms. Until now.

Today, UKHSA finally provided us with the names (you can see them here).

We can reveal:

• Innova Medical landed Covid contracts valued at £4 billion via the ‘VIP’ lane after its UK partner, a company trading under the name ‘Tried & Tested’ contacted Boris Johnson’s former advisor, Dominic Cummings.
• Surescreen Diagnostics landed a £500m contract after Liam Fox MP referred the firm to Matt Hancock – Surescreen subsequently donated £20,000 to Liam Fox.
• Matt Hancock assisted Ecolog International onto the ‘VIP’ lane after being contacted by Genix Healthcare – a company that has donated £156,000 to the Conservative Party. Hancock’s Department paid Ecolog £38m in 2021, after the Government decided not to proceed with previously contracted Covid work.
• Conservative Peer Lord Prior introduced a company called LumiraDx to Lord Bethell. The firm was awarded Covid contracts worth over £45 million.
• Lord Bethell referred a company called Optigne Ltd after being contacted by a Cabinet Office official – Optigene were subsequently awarded a £322m contract, leading to a 1221% increase in profits to £41m.
• Another Conservative Peer, Lord Lansley, introduced a company called Accoro onto the ‘VIP’ lane.
• Only Conservative Party Peers, MPs and donors appear to be named as referrers – no politician from any other political party succeeded in referring suppliers onto the Covid testing VIP lane.

We will continue to investigate the latest ‘VIP’ lane scandal. But we can only do this with your support. If you would like to make a donation, you can do so here.

 

Holiday has started

 Blogging will be sparse until the New Year.

UK MPs accused of using foreign trips for sex tourism

Politico.eu has the story. All-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) have long been courted by special interest groups, intent on gaining favourable attention in Parliament and the media. Now it seems that certain MPs and peers are taking advantage of the facilities to extend them to sex tourism. The article makes no mention of same-sex or paedophile activities, but it would not be surprising to learn that these are also sought.. 

A number of British lawmakers have been using parliamentary trips abroad as an opportunity for the covert use of sex workers and for raucous, excessive drinking, according to MPs, peers, diplomatic and parliamentary officials who spoke to POLITICO.  

One former Conservative MP, now a member of the House of Lords, asked hosts for directions to the nearest brothel when he traveled to Southeast Asia on a visit with an all-party parliamentary group (APPG), according to another parliamentarian who was present.

Another Tory MP and former minister used to stay on after the MPs’ delegation had returned home in order to pursue his “interest in [local] women,” two former colleagues said.

“He showed an interest in pretty young girls,” said one. “He routinely stayed on after these visits and linked up with young women in the place in question.”

A senior Labour MP displayed a fondness for “Russian girls” during trips overseas, according to a foreign diplomat, who said local officials felt powerless to intervene because they worried about preserving their influence in Westminster.

Particular concerns have been raised over the activities of “country APPGs” — backbench cross-party groups made up of MPs and peers with a focus on a single country or a group of countries. The groups are subject to less stringent rules than the House of Commons’ better-known select committees, but are still able to use parliamentary premises for their meetings. These groups’ focus on foreign countries mean they tend to make regular trips abroad, funded by overseas governments or private companies and often on parliamentary time.

As part of an ongoing investigation, POLITICO spoke to more than a dozen government officials and lawmakers in the U.K. and overseas who verified claims of drunken, lewd or sexual misbehavior by certain MPs and peers on such trips.

Numerous MPs claimed that while some colleagues were quietly pursuing a genuine and valid interest in relations with these countries, others treated the trips as “a jolly” for essentially recreational purposes.

MPs’ relations with British overseas territories were raised repeatedly, with local officials telling POLITICO some MPs had taken part in parties organized by diplomatic representatives at which young men and women were “supplied” for the purpose of engaging in sexual activities. 

Certain MPs were often proactive in asking foreign governments for a full, expenses-paid trip overseas, the same local officials said, sometimes going as far as floating their preferences for champagne and large meals.

Overseas representatives have grown wary of such approaches, one said, and some have resorted to packing MPs’ agendas with as many visits and meetings as possible in order to reduce “free time” for potential misbehavior. “There’s been a process of disappointment,” they added. 

MEPs are now hastening to close the loophole which has allowed foreign state corruption of fellow-members and EU institutions. Access by commercial interests is already regulated. UK parliament is complacent about both forms of corruption, presumably because they are so pervasive.

Holly, the willow and Jumbo

 This is going to read like one of Miles Kington's spoof obituaries but please bear with me. I may already have written here about my scoring when my mate Graham went in to bat in a school match when Buddy Holly's posthumous hit It doesn't matter anymore started playing on a pavilion trannie (as we called them then). In one over, Graham was out after scoring four fours and he returned to the pavilion just as the Holly track finished. The song had been written by Paul Anka and marked a deliberate change of direction by Holly after his hits with The Crickets. Another part of that change was his choice of the Bryants to provide the B-side, It's raining in my heart, the words of which by Felice Bryant may have been inspired by Paul Verlaine. Sadly, she is no longer around to ask.

Anyway, the tune has just been revived by the Barmy Army in Pakistan with an adapted lyric describing the ground conditions in Karachi, along the lines of: "The sun is hot, the pitch is dry [etc.]"  In this morning's transmission on Test Match Special, BBC's cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew promised to mug up on the original, which had been recorded eighteen months before he was born.

There must have been an even bigger gap in the case of Cush Jumbo's performance of Everyday on a bed to an overhead camera in The Good Fight. (Marvellous, but totally irrelevant to the plot.) Not only was the early Crickets hit before Cush Jumbo's time, it must have been before her mother's time. I would love to know whose choice it was to include it in the episode.

Norwegian state fund targets corporate greed

 For a long time, people have criticised company directors for receiving huge fees and inflation-beating share deals while the averaged wages of working people, especially those in the public sector continue to be depressed. So far, nothing has been done because supposedly independent remuneration committees are staffed by other members of a charmed circle resulting in a mutual back-scratching exercise. This attitude seems also to dominate the big City pension funds.

It takes an outsider, and one with muscle, to take action. Norway's sovereign wealth funds, based on her North Sea oil and gas finds, are estimated to account for 1.4% of investment world-wide. Now, as reported by BBC Business News and City Wire.

State oil fund Norges Bank Investment Management is to turn up the pressure on corporate governance, said CEO Nicolai Tangen, speaking at the De Wet Van der Spuy event.

Tangen criticised the greedy behaviour of some top managers at asset management firms and said they need to be called out: ‘Executive pay and corporate greed has just reached a level that is really unhealthy.

‘That is why they are not so vocal. If you are in charge of an asset management organisation, and you make an absolute killing yourself, you are not going to criticise the other CEOs.

‘We as NBIM can become louder, and I think we will. We can vote against resolutions more often if we have different expectations of behaviour’, Tangen said.

Liberal standards of good governance scrapped by today's Tories

 A young civil servant in my day would early be introduced to the work of Northcote and Trevelyan on his or her induction course. I hope that this is still the case. The recommendations of the Victorian reformers in 1854 were actioned by Liberal prime minister WE Gladstone and did much to end what was termed "The Old Corruption". For the sleaziness of many politicians at the time, one has to look no further than our former Conservative representative, Howel Gwyn, whose biography should still be available in Neath library. This is one of the reasons for Jacob Rees-Mogg and many like him today being described as Members for the 18th century. Under Charles III, the UK is returning to the standards resulting from the Restoration under Charles II and its over-reaction to the foregoing puritanism of Cromwell. Patrick Cockburn writes:

Signs of the retreat from the standards of honest and competent government to which the Victorian reformers aspired are today visible everywhere. What makes this decline so serious is the vast size of the sums of money now being wasted or misused. The most flagrant example of this was the waste of £12 billion spent on defective or over-priced PPE during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Probably, the figures are too gargantuan for people to take on board, but in a report published on June 2022, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, scarcely a muckraking body, spelled out the losses: equipment worth £4 billion did not meet NHS standards, £2.6 billion was not of a type or standard preferred by the NHS, £4.7 billion was written off because too much had been paid for it, and £673 million was spent on PPE that was defective.

The theft of the century

What we are really looking at here is one of the thefts of the century. The Government brushes aside this enormous useless expenditure of public funds, most of which ended up in somebody’s pockets, blaming it on an unprecedented emergency with which ministers were heroically seeking to cope. They argue that no time was available to check on PPE suppliers, however inadequate or dodgey they subsequently turned out to be.

This dubious argument silences many potential critics, aided by a certain naivety in Britain about the traditional mechanics of corruption. Our nineteenth-century ancestors would not have been so simple-minded, and would have been instantly suspicious of such self-serving government pretensions. They would not have been taken in by its claim that it was only its laudable enthusiasm to fend off disaster that regrettably led to so-many well-connected companies close to the Conservative Party winning profitable contracts.

And they would have been right: a study by the New York Times in December 2020 found that out of a sample of 1,200 Covid-19 related central government contracts worth £16 billion, about half of which worth £8bn, “went to companies either run by friends and associates of politicians in the Conservative Party, or with no prior experience or a history of controversy. Meanwhile, smaller firms without political clout got nowhere.”

The Golden Arches to go Green?

 One does not immediately associate McDonalds with environmental awareness, but it appears that the company is serious about recyclable packaging. A trial is underway on the continent.

Dangers of careless disposal of electrical equipment

 More and more electrical devices make use of lithium batteries, because of their high energy density. However, pure lithium is a highly-reactive substance as Professor Fry recently demonstrated on BBC TV. Thus the lithium-ion battery has to be carefully designed and manufactured. Even the biggest companies have been caught out in the early days of their wider use, as Panasonic and Sony found to their cost. They are now reassuringly safe - as long as they are not severely damaged, as for instance in a refuse crusher.

Several local authority environmental departments and fire services, such as Lancashire's, have therefore mounted campaigns to make users more aware of the need to dispose of those devices safely and only after they are no longer capable of being recharged. 

However, concentration of recycling at one centre which may not be easily accessible other than by private vehicles does not encourage safe disposal by residents, especially in large council areas such as Neath Port Talbot's. This is something our new coalition administration should look at.

What happened about concern for antibiotic resistance?

 Health Secretary Steve Barclay has reacted in panic to the rise in streptococcal infections by making it easy to acquire penicillin. After years of endeavouring with some success to stop the non-therapeutic use of the drug in agriculture, Barclay is undoing all the good work by enabling the sale of penicillin tablets over the counter. The official advice by the NHS remains the same: 

The overuse of antibiotics in recent years means they're becoming less effective and has led to the emergence of "superbugs"...The biggest worry is that new strains of bacteria may emerge that cannot be treated by any existing antibiotics.

Antibiotic administration should be under the direction of a qualified medical practitioner and only when needed. The best prophylactic is good personal hygiene, which seems to have dropped off since Covid-19 no longer hits the headlines.

Wash-and-brush-up for the LibDems' Web face

 Great minds at federal HQ had already been thinking along the same lines as I hinted at in a post last week. Prominent in the refurbished party web site is a clear statement of our values. 

In summary:

The Liberal Democrats stand firm on seven core values: liberty, equality, democracy, community, human rights, internationalism, and environmentalism. Each of these underpin the party's specific policy proposals.

Appalling ayatollahs not unique

 There has been justified outrage at the judicial killing in Iran of a demonstrator for wielding a knife and blocking a road. One trusts that pressure will be maintained on the ultra-religious who still hold power in Tehran to return to some semblance of civilisation. 

But why the continuing silence over the genocide by the China-backed junta in Myanmar?

Tory government's contempt for parliament grows

 Yesterday, the House of Commons debated the decision by Michael Gove to permit the development of a new coal mine in Cumbria. The original decision by Cumbria County Council to permit the development was overturned on appeal, but the minister had called in this later decision. There was considerable feeling in the House, led by local MP Tim Farron, that the minister's interference was a retrograde move. However, their ability to debate the decision was handicapped by an egregious breach of the ministerial code. Hansard tells the story. After Gove spent nine minutes on his opening statement, it was clear that what he said was markedly different from the short text distributed to MPs and to Speaker Lindsay Hoyle:

Mr Speaker
Order. The statement I received was the thinnest ever, but the Minister has gone long. Between that and what the Opposition and I have been provided with, there is something missing, which is not in accordance with the ministerial code. We do not work like that. The shadow Secretary of State has not been able to read what has just been said. I am going to suspend the House in order to try to find out what is in the statement.

11.05am

Sitting suspended.

On resuming at 11.17 a.m.:

Mr Speaker
I will suspend the House until 11.30, when we will have business questions. That will enable us to try to get a transcript of what has been said in the statement, so that all Members, whatever their opinions, can ask informed questions, as they would wish to. That is how we will play it: we will have business questions at 11.30, then we will come back to the statement. I am sorry about this; this is not the way to do good government.

The Opposition took up the fight after Penny Mordaunt's business statement:

Thangam Debbonaire [shadow Leader of the House]

I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business. I barely know where to start, but let us try with this morning’s chaos, which is not the only example but the latest example of a Minister failing in their duty to provide a copy of a ministerial statement to you, Mr Speaker, and to the Opposition leads, so that they are left listening to a statement that bears no resemblance to the one to which they were expecting to respond. It happened twice last week, and I asked the Leader of the House if she would drop her colleagues a note to remind them of their duty. I am dismayed at the absolute shambles we saw this morning. It is just not on.

These breaches of common courtesy, let alone the ministerial code, may not figure largely in conversations on the doorstep. They are, though, indicative of the contempt in which this generation of Tory ministers and  their advisers hold for anyone outside their circle. It leads to the complete misunderstanding of the difficulties which have driven so many people in the public service to go on strike. It inserts a thin end of a wedge into the authority of parliament whose thick end is fascism.

Advise to the Sussexes

 Don't let yourselves be defined by the Royal Family.

There is money to be made now by exposés of Meghan's treatment by the clearly racist circle surrounding, and possibly including, the royal family. However, the public, even those in the UK who are on Harry and Meghan's side because the Daily Mail and the Murdoch press are not, will tire of the subject and move on. 

They need to establish themselves in the public mind in their own right. They have their charity work to build on. Meghan, smarter than the average actress, and Harry have already established their credentials as champions of racial justice and improvements in mental health care. When Harry was still a royal prince, this official web page (read it now before it is purged!) detailed his work in sport for young people and for servicemen. For instance:

The Invictus Games

Prince Harry is committed to ensuring that wounded servicemen and women have the opportunity to rediscover their self-belief and fighting spirit through physical challenges. He is the force behind The Invictus Games, an international sporting event for wounded, injured and sick Service personnel, which took place in London from 10-14 September 2014.

To be sure, charitable activity in itself does not pay the rent, but there are surely well-funded international bodies who would support their aims. Or maybe the future lies in extending their TV and film interests beyond the confines of the royal circle and possibly into gaming. After all, they have both shown themselves to be inventive.

At least UK has the most flea markets

Euronews has posted the headline results of a survey of shopping eco-consciousness in European nations. Over a range of measures (the relative weighting of which is clearly open to dispute) Finland tops the league. 

In the section on reduction in consumption footprint Italy wins with 26.03 per cent over the past 10 years. It is closely followed by Sweden (21.99 per cent) and Greece (20.75 per cent). Given Sweden's already high consumer standards, her score is outstanding.

Before Vinted, Shpock and the like, there were flea markets and these continue to thrive. This is one arena in which the UK scores highest. 

More LNG imports from the US

 Today's announcement of a deal between the UK and US governments "to increase energy security and drive down prices, as part of a new energy partnership" raises worries over increased dependence on the United States. It was the too-close linking of financial interests which led to the crashing of our economy in 2008. One notes that the States promise only to strive to supply 9-10 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas during the next year.

There will be cooperation over the use of hydrogen as a fuel, but no guarantees about the means of production. While there are promising developments in the field of "green" hydrogen (such as Atome's in Paraguay), most industrial hydrogen today (about 95% by some estimates) is derived from fossil fuels, in processes which themselves add to carbon dioxide emissions. 

The net effect of the agreement it seems to me is to provide a safety net for US-based oil and gas producers and do nothing to accelerate the transition to non-carbon energy production/

Fair votes: one of the things that the LibDems are for

 Activists for the two big conservative parties often pose the question: "what are the Liberal Democrats for?" in attempts to squeeze our vote at election time. I fear we have rather played into their hands in the current parliament in spending more time responding to current events than publicising our core beliefs or at least our unique political positions. I am as guilty as anyone in that, but at least I have emphasised that merely getting rid of the Conservatives in national government or breaking up the Labour fiefdoms locally is not an end in itself. One must have something to put in their place. "Oppositionism" is not enough.

That is why I was pleased to receive from federal HQ this link to a speech by Sir Ed Davey to a leading think-tank. To be sure, it is peppered with attacks on the last decade of Tory government, but its main point is that of improving democracy, something that Liberals and Liberal Democrats have always stood for. As Sir Ed said:

This year marks a century since the Liberal Party made its first commitment to proportional representation. One hundred years on, our Liberal Democrat commitment to PR is stronger than ever.

This may surprise you but I see electoral reform as part of our great patriotic mission. After all, it was the nineteenth-century Liberal John Bright who famously described England as the “Mother of Parliaments”. And for a long time, the world looked to British democracy as a beacon - as the quality standard. Regrettably, that’s no longer the case.

So as someone who wants my country to lead the world once more, in the quest to build strong, vibrant democracies, I firmly believe we have to strengthen our democracy at home. To re-establish Britain’s democratic reputation in the world.

I should note for historical completeness that John Bright also coined the phrase “flogging a dead horse” in relation to his own efforts to reform our electoral system.

So our job is to revive the horse, and finish the work!

Is Sir Keir serious about replacing the House of Lords?

Or is the Labour leader merely seeking to divert headlines from criticism of his Blairite following of the agenda set by a Conservative government? His rather vague proposals have certainly achieved press and broadcast media coverage but there are few who would argue with the Opposition's contention that the basis for filling the Upper House is  indefensible in a modern democracy, 

Younger readers may not realise that the Liberal Democrats went into the 2010 general election with detailed proposals for an elected Upper House, There were sympathetic noises from Labour who under Tony Blair had gone no further than hobbling the hereditary appointments system. Yet when it came to the presentation of the Reform Bill under the coalition, Labour refused to support a timetable for the Bill which would have prevented Tory extremists (and some Labour backwoodsmen) filibustering it out of existence. We need a cast-iron assurance from the Labour leadership that they will not similarly weasel out of their responsibility when a future Reform Bill comes to the House.

One aspect of Labour's reboot of Lords reform to be welcomed is tying it to regional representation. The major flaw of the Liberal Democrat scheme was that it did not address the built-in metropolitan bias of the Lords, though one hoped this could have been tackled during Committee Stage if the 2010 Bill had been allowed to proceed. 

Amazing win in Pakistan

 While the attention of sports fans and the media is dominated by events in Doha, the achievement of the MCC tourists under Ben Stokes may not receive due recognition. Not only did the England team (actually England & Wales, though there was no direct Welsh participation on this occasion) succeed in a country where only 4 England Test teams had won before, but the victory was achieved on a flat Rawalpindi pitch which the groundsman had admittedly prepared to help batsmen. There was minimal help for spinners and seamers on the final day, yet Anderson, Leach, Robinson and captain Stokes achieved the virtual impossibility of bowling Pakistan out. Stokes has melded the morale and togetherness of Root's period as captain with a boldness at the opposite extreme to Root's caution. Stokes also appears to be learning from experience and able to adjust tactics when needed. One should also stress Root's contribution to the victory both with the bat and in the field when he was far from 100% well.

Praise is also due to Pakistan for their contribution to a match which looked on a few occasions when it was tilting towards them. It is only recently that the national team has been able to return from exile in the UAE occasioned by the Lahore bombing of the Sri Lankan test tourists. They have recovered well and the second Test in Multan may well go the other way.

An example of cricket bringing people together is that Burnley's James Anderson has a great following in Pakistan. If only the Islamic Republic's warring politicians could also see the positive sides of their opponents!

Horizon

 The latest reports from the judicial inquiry into the Post Office IT scandal confirm my suspicions about the roots of the disaster. Having concluded the part of the inquiry which exonerated hundreds of sub-postmasters of theft and false accounting, and put those who have survived in line for monetary compensation (though at the time of writing it is not clear how much of this has been paid), the legal beagles have moved on to the technical part of the inquiry: what was it about the Horizon system that caused it to generate the fallacious accounts which were used as evidence. 

It is clear from the evidence so far that the Horizon system was lashed up with no clear design plan, no standards and no testing strategy. Sadly, this product of Thatcher-Major outsourcing was not reviewed by the Blair government when it came into power. It was not too late in 1997 to pause the development and thoroughly recast it before any harm was done. 

For more, see Private Eye and Computer Weekly magazines.

Sunak unwittingly lied at PMQs

 Just because Boris Johnson said it, doesn't make it true. Membership of the EU and thus of the European Medicines Agency would not have prevented the UK from pursuing her own vaccine strategy. 

I despair of those MPs who are known to be anti-Brexit who do not pull up misstatements such as that.

Sunak and Hunt may have repeated Clinton's error

 In his autumn financial statement, Chancellor Hunt proposed easing the tax burden on banks, reviewing regulations that originated from out membership of the EU and announced that:

Rules surrounding the amount of money insurers must hold to cover potential losses - known as Solvency II - are to be eased, freeing up billions of pounds, ministers hope, for investing in badly needed infrastructure projects, including nuclear energy. [...] The reforms have resulted in disagreements between the Bank of England and the Treasury about the extent of financial safety cushions.

The Government appears to have dismissed the regulator's concerns, as the Chancellor said the changes would "unlock tens of billions of pounds of investment". [Report by David Connett in The Independent and i]

This is all very reminiscent of President Clinton's removal of banking and mortgage regulations in the 1990s. This led to a short-term economic boom, but also to the credit crash of 2008, as this Demos blog explains. Admittedly, various checks had already been eroded over the years, as the blogger points out, but it was the Clinton dash for growth that ensured that a financial crash would ensue. This occurred after Clinton left office, distancing him from the transatlantic carnage which followed. No doubt Sunak and Hunt have made a similar calculation: if a major insurer fails, it will be on the watch of their successors.

Windfall taxes are slanted towards Big Gas & Oil

 The last chancellor but three, a certain Rishi Sunak, reacted to public outrage at oil and gas companies making huge profits by introducing a Windfall Tax, which came into operation last May. Opposition parties immediately criticised the scheme because it also lets firms claim tax savings worth 91p of every £1 invested in fossil fuel extraction in the UK. 

Under prime minister Rishi Sunak, chancellor Hunt has announced an Electricity Generator Levy which hits all electric power suppliers whatever their source of power. Because of the way that electricity is priced, the huge rise in the cost of gas on the international market has meant big rises in profit for green suppliers in particular. The cost of renewables has been steadily decreasing such that they are now the cheapest form of generation in the UK. However, the government is not proposing to grant offsets to green providers who intend to increase their investments in research or further wind- or solar-generation facilities. So green providers are not playing on a level field, and already Perth-based SSE (which incorporates Scottish Hydro) has announced that it is to look again at its renewables investment as a result.

Together with its reluctance to encourage the spread of charging points for road vehicles and the reintroduction of Vehicle Excise Duty for electric cars, the government's strategy is clearly to impede competition for the fossil-fuel suppliers.

Gallium to the rescue?

 Although it has received less publicity than it should, anti-microbial resistance remains a threat to treatment for bacterial infections. There may be no silver bullet in sight, but another element may ride to the rescue. A recent European Parliamentary Research Service posting reports:

Antimicrobial-resistant infections are predicted to become the second biggest cause of death worldwide by 2050. Despite increasing investment in the development of new antimicrobials, awareness campaigns on antimicrobial misuse and abuse, and monitoring of antimicrobial use and resistance in animals, humans and the environment, antimicrobial resistance continues to grow and the last three decades have not seen even one novel antimicrobial class reach the market. Could the answer lie in a ‘Trojan horse’ strategy to disrupt a natural physiological process common to all bacteria?

In Homer’s telling of the fall of Troy, following an unsuccessful 10‑year siege, the Greeks offered the Trojans a large wooden horse. Once the gift was inside the city walls, out came an army, led by Odysseus, who destroyed the city and ended the war. While it may seem far-fetched to use an old Greek myth as an analogy for the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the market dearth of new antimicrobials, despite millions of euros invested, means bold new strategies are needed.

The Trojan horse that could be ‘offered’ to antimicrobial-resistant bacteria is gallium. This metal-based nanoparticle strategy exploits an essential living requirement for all living beings: iron acquisition. As an essential micronutrient, during an infection iron is used as a pawn in a tug of war between humans and bacteria: our organism sequesters iron in red blood cells, as well as in heme, ferritin and lactoferrin molecules; in parallel, bacteria secrete iron chellators (siderophores and heme carriers) that bind host ferric iron (Fe(III)) and transport it to the bacterial cell. Using gallium (Ga(III)) as an antimicrobial would mean tricking the bacteria into believing they have acquired iron. Gallium is an iron-mimetic metal, of similar electric charge, ion diameter and biochemistry to iron. It can enter bacterial cells through iron membrane receptors, like a Trojan horse, and then replace iron in physiological processes. However, unlike iron, it cannot be reduced to divalent gallium. Therefore, it inhibits essential cell biochemical processes that depend on iron as a co-factor, quickly becoming toxic for the bacteria and leading to its death.

Gallium is not a novel promise. This FDA-approved drug for cancer treatment was shown more than 10 years ago to successfully inhibit the virulence of Acinetobacter baummannii, a nosocomial bacterial pathogen that has become resistant to virtually all known antimicrobials, including ‘last resort‘ ones. Since then, gallium’s antimicrobial activity has been demonstrated for other multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be critical priority pathogens for the development of new antimicrobials. These include Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterobacterales species and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, responsible for tuberculosis, the second most deadly communicable disease (after COVID-19), causing 1.5 million deaths per year. More specifically, gallium was effective in a pilot phase Ib trial involving 20 patients with cystic fibrosis and chronic P. aeruginosa lung infections.

London Fire Brigade

The publication today of a negative report on London Fire Brigade  strengthens my theory about the New Cross Fire of 1981. If the LFB is institutionally racist now, what would it have been like 40 years ago?

The Begum case

 All the discussion on BBC News has been about whether she is or is not a danger to UK security, in the country or outside it. To my mind, this misses the point. She was rendered stateless in breach of international law and has never been tried in court or in absentia. She should have her citizenship restored. She then has the choice of returning to England (under her own steam; her travel should not be subsidised by the state) and face trial, or play the martyr in whichever jurisdiction is willing to shelter her.

Is this wanted woman in London?

 The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reports:

It’s been nearly three years since ICIJ’s Luanda Leaks investigation exposed how decades of corrupt deals turned Isabel dos Santos into Africa’s wealthiest woman – and drained hundreds of millions in public money out of one of the world’s poorest countries.

Since then, the Angolan billionaire’s business empire has largely been dismantled, battered by investigations in multiple countries, frozen assets, lawsuits, audits and more sparked by ICIJ’s reporting.

Now, Isabel dos Santos herself is wanted for arrest by the international police organization Interpol.

The agency issued a “Red Notice” request, which is a call to law enforcement worldwide “to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.”

Dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s ex-president who autocratically ruled the country for decades, has homes in Dubai and London and is believed to visit Portugal often.

Starmer in tune with Labour's immanent xenophobia

 Many people will have seen Sir Keir's speech to British business yesterday as a betrayal of liberal values within the Labour party. The truth is that these have only ever formed a thin veneer on the main body of the party which has always been suspicious of foreigners. One can go back to the Attlee government, so progressive in many ways, which refused to have anything to do with the incipient European common market, in spite of advocacy from Winston Churchill. Wartime restrictions on movement of aliens, including Irish, were not lifted until after the 1951 general election which saw Conservatives returned to power. Later, as a Guardian article lays out:

Home Secretary Callaghan introduced the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which placed British immigration policy on an overtly racial footing.

This act also created the phenomenon of human "shuttlecocks". Families, having left east Africa, spent weeks in airport transit lounges as they were shuttled from airport to airport because they could not get into the UK in spite of being British citizens.

The practice of denying citizens entry into the European country whose passport they held was eventually ruled unlawful by the European Court of Justice.

In 1969 Callaghan's amendment to the Immigration Appeals Act removed the possibility of making an effective appeal from those the act was ostensibly meant to benefit. He also introduced a measure preventing British women living with their foreign or Commonwealth-born husbands in the UK.

The 1971 Immigration Act enacted by the Tories was largely drafted by Labour when in power and consolidated the racial basis of immigration policy. It also had the effect of making people who had entered the country legally, illegal immigrants, retrospectively. This meant that they could be removed without any recourse to a court of law.

One wonders whether his war against the import of unqualified labour extends to the speculators from the US, Russia and elsewhere who have done so much damage to the City of London's reputation. Or, is he, like Peter Mandelson happy about the filthy rich as long as they pay some tax?

Why should we not be like Switzerland?

 I recall that during the campaign leading up to the second EU referendum, one of the selling points made by some leading Brexiteers was that we could be like Switzerland, being totally independent but gaining all the benefits of strong links with Europe with a series of treaties covering different areas of cooperation. Our new  Welsh Secretary was typical of the attitude in 2016, in a debate on the Wales Bill, he intervened: 

Does the hon. Gentleman {Stephen Doughty] agree that the citizens of Switzerland and Norway are Europeans and may be proud to be European? They are just as European as anyone else in Europe, and he would be just as European as a Norwegian or a Swiss person is after Brexit takes place.

 I would guess that "Top Cat" is one of those Conservatives cited in yesterday's press "warning the prime minister that there can be no attempts to strike a Swiss-style trading relationship with the EU". Whoever is in the group mounting that threat, it is a sizeable one. It demonstrates that there is a hard core of Brexiteers who never saw Brexit as a means to increasing the wealth of the nation or of its people. 

MPs are claiming public funds to pay their energy bills

 The i newspaper had an exclusive last Saturday.

Twenty-six Conservative MPs, including some ministers, have claimed a combined total of £16,040.69 for energy bills this year. Fourteen Labour MPs, including  some shadow ministers, have claimed a combined total of £6,121.85.

The basic annual salary for an MP from 1 April 2022 is £84,144. MPs also receive expenses to cover the costs of running an office, employing staff, having somewhere to live in London or their constituency, and travelling between Parliament and their constituency.

[Source: https://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/pay-mps]

One trusts that this information will be brought home to voters in their respective constituencies come general election time.

PENNY MORDAUNT; an apology

 Recent blogposts and postings on social media including Facebook and CIx may have given the impression that Penny Mordaunt MP was a breath of fresh air in the office of Leader of the House of Commons. Titles such as "Best since Sir George Young" and "At last a Leader on the side of MPs" implied that this author was an uncritical admirer of someone who rose above the crude Punch-and-Judy antics of party politics, resisting the attempts to turn Business Questions into an extension of the Prime Minister's Question Time zoo.

We now realise in the light of last Thursday's foretaste of the panto season that in fact she is just another principal Tory boy, all too ready to fall back on such well-worn clichés as: "Labour has no idea", "Look out, Corbyn is behind you" and "You jocks don't know when you are well off".  We apologise for any confusion caused to readers by our previous postings.

acknowledgments to Lord Gnome

Nuclear power: Hunt ignores critics' sinking feeling

 In his financial statement yesterday, shortly after boasting that his energy plans increased the UK's independence from foreign powers, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced that he was on the point of signing final contracts for Sizewell C. This is a project of the French EDF (80%) and the Chinese (20%).

In a previous post I criticised the experimental nature of the EPR (Evolutionary Power Reactor) and implied that there was no practical experience of running one. In fact Taishan 1 in China became the first EPR to start power generation on 29 June 2018, and the second one (Taishan 2) came online in 2019. By the time of that posting, the first European EPR had already reached its operating capacity. Olkiluoto Unit 3 in Finland should go live next month, albeit thirteen years late and still with some worrying flaws. Wikipedia says:

[It} has been under construction since 2005. The start of commercial operation was originally planned for May 2009 but was postponed repeatedly. The reactor eventually started up on 21 December 2021, and electricity production started on 12 March 2022. In May 2022, foreign material was found in the turbine steam reheater, and the plant was shut down for about three months of repair work. On 30 September 2022, the reactor reached its maximum output power for the first time. Regular production is expected to begin in December 2022.

Taishan has had its troubles. This Reuter article hints at a design flaw. EDF's own reactors in France, even before their own EPR becomes operational, seem plagued. But the EPR design may never be put to the test at Sizewell. Given the long timescale for construction (nine years if everything goes according to plan) the low-lying site in Suffolk may well be under water before then, thanks to global warming. For more detailed criticism, see this Wikipedia article.

Finally, there is the moral hazard of the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) financing model. The legal services firm Slaughter & May explains:

The key element elements of a basic RAB model include:

• A Government support package to protect investors and consumers against specific, potentially high value but low-probability events (essentially, where they are not commercially insurable).
• An economic regulatory regime (ERR) which will detail the sharing of costs and risks in an ex-ante manner between investors and consumers via an allowed revenue (set by the ERR).
• A regulator who operates the ERR.
• A revenue stream from suppliers to the project company to fund the project.

- and they also set out its drawbacks:

A major criticism is that, under the RAB model, risk is passed onto the end consumer during the construction phase and in a manner that may not best incentivise developers to minimise the risk of cost overruns. Costs will be passed through to end consumer bills long before the nuclear power plant begins generating electricity,

I suggest that, because of the greater number and decree of uncertainties involved in advanced nuclear plant construction, these factors loom larger than in more conventional construction projects where the RAB model has been used.

Qatar 2022

 I admit it, I am a hypocrite. While not willing to visit an undemocratic country, devoid of civil rights, even if you paid me to go, I will still be following, via TV and radio, Wales and England in the World Cup. It is inevitable that, if money dominates the thinking of football administrators, then you will have situations where nations with deep pockets will be able to buy the rights to stage international tournaments with no questions asked about their morality. Thus Qatar 2022 and also Russia 2018, four years after the annexation of Crimea. 

However, there should be a level playing-field (sorry) when it comes to charges of institutionalised homophobia. Qatar and Iran may criminalise same-sex relationships, but so also do Western allies Egypt and the UAE.* Indeed, one sees little criticism in the English-speaking media of Egypt's dictatorial regime generally, especially her persecution of journalists for even the mildest criticism of the state. 

Maybe there is hope for Qatar. It will be bad PR to prosecute any same-sex relations in the glare of publicity surrounding the World Cup. Out of the hundreds of fit young men descending on the hereditary monarchy, over twenty will be exclusively same-sex orientated. Statistics consistently point to that ratio. It is unlikely that all will remain celibate during the weeks of the tournament. When the sky does not fall in nor Allah devastate Doha with thunderbolts in retribution, it may dawn on the ruler and his advisers that homosexuality is and always has been historically, part of human life. Doha already houses the liberal international broadcaster Al-Jazeera. It is surely only a short step to quietly repeal the law against homosexuality.

That leaves the exploitation of migrant labour, which I fear will be a practice more difficult to eradicate. Believe it or not, conditions for workers on the football stadiums were an improvement over those other construction to date.

* It is interesting that Saudi Arabia, so repressive in many other respects, does not criminalise homosexuality, The kingdom does ban sodomy, but that is a particular sexual act which can be performed on women as well as men.

Raab intent on breaking another international agreement

 From today's Prime Minister's question time:

Sir Edward Leigh 

(Gainsborough) (Con)

Q10. Even if an illegal migrant is stopped on a French beach, he will simply come back the next day as no one is ever arrested. Will the Deputy Prime Minister ensure that we remove all pull factors for illegal migration by using his new Bill of Rights so that we have the legal power to arrest, detain and deport illegal migrants, and, for instance, have a review about a national identity card so that people do not just vanish and never get deported? (902238)

The Deputy Prime Minister [Dominic Raab] 

I totally agree that we need to strain every sinew to stop this appalling trade in misery. There is no silver bullet, although I think the agreement the Home Secretary made with her French opposite number will help, and we are embedding UK officials with their French counterparts for the first time. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) is right to say that the Bill of Rights can also help, not least in preventing interim orders from the Strasbourg Court from being recognised in UK courts. On ID cards, we already have e-visas for people coming to visit and live in the UK, and they act as digital evidence of a person’s immigration status. What is clear, however, is that we will have to do all these things in the teeth of opposition from Labour Front Benchers.

Yesterday, on Radio 4's Law in Action, Robert Spano, the president of the ECHR until last month, was firm in his opinion that the European Convention on Human Rights laid a duty on UK courts to have regard to rulings from Strasbourg, including interim orders. Dominic Raab's proposed legislation runs counter to this and would thus seek to break an international treaty which we ourselves took a leading part in framing. Added to the situation in Northern Ireland, this is one more move which must damage our hard-won reputation for integrity and trust.

A further thought is that Sir Edward must have signed up to the 2010 Conservative manifesto which promised to put an end to Labour's ID card scheme. Was he crossing his fingers behind his back when he did so?

Brexit now starting to hit the money men

We will not hear much in the winter financial statement about France avoiding recession nor the news that the Paris stock exchange is now more valuable than the LSE for the first time. 

One of the selling points of Brexit was that it would stimulate financial services in London to the extent that they would more than make up for the collapse of businesses dependent on the EU's common market. Now it seems that corporations find Paris a better place to raise capital than London. The UK will be even more dependent on laundering money of dubious provenance. One wonders how long the international financial establishment will tolerate this.

Brexit has hit small business and the little people hard. Now that it is touching on the prosperity of the City, how long will its leaders continue to support the Johnson project, kept on life-support by succeeding Tory prime ministers?

Free rail travel for old buffers (forgive the pun)

 The Autumn issue of Rail Wales, the newsletter of Railfuture in Wales reminds us of a Transport for Wales concession. Holders of a Welsh bus pass may travel free of charge between now and the 31st March on the following routes:

•  Heart of Wales line;
• Cambrian Coast line;
• Blaenau Ffestiniog branch;
• Wrexham - Hawarden Bridge

New trains

The class 197 train sets completed in CAF's Newport factory are virtually ready to enter service on the Wrexham-Bidston line and throughout North Wales. 

Cardiff Bay branch

Two new stations, including one named Butetown, will be opened on the branch. Cardiff Bay station itself will be upgraded. The historic Taff Vale Railway HQ building is, from the published artist's impression, to be retained. It astonishes me that it has not yet been snapped up by an ecologically-aware organisation, given its position a few steps away from a well-served rail station. 

Mis-posting: an apology

 Breaking one of my own self-denying ordinances, a post responding to criticism of three non-conservative leaders was inadvertently back-dated. What happened was that I originally drafted the post last Monday but revised it for publication today. Unfortunately, I forgot to change the original "hard-wired" publication date.

At least I did not pretend to predict an event which occurred in the last seven days alla Dominic Cummings.