Our Lady of the Bright Economic Vision!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The daily temperature graph fluctuates, but its general direction is down.  Windows and doors are still open, but the cloud cover emphasises the cooler temperatures.  At least it is not raining, and I can keep congratulating myself that I am not in the UK.

     Our Prime Minister Without a Popular Mandate has, at last, come out of hiding and given a few interviews to the local media, she doesn’t seem ready to take on the nationals with the threat of the Today Programme on BBC4 a big no, no.

     The key element in what Truss said was that, in spite of virtually all reasonable economic punditry condemning her reckless gamble on the British Economy, she had to do “what I believe is right”!  So, if I understand her correctly, she didn’t need a budgetary forecast about what she was proposing because that would have been based on informed projections and facts by proven experts, whereas what she and her wrecking chancellor were about was more to do with self-justified "belief".

     So, the lying Northern girl who has misrepresented her early life of “grinding middle class poverty” and spread her lies about a “failing school” that somehow managed to get her into Oxford University, has now reinvented herself as some sort of mystic: Our Lady of the Bright Economic Vision. 

     I imagine her as a grotesque reworking of Bernini’s sculpture of The Agony of Saint Teresa, lying back clothed in her carefully selected High Street brands (to demonstrate her un-Rish¡ down-to-earthiness) framed by strips of the golden wallpaper of her disgraced predecessor torn from the wall, calculating eyes half-open (to note and take advantage of the main photographic chance as it presents itself) and waiting for the gilt arrow of the Angel of the 1% to pierce the space where her heart should be so that she can unleash foison on those that already have.

     We really shouldn’t be surprised, as it is the same “belief” that drove forward the absurdity of Brexit and that continues to power its demented defenders in the face of demonstrable disaster. Brexiteers actively and robustly excluded so-called experts (Britain, declared Goblin Gove, has “had enough of experts”) from any consideration of the merits in the discussion for deciding the most momentous question of the new millennium.  It wasn’t facts, demonstrable facts, that drove the argument, it was “belief” – and we have seen just how efficacious that has been in boosting the wealth and reputation of the nation!

    Of course, the most obvious problem with dealing with someone whose ideas are based on “belief” is that there is no argument that can win.  The ‘facts’ may line up against the point of view, but all the holder of it has to say is, “But, I believe differently” and what is there to say to that?

     Belief and prejudice are nearly related, and while I believe that facts may strengthen “belief” and give it a foundation in fact so that it is no longer a belief but something approaching a scientific fact amenable to the ‘scientific method’, I also believe that facts must eventually defeat prejudice – you will have noted that I have used the dreaded word “believe” myself!

     I suppose when you come down to it, the way that you think is governed by what you think society is, and what your response to humanity is. 

     If there is one thing that I believe in, it’s people, working and thinking together.  It is the community, whether it be of science, or economics, or the arts, or nations, or whatever grouping you like to use to define the mass, that determine what is true and what is right.   

     I pop my daily pills, not in the mere belief that they will do me good, but because the scientific community and the medical establishment have produced, checked, and authorized their use.

       Cult leaders can fleece their flocks by wielding ‘belief’ as an effective tool to part ‘believers’ from their wealth, but I expect more from my political leaders.

     And that last thought might well be a naïf belief.   

       But it is one I cling to.

Result? Misery!

 

 

 

The chiringuitos (the pop-up bars and restaurants on the beach) are being dismantled: the sign that summer is truly over.  We may get an unobstructed view of the sea again, but, that sea will gradually take on the appearance of a more northerly stretch of water rather than the twinkling blueness of the Med.

     The sun however, continues to shine, though I have now taken to wearing a short jacket when I go for my early morning swim (defiantly un-zippered) but I do not need it (yet) for the return home.  Day by day, the temperatures get lower, but not low enough for us to dispense with the fans that have been godsends through the hot summer months.

     I dislike late autumn and winter because I feel more comfortable in t-shirts and shorts and I prefer the heat.  I do not ‘fear’ the winter, as so many of my fellow citizens both here in Catalonia and Spain and in my home country of Wales and the UK. 

     Prices are rising steadily and in some cases radically and people must, in their own words and their own languages be echoing the truism of William Micawber, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.”

     So many (all!) the politicians in Westminster are at least comfortable in their financial states (unless they have, like Mr Micawber been feckless beyond) and they can look forward to the coming months with something approaching complacency – at least as far as their own personal circumstances are concerned.   

     They have no conception of the true horror of having no money, or being in debt and having no realistic way of paying essential bills to keep themselves fed and warm.

     This winter could see obscene numbers of people experiencing real ‘misery’, of seeing no way out of a situation that is financially impossible.  And, at the same time seeing the number of millionaires and billionaires expanding exponentially as circumstances which are crippling middle and lower earners bring a sense of real desperation to the working of the body politic.

     The last twelve years of vicious Tory mismanagement have seen a hollowing out of the functions of a caring state, with yawning gaps in essential provision failing to be filled by the charitable and voluntary sector.  We have food banks saying that they are not only running out of food to give to those who are needy, but also they are going to find it difficult or impossible to continue their work with the ever escalating costs of power, let alone anything else.

     The announcement of The Fiscal Event of the Tory government to be foisted on us on Friday, reminds me strongly of Putin’s cruelly euphemistic description of the bloody War in Ukraine (the largest war in Europe since the end of the Second World War) as a so-called "special military operation." 

     Semantics matter. 

     For Truss calling the mini or emergency or timely or desperate budget, a "Fiscal Event" allows the government to do without an up-to-date report from the Office for Budget Responsibility (a parliamentary committee with a Conservative majority) which would have given an assessment of the economic consequences of the proposals outlined in it.  As apparently, the Fiscal Event is not a budget, it allows her to escape scrutiny.  Again.

      Truss is developing something of a reputation for being what That Woman referred to as “frit” when it comes to putting herself forward to have her views examined.  She evaded a full scale, in-depth interview during her interminable campaign to get the genteel knuckle dragging Tories of the South East to vote for her, and she seems to be following that obscurantist trait in her first days in Number 10.  She has been a stalwart member of the "Hide & Silence" brigade and her disreputably repressive government seems eager to continue on its suppressive way, as far as possible out of the glare of any hostile scrutiny.

     Truss, it cannot be emphasised too much, has a conflicted mandate.  She has no mandate from the public and she was not selected by a majority of Tory MPs.  If Johnson drew his cabinet from the dregs of what was left after he had purged the government of any ‘reasonable’ one-nation Conservatives, I struggle to find the word for the strained dregs that Truss used to form hers!

     Look at the holders of the four great offices of state and weep!

 

The horror!

 

Ideologue n. An ideologist, especially a particularly zealous or doctrinaire supporter of an ideology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Truss frightens me in a way that her recent disgraced and failed predecessors did not.  Even the liar and narcissist Johnson was selfishly pragmatic.  But Truss, is cut from an altogether bleaker and colder material.  She is driven by a belief that “Growth At All Costs” is something she is willing to be “unpopular” for.  Her central article of faith is that giving those who have, even more, will encourage them to spread their wealth around so that the poorer in society will ultimately benefit.

     The fact that she appears to have a single, solitary economist to back her up in her steely, gimlet-eyed concentration, means nothing.  The fact that the President of The United States went out of his way to Twitter that ‘trickle-down economics has never worked’ means nothing.  Her ‘higher’ truth is The Truth, and It Will Work.  The red meat that she threw to the ravening wolves on the Conservative far right during her interminable election campaign, was not her politicking and out manoeuvring Rish¡, it was what she really believed, and now she is going to make it all happen.  Allegedly.

     Leading her cabinet, the Truss-faithful few of the vitiated lees of the Tory Party, she, like some ranting eschatologist, will lead her people up the mountain of Growth! Growth! Growth! and await The Rapture of unicorn economics, where all manner of things will be well, and growth and prosperity will come to all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     She is, quite clearly, demented, and the twelve-year Tory catalogue of corrupt disasters will continue, and accelerate – with the taxpayer, as usual, picking up the Tory tab, and the Labour Party having to sort out the Conservative Crap

     I can now begin to understand something of the gibbering horror that Tory voters felt when they considered that someone like Corbyn (many of whose policies I wholeheartedly supported) might actually become PM, as opposed to a disgusting chancer like Johnson!

But Truss, is something different.  Something very different.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

 

 

 

 

 

King Charles III - Act II, The Proclamation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mummery surrounding the succession of the new King continues with the ‘proclamation’ staffed by what appear to be extras from the court of the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland.  The glitteringly archaic heraldic costumes just add that air of luxurious absurdity to what it, after all, an absurd custom to match the absurd reality of a seventy year old man given the throne because he happened to be the first born of a woman whose father was king because his elder brother had an affair (entirely unreported in the British newspapers at the time) with an American divorcee, and chose abdication rather than giving her up.  The stuff of soap operas on daytime television.  But, hey, it’s the way we choose our heads of state in Britain!

     I am beginning to wonder if I can keep up this carping for the whole period of mourning, up to and beyond the funeral.  That was, of course, a rhetorical question as I have no end of dissatisfaction with the way that things are happening at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     The Minority Mandate Prime Minister looks way out of her depth, politically, socially, and culturally.  She is going to be thrust onto the international stage (admittedly as something of a bit player) in a cast of characters all of whom have more experience than her at this level.  It is as if she has been promoted from spear carrier to main role and she simply does not have the character or background to make anything of the dramatic opportunity, which she must see is much more of a very real threat!

     Meanwhile the rest of the world looks on with amused envy: laughing at the blatant silliness of the ceremonial, but secretly wishing that their countries could do something like that to add to the jollity of nations.

     I do not dismiss ceremony, it can usefully add layers of meaning, and be an efficient focus of emotion and awe, I feel less happy when the ceremonial trappings appear to take on a life of their own and become the thing that they are supposed to represent, then I am concerned.

     The Monarchy is an expensive figurehead for Britain.  Given the way that our parliamentary democracy works (in spite of the best efforts of Johnson and the Tories) the Monarch is a cypher.  In theory the Monarch is immensely powerful, but in practice, without the acquiescence of parliament the Monarch is nothing.  A very, very wealthy nothing, admittedly, but with little command.  But the way that we treat this figurehead with robes, crowns, coaches, servants, soldiers, palaces, castles, particular forms of address, etc makes the person ‘special’ in a way that no other person in the country is, no matter how gifted, intelligent, knowledgeable, and rich other might be.  The trappings of the role and the flummery that goes with it, separates the person from the rest of the country and gives the Monarch a unique place – irrespective of that individual’s personal ability, or lack of it.

     I recognize that people feel that they are caught up in an historical moment, a new monarch, the first in 70 years.  Although born in the reign of the previous King I have no recollection of him, and my only early memories are of the late Queen.  When I was a Cub Scout, part of my oath was, “I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen”.  QCs, God Save The Queen, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State on passports, ERII on pillar boxes, her face on stamps, coins, notes – it is a monumental change as uniforms, badges, documents, and a way of thinking has to be changed.

     But, as the days of mourning progress and we work our way to the emotional outpouring of grief that will accompany the magnificence of the funeral, what we are actually seeing is the ruling class cementing its advantages, closing ranks to ensure that the status quo is not challenged, reinforcing the inequality which is exemplified in the very existence of a Monarch in an advanced democracy and watching and encouraging those who lose most by this unfair system actively and joyously celebrate their powerlessness!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charles III cannot fail to be an odd king.  He is the oldest heir apparent to finally accede to the throne.  He has spent over half a century waiting for his turn.  He has been a controversial figure and has made his views felt in a plethora of subjects over the years.  He has passions and on occasions he has made his preferences clear and has used his position in the royal family to advance his agenda.  This must all now change.  He is no longer the heir; he is the Monarch, and he will have to follow the ‘neutrality’ of his mother – or there will be trouble.

     He made it clear, or at least he suggested strongly that he has no intention of abdicating and handing the throne on to a younger generation.  Like his mother he is in the job for life and if he follows her example, he has a couple of decades on the throne left in him.  But he is coming to the job as an old man, beyond retirement age.  He will be dealing with a Government almost entirely younger than he is, in a country that is overwhelmingly younger than he is. 

     He has a hard job ahead of him and a lingering fear that the ceremony of accession televised for the first time today, could also be the last.

Royal Excess!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks as though BBC Radio4 is going to be something of a no-go area for the next couple of weeks. 

     The wall-to-wall coverage of the death of QEII and the subsequent fawning hagiography, where people who barely knew her regale us with inconsequential anecdotes of the minutiae of royal protocol allowing them to see, uniquely, the momentary all-too-human interactions of the real person under the crown.  Frankly, they should have found something better to do than facilitate the beefing up of the repetitive narrative of a long reign until it becomes an unassailable national myth.

     I will be glad when the broadcasters begin to focus on the logistics of a State Funeral, that will at least give them something real to concentrate on, rather than scratching around trying to find something concrete to say about someone who is best known for what bad things she (as opposed to her dreadful family) hasn’t done rather than achieving something of moment.

     The high point of nationalistic absurdity came, courtesy of our (God Help Us!) new Prime Minister who actually said in all sincerity (in so far as that wooden dummy is able to articulate that quality) that QEII was, “one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known”! 

     Truss does the memory of the late Queen no service by stating such a ridiculous claim.  Such sycophantic hyperbole tells us more about the vacuity of the speaker than giving an insight into the character of the Queen.  The truly dreadful delivery of Truss’s speech made it appear as though it had just been thrust into her hands and that she had to make the best of an impromptu performance as she winged it through the to the stilted peroration. 

      Johnson, lurking in full sight on the back benches, just couldn’t stay away from an occasion to raise his debased profile, but he must have seethed internally as he saw a golden opportunity for his particular populist pomposity, thrown away on a ventriloquist’s dummy.

     It is at times like this that I pity John Crace, The Guardian political sketch writer, who actually has to sit through and watch the unutterable tedium of politicians scrabbling around for their five minutes of televisual fame as they mouth yet more platitudes about a person they hardly knew.  John suffers for the rest of us, and I do look forward to his acerbic take on the sad (in all senses) spectacle of politicians emoting on a Grand Occasion!

     Tomorrow QEII’s coffin will be on the move and at least we will have a change of scene from damp people laying flowers on a granite bridge in the Scottish Highlands.

     We were in London during the lying-in-state of The Queen Mother and the queue to view her coffin, when we passed it on an open top tour bus, stretched from the south bank over the bridge and into the distance!  

      Why?  This was a woman who was allegedly slighted by a member of the press umpteen years previously and did not talk to the media from then on.  She was an almost totally remote figure, who kept herself remote, apart from the hand waving and hat wearing that is a sine qua non of female royal ‘duty’.  And yet, an estimated 200,000 people over three days queued to see her coffin!  Extraordinary!  Why did they do it and what did they hope to get out of it?

     I do not for a moment doubt the sincerity of the grief that many people have expressed, and their sense of loss is palpable, and I too, am not insensible to the power of symbols – but, for me I look askance at such public displays of emotion for an unknown, highly privileged, fabulously rich person who are where they are because of an accident of birth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

 

 

I feel infinitely more concerned for the well-being of Salman Rushdie who has solid achievements to his name, than I do for the well-being of any member of the so-called House of Windsor.

     I do not wish ill to the royal family, but I certainly look forward to the day when their personification of the built-in, hereditary, inequality in Britain is finally broken.

     Like Truss, a Prime Minister ‘elected’ by a tiny minority of the population, and Charles III who is king and head of state because his mother has died, both are emphatically Not In My Name!

 

 

 

 

 

London Bridge is Down, Operation Unicorn has begun

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What appears after this brief introduction was written earlier this afternoon.  Since I wrote, The Queen has died.  Whatever I think of the institution of The Monarchy in British political life, I am conscious that a woman had died and that her family is mourning her loss.  I do extend my sympathy to them, as I would to anyone experiencing the death of a close family member.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My one slip from grace in my slavish following of The Guardian newspaper, was when the Independent informed readers that it would NOT print ‘royal’ news, the tittle tattle of various parasitic members of the House of Wettin, that used to (and still does) drive me to impotent fury.  Perhaps I am deluded in thinking that there was ever a proper broadsheet (in the days when the Indie was a broadsheet) that would dare not report the most trivial of non-escapades of the various princes, dukes, and other hangers-on.

     However, The Queen is not just a relic of an outmoded and undemocratic from of government, she is also the Head of State, and as such she has an importance because of her role, that little in her life has justified her for.  Whether I like it or not (and you can tell that I don’t) The Queen has an importance in our national life, and she is generally liked and admired.

     It is clear that her health has worsened, and members of the royal family have journeyed to Scotland to be with her.  She is a very old woman, and there must be an expectation that her life is coming to an end.  It must have been disconcerting, to say the least, if The Queen read the newspapers and watched social media to see the amount of informed speculation that has centred on her demise and how it would be handled.  We even know the code phrase that will be used to indicate her death, “London Bridge is down!”  And if she dies in Scotland, then “Operation Unicorn” will swing into operation which will deal with the movement of her body from wherever she dies to London.

    Of course, not only the details of what happens to her body and what ceremonial will be associated with its burial has been widely discussed, there is also the question of the succession as the crown passes to Charles III or George the whatever if he decides that to be called King Charles brings up too many memories of the people decapitating the king who was the first of that name.

     There again there is the character of the heir apparent: his unfaithfulness to his late wife; his meddling in affairs of state; his reactionary views; his general unpopularity.  The Queen has been a positive but anodyne figurehead, doing what has laughingly been described as her duty, wearing various hats, and waving to crowds.  She is revered because she has been around for a long time, and unlike so many of her relatives she has managed to maintain a low profile of well-behaved, unreachable, otherness.  Her ‘act’ will be a very difficult one to follow, and Charles (or George) has not shown himself prepared to accept the publicly (and possibly privately) undemonstrative quiescence that has marked her reign.

     Charles has ideas, and is not backward in making them known, as the ‘spider letters’ 

 

 

 

 

 

eventually made public by reporting and efforts by The Guardian highlighted.  I find it difficult to imagine the new King Charles (or George) taking a back seat and allowing the elected (ELECTED) representatives of the people to go about their work without his interference.  If he does meddle, then he risks upsetting the delicate series of compromises that allow such a grotesque form of archaic deciding on the head of state in a so-called civilized and developed country. 

     Primogeniture to decide a head of state is an absurdity, and perhaps if Charles (or George) can’t restrain himself from taking a more overt role in government than his mother did, then he could preside over the end of the institution.

     Already the whole edifice is wonky, with the car-crash interview of Andrew merely the latest in a series of scandals that illustrate with glaring obviousness the unsuitability of this family or any family to ‘rule’ a country for generation after generation merely because they happen to be one particular family.

 

What follows is written on the evening of the 8^th of September as I have escaped from the frankly ridiculous hagiography about the life of somebody who appears to have been a rather ordinary person placed in extraordinary circumstances by the actions of a randy duty-denying uncle.

 

 

 

 

 

I tried to listen to Truss giving some absurd puff to the late Queen, by saying, “she was the rock on which modern Britain was built” but listening further to her nasal, monotonous whine was way beyond my patience and I turned her off.

    I fear that I am going to have to do a great deal of turning off in the coming days, as history is re-written, being seen through the twisted bi-focals of boosting a fairly empty figurehead into a dynamic force for good.

    Given the embarrassingly gushing coverage of the Queen Mother’s life when she finally died and the humiliating lines of people waiting to see her coffin, I dread to think what repetitious garbage we are going to be forced to accept as ‘reportage’ and ‘fact’ given that the Queen was around for 70 years, meeting and chatting with the great and the good – and indeed in many cases, the clearly not so good.  And doing what?  What did the Queen actually do during her reign?

    It is a fair point to make that, given the way the relationship of the Crown with the elected parliament works, if she had actually tried to do something substantive, then there could easily have been a constitutional crisis.  There are clear (or at least clearish) limits to the power of the monarch.  In theory the power is enormous, s/he is head of state, head of the armed forces, justice is administered in his/her name, s/he is head of the established Church of England, and so on.  But if the monarch dared to exercise those powers, then the state would descend on the crown and force an abdication.

     The monarch can wield a sort of soft power and, behind the scenes, according to the reporting of newspapers like The Guardian, direct power on laws so that sections related to the interests of the royal house can be excised, or obligations erased.  But mostly the monarch can try and influence - after all, s/he has the direct ear of the prime minister, and she has a council of privy counsellors to keep her informed.  But to be that near the levers of power and being unable to press them must be frustrating, and it takes a certain type of personality to be able to be placid and allow things to happen when, in theory you are the one who could make a difference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are now going to have to go through the unfolding process of a state funeral, followed by a coronation.  Truss must be thanking her lucky stars that not only will she have two massive ‘Bread & Circuses” events to keep the people thinking of something other than their parlous financial states, but also, she will be in the foreground, mixing with the royal family and the Grand Gathering of the Clans of presidents, prime ministers, royals, and other VIPs to bolster up her image.  Johnson must be foaming at the mouth thinking that he has been effectively side-lined on an occasion when he could have inflated himself to an absurd extent.

     And how much is all this going to cost?  At a time when people are frightened about the coming winter because they will not be able to afford to heat themselves and eat, how can we possibly justify the millions that will be spent on what is going to be a couple of tasteless jamborees?

 

 

 

      

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

My plan would be for the power, electricity, gas, water companies to fund it all out of their obscene windfall profits.  It would only (!) cost umpteen million to back the funeral and coronation and that would be a midge bite to the billions that they have made by doing nothing – and just think how those saps laying wreaths and feeling a personal loss over a person who has barely acknowledged their existence would feel.  As usual, those suffering and taxed the most, would doff their caps and thank those who exploit them.

     You could always argue that at times of national desperation the one thing that is needed is some sort of distraction – and who doesn’t like a good funeral, and we do them so well.  And what better for a government that believes in unicorns, to have the fairy tale splendour of gilt coaches, jewelled crowns, robes, lords, choirs, and troops to keep the people happy.  I wouldn’t put it past this Tory government to give each primary school child a coronation mug and a day off, rather than ensure that they are properly fed.

 

I hope that the Queen’s death gives the British people an opportunity to re-assess the value of a royal family, with the eldest child of one particular family becoming the king and head of state.

     It is time to bury the Queen with due dignity.  And it is also time for us to bury the whole institution.   

     Let Queen Elizabeth II, be the last of her house and her line.