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.

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.

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.

Dame Meg Hillier 

(Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)

this specific contribution

Businesses in my constituency, including some of the fabulous small breweries, are struggling with the extra paperwork they now have to fill in in order to export to the European Union. The Business Secretary was a great exponent of Brexit, but even he must acknowledge that it is causing a huge burden to businesses and seriously affecting their profitability.

Mr Rees-Mogg 

this specific contribution

I look forward to the hon. Lady’s supporting the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which is coming later today and will get rid of lots and lots of dreadful EU regulations that are such a terrible burden on businesses. Is it not wonderful, Mr Speaker, that our socialist friends at last have this glorious zeal for deregulation? It is something we on the Conservative Benches have supported since the time of Noah.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.