2020 Challenges

Should anyone be in any doubt that the new decade will be challenging, the Times today provides a helpful primer. No, not the 11 month Brexit negotiation which Ursula  von der Leyen has already dismissed as next to impossible and is now supported by Phil Hogan, the Trade Commissioner who expects the Government to ditch their legislation and beg for an extension to the transition period – expect the BBC to join this bandwagon, fff – but the foreign policy issue of the UK relationship with China and the future of our increasingly individualistic society. James Kirkup makes a compelling case for confronting our ambivalence to China in the shadow of ratcheting rivalry between that country and the USA and poses the question, what will it mean to the West if China can deliver sustainable growth and prosperity to hundreds of millions of people without giving them votes? Equally tellingly, reflecting upon the emergence of our permissive society in the 1960s which has led to multiculturalism, identity politics and victim culture, Melanie Phillips observes that, far from creating harmony, this hyper-individualism has destroyed social cohesion and promoted division. She laments that the young are “not taught how to think but what to think,” and that there has been a retreat from reason. Some challenges for the West, you may agree, which may relegate our future relationship with the EU to something of a side-show?  Meantime, Happy New Year!

The Christmas Irritant List 2019

I apologise for the late publication of the Christmas Irritants List for 2019 but, at the last minute, in stupendous acts of Darwinian purification, several entries on my draft list disqualified themselves during the general election process. Hopefully we shall never see them or their species again. So here they are, the remaining 2019 top 10,  in ascending order of irritation. There is no-one from Channel 4 this year and I enjoyed a much more agreeable year by not watching it but, from occasional peeks at Sky News, Beth Rigby, she of the grating elocution and ludicrous lippy, makes it in at No 10. Beth was eclipsed by another TV “personality,” Gary Winston Lineker. Surely there is little to add to Gary's mission to save world except the advice, stick to football? Lewis Hamilton keeps his place at the front of the grid for bling and another year of formulaic and insincere self-deprecation. As does St Matthew of Parris whose incessant whinging has somehow found its way into The Times and the Spectator despite the increasing desperation of his wishful thinking. Just ahead, however, is the even bigger whinger Ian Blackford whose strategy in promoting Scottish separation will surely drive us to barricade Berwick-upon-Tweed to keep out the noise.  Into the top half of the table comes the snidish winnet Ian Hislop, closely followed by Jeremy Hardy, who, according to Wikipedia, was a comedian. The talentless and squinting Claudia Winkleman eases into third place – get your hair cut pet! There was not much to choose between the Duchess of Sussex and this year’s winner but I shall give the relentlessly woke Meghan the benefit of the doubt, particularly since she and Harry are giving us all a break by keeping their royal heads down for a few weeks over Christmas – our gain is surely North America’s loss? Which leaves the winner’s podium clear for the gruesome gargoyle Elton John. What more can be said about this pompous, sanctimonious, virtue-signalling, shirt-lifter apart from expressing the hope that he keeps his self-righteous stream of consciousness to himself in 2020?

Overseas Aid

Mushroom has often questioned the wisdom of distributing, by law, 0.7% of GDP in overseas aid.  For an internationally indebted country like ours, automatically handing over huge chunks of cash to overseas good causes before properly addressing domestic priorities, for example defence, seems silly.  It is the sort of morally superior gesture which goes down well in Islington but, I suspect, cuts little ice in South Shields, Scunthorpe or Sunderland.  Indeed, the shadowy Dominic Cummings appears to have his eye on the Department for International Development, examining how that departments £13.4 billion annual budget might be better spent in furthering British foreign policy objectives.  When, as a country, we are dependent upon the goodwill of international financiers  to lend us the money to underpin our increasingly unrealistic domestic policies, it makes sense to examine how we can get more bang for a buck out of foreign aid.  One suggestion is to subordinate gift aid to foreign policy by rolling up DfID into the FCO.  Predictably, such radical thought has enraged “officials.”  Apparently, they argue, that (surprise) the foreign office are very good a diplomacy but they don’t have the “skill sets” to doll out vast quantities of public moolah.  It makes one wonder just what the job description of a DfID official looks like and to whom they are accountable?