Washington DC, twinned with Bangul

 In an election widely seen as the most democratic in the republic's history, in spite of intimidation leading to violence at a few polling stations, a presidential challenger wins by a narrow majority. Almost immediately after the declaration, there is an insurrection believed to have been fomented by the ousted president with the aim of regaining power by force. This is the scenario in many a third-world nation in recent years, the latest example being in the Central African Republic. Conservatives in the West viewing the footage of the riots might typically use such words as "savages" or more kindly "immature", "children".

One would not expect to see almost identical footage streamed from the capital of the self-proclaimed leader of the free world. Most shocking of all was the image of guns being drawn in the chamber of the Capitol building. One shudders to think what might have occurred if Washington DC did not have the strictest gun control laws in the States. 

Questions are already being asked about the lack of preparedness by the authorities. There is a contrast between the show of force by the administration in response to peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations and the laissez-faire attitude to security when it was known that President Trump was encouraging civil disobedience and that his fans were going further on social media. In spite of denials by the Department of Defense, the Mayor of Washington is adamant that his request to deploy the National Guard was rejected by the administration.

Order has now been restored and the formal procedures for anointing the new president have resumed, but the world will have been looking on in astonishment. The US claim to be a beacon of democracy, to justify her military adventures on the grounds of bringing freedom and order to less fortunate parts of the globe, already shaky, will hardly be believed any more.

And what of other Western democracies which have fallen under the spell of populist leaders whose ineptitude has been exposed by the hard realities of government? Will these now go quietly when they are rejected by their people at the next election? Would London's under-funded police be able to withstand a rabble roused by the likes of Farage and Cummings?

Covid-19: DfT acts twelve months too late

 The UK's Department for Transport is considering applying the same sort of preventative measures against SARS/CoV2 as Taiwan did in January 2020 and as New Zealand did a month later.

Israel's world-beating vaccination programme

 Israel has inoculated virtually 12% of her population against the SARS/CoV-2 virus, well ahead of Bahrain at 3.5% and the UK, who started first, on 1.5%. Questions have been raised about the low priority given to Palestinians, but it is still an outstanding achievement. The Irish Times explains how Israel managed to obtain sufficient supplies of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine in order to accomplish her programme. 

There was another factor brought out by an Israeli spokesperson on Radio 4's PM programme on Monday: universal healthcare. According to wikipedia, "Healthcare in Israel is universal and participation in a medical insurance plan is compulsory. All Israeli residents are entitled to basic health care as a fundamental right. [...] In a survey of 48 countries in 2013, Israel's health system was ranked fourth in the world in terms of efficiency"

On PM, Evan Davies protested that the UK also has universal healthcare. Well, up to a point. Although Israel's services are delivered by independent providers in the same way as France's or Germany's, they do seem to be less fragmented and uncoordinated than the UK's. Most importantly, they are well-staffed. Stumbling and Mumbling on the same issue says:

There is much talk of how Covid is putting pressure on the NHS. Such talk, however, often misses an important fact – that although NHS capacity is more or less fixed in the short-term, it is certainly not in the long-run. And past political choices have limited this capacity. For example, the UK has 2.8 doctors for every 1000 people compared to an average of three in OECD countries generally

The figure of Israel is 3.6. I have little doubt that the ratio for other health-care workers, nurses, laboratory staff and other ancillaries, shows a similar superiority over ours.

Codes of Conduct

 Notwithstanding Peter Black's optimism over the Priti Patel affair, the evidence is that codes of conduct have proved not to be as effective as their authors believe. The ministerial code did not deter Patel, nor her leader before her when Johnson resumed writing for the Daily Telegraph without informing the parliamentary watchdog as he should have done. 

Codes of conduct can range from the unexceptionable to the all-embracing, even oppressive. However strong they appear to be, there must be cast-iron sanctions for breaching them if they are to be taken seriously. The record of the Johnson government shows that the current ministerial code is about as strong as a pair of paper knickers.

Dismissal is an effective sanction in business. However, if the company's code of conduct is not carefully and reasonably framed, the employer could end up in court or in front of an employment tribunal. Besides, the employer him- or herself must be sure that they have not breached the code!

Codes of conduct promulgated by voluntary organisations are a different matter. One such is that insisted on by the Welsh Liberal Democrats from all their candidates in national elections. There is practically no remedy at law in the event of a dispute between whoever controls the state party and a candidate whom they deem to have transgressed, because, once elected, there is nothing the party can do to stop the new member from serving out their term and therefore there is no immediate financial penalty. 

There is, though, at its basest level, the threat of deselection and thus the loss of party backing at the next election. More important in my opinion is the threat of expulsion from the only party whose stated aims match ones own, and from the Liberal Democrat family. All this at the whim of the "state party" (that is, whoever holds executive power in the Welsh Liberal Democrats - in this case - at the time).

I hold the old-fashioned view that the existing approval process, involving face-to-face assessments, is strong enough to make a firm judgment on a candidate's character. Thereafter, he or she should be trusted to conduct themselves appropriately. If I wanted to be a compliant unquestioning cog in a centrally-directed machine, I would have joined the Labour party. 

As framed, the code of conduct gives too much scope to the executive to change policy and punish those who do not swing with them. Younger members who I have discussed this with are comfortable with it, seeing it as unexceptionable. I take comfort from the fact that my disquiet is shared by an eminent Liberal who is a strong proponent of the party's ethos of individual liberty. To be sure, there are many "mam and cawl" clauses which one cannot object to - but why is there a need to sign up to them specifically? And surely clause 13, "You must not bring, or risk bringing, the Party into disrepute" is already covered by not only clauses 1 and 2 but ones very membership of the party?

There are more dubious clauses. For instance, "You must give consent to and provide the details necessary for the Party to undertake (or to authorise an approved third party to undertake) an audit of your social media profile when requested."  Would you give the keys of your house or car to a stranger? I have a good idea of how far my personal details will go if I share them with those people I know and respect within the local party and region, but what about the people at HQ? There is an even greater risk of data insecurity at election time when young and inexperienced people are drafted in to help. 

"You must abide by the Party’s internal selection and election rules, and by any other Code of Conduct that has been signed up to by the Party." Does this bind the candidate to any future changes willy-nilly? The clause is ambiguous.

"If asked by your state party, you must complete a post-election review after each general election, whether or not you stood as a candidate." Unnecessary bureaucracy.

"If asked by your state party, you must agree a Candidate Compact with the local party (or parties) within three months of being selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate for a seat." More bureaucracy, involving not only the candidate but also the local party which could well do without the extra form-filling.

" If elected, and if asked by your state party, you must make a reasonable contribution towards ongoing party activity, which will include a financial element [...]" A system of tithing has been mandated by a Liberal Democrat conference in the past, but was widely ignored. It was, though, fairer in specifying a proportion of an elected person's earnings rather than the ambiguous "reasonable contribution". One man's reasonable amount is another's unbearable imposition. I was happy to give monthly a proportion of my councillor's allowance to the local party, but I am a single man with no longer any family commitments. It would be different for an individual with a young family and a partner who might have to give up a job because of the increased demands on the other's time - or an individual caring for a dependent relative.

"You must appoint an election agent who has been trained and certified by the Party, provided that a suitable person is available and willing to undertake the role." The point has been made that electoral law is changing at an increasing pace and that it is therefore necessary to have a certified trained person in the role. However, there is no substitute for experience and I would rather have an experienced agent who satisfies me that he (or she) has kept up to date with the legal requirements than someone who is merely fresh off a training course. Besides, the clause as worded impies that if no trained agent is available then the candidate must be their own agent, which all the agents manuals I have seen down the years warn against.

One of those fellow-members I discussed the code with advised that it was unenforceable and therefore I should sign it and not worry too much about its proviions. But it goes against the grain to promise something with no intention of fulfilling the promise when it came to the point. We have had a party leader who did that and much harm came to the Lib Dem cause as a result. That raises a question: Nick Clegg and company would have in coalition failed the provisions of the proposed code of conduct and not just over student fees. Would the English party have taken action?

So my future as a parliamentary candidate is in doubt, but as the code does not apply to local elections I propose to put my hat in the ring as a councillor again.

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The first American-born saint

Today is the feast day of Elizabeth Ann Seton who died 200 years ago. She was canonised in 1963 and is the patron "of in-law problems, against the death of children, widows, death of parents, and opposition of Church authorities".

  

Politics trumps science (2)

 There was a natural reaction in China to the sort of fake news emanating from the Trump administration (the Sun has an example here). BBC News reports that a senior politician there has countered that SARS/CoV-2 arose spontaneously all over the world. 

It is true that retrospective analsyis has shown that the virus must have been active in France and Italy before it was identified in Wuhan, but otherwise the physical evidence is against the minister. Analysis of the bug's genome positively establishes that it originated in SE Asis in a bat species, and that it must have jumped (possibly via another mammal) to a human or humans in that area. What is in doubt is that this happened in Wuhan rather than an adjacent province or country with whom China trades. The travellers who carried the virus to Italy and France may have come from another area of China and were possibly symptomless. 

It is to be hoped that politicial considerations do not hobble the WHO's investigation of the source of the pandemic. If I were China's president I would change the message. I would point out that it was Chinese scientists who had warned for years that such a species jump was bound to happen, and that the West just did not listen. It was Chinese scientists who identified the virus in Wuhan when the few fatal cases in Europe were ascribed to pneumonia. China, admittedly after a fortnight's delay, released details of the genome to the world early in January last year allowing companies round the world to start work on vaccines. With a handful of notable exceptions, Western governments did nothing for two months. The noise from Trump now is clearly driven by the desire to cover up post-Obama complacency.

Lidl goes veggie

 The chill cabinets in Lidl this weekend are dominated by vegan and vegetarian meals, and the theme is echoed in other aisles. The supermarket regularly has special weeks, usually dedicated to the specialities of another nation, but I don't recall a takeover on this scale before. Is the anti-meat movement gaining more support than we anticipated?

More relevant to me is the slashing of the price of coffee beans. Half-price is an offer not to be missed.

Politics trumps science

 We had a right to expect that the New Year would bring a more responsible approach to government on the part of Boris Johnson and his advisors. After all, he has a comfortable working majority and has, as the man who delivered Brexit, seen off potential rivals within the Conservative party for the foreseeable future. However, he still seems sensitive to what the tabloid press might say about him.

He is clearly worried that the target of inoculations against SARS/CoV2 set by himself and Matt Hancock might not be met. He has got the agreement of government health experts (including, worryingly, Wales' chief medical officer) to increase the gap between the first and the final booster dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in order to increase the number of jabs which can be made in the first month of the programme. This is against the advice of the company, which stresses that their product has been tested only with a 21 day gap and that it has been certified by health administrations only on that basis. More significantly, the BMA, which represents the doctors on the front line, has strenuously objected. Fortunately, as the New York Times has reported, many doctors have insisted on sticking to the original schedule. 

Coronaviruses are tricky customers, as the attempts to produce a virus against SARS1 showed. That is all the more reason to stick with what has been shown to work, rather than mess with the parameters. Johnson is proceeding on the basis of assumptions, much as he did last February when he failed to use the much-vaunted "control of our own borders" to prevent the invasion of SARS/CoV2 in the first place. 

There is a bright spot in that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine which becomes available in Wales next week has been shown to work with gaps longer than 21 days (indeed, there is a suggestion that it might be more effective with a longer gap). There is still, though, the danger of only partial protection after the first shot and therefore the necessity for a longer period of social distancing.

I am inclined under those circumstances to decline an offer of vaccination if made in the immediate future and wait for an unrestricted roll-out of both vaccines.

In the meantime, I have signed up for one of the ONS's Covid-19 tests to see whether I have had a brush with the virus without knowing it - and, of course, adding to the government's statistical base.