Are people led more by their emotions or reason?

 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau's belief in the noble savage and that man is corrupted by society and is intrinsically good, underpins the thinking of many on the left - socialist, communist and anarchist. This is what leads them to believe that they can build heaven on earth. Change the system and you change the man.

I think there's some truth in it, but I've always thought that man is more inclined to be led by his emotions than be guided by reason. This is what makes him susceptible to group think and the oratory of demagogues. A highly cultured society like Germany that gave us Ludwig van Beethoven, Heinrich Heine and Johann Goethe, also gave us Hitler, the Nazis and the death camps.

The former U.S. President, Ronald Regan, once said that if you're explaining, you're losing. He thought that a politician should keep his arguments simple. The cognitive psychologist, Herbert Simon, coined the term 'bounded rationality'. Simon believed that our ability to be rational is limited given the complexity of the world and our limited capability to process the information we have. Given our bounded rationality, Simon argued, we develop shortcuts to allow us to economize in our mental capabilities. These are known as 'heuristics' or intuitive thinking.

In short, most people are guided by their gut instincts and politicians and advertising men are well aware of it. Like stockbrokers and salesmen, they regard most people as suckers who are easily manipulated.

Economic myths and fallacies.

 

"The first method of estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him." (Niccolo Machiavelli). David Lammy (Foreign Secretary); Jonathan Reynolds (Business and Trade); Andrew Gwynne (Health & Social Care); Ed Miliband (Energy Security & Net Zero); Wes Streeting (Health).

Labour's Chancellor, Rachel 'Freeze' Reeves says the Labour government doesn't have the money to pay the winter fuel allowance to10m pensioners. Lucy Powell said the winter fuel allowance had to be slashed to stop a run on the pound. Keir Starmer said that he had to cut the pensioners winter fuel allowance to help save the NHS. It's likely that more British pensioners will finish up in hospital because they can't afford to keep their homes warm.

Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, gave the Ukraine £600m to support the country's "humanitarian, energy and stabilisation needs." Ed Miliband, then gave overseas developing countries £11.6bn in foreign aid to help them cope with climate change and they've got the audacity, to claim that they've got no money. Reeves said "If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it." So, where did the money come from for all this foreign aid? Where did the £22bn come from for the government’s “carbon capture” project?

What did the economist John Maynard Keynes say: "Anything we can actually do, we can afford." The American economist Milton Friedman, talked of the "Fixed Pie Fallacy", a belief that income and wealth are like a fixed pie and that one party can only gain at the expense of another. Margaret Thatcher subscribed to the "Household Fallacy", that led to austerity and cuts to welfare and public services. She compared the government to a household saying: “The Government should do what any good housewife would do if money were short...Look at the accounts and see what was wrong "

While a family or household can run out of money the British government can't ever run out of money because it creates all the money that it spends with the Bank of England being required to make all payments approved by Parliament. The pound is no longer linked to precious metals like the Gold Standard and neither is it part of a currency regime like the Euro. The British government has sovereign control over the issuing of money.

When British politicians tell you that the country has run out of money, as Labour's former chief secretary to the Treasury, Lyam Byrne, did in May 2010, economists fall about laughing. Byrne had scribbled on a piece of paper, "there's no money left." The incoming Clegg-Cameron coalition government, weaponized this letter and used it to justify imposing austerity measures much later. Byrne later claimed that the note had been left as a private joke.

Claims that the British government could ever run out of money are completely false but people still believe it, and politicians, still peddle this economically illiterate nonsense to pursue their own agendas. 

 

Capitalism's myths and fallacies.

 

There isn't one form of capitalism. Tory politicians often talked about turning Britain into a Singapore upon Thames. Singapore is often portrayed as a bastion of free market capitalism but most of the land and housing is under the control of the government and there are a lot of state-owned enterprises.

Germany and Sweden are capitalist societies but they have worker representatives on many company boards. Many countries have mixed economies of both state and private. If you live in a country like Britain, you will rarely hear the term capitalism ever used. Politicians hardly ever talk about capitalism or the capitalist system and you won't find it mentioned in the press or media. It's a bit like Oscar Wilde's the love that dare not speak its name.

 I don't think that capitalism and freedom necessarily go hand in hand. There's no clear relationship between a country's economic freedom and its political freedom. Nazi Germany was a dictatorship but it still had private enterprise, firms like Krupp's and I.G. Farben and some German businesses used slave labour. The Nazis called I.G. Farben the citadel of Jewish capitalism because there were that many Jews on the company board. Among the products that the firm supplied to the Nazis, was Zyklon-B gas which was used in the extermination camps.

Chile under the military dictatorship of General Pinochet was a capitalist society but it wasn't a free country. There's private enterprise and billionaires in Communist China but it's not a free country. The philosopher and economist Friedrich Hayek, called himself a 'liberal' and he was a staunch advocate of capitalism, but he said, "Personally I prefer a liberal dictatorship to democratic government devoid of liberalism." Hayek spoke in support of Pinochet's Chile which pursued Hayek's economic liberal ideas. Hayek believed in freedom, but it was freedom for the pike and not for the minnows. Some so-called free marketeers think that there needs to be constraints placed on democracy because politicians often do the wrong things in order to win votes.

I think John Steinbeck sums up my feelings about capitalism in his book 'Cannery Row'. The marine biologist Doc, says to Mac and the Boys:

 "It has always seemed strange to me. The things we admire in men, kindest, generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success."

The economist Leon Walras, once said: "You can't defend capitalism on the grounds that it is natural. The only justification should be that it's efficient and increases wealth."

Some people have a tendency to think that there always has been a capitalist system, which is not the case. An inclination to "truck and barter" may be the basis of an economy but it doesn't make it a capitalist economy. In a country like Britain, capitalism as we understand it, is a comparatively recent innovation dating back to what we now call the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century. If you know anything about English history, you would wonder how we ever became a capitalist society. In a country like England, religion and traditional virtue, taught people that avarice was a vice, usury a misdemeanour and the love of money was considered detestable. Working for wages was frowned upon as was buying cheap to sell dear. William Shakespeare's father was prosecuted for lending money. The Christian Bible told people, " And having food and raiment let us be therewith content...For the love of money is the root of all evil."

Free gear Keir to pay back £6,000 worth of gifts - including free Taylor Swift tickets and tickets for the races.

 

I always thought that Sir Keir Starmer-oid could turn on a dime. Before he was elected Prime Minister in July, this former Trotskyist was known for U-turns and broken promises and pledges.

Since he came to power, he's been like a pissed-up car driver out of control. He's even had to reassure the public that he's in control. When it was disclosed that Starmer-oid had received more than £100,000 in freebies from wealthy donors since 2019, which includes free clothing for himself and his wife, he defended his gift taking saying that it was transparency that really mattered.

Angie Rayner, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, said in a BBC interview that all MPs were on the take as they all took freebies. Jonathan Reynolds, Labour's holy roller Anglican Business Secretary, said that freebies were not a perk of the job but an important part of the job of being a politician.

Starmer, Rayner and Reynolds, seem to have quickly forgotten that when Labour was in opposition, it slated Boris Johnson and the Tories for sleaze and cronyism. Starmer wanted to know who had paid for Boris Johnson's wallpaper in Downing Street. Labour was incensed that Lord Bamford of JCB had paid towards Boris Johnson's wedding reception.  He forgets that he repeatedly told the public that if Labour came to power, they would clean up British politics. Starmer's squalid Labour government have been in power for just three months and it's already mired in sleaze and cronyism. Starmer-oid looks like a hypocrite and the best British Prime Minister that money can buy.

It's now being reported that Starmer-oid is going to pay back £6,000 worth of gifts including Taylor Swift tickets and free tickets to the races. We're also being told that he's ending a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by his wife, Lady Victoria Sponger.

I always thought that a Labour government led by two politically correct dipsticks like Keir Starmer-oid and Angie Rayner, would turn into a shambles. They're clueless! The opinion polls show that Starmer-oid is now less popular as a leader than the disgraced Liz Truss, who was ignominiously kicked out of Downing Street after fifty days in office. Starmer-oid and his wife recently attended Doncaster races when the Prime Minister was booed by a crowd and called a 'wanker' in the VIP enclosure. 

Eco warrior Dale Vince refuses union recognition to his workers.

 

The vegan multimillionaire, Dale Vince, wants to foist vegan meals on primary school children in Britain and to stop them eating meat, poultry, and dairy, products. He believes that a plant-based diet is better for them and the environment. It is also better for his pocket. His firm "Devils Kitchen', already supplies over a quarter of vegan meals to primary schools. Vince also wants to stop farmer's rearing livestock because he believes that cows are harmful to the environment.

Although Vince wants to save the planet, members of the trade union Unite, have been recently protesting outside the headquarters of Ecotricity, an eco-friendly energy company that is also owned by Dale Vince. They are protesting because Dale Vince is refusing to agree to union recognition for his employees so they can have a say in negotiating their pay and conditions.

Vince is one of the Labour Party's biggest financial donors and has given the party over £5m. He recently addressed a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference where he spoke about the benefits of vegan meals. He told the meeting that he wants Starmer's Labour government to change the law so primary schools don't have to provide meat and dairy products to their school children.

According to Unite, Vince has an estimated wealth of £107,000,000. Some of his vast wealth has been acquired from selling vegan meals to primary schools. No wonder he thinks vegan meals are better for all of us. He's got a vested interest in selling these meals. 

My thoughts and reflections on COVID.

 

I remember the health minister, Matt Hancock, telling the House of Commons in January 2020, that Professor Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England, had downgraded the risk of people getting COVID in Britain from low to very low. Hancock also said that as usual Britain was always well prepared and well equipped to deal with an epidemic. As we now know, it was all complete bullshit.

By May 2020 we had a higher death rate from COVID than Italy and the staff working in the NHS, were complaining of a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). One minute we were told that wearing a face mask was pointless and the next minute, face masks became compulsory.

At a time when the police were setting up road blocks to ask people where they were going and were flying drones to spy on fell and dog walkers, people were flying into Britain from all over the world without being put into quarantine or even being screened for COVID. Some of these people were arriving from COVID hotspots and walking straight onto the streets of Britain.

In March 2020, I remember being stopped by two police officers as I was walking home late at night. They wanted to know where I had been and where I was going. They made it clear to me that I wasn't under suspicion of anything but that I shouldn't be out walking, because Boris Johnson the prime minister, had ordered everybody to stop at home. They told me that I faced arrest for being outside walking and told me to go home. I told them that I wasn't aware of what Boris Johnson had said because I had been out all day.

We now know that Boris Johnson and his flunkies were deliberately flouting every law and regulation that they had introduced to control every aspect of our lives and the spread of COVID. There were regular piss ups in Downing Street along with birthday parties and Christmas quizzes. They even had a "bring your own bottle" piss up in the garden at Downing Street. Despite the widespread flouting of their own laws, Johnson told the House of Commons that he had been assured that COVID rules and regulations had been adhered to at all times. He was later found to have deliberately misled the House of Commons. Johnson then resigned as an MP to avoid being suspended for 90 days and having to fight a by-election.

Boris Johnson got COVID and was hospitalised. I got COVID in July 2021 and spent six days in an intensive care unit at my local hospital. At the time, I had not been vaccinated to prevent COVID and the hospital staff weren't happy about that. Before going to hospital, I had managed to get a GP to make a home visit. I told the GP that I was fatigued and felt tired and that on one occasion, I nearly fainted at a bus stop. I also told her that I was finding it hard to eat even though I felt hungry and that I hadn't the energy, to even to wash myself. She carried out tests and told me that she couldn't find anything wrong with me and that I didn't have the symptoms of COVID. I now know that I did have the symptoms of COVID even though she couldn't recognise it. I didn't feel particularly unwell and didn't have a raised temperature, persistent dry cough, or a sudden loss of taste and smell, but I knew that there was something wrong with me. Before she left, she told me to take a couple of paracetamols and to phone 111 if I felt worse.

It was a relative who later phoned the GP surgery to tell them I was still unwell. I had asked her if she could do some shopping for me. My cousin probably saved my life. My sister-in-law also came to my rescue and offered me help and assistance which was greatly appreciated. The GP said that he would call an ambulance. When the paramedics did arrive, it was 5.00 a.m. in the morning, and they told me that it had taken them twelve hours to get to me. They seemed to think that this was a subject of some amusement. I remember thinking to myself, I bet it didn't take twelve hours to get to that stupid bastard Boris Johnson. When they put the pulse oximeter on my finger, they told me that I was going to hospital straight away because my blood oxygen levels were down.

In the ambulance I was put on oxygen and taken to A&E. I didn't have to wait and was wheeled straight into the unit. They did tests and told me that I was being admitted to a ward because I had COVID. I finished up spending six days in a hospital ward with about twenty other people who all had COVID. I discovered that most of these had already been vaccinated for COVID but had still got it. Some of these patients were far younger than me and had been in a far worse condition. I discovered that one of the complications that can arise from COVID is blood clots, so I was given anticoagulant injections and put on steroids and anti-inflammatory drugs. When I was on that ward, a man appeared at the foot of my bed one day. He never introduced himself to me, but just said: "I can't guarantee that you're not going to get far worse." He then walked away and I never saw him again. Even though I was feeling much better, I thought that I had just encountered Grim Reaper. One member of staff, who worked on that COVID ward, told me that she'd had COVID three times. When I asked her what she thought about the way the government had dealt with the COVID pandemic, she told me that she thought that they didn't know what they were doing, and I think she was absolutely right.

I take my hat off to that lady and to the other members of staff who looked after us at Tameside Hospital. They put their own lives at risk by working on that ward. After being discharged from the hospital, I was given medication and told to isolate at home for ten days. During those ten days my sister-in-law brought food to my front door. I was later given a chest X-ray and given the all clear.

I've now been vaccinated five times against COVID and I am due for a sixth injection next month. I was fortunate to survive getting that laboratory-made Chinese disease, but some people weren't as lucky. One man told me recently that his brother had died of COVID simply because he contracted it from being in the company of people who had just returned from a holiday in Italy.

Since getting COVID, my GP surgery have never contacted me once to ask how I am doing. At the outset of the COVID pandemic in March 2020, they stopped having walk-in doctors' appointments and have never reinstated them. Today, it's almost impossible to get to see a doctor at that surgery because they're still reluctant to have face-to-face contact with patients. Hospital doctors and nurses have no choice in the matter. General Practice has almost become a sinecure. GPs are getting well paid for doing next to nothing.

Compulsory Meat In Schools Should Be Scrapped, Says Dale Vince.

 

Dale Vince

The multimillionaire green entrepreneur and vegan, Dale Vince, says he wants to speak to the government about banning schools from supplying meat and dairy products to children in their school meals. He also wants to ban the farming of animals which he believes is one of the biggest threats to the environment. He says that a plant-based diet is much healthier for children and much better for the environment.

Vince shouldn't find it much of a problem talking to the Labour government about this issue or gaining access to government ministers, because he's one of Labour's biggest financial donors, having given the Labour Party £5m out of the profits he's made from selling vegan meals to primary schools. His business interests include 'Devil's Kitchen', which already provides a quarter of vegan meals to English primary schools. He also owns the green energy firm Ecotricity and a green football club, Forest Green Rovers.

Although the law currently requires schools in England to serve a "portion of meat and poultry on three or more days each week", guidance on a healthy diet for children, also recommends plenty of fruit and vegetables and dairy products. Most doctors would recommend that their patients eat a balanced diet which includes meat, poultry, and dairy products, in order to remain healthy. Some medical professionals do argue that a vegan or vegetarian diet can lead to vitamin and nutritional deficiency. Nevertheless, Dale Vance wants the Labour government to change the law so schools are not required to provide meat, poultry and dairy products, to primary school children.

Personally, I wouldn't want this kind of vegan plant-based diet foisted on myself or my children, nor do I believe that a vegan diet, is healthier for young children or adults. A vegan or vegetarian diet is not much use to an Eskimo or anybody who lives in a cold climate. Dale Vince has a vested interest in promoting the take up of vegan meals and green technologies because he's made himself a very rich man by doing so.

I suspect that Dale Vince is another one of those vegetarian cranks, who would tell us that man didn't evolve to eat meat but crawled about on all fours eating acorns and berries in a state of nature. If this was true, which I don't accept for a moment, then he should explain why most human beings eat meat and are equipped with 32 teeth and a bite force of 162 pounds per square inch, which is very useful when it comes to eating meat.

Archaeologist have discovered flint arrowheads in the skulls of woolly mammoths and Clovis points have been found across Ice Age sites in America, lodged in mammoth skeletons. They've also found pig bones at Neolithic sites like Stonehenge. There's little doubt that early man was a hunter, carnivore, and scavenger, who would eat anything he could lay his hands on to sustain himself. We know that when humans are faced with starvation and hunger, they will eat almost anything including other human beings.

 

Rosie Duffield resigns Labour whip.

 

Rosie Duffield

I agree with Rosie Duffield's sentiments about Keir Starmer, but if she had been intending to resign the Labour whip, I wonder why she didn't vote against the cut in the winter fuel allowance on 10 September.

Duffield decided to abstain instead of voting against the means testing of the winter fuel allowance which will lead to nine out of ten pensioners losing it. Only one Labour MP voted against the measure and that was Jon Trickett, who represents the West Yorkshire constituency of Hemsworth.

All three Tameside MPs - Angela Rayner, Jonathan Reynolds and Andrew Gwynne, voted to pick the pockets of British pensioners. Reynolds, recently defended the £100,000 'freebies' that Sir Keir Starmer-oid had received from wealthy donors like Lords Waheed Alli. Reynolds said that taking freebies were not the perks of being an MP but we're part of the job of being an MP.

The Gaelic Revival.

 

They used to say that the Gaelic language spoken in parts of Scotland was a dying language because so few people spoke it. It seems to have been spoken mainly in the west of Scotland and among people of the Western Isles.

Some years ago, I used to read copies of the West Highland Free Press, that were given to me by a lady who was from the Isle of Skye. That paper wasn't published in Gaelic but in English. I remember reading an article where a registrar in Scotland had refused to enter a child's name on a birth certificate because it was in Gaelic. It caused a bit of a fuss with some people suggesting that the registrar must've been a dastardly Sassenach, but it's very likely that the registrar was a Scot.

On another occasion, the newspaper posed a question that I found highly amusing. The newspaper asked how do you know when two people are speaking in Gaelic? Answer: They're the ones that are covered in spit. That sounded more like a Scottish joke to me because most English people have never heard the language spoken and are not familiar with the Gaelic language.

I also remember reading how iodine tablets had been given out to people on the Isle of Skye which sounded ominous to me, because this is usually done when there is a danger of exposure to radiation. There is a nuclear submarine base on Skye and it is thought that coolant discharged into the sea from these submarines may be radioactive. The lady from Skye showed me a Bible that was printed in the Gaelic language and reminded me of the similarities between the Irish native language and the Gaelic of the Scots.

Nowadays, there seems to have been a renewed interest in the Gaelic language and one of the fastest growing areas for the Gaelic language, is in Edinburgh. In parts of Wales, it is compulsory for children to be taught the Welsh language even though it's not likely to be of much use to you outside of Wales.

I think it is important to protect native languages and culture because it tells us a lot about the history of a people, even though much of this culture and tradition, might be of recent invention. There's little doubt that what many people think of as quintessentially Scottish, is derived from the imagination and writings of Sir Walter Scott in the 19th century and the romantic influence of Queen Victoria. Old Gaelic was the language of Macbeth even though he probably spoke Latin as well.

At the time of the Jacobite wars between England and the supporters of the young pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, in the 18th century, the redcoat English soldiers would often refer to the Scots as the people of the Irish tongue. Many Scottish clansmen and Scots fought on both sides. After the Battle of Culloden, the English tried to ban all aspects of Gaelic Scottish culture including the language and dress, but they never succeeded.

The politics of hypocrisy.

 

Labour's Anglican Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has said that taking gifts, tribute, and hospitality, from wealthy donors like Waheed Alli, are not the perks of the job of a British politician, but are part of the job of being a politician. In 2016, Reynolds said that his Christian faith had led him to resign as Shadow Transport Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn.

Curiously, when Labour was in opposition, it took a rather different point of view when it came to politicians taking freebies. Sir Keir Starmer-oid constantly criticised Boris Johnson for taking freebies off wealthy donors like Lord Bamford, the owner of JCB, and demanded to know who had paid for Boris Johnson's wallpaper in Downing Street. Labour was incensed that Lord Bamford had paid towards Boris Johnson's wedding reception.

Many honest and decent people would disagree with Reynolds. They think that there's something squalid, bent, or even corrupt, about politicians taking freebies off wealthy individuals. British people cannot stomach cant and hypocrisy even when it's peddled by spurious holy rollers like Jonathan Reynolds.

 If Sir Keir Starmer-oid is to be remembered for anything, it will be as the best UK prime minister that money could buy. When a wealthy individual like Waheed Alli is clothing you and your missus and giving freebies to many of your cabinet colleagues, you've got to ask yourself why he's doing it and who is really running this country? In politics, people's perceptions mean everything.

 

Dale Vance - Conflicts of Interests?

 

Dale Vance

Labour donor and green entrepreneur, Dale Vance, says that he wants to talk to the Labour government about scrapping compulsory meat and dairy in school meals in England.

Personally, I wouldn't want vegan meals foisted on myself or my children but I believe children should be given a choice.  Vance who has gifted more than £5m to Labour, says that vegan meals are healthier and better for the environment. But is that true?

It's by no means certain if vegan meals are much healthier for children, or adults. A vegan is someone who doesn't eat food derived from any animals but lives on a plant-based diet. Most UK medical practitioners would recommend that you eat a balanced diet. It is known that vegetarians can be at risk of vitamin deficiency, but most Hindus are vegetarian.

We know that the Irish peasant once subsisted on the lumper potato. Although this must have been a rather boring diet, it was a perfectly healthy one. Apparently, the potato and the skin, is high in nutritional value. By all accounts, the only thing the Irish cottier needed to add to his diet of potatoes was butter milk.

Vance is campaigning for an end to the farming of animals which he believes is the biggest driver of the climate crisis. He told a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference that his company 'Devil's Kitchen', already supplies vegan meals to 'one in four' primary schools.

It sounds to me like Vance has a vested business interest in lobbying for vegan meals to made available in schools. Selling and promoting vegan meals has made him a multimillionaire. Is this why he's donating money to Labour and why he thinks farm animals are driving the so-called 'climate crisis'? 

Labour split over plans to cut pub opening hours in Britain.

 

Angela Rayner

We've been told by Labour's obese Business Secretary, Angie Rayner, who has admitted to a weakness for raves, vaping and cocktails, that Britain now has the most working-class prime minister and working-class cabinet in a generation.

In opposition, Sir Keir Starmer-oid (KC), a former state prosecutor and Trotskyist, said he would be a light touch prime minister who didn't want to tell people how to lead their lives. He pledged to “tread more lightly” on the lives of voters. But in just over eleven weeks, we're now seeing how controlling, venal, inept and authoritarian, Starmer's Labour government is.

Labour appears to be mired in sleaze and in hock to wealthy capitalists and hedge fund dealers who circle Westminster handing out free clothing and hospitality to Labour cabinet ministers as well as the Prime Minister and his wife.  With his bans and proscriptions on dissenters, there's more than a touch of the Maximilian Robespierre about Comrade Starmer-oid.

The Labour government now wants to crack down on junk food advertising, to weigh people at work and ban people from smoking outside pubs and in pub beer gardens. As a record number of UK pubs close on a weekly basis, Labour is now considering closing pubs early and introducing minimum unit alcohol pricing that will increase the price of alcoholic drinks to control alcohol abuse. This will lead to further pub closures and job losses.

Labour's health minister, Andrew Gwynne, who has been a career Labour politician for most of his adult life, and who now represent Denton & Gorton, has said that Labour are "not the fun police" or a "super nanny", but the case for introducing such measures was both moral and economic. He said that Britain's poor health was "morally reprehensible" and that the NHS hasn't enough money to cope with rising demand.

On Tuesday, Labour's Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, vowed to "table an emergency resolution" to stop any motion aimed at closing pubs earlier. Speaking on the BBC Today programme, McFadden said that pubs were a great part of the British tradition and that Labour had no plans to change pub opening hours in that way. Emma McClarkin, the chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said that she welcomed Mr McFadden's move to deny the rumours and that it was a huge relief that the Idea of restricting pub opening hours, had been squashed.

Sir Keir Starmer-oid's squalid and sleazy Labour government, have said they want to grow the British economy but they don't seem to have much of an idea about how to do it. Labour's mixed and confusing messages over policy and endless talk of doom and gloom and tight and painful times that lie ahead, are undermining both business and consumer confidence and diminishing economic activity and putting jobs at risk. 

Charles Dickens and his influence on English morals.

 

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was 25 years old when Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837. There's no doubt that many of us are aware of grinding Victorian poverty because of the books of Charles Dickens and that Dickens, has had a profound influence on English morals and values. To this day, we can recognise Dickensian English types like Seth Pecksniff and John Podsnap. But Dickens had his critics and some critics thought that Dickens was excessively sentimental and lacked intellectual rigour and depth.

George Orwell wrote a very good essay on Dickens and was clear that Dickens was not a socialist or revolutionary and neither was he on the side of the mob or trade unionists. He was more concerned with moral improvement rather than political reform. His heroes are not social reformers but ordinary people who make a simple commitment to decency. Orwell says that his general attitude was that it is "Useless to change institutions without a change of heart..." Orwell argued that Dickens must have been aware that many of the problems in society were caused by the structural inequalities caused by Britain's social class system and capitalism but he really fails to address this. Dickens always seems to resort to introducing the benevolent capitalist-type like the Cheeryble brothers, who come to the rescue or the wealthy John Jarndyce, whose main goal in life is to do good for others. Nevertheless, Dickens was a social critic and satirist and many of his books attack such things as the workhouse, the legal system, bureaucracy and the system of education in Britain.

John Ruskin seems to have been greatly impressed with 'Hard Times', one of Dickens's shorter novels. Among other things, this novel is an attack on 'Utilitarianism' and its ideology as represented by the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind who is morally blind and only interested in facts. I think Hard Times is probably the only Dickens novel that really addresses the issue of the class struggle but it's clear that Dickens, is on the side of Stephen Blackpool, who is shunned by his fellow workers because he refuses to join the union. Bitzer, who is a former pupil of Gradgrind's school of rationalist education, works in Josiah Bounderby's bank and spies on his fellow workers. He's a kind of prototype early Thatcherite. Mrs Sparsit, who is originally from an aristocratic background but has fallen on hard times, is now Bounderby's housekeeper. She's s only a simple widow woman but like Margaret Thatcher, she believes that the labouring classes must be conquered.

'Bleak House' is considered a 'Condition -of- England novel and I think Dickens' novel 'Our Mutual Friend', is also another good novel. John Ruskin coined the term 'illth' which was the underside of wealth. It refers to the damage that change leaves in its wake - the human cost of so-called progress. Dickens's novels show what statistics miss or disguise and what life was actually like for many millions of English people living in the most prosperous and advanced economy in the world. In Dickens's day it was paradise for 30,000 and hell for 30 million.

Reynolds defends Sir Keir Cadger and Lady Victoria Sponger taking freebies!

 

Labour's deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, says that she doesn't believe that she broke Parliamentary rules when she stayed five nights buckshee at Lord Waheed Ali's luxurious New York flat with her 'soulmate' and swain, Sam Tarry. Rayner declared only £1,250.00 for staying for five nights at the luxury apartment in Manhattan. Rayner told the BBC interviewer Laura Kuenssberg that all MP's are on the take and accept freebie gifts from wealthy donors. She told Kuenssberg that donations had been "a feature of our politics for a very long time", with all MPs accepting gifts. When asked if Lord Alli had received anything from her in return for his donations, Rayner said: "I promised nothing and gave him nothing in return."

Angie and the chancellor Rachel 'Freeze' Reeves, also received freebie clothing which they declared as "office support." The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has also defended donations that she received from Lord Alli.

The Labour prime minister Sir Keir Cadger and his wife Lady Victoria Sponger, have also received tens of thousands of pounds of freebie clothing from Lord Alli as well as designer spectacles. The couple have also received free tickets to Taylor Swift concerts and free tickets for Arsenal football matches. Sir Keir has been criticised for failing to declare on time, many of the free gifts and donations the he's received, even though he promised to restore honesty and probity into British politics.

Lord Alli is so generous with his largesse and bounty that you would think that he was a fairy godmother or was running a benevolent society. But we all know that you don't get as rich as Lord Alli by giving your money away. As they say, he owes pays the piper calls the tune.

While sleazy and greedy Labour MPs are being given luxury goods by wealthy benefactors like Lord Alli, they've just voted to make Britain pensioners poorer by taking their winter fuel allowance off them. All three Tameside MPs including Angela Rayner have expressed support for the measure and voted in favour of means-testing the winter fuel allowance.

Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, the MP for Stalybridge & Hyde, defended Sir Keir taking over £100,000 in gifts and donations since December 2019 including £698-worth of Coldplay tickets in Manchester. Reynolds told Times Radio that accepting 'hospitality' "is not a perk of the job, it's part of the job." He added that hard-working politicians were entitled to "a bit of relaxation." 

Is government debt a good or bad thing?

 

The national debt is in Japan is approximately 9.2 trillion dollars or 263% of GDP. Compared to Japan, Britain's national debt pales into insignificance. Yet, the Japanese economy, is the fourth-largest in the world and the country is far richer than Britain. Japan is also a more developed country than Britain with a far better public transport system. 

America is one of the most indebted countries in the world but as one of the most powerful economies in the world.  Despite these levels of debt, I don't think that either Japan or the U.S. are likely to go bankrupt. What matters is whether debt is serviceable i.e. can it be paid back. Economists talk of good and bad debt. Some countries do default on their debts as Russia did in August 1998.

Austerity might be one way of reducing debt but it also damages the economy. Inflation also reduces government debt because it increases the price level and reduces the real value of government debt. But inflation also brings economic problems as it increases the cost of living for consumers and the value of currency diminishes. Another way to reduce debt is by growing the economy because this increases tax revenues and reduces the relative debt burden. This is what Britain did at the end of WWII. In 1946, UK debt stood at 240% of GDP, but the government didn't impose austerity measures. 

I think people should avoid comparing governments with the way in which a family household or a small business is run. Many pension funds invest in government debt by buying government bonds which pay interest. While it might be wise for family households to pay off their debt, it isn't necessarily good for the economy if all consumers did the same thing. It would reduce aggregate demand because people would be spending less. One person's spending is another person's income. If the British government suddenly decided to pay off all its debts, it would crash the economy because it would have to withdraw £1.6 trillion of money from use in the economy.

Britain can't really run out of money because it can always print it, create it electronically, coin it, and issue it. The money is fiat money, a currency that is not backed by a commodity such as gold or silver. But printing more money doesn't necessarily increase economic output, it just puts more money into circulation. If consumers are able to demand more goods but economic output remains the same, firms will increase prices and this will cause inflation.  Britain also as sovereign control over its money supply because it's not in a currency regime like the Euro. If an individual, family, or small business owner started to print their own money, they would be locked up.

 

Sir Keir Starmer - "King of the Cadgers!.

 

Sir Keir Starmer

The Labour peer, Lord Waheed Alli, has been in the newspapers quite a lot in the past few weeks because of his financial donations to the Labour Party and to Keir and Victoria Starmer.

Lord Alli, who is estimated to be worth around £200m, is said to have donated tens of thousands of pounds' worth of suits and spectacles to the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and £5,000 worth of clothes and personal shopping, for his wife Lady Victoria Starmer. The Prime Minister has also declared £20,400 for "accommodation" from Lord Alli who owns an £18 million penthouse in Covent Garden and a property in Kent. These properties and office space in London, owned by Lord Alli, have also been used to host meetings of Sir Keirs team.

On the night of the general election on July 4, Sir Keir chose to be at Lord Alli's Covent Garden penthouse with family members and close aides to watch the exit polls announcement where a buffet was made available.

A recent analysis has revealed that Sir Keir has declared more free tickets and gifts than any other major party leader in recent times, amounting to more than £100,000 since December 2019. The Labour MP Lucy Powell, has declared gifts of £40,289.00 since 2019. Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, is also known to have benefitted from fashion donations. Declarations show that she accepted £2,200-worth of free clothing from the brand ME-EM.

The Conservative opposition who are no strangers to sleaze and cronyism, have questioned Sir Keir's approach to accepting gifts and largesse from wealthy individuals and businesses. Tom Tugendhat who wants to replace Rishi Sunak as the Conservative Party leader, told the journalist Sophy Ridge, that MPs are offered a lot of gifts and free tickets, but "a lot of us decline politely." He added:

"I've been invited to many different events...And you know, you've got to make a decision. Does it look right? Does it smell right? Pass the sniff test, frankly...The question is why are people offering him (Keir Starmer), so many freebies."

Sir Keir Starmer has suggested that he will continue to accepts gifts from Lord Alli. On Monday, Starmer said in Rome, that it would be "pushing it a bit far" for him to banned from receiving hospitality gifts.

It's A Wonderful Life (1946) - Frank Capra.

 

It's A Wonderful Life

It's a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart as George Bailey and Lionel Barrymore as Henry Potter, is one of my favourite films. Despite the film's general popularity to this day and it being a Christmas classic, Ayn Rand, the author of the pro-capitalist novel Atlas Shrugged, told the FBI that Frank Capra's film 'It's a Wonderful Life', was Communist propaganda.

George Bailey, owns a small buildings and loans business in Bedford Falls, New York. George isn't really an anti-capitalist, because he believes in a kind of moral capitalism, which sounds like an oxymoron to me. We might call it compassionate capitalism. George is basically a decent man who is on the side of the working man. The arch villain of the film, Mr Potter, is portrayed as a grasping and greedy and conniving capitalist banker who wants to put George Bailey out of business. When uncle Billy, misplaces $8,000 dollars of the firm's money in Potters bank and can't remember where he left it, George finds himself facing financial ruin, scandal and possibly jail. Unable to find the money, Bailey wishes he'd never been born and considers committing suicide but the prayers of his friends and family reach heaven, and his guardian angel, called Clarence Odbody, is assigned to save George in order to earn his wings.

Clarence sees flash backs of George's life and shows George what would've happened had he not been born. He wouldn't have been able to save his brother Harry from drowning. Uncle Billy was institutionalised when the firm went bust. Mary never married and has become an old maid and his mother doesn't know him. Bedford Falls has been renamed 'Pottersville' and is full of callous people and sleazy venues. George begs for his life back and is granted his wish.

Like all good films, this one also has a happy ending. George's wife Mary and uncle Billy, have rallied the townspeople of Bedford Falls who have donated enough to replace the missing money which Potter is hiding in his bank. Among the donations, George finds a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a gift from Clarence, who has inscribed: "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends."

I read Atlas Shrugged many years ago. Rand's novel, published in 1957, depicts a dystopian United States brought down by excessive regulation and government interference and collectivisation. This society is portrayed by Rand as having embraced mediocrity in the name of social egalitarianism. The hero of the book, John Galt, is a philosopher and inventor, who secretly organises a strike of the world's creative leaders to bring about the collapse of bureaucratic society.

The book was controversial when it was published. In America in the 1950s, and was criticised for its amoral tone and advocacy of self-interested rugged individualism and selfishness. Although Rand denied that she was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, the book is very Nietzschean in its tone. Rand's supermen, are the heroic capitalists like John Galt, the railroad tycoon Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, a steel barren and Ragnar Dannesjkold, a kind of inverted Robin Hood, who steals from the poor to give to the rich. All of them are depicted like Atlas, holding the world aloft on his shoulders.

Although Rand despised altruism and the welfare state, in later life she finished up on social security and Medicare. Today, Atlas Shrugged is considered the Bible of the American Congress and its hero John Galt, is a cult figure of the Tea Party. Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, became one of the members of Rand's inner circle. 

Leading psychologist says Trump's talent for manipulating half-belief is second to none.

 

Donald Trump

I knew of the 'Rashomon Effect' but I didn't realise that it was also the name of a film. The concept refers to the way in which individuals have competing realities and interpret events in different ways. Donald Trump is not only a compulsive liar, but he's also a dangerous demagogue, prone to using the 'Big Lie' and then imposing it on the American public.

Did Trump really believe that he won the 2020 U.S. election and then it was stolen from him? He's lost every legal challenge in the U.S. courts on this issue. Before the Presidential election in 2020, I remember Trump saying that he might not recognise the result. He's now saying that if he loses in November, there will be a bloodbath, and conversely, that if he wins the election, there will be no more elections. One psychologist said that the answer to the question of whether Trump really believes he won the 2020 Presidential election, is neither yes nor no, but yes and no.

In Psychology Today, Nancy Rosenblum, characterized Trump's approach as 'solipsistic reality'. She says Trump is only capable of embracing a version of reality based on what his own self seeks and needs, even though it may be far removed from accepted standards of evidence. Trump makes things up and comes to believe partially in his own lies. Once Trump created the Big Lie about the 2020 U.S. election, he had to maintain the falsehood, it was part of what Rosenblum calls the "narrative necessity." She says that Trump's talent for socially manipulating half-belief is second to none.

Some years ago, I watched an interview with Trump's former butler, Anthony Senecal, at Mar-a-Lago. He said Trump would tell guests that the tiles in his daughter Ivanka's room, were made by Walt Disney. He also made the same claim in a book. It was a great story, but totally untrue. "Who cares?" Trump laughed, according to his butler.

Trump is a liar, but he's consistent and it doesn't seem to damage him politically. Nor did being found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records by a New York jury. Despite his mendacity and crookedness, Trump has managed to become the chosen Republican nominee for President. Opinion polls have shown that Trump, a convicted felon, is more trusted on the economy, foreign policy, and immigration, than either Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. Nevertheless, his opinion poll lead has been narrowing since Harris became the official Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. Presidency.

Since Trump's abysmal performance in the debate with Kamala Harris, he's now ruled out any further debates with her before the U.S. Presidential election in November. I'm hardly surprised that he's afraid to debate with Harris because she wiped the floor with him. When Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, Harris pissed herself laughing and so did many Americans. The moderators told him that they'd fact checked the allegation with the authorities in Springfield, who couldn't confirm, what Trump had alleged. Trump then accused the moderators of being biased in favour of Kamala Harris, who he accused of being a 'Marxist' like her father. 

Some thoughts on Karl Marx.

 

As Marx said himself, he didn't invent 'social classes' or the 'class struggle' because that can be found in the writings of the ancient Greeks like Aristotle and Plato. Marx's genius was that he was able to knock these various different ideas - French politics, German and Greek philosophy and English economics, into a coherent philosophy.

It was Marx's belief that material conditions determine consciousness. As I understand it, what Marx is saying is that the way in which a society organises its economic system - its infrastructure - determines the type of social relations that exist in that society and also its 'superstructure' i.e. its legal, political, and cultural system. There seems to be a great deal to be said in favour of this. The ancient world had slaves, the feudal world had serfs, and capitalism created a proletariat. All these societies also had ruling classes who organised things to maintain the status quo. As Marx said, the history of all hitherto existing societies is a history of class struggle. For Marx this is what drove social change.

What is problematic about Marx's philosophy is the belief that somehow history follows inevitable laws of social development. There seems to be little room for agency or spontaneity. If Lenin, hadn't arrived in Petrograd in April 1917, there may well have been no October revolution. Marx didn't rule out a Russian revolution in spite of the fact that it wasn't really a capitalist society but largely a feudal society. He seems to have thought that a revolution in Russian wouldn't be sustainable without the support of other European socialist countries. Contrary to Marx's predictions, most revolutions have occurred in peasant societies and not capitalist societies.

Is it also the case that materialist conditions determine consciousness? What really comes first - the infrastructure or the superstructure or do the two things interact?  There doesn't seem to be a great deal of evidence that there was a sudden change in the way in which the economy was organised in Biblical Palestine when Judeo Christianity arrived on the scene or the Renaissance in medieval Florence. Similarly, the way in which the ancient Greek world was organised doesn't seem to have changed much throughout the centuries even though it's a period when great thinkers and ideas flourished.