Lunch And Politics

Lunch

This afternoon I went along as usual to the free lunch organised by the village each year for old age pensioners, to wish them the best for the new year and, by implication, thank them for services past to the village. As usual it was nothing like any analogous OAPs' lunch I have witnessed in the UK. After aperitifs of scotch, assorted reinforced wines and fruit juice accompanied by crisps, peanuts and “fougasse” (olive bread) there was an opening dish of lentils and foie gras. Red and white wine were available throughout the meal. The lentils and foie gras were followed by a mould of monkfish tails and rice in lime juice and then a casserole of young boar. Cheese, salad and chocolate cake with a fondant interior followed, the latter accompanied by a sparkling Clairette de Die, and, finally, the mayor came round with his own distillation of William pears to add to the coffee. The whole meal was served by the mayor and the village council. Music from a live group and dancing accompanied the meal. How does that compare to any free OAPs' lunch that anyone has witnessed in the UK (or elsewhere, for that matter?

I have been a part (grateful recipient) of this for some years now and have just come to wonder about the implications, particularly as neighbouring villages have a similar but much less generous tradition. Obviously, it shows respect for elderly people, as the Chinese do, but it also seems to me to imply a responsibility on newcomers to the village, who can't have contributed in the past, to do something for the village. I think, hope, I am doing that but the implication certainly serves to reinforce the strong sense of community that I feel here.

Politics

A couple of posts ago I attempted a post on an analysis of the domestic political implications of Brexit on the UK. I did offer myself a caveat by saying that I shouldn't meddle in politics as I was nowhere near enough to the ground but tried to reason. In hindsight I should have known that reason wasn't a player in this scenario. I didn't allow for a political leader who doesn't understand when prevarication, the normal gospel of politicians, is appropriate or one apparently bent on self-destruction, probably as a matter of principle. Anyway, mea culpa. In any future comments on UK politics I shall endeavour to allow for unreality. It's all around; I should have known.

Between servings of the aforementioned meal, which lasted some four hours, I jotted down some notes and decided that the Conservative party have the wrong name. They should be called the SPURIOUS party: Society for the Protection of Unicorns, Rogues, Idiocy, Oxymorons,the Uninformed and Screwballs. That will do for the moment. I have as yet no idea what the other political parties in the UK might alternatively be called, but I will work on it.

Post-truth And Alternative Facts

Post-truth: Alternative Facts

The evolving terminology of the post-truth society is beginning to beguile me. The latest phrase I have encountered is «alternative facts». To understand what an alternative fact is we need a definition of a fact. A definition I can accept is that a fact is something that is true (or held to be so on the basis of available knowledge). The slight hedging around «available knowledge» is necessary to allow for the scientific arena, except perhaps in mathematics where something can be axiomatically true. There is also an area of knowledge where “fuzzy logic” (an IT term) and probability theory applies in the search for facts. But what we can definitely say is that truth is of the essence of facts.

Scientists tend to be wary of truths, generally contenting themselves when asked for an opinion by saying that a hypothesis may fit all the known facts rather than necessarily be true. This leads us into the arena of competing hypotheses, Occam's razors, and other rather intellectually demanding disciplines. But do we really need to go there to understand alternative facts? In contexts where alternative facts are presented I have no sense of nice and important distinctions being sought. Rather I have the feeling of an inescapable fact (truth) being circumvented. In brief, alternative facts are almost certainly lies.

The problem with lies is that they have all sorts of negative connotations. Worst of all is that they obviously shouldn't be believed. So how do you make a downright lie smell nicer, so that it might be believed? You call it an alternative fact, side-stepping the fact (sic) that the alternative to fact is fiction. This intrigues the wordsmith side of me but has far more importance than that. What I think has been noted in important and powerful places is that there is a large population of people in the western world, and hence an important potential voting constituency in any democracy, who have managed to escape the predations of educational systems and are open to acceptance of downright lies. The problem is how to present lies palatably, believably; they need a sugar coating.

Enter the PR profession, the most creative wordsmiths in the world. If anyone can make a lie seem like a fact they can; they've been doing it for decades. They are also masters of the empty of meaning but emotionally profound turn of phrase, the trumpet call to cherished myths and fantasies of the past and future: patriotism (that last refuge of rogues), independence, taking control. Business has never been better, as it should be if you can add the present to buyers of past and future of fantasies.

Orwell missed a trick when he imagined a Ministry of Truth but omitted to imagine a Ministry of Post-truth. The signs are that we have one now but although it is as yet undeclared I believe it to be an actual fact rather than an alternative one.

Brexit And Trade Agreements

Brexit: A(n Attempted) Political Analysis

A good friend of mine from university days says that there is something of a cat and mouse game going on in British politics at the moment, certainly in the Labour party at least. The EU referendum created a discontinuity in the country's politics, splitting traditional voting patterns down the middle. Two very relevant points are that a majority of MPs are known to personally favour staying in the EU and the government has an absolute majority of just 14.

It is almost certainly fair to say that in any forthcoming bye-elections Brexit will be an important factor. There is no way of knowing how many bye-elections there will be over the next couple of years or what the results will be but, at the present time, either 8 government rebels or 15 abstentions in any vote in Parliament could be enough to defeat the government. In other words, the government's hold on power is tenuous, to say the least. So how will MPs and their constituents be likely to vote in situations where Brexit is an issue?

It's almost certainly fair to say (again) that MPs' first loyalty is to themselves rather than their party. Their principal aim is to be re-elected. Now, part of the discontinuity created by the EU referendum is that people did not vote on party lines, so party loyalty among constituents can't be relied upon. Thus the stance taken by most MPs on Brexit will most probably depend on how they judge the mood among their constituents. Some, the hard-liners on either side, will stay with their convictions. The rest will judge the mood among their constituents and, according to that judgement, declare either that Brexit was a democratic decision and we should go through with it, like it or not, or that the government clearly can't handle Brexit and so we should abandon it. Either of these arguments would justify a pro- or anti-Brexit stance. This point will be modified in Parliament by the party whips. MPs had a free vote in the referendum but Conservative MPs at least are very unlikely to get one on Brexit matters.

If we look at traditional party loyalties the Labour party has been the home of the working class and intellectual liberals and the Conservative party the home of business interests and hard pragmatists. The Liberal Democrats have always been somewhere in the middle ground, where they remain but with a definite pro-EU stance. Both the Conservative and Labour party have a significant extreme element within them (the old fascist/communist divide) that the referendum has split out. The Labour party is divided between that, pro-Brexit, and its benign socialist element which is generally pro-Remain. The Conservative party is split between that, pro-Brexit, and its business interest component, with few businesses apparently regarding the prospect of a hard Brexit with enthusiasm (and it is difficult to see how even a soft Brexit could actually improve business prospects). Future voting will depend less on what parties traditionally stand for than on the numbers within each of these components in each constituency (and how well MPs judge the balance).

Very recently it seems to be becoming clear that Theresa May will go for a hard Brexit. If so, that will provoke the widest split among MPs and there must be some doubt as to whether she can get Parliamentary approval…..if she has to. Which produces a focus on the forthcoming Supreme Court ruling on the matter. If the Supreme Court says she can go ahead anyway she probably will; she won't care about her promise to let Parliament debate Brexit if she does not depend on the result of the debate. If not, she has a battle on her hands and Conservative MPs inclined to rebel can point to party sponsors who have said they will withhold sponsorship if there is no EU trade agreement as a counter to any accusation of party disloyalty.

Whatever happens, Brexit is going to change the political map of Britain for a long time and, for a while at least, throw the structure of the current three-party system into the melting pot. I probably shouldn't meddle too much in politics as I'm not close enough to the ground but, as the Chinese would say, we certainly live in interesting times.

Trade Agreements

I had another of my furious shouting at the TV moments when the BBC news reported that Trump had moved the UK to the front of the queue in negotiating a trade agreement. The commentator chose simply to comment on the effect this might have on EU attitudes, probably good but possibly not so good news. My fury was that, to my mind, this totally missed the point from a commentator who is supposed to expertly assess the situation. Front or back of queue, every country with which the UK will want a trade agreement will also want a trade agreement with the UK. Political sanctions aside, why ever not for Heaven's sake? The crux of the question, totally missed by the BBC “expert” is: on whose terms? Trump will presumably offer the UK the already defined TTIP agreement (or something worse) which the EU has already rejected because it hands power to US corporations over national governments. So the UK takes back control just to give it to US commercial interests? Why can't a supposedly informed commentator home in on this? Must the same happen now for every new mooted trade agreement for the UK? Greeted with fanfare with no questions asked as to the terms? Trump or one of his advisors has reportedly said now was the time to exploit the weakness of the UK's position, and that won't have been lost on the rest of the world. The crucial point with any new mooted trade agreement will not be whether it can happen but whether the UK will get screwed (again). I shall try to avoid looking at any such announcements until I find a commentator who has the wit to focus on this, if only for the sake of my blood pressure.

Waitrose Listens Over The Festive season

Waitrose Listens

I have at last had some success with my blog on website usage difficulties, www.theelseclauseonline.blogspot.com.

When I started this blog on elementary logical errors on websites I stated that its aim was less to chastise website owners than to improve customer experience, thus benefiting both the website owners and their customers, a potential win-win situation. When I note an error, I send the note to the website owner for a reaction. Alas, the message seems to have fallen on deaf ears, arrogance or indifference seeming to be the norm. ……...until now. Waitrose has given me my first potential success story.

Just before the new year I wanted to order some groceries from Waitrose for delivery to my son in Weston Super Mare. Having chosen the groceries I found that Waitrose apparently required a land-line telephone number for the delivery address and the house where my son lives has no telephone land-line; all the occupants have mobiles. I emailed Waitrose pointing out this impediment which, on the face of it, excludes all such households from their potential customer base. I understood the requirement for a telephone number at the delivery address but not the requirement for a land-line number. The first response from Waitrose was not promising, simply stating that I could register with Waitrose without giving a land-line telephone number. That totally missed my point and I feared I might have encountered another website where the robots have taken over.

However, I was asked to give feedback on this response and did so, restating my point. This resulted in another email from Waitrose acknowledging my point. It stated that I could have inserted a mobile telephone number where a compulsory land-line number was requested and that would have been accepted but agreed this was not clear on their website. Waitrose said the matter would be referred to their technical team. A fix could be very simple, simply removing the asterisk from land-line number field which denotes it as compulsory. That would also make one of the telephone number fields possibly redundant but that is not of any consequence. The important point for me is that I have at last found a website owner that acts positively to benignly intended criticism. Waitrose listened and, hopefully, will act accordingly to the benefit of all concerned.

The Festive Season

The festive season passed smoothly and enjoyably here. I had Christmas lunch at Steve and Jo's house with some other English friends and invited Steve, J and Nick back to my house in the evening on Boxing Day (not a holiday here). On new year's eve I went to French friends Rene and Armelle with several others to see in the new year. So it was all very enjoyable. The weather over the holiday period was bright and sunny but very cold and it has continued in the same vein. The cold temperature has curtailed my boules playing. I keep my boules in the boot of my car (available for any opportunity) but they are like ice cubes in my hand and I find it difficult to throw as I want while wearing a very necessary jacket. I've ventured out a few times but not for more than a couple of hours. I feel I could do with some global warming.