Standing on the shoulders of a ….

…we have plumbed the depths with this one

Like most people who’d heard the quote, I assumed that it was original to Isaac Newton.

Not so.

In 1676, Newton wrote “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”, which is indeed a memorable phrase, and speaks well to the natural humility of an extraordinary person. 

However, Wikipedia gives the palm to Bernard of Chartres (a 12th century philosopher), and possibly much earlier: “Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.” The giants being the ancient philosophers and scholars of Greece and Rome. 

Which preamble is to bring us with a bang back to Brexit and the state of the British polity. Here is a nice little summary from a Spectator Coffee House commenter Paul Sutton, of what the ludicrously self regarding Speaker, John Bercow did:

It is clear to all that the Speaker has torn up three lynch-pins of our constitution – and ones which are essential safeguards:

1. The executive controls the order paper: Bercow (like something out of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe) allowed “emergency legislation” (i.e. it’s an “emergency” for Remainers, if we leave the EU) to propose a bill.

2. The bill involves massive additional expenditure, and so should only come from the executive.

3. The bill completely removes the use of prerogative power, from the executive. Comically, the Speaker (under probably non-existent “legal advice”) decided it didn’t, so no Queen’s consent was sought.

Even more fundamentally, the net effect is to cancel the 2016 vote to Leave – the first time in our history where the legislature has cancelled a popular vote.

…which just refers to the latest Benn Bill – never mind all the preceding attempts from Cooper-Letwin etc, which were also unconstitutional if we can really claim that the UK has a constitution (it doesn’t, it probably should, but one worries who would draft it).

So it’s all down to Useful Idiot Bercow, in whom, like the similarly self regarding Gina Miller with her legal case to give the final say to our mostly awful MP’s, we can identify a key figure in the attempts to derail democracy in the form of overturning the referendum result. It’s not a good look.

The four Speakers preceding Bercow, over the period in which I’ve followed politics, have been exemplary, unbiased public servants, irrespective of their party allegiance.

I can remember vividly Bercow’s persona as a genuinely far right Tory from the hang ’em flog ’em weirdo crew of the Monday Club. There was always an air of inadequacy about its members, with a strong undertone of failure with their preferred sex**. Numerous people over the years have commented on his diminutive stature, even though in reality he’s not that small (5’4″ – 5’6″). I’m not one to pick on physical characteristics normally, but it is the case, I suggest, that his behaviour in seeking and clinging to the role of Speaker has an aura of ‘compensation’ about it. As recently as 2014, The Guardian, of all media outlets, described their current hero in this way “Those who target Bercow are more likely to do so because of his foolish comments and insufferable, pompous interventions at Prime Minister’s Questions“. …as opposed to his height, which is what he was claiming. The Guardian was right.

Yet it is this vain, prickly, spiteful, bullying luvvie, with no discernible principles other than self glorification, and his weird fake gruff voice in the Commons, who is the rock on which the desperate Remoaners, who have no qualms at all about ignoring history, convention, tradition etc, have built their case.

I wasn’t intending to write this post, as I’m aware that it has an intrinsically unpleasant theme. Such is the situation though, created by this gang of dishonest, voter-hating, elitist unpatriotic tossers, some sort of analysis seems unfortunately necessary.

We can do better than Bercow***, whether we’re Remainers or Brexiteers.

 

**…and as if by magic, The Guardian comes up trumps. He really is revolting

Yes, it is genuine

 

*** the day after this piece, the poisonous pygmy quits. Long overdue. Tim Stanley on Twitter has it right though. Even in his departing he ruins it

*

The new semantics of the public square

From Sky News, who are slowly drifting into sloppy PC reporting, on the tragic murder by stabbing in an Aldi store, the details of which remain obscure:

North Yorkshire Police said it was neither terror-related nor a hate crime.

Terrorism I get (see below), but is ‘hate crime’ a thing in the public mind these days to be placed on a par with terrorism when considering each violent death? If so, it has a pretty warped definition. Murder is a crime, and it seems inevitable that hatred was involved in some way. Yet this wasn’t ‘hate crime’. What a relief.

On the other topic, it’s hard to beat the weaselly syntax of the Australian police, no doubt under a certain amount of pressure:

Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said police had found no evidence Noori planned his horrific actions or that they were terror-related.

Which as the numerous news reports (1, 2. 3) indicate, is not really true.  There are lots of ethical and practical problems with this intentional deception, not least is that it’s an appalling slur on people with mental health problems to clearly suggest that this kind of rampage is the sort of thing we can expect from them.

Frederick William, The Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia who dealt with the devastating aftermath of the Thirty Years War,  wrote eloquently about this in his Political Testament, exactly 350 years ago – some things never change:

“One thing is sure. If you stand still and think that the fire is still far from your borders, then your lands will become the stage upon which the tragedy is performed”

Non-politicians will draw their own conclusions.

*

 

 

Lest we forget: the Blair years revisited

Powell

Time moves quickly. When I was looking for slides for an operation that I thought I’d done two years ago at the most, I found it was actually five years that had passed. It’s nearly 7 years since Dave became PM but  it frequently seems like only yesterday. The other side of the tempus fugit coin though is that significant events, and the relevant knowledge that they provide, slip away in the memory all too quickly.

The current drivel regarding Russia is a perfect example. When I was a lad Russia was only a bogeyman because of its central place in the Soviet communist empire, which fell apart twenty six years ago, roughly. That was why we had a Cold War, not because Russia = Bad. Whether we like it or not, Russia (and Iran/Persia) are big powerful proper countries (unlike say Iraq), with very long histories and very distinct identities. We would be mad to not talk to them, to assume a relationship of permanent enmity. That’s not to say you should trust them, it’s strictly business.

Mandelson

You would guess none of the above from the hysteria that passes as foreign policy debate in much of the media.

Likewise, it’s salutary to remember that Britain was run by complete chancers for a long period – the Blair/Brown Terror – which seems pretty fresh in my memory, for lots of reasons, but if you are a first time voter this year, you were about 8 when we finally got rid of Blair and reasonably enough you would be unlikely to have useful political memories of the time.

Which brings me to an absolute zinger of a piece by the venerable Peter Oborne in today’s paper. He is reflecting on the nefarious past of an A1 hypocrite and member of the Blair Fixer Triumvirate, the other members of which were Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, both sadly still making themselves available for their tired commentary. I refer to Jonathan Powell, Blair’s smooth and somewhat sleazy chief of staff.

Oborne provides a very timely synopsis of much that was wrong then, and hopefully we can learn, or relearn, the relevant lessons of corrupt cliquey government and its abuse. I can only quote a few gems, but do read the whole piece. Its relevance to the current EU debate is very striking:

I was a junior political reporter in the early years of the Blair government. I can testify that it was disgracefully responsible for systematically setting about destroying the career of any civil servant who was not prepared to be unthinkingly loyal to New Labour — and then replacing those who refused with trusted Labour cronies….

….Within days of winning power in 1997, Tony Blair bullied pliant civil servants into waving through special laws which gave Powell the power to give orders to top civil servants.

It is no exaggeration to say that Powell’s relationship to civil service integrity could be compared to that of serial killer GP Harold Shipman’s to medical ethics — or gangster Al Capone’s to law and order. From the moment he entered Downing Street with Blair in 1997 to the moment they left together ten years later, Powell worked ceaselessly to undermine and destroy it….

The brutal truth is that during the Blair Years, Powell’s conduct was scurrilously partisan and he constantly flouted codes of honesty and decency.

Time and time again, he was caught up in the most putrid corruption scandals. Lies about the threat posed by Saddam. The stench of the Hinduja passports scandal when Labour was said to have helped two billionaire Indian brothers obtain British passports after giving £1 million to the Millennium Dome — leading to Peter Mandelson’s resignation. The scandal over Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone’s £1 million donation to Labour.

Powell was always lurking, playing a key role.

If anybody brought back to British public life the corruption and ‘jobbery of the 17th and 18th century’, it was Powell and his friends Blair, Mandelson and Alastair Campbell. Indeed, an illustrated ‘map of power’ in Downing Street at the height of the Blair years, showed Powell at the apex.

His No. 10 empire — in a clear breach of the civil service ethics which Powell told the BBC yesterday he cared so much about — stretched to include power over the prime minister’s private secretary.

And who occupied that position when Powell held most sway at No 10? None other than a rising young civil servant called Ivan Rogers. What a small world we live in!

A brilliant piece that could only be written by someone who saw it all unfold at close quarters.

There are plenty of people now who tut tut about the Iraq lies and the subsequent war, but would have you believe that the other stuff from the Blair era was wonderful. Don’t be taken in….

…. remember kids, know your history!

The Blair/Campbell, courtesy of Martin Rowson

The Secretly Pleased Voters

A typical SPV in Waitrose

2016 has been quite a year: memorable deaths from Bowie to Castro (so far), undoubtedly the year of Bad Losers (General Election, Brexit, US Election), and I would now offer, the ascendancy of the SPV, the secretly pleased voter.

Let me explain. Everyone would like the Johnson option of having cake and eating it, but it’s simply not possible for everyone. That large silent mass of voters has to do the unpopular heavy lifting of actually voting for change. When change duly rolls along, in the form of a moribund Labour Party, Brexit, and Donald Trump, the vocal minority, whose judgement, like their predictive powers is reliably garbage,  get to have their say. It goes roughly like this, you know the tune: don’t blame us; that ghastly man; racist/misogynistic/homophobic blah blah blah; isn’t Europe wonderful, I did French O level; mass migration is the only humane option etc etc etc etc. We all know the rules and the lines employed….

…BUT….

..not middle class enough

….those same people are delighted that the votes went the way they did. Not uniformly delighted, there will be a few genuine holdouts who actually really thought Hillary or Ed would be good at it, but in my view, very very few. I almost respect such people. It’s the frenzied middle class (always middle class), many of whom are in my family and social circles who want to yell injustice and still reap the benefits. They don’t want migrants in their area, they absolutely don’t want to pay more tax, they will still travel to wherever they please regardless of the potential changes in visas, they will retain numerous prejudices of which they will hardly be aware, they will be quietly satisfied that the US is now developing a backbone again, and they will enjoy for a long time the truly delicious fun of slagging off the victors and the voters who put them there.

And as we’ve already seen with Brexit (1,2,3), even if all their lousy predictions of doom, disaster etc are totally disproven, there will not be at any point an ounce of admission that they were utterly wrong, gullible and stupid. It’s the Waitrose Generation’s version of never retract, never explain, never apologise.

And in the century of the annoying acronym, it should be noted that the crossover between SPV’s and SJW’s (1,2) is virtually 100%.

It’s tough for us good guys, whose predictions are by and large accurate, and who can see the big picture, but we dig deep. Somebody’s got to do it.

SPV’s getting angry about something. Because climate change. Whatevs