Lockdown by Stealth

 

Have we begun another lockdown by stealth?  If nothing else, the rising uncertainty is reported to be having a significant effect on Christmas bookings in the hospitality industry. Similarly in the residential environment, the prospect of another disjointed festival looms. Like the dissident constantly in fear of a knock on the door by the secret police, we sit on the edge of the sofa waiting for the Prime Minister to interrupt the evening’s viewing with yet another grave announcement (whatever happened to Parliament for grave announcements, by the way).  Perhaps the Prime Minister knows more than he feels able to tell us and, in the interests of maintaining public morale, we should trust his judgement to get on with things on our cowering behalf.  Unfortunately, the evidence of competence is not on his side and our confidence in his authority may be misplaced.  Against the predictable chaotic response to the exhortation for the population to turn up for a free-for-all at the nearest vaccination centre and order a suitable supply of lateral flow tests, we are told that the so-called vaccine passport is essential to prevent spreading “the virus” in crowded settings.  But hang on – to get a vaccine passport and attend potential super-spreader events, I need two doses of a vaccine.  However, according to the PM, two doses of the vaccine are not enough to be effective and so I need a third booster dose. So what, for goodness sake, is the point of a vaccine passport, the qualification for which is an, ineffective, two doses when the minimum requirement appears to be three shots?

Send In The Clowns

 As the stables are cleared at Yorkshire County Cricket Club, presumably in a desperate attempt to regain favour with the English Cricket Board and, thereby, avoid bankruptcy, I note that Darren Gough has been appointed the “interim” Managing Director of Cricket.  I have never met Darren Gough although I have admired him playing cricket and putting on a creditable show to win the third series of Strictly Come Dancing.  According to Sky, he is currently enjoying a “lucrative broadcasting career.”  The closest I came to him was at New Road, the home  Worcester County Cricket Club, in June 1992 during a match between Worcestershire and Yorkshire (which Worcestershire won comfortably).  In those days, Worcestershire Members, of which I was one at the time, could sit to the side of the Members Pavilion under the visiting players dressing room balcony.  During a lull in play on the day in question, Darren Gough held forth in an extraordinary monologue from the balcony  - impressing his opinions on anyone within earshot who cared to note his pearls of wisdom.  Amongst other things, Yorkshire’s Managing Director of Cricket designate was particularly forthright about the inadequacies of the Yorkshire Committee in general and the Chairman in particular.  It is to be hoped that his new relationship with Lord Patel, the Yorkshire Chairman, will be less problematic otherwise the employment designation of “interim” may prove a hostage to fortune.

 

Life of Pi

 

Social media was awash yesterday with startling facts about a new Covid variant. With plans scarcely in place to deal with the Omicron plague, the WHO has designated a brand new threat Pi (not to be confused with Phi which will not emerge until later in the alphabet). Little is known about the Pi variant at this stage: it may be more virulent than previous variants or it may not. Symptoms could be serious or relatively mild. Either way, world leaders insisted that the public should not panic and continue their life according to current regulations. New restrictions will be imposed in due course, the Department of Health added, reassuringly. Asked about contingency planning for the Pi variant, the Government said that they were very much on the front foot and that Plan C was well developed. It is understood that radical new methods of protecting from Pi have been discovered by Government scientists working round the clock. Apparently, brown paper gives 96.37% protection against the new threat. The Department has begun covert acquisition of millions of large brown paper bags. But, in another humiliating U Turn, the Government has been forced to go cap in hand to the international marketplace since UK production of brown paper bags has been run down by serial Tory neglect. MPs on all sides described the brown paper situation as disgraceful and that Ministers had been asleep at the wheel.  In attempts to calm an increasing sense of panic the UK Health and Security Agency said that enough brown paper bags would be procured to ensure all adults could be protected and there was no need for personal stockpiling. They added that jumping into the brown paper bag and crumpling the top would keep us all safe. However, the public should wait until given specific instructions to enter into their brown paper bags, warned UKHSA, since premature donning would reduce effectiveness by up to 6.73% in lightly waxed paper and even 7.63% in plain paper, according to recent tests at Porton Down. This guidance, of course, only applies in England because Scotland and Wales have already announced contrary restrictions. If in doubt, the public should call 111 and they will tell you exactly what you can do – ever serve you right is our corporate DNA, said UKHSA.

 

 

Channel Crossing Victims

 

I don’t suppose a couple owning mobile telephones with satellite navigation facilities would, necessarily, be denied claiming that they were fleeing from persecution, war, famine and liberal intolerance.  They might well be.  On the other hand, owning a sophisticated mobile telephone and paying the bills, implies some sort of economic independence.  It must be expensive to travel across most of Europe to reach the northern shores of France, conveniently just a few miles from the draw of the United Kingdom.  I expect the insignificant cost of a foot passenger ticket on the ferry from Calais to Dover would have been welcome for the final leg of the long trans-European odyssey but most recent visitors to our channel shores have preferred more unconventional transportation.  Again, I understand, not an insignificant expense but, one assumes, a bargain into which the travellers and the boat providers entered into freely?   I doubt whether tickets for the Channel passage are issued or whether various consumer protections would be applicable in event of vendor default.  In short, if a deal looks too good to be true then it probably is so caveat emptor could be helpful advice to potential travellers in future.

Meanwhile, in UK, the bills mount up: temporary food and accommodation, medical treatment and vaccination, permanent housing, welfare support, education, and, of course, the fat salaries of the army of lawyers generously provided so that none who make it here are ever returned from whence they came, whatever the circumstances.  Indeed, less than one in 1000 of the 45000 or so known illegal immigrants has even been prosecuted  never mind dealt with, in the last couple of years.  Then add the millions we are paying our French friends to regulate their own coastline. We do not hear of the cumulative cost of all this and, of course, we could not possibly have a free discussion about the social consequences.  And yet the tide of migrants/refugees/asylum seekers/economic chancers/potential 5^th columnists, however classified for political correctness, are all, universally, “victims.”  But I just wonder, looking at the respective profit and loss, who are the real victims in this crisis?

Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner

 

It is a polling day today for the election of the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire police area occasioned by the premature departure of the previous incumbent who said something silly.  I sat in and observed the selection process for my party’s candidate.  Mere members were prevented from participation in any questioning or clarification process so each candidate, of the all-female short list of two, enjoyed a session with a single inquisitor whose benevolence afforded both copious opportunity to declare their “passion” for fighting crime and their determination to stamp out this and that and any other blight on society. Assuming the other candidates on the ballot paper are of a similar standard, I see no point in voting today.  I wondered how best to register my disgust with the whole charade and decided that it would be more effective to turn up at the polling station in the village and then spoil my ballot paper, which would, at least, be recorded, rather than just to ignore the whole process.  Anyway, it is a nice afternoon for a walk.  Meanwhile, in a nearby layby, a police constable is eating his sandwich whilst monitoring his speed detection device.

My Solution to the Fishing Dispute

 

Apparently, the issue that is driving Britain and France towards a full-on trade war is whether a pitiful number, 56 I understand, of small French fishing boats are entitled to fish in our coastal waters.  The qualification for renewing fishing rights, post Brexit, is childishly simple – prove that you have fished there before, for only a single day in the last few years, and we will renew your permit. The majority of French fishermen have found the low bar of qualification easy to surmount but a few applications have been refused.  From a French point of view, refusing a fishing permit is a prima facie breach of the Brexit Trade agreement.  From our point of view, permits have been refused only when the applicant is unable to prove that they are qualified in the first place.  The resulting feud is a pissing contest, “par excellence.”  If the consequences of escalation were not so serious, it would be very easy to laugh.  Macron, having marched his adoring electorate to the top of the hill, is not going to back down now and, from a British point of view, concession on such a nit-picking and economically insignificant point as this could prejudice our negotiating position on more important matters in the future. It will take a grand gesture, by one side or the other, to save face and move forward.  Sometimes only a bold and breath-taking “coup de theatre” will do.

Looking back on my time in the “Green Ink” environment of my previous post, I remember being startled by a security assessment on the potential future Naval Attaché for one of our Embassies overseas.  The security assessment had been submitted to my boss in Intelligence for his approval as the final arbiter in these matters.  My experience in security vetting was strictly limited to having been the subject but I expected the narrative reports I was about to check would have covered the usual ground of financial probity, political leanings, potential blackmail through homosexuality, honesty, drinking habits, gambling, debt etc, all the things that would make a potential spy stand out rather like Kim Philby didn’t.  I was, therefore surprised to read the single sentence assessment of character which had been signed by an Admiral – “I know this man!”  This indeed was a grand statement with at least two reputations standing on just four words.

It now occurs to me that little Emmanuel could learn something from this that could be helpful in resolving the dispute.  All he needs to do is to write to Boris with a bold statement, like the aforementioned Admiral, that he knows all these jolly fishermen personally and is confident that they are all good an honest “Jacques.”  Boris would have no alternative, as a gentleman, but to accept his counterpart’s word, grant the outstanding permits accordingly, and we could all then live happily ever after. Of course, zut alors, if the Macron declaration should later prove to have been economical with the truth, then that would be a matter for France to deal with and explain to the world.

 

 

Green Dreaming

 

A friend’s idle inquiry, “how much electricity does a heat pump use and how much do they cost to run,” prompted me to flick to Google on the mobile phone.  A helpful site informed me that, for an average 4-bedroom house, a heat pump with capacity 9-16 KW, depending upon the standard of insulation, would be required.  Mushroom Towers was constructed in 1996, according to the standards of the time so I suspect additional insulation and higher capacity radiators would now be required to keep us warm, even with a high capacity heat pump on continuously, as recommended.  At our age, we’d rather not feel pinched so let us assume a 16 KW pump.  That is an awful lot of electric fires on all the time.  The standard variable tariff with my current provider quotes a rate of 15.83 pence per KWH – until March 2022 when goodness knows what the cap increase will be – to say nothing of the cost of installation.  A Screwfix best-seller, rated at 12KW, would set me back £7799.99 including VAT to which should be added; the installations cost including higher capacity radiators and additional wall insulation.  Without reporting to the precision of Excel to crunch the numbers, on face value, it would seem impossible to construct a coherent business case to dispense with my trusty 24-year old gas boiler even if, according to British Gas, “we can’t get the parts any longer,” and I should need to replace it, like for like.

Although the economic case doesn’t stand up, who would say that they don’t want to live in cleaner and greener world?  But are we really confronting an existential climate emergency or is it more likely that the so-called “emergency” is only speculation of what could happen, other things being equal?  So it could be worth reminding ourselves how we arrived at this net zero race to the bottom.  The Spectator reminds us that it was Theresa May, in a throw away line at the fag end of her disastrous tenure, who committed us to reach net zero emissions by 2050.  This grand design was accepted with “minimal debate or scrutiny.”  Yet here we are, committed by our Parliament, to a “Net Zero Strategy,” but with no clear idea of the costs to individuals or the impact on their lives.  I realise that, by questioning the King’s new suit of clothes, I have become a “climate change denier,” which, as Charles Moore observes, is “a deliberately libellous term, echoing the Holocaust.”  Doubtless other paragons  of climate change virtue would simply brand me “scum,” in the vernacular of current political debate.

In truth, I do not know whether we face an existential climate crisis or not and I am certainly not well enough informed to opine on the most cost effective and socially acceptable measures we might ned to put in place in mitigation.  The debate has become so polarised that it has become impossible to reason – the politicians bound headlong on a virtuous journey, the global warmers shrieking that disaster is merely round the corner and those who are not too sure branded head-banging deniers.  Someone needs to call time out – time to stop and reflect.

Recognising the “groupthink de jour” surrounding environmentalism, Allister Heath, writing in the Telegraph, argues that, “the green challenge is too important, its implications too dramatic, to be left to an establishment that has embraced net zero as if it were a new religion.”  He suggests the public should have the final say through a referendum.  A referendum would afford the opportunity for all issues, not just the science of climate change, to be exposed and scrutinised.  Who, especially in a post-Brexit democracy, could argue with that?  Of course, we should need to fight to ensure that the establishment did not rig the question on the ballot paper but any party promising an open referendum on the momentous costs and changes inherent in the Net Zero Strategy would get my vote, and many more, I suspect.

But will our political elite, so intent upon cementing their place in the hall of virtue fame, take heed. They should do, especially if they have read Roger Scruton.  This extract from “Green Philosophy – How to think seriously about the planet” should preface all parliamentary discussion on the environment:

“The solution to the real environmental problems will always elude us, if we cast away the one human motive that is able to take over when markets fail, which is that of public spirit. But whence comes public spirit? It comes from patriotism, from love of country, from a sense of belonging and of a shared and inherited home. It comes from believing that this problem is our problem, and therefore my problem, as a member of the group. That belief disappears when anonymous bureaucracies confiscate our risks, and pretend that they can regulate them to extinction. Those commonsensical observations are all but politically incorrect, in a culture that has surrendered so much to the state, that it no longer trusts the ordinary human instincts.”

In other words, trust the people who elected you (in the privacy of the polling booth)!