Checks And Balances

Checks And Balances

Checks and balances play a latge part in life on any scale, be it personal or national. My last post was about all that I love here and why I love being here but I have to admit that I wouldn’t have liked being here when I was in my early 20s at all. Why? Because when I was in my early 20s I thought the world was my oyster and I wanted above all to explore it, to explore all the possibilities. Here the life can be idyllic but the possibilities are very, very limited. Worse, because the possimilities are so limited, the temptation is to enjoy what is here and not seriously consider other possibilities: the death of all wider exploration and ambition. That is fine for me now but wouldn’t have been when I was much younger

How do others achieve appropraite checks and balances, suitable compromises? One way that is very evident here is that people who have grown up in the village have left to further their goals in life but returned to retire here. There are numerous cases of this that I know of. What happens to those others who remain? Essentially they seem to become artisans of one sort or another who find a consistent demand for their services or they lose their way and become, in gnereal parlance, locus eaters. On a oersonal level It’s a question of finding the appropriate checks and balances for a specific period in one’s life. On a wider national or international level……..?

Pragmatism Vs Dogma 

On a national level, a case that comes to my mind is the NHS in the UK. Dogma says it should be free at the point of delivery and not privatised, although it already significantly is. Proponents for privatisation can point to France where the French equivalent is entirely privatised in terms of delivery and superficially looks like the American system. . But……..the French equivalent is very significantly controlled by the government, which says what it will pay for any drug or treatment and reimburses a percenatge, large or small, dependent on the case; it’s called a «concention». It is not a free market, as it might appear, because any service or drug provider who steps out of the government «convention» stands to lose around 80% or more ;of its potential market, so most clinics and hospitals stay within the convention. Checks and balances, pragmatism rather than dogma. The most important question is not a dogmatic healthcare should/shouldn’t be privatised but what are the practical effects, how healthcare is made affordable in the general case.

Rain 

It rained last night, which wouldn’t be news if it weren’t that it hasn’t done so for almost ten weeks now. It didn’t rain heavily but enough for me to forgo watering today, a welcome relief. The temperature today also dropped by around 10 degrees, which meant I could comfortably play boules in the afternoon. Evenings are becoming darker sooner also, so signs of autumn approaching are all around and, frankly, welcome. There was also a large fire last night, about 8km from the village, which was not that surprising considering that the countryside around is dry as tinder. Firefighters from 60km away were called upon to join up with local forces as were 5-6 planes to drop water on the blaze. There were no causalties but around 150 hectares of farmland and woods were destroyed. My friend Steve likes to say that the temperature drops by10 degrees at the end of August, the younger tourists all leave and the wrinkly tourists arrive. That happened a couple of weeks early last year and appears to have done so this year too.

Lucky Me

Lucky Me

My son, Carl, returned to England last Friday, taking with him one of the masks provided to me by the village authorities. I have to hope he will use it and be sensible about contact in the UK. In many ways it was good having him here but 4 months is quite a long time, he doesn’t speak French, my friends are much older than him (and mostly French) and he was missing his friends in England. It has been a question of choosing an appropriate time for his return to that madhouse of a country and last Friday seemed to be it. I hope that was a good decision.

This evening, having played (and won!) three games of boules I sat out in the Cafe des Sports and thought how lucky I am to be here. The evening mercifully lowered the temperature (it has been very hot and dry here for a month now – August weather and we are not in August yet) so I had a couple of beers with friends before coming home to attack the watering necessary front and back to keep plants alive. I feel I have everything I want, everything I could reasonably ask for, here and now I also have my house back to myself. Carl did a few jobs that would have been difficult for me while he was here so the house and outside are in better shape than they would otherwise have been.

One thing that lockdown did was to focus my mind (and Carl’s then) on cooking; what else, other than gardening was there to do? Hopefully my friends invited to eat will reap the benefits. I use a lot of herbs and spices in cooking and have a herb patch outside my front door with mint, parsley, oregano, winter savory and sage in it. The parsley has run to seed but is easily obtainable all year round in shops and the same goes for the mint. But the hot weather has allowed me to dry a lot of sage and winter savory for later use. Rosemary is perennial and ubiquitous here and so are bay trees so that sees me set up for winter cooking. Fresh coriander can be a problem but Algerians and Moroccans in the markets in Buis and Vaison normally have a plentiful supply for just a few cents a bunch. Most dry spices, other than esoteric Indian and Indonesian ones, are available in both markets so I’m very adequately supplied.

Given that my life here consists mostly of socialising with friends, gardening, playing boules (and whatever else is buzzing through my puzzled mind) I think that I am very lucky. I don’t lead (can’t afford) a very luxurious life but don’t feel the need for one, love what I have and find it affordable. Lucky me.

Jasmine

Jasmine

As the lockdown eases the jasmine seems to progress. It’s all over the front of the house and covers a large part of the wall on the back terrace. The perfume is everywhere. I had thought that one of the jasmine plants in a pot on the balcony wasn’t doing much until, looking left rather than straight ahead outside my bedroom window, 

I saw it happiky climbing over the TV dish and antenna next to the roof. I had to get my son to risk life and limb climbing out of my bedroom window, three storeys up, to untangle it. The result is that neighbours have vases full of jasmine and TV coverage is secured. Carl and I have also plastered the interior of the wall fountain on the terrace at the back with mastic to repair a leak so that is another useful job done.

Thanks to the lockdown easing we were able to have a pain au chocolat and coffee on the terrace of the Bar du Pont and bask in the sun on Friday morning and now look forward to a pizza in the same place on Monday evening. Summer is coming and hopefully there are good times ahead.

Lockdown Easing

Lockdown Easing

Lockdown has been eased for just over a week now and I have to admit it has made a huge difference to my life, so I very much hope that the anticipated spike in infections is low. The gardening that I enjoy hasn’t been affected by lockdown except to the extent that my plants have probably never had more attention. However, two other pleasurable aspects of my life, boules and socialising, most certainly have and lockdown easing has made both possible again. I have had friends to eat here, have been invited by friends to eat with them and hope that that part of my life can thrive again. On all such occasions we have observed reasonable distancing and the classic French «bise» (kiss on the cheeks) has been all but outlawed. However, social intercourse is back and is a great boon. So far I have played boules only twice but the public spaces are now open and social distancing is not difficult while playing. So I look forward to more of that.

The front of the house is looking good and the climbing roses at the back are in full bloom, as also is the dwarf blue campanula that I have plugged into the terrace wall wherever I could. The balcony has been running through its repertoire of scents, startiing with the lilac briefly followed by the honeysuckle which is now just going over while the jasline has started to bloom. It makes sitting out on the balcony in the evenings a real olfactory pleasure. The weather is doing its best to get the good feelings going with plenty of sunshine and warmth and the frogs in the river are in full song.

In the shops asparagus and strawberries are in full flood, melons are plentiful and the first peaches and nectarines are beginning to appear. Cherries will be next and I will have my fruit heaven. Life feels good again.

Speculation On The Future

How To Use Up The Time: Speculation On The Future

About the only people with no spare time on their hands now are those still working, especially those working from home and simultaneously looking after small children. For the rest of us there is the small problem of how to use up the spare time. There’s obviously reading, watching films, and listening to music. F acebook offers the opportunity for challenges such as posting photos, posting favourite songs, books, memories, etc. For me, apart from the first three, the preferred past-time is writing and speculation. So I want now to speculate on the future in the UK, as I have friends and family there.

For me all the big questions are about politics, the media and how the government governs over the next 9 months. There are some inferences that can be drawn from the last 3 months, I think, but above all innumerable questions for which answers are needed. Below are thoughts on some of the major issues.

Relaxation Of Lockdown

Johnson has been correct, I think, in emphasising the dangers of relaxing lockdown too much and too soon. Nonetheless, lockdown will have to be eased at some point. The advice from WHO and just about everywhere else is that pre-requisites are a defined structure and strategy, a staged process that allows for fallback, universal testing and tracing andPPE for everyone. The UK currently falls well short on testing, tracing and PPE. The Scottish and Welsh Assemblies have produced tentative proposals for easing lockdown but the UK government currently refuses to reveal either plans or the issues and priorities being considered. Why? Will other political parties and important representative groups be allowed input into the discussions? Will the government attempt to synchronise actions in England and Northern Ireland with Scotland and Wales?

Leadership

The crisis has made it clear that whatever Johnson is he is not a leader. Leaders are pro-active, decisive, prepared to take bold measures if required and generally follow a well thought out plan. Whatever the eventual outcome of the UK strategy it has thus far been characterised by complacency, prevarication, delay, indecision and necessary measures taken too late. If anyone is leading the government at the moment it would appear to be Dominic Cummings.

Support For Commerce

All affected countries have taken measures of various sorts to support commercial enterprises, large and small. The UK’s support for small enterprises seems to have been stymied thus far by the banks, through which the support was channelled. Could this problem not have been foreseen? Just now the government has decided to pay the interest on loans for a year, a useful measure but an afterthought and an oversight.

Loans have been made to large businesses but the government declines to disclose both the amounts and the recipients. Why? Which businesses have applied and which have been refused and why?For instance, if any media groups have received loans, which ones are they? Control over media coverage of government actions seems to be high on the governnent agenda.

Denmark, Poland and France have excluded all companies based in offshore tax havens from government support. This seems reasonable; if companies avoid taxes in a country why should they get financial support from it. (Perhaps Virgin could be refunded all the UK corporation tax it has paid over the past few years). I expect some other EU countries to do the same but not the UK.

Immigration (And Racism)

There can be little doubt that immigration is a major issue in the UK or that it was a significant factor in the EU referendum result. The number of race-related assaults recorded in the two years after the referendum result reportedly rose by 20-40%, dependent on area. However the high profile of immigrant NHS and care staff in combating the virus would appear to have defused the issue considerably. The advent of plane loads of Romanians to work in UK agriculture has further served to underline the UK’s economic dependency on immigration, previously stated in various economic studies. Will the government ever be honest enough to acknowledge this?

The Future Economy

The UK economy, like those in almost all countries, is taking a huge hit from the impact of the virus. This impact is likely to be followed by another in the UK if Johnson gets the no-agreement Brexit he appears to want (every economic commentator has said Brexit will harm the UK economy). Whatever the case, it is clear that commerce will require government support for some time to come. It seems unlikely that any government can support all of commerce so the support will have to be selective; but on what basis? It would be unreasonable to ask for an answer to that question now but the eventual answer, if we are ever allowed to know it, will be very important.

Given the hit on the public purse imposed by the virus, public finances will be stretched to the limit. So what will be the response of the government to public services? The UK government’s record on this is evident: to cut expenditures to the bone. The most likely outcome in the UK must be more austerity, with the virus as the obvious excuse (conveniently hiding the impact of Brexit). The NHS could be a particular problem here, with its current high positive profile. However an ostensibly high increase in its budget, even if inadequate to compensate for the cuts over the last decade and offset by higher costs generally, should do the trick. That should also serve to excuse cuts elsewhere. If Hancock’s offer of a badge for life-risking care workers for which they had to pay is any indication of government thinking, the means to recreate the NHS as it was a decade ago won’t even be sought. A more «socialist» approach from the current government seems very unlikely.

Managing natiional econolies after the pandemic but while its effects are still evident will be a lmajor challenge for all nations and will require genius economists and sensitive politicians to resolve it if major public unrest is to be avoided. Any signs of such in the UK?

Unemployment

Unemployment numbers are a statistician’s political game; it all depends on how you want to count them. Officially in the UK they were around 4.8% before the virus crisis, which is actually close to full employment, although a calculation in the FT put the figure at probably three times higher. Whatever the case, unemployment in the UK later in the year is likely to be very high. How will the government react to this? Even the government probably doesn’t know the answer to this problem yet but, given the general economic outlook, a large pool of low paid labour is likely to persist, which bodes ill for the economy. A large pool of low-paid labour encourages inefficiency locally and uncompetitiveness internationally.

Brexit

Brexit and EU relations are a backcloth to the virus crisis. The UK government has yet to state in any credible way why help offered by the EU in the virus crisis has been ignored (as well as help from some UK companies; why?). Brexit negotiations are reportedly fraught and a no-agreement Brexit seems the most probable outcome. In the interim some notable Leave campaigners have made very significant gains from the virus crisis. Will that be a trend over the rest of the year? Pecunia non olet but it has fingerprints.

The Media

Many of the media are in acute financial difficulties, which is why it would be relevant to know if any had received government financial support. The government lap-dogs posing as journalists in the Sun, Mail, Express and Telegraph have simply followed the government line in their coverage of the crisis, with very minor exceptions. The Sunday Times has been provoked into a return to journalism. Genuinely independent journalism, sometimes with a slight but discernible political slant, persists in such as The Independent, the «i», the Metro, The Guardian and the Belfast Telegraph. Helpfully it also persists in coverage of the UK by some of the foreign press such as the New York Times and Washington Post.

In UK TV the BBC and ITV have at least avoided any subservience to the government and Channel 4 has shown its teeth. If these can ignore any government threats to their licences, there is hope, because the UK and its democracy badly needs independent judgements and critical appraisals. However, it also needs access to the relevant information.

Openness, Scrutiny, Accounatbility

In his first speech from Downing Street after recovering from the virus Johnson made a pledge to openness and scrutiny. I think this is key to any democracy. However, if Johnson’s recovery from illness has not been an epiphany moment then this is simply a government ploy, much loved by masters of deception (dare I mention Goebbels?). Claim to do what others are criticising you for not doing but deliver only anodyne information, the trappings not the substance.

Before the virus crisis Johnson was being pressured to publish the report on Russian interference in the UK EU referendum which might, some claimed, contain information that would invalidate the referendum result. It would be easy to prove or disprove the claim, so why not publish the report? That, obviously, is very much on the back-burner now, although it would take only a minute to give the go-ahead to publish.

Before the crisis the government sought to exclude critical journalists from government briefings and has now reportedly barred Sunday Times journalists from asking questions at them. The government also threatened the licences of the BBC and Channel 4 for criticism of its policies. One of the first laws the government passed was to prevent Parliamentary scrutiny of trade deals. Why? Since then Johnson has lied over meeting corona virus patients, the government has lied over the provision of PPE and lied over testing. After any national crisis it is normal to have an independent enquiry into what happened yet the government refuses to commit to one. Why? A dependent enquiry maybe…….? If the government really does commit to openness it will truly have been an epiphany moment. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. There are many questions in this posting; the proof will be if we get answers to them.

Labour's Big Challenge

Labour Leader’s Big Challenge

It strijes me that one of the first priorities in Sir Keir Starmer’s agenda as leader of the Labour Party needs to be a skilled manager of communications. Whatever messages Starmer wants to deliver are going to have to get round the right-wing press, which most of the British public reads, and which can be expected to ignore or distort them. TV news channels will be very important since they can hardly ignore what he, as leader of the Oppositon, says.

It may of course be that some of the right-wing press folds in the economic crisis; it is certainly in danger, as are all newspapers. On the other hand it may be being subsidised by the government to stay afloat. We can’t know whether that is true since the government refuses to say to whom the large grants it is offering are going. That is just the normal government avoidance of scrutiny. However, it would hardly be surprising if Rupert Murdoch’s empire were a beneficiary. Time will tell, if we are ever allowed to know, which we may not be.

I think that Starmer’s sommunications manager’s first priority should be to expose the misinformation in the right-wing press, peferrably on TV news channels. The prime goal must be to make people distrust and question what they read. That can be applied to any publication; they can stand by what they print, or decide not to print, or not. Unforrtunately for the Labour party it doesn’t have a number of lage-circulation press lap dogs so it will be fighting against considerable odds; that is just reality. If all shadow ministers are instructed to expose misinformation (and blatant lies) whenever they occur the campaign could yet succeed. Internet news providers are more various and so the communications battle there is more even but it wouldn’t hurt here again to ensure that misinformation and lies are exposed as such. It shouldn’t be too difficult to expose pro-government postings from people who don’t exist.

I think this campaign should start immediately. It can’t be long before the right-wing press start attacking Starmer so why not take the initiative? Hopefully, the British public haven’t swallowed so much misinformtion and so many lies that they don’t even notice them.

The Virus War Versus WW2

War On The Virus Versus WW2

It’s been said that we are at war with the virus so I‘ve been playing around wirth the idea of an anology between that and WW2, to see how far the similarities go. Probably too much time on my hands but…...…………….

The lead up to and early days of WW2 were characterised by delay, indecision, unpreparedness and no little incompetence. Forewarning? There were plenty of warning voices in the UK from 1936 onwards and a report recently released shows that the current government knew in 2017, through Exercise Cygnus; it would be unprepared for a future virus. SARS a dozen years ago demonstrated the threat yet the government continued to make cuts to the NHS. An emergency load on medical services occurs in both cases so the analogy holds in all these aspects.

Leadership? Johnson versus Chamberlain? There’s little correspondence other than the indecision and lack of preparedness. Johnson would doubtless like to cast himself in the rôle of Churchill but there’s little correspondence there either. In WW2 we had a coalition cabinet to bring the country together. Now? Dream on. There’s no conscription now but why should there be? There’s no obvious reason but the government has the power to order it if manpower is short and critically needed for whatever. However there has been a successful call for volunteers and the army has been called in in both cases, obviously in the former.

Bomb shelters? Those are now people’s houses. Food shortages in both cases, caused by German U-boats formerly and self-imposed by greedy shoppers now. Air raid wardens? Those are now the police or drones.

Truth in the media as the first casualty of war/ Truth in the mdeia was already a casualty before the current crisis started but is certainly a casualty in both cases.

Isolation? Britain was not alone in 1939, as some like to suggest, unless you discount Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and an empire that covered a quarter of the globe. It need not be alone now but appears to want to be, refusing to join in cooperative initiatives in Europe. Lock-down/up? In the current case it is jock-down; in the former quite a lot, mostly toffs, were locked up.

There is one aspect in which the analogy does not hold up at all. It would be important, when WW2 ended, to evaluate the state of the economy and repair it; but nobody paid any attention to that during the war, the all-important goal was to win it. In this virus war, the goal of winning seems somewhat tempered by considerations of the economy in government pronouncements. After WW2 the UK had the most radical socialist government it has ever had, one which spawned the NHS. Does that come into the analogy?

Key moments? It’s probably too early for those in the current case but an El Alamein moment could be round the corner. A new general and far superior resources? If only…………….

Commentary

I passed this analogy analogy through my son and he made two comments I thought interesting. One was with respect to unpreparedness and forewarnings and the other with respect to how similar communities were then and now.

Thz first comment was words to the effect of “how much of what followed could have been known without hindsight?”. It’s a good question with a simple but simplistic answer: nothing. Nobody can be certain they know anything about future events. Indeed, a good way to inhibit any discussion of the future is to counter any assertion with “but you can’t be certain”. Another oft-discussed imponderable, motivation, can be treated in the same way. And yet intelligent people continue to discuss both. There are many situations, particularly in a war, when it makes sense, indeed can even be imperative, to put together all the known information and assess the probability of future events. Much the same goes for motivation. The important point here is to look at all the information, not just at isolated events. There is considerable documentary evidence that many people in Germany in the 1930s were uneasy at what Hitler was doing but found convenient reasons to excuse individual events. Nobody wants to forecast doom and few wanted to try to create a picture on a canvas of all the events. That was so then and seems so today. I think it very likely that this natural reaction contributed to Britain’s unpreparedness in 1939 but have no idea if, ot to what extent; it has shaped unpreparedness for the virus war. Nobody could know for certain that a new vrus would appear but the possibility was assessed and it was apparently decided neither to take action nor to hedge bets. Should bets have been hedged? That will be a matter of opinion.

My son’s second comment, on similarities or otherwise between communities now and then is also obviously relevant. Differences in life-style abound but but can probably mostly be set aside for the purposes of this exercise. Two pertinent key differences stand out to me: political divisions and closeness within neighbourhoods.

In the 1930s Britain was quite divided politically. The decade had started with a coalition government which was replaced by a Conservative government and the Communist party and the Fascist parties were stronger than at any time before or after. The primary causes of these divisions were the economic depression and attitudes towards Hitler. In the lead up to the virus war Britain had around 4 million worhers earning below the living wage and was split in two over attitudes to Europe. Soon after the outbreak of WW2 a coalition government was formed which helped to unite the country and ensure all were pulling in the same direction. In the virus war, there has been no similar rapprochement.

The difference in communities that strikes me is again essentially one of rapprochement and also of local support. Extended families tended to live very much closer then and neighbourhoods tended to be much closer knit, partly perhaps because far fewer women had salaried work. An important result of this was that there was effectively a strong social support network in most neighbourhoods. There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence for the strength of community spirit then. By the advent of the 21^st century most of the basis for this had disappeared as extended families scattered around the globe and more people travelled further to work. In the virus war, panic buying in UK supermarkets is evidence of the absence of community spirit. Mmany philanthropic people are trying to put together local support groups to fill this gap but a significant difference in the strength of local support seems likely to remain. Certainly there seems little very evidence of any general communal spirit of togetherness.

A final point, a question that children will ask in the future. What did you do in the virus war, mummy/daddy?