Hanging Parliament

At Hyde Park in London, there is a place called "Speakers' Corner", where it was possible to stand up and voice almost any opinion, although it is doubtful that it still applies. It is adjacent to the spot where at one time the Tyburn Gallows stood for the public execution of felons and traitors.

The debate on the Referendum on Europe now seems to be engaged at a rather noisier, lower and more confusing level than either of them.  I am for Leave on the grounds of sovereignty and democracy and that historically large complex authoritarian empires always come unstuck and usually badly.

Setting this aside, given what is going on there are risks and what we think we might get or might happen could turn out to be naive or wrong.   The first question is how many people might vote?  If the turnout is on the lower side and the size of the win is marginal then what might happen.  This is simple speculation.

Should the Leave win with a small margin, it may be at best this means only 40% to 45% of the total electorate on a turnout of close to 80%.  With a lower turnout of less than 60%, then perhaps only around 30% to 35% or even less if it is poor.

The theory is that if Cameron "loses" he will resign.  But if the total vote is only around a third to procure a marginal Leave win then he might decide to stay and adopt a dragged heel policy, or even no action one.

His spinners would be happy to dream up a litany of good excuses.  Negotiations would be subverted, crises created and at worst a war or wars begun.

For him to go it would then depend on the House of Commons on a vote of confidence to support or to be against him, the latter usually meaning he should resign.  But given the uncertainties here and with some major groups in favour of Remain, there is no telling what might be. Parliament might be hung as at Tyburn.

Technically, only the Queen can dismiss a Prime Minister.  If she and her advisers are looking at what is a constitutional mess, the sensible thing would be for her to stay out of it and leave the politicians to stew in their own juice.

I have a suspicion that given the financial interests and networks involved there could be a real risk of Cameron carrying on to the 2020 General Election if the Referendum figures are tight and he can get away with it.

He is not a man of his word.  Osborne is now looking like damaged goods and a fight between others for Leadership could be bad for what is left of the Party's credibility.

Looking at what is at stake this is possible even if Leave do win by a better margin given the nature of the commitment of Cameron and cronies and equally the Labour Party and the SNP, to adherence to the higher power and money of Brussels.

Ironically, a strong win for Remain in the Referendum would allow Cameron to hand over to his friends in 2018 or earlier and perhaps move on to work and activity more suited to his particular talents, helping out his local Chipping Norton second hand car dealer.

He could go to the Lords as well, if he chooses, perhaps as the Earl of Loose Chippings.

Football - Abolish Offside

Last weekend I skipped the FA Cup Final to watch something else.  In June it is likely that European International Cup games may not attract viewing.   How come after so long, the footie on TV is gone from a must to a might to a miss?  Is it me or them?

It might be that squads of gym pumped big men who run faster for longer and be highly organised in tactics and especially defence may have made the game far more predictable and less of a joy. Also, watching petulant millionaires is different from players of the past in terms of identifying with a team.

So if more people come to feel like this could the soccer boom start to go down instead of ever upwards?  Big money may have been an attraction in the past, but in the future may the effect on the game of creating squads of lookalike from anywhere players playing to order and the book put it beyond the interest of many?

One answer might be to increase the size of pitches requiring players to cover much more ground.  There is one small snag.  That is that virtually all the stadia around the world are built to the existing size.  What about reducing the number of players, say to nine a side?  Possible, but again may not do that much to help.

Which brings us to the rules of the game.  At present the highly organised defensive systems mean that half, or even less than that, of the pitch at any time is available for effective play.  Abolish the offside rule and you completely change the opportunities for attack and require the defences to be more widely spread.

A secondary amendment might be to limit the goal keeper to stay within the goal area rather than the penalty area for handling.  This might be useful but is relatively marginal.  What matters is opening up the game to more movement and changed tactics for attack.

There are other issues.  The "professional fouling" that is now common place, tolerated if not expected, is a game spoiler in many ways.  Also the theatricals that go with it.  Were referees to be allowed and supported in cracking down on this and sending more off would certainly open up the game for the good.

Would a cleaner, faster and more open game with the full pitch potential for movement and attack be the better way of bringing back the spirit of the game into the football being played?

The picture above is Sheffield FC of 1857, the first established football club in the world.  The club has played to rules that have changed or altered many times in the past.  In 2017 at 160 years young they should have no trouble with another.

Seventy Years On

The trouble with reading history books about a period that you recall is that you may learn some things that you did not know but on the other hand you see the things either missed or left out that you may think were important or relevant.

No, this is not another post on the Roman Empire but about the early 1940's.  I rarely read books about my own times but this was on offer and alleged "Secret History Of The Blitz" by Joshua Levine.  Perhaps there may be some secrets but often this means things left out or forgotten or thought to be unimportant.

There was one part of the book that did catch the eye.  I was not aware that early in the War when oil was critical and supply mattered more than cost there had been over a hundred "nodding donkeys" installed in the Sherwood Forest of Nottinghamshire and district.  Oil men from Texas were brought in to get them up and fast and this was before the USA entered the War.

Not only did the amount extracted matter, it was of high quality.  This allowed high octane aviation fuel to be produced, higher than that of German supplies.  The Battle of Britain was won by the skills and courage of the airmen and by quality engineering such as the Merlin engines, as well as the other support systems but they were helped by that extra bit of boost when full power was needed.

The chapters suggesting that this period allowed something of a sexual revolution and other behaviour raised the eyebrows and not for the usual reasons.  If anything what developed seemed to be a reversion to what had gone on in the Victorian age and beyond that had been curtailed by laws, organised policing, social controls and more settled employment etc.

The War disrupted this on a major scale very quickly. Afterwards for a period the established norms of family life etc of the early 20th Century seemed to return, but that may have been the product of the then housing, welfare, law and order and employment policies of that period. When that began to change in the sixties and seventies people simply reverted to old habits.

But there is one major omission.  The book deals with prejudice and does mention the then relatively small numbers of the minority groups affected, Jews, West Indians, Italians and Chinese.  This relates to our recent issues over race.  What is not mentioned is that a lot of this was down to ignorance in an era with limited education for the masses and at a time when someone from another town a few miles away was regarded as a "stranger" and often with suspicion.

It makes passing mention of class and snobbery but without explaining the extent and nature of this, but this might need a book on its own.  However, one major source of division I recall in that period was religious and the nature and effect of the differences between the Anglicans, the Dissenting groups and the Roman Catholics.

For the RC's the essence of the problem was the strong prejudice of many against The Irish.  Where the Irish were in larger numbers there could be trouble; where they were small they would be discriminated against in many places.  They were not helped by the IRA planting bombs in 1940 or the Irish Republic extending courtesies to The Third Reich when the Irish economy depended so much on UK remittance money.

In the case of the Dissenting Congregations and the Anglicans it turned on local politics and the ongoing struggles for power in many communities at a time when local authorities had control over major services.  This may seem a small matter in these days of central control but not then.

It may be defined as political but there was often the undertow of doctrinal and belief thinking.  A good many problems with local authorities doing their job was that the different groups could not agree what the real work was, never mind who should get the jobs to do them.  After 1939 this had to change and fast.

The enemy may have been at the gates but in too many towns and county offices the factions were wrangling about who should have the keys and hand them over.  It is this general confusion and old disputes taking priority over the War that explains the nature and the stridency of the propaganda of the period.

What the book does explain is that the National Health Service, the welfare state, education and other advances were born in this period with cross party support and to a great extent as a response to deal with the consequences of The Blitz.  The Attlee government confirmed and extended the peace time continuation as this clearly was the wish of the great majority of the electorate in the 1945 Election.

I have not forgotten that many of us in the 1940's, me included, regarded "Bomber" Harris and the men of Bomber Command and their American comrades, as heroes for repaying the Germans with interest.

Pick A Pocket Or Two

You are corrupt, he is corrupt, they are corrupt but I am the soul of discretion.  Ask Osballs or Camblair the EU lovers, whoever.  We need the EU to be bent to our financial will.

This longer but easy read by Ian Fraser in "Naked Capitalism" is clear in its meaning.  If you are looking for the big time classy corruption come to the UK.  They make the rest look like amateurs.

Central to all this are the finance and banking sectors, now the dominant parts of the UK economy.  Below is a long read but is as clear as possible given the subject matter.  It is from Bloomberg with hat tip to Automatic Earth.  If it is too long and intricate for the time, then skip read might be tried.

It is about banking in the world today and how it's self destructive operations that impact so much on society and the world economy might be contained and better regulated.

Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England thinks that regulation might help to save the bankers from themselves in order to benefit the rest of us.

But given the level of UK corruption and its extent it is not likely to happen.

Drawing Fire

As we have seen in recent years, being a cartoonist can be a risky business.

This example turned up in the Dr. Mercola web site as an example of how some companies can react.

Quote:

Rick Friday is a veteran political cartoonist for Farm News, an Iowa newspaper. That is, he was their political cartoonist up until earlier this month. After drawing more than 1,000 cartoons over his 21-year career, he was fired from the newspaper after one of its advertisers complained.

It’s true that money talks, and this is a clear example of who’s really in control of the press. The career-ending cartoon pictured two farmers talking.

One said, “I wish there was profit in farming.”  The other responded, “There is, in year 2015 the CEOs of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers.”

As for who complained, it was reportedly “a large company affiliated with one of the corporations mentioned in the cartoon,” according to a Facebook response written by Friday. The company cancelled their advertisement with the paper after the cartoon was published, leading to Friday’s termination.

Monsanto claimed it had no role in Friday’s firing, but a reported email sent by his supervisor said it was a “seed dealer” that cancelled their advertising.

Friday’s cartoon was accurate, by the way, but it doesn’t matter. When you receive advertising money from Monsanto, DuPont and other bigwigs, you have to censor what you say so they — and their products — are painted in only a positive light.

In rebuttal, Friday wrote:

“I did my research and only submitted the facts in my cartoon. That's okay, hopefully my children and my grandchildren will see that this last cartoon published by Farm News out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, will shine light on how fragile our rights to free speech and free press really are in the country.”

Unquote.

I wonder how much of this happens around the media in one way or another?

See You Later Incubator

Building,  staffing and maintaining prisons is a costly item on the law and order budget.  What is difficult is finding a place to put one.  Telling a community that they have been selected for this kind of public infrastructure investment is a very good way to lose votes.

Many of our heritage prisons originally were sited just out of town or on the edge.  A century or more later they are more in the middle.  So expanding existing ones is not easy. Some, on the other hand were put in isolated distant places and that is not popular for a variety of reasons.

It might be argued that of all those ancient castles there are some of lesser tourist interest that could be converted.  After all, many did have their dungeons.  There might be some others which could be show pieces for our caring sharing prison policy.  Windsor comes to mind.

Not so long ago in the past, we had a robust policy towards dealing with criminals who needed to be separated out.  Many were sent to the America's.  Unluckily, they had ideas above their station and became independent, then look what happened.  As for Australia, I say no more, we should never have taught them cricket.

Another outlet was the Army or Navy for many where they served their King or Queen.  We could not have built the Empire without them.  Sadly, as time wore on they probably played a part in us losing it.  As our present government intends to hand the Army and Navy over to the EU, that option is closed, the EU has enough criminals in its organisation without needing more of them.

In calling prisons possible incubators of reformed and dutiful citizens it is tempting to make a bad or even distasteful joke on the subject of incubators can make you an incubus, but this should be passed by in order to make a more important point.  Why do some people allow themselves to be caught or even risk prison?

It is possible that criminals may have a mind pattern that makes them take risk, or not see a right from a wrong or are chancers who will always take the chance.  Also, there do seem to be some who have no concept of right and wrong.  Not least, there are some who are by nature vicious and destructive.

What we are really looking at is a short term policy fudge, which with some figures manipulation and public relations fibs, will persuade us that something is being done, please look the other way.  If this is not going to work and some serious problems are building up what are we in for?

The answer is trouble and a lot of it.  The population demographics together with income and employment patterns indicate that the potential groups more likely to be active in crime and at the margins are going to increase, perhaps greater than the mean.  If the policing is not up to it on the ground, the courts avoiding prison sentences and indeed prisons run down for cost savings, then we could have much more crime.

In a way it could almost take us back to the time before police, before many of our prisons were built when criminality was endemic and it was every household for themselves.  It is possible.  It is happening elsewhere.  It happens too easily when the structure of dealing with crime disintegrates under the pressures.

But by then our present politicians will be long gone with their loot and with their payoffs.

Glory Days Are Here Again

There has been a great deal of puffing and huffing over Europe recently, because all is not well.  Feelings, if you can call them that, are running high.  Our Prime Minister talks of World War 3.

This is because there will be winners and losers.  As ever in history, those who see themselves as potential losers are often the ones to start a war or two.  With the PM looking like a loser he can only hope.

This jolly five minutes from Youtube will give an indication of some examples from history of what we might expect if the pessimists are correct.

Can't wait, now where did I put my old army boots?

In the meantime there are various booms and potential busts we might have.  This is one that is little known and discussed in The Spectator.  It could be coming soon to a town near you.

Which University could be the first to go bankrupt?