From northern bucks

Hi All,

Sorry for lack of posts. Currently on hols in our holiday home in  the "home counties" .


Open thread

Shabbat Shalom!

The reason why opinion has not shifted on Brexit

Hi All,

After the 2016 referendum, the pro- remain side didn't stop and agree to accept the decision of the voters . In fact from the day after the referendum they've been doing everything and anything they can to stop Brexit even after the vote . The media, save one or two papers, has been relentless in its attack upon Brexit. Recently and similar  of the referendum, we've had project fear mark II, this time Airbus. We could loose thousands of jobs we are told.

Yet quite consistently the opinion polls, given margin of error, have show us to be as split as we were before and after the referendum 50-50. In other words whatever latest attempts to block or undermine Brexit, it is having no effect whatsoever on the way people would vote in second referendum. This is the real question to ask : why is it that none of this negativity is having any effect ?

The  answer I think is threefold.

Firstly people have become far less deferential to authority. Years ago the BBC was the respected Oxbridge educational media which was seen to be impartial. Today it is seen by the right as a bastion of left -liberalism. To the far left it is a bastion of right wing toryism. People don't need the BBC for news. As far as the papers are concerned, they've always been partisan. The difference is that in the past newspapers would, whatever their political biases , do some incredibly good investigative journalism holding corporates, politicians and others to account. Nowadays this old school journalism is long gone. It is hyper partisanship with little attempt at analysis nowadays and any investigations are of the scandalous personal type, which have little impact on wider government affairs or politics. One final point to consider is that people don't need the papers either. They can use Twitter, Blogs and other electronic media to get and inform each other of views. Therefore the old press and its influence, while still potent, is no where near as strong as even 20 years ago.

Secondly. I think the whole project fear of job looses, in this case airbus, makes little difference to people as we've been immune to such threats and accept it as part of our economic life . Since the Thatcher revolution of 1979 onwards, no government has given a guarantee of full employment or directing businesses, let alone saving businesses by nationalisation. For years industry has been hollowed out and manufacturing jobs relocated to cheaper and less regulated countries. The only industry protected is that of the banks, but even those giants were forced to restructure when they were bailed out.  But in short why would people - except those involved- actually care about airbus job looses. Way back in time Britain allowed its coal, ship building, steel and car industry (before being bought by German and Japanese concerns, but even now it employs far less people than 40 years ago)  go to the wall . Carillion employed over 60,000 people. That went bust. The steel industry in Wales has practically gone under. BHS 11,000 jobs . I'm sure if we made a list we'd see a lot of business that has gone to the wall or relocated. It's a function of capitalism and one which we now culturally accept. Only in the instances of mass unemployment were there are millions and millions on the dole - which lasts for 6 months- would that culture change. I hope that remainers don't want to see that or make that happen to prove a point.

Thirdly the Brexit debate is in effect a proxy of the state of our nation. It is not as remainers suggest that half of the country has become xenophobic nationalists, but that of who has benefited and who has not benefited from the changes of globalisation. In short if you looked at a map of Britain you will see that those areas that have benefited from the EU voted remain and those who have not done well out of globalisation even in terms of community (uncontrolled immigration ) or jobs voted to leave. There is no point in threatening people will massive job looses if you are either unemployed yourself or are employed but on the minimum wage (thanks to the polish guy who can undercut wages)  you simply aren't going to care . It is one of the great travesties that so much of the Kingdom has been left wanting, while other parts have thrived.  Even immigration -in which the liberal left accuse you of being a bigot or a racist - is an exhibit of this: those who benefit from globalisation, large corporations and the middle class that supports them, plus the public sector which has also had a renassiance with the regualtions and need for diversity officers, cannot see the damage it does to communities which don't feel culturally enriched. Those who benefit from globalisation not only get cheap, non unionised labour for their businesses, but also personally. The Pole or Spanish nanny, the African cleaner that can be given extremely low wages because labour is vast and easy to obtain.  By contrast those communities who were already poor, but working, have found themselves out of a job, on the dole and have had their own community destabilised. The great irony is that the very party they vote for created this mess. But that party and their supporters brand their own traditional votes with the racist smear, because they cannot , simply cannot understand or appreciate what globalisation has done to their own working class base.

To conclude we are no longer one nation, but as Benjamin  Disraeli noted two nations. In order to fix this we need to go back to Disraeli's concept of 'one nation' conservatism ( I don't mean the leftist version that people made it into during the 1960s onward) which sought to preserve (conserve) the best parts of Britain, but to change the worst aspects by pragmatic reform. In short governing for the whole nation , rather than big business, banks, trade unions and other interest groups which seem to weld and enormous amount of influence over public policy, regardless of who is in power. This is needed - a vision is needed- especially given Brexit and the challenge from the left by Jeremy Corbyn. People have mentioned the rise of the populist right. There's also been, under the radar, the rise of the populist left: Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal , Britain and even in America. I read this morning that some long term incumbent centralist democrat was defeated by a  young populist left candidate in New York.  To rise to this challenge the centre -right needs to regroup and relearn what it was that made Disraeli and then later his successors electable and popular. It is worth noting that as more British people obtained the franchise, the more conservative governments were elected.

Farce book : Why bother?

Hi All,

After finally taking a plunge and singing up to farcebook , I find my account already under review for not posting a valid picture of me, even though they my mobile phone number,  my e-mail and date of birth...

My first picture  of chancellor Vok of the Koobe commonwealth was NOT acceptable :

Neither was my second of Emperor Esther II of the Martian Empire :

And this one of King Fak El Fak of the Svinge is under review;

His "native"  appearance is like this:

Although most species encounter him like this  :

How DARE Fwacebook discriminate against the Chancellor of the  Lagomorphs ,  the Emperor of the Martian Empire &  the King of the Svinge!!

Best speech ever

Hi All,

Britain could have made a peace treaty with Nazi Germany in 1940;  Europe was conquered and America isolationist . Russia had signed agreement with Germany and Japan was happy to take whatever she wanted in Asia and the Pacific. Britain and her Empire  (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, half of Africa and many other places)  were alone. The appeasers wanted to have a soft brexit and do a deal .Churchill said no and promised a war to the death :

 And here is a famous historians analysis  of Churchill :

Both my paternal and maternal grandparents fought one way or the other defeating the armies of darkness that represented Nazism and the axis powers. Thank God that Churchill and the British nation decided to fight this tyranny , rather than surrender to what would have been a real dark age of mankind.

My grandparents riddle

Hi All,

Being middle eastern my grandparents liked proverbs, sayings and riddles.

Here is one of them  ( hint: in relation to running a business) :

It costs nothing

But it is priceless

Thoughts in comments below!

The rational for alien invasions

Hi All,

Sci fi movies often give us the  alien invasion drama . Sometimes this is done in a subtle fashion and sometimes in a not too subtle fashion of big ticket guns blazing type dramas . But in what we could call real life, exactly why would aliens invade.

Let's take a few of the usual reasons given in sci fi:

1. Resources - Yet as we are constantly being told we are approaching peak everything, whether it is oil, gold, trees or fish fingers. But conversely the solar system is a treasure trove of what is for us unlimited natural resources. There's more water on one moon of Saturn, than the entire earth, more natural gas and hydrocarbons on another moon. One small asteroid can contain millions of tons of iron, platinum and other precious or rare earth metals. So no Alien would actually need to go to the trouble of actually invading earth.
2. Genetics - The general plot line here is aliens inter breeding with humans to create hybrids or to harvest human parts for some nefarious scheme or to save their race. Except that unlike Captain Kirk, it is highly unlikely that aliens would be biologically compatible with aliens- even ones with green skin and big breasts - and quite why they'd want to make half alien humans is rather a mystery in this context.
3. The Imperial megalomaniac -  An alien race with a warrior culture that goes around conquering for the fun of it. I could accept this to a certain degree. There is , after all, no correlation between scientific advancement and moral good. If you don't believe me, look at Nazi Germany. The most technologically advanced state in Europe and maybe the world at the time,  for example even in defeat in 1945, Germany was creating fairly advanced rockets and even the Americans and Russians  took German scientists to get them to work, yet the ideology of the Nazis was of course based on genetic purity, eugenics, conquest and  everything else that we would consider to be morally reprehensible .
4. The Invasion from within- I rather like this one because it touches on something that is going from science fiction to science fact- namely the rise of artificial intelligence and thus the philosophical question of what is life? But it is often portrayed as the AI or robots dominating , controlling or otherwise killing human beings. What of something different wherein AI engage in civil rights or suffragette type struggle or action?
5.  The refuges - I can think of two really good films wherein aliens aren't conquerors, but have arrived as refugees and are trying to survive on earth, either by cohabiting with humans or being forced into a ghetto. I  quite like this concept .
6. The original species- I think of Dr Who and the Sirulians /Sea Devils. The idea that there was a reptile type species which went into hibernation when catastrophe struck.  The only thing is I wish that the writers hadn't totally cast them as monsters. I think that they were more sophisticated than that, but it would be interesting to do a reverse of this : what if humans went into hibernation and after millions of years reawoke to discover that insects were know a dominant intelligent speices ? How would we react ?

Well that's all I can think of, can you add any others in the comments or add thoughts to mine?

World Cup

Hi All,

Are we out of it yet?

The war over Lunch : pre drinks

Hi All,

I was totally rushed off my feet, although my new found companion was helping out and surprisingly good at mopping floors, chopping vegetables , pot washing oh and  cooking, plus she was bloody attractive with a body that would make any heterosexual man or lesbian burn with lust, especially when she showed her fantastic ,ahem, well when she was kneeling to scrub the tiles that needed cleaning ;  it wasn't hells kitchen, but heaven's kitchen. 

I discovered there was only the two of us on the job, which also meant we also had to serve drinks before the meal. How could any of us waiter in chef whites? This didn't matter much for my companion as her purple cloth - the standard Martian clothing consists of one long piece of cloth specially wrapped around the body to knee length - didn't seem to be affected by the various smells of a kitchen. In fact she still smelt of that wonderful sensation you get when smelling fresh baking bread, but as for me, that was a different story. The answer was a smart piece of tech- a suit which changed from chef whites to waiter's clothing every time I left the kitchen to the dining room.

The ocean dining room was one of those things that you get used to after a while. It was like stepping into a sunlit sea, in every direction. There was no obvious signs of glass and whatever it was holding back the water , it was utterly opaque. You could see dozens of fish, from those multi coloured tropical ones to big tiger sharks, coral reefs and all the stuff one fines in a Attenborough- bot documentary.  It had occurred to me that this could be a star trek style 'holo deck', but apparently it was all real and not some holographic projection, which would explain the sharks helping themselves  to a baby whale or whatever it was they were tearing apart and some other aquatic life forms mating just behind the coral reef.  The only thing in the room, in the centre,  was a dinner table and two chairs for the guests.  I didn't look down because, it was as if you were walking on water with each footstep producing a tiny wave, probably like chucking a pebble into a pond.

It took two of us to carry in the drinks. I was carrying a large silver tray upon which rested two enormous gold, jewelled encrusted gemstones and my companion- who I hadn't learned her name - a silver tray with a Nebuchadnezzar  of Vintage  Martian Red.  From my understanding of Martian - the language exam is a part of nsturalised citizenship- I gathered the wine was bottled some 67  million years ago. Old as the dinosaurs.

Martian red is , like the planet itself, rust red and extremely potent to humans. We'd probably classify it as a port ,with whisky type alcohol strength.

There was one other figure in the room and that was Her Imperial Majesty Emperor and Supreme Autocrat Esther II. I have no idea why Martians choose to have human names. It's one of life's mysteries . Esther was a beautiful woman, as most of her kind were, olive skinned and a mop of ebony curly hair  ,  probably in her late thirties ,  but her halo was much brighter and her wings rainbow esque ,  like that of a pirate's parrot, her body wrapped in a purple cloth. She seemed to be watching the sharks eat.

'The French chef'  she explained '  cooked a , how do you say :  a "shit meal", so a meal was made of him. Or her. I forget this gender fluid, stuff, but those sharks are all for equality., they'll eat anything '.

My hands were shaking and I was desperately trying not to wet myself ,  my speech came out as one does when gurgling tcp.

' well put the wine and one goblet  on the table . It seems our guest will not arrive. But I shall need a bigger room as we have several other guests to entertain.  Alice - so that's her name-  if you don't mind , the relevant information is being dispatched to you now'.

'Yes indeed , that suggestion is excellent'.

Shabbat Shalom Friday

Hi All,

Open thread as usual !

Shabbat Shalom!

The war over lunch

Hi All,

Prologue

They needed a Brit . I said was that I  was a chef.  That was perfect. I'd only worked at Burger Queen in Dudley, but I had an NVQ level 1 in cooking and hospitality. That was fantastic they said. Before I knew what I was doing, I had become a fully fledged Imperial Citizen and assigned to Her Imperial Majesty's Royal Barage as a Chef for English cuisine. It was intense , but rewarding work and frankly the aliens looked after their human subjects well, probably better than any human government did,  allowing freedom of religion, an excellent healthcare, education, retirement and jobs system: there was no unemployment , no chavs and almost no crime whatsoever, people lived an average of about 150 years and that life expectancy was increasing with every generation. Every citizen also got shares in the Imperial Company Plc, the dividends  roughly worth  5,000 Ducats. I checked this out. That's something like £20,000,000 ! Today it is worth £50,000,000 thanks to a pound that's gone down the toilet. 

All this talk of war you see between Mars and the Yanks. Because Britain always supports the Yanks, we or rather they have been dragged into it as well. None of this bothered me right now :war or not I had to think about prepping the Yorkshire pudding. Surprisingly so many of our alien friends enjoyed Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding, so much so the French chef was busy twiddling his thumbs all day. Or at least that's what I'd heard on the grapevine. Another rumour was that she'd been assigned to the Imperial Hareem. Not that was such a bad thing. Afterall the Martians or whatever anyone calls them are Angels and the picture of perfect beauty, not only that but they smell beautiful as well. I guess that's why they are also called the Fragrance, because something to do with ferry moans.

'Chef of the English'  she said in that funny English, but  Mediterranean sing song type accent .

'Yes? ' I gasped  at the ten foot tall woman in front of me.

I still do that  when I smell and see one of them. They are literally Angels, male and female , replete with humanoid body , halo and wings, which led to numerous wacko pscyos back on earth denouncing them as demons controlled by the devil in disguise or some other crap, which incidentally partially fuelled the war cries ,  with the exception of their feet which looked more like some kind of a cross between what you'd find on a chicken and an eagle. Apparently the Cambridge boffins had deduced they were some kind of evolutionary fusion of birds and mammals, or some kind of duck billed platypus  but who knows.

'You are to be moved to the Imperial house of this ship and are to cook this menu for Her Majesty and guest '  as she handed me a scroll, sealed in wax with the imprint of the Emperor herself. 'Come along there is much to do, the food is to be served in the ocean room and we have not much time for this light lunch' .

'OK' I muttered dumfounded.

The road to war

Hi All,

The Bahar Khusboo or Springtime Fragrance,  as the Martians were known, had only ever colonised one planet: their own. Mars had once been the centre of their civilisation, especially their religion,  from which they explored the cosmos. Then one day they found themselves at war with a vicious civilisation. The war itself lasted for several million years, during which Mars itself was thought lost in the space time vortex. The Bahar eventually won this war and went on to forge a vast empire of several different universes, although they lived on giant orbitals and stations. Recently they had discovered a temporal dimensional wormhole. To their astonishment they had found their long lost planet and began to rebuild it. The humans that had already considered Mars to be their home were allowed to stay. In fact human Martians have a far better life under Bahar rule than under any human government, by any metric or index you'd care to ask for and despite the perpetual propaganda from Earth, 99.9% of Martian humans wanted to remain Imperial Citizens.

The primary source of conflict between Earth and Mars was what the Americans called 'freedom of navigation', this doctrine clashed with interstellar law. In brief interstellar law said that a planetary government had jurisdiction over the planet's orbit, in the same way on Earth nation states had territorial waters and economic exclusive zones. In turn this meant that any ships passing through this orbit could be liable to taxes, tolls and insurance requirements.  America and other Earth governments rejected this idea as they did not want to hinder the trade between themselves and the various colonies on the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus ,Neptune or the Plutiods. Thus in the past couple of years a dangerous game of chicken had been played between Mars and Earth shipping companies  passing through Mars orbit. In exasperation the Bahar decided to build a ring around their planet's orbit, so space craft had no choice but to dock, pay the tolls, taxes, fees and insurance covers on route to the other planets.

Madman theory or just mad?

As ever Trump is a figure of polarisation and the left's lightening rod . It's difficult to be balanced in such a partisan  atmosphere and or an environment wherein one has to be for or against a particular subject matter, lest you be branded medieval style as an evil Trump bigot or a   traitorous globalist.

There are several things to note ,though, and factually 

1. The US was the one who created the current international order after the second world war,  has benefited from it enormously and of course dominates the key institutions that were created as a result, such as the IMF, Bretton Woods (which made the global currency the US Dollar in all but name) , the world bank and the UN.  These were NOT imposed externally by someone else onto the US, but were created by her and for her benefit.

2. The trade deficits of the US don't matter to the US as they do in other countries  and this is partly why they are there . This is because the dollar is the global currency of trade. Hence the US can impose sanctions on any country and others fall in line. But more importantly when a country runs a massive trade deficit it either has to borrow to pay for what it needs in the short term , but   eventually  ends up facing a balance of payments crisis where that funding dries up and the balance snaps back into a realistic equilibrium . The US does not have to worry about any of this ,  because of their currency, so in extremis can borrow from itself at low cost.

3. The US heavily subsidises it's own agricultural base as does the EU and most other  nations. Likewise anything deemed to be a strategic concern to a sovereign state is going to get more attention or support from a state. There is no country on earth who applies a purely free trade regime as envisioned by Adam Smith. 

4.  America and Europe , Canada etc have pretty low tariff barriers in non agricultural  areas . Therefore it is worth the President asking why does the world not buy enough of our products ?  

5.Furthermore tariffs and subsidies are negated by multinational companies. Rather than export vehicles to America from Japan or Germany,  simply make the vehicles in America (which is what happens).  The only thing is that the profits from these multinationals return back to the mother country.  As people may or may not know the American tax regime is complex and has a higher rate of corporate tax than other governments impose. Thus American multinational  companies do not repatriate all of the profits from overseas subsidiaries and this in turn effects the balance of payments statistics.

Finally  is Trump engaging in the "madman"  theory of diplomacy or is he just mad?  I personally think he is simply acting as if international diplomacy is another reality tv show or New York property deal. In short he has to be the centre of gravity and also to win, but not just win, but be the only one standing while whoever is in his way is lying on the floor out cold. 

 This is also reflected in his desire to be lauded as an imperial figure , hence his delight when certain states have rolled out a massive red carpet and his personalized view of other heads of state, who are called by first names and analysed on whether they're strong or weak : "Justin", "Emanuel" and "school mam" ....along with a volcanic temperament which quickly changes from positive to outright hostile if he feels he's been slighted or challenged.  But alongside this is some massive self regard that thinks everything is like a New York property deal that he can win.  Unfortunately not all of the world's problems or just American problems can be solved that way .

Shabbat Shalom

Hi All,

Shabbat Shalom and good wishes to one and all...

Can kicking down the road

The European Union is often described by Euroskeptics as a EUSSR, akin to the old Soviet Union (presumably without the nukes and army).  If that's the case where are we timeline wise with 'our' version of the USSR ? I would say that we are probably in the early 1980s :  despite economic stagnation , the EU is still there, muddling through  and it looks as stable as ever if one believes the propaganda of the press and the BBC. Europe has a new, young and charismatic figure head. Not Gorbachev but Marcon. He is seen as a reformer against the old guard, so I guess Merkel is the Brezhnev of the situation. Underneath the surface things are different : whether it is the east Europeans in revolt, the Brexit decision or the problems of the single currency,which haven't and will never go away until the EU becomes a USA of Europe . The EU is very much like the stagnant USSR of the 1970s and 1980s and it is going to have to change or die. It looks like it is going to die, not with a whimper, but a bang. It all depends on how far Italy, Poland, Hungary and the rest are pushed around. The answer is - looking at Brexit - there will be a lot of pushing around. Doesn't matter how big you are, unless you are Germany , the invulnerable country, the rest can get kicked around by the EU.

Yet here in Britain, it is certain that the powers that be have decided that we are to remain in the EU in all but name. In fact the current proposals are actually worse than if we remained as full memebers. Maybe that is the point, so remainers can say ' hey this is the best deal and it's worse than staying in. So let's stay in'. The alternative is that May and her entourage really believe the guff they're coming out with. That's even more scary to be honest.  But let's say that we leave on the latest fudge of a fudge of a fudge. We end up following most EU rules, have the ECJ and the EU Council of Ministers setting policy, all of these organs without British votes. That is surely one way to continue to fuel Euroskeptism.  

Just also think that once a referendum - binding or not- is freely ignored and butchered to the point of not even bothering- then democracy ceases to work. In our country we obey the rules, no longer because we are DEFERENT to the elites, but because we know that if those who govern us cock things up, the removal van is there the day after the general election. In short one party is chucked out and another comes in. If that lot are crap, then the other lot get another go.  If and when the elite ignores this, then our whole constitutional system is in trouble.

But will the EU implode before Mrs May can do another fudge ? That's a tough one, as both seem to be able to keep things afloat and kick the can long enough down the road...

My solution to these issues .

Why some more fudge.

Yum.

The sketch that drove Corbynites crazy

When Tracy Ullman did this sketch on her comedy show last week, it sent Corbyn acolytes mad with conspiracy theories and claims of political bias ( which is kinda the point of satire and comedy). This begs the question :  do socialist types have any sense of humour ?

Ted for Pope?

Hi All,

Much to my delight, I see that the comedy  Father Ted is coming back as a musical and this time it will focus on the Irish Priest - who drinks, smokes and swears - become pope of the catholic church.  Of course we in the Jewish Community could do a similar thing. Chief Rabbi : the Musical anyone?