The media have failed - and the public know it

There are three malign motives driving many of the mainstream media in the UK. First is Brexit - which many London journalists have great difficulty in understanding has happened. "Do you think this is a good time to be leaving the European Union?" asked one gigantic numpty of Rishi Sunak at the daily Number 10 press conference; "We have left" replied Mr Sunak. Bitterness over having failed to reverse democracy pervades the newsrooms of the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky and has coloured their coverage of the Wuhan virus.

Second is their left-wing bias. Hence the suggestion that no one has ever made outside the febrile minds of journalists that Mr Johnson should share power with assorted failures and has-beens, mostly of the left but including a Remainer or two to frustrate our EU trade negotiations. Yeah sure. We have a majority of 81. Good reason to let Tony Blair and John Major join the cabinet.

Thirdly is their hatred and envy of Boris himself. Emily Maitlis made her own dislike of the PM very clear in June of last year, when she chaired (appallingly) that ridiculous TV debate with Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and a jejune attention-seeking Rory Stewart, all perched on uncomfortable bar stools while Emily launched dig after dig at Boris.

Fortunately, they're stupid enough to imagine that using their privileged airtime to slag-off the PM, our government and the nation's response will rouse public anger against the government. Well, cretins, it's had exactly the opposite effect. Our little media heroes have been stunned at the ferocious reaction against them on social media. Peston, Kuenssberg, Maitlis, Boulton, Newman, Burley, Morgan and the Snows hardly dare venture onto Twitter these days - they're immediately destroyed by an enraged public. And this at a time when newspapers are facing severe challenges from loss of physical sales and online advertising, as is Channel 4, and the BBC is facing an imminent decriminalisation of the TV tax. Yep morons. You're facing nemesis.

The final straw is their failure to ask serious questions of China of the sort that Niall Ferguson asks in the Boston Globe - serious and searching questions on the origin of the Wuhan virus, the cover ups, the conspiracy and the disguising of the truth. Peston's stupidity, Kuenssberg's malice, Matlis's meretriciousness and all the rest trying to find gaps through which to shove needles at Boris whilst giving the PRC a free pass have not been missed by the public.

All of which is reflected in the latest popularity poll from JL polling for Times Red Box (9/4); China may be down -45%, but the media is close behind at -29%.

Update
=====
The Boston Globe comes up fine for me, but for anyone missing the linked piece, Ferguson's questions are

First, what exactly was going on in Wuhan that led to the initial emergence of SARS-CoV-2? If, as first claimed but now seems unlikely, the virus originated from a bat at one of the disgusting “wet” markets (for wildlife intended for human consumption), which your regime inexplicably has not shut down, that would have been bad enough. But if it originated because of sloppy practices at the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, that is worse. It is insanity for research on potentially lethal zoonoses such as coronaviruses to be going on in the heart of a vast metropolis like Wuhan.
Second, how big a role did the central government play in the cover-up after it became clear in Wuhan that there was human-to-human transmission?
Third, after it became clear that there was a full-blown epidemic spreading from Wuhan to the rest of Hubei province, why did you cut off travel from Hubei to the rest of China — on Jan. 23 — but not from Hubei to the rest of the world?
Fourth, what possessed your Foreign Ministry spokesman to start peddling an obviously false conspiracy theory on social media and why has he not been fired?
Fifth, where exactly are Ren Zhiqiang and Ai Fen, to name just two of the Chinese citizens who seem to have vanished since they expressed criticism of your government’s handling of COVID-19?
Finally, how many of your people has this disease really killed?

The joys of snuff

With that title, I expect for some time we'll get disappointed google searchers hitting this page; internet users are a weird lot. An old post about taxpayer-funded elective cosmetic surgery entitled "Poor women with large tattooed breasts" consistently scored the highest hits ranking of any page on the blog. So to clarify for any puzzled visitors, this post is about powdered cured tobacco.

I took a complete break from smoking about seven or eight years ago and have never craved one since. Physically. Not smoking takes no effort at all, but Oh how I regret having foregone the pleasure of smoking; I loved smoking. Really enjoyed it. If I live to 75, I'm going to start again. Before the smoking ban here this year, I loved to spend an hour or two in the local Gasthaus just for the smell of the dense clouds of cigarette smoke around the bar, a delicious fragrancing of my clothes that I would sniff nostalgically for the rest of the day. Well, Nicotine has been a good friend to me since I was 15, with me at all the big moments in life. So when I took a break from fags, I switched to snuff. Made in an old English snuff mill, a Northern one, that cures and grinds Virginia tobacco.

It's not some eccentricity for public showing-away but a connection with a lifelong physiological partnership. The Nicotine is just a fraction of that from smoking, the dopamine effect imperceptible but the connection remains. With the benefit that one can take snuff when seated on an aircraft, at a restaurant table, in a bar. It confuses the bansturbators - nobody has told them to ban snuff. And sales are so inconsequential that HM Treasury can hardly be bothered to tax it - a 25g tin costs about £2.80 and lasts about a month.

There's only one drawback. As a seasoned snuffer, my sneeze reaction is pretty well under control; one intakes snuff like sniffing a flower, not snorting coke. One of my few pleasures in life is agreeing to let coke-heads take a pinch; inevitably they suck it straight into the upper septum where it takes about a second before leaving them in tear-streaming agony, puce-faced and contorted with pain. But sometimes - when out walking, when in the supermarket - the residual snuff induces a sneeze. No problem, as I always have a snuff-kerchief to hand.

But boy. The looks of fear and horror from anyone within ten metres. A couple of times I've done that little pantomimey thing of shaking the head and waving the hand 'no', though I don't think they were convinced. 

Snuff mills with parts dating to the 18th century still grind exceeding fine in English factories

Psst ... wanna buy an aircraft?

Airlines around the world are facing up to the reality that air travel is unlikely ever to return to the levels of late 2019, and certainly not within the life of many of their fleet of aircraft. Lufthansa is early off the blocks in announcing that 6 x A380s, 7 x A340-600s and 5 x B747-400s are to go, with another 11 x A320s removed from duty. Subsidiaries Lufthansa Cityline and Eurowings will lose 3 x A340-300s and 10 x A320s, Business Traveller reports.

Emirates are seeking to delay delivery of 8 x A380s, difficult as the aircraft are already in production. And of course Ryan Air have 20 x B737-MAX200s on order - rarely can new additions to a fleet be so unwanted.

It's not just aircraft that are unwanted. Airports face hard times, in some cases after having invested heavily in upgrades. Probably just as well LHR never got its new runway - it will never be needed now. I can see many smaller European airports closing down altogether - too many depend on bribing Easyjet or Ryan Air, and too many just want Summer visitor traffic.

But it's not those holiday-home flights that make money for the airlines but business travel; Politico EU carries a story which I think reflects an unwarranted optimism - "Business travel will come back when HR departments and corporate general counsels decide on a duty-of-care basis that they can relax their prohibition on travel, or actually come out and say, 'It’s time to go travel again'". Of course, with half the world learning to Zoom, manage Whatsapp groups and installing Signal on their phones, those HR departments may just decide that those trips are unnecessary. Of course, folk need to learn how to use those apps. Reader, I have just sent apologies for two Zoom meetings in a row - they are proving an indulgence for those craving attention but who have little of any importance to say. I'm not spending an hour linked to people (who can't pick up boredom signals) to do something that could have been done by email in five minutes.

Even our EU trade talks have resumed, albeit at low speed akin to a crawl, without over the table meetings. Oh, these will be needed at some stage, of course they will; one cannot dispense with all the NVC and interpersonal chemistry, but just maybe we will learn to exhaust the preliminaries by other means before an actual meeting. One can only hope.

We're with you Boris

Today our prayers are for the recovery of the Prime Minister and our thoughts with his partner Carrie Symonds. C'mon Boris - we need you so badly.

Will Starmer defend China?

It is apparent to epidemiologists that three nations - China, Iran and Russia - are not being honest with the rest of the world about the extent and development of the Wuhan virus in their countries. For Iran, the US openly shares satellite images of mass graves but has not yet revealed its satellite monitoring of either China or Russia for fairly obvious reasons. In addition, as the Telegraph reports, China has been flooding Facebook and Instagram with ads attacking the US and even blaming the Wuhan virus on Trump. In Belarus, the unreconstructed Soviet dictator Lukashenko has told his people that driving tractors and drinking vodka will cure the disease. Putin is also pretending that Russians are somehow immune whilst taking what measures he can, given Russia's primitive health infrastructure. In Iran, so many devout Islamists were licking shrines that I have considered changing their moniker from crane-hangers to shrine-lickers. I won't even mention the snake-oil cures peddled within diverse cultures.

These dodgy nations of course sit with us on the world's supranational forum, the UN - two of the epidemiologically irresponsible ones actually on the Security Council. The WHO is run by an Ethiopian chap of no apparent international distinction who has gladly done everything that China has asked of him.

The media is also filled with stories of the failure of that other supranational body, the EU. Failure to offer leadership at time of crisis, failure to implement mutual assistance requests from Italy, and an ongoing failure to release Germany's grip on its gold to help implement the European solidarity they talk about so much.

The reaction of the pro-Globalist, pro-supranational Left in the UK has been predictable; first, accusations of racism against anyone mentioning the origin of the Wuhan virus. Then a vigorous defence of the People's Republic, a defence of the lies, executions, concentration camps, organ removal from prisoners and all. Some bed fellows, Keir. It reminds me of that other old gulag-apologist Nye Bevan - who defended Soviet Russia even as he knew that the Holodomor was killing millions.

Of course, the Left are always helped by the far-right. In this case fake video of crowds at mosques during lockdown, promoted by Voldemort, Hopkins and Batten amongst others, never missing a chance to further their anti-Moslem hate campaign. This allows the Left to add to it's unequivocal support of supranationalism and authoritarian dictatorship its defence of Globalism. Yes, the Left and the global corporates are singing from the same hymn sheet.

Starmer is everything the metropolitan elites are looking for; a characterless technocrat devoid of charisma who supported Remain, adores supranational bodies, excuses Globalism and dismisses the concerns of labour's traditional voters. I'm just listening out for his defence of China - probably just before it's revealed they've been removing the lungs of condemned criminals to implant into Politburo bosses whose own have been compromised by the Wuhan virus.

Qom shrine licker

When Globalism failed

Let's take just a couple of samples from the front pages. From the Telegraph -

One of Britain’s few ventilator manufacturers was still prioritising supplies to China only a month ago, even as the Covid-19 outbreak accelerated here. Breas Medical, which makes breathing equipment from sites in the UK, Sweden and the US and is owned by the Chinese conglomerate Fosun, was focused on demand for ventilators in China until early March, when it was first contacted about boosting supplies to the NHS.

And again, from the FT

According to Tagesspiegel the Berlin police had ordered the masks from 3M. They were produced in a 3M factory in China and were due to be reloaded at Bangkok airport and flown to Germany. Instead the delivery went straight to the US.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump invoked his authority under a Korean war-era law, the Defense Production Act, with regard to 3M’s N95 respirator masks. That allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to use “any and all authority” to buy “the number of N95 respirators” it “determines to be appropriate” from 3M and its subsidiaries, according to the wording of the act.

We haven't even got to drugs and chemicals yet, but you can bet that most of the kit so expertly assembled by the army to construct those Nightingale Hospitals was made in China. As, absurdly, are the trousers, smocks and stable belts worn by the soldiers, the MoD having outsourced uniform and clothing production to China.

Time after time in comments both here and in the media, in riposte to my attacks on the failures of Globalism, failures that have condemned huge cohorts of our population to hardship, have halted social mobility and have made our children poorer than their parents, supporters of Globalism have pointed out the compensation. That in return for destroyed lives, hollowed communities and social decline, we have enjoyed cheap stuff. Chinese tat. Uniforms and boots so shoddy that many soldiers buy their own kit. Electric drills for £10 and jeans for a fiver.

Of course, every leader and government across the globe knows the deal with the Wuhan virus. Knows that the Chinese government and propaganda machine have lied and lied, have repressed, threatened and removed doctors and scientists trying to be internationally responsible, have lied to the world, have corrupted the WHO and it's pathetic puppet head, Dr Tedros. They all know the 3,000 deaths the PRC reported are really 300,000 or even 3,000,000 - until we have the declassified spy satellite images we just don't know. Yet whilst so much of our essential goods and supplies comes from this hellhole, we are obliged to be politely friendly to the PRC. No government has openly criticised the evil regime - for now, we need those masks and ventilators.

My anger is for the 1%, the greedy, fat bastards who have not only impoverished and limited their own peoples and nation to make themselves rich, but have hobbled our ability to deal with the consequences of their avarice. If this bloody virus doesn't lead us to make a bonfire of their odious Globalism, we are utterly lost.

Voices against the lockdown

It's quite proper in a free and open society that anyone should be able to question not only the actions of government but to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. And at times of radical government action - war, plague - questioning the rationale and objectives of particular courses of action must be expected, and is neither unpatriotic nor counter-constructive. 

We must also expect a full spectrum of fanciful suggestions and conspiracy theories, misinformation, distortion, omission and misrepresentation of fact, and many, many innocent errors. And it's often the nature of things that false information spreads more easily than the reality. As Terry Pratchett used to say, a lie can go around the world before the truth has got its boots on.

Social media is censoring the most immediately harmful lunacies to protect the most gullible, the most credulous and the most intellectually vulnerable. But already in the US, following suggestions that Chloroquine may be effective in relieving symptoms, a man has died after drinking something from his garden shed that sounded fairly similar. And both here in Austria and in the UK the nonsense is doing the rounds that the virus can be safely washed into the stomach by drinking warm water.

At the other end of the spectrum, confusion over the numbers of excess fatalities due to the virus baffles even advanced minds. If the lockdown is successful, as it is suggested it is, the R0 of the SARS-Cov-2 virus will fall below 1. A figure of 0.6 was suggested yesterday as being possible. This means there will be few overall excess fatalities. If the government is right, there's not going to be a huge bulge in the mortality figures - evidence for the lethality of the virus will be scientific and clinical.

The other advanced argument against the lockdown was put most eloquently by Toby Young - the economic argument. In The Critic, he argued using QALY figures that spending £350bn to save a few hundred thousand elderly people was a gross distortion of policy. However, also interestingly in the same publication, his arguments were comprehensively rubbished by Sam Bowman;

Taking all this together, we can attempt a rough recalculation of whether the government shutdown is worth it, from a statistical perspective. If 230,000 lives are saved (the difference between mitigation and suppression in the Imperial model Young cites), with an average age of 79.5, that is around 2,070,000 life years saved. At the statistical life year value of £60,000, that is a total benefit in statistical terms of £124.2 billion, compared to less than £66 billion lost to the economy.

I do commend the latter piece. Sam Bowman is an economist who explains succinctly and simply why the government's policy is the right one.

Take care all.

Useless political puppets at the WHO and Public Health England

The problem with having a 'woke' UN is that it ensures the top jobs are not distributed according to ability but under a rationing system in which every country gets to have a top official, a system not unlike the EU's for appointing its unelected commissioners. So at a time of crisis we have, heading the WHO, Tedros Adhanom. Tedros has a PhD from Nottingham University and he is a Malaria researcher; not a distinguished achievement perhaps in the UK but enough in his native Ethiopia to make him Health Minister, and from there to the UN. His abject failure in his post, his inaction and lack of leadership and above all his subservience to the Chinese government have all been well documented, as has the 'Change' org petition calling for his dismissal, which now has 680,000 signatures. The way in which the WHO and the UN work must now either be overhauled to appoint internationally distinguished candidates or we must re-consider our membership.

At home, the failures of Public Health England are also being widely documented. Having missed the bus on testing, and exhibiting an attitude of dismissal towards more distinguished and qualified advice, they continue to offer a mediocre and lackadaisical response to the crisis. The organisation, under the management of Duncan Selbie, has hitherto concentrated on campaigns against tobacco and the evils of sugary drinks. Selbie, an unknown bureaucrat, earns more than the PM. He was due to answer some very pertinent questions from the Commons' Health & Social Care select committee on the 28th March, but reported he was exhibiting some of the early symptoms of C-19 and so was unable to attend. He is now self-isolating and working from home.

We deserve better than Selbie and Adhanom. This sort of woke stupidity costs lives and ruins others. I leave you with one chart - levels of TB, often multi drug resistant, in London that are actually higher than those in Ethiopia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Selbie has been in his job since 2013. This should have been his bloody priority, not his campaign to ban smoking in all hospital grounds. He has failed at every aspect of public health. The man must go.

The world turned upside down

It is actually in the UK's interest to support M Macron and the southern EU states against Germany. Their efforts to force the Bundesbank to shit gold and ensure the future of the EU at least in the short term coincide with British interests. Oh sure, I dislike intensely all supranational bodies and the EU in particular and would love nothing more than to see its disintegration but as St Augustine prayed "..... not yet". The dual impacts of the Wuhan virus and Brexit shock means we need at least for a year or two a stable and functioning EU on our borders. We simply can't afford or accomplish the level of support we would be called upon to provide in the event of an imminent EU break-up.

We don't care if Germany loses her place in the world GDP league as a result of shared fiscal responsibility. In fact it suits us - Macron's plans would in effect castrate a powerful Germany on France's borders long before our Teuton cousins get any new ideas. It will all be money down the drain, of course, and the problem is the Germans know that. And if push comes to shove, I'd guess they'll put Germany before the EU. But we don't want a powerful independent Germany and a resurgent Deutsch mark. We really don't.

So many things will be turned on their heads during this crisis, supporting the French will not be the most extraordinary of them. The car lease market is approaching collapse, car dealerships are in crisis, car manufacturers close to bankruptcy. VW is burning through its €27bn cash reserve at the rate of €2bn a week. Some 13,000 passenger aircraft are now grounded, and after this crisis there may not be room for both Boeing and Airbus in the market without a massive state subsidy fight between the US and EU. The cruise ship industry is finished - our pensioners could just about take the 50/50 risk of Norovirus and spending the cruise voiding through the eye of a needle, but two weeks in a floating Wuhan disease incubator will be too much. Despite the Prozac-bright optimism of some in the markets - "Three months crisis, three months recovery then three months growth" - chirped one chap on the radio this morning - things will never go back to where they were in December 2019.

And as I predicted last Thursday, the public backlash against the police has already begun. I wrote "the longer and deeper the restrictions on our freedoms, the stronger and wider the public backlash, and the bigger the Big Bang demolition of the Central State to come". Well, we haven't even started yet.

Keep well, all.

Freedom and democracy

What stops the young, fit and strong from stealing wealth and assets from the elderly, weak and infirm? Of course the very wealthy can afford to employ other young, fit and strong persons who will protect them just as long as their weekly wedge gives them more than killing their employer and taking their stuff. If you want to see just how this works in practice in a society devoid of law or justice, watch a few episodes of Narcos on Netflix. The drugs markets and the lawless societies in which the kingpins flourish are the true example of free markets - power, wealth, ruthlessness and inhumanity are the qualities favoured in this environment of accelerated evolution. A wholly free market would mean not only food and toilet paper but ICU beds, ventilators, vaccines and medical resources would accrue to the wealthiest or those with the biggest guns. So be careful what you wish for.

Research has shown consistently that when faced with great risk and great uncertainty, and with unknown outcomes, we humans will opt for a social safety-net model every time. We will vote for a minimum-provision-for-everyone model when none of us can be sure we will not require it ourselves. But we will also vote for the opportunity to better one's lot - whether that means keeping hens or retaining our existing store-cupboards and hoard of silver. And this model needs a functioning state that can exercise a greater power than any individuals, that can enforce law and justice and protect the weak and vulnerable. It doesn't have to be a big State, or an intrusive state, but it does have to be able to execute the collective will. Expressed through the secret ballot by universal suffrage and the right of free association.

Anyone here who really wants a wholly free market, take yourself off to Mexico or Colombia. Anyone here who really wants a socialist paradise, take yourself off to Venezuela. No? No takers? OK, so I guess we're just discussing where the floor should be in our social-democratic model, then, and the degree of freedom individuals can exercise under various condition of risk, threat and uncertainty.

That we're having to discuss such things for the first time in this new century is actually a good thing. That we've got the internet on which to do so makes this discussion different from the discussions we had in 1850 or 1917 or 1945. Excellent!

Droning on

Back in March 2017 we joked (below) about suggestions that the police would waste public money and take bobbies off the beat by forming and training new 'drone squads'. Well, truth of course is stranger than fiction these days, and dog walkers and solitary hikers out in the lonely wastes of the national parks have been buzzed by police drones. They exist. Who knew?

They were, of course, subject to the law. Gareth Corfield (@GazTheJourno) has questioned whether the use of drones, in particular by the Derbyshire Police, was not in violation of the Air Navigation Order 2016 - and there are compelling questions for the police to answer about the qualifications of those controlling these drones, their compliance with the law and the professional standards we should expect in their use. And I would expect such guidance to be agreed between ministers in the Home Office and Department of Transport, not concocted by the fatuous and self-styled 'College of Policing', which the public do not recognise as having any democratic or legislative legitimacy.

These secret drones will not be the last of the State's little surprises that this virus will bring out of the closet.

Anyhow, it's Saturday, the Sun is shining and here again is that whimsical piece from 2017

*****************

"So, Inspector, this proposed Drone Squad can be staffed by transfers from the Internet Porn Squad? How's that gone?"

"Well sir since 2004 the lads have watched over 2 million hours of online porn. Deserve a medal, they do sir. Constable Hotchkiss can't hear the word 'Brazilian' now without twitching."

"And how many arrests and convictions have resulted?"

"Just the one sir. The chairman of the golf club who put hidden cameras in the ladies. But that doesn't affect the deterrent effect of those evil film makers knowing that the Force is watching. And we've learnt our lesson - the lads need periodic rotation out of the squad. Hence the new Drone Squad, sir"

"Ah yes. Sergeant Thom bought one for his kids and saw the crime-busting possibilities straight away...."

"That's right sir. Of course, police drones would cost a lot more, it being taxpayers' money, and the lads would need professional training from the RAF"

"I'm still not happy about us flying these potentially lethal things over people's houses and gardens .. have you considered the risks?"

"We estimate that 80% of the time we'll be flying over public roads and open land. In particular it will allow the lads to gather video evidence of widespread 'dogging' activity in Knickers Woods, sir. We could spend a year keeping constant tabs on it all then swoop. Then there's the poofs sorry BLTs on Handy Heath. We can follow 'em sir from the sky without risking officers on the ground."

"You don't think there's a risk that some of this footage may leak onto the web? Doesn't this sort of surveillance constitute a variety of porn in itself?"

"That's the beauty of it sir. The Internet Porn Squad can keep an eye out for any leaked footage"

"Ah yes. When was the last time any of these men actually pounded a beat or responded to a disturbance? Some of them look as though they have difficulty walking"

"Yes sir. Injuries incurred in the line of service, watching the porn sir. Sixteen early ill-health retirements so far. We're hoping that working the drones gets them out of their chairs, sir. Into other chairs."

"Very well. Carry on, Inspector"

A taste of isolation

At 8pm last night my ISP's LTE servers went down. Reader, believe me, the anxiety was acute. They're still down but I've reactivated an old PAYG LTE cube from a different ISP - so now must catch up before another post.

Whilst the crisis lasts I'm keeping both - and even considering a backup-backup satellite subscription and dish. Since both routers are Huawei, you can imagine some of the thoughts that went through my mind. I don't have a TV either - so have been reliant on local radio. I've got an old marine SSB set out in the barn and at one point seriously considered rigging it up with a car battery and makeshift aerial.

It really brought home to me just how utterly dependent on our internet connections we've become. 

Life after the Wuhan virus

The effects of the Wuhan virus on our freedoms and liberties has only just started. Even with a partial lifting of isolating restrictions in a 'stop - start' control regime, it now seems inevitable that we face food rationing. Ironically, the UK is self-sufficient in toilet roll manufacture but not in food. Professor Ashton introduces the unmentionable topic in the Telegraph. However, posts about rationing and the interesting effect this will have on the extent of the nation's food fads and imagined allergies are to come. This is a post about the future.

We will get the Wuhan virus under control, maybe this year, maybe next. And I have one prediction - that after an unprecedented intrusion into our freedoms and liberties, any hopes that the Central State has of permanently maintaining these controls will be dashed. On the contrary, the universal backlash against central State power will catalyse a hugely overdue Big Bang devolution of powers. We must just ensure that our most fundamental freedoms remain intact; universal suffrage, the secret ballot and the freedom to form and participate in political parties.

In addition to movement controls, we are likely to see food rationing, possibly even energy rationing and internet and phone restrictions, controls on internet shopping and deliveries, import controls, currency controls and unprecedented State use of mobile phone location and activity data to police and monitor public behaviour. These may all be used to ensure the greatest benefit for the greatest number whilst the crisis subsists. But paradoxically it will not be libertarians praying for the early development of a vaccine (which may also be compulsory - and sod the anti-vaxers. They will disappear along with the food faddists) but the central Statists; the longer and deeper the restrictions on our freedoms, the stronger and wider the public backlash, and the bigger the Big Bang demolition of the Central State to come.

There will be an interesting re-discovery of moral exactitude and an intolerance of moral relativity. We will get used to the idea of collectivist libertarianism. As a libertarian, I have long accepted that the freedoms I demand only extend so far as they cause no harm to any other. Libertarianism isn't the sort of me-generation selfishness that drives many of the objections to the lockdown measures, but the freedom to make your own decisions about your own life within an utterly essential collective, within a society and nation. And without ceding some freedoms to the collective, we cannot enjoy individual liberty.

But these are points for debate and discussion, not a didactic prescription. And that will be new for us. Perhaps not since the age of Huxley and Orwell will there have been such a national debate, will we engage in such dialogue over existential definitions, identity and morality. The paradox is that the Wuhan virus, from the heart of the most repressive nation on earth, may catalyse for us a freedom unknown for a century.  

Living under Lockdown

Well, it's here. Boris had no choice. And whilst my underlying beliefs remain unchanged, there are no libertarians in a plague or in a war of national existence. Just as our forefathers accepted conscription and rationing, we must accept lockdown. Breaching the terms is as treasonous as ignoring the black-out and shining a light up to enemy bombers.

We've had lockdown here for a week already. The local Spar is fine - after an initial run on toilet paper, the staff worked with a fury to get stuff onto the shelves faster than folk were taking it off, with the result that yesterday the shelves and aisles were groaning with Easter stuff. I have some migrants from Italy - they come every year. Black Redstarts. Usually two pairs. So rare in the UK that I once had to spend (planning condition) £300,000 installing a 'brown roof' on a new building for them; much to the chagrin of the client. The ecology people said they liked old bombsites, with plenty of demolition rubble, burnt wood and fireweed. Actually, they just like flies - or insects anyway - each pair eating some 1.5kg during the breeding season. And whilst the locals regard them as a bloody nuisance, I welcome them. They're ugly, they can't sing for shit and they're not entertaining like tits, but just for the untold millions that they cost UK developers, they're fab.

Stay safe all and let's take care of each other.
  

EU/EEA and the UK	Sum of Cases	Sum of Deaths
Italy	59138	5476
Spain	28572	1720
Germany	24774	94
France	16018	674
United_Kingdom	5683	281
Netherlands	4204	179
Austria	3631	16
Belgium	3401	75
Norway	2132	7
Sweden	1906	21
Portugal	1600	14
Denmark	1395	13
Czech_Republic	1165	1
Ireland	906	4
Luxembourg	798	8
Poland	634	7
Finland	626	1
Greece	624	15
Iceland	568	1
Romania	433	2
Slovenia	414	1
Estonia	326	0
Croatia	235	1
Bulgaria	185	3
Slovakia	185	0
Hungary	167	7
Lithuania	143	1
Latvia	139	0
Cyprus	95	0
Malta	90	0
Liechtenstein	46	0
Total	160233	8622

Bounceback & backlogs

We must not forget when throwing money at workers and businesses where we want to end up when the virus crisis is past. Before we spend every pound we must turn it over twice, as my mother used to say. This is not a demand shock - the nation did not want to stop spending. But we must realise that Covid-19 will change everything, and when it is over our spending patterns will undoubtedly have changed. We must not waste money on businesses and activities that have no future. The virus is a system shock that will accelerate changes that are happening anyway - but how do we decide what to fund, how to fund it and on what terms?

Airlines
The case for LHR's extra runway has become much weaker. I can't see demand for global travel ever recovering to the point it was at in November 2019, and that means airlines, which are anyway on the cusp of profitability, going bust and allowing it to happen. What do we save? Well, we're back to national carriers all over the world, so we must fund BA. And easyjet is our national budget carrier, so deserving of support. Let the others fall, including Branson's Virgin.

The High Street
The slow decline of the high street has seen chain stores struggle to survive in the face of crippling rent and rates. The government's last budget offered some relief, but after a period of enforced close down will the High Street post-Covid ever return to what it was? The streetscape of our towns and cities is relatively recent, dating largely from the mid 19th century, so it's not an immutable part of our heritage.

Bounceback
When it is possible to lift restrictions - and suggestions are that this might be stop-start - demand will return and we must do everything we can to ensure the effects of bounceback leave us where we want to be. For some businesses, there will be a permanent loss of income. If you normally go to the barbers every month, after four month's absence you won't have four haircuts - all that income is lost. Offering loans to such businesses is pointless - imposing a burden they are unlikely to recoup in increased trade. Backlogs in contrast will see a huge burst of spending as at the end of rationing when buyers create four months of sales in a month; loans to such businesses to keep them ticking over make eminent sense. Computers, DIY goods, home improvements may be such.

AI
We saw the end of the trade of Tube driver last week. The pics that hit the press and social media of dangerously crowded tubes because drivers were self-isolating in large numbers, when not a single DLR formation was cancelled, means the end of public opposition to driverless tube trains - meaning more of them, travelling more closely to eachother, more safely and less crowded, is only now a matter of time. Similarly across the economy.

The environment
I think across the entire world the effect of the standstill is striking billions of people as to the effects on both our world and ourselves of human activity. Choking clouds of SO2 and smog lifted from cities, bird song audible in London. We won't quite see dolphins in the Regent's canal, but the effect will be salutary - and not going back will become a politically saleable option.

The B Ark
We're finding out today who doesn't want their children at home. The most extraordinary melange of B-Ark passengers are claiming 'key worker' status, from nail painters, personal trainers and hashish purveyors to Uber drivers and artisan avocado-mashers. I reckon about 80% of these folk could easily be re-employed out in the fields. We need to subsidise only those activities that create the greatest total benefit for society and nation

It's going to be very interesting.

Update
======
Boris is under tremendous pressure from his entire team to introduce a full lockdown - we must at least credit him with resisting it for so long on libertarian grounds. However, I think the science is against him.

And fieldworkers? Uhm, metaphorical. It's my opinion that everyone on the B-ark is free to carry on what they're doing at their own expense - but if they want public money, they must help feed and dress the cared-for - or similar collectively useful employments - rather than painting nails or spraying tanning fluid.

Some numbers ...

Just a few numbers this morning that are causing the grey cells to spark. First, the news story that Germany has broken its 'balanced budget' dirge and has committed to €356bn of new debt - some 10% of GDP. Already Europe is preparing for a forthcoming 'fire sale' of some of its largest industrial assets - and British hawks are circling, hoping to pluck up some tasty morsels. With Europe's Bourses having fallen 30% - 40% in recent weeks, many are on the edge. The protective Germans know the risk -

"We will not allow a bargain sale of German economic and industrial interests," economic affairs minister Peter Altmaier said on Friday. "There should be no taboos. Temporary state aid for a limited period, up to and including shareholdings and takeovers, must be possible."

You'll note that it is the risk to German and not EU assets that has prompted the volte-face. Some solidarity, mein Herren. Just for comparison, here are the global benchmarks of 10% of GDP ($s)

	GDP $bn	10% bench $bn
USA	20,490	2,049
China	13,400	1,340
Japan	4,970	497
Germany	4,000	400
UK	2,830	283
France	2,780	278
India	2,720	272
Italy	2,070	207
Brazil	1,870	187
Canada	1,710	171

But Germany faces a dilemma. Save the Zombie banks or allow the stressed carmakers to use their liquidity to develop EV technologies? QE has left many big companies with fat cash reserves, and even German taxpayers will grumble if hard-working Max Musterman's wedge is thrown to VW whilst they are still sitting on their own cash-pile. Here's another chart

 
So VW hanging in there with a market cap of $52bn ... but here's where it gets interesting. As Bloomberg reports, VW is already sitting on a cash pile of $23bn - over 5% of the German chancellor's entire spending commitment. And the company would rather lay-off staff and close plants than spend it - foreign plants and workers to go first - as CE Herbert Diess was quoted as saying

"Drastic measures to protect liquidity" are required to tackle the crisis, Diess said Saturday in a message on VW’s intranet and later posted on LinkedIn. He said safeguarding the availability of spare parts and battery-cell supply are among the initiatives that are also "extremely important."

How this will play with German voters I don't know. But it's all getting quite interesting. One of the downsides of industrial socialism is that taxpayers will want a say in what is being done with their money.

It's all about China

Let's not forget where the Wuhan virus originated. Despite a highly co-ordinated campaign that in the UK has roped in the usual suspects including Sadiq Khan and David Lammy, the public are stubborn in continuing to say and post that this virus comes from China. Even parts of the UN (no surprise) have launched a campaign to tell us that the Wuhan virus is the result of deforestation and global warming, and it's nothing to do with eating bats or wet markets at all.

But sometimes there are no heroes and no villains. I wrote a post recently that regarded China favourably in airfreighting vital medical kit to Italy at a time when France and Germany had banned sending such stuff and the EU was deaf to Italian appeals. As usual, one well-informed commentator added the necessary perspective to the piece. No, neither China nor the EU deserve congratulation. Neither are heroes, both have damaged Italy. I read it wrong.

Where I stand absolutely shoulder to shoulder with Sadiq Khan and David Lammy is that this is not the fault of people from China who are working and raising families in our communities. Perhaps if they'd had the balls or the sense to say so instead of excusing the People's Dictatorship of China then their message might have been more widely heard. Any attacks on or discrimination or harassment against Chinese people is inexcusable and unacceptable. The irony is that many, at least in London, will be those and the descendants of those who have fled the PRC.

The Chinese government, bless 'em, having precipitated a global pandemic and millions of (coming) deaths by first trying to hide then lying about the Wuhan virus are taking a lesson from the EU in using this as a 'beneficial crisis' to tighten the Belt and Road bonds with Italy and drive a wedge between the country and the rest of Europe. The 'Chinese School' cartoon below has recently surfaced on social media. Well, sorry, guys - this sort of crude propaganda may play well amongst the third world, but Europeans remain amongst the most politically sophisticated voters in the world, and this just makes China look crude and silly.

Shooting the first rioter - a London timeline

If one thing is clear from the chaotic scenes on TV and social media of the undisciplined selfishness at our supermarkets, it is clear that the UK is not the place that many liked to think it was. And London, filthy, crowded, raw London with the highest multi-drug resistant TB rates outside Iraq, Ethiopia and Afghanistan, is worst of all. When Quentin Reynolds described the resilience of Londoners on Humphrey Jennings's 'London Can Take It' he was documenting a very different London to today's city.

Watching the fights break out over toilet roll at a time when there was no food shortage and the chip shops were open, one has to wonder what it will be like when food shortages start to bite, as they surely will. People who have never used their kitchens in London will be lost. Me? I love to cook. So my shelves are already full with dried ingredients and the staples - polpa, coconut milk, onions, dried onions, garlic, garlic paste, tomato paste, and herbs and spices in ranks of big Kilner jars (tip: never again buy those sully little supermarket bottles. Order your Turmeric, smoked Paprika, peppercorns, Garam Masala, mustard powder etc in 200g packets - 200g of Turmeric is the same price as one of those little curvy 28g jars.

When the pizza and cocaine run short - and you can bet the crisis is affecting the supply chains for illegal drugs as well as everything else - then tempers will also run short. Someone will pull out a zombie knife in Tesco. A shop worker will die in a pool of blood, and armed troops will be posted to London's supermarkets. A wilding gang will run at a guarded supermarket entrance, and a young soldier will open fire.

It hasn't even started yet.

Looking on the bright side ...

I must admit, against all the odds, that there are glimmers of pleasure in this global crisis. Rather than the free-market approach of letting 520,000 of us die, the government have opted for a national lockdown, which will see the UK's deaths this year rise only from the usual 600,000 to 620,000. Call it the People's Covid Strategy if you like - and it certainly depends on co-operation from everyone. And as in WWII, when the population had to make most of the sacrifices, there will be a reckoning to be paid. First, an evening-out of social inequality; back then it took the effects of a universal ration, in which even the King had the Buckingham Palace baths marked with the max 5" water level and the princesses had ration books, to persuade the masses to comply. Second, a universal service obligation. And finally, deep and permanent changes to society to enshrine fairness, equity and limits to the pre-war inequalities.

Jeremy Warner in the 'graph has somewhat stolen my thunder with this observation

Once the pinup boy for sailing close to the wind entrepreneurialism, and as such a mentor to many, Richard Branson is now widely demonised; the gist of it is how dare a tax exile with estimated wealth of £4bn ask for a bailout by UK taxpayers. Nevermind that thousands of jobs are at risk, he can, as one well-known Dragon’s Den celebrity investor put it, “b***** off”.

Anyone on Twitter yesterday cannot have failed to notice the universal hostility toward Richard Branson - and particularly to the thought that a taxpayer funded bailout should help his airline whilst he retained his £4bn personal fortune. It was revelatory. Thatcher's poster boy is now a figure of mass hatred. It must have sent a shudder through the 0.1% of the mega-wealthy, and be causing a little anxiety amongst the 1% who have so benefited from Globalism. That's going to be part of the price of this war - demands for an end to obscene rewards. And yes, I'd go along with that.

Another pleasure has been the utter helplessness of Labour. They so want to protest and be angry about something, but they can't find it. The nadir must be yesterday's demand for Covid victims to be classified according to self-identified gender as well as ethnicity and sexuality. Sweeties, men die more because we express greater levels of ACE2, to which the SARS-CoV-2 virus binds in cell-invasion. It doesn't help being a trannie. As far as Covid-19 is concerned, you're still a bloke.

A downside, as I posted a few days ago, is that Whitehall reform is on hold - we actually need a central command and control structure during the crisis. But this is not a reason, or an excuse, for maintaining a Big Central State once we have beaten this thing. Much more on this as time goes on.

And finally, the world's nation states have just amply demonstrated that supranational government is a pointless chimera, and that the people are best served by less Europe, not more, and by less UN. In concert yesterday, the leaders of the US, UK, Germany, France and Japanese, the G7, all announced co-ordinated bailouts of hundreds of billions. If everyone prints money, it doesn't count. And not a peep from the irrelevant EU or UN. The nation state is back.

And even though there's yet no hint of a vaccine, minds in the UK are already turning to a post-Globalist world; AI, computer printing, strategic national capacity. And our effects on our environment are quickly becoming manifest; clear water and visible fish in Venice's canals, and here blue skies free of contrails, and the deafening loudness of spring birdsong. We may not want to give up this green-ness, not want to go back to the filth and degradation. Universal basic incomes are also being mentioned without hoots of derision.

If you look, there's a silver lining to most clouds.

Actors

Actors age like fine wine and most are better with age. I've drunk and laughed with many, including an ex, and I like them as a breed - but they're definitely more fun when they've reached a stage at which they can laugh at their own profession. I've got a deep fund of actor jokes they've shared with me over the years, but a few are favourites. The late Billy Jay, an old time Rep actor, reminded me of the precarious life of an actor when we caught sight through the window of the French of someone carrying a box of Romeo y Julietas. Old-school actors, he explained, used to carry their make-up in cigar boxes. On spotting his thespian friend on the other side of Shaftesbury Avenue carrying such a cigar box one blade waved across the traffic and with stage-face asked optimistically 'Working?' the response was a shake of the head. "Moving" came the reply.

London's theatres are going dark. We are losing a large part of the magic that lives amongst us, for the live stage is a potent conjuration, an experience that leaves even the jaded and unimpressed changed, and mostly improved. Not just the actors on stage, but the whole backstage armies so skilled in lights, paint, ropes and canvas and mixing boards who form little animated clumps in pubs from the Welsh Harp to the Coach and beyond and whose presence amongst us adds immeasurably to the joy and quality of West End life.

I've just read Philip Ziegler's 'London at War 1939 - 1945' in which the capability of theatreland to survive and even flourish during the blitz and the following attritional bombing campaigns is well-described. This time that won't even be a possibility - this nasty little virus will succeed where Herr Goering failed (and we without a Murial let alone a 'Miss Hitler' to curse).

So here's a plea. In all the measures to mitigate the effects of this thing, let's not forget the theatres, and the people that make them work, and not just the West End but every Rep in the land that brings the magic of the stage to our lives. It will cost a lot less than maintaining the billionaire Richard Branson in his offshore lifestyle, and bring a lot more benefit to many more lives.

Capitalism good, Globalism bad

Take a look at this graph of UK GDP growth from 1955 to just about now. Clearly, it's in two halves, as they say - but what marked the change of the roller coasters of the economy in the sixties, seventies and early eighties and the dull, mediocre, flat performance since then? The 2008 shock is the only visible bit of excitement (though the virus will do something interesting)

I've been reading David Graeber, lefty LSE academic and Corbyn supporter, but a man with half a brain. His observations are good, his conclusions dire. Here are a couple of good bits, the first on Neoliberalism -

.. global economic performance over the last thirty years has been decidedly mediocre. With one or two spectacular exceptions (notably China, which significantly ignored most neoliberal prescriptions), growth rates have been far below what they were in the days of the old-fashioned, state-directed, welfare-state-oriented capitalism of the fifties, sixties, and even seventies. By its own standards, then, the project was already a colossal failure even before the 2008 collapse.

He manages to miss the real reason for this dire economic performance despite describing its manifestation .

While the new free market ideology has framed itself above all as a rejection of bureaucracy, it has, in fact, been responsible for the first administrative system that has operated on a planetary scale, with its endless layering of public and private bureaucracies: the IMF, World Bank, WTO, trade organizations, financial institutions, transnational corporations, NGOs.

Yes, Globalism. What Globalism has managed to achieve is to destroy the benefits of the version of capitalism that made us rich up until about 1990. Oh not rich in terms of disposable incomes, consumer toys, cars that we don't own but in the important things.

You may also note that the falling of the Wall and the start of NATO's decline also coincides with this Globalism - indeed, helped to enable it. All economics is human behaviour, so here's an anecdote.

Back in the 1970s I had a gap year before going to university. At the end of the year, I had enough saved as a deposit on a little flint-rubble cottage, which cost the princely sum of £5,250. The attraction was the rear garden, which was huge, with a little orchard of six trees and enough room to run a gaggle of hens and grow a crop of tobacco - but that was for later years. I was going away, and my student grant wouldn't pay the mortgage - no problem. A quick call to the USAF produced the first of my Master Sergeants, superlative tenants whose rent payments were generous and warranted by the US government. That sort of thing was possible back in those spiky, variable years.

If you measure wealth not in the volume of cheap £10 electric drills and £5 jeans one can buy but in having a stake in the country, a country with a standing army of over 100,000, a navy of a least 50 warships and an air force with more than a handful of squadrons, in which there was the freedom to take the sort of financial risks that we did, and enjoy the rewards that we did, then we were rich. Pre-Globalism we also had personal freedom and independence to a far greater degree than subsists now, and even though the State owned a lot more business and industry than it does now, it was also somehow a much smaller State. The Big State that supports Globalism is also supported by what Graeber calls Bullshit Jobs -

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world's population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the ‘service’ sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza delivery) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

These are what I propose to call ‘bullshit jobs’.

The paradox, as Graeber points out, is that the new de-nationalised capitalist Neoliberal West shouldn't allow such massive economic inefficiencies, such a huge waste of resources. Yet it does. That's an answer in itself. What's the point of having a Big State, a regulatory state, if you don't have a society replete with willing, conformist drones to enforce all the regulations?

I'm sorry, but all the cheap Chinese electric drills in the world and the availability of flash new cars I don't own don't come close in compensating for the real wealth of those pre-Globalist days.

Update
=====
The costs to the UK economy of over regulation, from the IEA

The report concludes regulation has become a political tool, used to drive social or distributive objectives, rather than to correct market failures. Failure of regulation, including over-regulation, has led to increasing barriers to entry for new businesses, stagnating competition between incumbents, and in many cases no evidence of beneficial outcomes for consumers.

Regulations are being judged on their intentions – not their outcomes – and increasingly weak mechanisms for accountability of state regulators risk undermining the rule of law, the report warns.

Dan Hannan is confused

Dan Hannan is an odd cove. His habit of buttoning up all three buttons on his suit earned him the nickname 'cockvirgin' on Twitter, and indeed there is something of the prissy schoolboy about him that limits the human warmth necessary for political success. Still, he was on the right side over Brexit and has been loyal to the party. It's just a shame his piece in the Telegraph today is so confused between globalism and globalisation. I suspect he knows. I suspect his piece is the first of many we will see in the coming months defending the interests of the global corporates as Covid-19 casts them as villains. It's not a good time for the CBI.

For any newcomers, globalisation is the neutral and unmanaged process through which trade, travel and technology makes the world a smaller place. Cheap airline travel, capitalism, electricity and the internet have brought 4G phones to the favelas of Rio and South African townships, primary health care and the polio vaccine to equatorial Africa and the Hindu Kush. Even the floods of young male migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Bangladesh heading for the Greek border are followed by mobile phone charging vans equipped with adaptors for everything from a Nokia to an iPhone, selling juice for a few Turkish lire.

Globalism is the process under which capital seeks those places with the lowest factor costs - labour, power, land, raw materials, transport, regulation, penalties for environmental degradation and pollution - in which to invest. Globalists love supranational government, the globalisation of commercial law and standards, open borders, free movement of people, capital and goods and everything else that facilitates friction-free profitability across the globe. Internationalists, in contrast to globalists, want wealth-making trade between sovereign nations, not for the world to become a single technocracy.

Globalism has lifted billions of the world's people out of absolute poverty. It has also hollowed-out the middle and working classes in the UK, Europe and North America. Median incomes have remained completely flat from 2008 until this year, whilst the 1% have grown hugely more wealthy. Globalism has destroyed our post war social mobility, globalism means our children will never be as wealthy as their parents and it has created a bitterly divided and unequal society. When Hannan's Telegraph piece claims 'Globalisation brought us unprecedented riches' it is false on two counts. First, it was not globalisation but globalism that so altered the world's economies. Secondly, it was not us to whom globalism brought unprecedented riches but 'them'.

The fact is that globalism has left the UK in a position in which we have not a single manufacturer of the type of ventilator we will need in the tens of thousands. The PM has mobilised British industry and we will put our taxes into British businesses to remedy this; sorry, Dyson, you get nothing. You've gone to Singapore. The irony is that the 1% here who have so enjoyed the material benefits of globalism will be no more exempt from ending their lives with their lungs flooded with Covid-19 than will the elderly working classes whose families they have robbed of futures.

14/03/20
EU/EEA and the UK	Cases	Deaths
Italy	17660	1268
Spain	4231	121
France	3661	79
Germany	3062	5
Denmark	804	0
Netherlands	804	5
Sweden	775	1
United Kingdom	707	10
Norway	621	1
Belgium	559	3
Austria	504	1
Greece	190	1
Finland	155	0
Czech Republic	150	0
Slovenia	141	0
Iceland	117	0
Portugal	112	0
Ireland	91	1
Romania	89	0
Estonia	79	0
Poland	68	2
Luxembourg	38	1
Bulgaria	31	1
Croatia	31	0
Slovakia	30	0
Hungary	25	0
Latvia	19	0
Cyprus	14	0
Malta	12	0
Lithuania	6	0
Liechtenstein	4	0
Total	34790	1500