Britain's Gaslit Future: So Bright You Gotta Wear Shades

The gaslighting is now so strong in Britain that you can't watch a government press conference without sunglasses. The last six weeks in plague-ridden lockdown have been particularly surreal. There's a horrible grinding sound as if whoever's really driving Britain is struggling to find reverse, while the CovidBrexidiot at the wheel claims that trade in goods is flowing as smoothly as public funds into his Tory cronies' pockets. Buried within the government's sycophantic media are tell-tale signs that ministers and officials never understood the trade barriers that EU membership suspended between Britain and its closest neighbours, let alone their own new rules; and none has read the withdrawal agreement, EU-UK trade deal or the mystical 'Northern Ireland Protocol'. We were even treated to the Parliamentary pantomime of Brexidiot Villiers urging Brexidiot Gove to 'renegotiate' a new protocol to replace the existing one. Fresh from misselling the benefits of the Japan trade deal, Brexidiot Truss has notified Britain's Pacific neighbours of the intention to join their trade pact rather than the world's largest only 21 miles away. Meanwhile, the Right Honourable Wackjob Reclining-Smug has regaled Parliament with claims that local fish are "happy to be British" and his favourite breakfast is "nanny's home made marmalade on toast".

But none of this is really new. A strong sense of denial and unjustified entitlement has powered British politics for well over a century. While most major countries embraced their relative positions in the world, Britain's political cult leaders and their followers drank constantly from a deep well of nostalgia-laced Kool Aid. Scorning the fact that phyrric victories in successive global conflicts had left their country dependent on both American money and a steadily growing European marketplace, they branded this twin dependence as Britain's 'Special Relationship' with the US and begrudging leadership of a grateful post-war Europe. 

Never mind the fact that Britain begged to join the EEC over French objections, then tried to cement its place by transforming the trade bloc into a steadily expanding European Union. Ignore 'big bang' when American financial institutions were encouraged to make London their route for raising and deploying foreign capital. 

The British political establishment consoled itself over such bitter compromises with reality by welcoming the embezzled funds of sundry despots and dictators, transforming a string of colonial-era island dependencies into tax havens and London itself into the money laundering capital of the world. Mayfair grew to entertain both US hedge fund managers and Putin's diaspora, united in their need for disruption and the investment opportunities that brings...

There is no better symbol of this constant struggle with reality than the rise of the mendacious Boris Johnson. It may have taken Trump's flash-in-the-pan for British populism to find its voice among the Tories' rabid Eurosceptics, but it took Johnson's peculiarly fraudulent outlook to spot the opportunity to lead them into the centre of government with perhaps the greatest confidence trick in British history.

Whether it's possible for politicians to continue defying the reality of Britain's decline is unclear. Certainly there is little by way of Parliamentary opposition, as their leader seems incapable of unifying his own party let alone pointing out the fundamental flaws in his country's trade plans.

But that gaslighting will definitely need to go up a notch... 

Brexidiot British Gove-ment Begs To Renegotiate Brexit After 33 Days

Well that didn't take long. Amidst the widely predicted damage that Brexit is inflicting on the British economy, Brexidiot Gove has written to his EU counterpart under the misleading title "Next Steps on the Northern Ireland Protocol" to list the many ways in which the British government would now like to renegotiate the terms of Brexit and future trade with the EU generally. Fearful of again running out of time, Gove has also requested a delay of "at least" two years in the erection of the barriers that he knew would arise with the end of Brexit transition, despite rejecting the option of a two year extension last June.

Never mind the fact that Brexit was touted by Brexidiots Johnson and Gove as a way to "Take Back Control" or Johnson's electoral commitment to "Get Brexit Done" with an "oven ready deal".

If those responsible for this fraudulent misadventure are not prosecuted for Misconduct in Public Office there seems little point in having the offence on the statute books.

Meanwhile, however, the visionless Labour 'leader' seems intent on placating the flag-waving nationalists who helped Britain into this mess. 

He and the Tories ignore the rest of us at their peril...

New Year's Resolution: Find The Opportunities In Idiocracy

Earth's future

Returning to these pages from 2020, I feel like a bewildered time traveler. Earth is gripped by climate change and a deadly pandemic. As the hospitals and morgues overflow, the outgoing US President attempts a coup and Britain destroys its own import/export markets, reducing free meals for children to bits of carrot... 

 

It's like the set up for a movie. I'm thinking Idiocracy 2: Birth. A kind of prequel to the first film, which leapt 500 years straight into the future without really explaining how we got there. How society really began to unravel to the point where people can barely speak anymore and don't even need to leave their armchairs to take a dump during Ow! My Balls on the Violence Channel. 

 

You may think I'm being negative here, but already I've come up with a movie idea, see?! 

 

Indeed, this chimes perfectly with my New Year's resolution: to only see the opportunities amidst all this carnage. Chill out. Enjoy the ride. Whatever happens. Take it easy.

Just do not read my Twitter account.

Mis-selling Brexit

The British Parliament has finally had the chance to scrutinise the new UK-Japan trade deal that has been trumpeted for so long by Brexidiot Truss. Unsurprisingly, two committees found that the difference between the new deal and the terms available to the UK under the EU-Japan deal are not as extensive as the Secretary of State for International Trade had claimed. An opposition MP found that the government's own figures show the UK will be worse off than under EU terms.

The House of Commons International Trade Committee, did find some extra items on digital services and data (precedent-setting for future agreements) and financial services (including a ban on the need to store financial data in the host country).

The House of Lords International Agreements Sub-Committee pointed out that "exaggerating the gains ... courts unjustified scepticism about what is a respectable ... agreement". 

UK-Japan deal also depends on a trade agreement between the UK and the EU because, for example, "to secure existing trilateral trade flows between the EU, UK and Japan, the UK and EU would need to extend cumulation to Japan through their own trade agreement". 

The Committees want more effective scrutiny of future free trade agreements that are not based on existing EU arrangements, which are likely to be more controversial. 

Meanwhile, Emily Thornberry revealed the results of Opposition efforts to get to the bottom of the economic value of the UK-Japan deal relative to the UK's terms under the EU- Japan deal:

Yesterday in the House, I confronted Liz Truss with her own Department’s report on the question she’s repeatedly refused to answer: what’s the difference, in pounds and pence, between her Japan deal and the EU-Japan deal it replaces? She didn’t look happy. pic.twitter.com/PKuiYYlNnI

— Emily Thornberry (@EmilyThornberry) November 26, 2020

 

Lipstick On A Pig: The Decade

The ten years since the first book rose from this bog blog have certainly demonstrated that bailing out the banks fails to change their behaviour and  'people power' is on the rise. Yet 'success' remains elusive, as does any clear sign of a winner in the war between 'intelligent practice' and 'uninformed, stupid practice'. 52% of Brits voted to leave the world's largest trade bloc, and nearly as many Americans just voted for a toxic Donald Trump as voted against him. Maybe we humans just love putting lipstick on pigs?

The successful 'facilitators' of 2011 have indeed become the 'institutions' of 2020, as the US Congress seeks to break their respective monopolies. And political parties have indeed proved to be more concerned with solving their own problems than those of their voters or society.

Individual narratives have begun to subvert the top-down institutional narrative - reality TV and the social media have catapulted lone footballers and 16 year old environmental activists to stardom, while enabling grifters to earn fortunes as social media 'influencers' and even to assume the highest office in their land.

Innovation has continued apace, and it's nice to see that the UK 'crowdfunding' market of 2020 has grown to a record £6.26bn, while the rest of the European has doubled in the same period to over €6.6bn. And this innovation did not 'kill' any other form of finance, as some feared (or hoped). The new and the old co-exist. Even cheques have not died out, while cryptocurrencies have boomed.

And our defences against disaster indeed weakened to the point where we were not ready for myriad floods, fires, global warming or the latest pandemic and its accompanying economic depression.

Financial regulation has flexed belatedly to address crowdfunding and more recently cryptoassets, but continues to lag too far behind ever more rapid developments and to protect regulated institutions at customers' expense.

On balance, greed and stupidity are still winning. Scepticism is applied just as often to hard facts as it is to political delusions or financial scams. Snake-oil vendors have done a roaring trade.

The working title of the next book evolved from "The Personal State" to "You: the war for control of your data and the money that flows from it." The abuse of personal data and artificial intelligence (not to mention encrypted messaging and distributed ledger technology) felt like the source of more bubble-and-crash. But that project stalled in 2015 due to workload and for some reason I lost all appetite for it in 2016... Most posts since then have examined developments in the Brexit farce, the bulk of which inspire nothing more than sarcastic dismissal on Twitter rather than anything approaching thoughtful examination. 

Sad.

It turns out that the direct action of 'people power' merely results in culture wars - including those of the armed variety. We humans just love putting lipstick on pigs...