Poor women with large tattooed breasts - 11 years on

Back in May 2007 I posted a piece titled "Poor women with large tattooed breasts will have to do the best they can" which has, over the years, attracted over 3,000 hits. I guess some 2,800 googlers or more will have been disappointed. There were no illustrations. It was about non-essential NHS procedures and I wrote

Whilst I also believe that funding decisions should be made at the local level by local bodies of health professionals and citizens, rather than from the State central health bureau, I think the NHS (or rather the NHS at its local level) should be allowed the power generally to ask for top-up fees for a whole range of medical procedures; a charge that is somewhere between free and the cost of a wholly private option.

Fertility treatments, breast enlargement or reduction, tattoo removal, elective caesarians for mums too-posh-to-push, varicose vein removal, cosmetic plastic surgery, piles reduction and many other minor procedures are now seen as a 'right'. This is never what the NHS was founded for. What next? Baldness treatment for men 'psychologically damaged' by being slapheads? Buttock implants for women who see a phat booty as a 'cultural necessity'?

Of course we're all happy to get something for nothing. But I'm sure if given the choice between spending money a year's gym membership or getting our piles sorted next week, we'll go for rectal comfort. 'Unfair to the poor' I hear some say; yes, perhaps. But not life threatening. And poor women with large tattooed breasts will just have to make out the best they can.

Well, NHS England have just caught on. Eleven years late and some £2bn wasted that could have been saved had they formulated policy from our blog posts in a more timely manner.

Of course, back then hardly anyone had gender reassignment treatment on the NHS whilst now there are thousands queueing for gender dysphoria counselling and hundreds waiting to have their tackle lopped at £16k a chop. But I doubt the NHS would dare face up to the Trans lobby - at least not for another eleven years.

Blair, Straw must face trial for rendition & torture conspiracy

I said at the time of the peak 9/11 rhetoric that you could no more have have a 'war on terror' than you could have a war on swords, or a war on light machine guns. Terror is just a weapon. You can protect yourself against a weapon, but to end the threat you must deal with those using it. And any group with a big enough grudge can use terror.

Our domestic war criminals Blair, Straw, Hoon and Irving - the holders of the four great offices of State who lied this country into an unlawful war - have also now been exposed as complicit in the most vile and despicable acts of torture. 

Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee has just published its long awaited report on UK complicity in rendition and torture under Blair and Brown's governments. Not only are the facts a damning indictment of Blair's hubris and utter immorality, but the intelligence service bosses, Scarlett and Dearlove, are also exposed as deeply complicit in this disgusting business. And please don't defend torture - "When we torture people, even if we win the battle, we've already lost the war for hearts and minds, especially our own". Blair's torture policy was Not In My Name and not, I suspect, the name of the vast majority of essentially decent British people. 

The Chair of the committee is one Dominic Grieve. This report has been long awaited, and perhaps those wondering why the long delays may look to Blair's machinations as in Chilcot's report and wonder if he has not adopted the same tactic here.

Blair and Straw at least must face trial over this. And both Dearlove and Scarlett, as Peter Oborne recommends in the Mail, must at the least be stripped of their kinghthoods.  

It is high time we put these people in the dock to answer for these crimes.

50% of UK Revenue Cutters deployed to Greece

Those of you familiar with North Norfolk will at some stage have come across the horses of the Household Cavalry on holiday. In return for having to live in London's ugliest building (by the hubristic brutalist Basil Spence), having to stand still for long periods outside Horse Guards as idiotic tourists self-snap and caparison alarmingly close, and at getting a sniff of Hyde Park but never being allowed to get a full gallop on, the doughty chargers are rewarded with a few weeks a year cantering naked in the North Sea surf, galloping down wide dawn beaches with damp sand under their hooves and pigging out on sweet fresh grass well-balanced with mash and hay. Then it's back to London. 

The same must apply to the crews of the UK's revenue cutters. Not only have Dutch shipbuilders Damen constructed these for standards of crew comfort unknown to the Royal Navy, with floating soundproof decks, 'box-in-box' suspended crew quarters and generous leisure space, but they also even have raft-mounted engines to reduce vibration so the crew can sleep more easily. Those domes at the stern aren't for tracking the pursuit of drug smugglers - they are TV satellite receivers, so the lads (and lasses?) don't miss a single world cup game. And that tube at the front isn't a gun but a fire-hose, designed to look like a gun.

But I guess that comfy beds, satellite TV and gourmet food just aren't enough for our Border Force afloat. What they really need is a month or so steaming between the Aegean islands on ink-dark seas, with Retsina and gay discos after their 9-to-5 shifts are done. To top up their tans and steam about searching for the few rubber boat people making the trip to the Greek islands from Turkey, and take them back.  

The problem is, the UK has only four revenue cutters - HMC Valiant, HMC Seeker, HMC Searcher and HMC Vigilant. Valiant has been on holiday in Greece since 2015, and it's been so much fun that another of the flotilla will join her there. Meaning half our total revenue cutters are away on holiday. And unlike the Household Cavalry's chargers, not just for a quick break. 

Nice work if you can get it. 

HMC Vigilant - will she win the Greek lottery?   

Europe's Liberals need to learn from Turkey

If you or I were in Turkey, opposing the illiberal authoritarian regime of Dictator Erdogan, we would risk being thrown out of our jobs, having our homes trashed by thugs, imprisoned or being quietly dragged away at night and shot. Erdogan's fifteen year regime has used every legal means plus emergency powers to repress free speech and democracy in Turkey.

Some 60,000 are held in 'emergency detention'. 150,000 public sector employees have been thrown out of their jobs since 2016, following a purge of the armed services in 2013 in which commanders not loyal to Erdogan were jailed at show-trials. Police, judiciary and universities have been purged of potential opponents, but above all Erdogan has complete control over news media and has jailed hundreds of independent journalists. 150 media outlets were closed after 2016, and government censorship is active and present in all others. All news in Turkey is Erdogan news. Internet access and use is restricted and any website can be (and are) blocked at the whim of the censors. Even Wikipedia is banned. In the run-up to the election, Erdogan's party got 67 hours of election broadcasting. His biggest rival Ince got 7 hours. the Iyi party got 12 minutes.  

Yet despite all this, people still communicated. Somehow they managed to meet and talk, to canvas, to spread the message. 87% of voters turned out to vote, and despite the repression and crackdown, Erdogan managed only a slim parliamentary majority. People organised themselves to guard polling stations and ballot boxes from Erdogan's thugs. Even Kurdish voters, some of whom faced an 8km walk to cast their votes, passed the magic 10% threshold as their HDP party gained 12%, despite the party leader having been imprisoned by Erdogan. 

Free speech. Free association. The right to form political parties. Erdogan has trampled on all these most fundamental rights - yet still somehow he failed to win the victory he needed. Universal suffrage and most of all the secret ballot have kept democracy alive in Turkey. They are the most precious of our rights, and worth our blood to defend. 

We need to learn from the Turks the ways in which democracy can be nurtured under an illiberal regime.

[REDACTED] II

http://www.breitbart.com/london/

REDACTED

THIS POST IS REDACTED

COMMENTS ARE CLOSED

We apologise for current social media censorship that makes impossible the discussion of some aspects of current affairs without triggering automated decisions using algorhythms.

Globalist granny-grabber mouths off

Globalist granny-grabber Emmanuel Macron mouthed-off in Brittany yesterday, according to France 24;

"I'm saying to you in the gravest terms: Many hate it (the EU) but they have hated it for a long time, and now you see them (nationalists) rise, like leprosy, all around Europe, in countries where we thought that they would never reappear."

Proving yet again that the little Kermit is deeply deluded.

Hating the EU doesn't make anyone a nationalist; all right thinking people should loathe and resent a body so hubristic, so territorially ambitious, so hungry for power, so anti-democratic and so dismissive and scornful of the people it aspires to rule that it allows folk like our gerontophile Kermit to flourish. Hating the EU is normal - those of whom to be suspicious are the hysterics, carpet-chewers and effete womblies such as PTSD Adonis or 'Howler' Grayling who support the vile federasts.

We're close to the Veneto here, so Macron must forgive me for toasting today's anniversary of Britain's historic vote in Prosecco straight from the Vigneron, in crates of bare, unlabelled brown bottles with crown caps, in complete defiance of every EU diktat you can imagine. 

Cheers!

 

United Nations Human Rights Council - The 2018 awards

Good day! I am Dr Barrister Adoke Aboyongo and I am please to announce UNHRC awards for 2018. The Council has seven first world members (not eligible for prizes due to colonial advantages) and forty members drawn from the minor kleptocracies, dictatorships, banana republics, junta, repressive autocracies or theocracies and corrupt and failed states from around the world. This year those forty nations competed for our top prizes and I am happy to announce the winners. 

THE LAVRENTI BERIA AWARD FOR EXTRAJUDICIAL MURDER
The judges were unanimous in deciding this award should go to PRESIDENT DUTERTE of the Phillipines for having shot more citizens in twelve months than any other dictator of the past 60 years. The professionalism and commitment of Mr Duterte's death squads, working overnight and weekends, have left a mountain of corpses and a lake of blood on Manila's streets. 

GILLETTE PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
For the 11th year running this prize has gone to the KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA, a nation foremost in skills of head-chopping and spectacular and bloody public executions. A special mention of the nation's high regard for gender equality was underlined by the panel - in 2017 some 27% of heads chopped were women's, the highest proportion ever of women executed in the Kingdom.

MONSANTO GOLD MEDAL FOR AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
The winner of the 2018 award is SOUTH AFRICA. The rape, murder, mutilation and dismemberment of white farmers under Operation Machete has achieved remarkable levels of terror, fear and lawlessness, and the police and government are congratulated for refraining from intervening in any way with the movement. At the same time, the activists have achieved a 14% reduction in domestic food production and cash-crop harvests - a spectacular reduction for the 21st century.

THE POL POT PRIZE FOR POPULATION DEGRADATION
The judges were faced with a strong field of candidates and shortlisting was a difficult process. Finally, the decision was unanimous to award the prize to VENEZUELA; the sheer levels of incompetence required to turn an oil-rich second world nation into an impoverished failed state with a starving population forced to kill and eat their pet cats and dogs could not be equalled. 

With deep thanks to all the nations of the 40 who were not successful this year, and to the many of you who made kind contributions to the Aboyongo Fund for Comfortable Retirements ($ only, please!).

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yes, all the above nations really are members of the UN Human Rights Council.

Waving carefully

Coming from the UK, perhaps one of the most alien cultural differences here is the utter horror of any reminder of the Nazi period. Whilst Prince Harry and his chums may quite happily don SS fancy dress and barely a day goes by without the Swastika appearing somewhere on UK TV, here it remains strictly verboten. I'm even slightly careful not to hold my arm too rigidly when raising a hand in greeting, as one does multiple times a day here. Truly.

A 51 year old Croatian chap is finally going home this week after a month in custody and with a fifteen month suspended sentence for making the Hitlergruß. 

Some of you may remember a mammoth libel case brought by Lord Aldington against Nikolai Tolstoy some years ago. Aldington, then Brigadier Toby Low, together with an officer named Harold Macmillan, were instrumental, when commanding units of the British army of occupation here in 1945, in forcefully sending back tens of thousands of Croatian Ustache fighters and their families to Yugoslavia, where they were massacred in mass shootings just across the border. Having fought for Hitler, these Croat fascists wanted to surrender to the British or Americans, but wartime diplomacy meant they had to be sent back to their certain death. 

Anyhow, every year there's an embarrassingly fascistic remembrance event at Bleiberg with flags and an open air catholic mass. The Austrian and Croatian governments both want it to end, as does the local Catholic bishop. The Croats and their sympathetic priests, however, are determined to continue. It's all carefully watched by the police - which is why, when this fairly pissed chap shot his right arm up, he was promptly arrested. 'Reactivation', it's called. 

Prince Harry, be warned.  

Migration - the real coming EU crisis

Italy has closed her ports to the NGO taxi service, and to the earnest young westerners with access to enough wealth to buy small merchant ships who have operated it, ferrying hundreds of thousands of Africans from both the maghreb and sub-saharan regions from the Libyan coast to the Mezzogiorno. And since it is not only these idiots but the Italian coastguard and Navy that has transferred migrants from their spanking-new Chinese rubber rafts for the trip across the Med, one wonders what orders they have now. Sailors are under an international legal obligation to respond to those in peril, but the law doesn't require us to go looking for them - so most likely their patrols have been restricted to the Italian coast, or even more wisely, they are now steaming to the Horn of Africa for anti-piracy operations. 

I have printed before a version of the UN graphic below. Youth unemployment in Africa is between 25% and 70%. Over the next ten years the number of young Africans 15-24 will soar from 250m to over 300m - and the best guess is that some 50m of those will drift north, seeing their only future as recipients of European wealth. 

This bulge in the number of young Africans is coming at a time when global opportunities for uneducated and unskilled young men is approaching a nadir; robots have replaced them as factory fodder, and even the traditional entry-profession of taxi driving is now under threat from AI. We have seasonal opportunities in the UK for fruit pickers and horticultural workers, but want the workers to go back home when the work ends. These folk want to stay. 

What the nations of Europe must now decide - and the six-month Austrian presidency of the EU is determined to ensure they do - is how to tackle the people smugglers and thousands of giant-sized Chinese rubber rafts. The only realistic solution that I can see is European enclaves in North Africa in which we maintain migrant camps that can hold a million or more Africans - feed them, keep them safe from enslavement, provide basic medical care. And then send them home. 

Are you a Liberal?

There is currently a very lively dialogue between left and right on what should be common ground, opposition to illiberal authoritarianism. What constitutes illiberal authoritarianism, however, could not be more differently defined. For the right, it is central command and control, abnegation of direct and popular democracy, restrictions on free speech, loss of national sovereignty, the power of the global corporates and their alliance with forms of super-national and international government. For the left, it means the undermining of benign expert and technocratic public administration, abusing the credulity and anxiety of the less-educated masses, the threat of raw nationalism, and the rejection of super national and international bodies that define and uphold standards of rights and justice.

I suppose the one benefit of this near universal opposition to illiberal authoritarianism is that we're all of us now liberals - but liberals of very divergent types. On the right, the 'classical liberals' trace a lineage back to the fathers of the enlightenments - Burke, Locke, Hobbes, Adam Smith and JS Mill. Jordan Peterson is a typical classical liberal - and his Channel Four interview with Cathy Newman on You Tube now has over ten million views. I'm not sure what to term the opposite kind of liberals - perhaps 'progressive liberals' or 'social liberals' - but perhaps Ms Newman herself is a good exemplar.



In June 2016 there was spoof Guardian headline screaming 'The wrong people are using democracy!' that actually uncovered an uncomfortable truth. From this event have evolved proposals to change democracy to make it better - including both ideas about deliberative democracy, giving state experts a role in guiding the masses to make the right decisions, and the proposals from classical liberals for direct democracy based on the Swiss model. All these ideas for new, improved democracy stem from a 'need' to tackle illiberal authoritarianism and a presumption that our current system of representative democracy is flawed. That, again, is common ground between right and left.

So are those of us who have called ourselves Libertarians liberals also? Derek Robinson writes in Politico about the American experience, where 'classical liberal' is coming to mean the conservative but not Trumpist faction within the Rebublican party;

Daniel Klein, an economist at George Mason University, suggested that the “libertarian moment” may have exerted its toll on the movement’s brand. “[The term libertarian] has the baggage of being slightly dogmatic, whereas the ‘liberal’ expression does not,” Klein said in an interview. “I’m not for discarding the word libertarian, but classical liberalism is like a nuanced libertarianism.”

Ah OK. He means Libertarians have earned a reputation as swivel-eyed loons with their heads in tankards of ale whilst the kinder, gentler classical liberals sip amontillado. Fair dos.  

So, fellow liberals, at least we're united against the other liberals, with clear blue water between us. The only question now is whether the Liberals are liberals ...

Tony Blair - Godfather of Illiberal Authoritarianism

It's not only columnists from the centre-right such as Allister Heath in the Telegraph who are awake to the threat to our democracy of the new Illiberal Authoritarianism - the centre-left is also now waking to the threat. They, too, point to Putin (correct) and China (correct) but also to Trump (stupidly wrong). The problem is, the solution of the lefties to a threat to democracy is often, erm, less democracy. 

Reading a mirror article to that of Heath, featured in the post below, in Der Spiegel, the bells started ringing as I read the following;

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary has adopted a similar approach, one which has kept him in power for eight years and recently got him elected for four more. His people now occupy not only all key positions in Hungarian ministries and agencies, but also in universities, clinics, theatres and courtrooms. He has also managed to bring a large part of the economy under his control by way of a network of companies that are well-disposed toward him.

Good God. That is exactly the plan developed and carried out by one Anthony Blair - and had he not been deposed by the petulance of a political pygmy in the wings and his own criminal culpability over Iraq, he could still today be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He stitched up the entire machinery of State, allied himself with the global corporates and paralysed effective opposition in a stranglehold of central control. The Blair model of Illiberal Authoritarianism is now being applied across the globe.

Well, good luck to Der Spiegel. If they find an effective way of prising-off all those political appointees who cling like pubic lice to their posts, sinecures and tenures, I do hope they tell us - we're still in urgent need of a cure here.

Yes, we must now fight for our most basic democratic rights

It became for me noticeably clear after the Referendum. There was an agonised scream from the Guardian - "the wrong people are using Democracy". It was not just a joke. Since then, the bien-pensant metropolitian class has been doing everything it can to remove and replace our most fundamental democratic rights with various decision-making systems that they can control. You may have thought me over the top when I have warned previously that our most fundamental legal democratic safeguards - the right to associate, to free speech, to form political parties, the right of universal suffrage and of the secret ballot - are under threat. Today I commend to you without reservation Allister Heath's column in the Telegraph (£). 

Heath characterises this as a struggle between the liberal democrats - us -  against the managerialists of  'authoritarian liberalism'. And we are losing. Heath also admits that we have lost Brexit.

I prefer to call this emergent global political model “managerialism”. If you want to find some of its more vocal proponents, look no further than the pro-EU “rebel” MPs slowly but surely killing off Brexit: their contempt for real democracy is matched only by their preposterous self-regard. They are typical card-carrying authoritarian liberals, convinced that they know better than we do what is good for us. ...

Brexit is being overturned but it won an astonishing victory against a Remain side that massively outspent it....

There is huge, pent-up populist anger across the EU, and the rage of the Brexiteers when they find out they have been conned will be something else....

Britain almost broke away; but it seems that the tide of history was too strong for Theresa May’s hapless government. Still, history never ends, and supporters of liberal democracy will live to fight another day, in Britain and across the world.

Please, if you spend money on anything today, buy a copy of the Telegraph and clip Heath's article.

We must start over again. We need a party to replace both UKIP and the Conservatives, that supports fundamental libertarian and democratic values, that supports all those deserted and abandoned by the Labour Party and that isn't ashamed to learn from the Swiss how to defend popular democracy.

This fight has just started.

No one complains they were a refused an overdraft for being gay

There is an interesting debate now widening its scope on the ethics around AI. I reproduce below a survey conducted by the RSA in which many respondents expressed hostility to the use of AI for decision making - except for the two areas in which most people have experienced it, financial services and ad content on social media. For every 'computer says no' there are at least as many 'computer says yes' decisions. And AI is colourblind; it doesn't care about your accent, your creed, your beauty or the size of your, erm intagible assets. You can't game an AI system, or rely on a human co-religionist or wearer of the same club tie to distort the outcomes. I've never heard anyone complain they were refused an overdraft because they were black or gay - AI has credentials of utter impartiality that few human agents have. 

There are, I think, two reasons for opposing the use of AI . The first is that it doesn't make the quality of decisions that do humans, that it's somehow second-best. This is the easiest criticism to answer. In most cases AI is deployed because it makes better decisions than people - and the gap is getting wider each day. Simply, AI should not be deployed unless it's demonstrably better than human decision-making.

The second and most apposite reason to oppose AI is because it is utterly impartial.The sharp-elbowed middle classes have no advantage over the modest or inarticulate in securing better access to services; neither will favoured ethnic, faith or sexual-preference groups go to the front of the queue. The old school tie will cut no ice, a golf-partner MP or Chief Constable dinner guest will endow no special treatment. Decision making by AI, in other words, offers the potential for the ultimate meritocracy, making decisions without fear or favour on strict clinical, equitable or judicial grounds, unmoved by all those factors economists class as 'taste' discrimination. But the word 'potential' is the key word.

The reason we are having a debate right now is that we need to set the rules, and to set them in law, as to how AI makes decisions. Healthcare AI, for example, must make decisions on strict clinical grounds. Ethnic minority women in the population are substantially more obese than either ethnic minority men (.pdf) or the general population. If treatments or surgery are withheld from the obese on clinical grounds, black women will be disproportionally affected. Will an ultra-liberal NHS stand for this, or will the AI be programmed to refuse surgery to the obese unless it's a black woman? That's why we need a legal framework. And a debate. 

I guess the BBC and the public sector will fight tooth and claw to resist a hiring-and-promotion AI system based only on merit - no more internships open only to Somali transexuals, no more preference for Korean pederasts who are 'under-represented' as leisure-centre instructors.  

The geopolitics behind both Trump and Brexit

AEP concludes his most recent piece in the Telegraph (£)

Seen it this light, the US assault on the world’s existing trade system becomes less of a mystery. It is not a discussion about tariffs or Ricardian theories of comparative advantage. It is about geopolitics. This is much more threatening for Germany.  

It also makes it all the more important that we work to keep Germany tied tightly into a Western European alliance (EU and NATO). Yes, it's all about geopolitics - not the stale Nazi lebensraum variety but the cerebral Kissinger realpolitik kind.  

This is how the theory goes. The global core remains pivoted around Poland, and comprises the nations of Mitteleuropa from the Danish border to Croatia, the Baltic lands, Ukraine, Eastern Europe north of Bulgaria, and Western Russia. This core is both self sufficient in energy, grain and most raw materials and is wholly-land connected. Around the core is the 'rimland' - connected by land to the core. Beyond the 'rimland' are the 'islands' - Britain, the New World, Japan, Oceania, which depend on the seas and ships for trade and defence. There is a continual and tectonic struggle for power and dominance between the three regions. 

Following the fall of the Wall in 1989 both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote of the importance of maintaining focus on the core - it was not, as Fukuyama so naively claimed, the 'end of history' and Russia and Germany remained the focus of global policy and international strategy.

After Russia, the second geopolitical threat traditionally remained Germany and, as Mackinder had feared ninety years ago, its partnership with Russia. During the Cold War, Kissinger argues, both sides of the Atlantic recognised that, "unless America is organically involved in Europe, it would be obliged to involve itself later under circumstances far less favourable to both sides of the Atlantic. That is even more true today. Germany has become so strong that existing European institutions cannot by themselves strike a balance between Germany and its European partners. Nor can Europe, even with Germany, manage (Russia) by itself.  It is in no country's interest that Germany and Russia should fixate on each other as principal partner."

And it's not just one-way. America alone cannot contain the endogenous expansionism of the core; "Without America, Britain and France cannot cope with Germany and Russia" and "without Europe, America could turn … into an island off the shores of Eurasia."

The aims of this geopolitics are summed up in the classic aims of British diplomacy - "To keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out" and the fall of the wall hasn't changed a thing.

And there you have it. Trump knows he must both weaken Germany and keep her tied into the Rimland - this I think is that to which AEP alludes. And Brexit is no more than a re balancing that confirms Britain's geopolitical place amongst the nations of 'the islands' rather than tied to the rimland. 

And it doesn't really matter whether you or I believe this analysis or not - it's clearly part of the understanding of the Davos and Bilderberg class. It's also a framework that allows one to place global players in support or otherwise of the three competing blocs. And explains a lot.

Austrians to close mosques, deport 60 Islamist imams

Cracking down on 'political Islam', Austrian ministers have announced that seven Salafist mosques are to be closed down and 60 imams and their families deported. Six of the mosques belong to the 'Arab Religious Organisation' and all the Salafist mosques and the imams are funded by the Turkish government's Religious Affairs Agency, which has close and cordial links with the head-choppers of the KSA. It has long been suspected that the Turkish government agency is funneling funds from KSA aimed at subverting western societies and the rule of law.

"Greetings, thou bloody butcher" - Turkey's head of Islamism meets his head-chopping counterpart

"Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation have no place in our country," said Austria's President Kurz, echoing the UK's previous Prime Minister's words. Unlike Austria, which also has a total ban on face-covering, the UK has taken no action against Salafist mosques, imams or funding. 

Steady the line, boys ...

No-one starts negotiating stuff at International level. All trade negotiators will have honed their skills over many years, starting with quite trivial agreements and working their way up. Many of us in our own professional fields will have had experience on the lower and middle slopes - and the more that Brexit drags, the more I see correspondences between the process and my own experiences.

One anecdote. We'd put in the best bid for the second part of a serial contract, but it was way higher than the Client's budget. He started by instructing that we reduced the bid to the equivalent of the first part. We said we couldn't do that. He said he wouldn't give us the work. Fine, we said, but tell us quickly so we can get on with other stuff. The ping-pong went on until the order came from the very top on both sides to sit in a room on a Friday and not to come out until the deal had been struck.

Our approach was full-disclosure - an open-book tender. We were taking normal profits on each part, but at the time copper prices were as mobile as the underwear of a lady of negotiable affection, as they say. Cost risks on many other items had pushed the rates up, whilst unknowns and poor measures meant we couldn't do lump-sum prices for many of the quantities. Our base price could be reduced substantially, but only if we moved risk on price and quantity to the Client side and adopted many schedules of rates in place of lump sums. The meeting lasted from 10.00am until 11.00pm. They conceded every major point in the end, and we both went back to principals announcing a win. In the end the actual contract out-turn was within a whisker of our initial bid. Where they found the extra millions from I don't know, but they did.

It was a useful lesson for me - in not grandstanding but explaining honestly and openly why we could not agree to their demands. Unless they moved, the answer would have to be No. Things are about to get very rocky over Brexit. The Germans are utterly inflexible and determined to hurt us, and their man Selmayr inserted corruptly into the heart of the crooked Brussels cabal is turning the thumbscrews. PTSD Adonis and his hysterical chums are shrieking and throwing their skirts over their heads at home. Soros, Lord of the Flies, is using his fortune to try to destroy a Britain he hates. A fifth-column of disloyal and anti-democratic civil servants are sabotaging from within. And we have a leader whom it would be slanderous to accuse of membership of Subphylum Vertebrata. There is a deal on the table we cannot accept - not without blood on the streets. The conditions - a minute to midnight, grossly polarised parties, fear of collapse of order - in other words are perfect to achieve a workable deal. Steady the line boys - don't go to pieces.         

Grenfell: The only winners will be the fee earners

It is not just Building Regulations in the UK, but the official guidance to the Regulations that must be followed for any new construction project. With an industrial scale laser printer and a few reams of A4 you can, given time, print the whole set of volumes yourself. Unlike British Standards and suchlike, Building Regs are free for all to access - so no reason for anyone not to comply. I frequently have to explain the UK system to the natives. In Austria, only a qualified and licensed Baumeister can build commercially, and written Building Regs are limited to two or three sides of A4 as reliance is wholly on professional competence. In the UK, I explain, anyone can be a builder, yes, anyone - even those with criminal convictions, perhaps especially those with criminal convictions in some cases ... but they must follow this stack of rules we call Building Regs. 

The consequences are as you might imagine. Here, builders are very expensive, very conservative and will over-engineer even the simplest jobs to absurd lengths. Design of new domestic dwellings is banal, even ugly, but massive. Any nester looking to construct an innovative, beautiful house incorporating the latest building technology and cutting edge materials would be better off moving to the UK; here they will be met with noisy tooth-sucking and head-shaking. And builders here are very, very, stubborn. 

My new roof - one of the few jobs here for which I used a profi - is to my eyes still a travesty to which I am not used. The old roof was a lovely 18th century testament of settlement and minor movement, gently undulating with dips, fold and curves. Having worked with English Heritage many times in the UK - very amicably - my instructions here to the builders were to retain the historic form and character in the new covering. No. They spent weeks and threw away a deal of profit on eliminating every historic irregularity with shims, packers and counter-battens to achieve a millimetre perfect regularity. The rows were intense. Three times I threatened to throw them off the job. All to no avail; I could not have found a roofer in all Austria who would build a crooked roof. For their part, having never seen an English restoration, they were convinced I was mad and needed to be over-ruled for my own good. 

What a roof restoration should look like ... unknown to Austrians

Would Grenfell have been done here? Probably not. Contractors here have very much more power and stubbornness than in the UK - the Baumeister has personal liability for failure. They would have used the best materials - with a hefty factor of safety on top - and it was the Client's job to pay whatever it cost. There is little incentive to do otherwise. And as I found, once a contractor is appointed, he very much takes control of the job; the Client is just an irritating noise to be ignored.

So I already know the outcome of the Grenfell enquiry. The mob need some red meat, so a scapegoat or two will be found. We will be told pompously that lessons have been learnt. And above all, new regulations, controls and standards will be legislated to make it more difficult for our bucaneer, unqualified construction industry to flout official intentions. It will not in future be left just to building inspectors to police the Regs. And this will mean a fee bonanza for the suits - I can almost hear this morning the discussions as professional service firms contemplate creating new compliance divisions.

Creating creativity

The old Colony Room club of fading memory had a fair share of LSAs - less -successful artists, as I termed them, to complement our first division YBAs. For every Damien Hirst there was a Justin Mortimer, for every Tracey Emin an Alyson Hunter. As I combed through a pile of crap from the woefully stupid public sector and cynically manipulative private developers for yet another fully-designed 'creative quarter' to an area of south London, I asked several LSAs what they looked for in workspace. The answer was pretty much a Zone 2 Tube station and £4 a square foot. 

The irony is, of course, is that this combination only exists in the little pockets that have remained untouched by the dead hand of Planned Development - old machine shops and assembly plants deserted by industry, the scruffy bits of graffiti-scarred rough common brick and asbestos-cement roofed clutter at the back of council estates unsuited for residential conversion. A whole roomful of economic development officers, town planners, architects and commercial developers can no more create a creative district than they can populate a bijou shopping parade on demand with an organic fish merchant selling grilled sardines, an independent coffee shop and a hipster designer-porridge outlet. 

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian is smart enough to know this. Writing about social-engineering plans to distribute the New Illiberalism that characterises Channel 4 to an area of Britain other than London he writes

There is nothing more gauche than Whitehall “being nice” to the provinces. Its attempt to force Channel 4 to move north from London has felt akin to the Victorian church sending missionaries overseas to civilise the heathen. As austerity descends over museums and theatres across the land, the culture department wants to dispatch a few television executives to live among the natives, to introduce them to kale, quinoa and turmeric lattes. That should cheer them up. Whitehall also seems to want to have some fun. No one has instructed Channel 4 where to go. Instead, the provincial cities are told they must line up like children in a workhouse and beg. London will decide who gets the smashed avocado. There will be two consolation “creative hubs” for the runners-up, wherever the judges can find something approximating Shoreditch High Street.

Still, we should all support this. If only for the chance to seriously piss-off the sanctimonious bigots at the TV station forced to uproot from Blackheath to Burnley or wherever. The more we can disperse these destructive zealots amongst ordinary folk and dilute their malignant influence, the better.

Remembering Ronnie

I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing in the early hours of the morning in the UK when it was confirmed that Ronald Reagan had won the US presidency. At the time we were appalled - a 'B' movie actor, a rather stupid and vain man who dyed his hair, a man unacquainted with the complexity of realpolitik, we thought. East Anglia back then was little more than a vast USAF airfield; F4 Phantoms and A10 Thunderbolts screamed overhead at low level from dawn until dusk, the last of our own fantastic Lightnings having been retired from RAF Wattisham in 1974. The faint stench of unburnt kerosene hung in the air and on our clothes and somewhere over to the east vast Soviet tank armies and millions of jackbooted killers stood ready to steamroll over Europe headed for Southwold and Walberswick.

The fear of nuclear war was endemic and ever present. Our rural counties had ICBMs targeted at them, we knew. Members of the Royal Observer Corps, normally village postmen or somesuch, would don their berets each day after work and scuttle down into their holes in the ground, mashing-up forty feet below the fields, with the milk rota pinned up next to the expected megadeaths from various megatonnages of nuclear blasts. We were terrified that the stupid, ignorant, blundering Reagan would provoke war with Russia, that he was gambling with our young lives. 

Well, we were as wrong as were the nation's finest economists who scribbled chain letters explaining why the housewife Margaret Thatcher would be a disaster for jobs and growth. And of course we've heard it all again about President Trump. And on past form, that's why I'm less concerned about a trade war, tariffs and sanctions, mutual economic destruction and all the rest than I should be. In fact, the more that the world's economists are shrieking how dreadful it all is, the more experience tells me that it may just work, but perhaps not in the way that Mr Trump thinks it will (those US rust belt jobs will never return - but tax cuts, deregulation and fracking will compensate). Reagan never expected the wall to come down, after all. 

EU tariffs on cranberries, bourbon and denim jeans? Give me strength. BTW, preiselbeere or Lingonberry sauce is a perfect substitute for cranberry sauce - sold in big, cheap jars and also perfect with venison, I wouldn't use Bourbon to clean the sink and my denim is made in China and SE Asia by slaves. If I couldn't get hold of Dickies shirts and boots, on the other hand, that would be a disaster ..