Further reflections (while my internet access is limited)

 

More reflections while still off-line.

 

Peter Mandelson

This afternoon (written Monday 20^th April) Sir Keir Starmer  is to explain to the House of Commons he   Government’s mis-handling of the appointment of Lord (I think he’s still a lord) Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the US. 

Somewhere  in Bagehot’s famous account of the British Constitution he writes, in justification of the Monarchy, that the people “love a marriage more than a ministry.”  That is probably still true today. 

What is certainly true is that the British media much refer to titillate the public, and therefore promote their profits or viability, with a minor scandal  rather than furnish details of serious issues. 

Yes, it was probably a mistake to make Mandelson our ambassador (though the appointment was widely praised at the time,) but it is not all that important in the wider scheme of things, where people are being frightened , driven from their homes, maimed and killed, some of them with the connivance of our government, the atmosphere is being further polluted by the explosion of  bombs, and the cost of that is being provided by reductions in help  to feed people on the verge of starvation.

 

BBC

Last week the  BBC announced it is to reduce its staff by a tenth.  This is stupid. 

After the threat of nuclear war, which has now risen closer to the surface than at any time since the Cuban Crisis of 1962 (when those in charge turned out to be adult) the second greatest danger to liberal civilisation is disinformation.

Last week I caught a snatch of a Radio 4 programme which claimed that those  attempting to undermine liberal democracy do so by reducing trust in the established sources of information.  They (the Tech Bros?) are being very successful, especially via social media and by taking over the ownership of the established sources. 

 

The BBC with all its faults remains to most trusted source of information in the UK and probably the rest of the world.  As hedge funds  and possibly the Russians and Chinese aim to extend their empires it is ludicrous  to contemplate reducing the BBC’s effectiveness.  Its resources, staff and language services should be increased in order to save civilisation as we thought we knew it.

 

President Trump.

Following from the above, Mr Trump’s pronouncement on current situations, in speeches and on social media, clearly bear no relationship to reality but merely express what he wold like to be happening  rather than what is actually happening. 

I’m reminded of the final speech of Koko, the  Lord High Executioner, in the G&S Opera “The Mikado.” Koko Explains why he hasn’t actually executed the heir to the throne, though he claimed he had “with most affecting particulars.”

Viz;

“It’s like this: When your Majesty says, ‘Let a thing be done,’ it’s as good as done – practically it is done - because your majesty’s will is law.  Your Majesty says, ‘Kill a gentleman’ and a gentleman is told off to be killed.  Consequently, that gentleman is as good as dead, - practically he is dead – and if he is dead, why not say so ?”

 

Unfortunately Trump is not a character in a comic opera, but in charge of the mightiest military force and the largest treasury in the world.  We can only hope and pray that the we survive long enough for the American electorate to put the brakes on him in November.

 

Leo XIV

On which three cheers for the Pope, who in the words of our Prayer Book “continues all such good works ( or words, perhaps) as are set before him,” by saying the thigs our politicians seem freighted to say.

No change here

 

I am reading and enjoying the fourth (?) volume of Alan Bennet’s “Diaries,” published last month.  Here are two highly prescient entries:

7 January 2019:  When Trump destroys the world those who are left  will look at one another  and wonder why nobody stopped him.”

And, a few days later:

16^th January, 2019: “. . .Jacob Rees -Mogg . . .Boris Johnson, ‘Sir’ John Redwood . . .gentlemen who have never been in two minds about anything

 

 Post Script (added Thursday, 16th April)  A letter in yesterday's Guardian (15/04/26) from a John Deards of Warminster, Wiltshire, commends  Bennett's political acumen by quoting the self-same 2019 comment on Trump in the diaries, as above.  I'm rather chuffed that Keynesian Liberal got there first.

 

 

 

ng  except where their own self-interest lies.”

Missing Observations

 

My computer has been malfunctioning for the past two weeks: hence a dearth of comments on  the several dire problems facing the world

 

The Space flight.

 

There has been a rather pathetic attempt by the BBC to generate excitement about this project. I know it is very clever but it was successfully done  fifty years ago, when technology was much less advanced, and flights to and from the International Space Station have become routine since. So why be thrilled with this one, even if it is a little bit further and we get new pictures of the other side of the Moon? 

There’s been  talk of looking for water on the Moon.  In the past ten days I’ve received a circular from Water Aid, for which I used to be an accredited speaker.  They are proud  that 90% of the World’s population now have access to safe clean water.  But 10% still don’t and even more don’t have the facilities to defecate in private and with dignity, with the waste hygienically disposed of.   It would be much more sensible  to divert resources  to helping them. 

The BBC

I find it embarrassing, and irritating, that the BBC feels it necessary to waste its resources and our time by telling us how wonderful and varied it is.  That should be a given.  The signs are that the government  is now prepared to give it a permanent Charter.  Good.  So it won’t have to fight for its existence every ten years.  But what the government gives with one hand it takes away with the other: the BBC’s funding is continuing to be reviewed every ten years.

 The financing of the World Service should be taken away from the Foreign Office and returned to the BBC, a generous allocation for the entire Corporation should be made and at the very least with guaranteed increases in line with inflation,  the “fee” should be based on the use of the internet (as I believe is the case in France) and not on the possession of a TV set.

Regulation of the other broadcasters (especially GB News) should be beefed up.

The War against Iran (and Gaza)

I am ashamed that 99% of the media reportage of the US war against Iran concerns the effect on trade and the cost of living.  There’s hardly any mention of the innocent Irani children, women and men being terrified, maimed, or killed.  The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury have their priorities right: our politicians and media should follow.

 It is clear that President Trump is delusional and probably technically deranged yet the Americans have elected and re-elected him as their leader.  There is no room of we British to feel superior or complacent: our system placed the equally delusional Johnson  and then the incompetent Truss in charge.  But in our system there was  a “facility” that when a leader became  way too incompetent for the nation’s good “men in grey suites “ would appear to inform her/him that it was time to go.  This worked for Mrs Thatcher, though much too late The most obvious equivalent n  in the US are the supreme court Judges, but they are mostly creatures of Trump and have nothing to lose by his continuance in office. Maybe some of the Republican leaders will done their grey suits and persuade Trump to go in order to try to avoid their parties’ decimation in November.  But if Trump goes the replacement is Vance, whose views are equally evil, though he is probably more sane.

Prayer on the Papal/Cantaur  lines seems to only solution.

Global Heating

Our right wing, including  Mrs Badenock and the official Conservative Party, cannot resist  a populist call to authorise more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, regardless of the fact that doing so would do little if anything at all to reduce their prices.  But it would, of course, add a little to the possibility of increasing the frying of the planet and future generations, the ones they’re so (mistakenly) anxious not to burden with debt. If we really want to behave responsibly with regard to fossil fuels we should use the crisis  impose a 50mph speed limit (as we had in the 1970s crisis.)  But that might upset  the motorist lobby and infuriate the oil companies and their client  press so Labour lacks the courage.