Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Doing a line by line scrutiny of 650 results, you may not have noticed the astonishing number of Pakistanis. Names of Pakistani heritage I suppose we have to say nowadays. This is way beyond the numbers to be expected from Pakistani areas of settlement and the PR needs of the various parties -- they are very noticeable in the case of the Brexit Party! What does this mean? What does it foreshadow, as Enoch Powell would say.

It means that Pakistanis are engaged in their favourite pastime, politics. For us non-Pakistanis, politics is something to be left to those relatives we can't lock up in the attic but for them it is ... well, one would have to say it is a branch of retail. Sometimes literally, they are incredibly corrupt, but mainly in the sense of 'retail therapy', an activity that one engages in as a matter of day-to-day happiness. On the whole, as with retail proper, it is a valuable contribution to the British way of life. They need careful watching all the same.

Technically Tulip Siddiq is Bangladeshi.

[Mick Harper]

Do you live in a spooky constituency? I do. It starts off with the smallest Labour majority in the country then, despite or because my nephew is canvassing for Labour, it has the smallest swing to the Tories in the country resulting in now having the smallest Conservative majority in the country. It also had the largest number of candidates in the country (eight) and this is only counting Sam Gyimah once. And just to complete a nap hand, bottom of the poll with twenty-eight votes is the Workers Revolutionary Party despite there being more than that from the Redgrave clan alone living in the constituency.

I'd like to move but what if it is me that is causing this rent in the political firmament and I simply take my fluence somewhere else? No, I'm not budging. Come ye vasty spirits of the deep and do your worst!

[Mick Harper]

It's good to hear Labour won the argument over policy.
"Will you be voting Labour again this time?"
"Not sure."
"Do you like our policies for instance? We sent you a pamphlet."
"Haven't quite finished it yet."
"We're taking water into public ownership."
"Won't that cost a bob or two?"
"It's fully costed. The top five per cent will be paying."
"I'll have some of that then."

[Wile E. Coyote]

Interestingly, the perceived threat of the planet dying, and species extinction, does not change behaviour, without coin to help develop new green technologies.

So the EU answer will, of course, be chucking lots of coin to those countries who are less green, to help them go green, to meet the 2050 climate neutrality target.

Still that isn't enough. Poland heavily dependent on coal is being allowed out an "opt out" of the target to be carbon neutral by 2050.

[Mick Harper]

Going against the grain of human behaviour is rarely a good idea (which is why you require totalitarian governments to, say, introduce socialism) but the Green idealists almost never recognise this. 'Hair-shirtism' is rife among them but not among us. And yet when the time is ripe, it comes very quickly and relatively painlessly. It wasn't so long ago that it was Britain and Germany who were arguing the Polish position but now coal is pretty much absent from both countries, whether mining it or burning it.

My own pet beef is jet aircraft. It seems to me insane to allow kerosene to be dumped wholesale and in exponentially greater amounts in the upper atmosphere. Yet such is the public's love of cheap and fast travel it is rarely on the agenda.

[Mick Harper]

The thing about listening to Leninists is to work out to what extent they believe what they are saying. Take Richard Burgon, as it seems the Labour Party may be doing as their next leader (or next but one). He drones on in that flat man-of-the-northern-people voice, without a flicker of emotion, saying things which he knows are not true. "Jeremy wasn't an issue on the doorstep. It's fully costed. The Tories want to sell the NHS to Donald Trump.” That's a necessary par for all politicians and should not be objected to unduly.

Leninists have another level of deception. They are entryists into a democratic process which they do not subscribe to but do not tell you they do not subscribe to. But British Leninists are entryists into a fully democratic society. They are not like literal Leninists, born into a despotic society in which conspiratorial politics is a reasonable, perhaps necessary, strategy. You can be a Vanguardist with a clear conscience if you believe that a few thousand of you are entitled to overthrow the state because it needs overthrowing and it is the only way to do so.

At some level, British Leninists know this. But at another level (I think) they don’t.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

You are right in a general way about the Left because it is always based on the premise "We (the few) know what's good for you (the many)". You are also correct to point out this is true for all ideologues, left and right, but surely you are wrong to subsume it all under the 'Leninism' banner.

For instance, the ERG are not entryists into the Conservative Party but a faction of the Conservative party. They do not (I hope) have the ultimate ambition of throwing off the moderate shackles and embarking on a radical remaking of Britain, if necessary by the use of force. Ditto the soft Left of the Labour Party. Ditto even Jeremy Corbyn. Pussy cats may be in the same family as sabre tooth tigers but they are not the same thing.

[Mick Harper]

I am having triangulation difficulties with the standard Goebbels biography I am reading (strictly for research purposes, you understand). He is clearly a genius -- both as an organiser and as an orator -- and David Irving, the author, has equally clearly fallen slightly in love with him. Then again all good biographers should do so with their subjects. But should I?

And then there is another problem. In order to explain Goebbels' spectacular success after being appointed Gauleiter for the Brandenburg area in 1926 it is essential to explain how a party that had just won a total of 327 votes in Berlin-wide elections became a dominating force -- at least at street level -- by 1927. Goebbels' rabble rousing and administrative skills are all very well (if you see what I mean) but it is the Jewish domination of the city -- at least in various sectors -- that is the more potent factor. Irving describes this with such relish that one reels. Whilst also believing.

And one more thing. One thing that people who are forever raising the cry of 'anti-semitism' should bear in mind: the more the Nazis were opposed -- in the media, in the courts and on the streets -- the more they thrived. That too is a tricky question of triangulation.

[Mick Harper]

If it is agreed that Northern Ireland can break away from the UK, join Ireland and thereby automatically be part of the EU, why can't Scotland break away from the UK, join Ireland and thereby automatically be part of the EU? It can break away from Ireland later à la Catalonia from Spain. And they call Dominic Cummings brilliant.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

Pots & Kettles Department

[Mick Harper]

I suppose you are entitled to know the next big thing in World Politics before the world knows. Turkey is intending to reconstitute the Ottoman Empire. You already know about the little stuff, in Syria and the Aegean, but you may not be aware that it is on the verge of taking over Libya. You probably also don't know that Libya was the last place the Ottomans were ejected from (by Italy in 1912). Once Turkey's got hold of the Libyan petrosquillions it will be able to take on the big hitters in its old dominions in Arabia and start competing with the EU in its former Balkan heartlands. The Ottomans were mainly Albanians, Serbs and Bulgars.

Their big problem is that Russia is trying to recreate the glories of Tsardom and the two have been competing since ... um ... say, 1700. At the moment, Erdogan thinks Putin is on board and Putin thinks Erdogan is on board but they're both in for a surprise. More when I know it. The post-American world is very fast-moving and even I have difficulty keeping up with it. But meanwhile

They're riding along on the crest of a wave
And the sun is in the sky,
All their eyes on
The distant horizon
Look out for passers-by.
They'll do the hailing
While other ships are round them sailing
They're riding along on the crest of a wave
and the world is theirs...

Everyone always thinks that. But it ain't. Not any more.

[Mick Harper]

It's rather odd, night after night, watching the bushfires rage across Australia, knowing I hold the solution in my hand. It's not in the least frustrating, I have long got used to that though it used to drive me nuts. I know I should be bending my back finding ways to bring the solution to their attention but since I also learned long ago that the right key is entirely a matter of serendipity, that too has ceased to bother me. As the character in Joseph Heller's Good as Gold would say, "My name is Smug, not Smaug."

[Ishmael]

I'm all ears. Let's have the solution! :-)