Last Christmas

So Wham!'s catchy song has finally topped the year-end poll. It is of course a song about the break-up of a relationship and not anything more serious, though some have taken it as a portent. More serious is the diagnosis of a terminal medical condition - but this is as assessment, admittedly based on knowledge and  years of experience, but still an assessment, not a death sentence. The human spirit can do surprising things and my Christmas wish to all those in the situation, particularly in my extended family, is to apply Winston Churchill's personal mantra: keep on buggering on.

"It's OK, lads, I'm with the AA"

 Standing on a wet grassy slope behind a crash barrier on the M4 for ninety minutes on the evening of the eighteenth while the rain steadily fell and we were steadily splashed by the usual mix of personal and commercial traffic, I did wonder whether we would have done better if we were bank robbers. (For those who do not get the reference, have a look here.) The soaking I received led indirectly to the indisposition of the last few days and thence this five-day pause in blogging for which I apologise.

Seriously, I understand the difficulties the emergency services were under that night. There must have been loads of emergency calls that night. Indeed we were probably lucky to be attended to when we were -we could have been waiting twice as long according to the emergency operator's first estimate. When Viv of the AA arrived (I don't believe my daughter, who had been driving, caught his surname) he expeditiously applied, under difficult conditions, a temporary support (a "stepney"?) for the blown tire and guided us to a garage where the correct replacement could be provided. 

The whole procedure was efficient  and as fast as could be expected, living up to the AA's claims.  I just wish the TV ad did not imply virtually instantaneous service.

Solar panels on canals

 When I first read the headline, I thought: what a splendid way to combine two green issues, but how would it work? Then it dawned on me: "canal" in America implies irrigation rather than navigation. So turning the Neath and Tennant canals into a cheap energy source was clearly not on. However, the idea is clearly a goer in the appropriate areas, as this article explains. 

It has the beneficial side-effect of reducing water loss due to evaporation from direct sunlight. This was carried to the extreme by the ancient Persian qanat (a useful word for Scrabble-players because it does not need a U). Several of these underground aqueducts are still in use today. 

Less ecological is the Libyan Great Man-made River, a project begun by Gaddafi and completed by 2007. The infrastructure was attacked by NATO in 2011 and has since been prey to campaigns by warlords and neglect, but is still delivering some water. The source of the water, piped to reservoirs in the north of the country is a fossil aquifer which is not being replenished and may be exhausted by the end of the century, though other estimates give lifespans of up to one thousand years. 

Salty tea, anyone?

On this day in 1773 occurred the Boston Tea Party, after which a radical Republican group which is anti-tax among other things, takes its name. 

Sathnam Sanghera and William Dalrymple discussed the matter further in the recent Empire of Tea series on Radio 4.

Those rare metals the modern age depends on

 There is an outline of the importance of rare earth elements and the shift in power resulting from China's exploitation of them here. However, what the Bloomberg article fails to mention is that Afghanistan also sits on deposits of rare earths. There must be an opportunity for a nation which is not China (oppressor of the Muslim Uyghurs), Russia (hated occupiers) or America (imposer of corrupt government) to take advantage.

Restorative justice can mitigate racial abuse

 There was a reassuring story on BBC Sport this week. Derbyshire all-rounder, and VP of the PCA, Anuj Dal explained how he dealt with racial abuse on social media. He did not just lie back and take it, but took a course of action which through restorative justice led to a written apology from the abuser. I maintain that most casual racism in this country results from ignorance, not wickedness, and this story tends to confirm the view. 

I understand that Anuj Dal wants to encourage the wider application of the sort of action he took. He is clearly an adornment to the game in England and Wales, and one trusts that he will go on, when his playing days are over, to take an active part in administration of the game here. It is high time that some relics of our imperial past were shifted out of the Lords boardroom and into the museum where they belong.

Mosquitoes will extend their range through climate change

We have already had a warning that milder winters have enabled an increased threat from a disease-carrying insect. Bluetongue is a virus disease of cattle and sheep. It is spread by a midge which is common on the continent. The midge has not yet been reported as overwintering in the UK, but the fact that bluetongue has now been reported as late as November means that that is a likely scenario.

Now there are suggestions that a mosquito species, aedes albopictus, known as the tiger mosquito, could set up home here. It is particularly dangerous because it feeds during the day and is adapted to urban environments. In its home sub-tropical range it carries a whole slew of potentially fatal diseases. 

China's revenge for the opium wars?

 There was a report on BBC TV news yesterday of a significant rise in deaths from illegal drugs imported from China. 

Super-strength street drugs more powerful than heroin have been linked to at least 54 deaths in the UK in the last six months, the BBC has been told.

The deaths are all linked to synthetic opioids called nitazenes, which experts fear are being manufactured in labs and then imported into the UK from China.

However, the true total could be higher - the National Crime Agency (NCA) said 40 more cases awaited further testing.

The UK government plans to classify 15 new synthetic opioids as Class A drugs.

Nitazenes first made news in the UK in 2021, when an 18-year-old patient was treated for a non-fatal overdose.

Experts say the new drugs can be stronger than both heroin and fentanyl, another synthetic opioid, which is a leading killer in the US - contributing to 75,000 deaths last year.

The report comes on top of the fentanyl scandal in the US. It seems that the precursor compounds for fentanyl largely come from factories in China, for whom illegal drug-dealers in the US have replaced the previously legal pharmaceutical traders. Moreover, producing fentanyl from these precursors is a relatively simple process and there is a danger that fentanyl could hit the streets from illegal labs here.

According to the Empire of Tea series on Radio 4 (relevant programme on BBC Sounds here), what were named the Opium Wars should really have been known as the Tea Wars as (from the National Archives):

the British were smuggling opium from their Indian colonies into Chinese ports against the wishes of the Chinese government. This was to help pay for the large amounts of Chinese tea that they were importing – by the early 1800s, tea was a popular drink with the British public. Britain also wanted more control over their trade with China, as they could only trade with certain officials called Hong merchants.

Getting the Chinese hooked on opium helped other foreign powers - Russia, France and Portugal - to join the UK in setting up concessions in China. China has in recent years reversed the process. The commodities concerned are led by rare earth elements rather than addictive substances, but it must bring a wry smile to the lips of President Xi to know that illegal opioids from his country are helping to undermine civil society in the West.

Guyana a safer haven for migrants?

 Further to my brief post about Venezuela's coveting the oil-rich Guyana region of Essequibo, it seems that high-level talks are due to begin on Thursday. President Maduro seeks to gain the territory by legalistic means knowing that a military expedition is unlikely to succeed.

An interesting fact arose during a BBC World Service discussion on the issue. The population of Guyana is only just over 800,000. Thanks to recent petroleum developments, GDP per head has grown over the century from less than $4,000 to $19,000 currently and is predicted to rise to $45,000. It seems to me that those people suffering from poverty and oppression in certain Central American states should not be heading north through Mexico to the US, but across the Caribbean to Guyana.

Important art-deco building saved

 The historic Littlewoods building, formerly the HQ of the football pools and department store empire, in Wavertree, Liverpool has been saved from decay and vandalism. It will be transformed into a suite of film studios, shaped after Pinewood. There may be those who see this as unnecessary competition for the likes of Bay Studios in Neath Port Talbot, but it seems to me that not only will films continue to be made, for streaming if not necessarily for theatrical viewing, there seems to be a vast market for daytime TV viewing as well as increasingly sophisticated computer games.

Agency workers in the public service

 I have long argued that underpaying teachers and nurses is a false economy. As trained professionals leave to take better-paid jobs in supermarkets, one has to fill the resulting gaps with workers from contract agencies who are not only more expensive in terms of their hourly rate but also have little invested in the establishment they are recruited for, since they are only there on a short-term basis. 

So I was surprised by a story in today's Evening Post, quoting a local authority's HR representative to the effect that it was more expensive for schools to employ staff directly because of things like pension costs, which she said were "spiralling". She had been responding to an enquiry by reporter Richard Yuile who was following up a Carmarthenshire council committee report that the total agency spend by primary and secondary schools in the authority's area was £9.6m in 2022-23, nearly double that of three years previously.

Given that the pension contribution has to be paid by someone and therefore must be factored into the agency worker's price, and that a fee has to be charged to give the agency its profit, it is difficult to see how a contractor can be cheaper. I am clearly missing something. Perhaps an insider could put me wise.

UK government silent over Maduro land grab

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-67610200 refers.

Impending Senedd bloat

 Rather late in the day (the key decision in the Senedd was made earlier this year), people are waking up to the enormous increase in the size of Wales' parliament which Labour and Plaid Cymru are set on. Conservatives have started to campaign on the increased cost of a larger assembly - and they are on firm ground in doing so. But the nature of election is at issue also. A former member of PC, and of the last commission to look at Wales' electoral system, objected on Sunday Supplement (just over 33 minutes in to this) to the reduction in democratic control inherent in the list system.

There is a summary of the various constitutional committees and commissions here.

The great Iranian crisis

The expert contributor* to yesterday's Great Lives programme was of the opinion that one cannot draw a straight line between the events of 1951-1953 in Iran and the Islamic revolution of 1979. However, 1953 was surely the year in which Iran might have settled to a future of stable constitutional monarchy (alla UK) but instead tipped into monarchic dictatorship shepherded by the USA and all the instability that that engendered.

The great movie sound-sculptor and editor Walter Murch had chosen Muhammad Mossadegh as his Great Lives subject. Murch had been attracted to the subject by his background reading to conflict in the Middle East in preparation for work on Sam Mendes's Jarhead. He went on to work with Iranian exile Taghi Amirani on a documentary about the 1953 insurrection, Coup 53. It no doubt helped that both Amirani and Murch are now British residents.

I am gratified that I got so much right in my earlier post on the subject - and, of course, that such a major figure as Walter Murch is championing Mossadegh's cause. Having access to much more original material and people who knew the players in 1953 enabled Murch to produce a richer and more rounded picture. For instance, the switch from the Democrat Truman, who was sympathetic to the democratic aspirations of Mossadegh and against the effective colonialism of the Anglo-Iranian Oil company, to the Republican Eisenhower in the White House was significant. Eisenhower, himself an anti-Communist brought the cold-warriors, John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen to the State Department and the CIA respectively. Thus the scales were weighted against Mossadegh, but the revolution was not inevitable if some other key events had turned out differently. The whole programme is well worth hearing. Sadly, there is little chance of our government listening to it and even less chance of issuing a long-overdue apology. 

Only a couple of minor details were missed: the fact that the signal for the decisive riots was given by a coded message on the BBC Overseas Service** (now the World Service) revealed if I recall correctly by this analysis programme from 1980; and Mossadegh's hypochondria (from Christopher de Bellaigue's biography), which may or may not have affected his political judgment.

* Professor Ali Ansari of St Andrews University, presenter on Radio 4 of Through Persian Eyes

**A very rare example of the BBC's breaching its ethos of impartiality, even more marked in the World Service than in terrestrial broadcasting. Of course, the management may not have been aware of (presumably) MI6'ht s initiative.

Wales 0-0 Germany

 Congratulations to the Welsh women footballers on holding the mighty German team to a draw at the Hafod stadium tonight. Wales did not merely defend well, they were the more positive side for most of the match and were unlucky not to score. At last they have found a formation and personnel to suit, too late in the day for the Nations League, but promising for the future. All they need to do now is work on their ball retention.

 

Tories blaming the pensioners again

 From Friday's inews:

The co-authors of the 2019 Tory manifesto said the state pension triple lock should be scrapped – but warned both Labour and the Conservatives are too concerned about the electoral damage to do so.

Rachel Wolf and Robert Colvile, who helped to write Boris Johnson’s landslide-winning manifesto, said the Tories should not maintain the triple lock pension pledge into the next election.

They argued it is unsustainable and would need reforming in some way to ease the rising cost on the taxpayer and growing generational divide.

So a former political adviser and a think-tank chief, both no doubt having built up a reasonable private pension pot, believe that the UK economy cannot sustain a decent state pension while virtually all our nation's continental rivals can. Last year's suspension of the lock put a great strain, at a time of inflation, on those people whose only regular source of income in the state pension. Scrapping the triple-lock, or even a suspension, after the general election is going to increase the hardship for old people. One notes that neither the Tory leadership not that of the Labour party will commit to retaining this progressive measure. I trust that the manifesto of the Liberal Democrats, who introduced the triple-lock in 2010, will contain that guarantee.

Starmer's love of the headline may deny Labour absolute power

 The big domestic news this morning is that, in a Sunday Telegraph article, Sir Keir Starmer has praised for their "sense of mission" Clement Attlee, Tony Blair … and Margaret Thatcher*. What a disparate crew! There may be some similarities of world view between Thatcher and Blair, but the fact that Blair chose the Labour party as the vehicle for his ambition, when he clearly could have made a Conservative front bench, shows that there were differences of philosophy. Both, of course, were leagues away from Attlee. One has to conclude that Starmer wants to be more associated with people who have made headlines, rather than any particular political belief. He has already been accused of trying to woo Conservatives, but for every soft Tory vote he attracts, he is likely to lose both socialists and social democrats, the nod to Attlee notwithstanding.

The impression that he wants to be all things to all voters had already been given a boost by his foreign affairs spokesman, David Lammy, on Friday.  The i headline proclaimed: "Labour: EU will be our number one priority for foreign policy". Examination of the small print, however, reveals that there is no change from Labour's avowed policy of "making Brexit work", only a promise to hold regular (every four months) talks with EU leaders. There is a suggestion of closer military cooperation, but nothing about restoring our former favourable trading relationship or common social and environmental standards. Participation in Europe's political processes of course is right out of the window. 

Not being a Tory is insufficient. Voters, come the general election, will want to know what Sir Keir really stands for. I pity the Labour candidates who will have to reconcile the conflicting messages on the doorstep and at the hustings - if they dare to attend any.

* I have also been known to applaud Margaret Thatcher, but only for chipping away at the glass ceiling by becoming the first British female prime minister.

Anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine

 From the US National Archive:

The Monroe Doctrine was articulated in President James Monroe's seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. The European powers, according to Monroe, were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States' sphere of interest.

It has been argued over, nationally and internationally, ever since.

Hancock wants less devolution of health

 Given the lying and contempt for the advice of experts at the top level of government exposed in the Covid-19 Inquiry, surely more devolution of public health matters would improve things? Yet Matt Hancock in his evidence of the last few days opined that when an epidemic strikes all decisions should be taken in Westminster. 

When a community recognises what needs to be done, puts aside party and other politics, and coordinates in a common cause, great things can be achieved. Ceredigion's successful fight against the SARS-Cove2 virus was only vitiated when outside authority stepped in and forced the county to accept returning university students, bringing fresh battalions of virus with them.