Monday 31 October 2022

Bridges

 Among many disasters taking more than a hundred lives this weekend has been this man-made one. The supporting cables of a suspension bridge in Gujarat state failed plunging at least 130 people to their deaths. The bridge dated from the days of the Raj in the 19th century.

Another 19th century suspension bridge, the Menai, which links Ynys Mon to the mainland, has been closed to all road traffic apart from emergency vehicles below a certain weight. This closure may last into next year as hangers are checked and replaced as necessary. There will be serious effects on trade, but in view of what appears to have been a  premature reopening in Gujarat, surely the precautionary principle must apply.

Friday 28 October 2022

Welsh GPs settle for lower-than-inflation pay rise

 It has to be said that 4.5% uplift to a GP's income is more than 4.5% than a nurse's or a teacher's salary and that the Welsh government should do more to address the very real difficulties that those essential people are having in the current economic climate. However, the settlement just reached is a positive step.

The new contract will lift many non-monetary burdens from GPs which clearly were a major disincentive to doctors to staying on within the service in Wales. The burden on nurses, causing them to leave the profession which they joined out of love, is the overwork caused in a feedback loop by too many leaving the profession. Now that is a problem which can be solved by putting more money on the table, raiding other budgets if necessary. The consequential from the stamp duty cut could have been a start.


Thursday 27 October 2022

The ERG versus the people

 In the sort of deviousness we came to expect from Jacob Rees-Mogg, the then Business Secretary was true to form last Tuesday morning. In response to a question from an Opposition MP he neatly avoided the real point and instead puffed his own Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022-23 which would if enacted make things worse for Dame Meg's constituent.

The problem, as Rees-Mogg well knows, is not UK red tape, but Brussels paperwork which is now necessary as the UK is now a third country.

Sunak had a clean slate and could have killed this obnoxious Bill, but chose not to. In one way, it probably will solve all the brewers' problems because, seeing the sweeping away of all remaining EU standards, the Commission will probably rule that those businesses will not be permitted to import into the EU in future.

The deceiver Rees-Mogg has been replaced by the man with the multiple personalities, Grant Shapps.


Wednesday 26 October 2022

Yesterday's men and women

 My hopes of last Monday have been dashed. Not only has Suella Braverman, the supreme advocate of banning all immigration (except presumably Indians under a deal with Modi) and public demonstrations, been reappointed Home Secretary. At the same time, Dominic Raab has been brought back to the Ministry of Justice. At the time of his appointment as Foreign Secretary, it was reported that "Dominic Raab is on record as being against the so-called 'values agenda' – code for human rights – and has almost always voted against any development of anti-prejudice and discrimination laws". 

Elsewhere, old faces have been brought back, often to their previous Departments, presumably in the interests of continuity and competence. But the appointments which affect civil society go beyond that and suggest that Sunak wants to stifle dissent and at the same time continue feeding red meat to the racist element of Tory support.



Tuesday 25 October 2022

The new cold war players

 The easily-replicated AK-47 "democratised" war on the ground as many too-successful terrorist groups have shown. Now the ingenuity of designers in Turkey and Iran threatens to do the same for the war from the air. 

Patrick Cockburn writes that at the time of the Iraq wars only the Americans had

the capacity to quickly cripple a country's infrastructure, beginning with its electric-power system. Even in a major oil producer like Iraq, petrol and diesel became scarce after the refineries were destroyed. For many years, it was only the US that possessed large numbers of precision-guided weapons capable of hitting any target accurately at long distance.

Other countries have since made successful efforts to catch up, notably Turkey and Iran, which have turned themselves into what some military specialists call "drone superpowers". 

[...]

On a single night, drones and cruise missiles - almost certainly launched by the Iranians, although they deny it - hit Saudi Arabia's oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais with great accuracy. Saudi oil output was cut by 50 per cent and world oil prices surged. Not only was the damage great and vastly expensive to repair; but much of it had been caused by drones costing as little as $15,000 each.

The Russians have tacitly admitted that these bargain-basement missiles are more effective than the products of their state munitions industry. Ukraine is suffering as a result of Putin's purchase of "kamikaze" drones from Iran - or was it Turkey? Iran denies the sale. 

Blackouts are becoming familiar in Ukrainian cities and lack of power also affects water and sewage systems. Much can be repaired and Ukraine is looking for more and better anti-aircraft equipment, but swarms of drones and less frequent cruise missiles will overwhelm almost any defence, however sophisticated it may be.

There is a warning here for our sophisticated defence industry and the strategy which depends on it. Our position as an offshore island surrounded by (militarily) friendly nations is at present a defence against the limited range of a squadron of these predator drones (though we may have to increase our vigilance against "trawlers" hosting a couple of them along with their radar). However, things may change.




Monday 24 October 2022

The golden thread

One hundred and thirty years after the first Indian, the Liberal Dadabhai Naoroji, was elected to the UK parliament, we have our first prime minister of south Asian origin. Congratulations to Rishi Sunak who has the task of rewinding the debt built up under the disgraced Boris Johnson, without causing pain to the people who least deserve it. In particular, he and his chosen chancellor must make good his promise to restore the triple-lock on pensions.

He also has to pull the Home Office back from its authoritarian tendency, increased under each of the previous two ministers. The voting record of the Home Secretary he inherited is not great either.The nation needs to feel at ease with itself socially as well as economically. Civil rights are not incompatible with sound finance.


Sunday 23 October 2022

A Conservative death spiral?

 Former Foreign Secretary and Conservative party leader William Hague (a resident of Powys, as the County Times reminds us) was aghast at the news that disgraced PM Johnson aimed to get his old job back. Johnson, who was recuperating in the Caribbean after a remunerative lecture visit to the US, claimed to have the necessary one hundred supporters to put his name on the ballot. (One trusts that the voters of Uxbridge will take so dim a view of such absenteeism during a political emergency that they unseat him at the earliest opportunity, just as Montgomeryshire punished Lembit Öpik for his cruise.)  Hague told Times Radio that electing Johnson would put the Conservatives into a “death spiral”. He said that Mr Johnson’s return was “the worst idea I’ve heard of in the 46 years I’ve been a member of the Conservative Party”. 

It seems to me that the descent started in 2014 when Hague himself quit parliament when in the high office of foreign secretary. If he had stuck around to keep the party on the rails, the process which led to last week's ignominy might have been avoided - but perhaps he felt that the odds against were too great. He had been an outspoken critic of Putin. The year of his resignation saw the start of Russia's campaign of covert interference in UK politics, according to US official sources. 2014 was also when Putin annexed Crimea and Russian donations to the Conservative party were stepped up.

Roll on four years, and Boris Johnson was foreign secretary. While the affair of the Salisbury poisonings was still live, Johnson had a private meeting with an ex-KGB agent, Alexander Lebedev, while attending a weekend-long party in a castle in Italy owned by Lebedev's son. It was only earlier this year that Johnson owned up to this. It is still not clear that he kept officials at the foreign office completely informed as he should have done.

One could draw the conclusion that Russian money inhibited robust government action in 2014 and 2018. Strong sanctions then could have deterred Putin from his criminal invasion of Ukraine, whose results we are seeing as a large contribution to the current energy supply emergency.


Friday 21 October 2022

I subscribe to the anti-growth coalition

 I am particularly against this sort of growth (thanks to Private Eye for the cartoon):



Presenters and pundits alike on the broadcast media bemoaning what has become austerity by inflation and bond strike have concentrated on the effects on their mortgages and on their offspring trying to get on the property ladder. They do not query a trickle-down effect, that things are getting more difficult for renters. There is pressure on the rental market and the cost of repairs is going up, affecting both private and social landlords.


Thursday 20 October 2022

It's not exactly gerrymandering, but . . .

 .  . . the proposals of the Boundary Commission affecting Neath create some peculiarly-shaped constituencies. There seems to have been a slavish adherence to the part of their brief which requires voter numbers to be equalised across the nation at the expense of broken community ties. For some reason, though, Bridgend has been picked out as a town which has to maintain its integrity and one wonders why.

Our main objection to the previous set of proposals remains. Rhos, Alltwen and Pontardawe have no natural affiliation to the county of Brecon to which they are reassigned. To that has been added a new one: that the wards that make up Skewen which under the previous proposals would at least have been reunited with other components of Neath, have been cast back into an Aberafan and Porthcawl constituency. 

My party benefits from the professional expertise of Pete Roberts. It is depressing that the Commission has cast aside his thoroughly worked-out alternative dispositions which would have provided a better balance between numeric equality and community cohesion. 

However, in view of the political earthquakes in Westminster over the last few days, that may all be academic as we prepare for a snap general election on the existing boundaries.


Women are more likely to die from asthma than men

 Hormones clearly play a part, but so much is still a mystery. More research is needed.


Menopause is a time of huge hormonal change in the female body, and many women with asthma notice that hormonal changes can make their asthma worse.
 

We know women are more likely to have asthma and to have more severe asthma. Sadly, women are also more likely to die from their asthma. We know sex hormones have a role to play but we don’t yet understand why, or what we can do about it. That’s why we’re funding a dedicated programme of research looking into why asthma is worse for women.

Our supporter, Alison, noticed her symptoms would get worse before her period but couldn’t be sure they were linked. She struggled to get her severe asthma under control until she reached perimenopause and started hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Here she shares her story and chats to one of our researchers about his work looking into the link between sex hormones and asthma.

Read more

If you think your hormones could be affecting your asthma, it’s important to know that you’re not alone. You can find out more about managing your asthma triggers on our website.



Thanks,

Dr Samantha Walker
Director of Research & Innovation
Asthma + Lung UK


Update 2022-11-01: there is now a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9OAvkJhEDk


Wednesday 19 October 2022

Long covid's contribution to social security stats

 Phil Hammond, MD of Private Eye, is more forensic in his examination of statistics than the government's media people:

the unemployment rate may be at its lowest for 50 years at 3.5 percent, but this is partly driven by a record high in the number of people not looking for work because they are suffering from long-term illness - currently 2.5m according to the Office for National Statistics. Much of the increase is likely to be due to long Covid. are now more Scots living with long Covid than there are residents of Aberdeen. And a study [...] concluded that there were 334,327 excess deaths beyond the expected number in England, Wales and Scotland over the period of austerity between 2012 and 2019 (i.e. before the pandemic). Cuts to social security and essential services are likely to shorten the lives of the poorest, who were also most likely to be harmed by Covid and the measures put in to control it. Something for the health secretary and the new chancellor to consider.



Tuesday 18 October 2022

Tory myths

 In her gig standing in for prime minister Liz Truss yesterday, Penny Mordaunt perpetuated the myth that the 2016 EU referendum was a one-off. She herself may be forgiven because she was not born when the first referendum was held in 1975. The people who briefed her and other Conservative speakers should know better, though. This is not just nit-picking. The anti-Rejoin campaign thrives on the legend that the British people were denied a say in the country's membership until 2016. 


Monday 17 October 2022

News Corp's friend a step closer to premiership

 Commentators are falling over themselves to welcome a competent chancellor of the exchequer. Jeremy Hunt's appointment has certainly arrested the rise in the cost of government debt and the plunge in the value of the pound, though the latter has yet to rise to its value of $1.29 before the 2019 general election. Hunt clearly has the confidence of the majority of Conservative MPs as well as the commentariat. He is also doing the right thing in saving the detailed statement of his proposals for the House of Commons, though outlining them to the media this morning.

It should be remembered though that, until he strategically resigned from Boris Johnson's government, he has been part of a Tory administration which failed to counter Russian influencing of our politics, has run down the NHS, attacked benefits and abandoned our links to continental Europe. To be sure, he supported Remain at the time of the second referendum and (rightly) advocated remaining in the single market and customs union after it, but he publicly reversed his position the next year. He was an advocate of privatising the health service before the 2010 general election which brought his party back to power. As DCMS secretary, he pushed through the establishment of local TV stations, which have fallen far short of his vision, judging by the relic of Swansea Bay TV. As longest-serving Health minister he economised on PPE and ignored the recommendations of experts who foresaw the danger of pandemics.

Hunt has consistently shown his desire for the top job. This ambition was no doubt strengthened by his relationship with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (later News Corp UK) demonstrated by an apparent kid-glove treatment of the BSkyB takeover bid. [Source: Wikipedia]

Hunt will be an effective emergency dressing of the sore sapping UK strength, but what is needed is surgery in the form of a general election.


Saturday 15 October 2022

McGuffin on a train

 Usually when some veteran actor dies, the headlines are written by under-30s for under-30s, and I am compelled to put some tart comment on Facebook to the effect that "X had a major career on stage and in classic cinema before playing an Orc for Peter Jackson". I am glad to see that due tribute was paid to the sadly-late Robbie Coltrane's early work before Harry Potter. It was also gratifying that Angela Lansbury was remembered in the obituaries (like Radio 4's Last Word) for more than Murder, she wrote. From being Elizabeth Taylor's schoolfriend (I remember her towering over her fellow English exile) in National Velvet and Charles Boyer's maid in Gaslight (still the best screen adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's play in my view) through Elvis Presley's mum to her chilling would-be queen bee in The Manchurian Candidate the major peaks of the first half of her career were covered. So I feel quite justified in adding my few jottings to Murder, she wrote.

To be honest, I did not watch the series for her acting (she confessed in an interview that she virtually walked through her performance) or, generally, the writing. One attraction was the puzzle element which was true to the series' inspiration, the classic English murder mystery, especially the work of Agatha Christie. Another was the fact that Ms Lansbury clearly called on the circle of friends she had made in Hollywood and on Broadway to feature, especially in the early series. Some must have revelled in playing against type: for instance, former matinee idols Stewart Granger (as a shady art dealer) and Van Johnson (as an eccentric inventor among other parts). In an episode I have just caught up on, showing on 5USA, Marsha Hunt, a major figure in Hollywood until she was victimised in the illiberal 1950s and who also died at a great age earlier this year, had a minor part. Keith Michell, who had a hit on BBC TV as Henry VIII in 1970, shared some of the burden of fronting the series. Some of the other names from the golden age I can pick out from the roll-call here are Norman Lloyd, Gloria de Haven, Hurd Hatfield, Nina Foch, June Havoc, Betty Garrett, Ann Blyth, Cyd Charisse, Ernest Borgnine, Dorothy Lamour, Jane Greer and of course Jean Simmons, not to mention many who had made their name in previous TV series. Quite a few Brits appear in the list, but surprisingly there is no cross-over with another of our exports, Alfred Hitchcock. It's as if there was a Lansbury set and a Harrison/Hitchcock set in Hollywood. However, the best of the Murder, she wrote productions gives several nods to Hitchcock.

South by Southwest is set largely on a train (as two of Hitchcock's classics were), has a McGuffin (Hitchcock's name for an object on which a plot turns) and has a title which is an incorrect compass bearing, like North by Northwest. (The anomaly appealed to Hitchcock, a keen sailor. In fact, the reference is to Northwest Airlines.) There the resemblances cease. There is no mysterious blonde or any psychological overtone. There are hints of another Hollywood classic, The Narrow Margin. It neatly combines the elements of thriller and whodunit. And Ms Lansbury tones down her performance from the broad acting, at times mugging, of the weekly series production line. I hope to be watching it again on TV tonight. 

Friday 14 October 2022

Is the Conservative party breaking up?

 I cannot recall a time when the fabled Conservative loyalty to the leader was less in evidence. Certainly there was sniping at Edward Heath when in office for not going far and fast enough in giving up government control of utilities and other public sector bodies. However, no Tory MP briefed within eight weeks of his taking office that he should resign. This has not only happened to Liz Truss but some of her honourable friends actually went on the record calling for the whole of the new chancellor's strategy to be abandoned. That did not happen in 1970, still less in 1979/80 when Thatcher and Howe's fiscal strategy destroyed a whole swathe of SMEs. 

Part of the difference is that we are at the fag end of a period of Conservative rule, rather than at the start of a fresh-faced opposition's assuming power for the first time. However, it seems that sacrificing a friend and neighbour in Kwasi Kwarteng has given Liz Truss a stay of execution.

It would tempt fate to say more now, given how fast things are moving.



Wednesday 12 October 2022

The wrong sort of windfall tax

 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/uk-moves-cap-revenues-low-carbon-energy-producers-2022-10-11/ refers

There is no doubt that the pricing mechanism for electricity needs reform. Indeed, the government launched a consultation earlier this year. 

But today's proposal does virtually nothing for consumers. Instead, it would punish those providers who have done the right thing in avoiding fossil fuels for generating power. It is not going to encourage firms to enter the non-carbon market. It looks very much as if the multinational oil and gas companies who directly or indirectly support the Conservative group currently in power have influenced a policy decision which would shore up their industry.


Tuesday 11 October 2022

Tax cuts and inflation not the only threat to the UK economy

 Derivatives have a bad name, star investor Warren Buffett having described them as "financial weapons of mass destruction". One exception looked to be the liability driven investment or LDI. Private Eye's In The City column explains that "LDI enabled pension funds large and small to reduce the risks from future liabilities by using derivatives". I must confess that I did not follow the detail, but the conclusion was that LDI has up until now done its job in normal financial markets, and even "if bond prices fell and there was a margin call for more collateral, this could be easily achieved by selling other assets to produce the cash. But that envisages time frames of days not hours, and that prices declined not cratered" - as happened after chancellor Kwarteng's financial statement. Hence the Bank of England's intervention last week and again today.  So LDI was just as risky as any instrument which has derivatives at its base, and pension fund managers are going to have to revise their strategies again.

But there is another Eye story which worries me more. There is a threat to the integrity of banks and probably large companies too as a result of iffy auditing standards.

In the run-up to [the 2008/9] financial crash, banks such as Northern Rock, RBS and HBOS hid billions of pounds in losses on loans until it was too late to do anything about them. Since then, internationally agreed accounting rules - heavily influenced by the Big Four accountancy firms that draw so much of their income from the financial sector - have barely changed. Currently, banks have to estimate what their losses on loans such as mortgages will be over the following 12 months, rather than what the total they won't get back really is. As it's easy to put on the rose-tinted specs and judge that default is at least a year away, the effect can be to conceal serious problems.

Some academics and investor groups have argued for action before it's too late again. They also say that the requirement under UK company law for accounts to show a "true and fair view" of a company's business overrides the specific 12-month rule and incorporates all reasonably foreseeable losses. 

Standard-setters are unmoved.

The Eye predicts doom "As interest rates soar and debt defaults loom while Liz Truss's government deregulates the City regardless".

Monday 10 October 2022

Xi should be big enough to let Taiwan go

 Today Taiwan has been celebrating her unique identity distinct from mainland China. A liberal democracy as opposed to the absolutist state over the water, it is not surprising that more and more of her inhabitants identify themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, even though many are descendants of the rump Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek and its followers. (For an authoritative modern history of the situation, see this Atlantic article.)

It seems to me that the present attitudes of the US military and the Chinese state are bound to lead to a conflict which, even if it does not draw in Japan and the two states in Korea, will impoverish the world, since so much of high-technology manufacturing is concentrated in the region. Far better to appear magnanimous and, from her eminence as one of, if not the, leading economy in the world, relinquish China's claim to be the de jure rulers of the island. The claim could be replaced by a binding treaty recognising their common interests. 

President Xi is surely taking note of a potential parallel in Ukraine where Putin is attempting to reclaim a former part of the Russian empire. The "special military operation" is draining the resources of both states and has reduced a vital supply of grain to the rest of the world. Letting Taiwan go would also burnish China's claim to be the enemy of colonialism on the world stage.

 

Sunday 9 October 2022

Seamark

Talking Pictures TV yesterday showed what they implied was the discovery of a lost film. Murder in Reverse (released as Query in the US) was in the UK cinemas in 1945, but I saw it on television in the 1950s so one wonders what caused it to disappear. 

It was notable for William Hartnell's billing above the title, a rare distinction for someone who was known mainly as a reliable character actor before Dr Who made him a star for a new generation. There was solid backing from others in the cast, part of a virtual UK film repertory company of the time: John Slater, Brefni O'Rourke, Jimmy Hanley, Kynaston Reeves, Edward Rigby and John Salew. There was also an early appearance for Petula Clark.

The plot was a pre-echo of 1999's Double Jeopardy: someone is imprisoned for murder or manslaughter while the victim remains very much alive. On release, there is a search for the man who caused the miscarriage of justice. That is where the similarities end. In the 1945 film, Masterick has to give up his young daughter for adoption on his imprisonment. The young reporter who campaigns unsuccessfully on his behalf and his wife adopt the child as their own, with Masterick's agreement that she will never know her real parentage. The flashback is narrated by the reporter who has become his paper's editor. In the film, since Jill Masterick is already an alert schoolchild (a 12-year-old Clark playing 8) at the time of Masterick's arrest, this does stretch credulity. One wonders whether this was to allow the 25-year-old Dinah Sheridan (Hanley's wife at the time) to play a significant part in the plot whereas a more plausible 15-year-old might not, or whether it was to give Clark a leg-up. Or maybe the flaw was in the original short story on which the film was based?

This is when one of those rabbit-holes, to which I am addicted, opens up. The film is set contemporaneously so that Masterick would have been in Dartmoor since 1930, neatly straddling the war. The original story, "Query", is set in 1926 establishing the crime as being committed in 1911, again avoiding war years. It also makes more plausible the mis-identification of a body at a time when criminal pathology was not as advanced as it must have been in 1930. 

The author was Austin Small, who lived from 1894 - 15 January 1929. Where he came from or how he died so young is still a mystery. He wrote prolifically as Seamark in the UK, though under his own name in the US, This is the most complete biography I have found:

In the days before radio and rapid transportation Seamark (Austin James Small, fl. 1919-29) roamed the wastelands of the world - mainly the Yukon and up to the Arctic Circle, but also around the Pacific, across the Kalahari, and through West Africa's fever-belt. He served in the British Royal Navy during the First World War and was in several actions, notably the attack on the German submarine pens at Zeebrugge.
He was a prolific short-story writer for the fiction magazines of the early 1920s, at one stage appearing in 20-Story Magazine under his own name as well as his somewhat obscure pseudonym (1. Landmark visible from the sea, navigational guide; 2. a coastline's upper tidal limit). He put a great deal of his own experience of the gruelling side of life into his stories, which are vivid and vigorously told, with just the right amount of sentiment and melodrama to appeal to his audience.
Coming under the spell of the thriller writer Edgar Wallace, in his last books he wrote of vast global conspiracies and insane criminals who used super-science to gain their ends: Master Vorst [1926]; The Man They Couldn't Arrest [1927]; The Avenging Ray [1930].

The rest of his work may well be worth mining for TV or film drama, especially as he is now well out of copyright. 


Saturday 8 October 2022

Are the broadcasters stepping up their exposure of Russia?

 Channel 5 has renewed interest in the unexplained 2010 death of GCHQ employee Gareth Williams. Several contributors to the documentary asserted that Russia was involved directly or indirectly in what must have been an ingenious murder. The Russia theme dominated, to the detriment of the programme in my opinion. The personality of Williams himself was lost. What filled the gap between his schooldays, so movingly described by a former teacher, and his acceptance by GCHQ? There were several shots of Williams in cycling gear. If he was a competitive cyclist, why did we not hear from team-mates and rivals? Were the fashion items in his cupboards for personal use or the kernel of a canny collection? And how did he make the financial leap from being a lodger in suburbia to a well-appointed flat in central London?  Even for a mathematical genius, civil service pay is surely not that generous.

Last week, on radio, there was another revival. Radio 4 reran Oliver Bullough's five-part examination of how London came to be the conduit of choice for dirty money, largely (though not exclusively) money stolen from the Russian people by the men styled oligarchs. 

It could be just coincidence that these subjects were taken off the shelf as the Johnson administration, so closely identified with Russian capital, was ousted by Liz Truss's government, dominated by other interests. One must await the third coincidence.



Friday 7 October 2022

SARS-CoV-2 three years on

 "Three years" is not an error. Analysis of (there is no way of avoiding the expression) sewage has shown that the virus was in the wild in the West in November 2019 at the latest. Typical is this example from Brazil. The vector, one guesses, is Chinese tourism (as with the Italian epidemic) or perhaps business visiting. The latter suggests that Africa, the object of Chinese investment, may be another early playground for the virus, undetected because there is little sophisticated public health analysis on the continent. So the epidemic in South Africa may have had an earlier cause other than medics returning from their holidays in hot-spots in France and Italy, which was my first suspicion. An October infection would account for the development of so many strains and sub-strains of the virus in the republic.

Anyway,  the Covid-19 Inquiry started in earnest last Tuesday. It promises to be exhaustive, though one notes that the duration pushes its report beyond the probable date of the next general election, conveniently for the Johnson/Truss government.

One trusts that Phil Hammond ("MD" of Private Eye) as both practising physician and commentator on public health will be called to give evidence. "Lockdown" is sure to be discussed and in his column of a month ago, MD wrote:

The fact that two pandemic modelling exercises (Exercise Cygnus  [pdf here] for flu and Exercise Alice for coronavirus) concluded that we were woefully ill-prepared and yet the government then did nothing to prepare us also failed to feature during the [Conservative leadership contest] hustings. Both candidates played to the crowd, Truss claiming that "we went too far with lockdowns" and Sunak that the government in which he was chancellor "gave too much power to scientists during lockdowns" and "was not honest about the potential downsides". Ministers were even "banned from talking about the trade-offs involved".

Lee Cain, No 10's director of communications in 2019-20, tells a different story. "I sat around the cabinet table as politicians, scientists, economists and epidemiologists agonised over the extent to which lockdown would devastate lives and livelihoods," he wrote in a letter to the Spectator last week. "It was not an easy decision for anyone We locked down because we knew the cost of 'letting Covid rip' was far more damaging to both the health and wealth of the nation. But as the pandemic fades into our collective memory - and critics try to rewrite history - it's clear that the biggest mistake was not locking down but doing so too late."


Thursday 6 October 2022

The misguided pursuit of growth

 Liz Truss in her closing speech in Birmingham yesterday spouted the gospel of growth as if it were some new revelation. It is not. It is a tired old pursuit of Conservative and New Labour ministers which has excused deleterious experiments with the economy which it is going to be difficult to rectify. The fact is that a mature economy such as the UK's is not going to achieve the GDP growth figures of an Estonia or a Kenya freed from state socialism and colonialism respectively. Certainly, there will be a rise in GDP as the global business cycle raises the UK along with other nations, but it will then plateau.

The European Environment Agency warns that the only way economic growth can be achieved in the West is by raiding non-renewable resources. Thus there is "loss of biodiversity, climate change, pollution and loss of natural capital". We should be instead maintaining our place in the top ten developed nations through transition, taking advantage of social and scientific advances to replace old technologies with new. 


Wednesday 5 October 2022

Data protection: warning signs

 When a Tory government sweeps away EU-generated legislation in the interest of making life for business easier, one should worry. When it says it can improve on that legislation with its own, one should have handy a pile of salt to pinch from. When one of the areas it is legislating in is data protection, and makes this the subject of a key speech at its annual rally, warning bells should ring. A data protection Bill was already introduced to parliament, but has had to be paused without debate as the new multinational-friendly Truss government wants to tinker with it.

 There will be comment elsewhere on the effect on international trade, online customers and social media users. However, we should also be concerned about the gathering and use of personal data for political purposes. The UK implementation of EU GDPR regulations imposed heavy burdens on small voluntary organisations, including local political parties. In my opinion, that could have been made simpler in respective of logistics without affecting the general principles of protection. Better that, though, than the scandal of data misuse, The concern is that the Conservative party, which has form in this area, wants to sweep away practically all protection.


Tihar

 As the Nepali autumn festival, the equivalent of Diwali, approaches, the Gurkha Welfare Trust asks us to remember its beneficiaries who have served this country well through many conflicts.


Tuesday 4 October 2022

North Korea stirs

 It is likely that public demonstrations of military capability occur on a date set by a long-established timetable, because that is the time when a particular development has reached fruition. There is however no doubt that North Korea's firing of a missile over Japan has wrenched the attention of the world away from the conflict in Ukraine. 


Monday 3 October 2022

The evolving role of faith in today's world

 That was the theme of today's Beyond Belief on Radio 4. In his last programme after 21 years of presentation, Ernie Rea gathered a former Anglican bishop, a Muslim imam, a Hindu teacher and a woman who spoke for those of us who do not subscribe to any particular religion. It was an insightful discussion, though conducted by people who it would be fair to describe as liberals within their respective faiths. It was striking that the only faith represented on the programme which did not necessarily have a personal god at its centre, Hinduism, was the one which was growing fastest in the UK. It currently ranks third behind Christianity and Islam. The concept of God "not as a person but as a principle which underpins the whole universe" called to mind the image of the golden thread in Gore Vidal's Creation.


Sunday 2 October 2022

Is there a British Jeffrey Epstein?

 The i newspaper has an article this weekend asserting that there is a major untouchable child abuser at large in the country. Mark Williams-Thomas, a former police detective, now a TV journalist, who was able to document the shameful career of paedophile Jimmy Savile, says there are still perpetrators out there. 

There is one very significant person who I've done everything to try and get prosecuted because he is clearly a child sex offender. To date, the CPS won't prosecute. The police and I have tried really hard to get there. He will die in due course and then the floodgates will open in the same way they did with Savile That's not right.

Williams-Thomas gives no hint as to whether the man concerned is in show business, like Savile, a politician or an entrepreneur. He is presumably wary of starting the sort of witch-hunt which embarrassed Harvey Proctor and Sir Cliff Richard. There is also the danger of an expensive libel suit being brought if the evidence will not stand up in court, complainants being too ashamed or intimidated to testify. 

Shame on those who are protecting individuals who are corroding our society.