Prison reform

 The commitment by the government to restore the prison officer complement, so disastrously cut over the last decade or so, is welcome. Long term, of course, the solution to prison overcrowding is to cut back on the number of needless imprisonable offences (estimated to have been added at the rate of one per day of the Blair-Brown governments) and to implement alternatives to prison. In the meantime, the second-largest prison population in the Western world needs to treated humanely and given the opportunity to reform. More supervision will also reduce the scandalously high use of drugs in prison.

Recruitment may be difficult, but perhaps the government should look at the pool of ex-services personnel. They are people who are used to discipline and are aware of its advantages. Many have found it hard to adjust to civvy life but should fit the HMP structure.

A fish rots from the head*

 I am uneasy about the concentration by the Opposition on the almost certain flouting of their own rules on partying by the Johnson government. After all, the transgression occurred a year ago and there are continuing scandals which need more exposure. Raab's inadequacy at Justice and Patel's draconian measures against incomers come to mind, not to mention the failure to tackle the London laundromat. 

On the other hand, ordinary citizens understand unfairness and hypocrisy readily, while the implications of hot money may be lost on them and their opinions may be divided on refugees and on civil rights. The disgust at their party's behaviour clearly had its affect on Conservative voters in Old Bexley and may even be telling in North Shropshire. 

There will be no immediate effect on party control at Westminster if the Conservative vote in by-elections continues to fall, even to the extent of losing North Shropshire. However, back-benchers on the government side will be casting anxious eyes on their prospects in the next general election. The pressure for a change of leadership must be intense.

There are reasons beyond mere self-preservation for the Conservative party in Westminster to change direction. What does it say to those people identified by a former Conservative prime minister as "just getting by" as well as those even worse off if they see their elected leaders getting away with lying, taking bribes and disobeying laws imposed for public safety? It is surely significant that recently released figures reveal a steep increase in crime, particularly in violent crime in the London area. The example of people at the top misbehaving with impunity must encourage crime at lower levels of society.

Morality must be restored at the top, and the sooner the better.

* an old Turkish proverb - allegedly

"A date that will live in infamy"

The Daily Mirror, though obviously concentrating on news of the war in Europe, throughout 1941 kept its readers up-to-date with developments in the Far East. On February 25th, a headline proclaimed JAPS WARN WHITES TO QUIT THE PACIFIC. The report began:

As Mr. Matsuoka, Japanese Foreign Minister, told the House of Representatives in Tokio yesterday that the white race "must cede Oceania to the Asiatics," Mr. Churchill saw the Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Shigemitsu, in London. [...]

Japan's conception of Oceania, it was thought by US observers, extends to the entire South Pacific, including the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines and possibly Australasia.

This was based on Mr. Matsuoka's reference to the number of people that could be supported in such an area:-

"This region has sufficient natural resources to support between 600,000,000 and 800,000,000 people. I believe we have a natural right to migrate there."

There are pre-echoes there of present-day China's pretensions in the South Pacific.

In July, the Mirror stated:

Vichy [the Nazi puppet regime in France] and Japan are negotiating over French Indo-China, where the Japs want bases from which to threaten British and U.S. possessions.

The news of the talks came last night from authorised circles in Vichy soon after the British Singapore Radio had issued a blunt warning about Japanese moves in Indo-China. 

At the end of the month, it happened:

Japan began to occupy Vichy's Indo-China yesterday. Troops disembarked at ports in Cambodia [...] At the same time, Japanese military lorries entered Saigon, capital of Indo-China. Bombers roared above them. According to the Chinese National Military Council in Chungking, Japan has also presented demands to Thailand to join the "new order in South Asia".

On November 17th, there was a reinforcement from prime minister Tojo and foreign minister Togo  of  the message that Japan would risk war with Britain and America in her determination to press on with her expansion programme. On November 26th, the Mirror reported that President Roosevelt expected the Japanese to launch an attack on Thailand at any moment. All the while, Japanese special envoys were talking to the US administration.

So an attack by the empire of Japan on Western interests in Asia was not unexpected, but Pearl Harbor was in Hawaii: US territory. Moreover, peace talks were technically still in progress. What made the Japanese raid more shocking was that service families and civilians alike were preparing for Christmas at the time. Early estimates were that 1,500 Americans died in the bombing raid of 7th December, with an equal number severely injured.

In the end, it proved to be a disastrous miscalculation by the Japanese in that it brought the US into war not only with Japan but also against her Axis allies. Britain was no longer alone. Finally, the US wrought a terrible vengeance at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sarah Gilbert's Dimbleby Lecture

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0012b15/the-richard-dimbleby-lecture-dame-sarah-gilbert

Revealing and inspiring - what more can one say?

Practical psephology is alive and well in Gambia

 Students of electoral science will know that R.B.McCallum coined the term "psephology" to describe his discipline and David Butler publicised it. It is based on the ancient Greek use of pebbles to cast votes. In the 1960s, Gambia revived the practice in order to combat fraud involving ballot papers, using glass marbles (or alleys, as we called them in my young days) deposited in drums bearing candidates' names and descriptions. Despite moves to replace the system with a more twenty-first century one, it was still in use yesterday to elect a new president for the nation.

Dame Margaret Hodge

 Margaret Hodge MP may not be a saint (one recalls her benefiting from a tax-avoiding family trust at the same time as she was castigating such schemes when she chaired the Public Accounts Committee), but government ministers and Treasury advisers alike will no doubt celebrate her announcement that she will not stand again at the next election. However, she will go out on a high, if she continues to keep up pressure on the government on its record of inaction against economic crime, as in the debate she introduced yesterday.

The government response to the litany of financial abuses which she and SNP speakers listed? "It is important that the Government pursue a targeted and proportionate level of enforcement, focusing on achieving compliance from companies." In other words, practical inaction.

Pandemic hastens telecommuting

 For almost as long as I can remember in the computer business, certainly since the invention of the personal computer, the future of office work was going to be distributed to people's homes. "Telecommuting" was what we called it then, but it really did not take off in any big way. A rare exception was Steve Shirley's F.I. Group which basically employed women working from home, largely those who were professionally qualified but who had taken a break to start a family. That would probably not have taken off but for two factors: the high skills of its members and the tenacity and drive of the founder. In the case of humdrum office work, too many managers had a need for the comfort of warm bodies around them. It was too easy to drip feed instructions and/or change ones mind knowing that your staff were instantly accessible, nine to five. No need to work out a coherent and detailed plan of work.

The pandemic has given many a rude awakening. The skills necessary to run a distributed office have had to be acquired. And now a new opinion survey commissioned by the i newspaper shows that "a third of millennials will look for a new job if their employer insists they return to office working full time". What economic logic has failed to achieve, a coronavirus has done the trick, probably helped by the Green revolution pounding out the message that personal travel adds to carbon equivalent emissions.

Omicron: cause for optimism?

 The fact that a SARS-CoV-2 infection in the Netherlands which occurred before the South African announcement  has now been shown to be of the new omicron variant may give some hope. It clearly raised no special alarm at the time of first diagnosis, suggesting that omicron is not more lethal than the currently most widespread strains. The major question remaining is whether existing vaccines offer the same degree of immunity or at least protection from serious complications. However, both Pfizer and Moderna have confirmed that their vaccines can be tweaked within months to recognise the new strain specifically should it be necessary. One would expect AstraZeneca to be able to offer the same assurance.

The Netherlands analysis also throws open the question of the origin of the variant, though the dates do not rule out an infected person bringing the virus to Europe. The odds must still be on a sub-Saharan African source, given the vast pool of unvaccinated people there, a population also affected by HIV. This situation must be tackled by the major nations, acting independently of the slow-moving UN agencies if necessary.