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Liz Truss Smiles
It was an accident, Guv’nor, unintended consequences. Who could have predicted it?
Ah, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng introduce a mini budget that sends the pound reeling. Wealth Funds short the pound and win big. Of course, they only win big with these newly cheap pounds. What is needed now is for the pound to rise again. Rishi to the rescue, and the pound begins its march back to solvency. It will be tough, lads, but we have to bite the bullet to get Britain back to its proper place at the big table.
What if the two premierships were a plan from the outset. First we let the Conservative populace decide on Liz, as we knew they would. She pulls the plug on the economy and then she steps aside for the man of the hour. And it’s a home run because this time we don’t let the Conservative populace decide, because that would risk the plan falling apart.
Looked at this way, the pound sinks and the pound rises, and some rich people make money along the way. Perfect. And it is not over yet because the British people have to bite the bullet for years.
Do you remember the smile on Liz Truss’ face when she stepped away from the lectern after resigning?
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The Last Prime Minister
In a few minutes the next British Prime Minister will be announced. The election follows the ejection of Boris Johnson from the job for his unforced errors and disregard for the truth.
An unforced error: a mistake in play that is attributed to one’s own failure rather than to the skill or effort of one’s opponent. Prorogation The first unforced error was that on 28 August 2019, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was ordered to be prorogued by Queen Elizabeth II upon the advice of the Conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson. Britain is a constitutional monarchy, meaning that the reigning monarch has little power, and ‘on the advice of’ is a particularly British way of saying the the prime minister ordered the Queen to prorogue Parliament.
A prorogation is the discontinuance of a session of Parliament without dissolving it. Johnson’s purpose in proroguing Parliament for an unusually extended period was to severely limit the time that the MPs in the House of Commons had to consider the Brexit Bill that was before it.
Concerned citizens raised a legal challenge and the Supreme Court ruled that the prorogation was unlawful.
Had Johnson’s Government given even the slimmest of reasons for their action, then the Supreme Court would not have looked to the adequacy of the reason. But the Government gave no reason, and that allowed the court to conclude that the reason for such a lengthy discontinuance was simply to deny Parliament time to carry out its function, and that that was unlawful.
Owen Patterson MP The second unforced error was to try to overturn the 30 day suspension of Owen Patterson MP after Kathryn Stone, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards of the House of Commons, found him guilty of breaching the paid advocacy rules.
In October 2021 the Commissioner found that Owen Paterson had breached the paid advocacy rules for making three approaches to the Food Standards Agency and four approaches to the Department for International Development in relation to Randox and seven approaches to the Food Standards Agency relating to Lynn’s Country Foods.
The Commissioner said Paterson had “repeatedly used his privileged position to benefit two companies for whom he was a paid consultant, and that this has brought the house into disrepute” and that “no previous case of paid advocacy has seen so many breaches or such a clear pattern of behaviour in failing to separate private and public interests”.
Acting on her report, The Commons Select Committee on Standards recommended that Paterson be suspended from the Commons for 30 sitting days. The Government decided they didn’t like that and voted to overturn the suspension. The uproar that followed resulted in Own Paterson resigning as an MP.
Malicious Slander The third unforced error was to maliciously slander the Leader of the Opposition Labour Party in the House of Commons.
Munira Mirza is a British political advisor who was the Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit under prime minister Boris Johnson, until she resigned today, 3 February 2022. She resigned because, as she described in her resignation letter, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson knowingly and maliciously slandered the leader of the Opposition with a false claim about his supposed failings when he was Director of Public Prosecutions.
Christopher Pincher MP The final straw for the members of his Cabinet was when he promoted Christopher Pincher MP, knowing that Mr Pincher was subject to an investigation over sexual assault, and then lying to Parliament saying he was not aware of the allegations and the investigation.
Partygate And I have not touched on Partygate and the breaches of the rules about meeting during COVID that his Government has laid down and which the population had followed, sometimes resulting in family members not being there to say goodbye to loved ones on their deathbed.
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Longer COVID
Take a step back from the COVID-19 pandemic, and compare one country against another. I wonder which will benefit and which will suffer from the consequences of COVID 19. I mean in the long run, measured over the next thirty years.
In the UK, the oldest in the population have died and will die. Their wealth will pass to the next generation. The age profile of the country will change. There will be more people of working age and more spending power for those who inherited unexpectedly early. The drain on the Health Service will be less because the vulnerable will have died. For non-COVID patients there will be an increased demand. That will come from those whose disease progressed more than it would with earlier treatment. But that will be offset in part or whole by those who died waiting for treatment.
Life expectancy will decrease because those who could have had treatment for non-COVID disease early did not. And pension funds will benefit, according to XPS actuaries:
Article In The Times November 30th 2020
Employers with large pension deficits are expected to seize on Covid-19 to justify making smaller payments in their negotiations with the funds they sponsor in the coming years.
An analysis from the actuaries XPS, formerly Punter Southall, suggests that deaths in Britain by the end of March will be around 100,000 higher than in a normal year. In its worst case scenario, which it says is unlikely, it sees 250,000 excess deaths in total.
These so-called “excess deaths”, along with a recession-induced reduction in life expectancy growth in the years ahead, will cut the liabilities of defined benefit schemes in the UK by between 1.5 and 3.5 per cent — or £25 billion to £60 billion, it estimates on its central case forecast.
COVID-19 Case Fatality Rates
Britain had a case fatality rate of 15.4% early on in the pandemic. That was in part caused by decisions made by the British Government to move elderly infected patients from hospital to nursing homes. Once in nursing homes filled with the elderly, the virus spread like wildfire.
The COVID-19 death rate when I first drafted this article at the end of 2020 was down to 3.6%. Now at the beginning of 2022, the death rate is down to a fraction of 1%.
The initial case fatality rate in Britain was much higher than almost anywhere in the world. Britain will benefit, therefore, from having a older generation die early. It’s positively Machiavellian.
The unknown is long-COVID, and how long it lasts. How long is the ‘long’ in long-COVID? And what proportion of the affected will find life less than optimal far into their lives?
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GTP-3
These tweets are made with GTP-3 - an artificial intelligence program that can, among other things, make natural language - in this case taking an input of descriptive words and generating a sales pitch [CAI](https://twitter.com/jjeremycai/status/1296098155994349568)
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50 Licences Granted To Mine In The Clarion-Clipperton Zone
The UN has granted licences to mine the sea floor over an area stretching between Hawaii and Mexico in the Clipperton Fracture Zone.
It is a geological submarine fracture zone of the Pacific Ocean, around 4500 miles (7240 km) long and covering about 4,500,000 square kilometres (1,700,000 sq mi).
The fracture begins east-northeast of the Line Islands and ends in the Middle America Trench off the coast of Central America.
It roughly forms a line on the same latitude as Kiribati and Clipperton Island.
In 2016, the seafloor in the Clipperton Fracture Zone was found to contain a huge amount of sealife, with more than half of the species collected new to science.
So what is it to be - whether to mine, pour back all the tailings and sludge, kill all the creatures, and get the minerals - or to not do it and bring battery technology to a grinding halt for lack of materials?
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Fracking Causes Earthquakes
"News: Another tremor felt near the UK's only fracking site An earth tremor has struck near the UK's only hydraulic fracturing site. A tremor measuring 2.1 on the Richter scale was detected at Preston New Road, near Blackpool, and was felt by the surrounding area. Cuadrilla, who operate the site, say no fracturing was taking place at the time."
So perhaps it was just a coincidental tremor, a tremor of the kind that Britain suffers periodically? So what does the British Geological Survey recent earthquakes list page show...
Recent Earthquakes
Not listed there - but here is the list of Induced Seismicity around the British Isles in the last 50 days - and it does feature there, and the page contains this statement
"Last updated: Sun, 25 Aug 2019 14:10:00 (UTC) This list contains seismic events for which there is strong evidence that they have been induced by human activities. It is linked to a database of seismic events and locations and magnitudes may change as events are re-analysed and revised. Background, tectonic seismic activity is reported on our recent earthquakes list."
Human activity earthquakes
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Philip Hammond Writes
24 AUGUST 2019
Dear Prime Minister
Operation Yellowhammer document leak
According to the media. a Number 10 source has briefed that the Yellowhammer dossier was ”deliberately leaked by a former Minister in an attempt to influence discussions with EU leaders”. The clear implication was that a Minister in the last government had retained, and then leaked, a copy of this document. The media has speculated accordingly on the source of the document.
It has now become apparent that the leaked document was, in fact, dated August 20l9 and would not, therefore, have been available to any former Minister who is not serving in the current administration. Accordingly, I am writing on behalf of all former Ministers in the last Administration to ask you to withdraw these allegations which question our integrity, acknowledge that no former Minister could have leaked this document, and apologise for the misleading briefing from No. 10.
I will make a copy of this letter available to the media.
I look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely
PHILIP HAMMOND
Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP The Prime Minister 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA
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Olympics 1936-1948 Surprises
After the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games the head of the British Foreign Office, Sir Robert Vansittart, commented on the grandeur of the design, and that the stupendous cost made him thankful that Britain had relinquished its claim to the next Olympiad in favour of Japan.
The 1940 Olympic Games were cancelled because the Japanese pulled out in 1938 because of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which broke out in 1937.
The Games were then to go to Finland, the runners-up to the original bid. The Helsinki Games were cancelled, though, because of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union.
The 1944 Olympic Games were due to be held in London, but were cancelled due to World War II.
The 1948 Olympic Games were held in London, and were known as the Austerity Games because Britain was nearly bankrupted by the war. Food was still rationed and would be until 1952. Special rules were introduced to allow the athletes to be fed more than twice the UK national allowance.
Germany and Japan were not permitted to send any athletes to the 1948 Olympics, and the Soviet Union didn’t send any athletes because of the deterioration in East-West relations.
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