Pub needing rescue

 

The Rock and Fountain, Craig Cefn Parc in the Tawe valley, has been up for sale for around a year now. Relatively modern and serving a small but expanding community, it is surprising that the owners have been unable to turn a profit in recent years.

Although I have been unable to visit it for some time, it used to be a valued refreshment stop after a walk in the hills overlooking Clydach or after visiting the RSPB nature reserve. I would have thought that the Rock and Fountain's appeal to walkers in need of refreshment was enough to top up the income from locals and keep it viable. 

Mick Bates has died

 I have only just learned from friends in common on Facebook of the death of Mick Bates, the sort of man that liberalism on the ground used to be all about. There will surely be an obituary in due course which will do justice to his memory and I hope to post a link when it appears.

From Baby Grand to Only Connect

 It was a typically quirky memorialising by Victoria Coren-Mitchell at the end of tonight's Only Connect that alerted me to the death of Chris Stuart which somehow passed me by last month. It does not seem over forty years since I hugged myself over the fun and wit of Baby Grand, in my view an all-too short-lived musical group in the great tradition of Flotsam & Jetsam and the Western Brothers. Chris Stuart moved onwards and upwards and it was years later on the set of Only Connect that I had the briefest of opportunities to meet this charming man. He died too soon. At least there will be archive of his distinctive voice to remember him by.

Coffee economics

 At last some evidence in black-and-white in favour of traditional coffee machines over Nestlé's pod system. Friends swear that pods give the freshest coffee at a reasonable price. I argue that they are needlessly expensive and create unnecessary waste. I reluctantly concede that because of their means of delivery they probably do provide the freshest coffee at home, but the latest Which? report shows that the economics are on my side.

Neil Oliver's rant

 Reddit appears to be the easiest way to review Neil Oliver's recent sounding-off on GB News. It is easy to dismiss his tirade as that of just another conspiracy theorist, but his insightful TV programmes on geology, history and archaeology show that he is a cut above QAnon and its ilk. It could be that his attack on Net Zero was funded by Big Oil. After all, the Dubai-based Legatum Group, which has extensive interests in oil and gas, recently took effective control of GB News alongside Sir Paul Marshall (infamous in Liberal Democrat circles as the funder and co-editor of the Orange Book). However, some of Oliver's evidence does stand up, though the conclusions he draws from it are debatable.

He starts by declaring a realisation that the state is not benevolent, not on the side of the ordinary citizen. One must accept that this is largely true of what is left of the civil state, but it was not always so. There was an understanding between the parties at the end of the devastating second world war that people should be able to rely on a system of government that ensured that basic needs were taken care of. There were people running our public and social services who, provided they were paid a fair wage, had the public good in mind. That all changed from 1979 and the "greed is good" ethos of Thatcherism, continued by Major and Blair. This would be round about the time that Oliver was in high school and no doubt absorbed in the academic career he wished to follow, so he may be forgiven for not noticing the change.

What resulted was a competition between various parties as to how much of the assets of the state they could strip and exploit. So rather than an organised conspiracy there was a fragmentation of what was formally a whole with a common purpose. 

I agree that not all so-called renewables are green. It is a scandal that Drax, with its extra fuel miles and damaging emissions is still regarded as such by the government. Too many energy firms base their green credentials on bits of paper rather than actual generation. However there are genuine non-carbon generators out there which should be given more encouragement by government, not less. Why, for instance, is there a "carbon tax" on distribution of electricity which penalises green energy companies along with the rest?

It is not a grand coordinated conspiracy. It is old-fashioned hypocrisy and greed writ large. Oliver is right to object to the lack of restraint on big companies, which are treating us as, in his words, "battery hens", but the media company he works for would be among the first to complain if a government tried to rein in their excesses. It has to be done, though; government for the people has to be restored.

His anti-vaccine tirade at the end is sad. Yes, this insidious coronavirus can strike vaccinated people, but they are protected from the worst effects of SARS-CoV-2. Hospitalisation and possibly intensive care are avoided. And the falling death toll in 2022? Well, that is because a more contagious strain which originated in South Africa has now conquered the world and it is milder in its effects. This was certainly not the case in 2020/21, though, and given the government's dereliction in allowing the virus to spread in the first place, Johnson and co. did well to drive through the vaccination programme. 

What is reprehensible is the profiteering by certain chancers who happened to be friends of the prime minister or his political party. But this is where we came in.

Sunak regrets not yielding more victims to Covid-19

 That is the real meaning of his attack on the science delivered recently to the Spectator. Presumably he feels he is losing to Liz Truss in a race to the bottom of the Conservative Party. The BBC reports:

Rishi Sunak has said the government gave too much power to scientists during Covid lockdowns - and was not honest about the potential downsides. The Tory leadership contender and former chancellor told the Spectator ministers were banned from talking about the "trade-offs" involved. He also said it was "wrong to scare people" with posters showing Covid patients on ventilators.

Contrast the assessment of the early days of the emergency by a practising GP, Phil Hammond, "MD" of Private Eye:

MD's view is that we could have done better. [...] people would still have worked at home if they could. Decent masks, ventilation and  air filtration in essential buildings could have been provided. A test and trace programme that was not outsourced but built around local public health expertise to provide support for those who needed to isolate would have been better.

We didn't get these because of multiple breakdowns in trust. The government didn't wholly trust its scientific advisers and vice versa. The Department of Health and Social Care didn't trust Public Health England and has subsequently blamed it. The public sector wasn't trusted to deliver track and trace.

What can be achieved when there is mutual trust between government and people, and when government acts promptly based on knowledge and experience, is evidenced by Taiwan. What could have been achieved when community and agencies of the government come together was evidenced by Ceredigion - before the county was forced to readmit university students from all over.

Starting today: Freeview channel dedicated to green programming

 A venture by a US-based non-profit organisation which seems to have started as a streaming service, there are doubts whether EarthX TV will be viable in the UK. There is increasing programming of green issues by the mainstream broadcasters here and one wonders whether the market is already saturated. Those who are receptive to the global warming message have already been converted, surely, and the hard-core deniers are not going to be persuaded to switch to a channel dedicated to green issues. At best, it will be a channel which virtuous watchers will dip into if there is a good enough documentary on it.

The Ofcom registration is here.

We need a new Sillitoe

The overnight news that yet another innocent child in Liverpool was shot dead came like a punch in the stomach. Fifteen years ago, an 11-year-old boy had been fatally wounded by gunfire in Croxteth, as a result of gang warfare. One would have thought that the successful prosecution then of the gang responsible, and the weeding-out of corrupt police officers, would have put an end to such tragedies, but it appears not.

 Like today, gangs and gang warfare pervaded most of the big cities of the UK after the Great War, but the worst excesses occurred in Sheffield. Growing up in the 1950s, I picked up brief references to the race (meaning horse-racing) gangs of a generation earlier. Then, as now, guns as well as knives were used to intimidate or settle scores. The man credited with taking firm action to break the dominance of the gangs in Sheffield and, as I now discover, afterwards in Glasgow, was Sir Percy Sillitoe. 

Now illegal drugs have replaced illegal betting as the source of gangsters' income. Special task forces are needed to break the latter's power in the worst affected cities, London, Birmingham, Manchester and especially Liverpool. This emergency action would not be an alternative to the proper funding of policing, the justice system, criminal rehabilitation and the social measures which are needed to prevent the growth of a criminal culture in the first place. However, it would move us towards a society more at ease with itself and one in which the long-term measures can be implemented effectively.

Sometimes when disease prevention has been lacking, an emergency operation is necessary.

The Gurkha online auction returns!

 

It is time again for our online auction week! You can now bid on some truly unforgettable items and experiences including a five-night stay at a peaceful retreat in France, an exclusive behind-the-scenes experience of Changing of the Guard, and dinner for two at St James's Palace. We also have a selection of authentic Nepali items, beautiful gifts and GWT branded clothing and accessories. Bidding is simple and easy, with automatic updates so you don't get outbid. Auction ends Sunday 29 August at 10pm Below are just a few of the items available - click here to see the full catalogue!

Thatcher/Major privatisations: organised rip-offs

 Thanks to Jonathan Calder for putting us on to Jonathan Portes' insider's view of one of the iconic privatisations of the 1980s. Although, as a trainee administrator, he was privy only to the privatisation of water in England and Wales, the latter standing out now as a prime example of the dire effects of selling off a natural monopoly to the private corporate sector, what he says applies to virtually all the privatisations of the Thatcher/Major years. (It was later repeated in the sale of Royal Mail by Osborne and his chums under the supposed stewardship of Vince Cable. The only difference was that much less of the stock was available to the general public.)

Long before anyone talked about “magic money trees”, the Thatcher government offered one: this was free money to anyone who filled in the application form. [...]: the shares were sold well below their value so taxpayers lost out, and consumers have paid through the nose ever since. But this is not just hindsight. We knew what was going on, because water privatisation was never really about efficiency. In the short term, the overriding political priority was a “successful” sale – one where demand for shares was high – and where those who applied and who had, from previous privatisations, already come to expect a large premium, were not disappointed.

[...]

Paradoxically, while the underpricing of the water and sewage companies helped fulfil Thatcher’s short-term goal of a successful sale that was lucrative for those who bought shares, it fatally undermined her long-term goal, which was to create a “shareholding democracy” that would parallel the way right-to-buy created a “property-owning democracy”. The problem was that few small shareholders could resist the temptation to cash out their large profits.

Those of us with longer memories could have predicted this.  ICI, a progressive company before it became prey to corporate raiders in the 1980s, would offer shares to its employees, the majority of which were cashed in when ready cash was required. 

So, as they sold their shares, the companies were bought up, mostly by private equity, institutional investors and large infrastructure firms from abroad. These investors spotted the combination of large investment programmes, effectively guaranteed returns, and a supine and underpowered regulator that lacked access to high-powered economic consultants and lawyers. The result is that companies have been loaded with debt that has permitted huge returns for shareholders. Meanwhile, regulators have allowed returns that have been high or higher than an average risky private company, yet investors have been exposed to no more risk than government bonds. As the Financial Times puts it, 30 years on, “water privatisation looks like little more than an organised rip-off”. 

 One wonders how much Thatcher planned this or whether she really believed in her own rhetoric of a share-holding democracy. I tend to the view that she was unconsciously manipulated by people who played on her prejudices against the state, given Enoch Powell's testimony that she never really understood the monetary policies that she and Geoffrey Howe pursued from 1979 onwards.

Back to blogging, greeted by a win

 Unfortunately, for various reasons, I was unable to attend the Gnoll for the stunning One-day Cup victory over table-topping Hampshire. It was good to see Colin Ingram posting a good score in his last match for the county this season as well as a breakthrough century by a young opener, product of Glamorgan's development programme. It may all be in vain, though, thanks to the two preceding losses, one against Northampton, the bottom side. Progress depends on results elsewhere.

End of public service?

 So  Rishi Sunak plans to "cut back 'bloated post-Covid state' with civil service shakeup" (various media outlets including this). Earlier, Jacob Rees-Mogg, effectively Liz Truss's chief-of-staff, had used similar language. One trusts that these could be no more than part of the red meat being thrown to the narrow electorate which will decide the leadership of the Conservative party and thence the kingdom. Having got himself or herself elected, the winner will conveniently forget their pledges, as their lord and master Boris Johnson did after the 2019 general election.

Pre-Brexit, the civil service machine was already under pressure. Since then, extra people have been needed to duplicate the work in trade and some foreign affairs carried out by EU staff. This is surely a continuing task, no matter what Rees-Mogg believes. Likewise, the SARS-CoV-2 emergency has exposed the need for a permanent contact tracing system, reverting to that run down by previous Conservative Health ministers, and avoiding the need for the expensive and often useless panic measures thrown together by the Johnson government in 2020. Moreover, civil servants need to be paid fairly on the basis of equal pay for equal work.

Unlike Big Oil, Norwegian investment is progressive

 I would not have known about Yara, an Oslo-headquartered company with a global reach, if it had not been for a segment on a recent BBC News bulletin.

Our company was founded in 1905 as a solution for the European famine that swept over the continent in the early part of the 20th century.  Since then, we have continuously developed solutions that improve and increase global food production in a sustainable way.  Through this expertise, we have also managed to create additional environmental solutions that reduce harmful emissions.

Global challenges are real and will not vanish on their own. Climate change is affecting our way of life. The world’s population continues to increase. We have more mouths to feed, limited land to farm and less resources to draw upon.

At Yara, we believe in meeting these challenges head on. There is no trade-off between building a profitable business and solving global challenges. But both companies and governments must do their part. Together we make a difference, and our mission, vision and values embody Yara’s spirit and DNA.

The report by BBC's climate editor recorded a voyage by an innovative container vessel, the Yara Birkeland. Not only is this vessel independent of fossil fuels (the electricity she requires comes from non-carbon sources), but she will eventually not require a captain or crew.

My younger daughter, a resident, had already alerted me to wholly electric-powered ferries operating out of Norway such as this one, and I have already mentioned hybrid cruise ships on this blog. It seems to me that the nation has used her North Sea bonanza to progressive effect. There is a glaring contrast with Exxon, a huge oil major which, even before its merger with Mobil, was one of the five largest companies in the world. The company's own scientists were telling it in the 1970s that fossil-fuel driven global warming was a reality. Exxon could have started making the transition to renewable resources by declaring itself to be a total energy company, as BP was to do. Instead, it did the opposite: denied its own research, and funded - generally opaquely - climate change deniers. It is hard to estimate how much Exxon's influence set back the cause of recovery from global warming.

 

Llanarthne doing its bit for water conservation

 The National Botanic Garden of Wales looked a picture yesterday. Apart from most of the spectacular plants in the great greenhouse having passed their peak flowering, and the lake levels being slightly lower than normal, there was little to show for the heatwave and near-drought conditions (which thankfully look like coming to an end just before an emergency is declared in Wales.) For once, there was no need to close the "airlock" doors to the glasshouse in order to keep the Mediterranean heat in.

All was achieved without troubling Welsh Water. There is a borehole which supplies the estate:

- and water is reused:

We recycle waste water in our Living Machine

Sewage, and stuff that’s gone down the sink in our restaurant, is pumped into a big underground tank in the Living Machine. Whilst the solid sewage drops to the bottom of the septic tank, the watery top is pumped down to a big pond in our Conserving Our Future Zone. How does this work? Here, tiny creatures eat the nasty bits. These bacteria need lots of oxygen – so we pump air across the gravelly floor. This fairly new technology is called ‘forced bed aeration’.

Tall reeds help control water flow. Bacteria also attach themselves to reed roots – so increasing bacteria numbers.

Where does all the water end up?

It waters trees in a nearby field which we intend to use to fuel our biomass boiler.

There is more at the official site, botanicgardens.wales.

Britain's electric car battery future hanging by a thread

 The Guardian has reported: 

Construction of a huge electric car battery factory that has attracted tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer cash and been hailed as a flagship project of Boris Johnson’s levelling up policy has been put on “life support” to cut spending, leaked internal documents suggest.

This would not be the first time that Tory hype has run far ahead of reality. Remember the promise?

the Prime Minister said the new battery factory will “boost the production of electric vehicles in the UK, whilst levelling up opportunity and bringing thousands of new highly-skilled jobs to communities in our industrial heartlands.”

Johnson & Johnson follows North American talc ban with international stop

Johnson & Johnson will no longer sell its talc-based baby powder globally in 2023, the drugmaker said on Thursday, more than two years after it stopped selling the product in the United States and Canada.

Others will surely follow, as they cannot be 100% sure that their product, sourced largely in Asia Minor, does not contain impurities with a risk of causing cancer.

I shall continue using my Imperial Leather, but with caution and will look for a reasonably-priced alternative when this tin runs out.

Extra-territoriality

 News came through yesterday morning of Israel military forces killing two Palestine militants in a raid on Nablus. There was no attempt, unlike previous similar operations, to minimise civilian casualties by attacking during nocturnal quiet hours. A 16-year-old boy also died in the raid. Nablus has had a chequered history, but the last international resolution of its status sees it as part of Palestine. Israel's actions are therefore legally questionable as well as morally so.

There is less doubt about the illegality of USA's extraterritorial killing in Kabul recently and, during the Obama presidency, of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.  Russia sends agents into England to liquidate fellow-citizens benefitting from asylum in the UK, and the UK may not be the only nation which allows this to happen. In all these cases, there has been collateral damage, often including the loss of innocent lives. 

It seems nothing can be done to hold the agents to account. The ultimate judge in these matters is the United Nations Supreme Council, but both Russia and America are permanent members thereof - and Israel disregards UN Resolutions anyway.

Digitising the phone networks

 Ofcom has just issued some advice to calm people like me who were worried that our plug-in telephones would cease to work once BT and Virgin turned their networks over from traditional transmission to digital - or from PSTN to VoIP in the jargon. (I see that the always-independent Kingston-Upon-Hull has already made the switch.)

Some excerpts:

BT has taken the decision to retire its [public switched telephone network (PSTN)] by December 2025 and this means other providers that use BT’s network must follow the same timescale. Other companies with their own networks such as Virgin Media plan to follow a similar timescale.

[...]  in the future, landline calls will be delivered over digital technology, called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). You might also see this referred to as ‘digital phone’ or ‘digital voice’.

These changes have already started, but you don’t need to do anything until your provider contacts you to tell you your service is changing. Alternatively, if you want to move to a VoIP service now, you can do so by upgrading to a new phone and broadband package.

Once you have moved to a VoIP service, your landline phone will work in much the same way as it always has.

The full advice, including details of how other devices connected to the telephone network are affected, is here.

Funding public broadcasting

 France has scrapped her TV licence fee. As Screen Daily reports: 

The licence fee removal was a campaign promise from re-elected candidate Emmanuel Macron. The government instead plans to fund public broadcasting by allocating “a fraction” of VAT revenues, worth approximately €3.7bn.

Probably the main objection to a fixed licence fee is that it is regressive. It bears more heavily on those with lower incomes as it is a larger proportion of these than on those more well-off. Taking broadcast funding from VAT revenues is progressive to the extent that those who spend more on VAT-able goods contribute more. But "the French Senate adopted an amendment saying that this could only be a temporary measure lasting until December 31, 2024". This throws the structure of funding - possibly even the future - of French national broadcasting into doubt again.

Neither the licence fee nor the new French system put pressure on the national broadcaster to operate efficiently. There is over-staffing at the BBC and in my view too many resources devoted to the games politicians play.  Surely there must be a mechanism for funding the corporation fairly while eliminating needless job creation, without micro-management from outside which most agree would be dangerous.

The Shipping News from Norway . . . and Kenya

 A news brief about a cruise ship grounding in Sognefjord in Norway caused a wry smile, as I had heard that these modern leviathans, uncomfortable guests at traditional ports, had been causing trouble not only in Venice but also in former city of culture, Stavanger. However, the full story in the Maritime Executive revealed a more hopeful side. Since February, the Richard With

had been at the Myklebust Verft yard undergoing a conversion to hybrid-powered propulsion including the addition of battery power and a connection to attach shore power in ports. She departed the shipyard earlier in the week and was heading to Bergen to resume service on August 8.

That edition of the Maritime Executive contained another surprise, worthy of inclusion on Pointless. Kenya has joined the ranks of shipbuilding nations alongside South Africa and Egypt.

Beneficial ownership register at last

 Six years after it was promised by David Cameron, the Register of Overseas Entities is now in force. It seems that the introduction of this instrument, long demanded by groups concerned about the anonymity of the ultimate ownership of so much property in Britain, has been hastened by Putin's war on Ukraine and the need to identify oligarchs and their hot money.

The i newspaper reports the anti-corruption group, Spotlight on Corruption, welcoming the register as "a crucial first step" towards clamping down on criminals. 

This blog has followed Private Eye in calling for transparency in this area. There is a worry that there may be some loopholes in the legislation and regulations. One that leaps out is that property acquired before January 1999 is exempt. An even bigger worry is the threat by the current government to cut the number of civil servants. To be effective and command respect, the register must be kept fully up-to-date and penalties for non-compliance applied swiftly and enforced. For that, staffing in Newport has to be increased and at the right level of competence. The attitude of the Tory government to policing the existing Register of Companies does not inspire confidence.