No shame Tories….
So we’ve seen the return of sir “call me Dave” of pigtoon. This is the fellow who, to quote Jeremy Paxman “gambled the country’s fortunes for the sake of the Tory party and after he mucked it up, he buggered off”. Then, to quote Danny Dyer, “he put his trotters up…..twat!”. If the answer to any question is David Cameron, you are in serious trouble. Keep in mind, he’s been mired in various scandals since he left office, notably the Greensill lobbying scandal (which of course has not been fully investigated)….so he should fit right into Ri$hi’s cabinet!
It proves a couple of things however. Firstly, that for the elites, actions have no consequences any more. It used to be the case that if a minster did anything wrong, even if it wasn’t necessarily their fault, they’d resign at once (they won’t even wait to be sacked). Now its a revolving door, with no punishment whatsoever for any manner of incompetence or corruption. Apparently the EU are still laughing their asses off.
….I told you so
It also goes to prove a point I made ten years ago. That, by pandering to the right of his party, or trying to out UKIP UKIP, Cameron was making a terrible mistake. The far right would see such attempts to appease them as a sign of weakness and demand more and more, until they’d move the party so far to the right, its now considered more right wing than actual fascist parties in Italy.
Instead I argued he should have confronted the ERG and told them to put up or shut up. And if they had a problem with this, well just leave. Yes this would have caused a temporary split in the Tory party, But inevitably such candidates would generally lose to official Tory candidates (much as the moderate Tories were driven out by Johnson before the 2019 election).
The threat of UKIP was always over rated, as they are less a political party and more a mechanism for dark money to pressure the government. Push come to shove, they’ve generally withdrawn from elections at the last minute (or at the very least not run against the Tories in marginal seats), as said dark money doesn’t want to risk a labour government (especially back in 2016 with Corbyn in charge of labour). Thus Cameron could have seen off his rivals, avoided a referendum and might well be still in the job, if he had a functioning brain cell and a spine. Unfortunately, he has neither. So why is he back in the cabinet?
Well one possible answer is that the grown up’s in the Tory party have finally woken up to this reality. This could be the first step towards ousting the headbangers from the party and possibly even seeking re-engagement with Europe. But I’m doubting it. After all, what consequences will Fishy Ri$hi face for his reign of error? Like Cameron, Johnson, Truss, et al, likely no consequences. For Ri$hi being PM was always just something to put on his CV. In about a year’s time, once he’s lost the next election, he’ll be back in the US working as a trader. The state of the UK, or the Tory party, will be someone else’s problem.
The continuing Tory war on the disabled
The Tories claim the economy is doing fine. And even if it isn’t, this has absolutely nothing to do with them whatsoever. Its definitely not the fault of brexit. For sure, absolutely, let’s talk about Gaza and Gary Linker’s latest tweet. This is somewhat betrayed by the fact that they are pinching every penny they can. For example they are looking to force those with chronic long term illnesses or disabilities to go back into the workforce, by working from home. What’s wrong with that?
Well the devil is in the detail. I’m sure some could benefit from this, but not everyone (and there is history here, where the Tories used a change in policy to snatch funding from disabled people). I’ve had to care for relatives with long term illnesses and for some, even simply things like getting out of bed and making breakfast can be a hell of a chore. Then you’ve got the various medical appointments to attend (physio, dietitian, GP, etc.), which means getting into a car and finding a space (and hoping some dick in an 4×4 hasn’t double parked over it), getting out of the car, getting inside and up the lift, etc.
By the time you’ve done all that, its half the day gone. So when exactly are they supposed to be working? I assume the Tories think all disabled people are like Charles Xaiver from the X-men, who literally has a small army of superheroes to help him.
The other problem however, is employers. You know like members of the Tory party whinging about people working from home. We had someone in my office pensioned off due to long term illness just prior to covid, as the higher up’s didn’t like the idea of him working from home full time. This has improved a bit since covid, but not by much. We’re now being told that we are expected to be back in the office for all classes and certain key meetings (which for most staff means coming in every day 9-5). And I’d note this even applies when the students indicate they’d prefer certain classes to be delivered online, or it would be more practical to hold certain meetings over the internet.
And this is not an isolated case. We recently tried to launch a new part time course for those already in employment (so they could upgrade their skills). The plan was they’d work from home and either do self study, or attend online classes 1 day a week. Then they’d also come in several times a year for intensive teach (typically over a week) to cover the stuff we had to do face to face (things like labs for example). Well it all fell apart because most bosses were against the idea of their employees working from home. They preferred instead to have them in the office (where they could keep an eye on them) or in the uni itself, so their attendance could be closely monitored. Of course this would only work if the students lived within commuting distance of the uni, so a number of our prospective students who lived further away couldn’t attend (which pulls down student numbers and brings into question the viability of the whole project).
Oh, plus I’ve noticed since covid an inflation in the length of meetings. This week alone I’ve had to do two 3 hour meetings and a 4.5 hour meeting (I assume the people who call these meetings don’t have a bladder, nor eat or drink!). That’s the sort of attitude you are dealing with. There’s a lot of bosses who still think that working from home means you are playing hooky. Work is supposed to hurt, otherwise you aren’t working hard enough.
India trade deal?
One conspiracy theory doing the rounds (which might not be so daft when you think about) is that there’s a real reason why Cameron is back and Cruella Graveman was sacked. Fishy Ri$hi is desperate for a UK-India trade deal. He and his wife would personally benefit from such a deal to the tune of tens (if not hundreds) of millions of pounds.
However, the stumbling block is immigration, as the only real benefit to India would be in making it easier for Indians to travel to the UK (currently they have to get a visa). Which is why the hard right of the party are dead set against such a deal. However Cameron, aka dodgy Dave, has no such concerns (again, actions have no consequences for elites like him, I mean its not like he’s elected or anything!).
So it could be his one mission is to push through this trade deal prior to the next election. At which point he and Ri$hi can retire in comfort. Like I said, its just a conspriacy theory for now. But watch this space…..
Hidden figures
I discussed the latest immigration figures back in May, pointing out how it showed the Tory’s immigration and brexit policy was always doomed to failure. I recall speculating that they might be tweaking the figures to try and make them look better. Well it turns out, I was right. The true figure was 140,000 odd higher (yes they failed to notice a large town’s worth of people entering the country, good to know the post-brexit border is secure!).
Confidently, they announced this “discovery” right before the latest immigration figures. Which means the latest figures appear to show a slight drop in immigration, which the Tory client media were then quick to report on, while ignoring the fact that this its way higher than it ever was under labour, or prior to brexit (thanks to the wise leadership of the party, the chocolate ration has increased from 30 grams to 20 grams).
Similarly just before the Autumn statement by the Chancellor, the ONS found an extra £54 billion pounds….hidden down the back of the sofa I assume! This bounced the economy up to make it look much better. And, despite the fact that food prices are rising by over 10%, with a 5% jump in energy expected after Christmas, certain key metrics in the basket of numbers used to calculate the official rate of inflation fell massively (faster than ever before in history), which pulled the overall figure down to just under 5%. And yet despite this, the Chancellor gave out an inflation busting rise to both pensions and benefits of 8% and 6% respectively (this contradicts Tory policy about not giving inflation busting pay rises, suggesting he knows the official inflation figure is baloney).
So what is going on? Well this confirms for me what I’ve suspected for sometime. The Tories are manipulating official statistics to suit whatever narrative they are driving at the time. To say this is bad is an understatement. Firstly, the whole point of having these official statistics is to allow the performance of the government and the economy to be measured in cold hard numbers. Which we now cannot do. And like the boy who cried wolf, we can’t even believe them when they start telling the truth.
This will for example mean businesses stop believing in official figures and put off investment decisions. They are also more likely to panic when things go south (as they have no way of reliably estimating their exposure to risk). One of the contributing factors to the fall of the soviet bloc was that many people had simply stopped believing their governments and assumed every word out of official’s mouths was a lie, even when they were actually telling the truth.
And what’s the bet that the day before labour takes over, they “find” something that downgrades the whole economy and pushes the country into a massive recession (which we’ve actually been in for over a year or more), which the Tory client media will blame on labour (or, as they did before, the fear of a labour government caused a recession they’ll claim). The Tories seem determined to complete a scorched earth approach before they leave office.
The real impact of AI
The UK hosted an “AI summit” recently. Although oddly enough, very few actual AI researchers showed up (probably because Open AI seems to have gone the full Judean people’s front). It was mostly attended by billionaires, motivational gurus, tech bro’s or politicians, such as Elon Musk and Fishy Ri$hi. And they went through the usual $hite, AI is a threat to humanity (like any technology, AI can only be as dangerous as we make it), that it will eliminate all work, etc. Actually I’d argue this is all more about attempts to control the narrative than actually deal with the genuine concern for the impact of AI.
Firstly, while it is very likely that yes, AI will have an impact on the workplace, this will probably follow the same trends as previous advances. Basically, it will eliminate some roles yes, but create new ones as well. Robots for example did eliminate a lot of manufacturing jobs. But they also created whole new categories of jobs (somebody has to programme and maintain these robots, higher productivity meant more staff hired to manage that extra productivity, etc.).
Also there are some jobs AI simply cannot replace for practical reasons. For example, in engineering before we move ahead with production, somebody (typically a senior engineer) has to sign off on the drawings and specifications. This is to confirm that all of the information has been properly checked and indicates that the engineers are willing to take responsibility, should anything go wrong. Similarly contracts have to be signed off by a lawyer (in fact lawyers have gotten into hot water because they used a chat bot to write a legal brief).
Hell, I’m still not convinced even simple tasks such as driver less taxi’s will ever be a thing. And again, its the simple question as to who is responsible in the event of a crash? Up until now Musk has tried to deflect blame for crashes (into the back of emergency vehicles) onto the driver (who was handed control a milisecond before the crash). But that’s not going to work if there is no driver and no driving controls. In short its going to be a very long time before AI is mature enough to fulfil many roles.
This creates the problem that we’re going to still have plenty of people working, but with a lot of people who are just unemployable, as they lack the skills to fulfil any jobs in the post AI world (they either don’t have a suitable qualification, or they qualified in a field rendered obsolete by AI and can’t afford to re-train). That is the real problem with AI, as our current economic model assumes any able bodied person who is not working must be a soap shy scrounger.
Now there are some solutions. But nobody, least of all the people at this conference, wants to implement them. Firstly, there’s the concept of universal citizen income (UCI). This would, for example, allow anyone who lacks the suitable qualifications to work, time to go off and get the necessary education to enter the workforce, without having to worry about putting food on the table in the mean time. Or people could opt to perform other unpaid tasks (caring for relatives, charity work, etc.).
We also need to recognise that the 9-5 working week is a relatively new phenomenon and largely an invention of 19th century industrialists. Throughout much of human history the working day was significantly shorter. Thus simply reducing the working week to say 20-30 hours would immediately create a whole load of new jobs. Note that this would not necessarily increase costs for employers as said employees, in receipt of UCI, wouldn’t need the same salary as is now the case. They can be paid pro-rata.
Then there’s the issue of taxation. As I’ve discussed previously, the emphasis on income tax in most countries was largely undertaken due to short term factors, with little thought to the long term implications (e.g. income tax in the US was only introduced to offset the lost revenue from prohibition). Switching to other forms of taxation would not only provide the income to afford UCI, but also reduce the tax burden of hiring new staff (thus encouraging more employment). These taxes could include wealth taxes, taxes on property and rent seeking activities, taxes on pollution, carbon footprints, or even on AI produced products and services.
Of course this sort of social change is exactly what many of those attending this AI conference want to avoid. They want AI yes, but only so long as they can maintain the status quo (i.e. use AI to exploit the rest of us). Case in point the Guardian did a recent review of the carbon footprints of the wealthy. The super rich in particular have carbon footprints many times higher than your average citizen (for example 12 billionaires run up a higher carbon footprint than 2 million households). So a carbon tax would mean they’d be paying many thousands of times more in tax than any of the rest of us.
Land of the not-so-free
One of the many hypocrisies of the right is there support for free speech….just not the type we disagree with. E.g. say anything remotely critical of Israel and it will literally get you fired…..unless you are Musk or another conservative of course. Musk being fine with publishing anything….unless its something he dislikes. Then wonders why advertisers run for the hills. Its like something you’d expect to see in China (who are currently freaking out because some celebrity chef posted a recipe for fried rice).
The other obvious hypocrisy is the ban on abortion. You cannot be pro-freedom and against abortion. If a women (and her partner) can no longer choose how many kids she’s going to have and when (which is going to probably be the most important decision of her life), exactly how does that square with your claims of support for ultimate freedom?
Also there’s the practical consequences of banning abortion. It means a government so authoritarian that its allowed to place a women’s womb under government control. A government that is allowed to monitor its citizens movements and potentially block them from crossing state lines, lease they get an abortion.
And predictably republican states are now looking for access to women’s medical records (and how long before that starts getting used for other purposes). Some states have used their abortion bans as a snoopers charter, to the benefit of curtain twitchers, who can now legitimately spy on their neighbours and report that to their fellow busybodies and the police (and again, its not like that’s likely to be abused, or lead to persecution of those who they don’t like).
Social media induced riot
Finally we have this race riot in Dublin. Supposedly this was because of a stabbing incident outside of a school. Thing is, the attacker was an Irish citizen and the only migrant involved (a Brazilian deliveroo driver) was actually one of the heroes of the hour, helping to foil the attack.
The media have tried to come up with various explanations. Immigration to the country. I hate to break it to anyone, but immigration into Ireland is not a new thing by any means, nor has it been unusual for some bigots to whinge about it. Net migration into Ireland has been a thing for at least two decades or so, with similar figures to other European country (UK born citizens btw are the largest non-Irish born migrants, followed by poles & NI). Similarly Ireland has a long history of accepting refugees (this is why Ireland has a relatively more sympathetic view towards Palestinians, and other minority groups, that perhaps other countries).
If one were cynical you could argue Ireland has internalised its racism. In other words most Irish have no problem with people from Africa, but don’t get me started about them gombeen’s in the village down the road!!! Or them hoor’s from Dublin with their swanky cars and their Dublin ways (fun fact, many Irish companies have two sales teams, one for Dublin staffed exclusively by Dubs, the other for the rest of the country, with no Dub’s on the team, cos there’s no way a guy from Kerry is buying anything from a Dub). And as for travellers……don’t ask!
And who needs race riots when you’ve got Gaelic games. Gaelic football, being an organised brawl and hurling being an organised brawl with weapons (fun fact, in hurling you are expected to play the ball, so if someone gets his face in the way of your back swing, that’s technically not a foul as he was obstructing your swing with his face).
Either way, really about the only thing that’s changed in Ireland significantly over the last few decades is the influence of social media. And it is a known fact that there are various agitators online seeking to stir up trouble. And these events come straight out of the alt right playbook. Hence, one has to ask, are twitter, Facebook et al going to pay for the damages inflicted on Dublin? Never mind the trauma inflicted on minorities within Ireland. Until these billionaires see an impact in their pay packets, they will not take any action.
daryanenergyblog 