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The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)
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Mick Harper
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The one thing you don't do when facing climate change is to start improving flood defences, dams, coastal erosion sites etc etc. These are infinite and nobody can predict which are at greatest risk. In fact I predict that the real problems will be in places that are so unpredictable as not to even be on the list. This dam is a case in point. It's a tuppenny ha'penny canal top-up built two hundred years ago. No such bit of kit has ever been considered a threat before and probably isn't now either. Three hundred million gallons of water? You could walk away in your wellies. But the emergency services do like to make a fuss. Plus, it was damaged by a flash flood which are themselves entirely unpredictable, with or without climate change.

So, Britain, take a deep breath and do nothing. You 'll probably have to do quite a lot in the future reacting but meanwhile let complacency be thy watchword.
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Mick Harper
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What is the most vexatious thing about Crossrail? Correct! Having to give up using the snappy, exactly descriptive and cosily familiar term Crossrail and start saying 'The Elizabeth Line'. I don't know who she is, the wife of some long forgotten Minister of Transport probably, but she can just, as we Cockneys say, "Eff orff'. But don't you worry, we've got our little ways. Baker Street and Waterloo Railway, anyone?
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Mick Harper
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I must spring to the defence of Dominic Cummings. What people forget is that he's incredibly young. That doesn't matter for the rest of you because, politically, you believe the same thing from late adolescence to five minutes before your death when you come bolt upright with a look of indescribable horror on your face. So remember, he doesn't know what he's doing but he's getting there.
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Mick Harper
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Mick Harper, some time ago, wrote:
An interesting programme last night on 'wrecking'. There is always ambivalence towards 'getting something for nothing' situations -- a shrug if you're getting, tut-tutting if you're not. And so it is with coastal communities and their attitudes to shipwrecks.

A tragic example from Tanzania (reported by the indispensable Al-Jazeera evening news). A tanker carrying petrol to somewhere in the hinterland, overturns in a village and the petrol starts to pour out. A fairly dangerous situation? No, the inhabitants see it as a free petrol bonanza. Now, remember, this is not like tapping a pipeline, it's a situation nobody has confronted before and it’s damned difficult siphoning up free (running) petrol. But they quickly learn how to do it. Word spreads. Everyone's got a mobile. People start coming in from all around on their motorbikes to join in, using their bikes to get to the head of the queue. Eventually there’s a spark, sixty seven are dead, hundreds have burns, the village is destroyed etc etc. Until maybe the next time. Gift horses, mouths etc etc
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Mick Harper
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In olden days, flying in a jet plane across the seas to have sex with a prince was every seventeen year-old's dream, nowadays you get trauma counselling. But most interesting continues to be the mysterious presence of Robert Maxwell's daughter. Unless there's something seriously wrong with Britain's bankruptcy laws, Ghislane can't be that rich in her own right. But how did she hook up with Epstein -- operating way after Maxwell? To be the daughter of one crooked billionaire is unfortunate, but to be the procuress of another crooked billionaire as well is very unfortunate. Not that we know Uncle Jeffrey is crooked but then we didn't know Papa Bob was either until he died.

Also under mysterious circumstances. That's right, Grant, she's a hitman for the Lombards. Wakey, wakey!
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Mick Harper
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Since by all accounts Dominic Cummings is running the country I’d better run the rule over him. I’ll use the first bit of accessible prose I found on his website

The Project Maven experience is similar to the famous example of the tank. Everybody could see tanks were possible from the end of World War I but over 20 years Britain and France were hampered by their own bureaucracies in thinking about the operational implications and how to use them most effectively.

This is straight orthodoxy and quite wrong. They were about average (maybe above average) but since the British and the French lost in 1940, and everyone judges by results, this sort of thing is back-foisted on them as a matter of routine.

Some in Britain and France did point out the possibilities but the possibilities were not absorbed into official planning.

This is more orthodoxy, more judge-by-results tripe. Nobody knew what would work and what wouldn’t work but, for sure, within the range of offerings, are the ones that worked. They get labelled the work of visionaries, the others of Colonel Blimp.

Powerful bureaucratic interests reinforced the normal sort of blindness to new possibilities.

Bureaucracies are well aware that new possibilities are mostly wrong. Though it is true they have a tendency therefore to resist possibilities.

Innovative thinking flourished, relatively, in Germany where people like Guderian and von Manstein could see the possibilities for a very big increase in speed turning into a huge nonlinear advantage — possibilities applied to the ‘von Manstein plan’ that shocked the world in 1940.

The Germans won everywhere. We have no idea whether it was tank speed that was the operative factor but they won whether tanks were involved or not, whether fast tanks were involved or not. Since he mentions it, the only notable British tank success, at the Battle of Arras, was by the slowest tank in the recorded history of tanks, the Matilda II.

This was partly because the destruction of German forces after 1918 meant everything had to be built from scratch

More orthodoxy. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. German forces have been hot shit since 1866 so it’s hard to tell why they are hot shit on any given occasion..

and this connects to another lesson about successful innovation: in the military, as in business, it is more likely if a new entity is given the job, as with the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons.

If you say so, Dom. Though my reading would be that it was given to a senior military warhorse (General Groves) like all novel weapons.

The consequences were devastating for the world in 1940

He means France.

but, lucky for us, the nature of the Nazi regime meant that it made very similar errors itself, e.g regarding the importance of air power in general and long range bombers in particular.

He means that German aircraft were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers produced by countries with ten times the productive capacity of Germany. At least they didn’t waste their scarce resources on long range bombers as we did (a third of the entire British war output, some say) to do ... what exactly? Shorten the war by two days because the Germans had to work in factories without rooves? Lengthen it by three months because the Brits and the Yanks never had enough petrol tankers because they were always building bombers? We will never know. Apart from our Dominic. Apart from our military historians. Apart from bloody everyone except me.

(This history is obviously very complex but this crude summary is roughly right about the main point)

Maybe, baby.
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Mick Harper
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An interesting legal point has arisen in the Andrew/Epstein imbroglio. The age of consent in Britain is sixteen so Andie was quite within his droit de seigneur to slip it to the then seventeen year old at the centre of affairs. But she flew out from JFK where the age of consent is eighteen so the FBI is within its rights to charge HRH with interstate commerce for the purposes of statutory rape. (I may have got the technical charge wrong, but the lead case is United States vs Chuck Berry.) This could go all the way to the International Court of Human Rights because even royal princes are entitled to the protection of the law.
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Mick Harper
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Nevertheless this Cummings chap is undeniably impressive. His chief problem is the one that everybody who is cleverer than those around them fall into, being overly prescriptive. He kinda knows you can't beat City Hall but keeps banging on the door anyway with his solutions. Life's too short, Dom, and the world's too big. I'd give you an example of his solutions in the education field -- where he was Gove's think-man and even got some of them off the ground -- but I can't because his blog is too opaque to ever find anything again. It mentioned academies and some other stuff.

Suffice it to say, I disagreed with all his suggestions but I'm pretty sure he disagrees with them himself now, five years on. All you can do is advocate negativity, tear the whole thing down and let it grow up again in its own fashion. People always think this is a counsel-of-despair or anarchistic radicalism or whatever but people forget we've been there, we've done that, we know all the wrinkles -- everything will re-assemble itself in no time flat but without (some of) the old crap.

When it comes to education I just say
1. Abolish compulsory education
2. Give every kid whatever per capita sum we spend on education now to spend on education
3. That's it. Let 'em get on with it.
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Mick Harper
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But since that will never happen I had better mention what is at the heart of the present education problem. The quality of a school is essentially defined by the quality of its pupils. Since good pupils are always in short supply, good schools will always be in short supply. Good pupils tend to have good parents who will always evolve strategies to find the good schools faster than the educational authorities can think up strategies to spread the load, so they should give up trying.
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Mick Harper
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There are certain things that are quite useful but then they become a nuisance. So we try to deal with the nuisance part but we find we can't. The weird bit is we don't seem to be able to just get rid of it because while we all agree it's a nuisance, it was once useful. Don't seem right somehow just because a few spoiled it for the many. A trivial example and then a very mega one.

I just got a cold call. From BT something or other, they said, but I put the phone down before I found out who they really were. Not BT presumably. I get lots even though I'm signed up to all the usual government-approved outfits that say I don't want them. I could get a nuisance caller thingy on my phone but they're far more trouble than they're worth (especially for people ringing me) so I put up with it. So do you, so does everybody in the country. What's a small nuisance even when multiplied by sixty million? But why do we all have to?

Why shouldn't cold calling be made illegal? The whole industry, no exceptions, swingeing penalties for the British/European ones, a dedicated unit to eradicate foreign calls. A stern démarche to the Governor of Mumbai province -- I'm sure he's getting them at home too, or we could ring him round the clock, whatever it takes. It shouldn't be technically difficult, given the will. If it is difficult, we'll stick at it, we might learn something. The legitimate cold callers will protest about this and that and, yes, whole other industries will be collateral damage. They'll have to find another way. Boo hoo. And all those old people "who like talking to us, they're lonely" will have to get lonelier. Not boo hoo, but "Sorry, poppets, that's the way it is."

A minor scourge eliminated. We'll be ready to tackle the major one now we've learned how the collective will really works...
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Mick Harper
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No, you're not ready for that yet, so here's a medium-sized one to be getting on with. Fly tipping. It costs a small fortune, creates a bunch of misery and is a blight on everyone's landscape. Now here's the thing you didn't know about fly tipping: it cannot be eradicated. It cannot even be much ameliorated. It's simple arithmetic:
there are sixty million people who provide the material, wittingly or unwittingly
there are tens of thousands of people who will commit it because it's mediumly profitable, you never get caught and if you do, you get fined threepence ha'penny, occasionally two years in prison. It makes no difference.
there are ninety thousand square miles that need guarding from fly tipping.

AE Rule No 559: Don't bother trying to stop something that cannot be stopped. Just make sure they fly tip where it will do the least harm. These will be official local authority dumps, open 24-hours a day, seven days a week, completely free, no questions asked, shovel the lot out the back of the van without stopping if that's what you prefer. How many? As many as it takes. So long as there are no rules -- they're for fly-tippers for Godsake. Just one rule, just one bloke with a clipboard, and they'll be leaving it in some sylvan spot that was once forever England. It's all the same to them unless you make sure it isn't. NB Make sure you prosecute one of the sixty million from time to time, we don't want fly-tipping to become the norm.

No rules! Blimey that'll take a sea-change. Worth it in itself. Look, I know it's an appalling prospect, giving in to those bastards. Got a better idea? If you'd prefer the problem rather than the giving in, that's all right too. It's your choice and admirable in many ways. But maybe you won't be ready for...
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Mick Harper
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I am getting some flak over the practicalities of my proposal and even more about 'how it fits in'. Even in some quarters, 'what is he banging on about now?' Broadly it is that things can be good, then bad, then 'we can't do anything about it'. If you don't go through the first stage, it rarely gets as far as the third stage. Thus, for instance, when I was young and hippyesque, one thing you could do, if you didn't want to be a dope dealer, was become 'a white van man'. This involved buying a van and putting an ad in the paper or at any rate in the newsagent's window with the phrase "any load, any time" or to that effect. Basically it filled the gap between the dustbin and the furniture remover and was a popular and harmless service because they were hippies. Like dope-dealers at the time, they had a sense of social responsibility.

But then both were taken over by non-hippies and we started getting fly-tipping and drug epidemics. I'll leave the state's reaction re drugs to another time (spoiler alert: it was bad) but in the case of rubbish removal, you now had to get a licence and if you gave your rubbish to someone not licensed you could be prosecuted too. The unintended consequence was, if you couldn't or wouldn't get a licence, you might as well be hung for fly-tipping as for being unlicensed and since licensed people couldn't compete on price with fly-tippers, Gresham's Law meant everyone below furniture-removers was likely to be a fly-tipper.

The powers of the land reacted quite sensibly by enjoining local authorities to set up both free removal services and free removal sites but at the first whiff of retrenchment local authorities reacted quite sensibly by starting to charge for both (or making sure they weren't much used by making everything inordinately difficult) and discovered, since nobody fly-tips on their own doorstep, the consequences weren't their problem. The government should have stepped in but found the problem was now too big for radical action, and (British) national governments have been incapable of radical action for a good while now.

More on the practicalities of my fly-tipping solution and the next level up of the 'good now, insoluble later' problem later. It is Notting Hill Carnival weekend and I must batten down the dustbins.
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Mick Harper
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Let's just make sure all the bases are covered by my fly-tipping proposal

1. The householder. If you give your rubbish to an unlicensed disposer, you may get prosecuted but you will save money. No change.
2. The disposer (licensed). If you use the new free fly-tipping sites you will save money but you will be fly tipping, eventually identified from the rubbish, prosecuted, lose your license. Therefore you will continue to use your current methods. No change.
3. The disposer (unlicensed). You will certainly use the new fly-tipping sites because, since you will be neither identified nor prosecuted for doing so, why take the risk of using a farmer's field or a flyover underpass? You will cease to be a fly-tipper but you are still an unlicensed disposer and may be identified and prosecuted from the rubbish you leave at the official site. This is the position now and is why the scheme works -- fly tipping is a very visible crime, it makes no difference where it is committed. Better off.
4. The local authority. Although you will have to pay for these unofficial sites, they are unmanned and cheap(er) to clear up than random fly-tips. You will not benefit directly from the cessation of your own fly-tippers but you will benefit overall from the cessation of random fly-tipping, some of which you currently have to clear up. However if your dumps are better than their dumps fly tippers will make a beeline for them and you'll end up with a bigger bill than now, so you will make sure they're worse. Doubtful.
5. The government. You will probably end up paying for (4) but the national bill will go down drastically which is what you're supposed to be in business for. Severe PR problems though from the general public who will be furious that taxpayers' money is being spent rewarding criminals. Doubtful.
6. The General Public. Better off in every way except inchoate feelings of rage. Fuck 'em.
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Mick Harper
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Next, a biggie, but not the biggest. That's to come, fans. No, we're going to deal with refugees (with whom we're going to lump in asylum-seekers, for reasons that will become clear). Let's all agree on one thing: refugees are deserving of our help. So the first thing that has to be done is to abolish refugees.

Refugees are, as a matter of definition, people who are being persecuted where they are and need to be somewhere else fast. That somewhere else is across the nearest border. And that's it. They are no longer being persecuted. They are in an absolutely wretched state -- and our hearts and wallets should go out to them -- but they are not refugees. They live in what are referred to as 'refugee camps' and they continue to be called and think of themselves as 'refugees' but they are not. They are not being persecuted, they do not need to be somewhere else fast, they do not satisfy the basic criterion of being a refugee. They are just people in an absolutely wretched state through no fault of their own.

In fact we do not have a name for them which is what causes the problem. If you don't have a name for a problem you cannot solve it but you can be sure that others will seek this equivocal status in seeking to solve their problems. Which might make it our problem and may also make it a problem for the 'refugees'.
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Mick Harper
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A little side note here. Social problems are always ingrained and part of being ingrained is that everybody has come to comfortable terms with them. Except maybe the ingrainees but let's just stick to the people that count. You and me. We've done everything we can and if the social problem remains it's because it's intractable. If somebody comes along and proposes a solution, he is suggesting it is not intractable and we have no business being comfortable about it. This makes us uncomfortable so we denounce the person as an unfeeling fascist bastard with an agenda and he goes away.
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