DUFF & NONSENSE!

Alex Salmond for Prime Minister - of Britain!

Yesterday I watched Alex Salmond face a lengthy barrage of questions from various Scottish politicians and I was truly impressed.  First of all, he answered all the questions with no ducking or diving and he remained calm and controlled throughout.  According to the headlines in 'the prints', the days of 'Mrs. McWhinge' are truly numbered.  Well done, Alex, and when you have sorted the Jocks out, come south and sort us out, too!

No more Scotland the brave, more like Scotland the bonkers!

During these cold, wet, boring days, thank God for the Salmond vs. Sturgeon claymore fight!  It's even better and bloodier than Celtic vs. Rangers!  I am unable to take sides because both participants strike me as ghastly people!  Alas, I do feel sorry for Scotland and the 'Jocks' who surely deserve better than this in the way of political leadership!  Perhaps, if this is the best that not-so-bonny Scotland can offer then maybe they should consider ditching their so-called 'independence' and return to full partnership with the Anglos.  At least they would then be able to agree on one thing - the Anglos are ghastly!

Sorry, sorry, sorry!

Er, for my absence, that is!  Alas, I have been on funeral duty - no, not mine! - for a very old and dear friend.  'SoD', bless his cotton socks, drove all the way down here to take us to the venue.  I was asked to say a few words but don't ask me what I said!  I did not prepare a eulogy, I simply made it up as I went along, so at least it came from the heart and from the memory of many good times in the past.

Farewell, Marcus, you will be missed enormously!

The Sunday Rumble: 21.2.21

Squabbles inside No. 10, so no change there then!  Turbulence in Downing Street as another Vote Leave aide departs | The Spectator.   It's 'handbags at dawn' inside No.10. as most of the PM's advisors are too busy bashing each other to waste any time actually advising Boris.  Not, I hasten to add, that advising Boris is likely to have much effect!  'Bozzer' does it his way, er, when he can be bothered!

 

Whatever happened to 'Wotsisname'?   Suddenly, there was no Trump!  No pics of his magnificently quaffed hair!  No close-ups of his childishly pouted lips.  How he must be hating anonymity!  Ohdearwhatapitynevermind!

 

Farewell, Meghan.   No reason to ever come back.  Nobody will miss you!

 

The ever-excellent Julie Burchill hits it on the head:   The headline to her latest piece in The Telegraph says it all:

   "When will Remainers admit they were wrong about Brexit?"

When hell, or the EU, freezes over, I suspect!

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Off tomorrow to attend a funeral of an old and very dear friend

 

 

No more rumbles 

 

 

 

No, that bloody-bloody 'Covid-thingie' didn't get me!

It wouldn't have the presumption to 'off' the world's greatest blogger - and I heard that!

Anyway, I am, sort of, back upstairs in front of my computer even though I don't have much to say - except to offer a 'yuuuuuuuge' thank you to my readers who kept checking in.  I really do appreciate your loyalty.  It has been am extra-ordinary Winter.  The appearance is that the world just juddered to a halt, although, of course, it did nothing of the sort!  It's just that 'the players' simply kept their heads down and their cards even closer to their chests whilst the rest of us just plodded on as we prayed for the first signs of Spring.  Not much sign of it here but at least we're not buried in snow as so many of my 'Yankee-doodle' friends are!

It is, of course, a highly dangerous time because there is nothing the evil-doers like better than for us, living in the few remaining democracies, to take our eyes off the ball thus leaving them free to conduct their malpractices.  Alas, I cannot offer you much in the way of informed opinion given that for the last few weeks I have hardly bothered to read a newspaper - mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!  However, I am back on watch now so you can expect a (fairly!) steady stream of opinion from now on which will, of course, be of my usual standard - yeeeeeeeeeeeeees, quite!

 

 

 

Computers! Don'cha hate 'em?

Well, I do, especially when I knock out one of my usual brilliant and witty posts and the bloodybloodybloodybloody useless machine fails to publish it!

"I shall return", when my temper has cooled!

A dangerous game, but me no buts

Jermey Warner right on it like a car bonnet ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/02/05/vaccine-success-may-exception-rule-comes-state-activism/

t must have been through gritted teeth that Kwasi Kwarteng, as one of his first acts as the new Business Secretary, this week published a consultation document on state aid. As an ardent free marketeer, Kwarteng belongs very much to the Ronald Reagan school of thought on such matters, or rather, he used to. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language”, Reagan opined back in the Eighties, setting the tone for the next several decades of neo-liberal policy making, “are ‘I’m from the Government and I’m here to help’”. 

Coorrrr, that's music to my ears, I'd forgotten that one!  And now it comes back with all its resounding glory ...

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the Government and I’m here to help'"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhYJS80MgYA

But.  Why does there have to be a but?  But is bad ...

But the world has changed, and Kwarteng with it. Being a free marketeer today means something quite different; following the example of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore – often held out as a shining example of small state capitalism in action, but in reality one of the most activist and protectionist governments on the planet – there is a sense in which we are all interventionists now.

Oh dear.  Then next up he "buts the but", negate the negative, good! ...

As it happens, there is not much in the consultation that would seriously worry believers in the old ideology. “We will not, of course, return to antiquated command and control methods of economic management, or encourage wasteful use of public money by propping up failing businesses”, Kwarteng says in a foreword.

Indeed, reading this document, you wonder how it was that “level playing field” considerations came to be such a totemic issue in the Government’s negotiations with the EU, as it would seem that the UK intends to abide not just by the principles of the EU state aid regime, but also by much of its underlying detail – a case of taking back control in order not to use it.

Blimey, now a nonetheless, aka he buts the but of the but.  How many negative of the negatives is that, ah, bad ...

Nonetheless, nobody could mistake the distinct shift in tone, already heavily advertised by Boris Johnson, who has described himself as a “Brexity Hezza”. Michael Heseltine, it will be recalled, wanted to intervene before breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The apparent success of the Government’s vaccine strategy seems wholly to support the new approach. By partnering with the private sector, the Government has managed to spawn a whole new industry in vaccine production. The UK has always excelled in vaccine research and development, but it has substantially relied on global supply chains for the doses themselves, as indeed for delivery of much else besides. 

Necessity has changed that balance, encouraging the government to believe it can repeat the trick in multiple different industries in pursuit of its levelling up and zero carbon agenda. It would be wise to tread carefully.

The swing back to more interventionist strategies is in part merely a cyclical matter. Globalist principles are being challenged almost everywhere, not least China, which having done so well out of 40 years of explosive growth in international trade, now pursues a “dual circulation” economy which targets self sufficiency in almost everything from computer chips to aviation and bioscience.

Oh that's butty bad.  Back and forth goes Jeremy, hedging this way and that, shape shifting like a fortune teller who sounds plausible but actually says nothing!  These MSM pundits, how do they get away with it, imagine if I was equivocal like that!  Then ...

Covid, it would seem, may end up performing much the same role as the Second World War in ushering in a new era of interventionism and deliberately pursued self sufficiency. When the pendulum swings, as it plainly is at the moment, it is hard to resist.

A less efficient economy where duplication and protectionism become the norm may be a price Western electorates are prepared to pay for a greater sense of national resilience.

The other danger is that interventionist policies end up, as they did in the UK in the years after the War, in greater welfarism, in profligate attempts to pick industrial winners, in pork barrel investment, and in state bungs to save otherwise obsolete jobs.

It’s a slippery slope once industry believes itself to be underwritten by state aid and orders. Far from catalysing economic advancement, it can have the opposite effect in holding it back.

And that's the awful butty truth.  History is indeed repeating itself, as I said it would, Covid is like WWII.  We are in 1944, the beast is not dead yet, but we're nearly there.  And then we'll have the long slow decline and fall of a hyperactive, over-reaching state, the 1945-79 period, to follow.

I'll but you no buts.

SoD

Lions lead by donkeys

BoJo has ordered you to clap for Captain Tom at 6pm ...

Gonna do it?

I tell you I am not.

If BoJo had handled the Covid crisis as competently as SE Asia, NZ, and Oz, Captain Tom might still be alive.

The attempt to bask in the reflected sunlight of Captain Tom - and doctors and nurses - by being the cheerleader of applause, while having been the orchestrator of 100,000 deaths through criminal negligence (not including Capt Tom) and so as to deflect and distract from that fact, is vile politics beyond words.

The Poppy Appeal was renamed from the Earl Haig Fund, as the wiki article describes, because the people couldn't stomach the vile attempt by that Field Marshal to launder his negligent atrocities ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haig_Fund

Sensible people.  Let's see what today's peeps are made of at 6pm this afternoon.

SoD

P.S.  This about sums it up! ...

 

 

Blue socialism: the manifesto is out now!

We've eagerly awaited the real meaning of BoJo's administration, the action not the words.  Might the "levelling-up" and "backing winners" verbiage have been a great smoke screen for "the Singapore of Europe", like Dave Cam's "Big Society" and "hug-a-hoody" were while he steadfastly repaired Blighty through austerity and shrinking the state as a percentage of GDP?

Sadly no ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/02/03/kwarteng-hails-dynamic-state-aid-system-replace-eu-rules/

Having backed losers in the 1970's, like British Leyland, British Steel, British Rail, British Telecomm, Coal, Gas, Electricity, Water et al, and thereby sustained their failure and bankrupted the country, the real plan this time round is indeed to destroy the productive base by "backing winners" and bankrupt the country ...

Victoria Hewson, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: "It is concerning that the government sees intervention and subsidisation in the economy as under-pinning our post-Covid recovery, as welcome as it is to see a move away from the EU bureaucracy.

"Governments are notoriously bad at picking winners, whether that’s in the UK or at the EU level. Using taxpayers’ money to prop up failing businesses is likely to distort competition, slow down innovation and favour incumbents."

Those two paragraphs say it all.  We have cut the final ties to Thatcherism by leaving Maggie's Single Market, Four Freedoms, and State Aid rules.  The straitjacket is off, the state can let rip and ruin us again, this time by pretending that dumbass pols with zero track record can outperform capitalism in the role of investment banking.

And the true meaning of "Take back control" is revealed in all its grisly truth: no control for you and me, but instead, unfettered "Take back control" for blue, yellow and red socialism, with all the attendant death and destruction.

Good call 23rd June 2016.

SoD

Fractal failure: the DNA of the state

It's astonishing how states, federations and confederation's always blame the private sector for their own incompetence.

The EU blames AstraZeneca, the NHS blames the pharmas for ripping them off, the local authorities blame the cladding companies for Grenfell.

Do you think a private healthcare operator blames the pharmas when it gets ripped off? Or a construction company when its sub-contractors rip it off? Or do you think they give their procurement teams and inspectors a kick in the pants and sack a few incompetents to make them do better next time?

The state failed as an operator, so we stopped it doing all the stuff it failed at doing in the 1970's: car manufacturing, coal mining, steel manufacturing, transport, gas, electricity, water and telecoms, all basket cases when the state ran them.

So then the state said, "OK, we'll procure from the private sector instead." And they ducked that up as well! Not only could they not do the do, they couldn't procure the do either!

Then get this: they gave up on procurement and decided to "procure the procurer", in other words, they subcontracted the procurement team. And they ducked that up and blamed the procurer they procured! ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/01/31/britain-give-ireland-priority-sharing-covid-vaccines/

Meanwhile, the outsourced NHS procurement system failed miserably, as private firms relying on “just-in-time” delivery faced surging demands and collapsing global supply chains. Even the pandemic PPE stockpile had been outsourced to a private company. Their warehouses lacked key equipment like gowns, and 45 per cent of their supplies had expired on the shelf. Resultant shortages were linked to over 8,000 cases and 126 deaths among health and social care workers.

(That article, btw, is a pure douche-bag blue socialist complaining about the failure of the slimmed down "regulatory state" on precisely its failure to procure, while then concluding that the state should return to its 1970's roots as full operator of the means of production and distribution - the even worse failure of full socialism that once was! You couldn't make up the stupidity. And that's a DT article, imagine what Starmer and crew have got planned!)

Perhaps next the state will try to "procure the procurer of the procurer".  An infinite regress of underachievement: fractal failure by design.

Instead, why not try getting rid of the state completely and giving the tax, borrow and print wedge to the citizen to go procure? Then have the pols create laws, the original and only domestic worth of the pol, to protect the consumers from rip-offs? Removed from serial failure in production they might have learned what incompetence and malfeasance actually is, and as poacher-turned-gamekeeper they might be in an ideal position and useful in creating laws to protect us from the rip-offs they once foisted upon us.

Funded Libertarianism still has a domestic role for the pols. We don't have to exterminate them.

SoD