Shabbat Shalom!

 Hi All,

Shabbat Shalom!

Pubs are being treated like the miners

 Hi All,

Back in the 1980s the decision was made to crush the coal industry. There were two reasons for this :

1. The Coal industry was heavily unionised and led by ultra militant and far ,far left ideologues. Union barons no longer cared about their charges, but only about revolution and ideology. In the 1970s this leadership bought down an elected Conservative government by strikes. Naturally a new conservative government under Mrs Thatcher was determined never to let that happen again.

2. The Coal industry was inefficient and a product of the 19th century. As a fuel source it belonged to a bygone age. Today you could also add it was an environmental hazard.

Today we have a similar situation with the pub industry. This may sound hysterical , but I think it is something worth saying.   But it has to be said that , unlike the coal industry, the Pub industry is actually viable. True there's been a lot of pub closures in the past 20 years, due to consolidation by the big nationals, either pubcos or breweries ,  but also in that time period there's been a growth of independents and microbrewers. 

Then covid came along and the decision seems to have been taken to sacrifice the pub industry in the same way the coal mining one was. Now in the case of the coal mining industry there was as noted above both a political motivation and an economic one .

In the case of the pub industry there is, I think, a clear bias against pubs from the scientists and the medical profession. They are always calling for minimum pricing of alcohol, increased taxes and of course they got their way with the smoking ban. Their motivation is of course to see every pub as being similar to those in city centres on programmes like 'brit cops'  in which drunks pick fights and get arrested by the coppers. It's all reality  tv gone a bit mad. Therefore what a brilliant opportunity to nip all of this in the bud, by destroying the whole industry itself and not just the wild side of city centre pubs. 

In the case of the politicians, I don't think there is actually a bias against pubs, in that the government is actually hostile to them in the sense of Mrs Thatcher and the miners. It is more of a product of the Conservative Laisse Faire approach to businesses, forgetting perhaps that this is okay enough if it were left to free markets. The destruction of the pub industry is happening as a result of government policy toward a virus. It is as if the scientific community has told the government to sacrifice the pub industry if they want to open up other bits of the economy or ,say, get kids back to school. 

Why do I say destroying the industry, when Tier 2 allows for pubs to open with 'substantial meals' and Tier 3 can do takeaways.

Firstly not all pubs serve food and traditionally pubs never did. But even if 'wet' pubs did decide to do so, it means more expense for the owner. Having to hire a kitchen team or if you are doing this yourself the necessary regulatory food hygiene certification, plus knoweldge of the regulations surrounding operating a kitchen so the HSE  don't shut you down . Plus you need money to build a kitchen and equipment. As for takeaways, the market for them is saturated and I doubt would be much of a lifeline for pubs that do do food- if you want fish and chips you go to a chippy. Fish and chips in a pub is different if you want some time of service or sit down meal.

Secondly -and this applies to all pubs in all the tiers - is the new regulations and necessity to make the pub covid secure. In terms of the kitchen risk assements will allow one maybe two chefs. In the front of house you need one at the bar, one monitering the floor (e.g. toilets and making sure people wear masks when not seated), someone on the door to take the addresses etc, someone to bring the food out and someone to clean the tables and take the plates away. You can see that is a minimum and is a lot of staff.  Add to this that pubs now have to have tables 1.5 metres apart . That means we had a seating  of 65 reduced to 30. Pubs have peak times, but if you have to employ these staff you can't just send them home if it is not busy. The end result is that the payroll exceeds revenue, which has dropped by about 40-50%, but the wage bill is now 120% of that turnover  per week. In short we are better off closing than opening and that was when we had Tier 1 restrictions. 

So there you have it . We are being well and truly shafted and it isn't going to get any better. There may well be a boost for Christmas, but I suspect given the loosening of restrictions over the five day period, the country will all be in tier 3 by January or they'll be another lockdown.  

Lockdown North was another country. Lockdown South centre of the universe

 Hi All,

Last month I mused about how we were steadily going into a national lockdown by default and yesterday's Tier restrictions more or less confirm that, because at the beginning of lockdown 2 it was only 'the north' as the London media like to think of the rest of the country outside of London and the Home Counties. Having 'the North' in lockdown- and a lot of it has been continually since March- was perfectly OK, but now that the South East of England is also in either Tier 2 or 3, it's become a national emergency and people are talking about a dictatorship. 

When it was 'the north' in lockdown it was seen as something that was going on in another  faraway country . The reporting by national newspapers was like what you got from people reporting from Peru when a natural disaster happens. Concern for the natives, but smugness that it ain't happening here.  But now it is affecting the South East of England and London the hysterical factor has been notched up by billion. It's as if Northerners can and should have the problems and suffering that comes with a lockdown and it  don't count when it comes to their civil liberties being curtailed or ability to go to the pub. That's them being immature and chippy you see.

Whilst Manchester's Andy Burnham is easily dismissed as a 'chippy northerner' , who is either being 'political' or  should 'get on with it for the good of the country' , for his fight against Manchester lockdown, London's Khan (of the same political party) is seen as one of those brave heroes campaigning for London's right not to be in the worst of all lockdown tiers , as London is 'the heartbeat and economic powerhouse of Britain' with 'millions' of jobs at issue (the north also has millions of jobs). This might explain why London is only in Tier 2, as for government logic it should actually be in Tier 3. It's okay for the North to be in perpetual lockdown, but not the South East seems the logic. 

Sometimes I can see the SNP argument about this country being dominated by 'Westminster'  and it's London bubble.

The newsfeed and politicians of yesteryear

 Hi All

A news feed from the 1960s :

When I first saw this I assumed it was a comedy sketch as today i don't think they'd be able to use the term "Japs" for Japanese people nor make a light hearted joke about the wives shopping and nattering. Today they'd also moan about the guy smoking , the fact they're hunting, have guns  and that he's got a big house with a Labrador retriever . But no pathe was a news company and yes there was a Lord Home (pronounced Hume), a Scottish  Conservative  who became Prime Minister, even though he was an earl, who in true aristocratic tradition said he wouldn't want to be Prime Minister because he did his sums with match sticks. He was one of  the last of the traditional elite of Britain and sadly what was a lot of good in public life .

Lord Home is clearly a man who represents the old governing class at its best. ... He is not ambitious in the sense of wanting to scheme for power, although not foolish enough to resist honour when it comes to him. ... He gives that impression by a curious mixture of great courtesy, and even if yielding to pressure, with underlying rigidity on matters of principle. ... This is exactly the quality that the class to which he belongs have at their best because they think about the question under discussion and not about themselves.

Utopia impossible

 Hi All,

At the basic level the left (the genuine believers) see all the bad in the world and want to make it 'right' and 'just', Exactly how we define these terms is for now not irrelevant, but suffice to say that the left want the planet to be turned into a secular utopia. I write about the 'genuine believers' because there's an element within the far left that simply like chaos and perpetual revolution : if it is not  student riots in 'the summer of love' in the 1960s , it now  involves Green issues, but it's more far left ideology than any concern for people or planet that drives these people to mayhem. For them even a utopia wouldn't be good enough, even if everything was green and the whole country was powered by solar wells, Greta was President of the World, but we can leave them aside for now. 

Creating or living in a secular utopia seems like a noble and great endeavour, indeed in Judaism we have an idea that the Messiah will come and create a divinely ordained utopia on earth. Other religions look to heaven as a form of utopia. However it seems impossible for us human beings to be able to create one on our own, Indeed as history has shown, the further left a government the more oppressive, murderous and dystopian has the place where they're in control become.  The further they try to make a utopia, the further they go from one and this is historical not 'oh well we've never really had a proper socialist government anywhere'  (except Russia, China, Eastern Europe, North Korea, Vietnam , Cambodia and numerous African states) . 

There is, for example, a belief on the left that the climate crisis requires a reduced human population. China tried that and has a massive population imbalance and abortion by state fiat. Taken to the ends justifying the means, they'd be death quotas, set euthanasia at a particular age and abortion after 1 child and who knows what else. The left like to think of themselves as moral and the good guys. But they also seem to have no qualms about ends justifying means. That's the scary part of the far left as once you accept that then you can do anything, no matter how bad. 

January will be the hangover from hell

 Hi All,

So the  national lockdown ends on December 2nd. In order to "save Christmas" ( but not Diwali, Rosh Hashanah, Eid etc) the lockdown will be sufficiently watered down or suspended until 1st January. Covii would like to celebrate Christmas as well you see, so he's taking a two week break. 

The agitation to 'save christmas' has nothing to do with any religious piety, but everything to do with the reality of what Christmas is to most people. It is not a religious festival for most of the nominally Christian population, but a capitalist opportunity for businesses to sell you excess amounts of food, alcohol and to get you to spend way too much money, more than you actually have so bust a credit card doing so, on presents. This is why it is deemed to be important for all sorts of business sectors. The sentimental fluff about visiting people is not why the newspapers, conservative MPs or opinion formers  want to end the lockdown, but because they need advertising revenue from companies during Christmas. Those companies often make the bulk of their profits during this time. And conservative MPs know their party is reliant on business donations. The Prime Minister doesn't want to be a scrooge. He doesn't want to stop Christmas. So instead he hopes that we can pause the virus for two weeks and then deal with it after Christmas. By which time another lockdown will be necessary. 

The trashing of the economy, businesses on their knees, record deficits and high unemployment and families split apart is, we've been told,  for a greater good. That 'greater good'? It's  making sure the NHS doesn't get to over full capacity and for the government to start deciding who gets treatment and who doesn't, To think that this tap can be switched off and then on again- lockdown- undo lockdown for Christmas -  is a joke. They either continue with some form of tier restricted lockdown and make Christmas manageable in the way we did with our festivals and Hindus have done with Diwali or go on with a full lockdown. There's zoom, facebook, All sorts of ways to connect with people. But just to pause these sacrifices - so we can have  a two week bout of drunken, glutton filled and spending more money than you've got - then go back to them- seem to me like a complete waste of time.

A return to a medieval form of government

 Hi All, 

Any student of British Government and Politics will tell you that in Britain's uncodified constitution, the executive is embodied in the Cabinet .The Cabinet is made up of the 22 most senior Secretaries of State, who come from the political party which commands a majority in the elected House of Commons, although in the past 300 years they could have been blue blooded nobles, i.e.  Dukes, Marquesses and Barons, today they are mostly commoners and MPs. The Prime Minister is merely the first among equals when it comes to big decisions. 

 The Cabinet itself is formally a Committee of the Privy Council- the Council that advised the Monarchy when England was an absolute Monarchy. The politicians would vie for power among themselves and their King or Queen. Pillow and personal talk was important. Hence being a 'groom' to the King was an important role . If you were grand keeper of the King's loo role, you were as important as a Lord Chancellor because you had the ability to speak to the King. And the office of loo role holder was often held by a noble and not a serf.  Likewise if you were a lady in waiting to the King's wife,  that would give you access to the King via the Queen who could have a lot of informal influence upon the king. Hence the power behind the throne and the machinations of medieval Monarchy. 

Now let's go and see what's happened this weekend, which would have given Henry VIII a run for his money. The media screamed that the government was 'in crisis' . And yet unlike in the recent past, it was not Government Ministers i.e. members of the Cabinet that were being sacked or who were openly briefing against one another. It was unelected advisers on one side. And on the other the Prime Ministers unelected girlfriend (not even spouse). So rather than any of this being held to public scrutiny, the way a Cabinet Minister is, we have like a Medieval Monarch's Court bedchamber fractions and machinations , the old theory of Cabinet government, replaced not with unelected advisers. But with the PM's girlfriend and her girlfriends and court fraction. You couldn't make this up. We're back in the days of Monarchy and court intrigue. And no-one elected any of them.

Mrs Jane bond, Cleopatra and dr what

 Hi all,

Following from the gender change of Dr Who, and what a success that was, we now have the news James Bond is also to have a gender and racial change to a woman of colour. Doubtless Twitter leftist types love this , after all they don't watch stuff like this but do like it in the terms of cultural wars: any strong strain male role is bad and had to be taken down in the war on patriarchy. Yes a black female gets to play a traditional masculine male  "misogynist" white role,  but when a certain Israeli Jewish actress called Gal Gadot (wonder woman) is confirmed to play Cleopatra in a forthcoming film, the Twitter mob hate the fact a role isn't being played by either an Egyptian Arab or a black person but a "white Zionist "....hmmmm. Cleo was Greek.

Rabbi Sacks 1948-2020

 Hi All,

A tremendous blow to the Jewish community is the news that chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has died at the age of 72 , of cancer. He was an intellectual and philosophical master of the Torah and a torch bearer of modern. Orthodox Judaism  whose reach went beyond the Jewish community of Britain , but also to America, Israel and the global Jewish community as well as the non Jewish world.

He will be missed .

"May Hashem comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem"

Democrats/Republicans turn the USA into dunny on the wold

 Hi All,

To my good and dear American friends

Democrats.

Republicans.

 Think of this as the American election results in the "toss up" states and you'll understand the British humour😆😆🍹🍹🍹 

Enough said:

Biden's view of Britain (American Irish)

Hi All,

Well ny paternal surname is kavanagh and just like every single Irish American I'm Irish and think I can butt my nose into problems that are bugger all to do with me.

The Irish American stereotype : diddly dum, fiddly dum, on my drums and Irish harp, with lots of whiskey , Roman Catholicism and stout - although abortions o.k. right Irish Catholic Biden ? English occupation of Ulster must end. The eu guarantees that. It's international law. America has never ignored that when it suits ..... Guinness (actually created by Protestants who forbade managers from marrying Catholics until the 1960s)  ?

The Irish American stereotype  of Britain : throw another child in the fire Lord bastard!

When Biden needs an international partner :  it's the British !

America votes

 Hi all,

Prepare for the guardian to go orgasmic if trump looses....

Buts here's a pint for American's political system which is basically today a democratic vote between the elite baby boomer gerontocracy.... 

Lockdown 2

Hi all,

Second national LOCKDOWN.  Hope everyone is ok and panic buying -it's okay Andrex alone has 100 million  loo rolls of spare capacity....