Something’s Gotta Give

“Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way”

(Pink Floyd, Time)

If any line sums up the twelve years of Conservative rule, that is it. The British people have spent that time sucking up a lot; the long-term effects of Austerity, Brexit, the corruption and incompetence of our elites, the filleting of the unwritten rules of our society and the widespread gaslighting of us all. Why did my fellow citizens did all that sucking… well, that’s a discussion for another day. Today it’s an attempt to exorcise the vision of our immediate futures – an attempt I suspect shall fail.

Unlike the title of this very blog, it is not a vision which I alone have. It is one which has been warned of by – amongst others – charities, the Bank of England, politicians, trade unions, media figures, consumer groups and a myriad of industry experts. The warning signs are flashing on all fronts; from cratering consumer spending power to the very real risk of health service collapse this winter.

Yet what do we have? A generally flaccid client media downplaying the issues and declining to join up the dots, a Conservative Party showing the rest of us just how deluded, biased and out of touch they are with the realities of the country while almost without fail Tory politicians either lounge on their ‘holibobs’ or are busy pandering to the prejudices of the previous group – people who despite all the shit, lies, corruption and incompetence still love Bozo and all his works.

Bad Timing?

Part of the problem may simply be down to the time of year; we’re smack-bang in the middle of ‘silly season‘, where many people are either on their holidays or somewhat disinclined to work; as a result, less attention by both actors and audience on the subjects on hand. In fact, several crises have arisen in this time and had a lacklustre reply; the 1998 Russian default, the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis and 2021 Taliban conquest of Afghanistan all examples of this correlation. (I’d actually be interested to see if there was a true link, or just that I’ve got an evidence bias going on). Throw in the fact the country is in the middle of a leadership campaign with a selfish, lazy lame-duck sunning themselves at somebody else’s expense…

But even after taking that into account, I cannot shake the belief that there’s a tacit conspiracy of silence going on here; a combination of those who are too stupid to see the vision, those ordered to not mention the vision and those who believe if they deny the vision it shall go away. And do you blame them? This very strategy worked for selling both Austerity and Brexit to just enough of the electorate to make it happen. And this vision is a nasty one – that Britain is about to tear apart.

Last Straw?

I don’t use this term lightly; I am a Brit and don’t like hyperbole or fear-mongering. In fact, every word I am writing now is fighting my ‘it cannot happen here!’ nagging within my very guts. That like at the end of the Lord Of The Flies, I have some atavistic belief that some ‘grown ups’ will come and sort it all out, perhaps just in the nick of time… despite a firm knowledge from my own childhood that it rarely ever pans out like that. Which is perhaps the point; these delusions are often unconscious and powerful.

When I say ‘tear apart’, I don’t mean as a sovereign nation. Perhaps dissolution of the Union is on the cards, but I don’t think it will happen right now. No, what I mean is that the myriad of problems will reach a tipping point; and when it crosses that point things will get ugly fast. People like Gordon Brown and Martin Lewis are not renowned for their hysterical natures or extremist ideologies, and they are having the same visions as I am.

That vision is of a state running out of road, of a citizenry running out of patience and hope. Of a ‘social contract’ straining to the point of snapping entirely. There have been dire warnings towards people considering ‘energy strikes’ this winter (for example), but my answer is this – threats regarding long-term consequences mean little when you see no future, and pleas that ‘the system’ needs the cash to operate falls on baked concrete when you look at the ballooning profits from said companies. There comes a point where you have nothing left to lose.

The Road Behind?

Now, this isn’t a new thing; Austerity since 2010 has done sterling work in an ultimately futile attempt to balance the nation’s books on the backs of the poor and by starving public services of funds without any regard to the wider results (though some shall argue that this was always a political, not an economic project). Because of the greed and hubris in the banking system, I shall remind you, in case you’d forgotten.

And this, as we shall know has been a decent success in regards to the Tory party and their owners; that while we’ve had a clear ‘Lost Decade’ economically, personally speaking the wealthy and the elderly have won, while the poor and the young have lost. But this didn’t really matter as the latter didn’t have much to lose in the first place and didn’t vote Tory anyway… so who cares?

Sinking Ship…

Perhaps they should. For the situation has declined to the point where swathes of the ‘middle class’ faces proletarianisation – the reduction of their living standards to us working stiffs due to a classic ‘scissors crisis’ (declining income and soaring expenditure).

After countless years of being ‘richsplained’ on budgeting, cooking, employment and lifestyle generally, I shall happily admit – I’m getting a bit of Schadenfreude watching those folks having to use food banks and fearing knocks on the door for the first time (like I did at the start of the pandemic). They’ll get to see the grey, threadbare condition of our welfare net in person – the one they’d always been assuring us ‘wasn’t that bad’. I wonder if they’ll remember their condescending and hectoring advice to ‘work more hours’ and ‘thirty pence meals’ now, eh?

Gloating aside, this situation promises to be politically dangerous – because these are the people who have stuff to lose. Homes, pensions, savings, businesses. A general ‘standard of living’ which allowed enough weekend city-breaks, shopping trips and slap-up feeds in restaurants to allow them to muse ‘well, the Tories do alright generally‘, a view easier to hold after consuming said slap-up feed and you’re comfortably ensconced on a sofa.

Prosperity isn’t like love; the worst bit is to have enjoyed it and then lose it than never experience it at all. And Tennyson never mentioned the possibility that some people shall feel entitled to have love either.

Dumping The Pilot?

For all the myriad of failings of the Johnson government and of the man personally, one positive thing has to be said; at very least the man was not rigidly ideological. That be it on Sunak’s ‘Payday energy loan’ or on the ‘Owen Paterson affair’; he was susceptible to public outcry. A man who has zero concept of shame cannot experience it on doing a climb-down, after all. Speaking as an anti-Tory, this admittedly made him easier to put up with (along with the mass incompetence which meant half of the odious schemes would fall apart and be shelved before completion). It’s unlikely we’ll see this from his successor.

We cannot forget that both candidates were paid-up members of ‘Team Boris’. That despite all the internal squabbling and posturing, they are in almost complete agreement on all the ‘important issues’; that of resumption of Austerity, cutting of taxes on the wealthy and laissez-faire economics. This tallies perfectly with the instincts of the Conservative Party membership; that Johnson was removed not due to mass personal and/or political failings, but due a conspiracy by the ‘deep state’, led by ‘Remoaners’, ‘the media’ and all the other folks which are ‘against us’.

That must be remembered; the Tories may have dumped the pilot, but they’ve kept the course. The analogy to Corbyn has to be drawn; that like him, the cause of Brexit can only be failed, none of the failures are theirs and so on. This iteration of Conservatives are so bankrupt for ideas that all they can think of is more doubling-down on what came before; more ‘anti-Woke’, more deportation flights, more ‘Othering’, more bile and venom. Stuck in a warped vision of the 1980s, they continue to tend ‘the flame of Thatcherism’ while unable to notice that the situation is drastically different; in some cases the problems that were created by Thatcherism.

Yet… while the plumes of smoke continue to move towards us… this ‘caretaker’ government still has done nothing, save a blithe assurance from Johnson that ‘something will be done’… later. Oh, and the visage of the cretins like Iain Duncan Smith, believing in their arrogance that blathering on about ‘Universal Credit’ being the solution and so on. Behold, the answer from the tin-eared lackey to the rich, one who simply does not give a fuck about the situation, who does not believe it is their responsibility to try to sort out.

Road Ahead?

This isn’t a pleasant message. Nor is it one filled with hope. But it is the truth – that the United Kingdom faces a serious crisis; that of a incompetent government, a greed-riddled elite, an utterly callous Conservative party and an enfeebled state apparatus. All combined… well, something’s gotta give, and I suspect it’s going to be the public’s patience. That when you have nothing left to lose, that there is no hope of the ‘grownups’ to sort things out and you’re desperate… well, that’s when things fall apart. And things can spiral away from this very quickly.

The worst thing regarding this crisis is that it was a foreseeable one. The situation with energy, staples and minerals was inevitable when our country decided to resist Putin’s genocidal rampage across Ukraine. This is the cost we Europeans shall have to bear if we desire to wage war on the Russian regime (for we are at war, simply there’s no physical fighting for us… yet). And while the apologists and tempters are very quiet right now, their voices shall grow, and grow quickly as soon as we hit winter.

Which is my take-home point. That the pandemic showed that people are able to put up with considerable privation – if they understand why it has to be done, and that ‘why’ is a reasonable answer. And that the state steps up to take some of the strain – not because (as it’s been accused) of being a ‘big government’ obsessive or whatever, but the simple fact that when a problem is this large and intertwined, only the state has the legal, fiscal and organisational abilities to even attempt to sort it out.

It’s not just a question of ‘it needs to be done to keep public support for Ukraine’, or even ‘it needs to be done to provide the Conservatives with some chance of winning the next election’ – it’s quite literally ‘needs to be done to stop a cascade failure of British society’. And our alleged ‘leaders’ are so fucking arrogant they think they can do what the hell they like, that us plebs will take any amount of kicks and slaps and will never bite them back.

No… it didn’t work. Like Smith’s diary in Nineteen Eighty-Four, my urge to shout expletives at the top of my voice remains as much as before.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.

Lifeboat Politics

So, the Home Secretary Ms Patel has gotten her wish, even when her underling the Immigration Minister explicitly denied last week otherwise; the plan to dump asylum seekers in Rwanda so basically, we don’t have to have them. This is different from say the ‘Australian model’; this isn’t a ‘go to Central Africa while we process your application’ (which would be bad enough), this is a ‘here’s a one way ticket, please fuck off, beggars can’t be choosers’ model which has been attacked not just from the predictable ‘bleeding hearts’ but even the rather hard-nosed types who are objecting on grounds of ‘value for money’ (it appears we’re going to be paying more for Rwanda to take them than actually doing it ourselves), legality and the fact Rwanda is not even granting asylum for them either – in fact, the seekers are merely allowed to request it.

Now, much of this is fag-packet territory (as it normally is with the Johnson Government) but the reason for doing this policy is obvious; it’s to cater to the xenophobic Brexiteer demographic; particularly those living in the old ‘Red Wall’ seats in the British Rustbelt. The areas of the country which, completely coincidently were the ones which got Johnson over the electoral line in the 2019 election. A bit of ‘red meat’, so to speak. Unless it’s all simply yet another distraction from the level of stink coming off this incompetent, corrupt, lying, degenerate ToryKip government. Which is possible.

No… wait. It’s a shitty little attempt to influence both the coming local elections and the Wakefield byelection! Which as Caroline Lucas, MP points out, may actually be illegal. But rules are for the ordinaries, not them.

Storm In A Teacup?

This is in fact a good question to start with – just how serious is the issue? Well, as of 2021 it was around thirty thousand. Well, three quarters of the applications for asylum are accepted, which means last year the UK had to accommodate around twenty-two thousand. Which depending which measuring-stick you’d prefer, is 0.03% of the total UK population, a town the size of Potters Bar, equal to the amount of people who died in just over two weeks in the country in 2019 or accepting a couple of busloads of new people every day.

Now, folks can say (with some good reason) that this is just the numbers of folks ‘caught’; though more accurately the folks who are attempting to claim asylum (illegal ‘economic’ migration is a different issue entirely). And remembering (which many don’t) is the simple fact there is no fucking way to claim asylum in the UK without actually getting here (Patel lied! Who would have thought it!).

So… why do folks care so much about something so statistically small? Part of it is the graphics of it; crappy little barely-seaworthy dinghies braving trying to cross one of the busiest sea-lanes in the world. But the main aspect of it has to be the simple over-coverage of the issue vs the reality; if you went on Hate Mail, Scum etc coverage alone, you’d think the numbers were hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. And the vast majority of them bogus asylum seekers.

Well, that answer is simple; right-wing media stokes up a controversy which then suits right-wing politics. Farage built a whole political career off the back of xenophobia (which until late managed to deftly avoid falling into obvious racism) and like a vampire, UKIP managed to bite and turn the Conservative Party into a clone of itself. Thus ToryKip shall scare you with visions of boats to vote for them, and the only way to be ‘tough’ on it is to be maliciously, stupidly evil.

The real question is why the hell people fall for this. And that answer, is frankly depressing.

Conditioning?

I’m obviously not talking about the racists, closeted or not. Or the simple xenophobes. Just the ‘normal folks’ who in other respects seem sane and reasonable. Why are they so worked up about a few thou of people of which it is unlikely they’ll even meet one of, and even if they did meet one, wouldn’t realise it?

The answer is simple; despair, fatalism and apathy.

These are the people who are the net losers from the ‘neoliberal era’. They’ve had perhaps forty years of having the myth of ‘trickle down economics‘ rammed down their throat; even now we have that haunted mannequin called Rees-Mogg plugging his ‘cheap shoes for peasants’ line, hoping that that shall appeal to said peasants who haven’t had a real pay increase for decades and trick them into supporting policies to make him richer.

However, Austerity helped really grind in that despair. Cut cut cut. Take from those who already have little. Trim your sails, make do with less, lower your standards. Watch the standard of life – never really that high in the first place – slip downwards. However hard you work, despite every effort to ‘get on’, you’ll count yourself lucky if you simply manage to tread water. See services in a never-ending circle of decline; as social housing stock decays, waiting lists balloon and staff become ever-more overstretched.

It was this mentality Jarvis Cocker tried to show in Pulp’s Common People; a land where you ‘watch your life slide out of view’. That of the belief that things cannot improve, there’s nothing you do about it and at best you can hope that you can avoid things getting shittier than they are already. A land of low ambition and even lower success, where high hopes are nearly always ‘delusional’ in nature. The land of the zero-sum game, in fact.

Lifeboat Mentality?

A zero-sum game is simple; it’s one where a ‘gain’ has to balanced by a equal ‘loss’ somewhere else. A game of poker is a good example; no person can win a sum larger than the pot of cash put in by the group.

Now, replace ‘pot of cash’ for ‘a nation’s resources’. Hospital beds, council houses, school places, jobs and so on. If you’ve been so conditioned by a lifetime’s failure and kick-downs to believe that that pot is unable to be increased – a belief reinforced by the British ‘Lost Decade’ – you have a zero-sum game. Or as I call it, ‘lifeboat politics’.

In the lifeboat, one can only gain at the expense of another. And when a migrant gets in the boat, it means a bit less of everything for everyone already in it. Now, that wouldn’t be so bad if the boat had ample supplies and space. But the UK lifeboat doesn’t. It’s already on short rations, and our Brexit-loving working class are in the worst seats, getting covered in spray every rock in the sea, feeling hungry and cold.

That’s what a migrant is. Less for me, to accommodate you. So you’re hurting? Look at me, mate. I’m not living the life of fucking Riley. Any change is bad, all developments mean less for you and your family and friends, without fail. Immigration. Climate change. Globalisation. Affirmative action. A black person getting a slot means a ‘normal’ person is denied and so on.

Dare To Dream?

The fact that this is a mentality mainly seen in whites is not down to racism. Well it is, but not due to the racism from the white working class themselves. It’s merely that traditionally they’ve been treated better than this. They in fact, did decently well in the previous era but their prosperity juddered to a halt in the 1980s and never picked up again.

This is important because people perform comparisons not from national statistics, but their own personal ones. The older white remembers the higher ‘base rate’ they enjoyed thirty, forty years ago – even I can remember ‘the Cheapskates’ managed to raise five kids on one, not huge salary in the 1990s (though our SoL was kinda shit, thus the name). Part of the lack of belief in the future is the one which doubts that their kids will ‘get it better than I did’. Hell, I think many don’t even think the kids will get it as good as they did, let alone better.

Minorities don’t have this nostalgia because in most ways, their lives were shittier. Many are perhaps at best three generations removed from a subsistence farm, urban slum or a mediaeval village. Overt discrimination has almost vanished, covert has drastically declined. In comparison terms, they have more ‘opportunity’ to rise than they did in say, the 1960s. In fact, for many groups, the much-maligned ‘affirmative action’ programmes help overcome some of the historical imbalance which is the lack of ‘accumulated capital’ which keeps you stuck to the bottom floor.

Which is the remedy for ‘lifeboat politics’. That we on the left cannot simply talk in generalities, or promise more cake in the future. We won’t be believed, and I don’t blame this disbelief one second. Nor should we deride or attack such feelings as racism, xenophobia etc. In fact, much of the their disbelief is perfectly justified due to the fact the pale-pink ‘New Labour’ types have generally failed to live up to almost all their promises. And are unlikely to buy the same old things again.

What we have to do is talk less about the redistribution of the current supplies and more about how we can increase supplies. Without resorting to pushing people off the boat. Even if there are a tiny group on the boat sitting on the supply-chests with a shit-eating smirk telling us ‘there’s no money left’ and doing all they can to get us to turn on each other.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.

Why ‘Britcoin’ Is Stupid

It’s been a busy week for the old Johnson Government; working hard to throw lots of ‘news’ in our direction to distract the country from the fact they’re trying a ‘bold experiment’ (perhaps even ‘courageous’, as Sir Humphrey would put it) called ‘let’s see what happens when we encourage mass coronavirus infections’.

I deploy the quote-marks over ‘news’ for in fact most of it barely warrants as such; a new crime strategy with reheated ideas and no new money, a new disabilities strategy identical to previous, a proposal to get more school-kids learning Latin (and with no new money), opening up the UK for tourism but not getting ‘buy-in’ from the other parties (meaning it’s basically pointless) and this – the fact the Bank of England (the UK’s central bank) is looking into ‘digital currency’ – something that Chancellor Sunak seems pretty keen on.

Let’s ignore the fact that this is in fact re-heated news which first came out in April, which I suspect was dug up as part of the above distraction strategy. For this idea is in fact an interesting one which as far as I can see, nobody within the ‘proper’ media bothered to go any further with than merely reporting the Chancellor’s comments and the Bank of England’s study.

Studying The Bandwagon

Which is clearly the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Despite the fact many solid folks (like Warren Buffett) are dead against it, it’s too unstable in value to be used reliably as a currency, it’s harder to spend or transfer than e-money and it lacks either an issuing authority, inherent value or assets backing it (meaning that it works simply because folks believe in it, making it akin to magic in the role-playing game Mage The Ascension) – the simple fact that it continues to shoot up in value (the main definition of a asset bubble) means it clearly warrants closer examination by the Very Serious People, like central bankers.

Design Issues…

Most of the Bitcoin detractors have cottoned to the ‘lack of backing or value’ if not anything else. So, couldn’t we simply fix this (and the value fluctuations) by pegging the ‘crypto’s value to say, Sterling and having a bank working on keeping the value steady? The answer is a clear ‘Yes’ as this is what caused central banks to exist in the first place – banknotes started out as ‘promissory notes’ for gold and silver coin held in reserve a couple of centuries ago.

The problem is the fact much of the money in crypto is speculative – people are trying to make a profit out of the massive value swings; from buying coins on the unregulated exchanges, or the mining syndicates manipulating the prices by their dominance of the ‘supply’.

Therefore, a regulated crypto will have a fraction of the demand of the original, simply because there won’t be any hot money sloshing about in it, hoping to turn a profit.

Glass Pockets?

Hot money is half the problem; the other one is ‘dark money’ – aka the proceeds of crime. It’s perhaps the only other thing ‘everyone knows’ about Bitcoin and it’s ilk; that scammers, hackers and dealers use it in the belief that it’s anonymous – something which a direct bank transfer is not.

Like many of these things, Bitcoin isn’t anonymous, but pseudonymous – coins are tied to ‘wallets’, and while said wallets aren’t tied to people (like bank accounts) the link becomes rather obvious when you try to convert your coins to currency (for you need a bank account to pay into). That like the old bank robber unable to spend the wads of cash they’d nicked, it’s very possible to have a tasty haul of coins you’re unable to convert into ‘real money’ without alerting the authorities.

However, despite this crypto does offer more chance for successful evasion than bank transfers; simply because it’s easier to increase the difficulty of tracking the transactions. What’s more, as wallets aren’t tied to anyone, it’s possible to use it as a method of hiding wealth from the authorities too.

Naturally, no central bank or government revenue agency would allow this aspect – the ‘crypto’ – to remain for their own versions. In fact, most proposals have it even easier to trace transactions than traditional e-money; for the currency would be a centralised system where every coin’s location would be known instantly and previous transactions as visible as if you’d simply sent your account statements to the authorities.

And this prospect excites them – the dream of a world where everyone has glass pockets in which not a single penny gained through crime, evasion or fraud can be hidden. Part of the dreams of the ‘virtual panopticon‘ in which Big Data can end up knowing more about you than you do yourself.

I don’t know about you, but I would object to having a fiscal glass pocket on the matter of principle – at very least my bank would resist (usually) the demands from the state into showing my transaction record to them. And knowing that a major user of cryptos are for illicit activities means they’d never touch this digital currency with a bargepole. Which makes you wonder who would.

Begging The Question…

Was what alerted me to this story; when the Chancellor tweeted about ‘looking into a British digital currency’. Because we already have a de facto ‘digital currency’, called electronic banking, denominated in currencies such as Sterling, Euros and so on. It’s known, it has protections against abuse, the infrastructure already exists and most importantly it works. Newer payment options – like most micropayment systems – are merely an extension to this. It was estimated that only 10% of transactions in the USA were in cash by 2018, and I suspect the UK was similar in ratio – and with almost all the rest of the transactions being electronic in some form.

Generally speaking, I don’t like ‘If it ain’t broke’ arguments, but it’s completely true in this case. As long as the banking system itself is ‘sound’ and everyone has a functional bank account (or three) there is no need for this pseudo-crypto to enter the situation. In fact, it threatens to make the situation worse by in effect, mooting possible creation of a secondary currency (and thus complicating matters).

I’ve read a couple of abstracts for this concept, and generally speaking the projected ‘advantages’ to the end user are actually almost zero – for example, you don’t need this pseudo-crypto to ‘promote financial inclusion’, merely ensuring everyone has a free bank account will suffice. All the benefits are for the state and financial institutions.

* * *

Let’s return to the original question; so, the Bank of England (amongst others) are thinking to creating a digital currency which holds no advantages to traditional electronic banking for the end user, no chance of speculation, no transaction privacy and would cost a huge amount of cash to set up and then run.

I’ve heard the phrase ‘build it and they will come’ but in this case I think it’ll be only to point and mock. Proof that even supposedly ‘very smart’ people get taken in by fads and fashions.

In defence, perhaps one day central banks will move to a full digital currency than the current ad-hoc, layered abstraction system with all the inefficiencies we currently have. But like hydrogen cars and global veganism, I think this is decades away. And may not even need another currency.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.

Pick For Pittance?

One of the news articles I bet you missed last week was the scrapping of the ‘Pick For Britain’ campaign which was launched in March ’20, fuelled by a fear that food supplies might run short due to ‘the pandemic’ both gumming up the imports of foodstuffs and of migrant labour to work British farms, which is critical mainly for those producing fruits, vegetables and salad items.

There’s a good reason why this story was buried – for the campaign failed. Massively. Like anyone who knew the foggiest about the industry warned it would. The oddity lies perhaps the fact that not even the ‘agin’ the Government’ media seem to have rather ignored it too. I cannot really explain this; I really don’t want to suggest conspiracy here, so I’m going to go with the theory that the vast majority of journalists either don’t really care or they think the public has forgotten all about it by now.

Normally, I don’t do straight ‘reporting’ (and this news is a bit old now) but I feel we should look at this issue a bit closer; for it shows us rather a lot of what’s wrong with Britain. Or at least an aspect of it.

New Land Army?

The principle was simple. Britain needed millions of tons of food harvested, millions of Britons needed jobs due to the first lockdown throwing them out of work (in some way). Well, you don’t even have to be a man as ‘smart’ as Dominic Cummings to draw a line between the two and wonder if one can’t solve the other.

So, it was hatched. With the predictable standby of the motheaten Second World War motifs, backing of celebrities, Royals, politicians and companies, the ‘Pick For Britain’ was launched with website, adverts on all media and supportive journalists. When it was officially launched, said website crashed due to the demand – 160,000, according to a spokesman. It was sufficiently decent-sounding that I didn’t criticise it once (the plus of a blog; you can effectively re-visit your old thoughts).

I suspect if I had thought things through a bit more, I would have. Or at least raised questions.

Labour Issues…

However, it became rapidly clear that while there was masses of vacancies, the employers were generally not interested in British labour. In their defence, farm labouring is job which is heavily physical; something that not much native labour is used to these days – myself included. This is not just about ‘laziness’ either; sheer willpower alone won’t turn a middle-aged office worker into a successful agricultural worker overnight.

However, the very fact so many of these potential inefficient farmhands were informed they weren’t needed was the first suggestion that like the old ‘iron railings for tanks’ wheeze during the Second World War, ‘Pick For Britain’ was perhaps not all what it seemed. This suspicion rapidly rose when even fit, healthy and footloose Britons – the ideal worker for farms – were being denied en bloc.

After all, we’d been told that there was serious risk of food shortages. Prince Charles told us that it was ‘a vital contribution to the national effort’. If it was that important, inefficient farmhands were better than no farmhands – similar to when the NHS ransacked the country for anyone who could realistically be pressed into a doctor’s coat or nurses’ uniform, or during the above war conscripts were sent down the coal mines as ‘Bevin Boys’ because the energy shortage was so severe instead of the armed forces.

The Wrong Answer

The fundamental problem was that ‘Pick For Britain’ was not the answer British agribusiness wanted to hear. They’d been whining to the Government ever since the Brexit referendum about the drying-up of the cheap migrant labour from (particularly) Romania and Bulgaria which had left them around thirty percent understaffed in the 2019 growing season.

That when they went back to bawl at the Government in April about the almost complete loss of the ‘migrant tap’ due to travel bans, what they wanted was to be given special ‘importing rights’ for said labour – not this damn silly idea of hiring native Britons to do it.

So they made sure the campaign failed.

It wasn’t hard. Many applicants could be refused due to being too old, unfit or geographically restricted. The vast majority of the minority who cleared that could simply be ignored. Then they could go the right-wing media and whine about ‘Britons being so lazy’. Admittedly, not every farm was in on this – but enough were to achieve success.

The travel restrictions eased up, they were given ‘guidance’ on how to make their plants and farms (supposedly) ‘covid-secure’. Then they got their pipeline of migrant workers back.

The Usual Reason…

Is why British farms love their Eastern European labour. They are cheap, they are more docile and are more easily exploited. More than anything else, they can be imported by the plane-load via agencies, in the same way as you’d buy in packing crates, rolls of wire or a new rotavator. The very fact most are from Romania or Bulgaria is telling – these are the two EU nations with the lowest standard of living.

For it is a terrible job. From the stories I’ve read, the conditions – or pay – don’t seem to have improved much since when Orwell went hop-picking ninety years ago. There is a damn good reason why Britons do not do this – because almost any other form of employment is superior. Even the likes of an Amazon warehouse for minimum wage is better, and that’s crap. It’s not ‘laziness’ stopping Britons from doing irreparable damage to their back picking fruit, it’s the simple fact they were educated to notice which number is bigger than the other and logically picking the occupation which was least shit.

Though British labour is, frankly a complete faff to hire and retain for agricultural labouring – in the employers view. They don’t like working fifty-plus hours for fuck all cash in all weathers while residing in a dilapidated static caravan minus amenities in the middle of nowhere. They have this tendency to ‘know their rights’, ‘talk back’ to the supervisors or even *gasp* call the authorities when things go wrong. And because they’re in their home country, they’re much more likely to walk if they don’t like things.

Ourselves To Blame?

The more thoughtful farm managers and industry experts are painfully aware of this. However, they also know who is ultimately to blame; the British consumer.

It’s us, in our ever-stronger demands for year-round, cheap and fresh produce which has pushed the income earned by British farms so hard that said ‘migrant pickers in tatty caravans’ is the only labour they can afford. What’s more, the British supermarkets are both the consumer’s manipulator and handmaid – in one breath they assure us we can have fresh food cheap, then in the next take a bat to the growers in our name to get said cheapness.

It’s a racket which only the truly wealthy can escape from – like Prince Charles, in his neat Scottish garden. Chances are, he pays enough to support agricultural workers well enough to attract Britons. But not many others. Not for the first time, I genuinely wonder whether he even realises this.

In this day and age, it’s ever so ‘woke’ to think about organic, non-GMO, sustainable sources, carbon footprints, food miles and so on. Yet with the exception of a very few imported goods (such as coffee, cocoa, tea etc) there’s almost nothing to encourage British consumers to actually buy fresh native produce which supplies it’s harvesters an actual living wage.

The answer is – I suspect – depressingly simple. ‘Labour exploitation’ is only something which happens far away, which is conveniently distant to allow us to do much about it. If we came to accept this exploitation happened in our own nation, the excuse is much thinner.

So, best not think about that. Just in case it makes you sad or something.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.

Right To Repair?

So, in a action which independent repair staff, greenies and frugalities will all celebrate, the European Union’s new ‘Right to Repair’ legislation will come into force; which the UK had agreed back in 2019 to copy (though it’s somewhat irrelevant even if the UK hadn’t, as we’re lumped under the ‘European bloc’ with supply chains).

Normally, I don’t cover news reports but this one I feel is both of sufficient interest and was lost within the noise of a rather busy news weekend to be worth talking about. Plus, what reports I saw weren’t that great in the first place.

So, What Is It?

These new regulations, in a nutshell stipulate that consumer products – such as TVs, washing machines, refrigerators etc – must…

– Not be made in a manner which can’t be disassembled using ‘normal tools’. Example; no more sealing product within a plastic case which can’t be removed without breaking it.

– Have repair manuals made freely accessible.

– Spare parts to be supplied for at least ten years.

Naturally, these are regulations which the appliance industry fought tooth and nail against – with good reason. And the ultimate reason is utterly predictable.

In It For The Money

Firstly, most companies have a vested interest in you buying more of their product, and to be frank well-made, durable items simply don’t carry the margins, like I noted with disposable razors last year.

The main problem is of reverse ‘false economies’; the person who pays £40 for a pair of cheap shoes that last a year isn’t usually going to spend £400 on a pair that lasts ten – let’s say they only spend £300. If the ‘profit margin’ for both shoes are equal (say 10%) this means the ‘cheap shoes’ generate £40 of profit in a decade, while the ‘expensive shoes’ generate £30.

Bad for the planet, bad for you – but good for business, no?

The other side is that of the very lucrative ‘aftermarket’. That when the company deigns to make the product repairable (which is a must for some big-ticket items, like say cars) it looks to ways to limit or completely eliminate the competition. Warring against the independent repairer, making stupid warranty claims, having private supply chains, making all the parts proprietary and so on. Meaning that you’re forced to trudge to the ‘authorised service’ people, who more often than not will leave you with a massive bill only marginally less than the original cost of purchase. Or to be told it’s ‘uneconomic to repair’ (as in; the company has made it so).

This is predictable, when you end up with a free market without the aspect of free competition.

A Limited Victory?

I’m not going to dump on this victory – for it finally enshrines a principle of the ‘right to repair’ in EU law – but it is very limited in scope.

There’s a myriad of products – most notably phones and laptops – not covered in the directive. It doesn’t say that the spare parts need to be of reasonable cost, or does it allow generic copies of said parts to compete on price or quality. Lastly, it doesn’t actually demand that the product’s designed life-span (ie before repairs are needed) must be increased.

Unintended Consequences?

One thing which nobody in the professional media noticed is the fact that this directive will make unit costs for said appliances higher at the bottom end of the market. Good products – like my £300 shoes above – are usually already made in a manner which facilitates repair and are usually long-supported by the manufacturer. However, it’s de facto made my £40 shoes illegal as they aren’t designed to be repaired.

Naturally, this will hurt people on low incomes disproportionately, similar to when the energy-efficient lightbulbs came along around twenty years ago and they found their ‘lighting costs’ going from around 50p a bulb to £4.00. This is an classist aspect of the coming ‘green revolution’ which has not been really addressed yet which I discuss in more detail here.

On the other hand, this directive may in fact rejuvenate the second-hand consumer goods market, something which has generally been dying for some thirty years – I mean, when was the last time you saw a TV repairman? The car market can be cited here; build quality has generally improved hugely in said decades, but even then not that many people buy new cars and run them all the way to the scrap-heap – in fact, the normal life-cycle is usually three or four owners before it’s in auto heaven.

A Changing Model?

This is the ultimate goal for the ‘circular economy’; in which items such as appliances are maintained, repaired and upgraded over their lifetime, which is measured in decades. A world of more hand-me-down appliances, used emporiums and the independent repair personnel.

The problem is that this is in direct contradiction of consumerist capitalism, and it cuts a lot of corners to make it ‘affordable’ for poorer consumers, such as sweatshops and planned obsolescence. Even something more ethically neutral as ‘economies of scale’ will be hurt in a world because it’s obvious that if you extended the standard lifespan of televisions from 5 to 10 years, the yearly demand for them will be half than before.

Yet, consumer mindsets need to change too. There’s so much stigma regarding second-hand items (generally) which means that, say a company trying to sell used white goods would have a rather tough job of it right now. And not all of this is due to consumerist propaganda stoking demand for ‘new stuff’ – but genuine scepticism of quality, remaining life-span and product support.

And while the European directive won’t sort all this out alone, it’s a start in the right direction.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions – save the paragraph regarding shoes, which is adapted from Terry Pratchett’s ‘Vimes Boots Theory‘. Part of my Frugality series.

Return To Normality?

I don’t like being right (at least in this case) – but it seems that my suspicions that Austerity would return out of it’s political grave and claw at us again is coming true with the Chancellor’s recent budget. The ‘take home’ note was – as suspected – the 1% pay increase offer to NHS staff, which in ‘value terms’ is actually a pay cut as inflation is expected to be around 1.5% this year.

Austerity, Redux

But hey, what were you expecting? We’ve had glimmers of warning-signs that the ‘fuck you, I’ve got mine’ libertarianism of the likes of Britannia Unchained still beat in the heart of this administration – that they were merely keeping their heads down during the pandemic. In fact, with the purging of the (relatively) moderate ‘One Nation’ Tories over their resistance to a ‘Hard Brexit’ and / or Boris Johnson, this hardline Thatcherite faction is perhaps the key group in the Parliamentary Party; many are members of the ToryKip ‘ERG’ which allowed Johnson to win the leadership in 2019.

This was the sole reason I vaguely mourned Cummings’ removal late last year; that it was possible that gremlin may have had economic ideas which had progressed past 1994, would be able to argue back against the Thatcherites and instil some backbone into Johnson into standing up to them. For we all know by now that Johnson’s ‘strengths’ does not include a steely conviction on anything, save himself.

Levelling Down…

That while I’m not going to buy the coffin just yet, I think it’s a safe bet to predict that the great ‘levelling up’ programme we got in the ~3 months of pre-pandemic Johnson is stillborn – in a Britain where there’s budget cuts across the board and ‘we need fiscal prudence’ there’s going to be nothing more than a few tokenistic baubles on offer. And with a sluggish recovery laden by the dead hand of the ‘landlord interest’ and debt-loads generated by the pandemic on the medium and lower incomes, if any ‘equalisation’ will be seen, it will be the better areas sinking down. This is even before Brexit is factored into any calculations…

However, I will give Chancellor Sunak a little bit of credit. He is not a carbon copy of George Osborne (or I don’t think he is). For starters, he’s been willing to increase taxes on businesses (well, intends to… soon) and has openly said that the ‘Laffer Curve’ is actually often a load of bollocks which marks him out for at least, having enough flexibility to at least admit the rudiments of economic reality (which is a backhanded compliment to the current Tory Party). The moves to have more civil servants being relocated out of London is a resumption of a decent idea first done in the 60s (didn’t you ever wonder why the DVLA was in Swansea?) and the idea of a ‘Development Bank’ is promising at least on paper.

Yet, that credit is only measurable in loose change – for the fundamentals remain unchanged.

Same Old Ideas?

First, the cuts in spending. Not only is this on top of the cuts inflicted over the last decade, but also at a time where many of the departments have incurred higher costs due to the pandemic – the NHS, for example is going to try to work out how the hell it can reduce the massive backlog of cases with less resources than before. If they do, I predict it will be down to a combination of drawing even deeper on the goodwill of staff and robbing Peter to pay Paul. Honestly, I don’t expect much here on this and the rumbles of discontent can already be heard.

Then there’s the ‘subsidies’ to businesses. Many of these are the in the ‘looks better than they are’ category; like giving investment rebates. At best this is a mitigation to private business for the shoddy state of the UK in regards to infrastructure, skills etc – at worst, simply giving capital more capital in the hope they’ll invest more. If this sounds familiar to you, it’s what they tried with the banks after the ’08 Crisis and we all know that ended up with much of the help merely being trousered and all we saw was a ‘who me?’ look.

Similar can be said for the ‘freeport’ programme; at best, they can help attract the trans-shipment trade – but in the wrong hands, will allow firms to ‘offshore’ themselves while remaining in the UK; the final stage of where the world’s multinationals withdraw from paying anything to anyone save the shareholders. The very fact the UK’s ‘Border Force’ and so on are already overloaded and under-staffed due to counter-productive parsimony from the Treasury – which means like so many things in the current UK, may allow many things to happen simply because the state is too feeble to stop them.

Then there’s the ‘subsidies’ to the housing sector. ‘Stoking an already overpriced asset bubble’ is the only way you can describe this; for all it is doing is adding more cash into the market, not more property. That in fact, it’s counter-productive (again) as it will make housing even more unaffordable. Meanwhile, not only is there nothing for the ‘affordable’ rental sector, it doesn’t even deal with the issue that the housing organisations must be staring at a serious issue of ‘bad rent debt’ which they’ll have to swallow – resulting in less investment and rent increases.

Lastly, there’s the old ‘wage freeze’; something which is (surprisingly!) counter-productive because recoveries are based on consumer spending, and people growing poorer by the day due to inflation are clearly not spending more than before. In fact, it’s somewhat boneheaded as often it can act as a

dampener to the private sector wage growth. Similar in the result will be the freezing of the tax bands; allowing more lower-paid people to fall into paying more tax over time.

Sunak’s Gamble

The reasoning for the Chancellor’s actions are simple to understand; he is worried about the pandemic-bloated National Debt, to almost the exclusion to all else. Or more correctly, he’s worried about the possibility that while interest rates are amazingly low now, they may not be in a couple of years in the future. In this he’s akin to the person who’s scraping and scrimping to clear as much of their credit card debt before the ‘teaser’ rate ends and the big gouging begins.

However, this is where the analogy ends because a country is not a household (and anyone who says it’s about the same is an economic illiterate you can then safely ignore). The spending being cut was not on say, discretionary items such as luxuries – it’s on services and investment in the country. This will come at a cost; lower economic growth. An under-resourced NHS, for example means more ill-health in the workforce, equalling lower productivity, while chronic shortages in Customs officers means more delays for imports and exports at our borders – this can be extrapolated over all government departments.

The gamble is that the lack of government spending will not overly matter, as the British economy will ‘roar back to life’ in the latter two-thirds of 2021, buoyed up by the massive glut of mainly involuntary saving UK consumers are currently sitting on being spent on all manner of things. These cash-piles do exist, yes; problem is that they’ve overwhelmingly concentrated in the elderly and wealthy – the two groups who have a tendency to simply squirrel away or invest extra cash, not spend it. Some of the demand will have have been destroyed, not merely delayed.

The second part of the gamble is much more a long shot. It’s mainly the tacit assumption that everything will return to 2019. That nearly all those being furlough will return to work, the offices will re-fill with the din of typing and phone calls, the shops humming with customers and so on. An assumption which I have not heard from anyone else.

Debt Overhangs

The last – and perhaps most serious – gamble is the tacit assumption that there won’t be much of drag on the economy due to pandemic-related debt. Clearly, more debt repayments equal less consumer spending and this equals less economic activity. What’s more, said debt burdens will kill many a business currently ‘frozen’ and even the ones who do survive will have to carry said debt, resulting in less investment in the long term. Less investment means less growth, which means less ability to ‘grow out’ of it’s debt burden by increasing profits.

This issue will be replayed on a national scale. What we’re seeing Sunak do with UK.Plc is the government version of slashing investment, jacking up prices and sweating current capital harder in the hopes of wringing out more profit. That is unlikely to provide much actual economic growth – the official projections for the next few years being around 1.7%, which is a third less than the level seen in the previous decade (and that was shit).

This could leave the Government in a very difficult position. If growth does not magically appear and then interest rates start creeping up the ‘debt burden’ for the UK will continue to rise. This will result in a ‘spiral of decline’ – as the burden increases, more cuts and rises will be inflicted in the name of ‘getting the finances in order’, which will result with even lower economic growth and so on. The net result will be an economic variant of the old quip of ‘the beatings will continue until morale improves’.

No Other Option?

This is a line I suspect we’ll hear much of in the coming years. And it’s a lie. At this moment in time, the world is awash in a glut of capital which is seeking any suitable home; that now is the time to borrow – not on corporate welfare or subsidising market failures, but on capital investment. This is what ‘growing out of the debt’ means; that by improving the assets of the country – from transport to education, health to energy – we can get the economy growing faster than the debt, thus reducing the ‘debt load’. And it’s been done before – in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Normally, I’d say the Conservatives would simply bludgeon on with this plan regardless of the result out of sheer obstinacy, but there’s one major difference between 2010 and now – the ‘Red Wall’. One half of the reason Johnson managed to flip them in 2019 was due to ‘Get Brexit Done’ (something which is falling apart in front of our eyes) but the other half was down to an end of Austerity, to improve their lives economically.

The question is this; how can you keep this promise with anaemic growth, the Treasury enforcing economic orthodoxy and merely concerned about ‘paying down the debt’? The only answer I can think is ‘create culture war and lie through teeth’, but even then I’m not sure this will work. That in short, Johnson will have to make a decision within the next year or so – side with the Thatcherites and probably lose the next election, or side with the Populists and possibly lose the leadership.

Which is why I suspect Johnson will take the third option; retirement. To take a bow while most of the audience will clap and cheer you, not pelt you with refuse. And without a dozen blades in the back.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series. A better-written but somewhat harder-going analysis of the situation can be found at ‘The Next Recession’ Blog.

More Than A Food Parcel

Another day, another sign of the incompetence of the Johnson government; this time involving the ‘food parcels’ being sent to school-age children currently at home but also in receipt of free school meals.

I’ve seen enough pictures which show the general crappiness of it; expired foods, unsuitable foods, insufficient foods, nutritionally unbalanced foods, unappetising foods, stupidly basic foods… I mean, you’d think ‘Roadside Mum’ (the one who helped this story become mainstream) would have been allowed a cucumber and pickle so the cheese sandwich would have taste, or a serving of spread so the carrots and potatoes could be made into some form of mash, right?

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

As I’ve recounted before, I’m no stranger to eating on a tight budget – and much of what I see worries me. Firstly, there’s a seemingly quite strong assumption that a cold lunch is acceptable. In January. In homes which may be currently chilly due to the lack of cash to heat. One of my first memories is enjoying my free dinner at school on a cold, wet and overcast day rather like the one outside my window right now. For it was the only hot meal I’d have that day, and it contained proper food, like meat.

On the plus side, this does mean it’s more affordable than say, the pasta and potatoes which will need cooking. Do you even know how much it costs to cook something? I’ll tell you this much; it’ll cost at minimum 20p to do a jacket potato in the oven and about 10p to boil pasta (with electricity rates as they are). In fact, chances are it will cost more for generally, the people who are getting free meals often have older, more energy-inefficient appliances.

And before you say ‘for fuck’s sake, it’s only 20p!’, remember these people are subsisting on very low incomes. I’ve been there; it’s a world where a possession of a tenner can be the line between an ‘okay week’ and ‘shit week’. In this case, it’s going to be another pound or two the adult will need to find from somewhere for the electricity bill.

Then there’s the issue I already touched on earlier; the sheer basicity of the items given. I’m looking at Roadside Mum’s parcel, wondering what the fuck I’d make of that. If I had nothing else in the house; not much at all. At best, that’s food for three kid-meals, and then it’s the joys of plain white bread. That’s a running theme with many of these parcels; often carb-heavy and protein-light. There’s decent fibre in there, but it’s mainly in the vegetables which will be rather hard to convince a kid to eat on their own. Hell, it would be hard to convince me to eat on their own. Doubt it even has enough calories there for a kid.

Next, there’s the issues that it takes no consideration to actual requirements. I’ve seen Muslims issued with ham (sods law; only ones who get meat are the ones who won’t eat it) those with fish allergies tuna (ditto) and ones requiring gluten free given loaves of bread. It reeks of being a classic, top-down, inflexible ‘solution’ to the problem which also had the benefit of not actually handing over real money for poor people can’t be trusted with it.

Lastly, there’s the little issue that these parcels are a joke. Allegedly, Roadside’s packet was meant to be £30 of food; it’s been calculated as £5.80, which seems about right by my fag-packet calculation. Now, the provider of this somewhat backtracked and said this was for a week, not two – but even then, there’s at least £9.20 of foodstuffs which have vanished into the aether. More, I bet – for I could do it for less by savvy shopping and bulk discounts.

One Crappy Symbol?

The thing which has made this issue get stuck under my skin is that this whole issue feels so emblematic of all which is wrong with Great Britain in 2021. The cheapskatery of the contractors, providing crap, trousering fat profits and giving a ‘who, us?’ look when caught out. The bellow of ‘be grateful!’ and ‘beggars can’t be choosers!’ from the shitheads who infest the comments section on news sites. The very fact that it took a professional footballer to push the government into action, over the objections of their own backbenchers who expressed a desire to ‘punish’ parents by making their kids go hungry.

Okay, they all piss me off. But the most alarming thing is that nobody has asked why in 2021 in one of the richest nations on earth (apparently) we have an serious issue of child hunger and malnutrition. And after thinking about it, I come to realise the reason why: we’ve become used to it.

Normalisation?

The rot started in the 1980s, but hugely picked up after the election of the pseudo-Coalition in 2010. I am naturally, talking of Austerity. What we’ve seen since then is a massive curtailment of services on all fronts, normally without any real logic behind them. That the country has remained in the ‘rich’ definition, but it’s being held up in the rankings by an smallish group of rather wealthy people.

And as everything has shrunk, declined or been cut, society has become harsher and expectations lowered. Welfare payments barely even follow the pretence of being able to be lived on, food banks have positively boomed and have become a fixture of our landscape. What was meant to be a stop-gap has become a critical aspect of our society. Private charity is not supposed to be an arm of the state.

The rot has set in elsewhere; housing overcrowding is worsening and so is the quality, jobs are becoming deskilled, casualised and degraded. Infrastructure grows ramshackle, pay in public services stagnates and what funding there is gets spread ever-so-thinner. As wealth inequality soars at the top, the debt-loads increase below.

What’s worse is the fact that British capitalism is becoming dependent upon this threadbare, hustling poverty economy. From people trying to raise a few quid on eBay flogging items to those working all hours on pittance pay as delivery drivers; the surge in bargain-basement retail like the Primarks and PoundLands of the country. A plethora of small ‘businesses’ which sat precariously on the edge, mainly existing so their not-employers can avoid paying tax and National Insurance for their not-employees. Big Retail uses the food banks as a method of paying even less tax, contracting companies continue to rip off the decaying state and the shit-fed morons shout abuse at the recipients, all the while ignoring the fact it’s our taxes being stolen by said companies.

Widening Cracks

The main threat comes to society – not just British, but any – when economic conditions become so degraded and the welfare net so thin that the people being thrown at the mercy of food parcels and suchlike aren’t just the ‘usual suspects’ but those in the upper-working and middle classes too. Ones who traditionally at least were in decent employ and more importantly, have things to lose – a car, a home, savings and so on. More than that, they have their pride to lose.

Coronavirus is causing these cracks to become massive fissures. Even bastions of capitalism like Bloomberg and the like openly admit that for a lot of people, their ‘reserves’ are either running out or already have. Household debt has ballooned, rent arrears are rising and tax bills will be soon too. Unless some If we rely on neoliberalism to get us out of this mess, well I doubt we’ll ever exit it.

It Can’t Happen Here

The fundamental worry I have is that Britons – particularly conservative Britons – are proving themselves to be stunningly, frighteningly complacent. That our economy will continue to tick over just fine however much looting and burning they commit, that stoking up a culture war to get us proles to vote Tory is perfectly fine and will never come back to bite them, that gross hypocrisy, greed and incompetence on their part will never cause us great unwashed to demand change outside our ‘permitted modes of expression’.

This is a ‘failure of imagination’. They cannot visualise that in so many ways, they’ve been sawing the branch we’re sitting on for decades. That social cohesion does not work if you’re trying to get people to turn on each other, democracy dies if you encourage a passive, apathetic and cynical populace, that by allowing the middle classes to die robs societies of their ‘moderate ballast’. And most of all, a complete failure to appreciate that things like true stability, prosperity, peace and democracy are neither ‘gifts from the Lord’ or somehow appear out of the aether – they are painstakingly built and require constant effort to maintain and improve on it.

In this, Trump is a warning – to never take anything for granted. As I write this, it looks like the man will avoid being impeached again by the simple fact Republicans are increasingly fearful that to turn against the one they’d enabled and pandered to for the last four years could lead to their own death. This is similar to the situation in Russia, with the exception that the death would be caused by FSB poison rather than a MAGA hat with a gun.

Being melodramatic? Perhaps. But then look at images of Washington DC in 2020 and tell me that all of that was both normal and expected.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my ‘Essays‘ series.

Little Brexiteer, What Next?

I think it could be said that if the whole Brexit saga is a tragicomedy of three acts; the end of the transition period on New Year’s Eve is the end of the second part. A suitable point, I feel to pause and look at the path ahead of us; something which I’m finding precious few professional journalists are bothering to do. Perhaps they’re all too distracted by coronavirus (I was a bit; this post was meant to have been written days ago!). But better late than never, eh?

On The Previous Episode…

In the backdrop of the mounting ‘third wave’ of coronavirus and President Trump apparently losing the plot over his election defeat, sat the UK trade negotiators, trying to produce a deal which basically satisfied the ToryKippers but disguised the obvious damage leaving the Single Market from us plebs – at least right now.

In this, I can’t fault; they were basically successful. By throwing the Northern Irish, The City, national interests and our economic needs under the bus they achieved a very thin trade deal which satisfied the Conservative Party for the time being, ‘No Deal’ was avoided, there was no extension and we ‘took back control’ – whatever that fucking means. Then they bounced Parliament into signing it by making it impossible to change or really discuss it, at a time where most of the people and media were rather distracted by the holiday season. If that was merely a coincidence, well it was a stroke of luck for Mr Johnson. But… I don’t believe that for one moment.

In short; this was a deal which was good for the Party, not Country. It’s also a ‘duct tape’ solution for many of the conditions of the deal rely on the UK faithfully copying all the European standards etc which means the second the UK ‘diverges’, the thing falls apart. It’s also subjected British businesses with billions of pounds of red tape when dealing with Europe; and there is no part of the British economy which does not deal with Europe somewhere – if not directly, but within in their supply line. This means that British exports will be less competitive in our largest overseas market.

Not for nothing, did the Treasury’s own predictions point out to Mrs May two years ago such a deal would cost the UK £130 billion of lost growth within fifteen years.

That’s… a problem.

The Throne Of Lies

It’s a problem for one of the primary reasons Leave voters did so back in ’16 was due to economic ones – particularly working-class people residing in ‘left behind’ parts of the UK. They had been told for the best part of three decades that the widening income disparity, the generational wage stagnation, the casualisation of employment, ever-more overloaded public services and the under-invested, creaking infrastructure was due to the European Union.

It became part of the ‘triad of evil’ noted by such rags as the Express and Sun; if the manufuctversy of the day wasn’t ‘Brussels’ fault’, it was that of either ‘political correctness’ and/or ‘health and safety’. This was usually – though not always – either a lie or a misinterpretation; such as implying if say a German or French company got a UK government contract it was a due to a ‘European rule’ rather than say, the more boring reason that they were the best bid. Lies by omission were also told; like never mentioning that while said German and French companies may get UK government contracts, it also meant that German and French government contracts went to British companies.

The fact that the latter example didn’t happen as much as it should have was not due to any European discrimination (well, much); more due to the decisions of our own ruling classes over said last decades.

Scapegoating

It was the UK government which chronically under-invested our infrastructure, traded tax cuts for the rich for public services, decided to flog off our industrial base and went for the low-tax, low-skill economy based around an engorged financial sector and services. That in fact the EU helped these happen by not just providing a ever-useful scapegoat but also by giving the UK a larger ‘economic hinterland’ for The City to exploit and lastly, a somewhat ‘safe harbour’ away from the chill winds of global economic competition – a primary reason why the UK joined the then-EEC in 1973.

In the above, the road we chose was primarily our own. Germany did not do this. Sweden did not do this. France did not do this. Yes, there were EU rules about ‘state aid’ and so on which limited action; but these never really proved much of a barrier to other member-states. As with many of these things, the ‘can’t do’ was in reality mainly ‘won’t do’.

Worse was that the ‘benefits of membership’ was spread unevenly. Just like a person who never leaves the UK won’t see any benefit of ‘free movement of people’, a person who’s income which has been declining in real terms since 1979 won’t see any economic benefit of membership. In fact, they may see the whole thing as nothing more than a massive con.

Cashing The Cheque

I know the above reads like yet another ‘Remoaner screed’ but it was needed; but for starters, a lot of the ‘Ultra-Remainers’ still don’t get this; thinking that the vote was completely motivated by xenophobia, ‘nostalgia poisoning’ and stupidity (hint; that view is one of the reasons you lost). The point I’m making here is that a significant proportion of working-class Brexiteers expects their materiel position to improve post-Brexit – rather quickly, in fact.

The main problem, obviously is that the EU wasn’t stopping us from building modern infrastructure, upskilling our workforce, encouraging manufacturing growth, sorting out the housing crisis etc. That unless these things (and more) happen, the UK will still continue to limp along with anaemic growth rates and increasing societal stress like the situation past the 2008 Recession. Something which I doubt will happen, at least to the level which is sorely required.

The other main issue is that not only is the post-Coronavirus recession promising to be hideous, but Brexit will cost us money too. We will be looking at a situation that policies which start to correct the historical dysfunctions and inequalities would be ‘difficult’ for a Conservative Party to accept (politically) during times of plenty, almost impossible for them to accept in times of famine.

The Wrong Argument?

One of the issues with the whole Brexit debate has been that it’s become partly a proxy argument regarding the successes and failures of the ‘Neoliberal Era’ within the UK. To the point where ‘continued membership’ was taken to mean simply ‘continue the status quo’, that if you advocated change it required the country to leave it – a viewpoint both Nigel Farage and Dennis Skinner agreed on (if nothing else).

That is – in my opinion – an incorrect argument. Not just that, an excuse for inaction. The UK never really tried to see if she could build a socialist state within the EU. Nor did the right-wing libertarians seem to consider that it was possible to change EU policy by winning elections and then arguing their case in Parliament – Farage and his minions only turned up to collect their pay and occasionally grandstand.

When you consider it like this, EU membership is not the be-all and end-all for the UK. The country is perfectly capable of ‘making a success’ long-term being outside of it, as much she was able to make a success of membership. And vice-versa. In some respects, being outside of it may make it easier; such as a declining strength of finance meaning the country reorientates herself back towards manufacturing. Yet this plus is overly outweighed by the minus of less cash to play with.

The Long, Stony Road?

The biggest plus may be in fact the loss of the scapegoat. This may be of critical damage to the Conservatives, for they will need to find another to blame for their inaction now. In this respect, it’s a politically exciting time; like how the pandemic showed that many of the government’s traditional claims that they ‘couldn’t do’ something was in fact a ‘won’t do’, such like with homelessness.

But it’s also the removal of the ‘comfortable inaction’ which Labour traditionally enjoyed. That the big, long-term politico-economic calls need to be made. That decades of chronic under-investment, fudged decisions and can-kicking now have to be dealt with.

Yet… this may ultimately be the best thing which has happened to the UK for decades. A time where we’re forced to deal with the backlog, to walk that long and stony road back to the success which we’ve not had for such a long time. That Brexit is ultimately, what we make it. But it requires a butt-load of effort.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my ‘Essays‘ series.

Why British Management Sucks

So, allegedly workers at the mobile phone operator EE have been subjected to a ‘demeaning workplace culture’, such as being coerced into performing acts such like barking like a dog and performing squats as, basically punishment for missing sales quotas and so on. A number of Muslim and female employees subjected to this have called the above racist / sexist, but I disagree – holding to Hanlon’s razor; that this is a case of stupidity than malice.

For this is Britain. And British management is terrible.

Welcome To Slough…

All said and done, ‘British management’ can be generally described in three words; mediocrity, incompetence and egotism. We see this throughout our whole society; from the shop floor to government ministries. It’s why we found The Office true ‘cringe TV’; we’ve all known ‘David Brents’ in positions of authority, all-too-often where we have to deal with them.

It also explains why nothing seems to run right; if big projects don’t fail, they end up hugely over-budget and over-time. Our organisations rely on a myriad of unofficial ‘hacks’, making up for the fact the official regulations are often impractical, inflexible and / or insane. Why simple issues end up unfixed for aeons, while bone-headed mistakes keep on being repeated ad infinitum.

I’m not alone in this thinking; in almost every survey, ‘management incompetence’ is cited as the single biggest factor in regards lack of productivity, morale and ‘quality outcomes’ by British workers. And my little tale can highlight exactly why.

My Pointy-Haired Boss

Arrived in my life some fifteen years ago. I’d signed on to The Company, found myself in the Pointy-Hair’s fiefdom unit. Unfortunately, being new and green, I’d committed the sin of appearing too competent and alert, which led me being ‘promoted’ to ‘team leader’ – with the result that I had to work directly under / with Pointy-Hair. It wasn’t long until I realised why the others had done their best not to catch the boss’s eye.

First, I realised that they were an ‘accidental manager’. This is very common in the UK; many technical/professional careers suffer from ‘early plateaus’; a qualified nurse, for example can run out of nursing-related rungs by their early 40s – meaning any further upwards movement would be into management.

Unfortunately, this meant that Pointy-Hair didn’t really have management skill. The Company had tried to train them a bit, but in a superficial manner; all Pointy-Hair had in their morale tool-kit was a) certificates, b) insincere flattery and c) being told to ‘be grateful’ for our jobs. In fact, the only real ‘decent’ understanding they ever showed was in regards to finance.

Next, I learned that Pointy-Hair was overly-respectful and / or fearful of their superiors. They showed the classic symptoms; refusal to delegate decision-making, but a refusal to make said decisions too. This made perfect sense; for both Pointy-Hair and their boss were ‘seagull managers’; meaning a prime goal for every rung was to avoid being crapped on by their superior.

The result was predictable; a pyramid of lies. We ‘lied’ (by omission, interpretation etc) to Pointy-Hair, they in turn lied to their boss and so on. We all followed Da Rules on paper, for all the ‘rule-breaking’ was informal and unrecorded. The net result of this was a situation where the head didn’t know what their feet looked like, and the right hand was not just ignorant of the left hand’s movements but of how many fingers it possesses.

It worked the other way; in the manner we would ‘re-interpret’ Pointy-Hair’s orders into something more sane whenever we could realistically get away with it, Pointy-Hair themselves would do similar to their bosses’ orders. This usually involved what Yes, Minister termed ‘creative inertia’; the ability for Pointy-Hair to resist change or innovation as long as possible without appearing to do so.

The reason for this was obvious; they saw no need to change. However, I also suspect Pointy-Hair resisted it with the subconscious knowledge that change would require them to learn new things, and their inability to do so would be shown up. Resisting change was a defence mechanism to protect their intellectual mediocrity from being discovered.

Cherry Blossom Poisoning

All the above would have been tolerable if Pointy-Hair hadn’t been a egotistical despot. They didn’t want colleagues, they wanted flunkies. Their ‘discussions’ were in fact lecturing monologues. Their ‘views’ were always beneficial to The Company, so couldn’t be resisted. Their perception was ‘reality’, while yours was merely ‘an opinion’. This meant our unit had a solid pecking order; mainly based on how well ‘in’ you were with Pointy-Hair, not actual skill level, productivity or seniority. The only saving grace here was that Pointy-Hair was a combination of ‘too incompetent’ and ‘too busy’ to interfere to a critical level at the coal-face.

For much of Pointy-Hair time was spent with their lips around their bosses’ shoes. Deferential and sycophantic upwards while haughty and obstinate downwards; if nothing else, they did practice what they desired from us. And it worked; after all, the ‘grandboss’ was the one who could fire Pointy-Hair and also where our complaints would go to – and Pointy-Hair had subtly let us know they got on well and had for many years.

Manager Cheapskate

In this, I have to give credit to Pointy-Hair; they knew what mattered; flattering their boss and maximising profit. Which in the absence of any idea to increase income or listening to other’s ideas, meant cheeseparing. Even when it hurt productivity, morale or long-term profitability. ‘There’s no budget’ was the stock answer; which showed with the absence of training, the elderly equipment and their obsessive nature regarding pen consumption.

As ‘work more hours for free’ was their only solution to any problem, nobody reported issues to Pointy-Hair unless unavoidable. More worrying was the times Pointy-Hair would be feeling adventurous and would ‘pitch in to help’ which invariably would make the task harder and longer to complete. One of my co-workers had the suspicion this was deliberate (training us not to ask for help), though I don’t think they were that smart.

Archetype?

With fifteen years more experience, I’ve come to realise that my Pointy-Haired Boss displayed most of the negative attributes of ‘British management’, save the actively evil ones. Officious, prejudiced, incompetent and capricious, thinking that arrogance and obstinance were ‘leadership qualities’.

And I see this once again with the EE managers at the start of this post. Doling out punishments for lack of sales instead of y’know perhaps investigating the reasons why and trying to make good. The ‘motivation’ of having staff bark reeks of managers who know fuck all about basic people-managing skills, let alone such things as cultural sensitivity. And EE’s response was traditional too; blame an individual, say it was dealt with and say there’s a policy about this kind of thing. Job done, move on, the end. Reminds me of my school, who stated that bullying didn’t exist there due to the presence of an anti-bullying policy.

Eating Us Alive?

But the country is full of Pointy-Haired Bosses. They were the ones who ran the likes of Arcadia into the ground; excessive ‘cheapskating’ and sucking out all the cash for dividends until the company died. They were the ones who put the flammable cladding onto Grenfell; the official records conveniently silent on who exactly knew and did what. Various incompetent outsourcing giants plodding on year after year, their repeated fuck-ups seemingly no barrier to gaining new contracts. Company boards and upper management grades clogged up with over-paid, over-rated, over-lauded jack-of-all-trades. This is most obvious at the ‘CEO grade’; going from say running a retail chain to a brick manufacturer or hotelier; it all apparently being ultimately the same.

This description is depressingly similar to the situation which arose in of all places, the Eastern Bloc, above all the Soviet Union.

The Nomenklatura

They were nicknamed ‘the encyclopaedists’; that like an encyclopaedia they knew a little about everything, but not a lot about anything. They sat in hierarchical organisations where the main routes to promotion was ‘political reliability’ and ‘fulfilment of Plan goals’ than professional skill or creativity. A system riddled with ‘clientism’; where every boss would empire-build by cultivating ‘clients’ below them while supporting the efforts of their ‘patron’ above them. To do this was simple; the second an underling is forgiven for a transgression by the boss, they become blind to the bosses’ own failures. Both sides were now ‘protected’.

That while they didn’t technically own the concerns they were running, they ran them like they did; distributing ‘spoils’ to their clients for loyalty and motivational purposes. However, this was done relatively covertly; not only were ‘the masses’ to be kept ignorant of the details of the perks, but even rungs within the nomenklatura itself. The reason for this was simple; for it would not do for ‘the masses’ to know how well their bosses were remunerated. And compare it to their relative lack of it.

To said masses, they were authoritarian, domineering and arrogant; they knew they were in charge and that precious little could remove them – after all, the ones who judged them were other members of the nomenklatura. Leadership cults abounded; from the wisdom of the one in the corner office to the deified members of the Politburo, hailed as the font of all knowledge and without human flaws, like mortality.

Said masses were to know their place; behind their beloved leaders. To accept their ‘truth’, even when their own experience, knowledge or even common sense told them otherwise. To quote a Soviet quip; a good Communist always drove behind the Leader; regardless of speed, driving skill or direction.

To enforce this conformity, countless meetings were conducted; where the masses were lectured on the ‘party line’, to deliver canned paeans to the leadership and to develop ‘correct consciousness’. In the more hardline regimes like Maoist China, ‘struggle sessions’ where used; where the victim would be inundated with a long barrage of ‘constructive criticism’ from co-workers in an attempt to break their will. Passive obedience was not enough; nothing short of full-throated unquestioning support was allowed. For if you didn’t, you’ll become the next victim.

For victimisation was the blood the system ran on. Every failure needed a scapegoat; if an individual was at fault, it meant the system itself was fine. It was just the failure of an individual boss, or unit, or work-crew – nothing more or less.

The British ‘New Class’

“Earlier this year the franchisee thoroughly investigated the claims and dealt with them seriously … The unacceptable behaviour was isolated to one employee, who we understand has been retrained to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

(EE Official Statement)

Hmm… ‘criticise but don’t generalise’? Okay, the above may be true, but no British organisation ever admits that it’s own systems were crap unless literally forced to. But our own ‘managerial class’ shows many of the attributes of the old nomenklatura; sure, we’re not being bidden to mount airbrushed portraits of our CEO in our cubicles, but sure as hell we’re made to laud their ‘vision for the company’.

We see this in ‘training days’; the horrid situation where we drones are bidden to attend cold fields, muddy woodlands or drab conference rooms on our day off to get to pretend to be a tree or other such drek. For a long time I suspected it was a kind of ‘docility test’ (the ones who refuse or participate in a lacklustre manner noted down for later ‘removal’) but now I suspect otherwise; that our beloved leaders don’t think we need new skills or experiences – just ‘the right attitude’. Rather like in the Five Year Plans, where the lack of skill, time, tools and resources were to be made up for by sheer willpower. Or breakneck 70-hour weeks.

There’s many ways to have a ‘bad attitude’. Asking for a raise. Telling the boss they were wrong. Asking your co-workers what they’re paid. Trying to unionise. Refusing to work unpaid overtime. Refusing to perform squats for the boss. To be an individual is to be labelled ‘does not fit in’, to be honest is to ‘be difficult’, to cite your poor salary and working conditions is to be ‘self-centred’. British management has the anti-Midas touch; everything they deal with turns to mediocrity.

Admittedly, this is not unique to the UK; this tendency has been noted repeatedly in many industrial and post-industrial nations. But it’s of particular issue of the Anglo-Saxon nations. And until we accept the issues and move to tackle them, the drift and rot will continue.

Epilogue

As you guess, I didn’t stay long working for Pointy-Haired Boss. But I heard later from a former co-worker how it all ended.

A new hire wheedled their way into Pointy-Hair’s clique, and used this to start thieving from The Company. Fake returns, padding expenses, inventory theft, the usual things. Making full advantage that Pointy-Hair was too ‘busy’ to know what was happening on the shop floor and too incompetent to notice the books were being cooked. It was rumoured they’d co-opted a couple of others into this scam too. If true, this wouldn’t surprise me; it was one of those workplaces where a decent amount of shady things seemed to go on in.

As so often, greed was the reason for being caught; the crooks stole so much that the profits for the unit got too low, and Head Office noticed. They worked out enough, which led to a raid which resulted in the great-grandboss tearing Pointy-Hair into little pieces in front of everyone. However, the underlings got it worse; they were all sacked. Apparently, Head Office had decided the whole barrel was icky and did a clean sweep.

Except for Pointy-Hair. When the unit re-opened, they were the only holdover. My suspicion is that their boss had saved them; they’d had enough clout to call in that favour – perhaps as part of a deal where Pointy-Hair didn’t try to pass the blame upwards. Yet The Company’s own hierarchy was blasé enough about the situation to retain a manager who’d proven to be either hugely incompetent or corrupt.

Enough said, eh?

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my ‘Essays‘ series.

University: Product Not As Described?

In a way, Coronavirus is like Donald Trump for journalists; it’s the gift which simply keeps on giving. In this case, it’s the increasing levels of University students being put under lockdown conditions on campuses, the cancellation of some to all face-to-face teaching and the possibility that some may even be forced to endure the Christmas / New Year period stuck in their term-time accommodation. Even more important than we older folks would imagine; what with the glut of university students due to our seeming utter obsession with the thing.

Ramifications

Lockdown; some which are even stricter than the ones in the spring – not even allowed out to exercise or shop. Result; 24/7 of staring at the walls, some of which will be close indeed, if you take into account how small some Halls rooms are.

Physical isolation; effectively no food or drink with another; games, sports and similar all verboten. Some have cancelled all physical contact with other students and/or their tutors. If the screw is tightened (say due to a case) often a whole residential building or class is thrown into quarantine – backed up with university sanctions if broken.

Allowing some adaptation to suit your own circumstances – could you live under these provisions for months on end? My answer is simple; no. My glorified squat of a flat may be too small legally to even be constructed as such now, but at very least I did not have to share my kitchen or bathroom, was bigger than a glorified cupboard and contained items to alleviate cabin fever, such as books and dumbbells.

What’s more, I could still leave. Even taking work out of the equation, I could still visit shops and take my daily ration of exercise; which in my case was mainly jogging or going for long walks. To use an analogy; while I may have been imprisoned in a cell for the best part of three months, but at very least I was allowed walks in the yard.

Speaking of cells, I didn’t have a cell-mate either. Speaking as a Kid From Care, having to share physical space with complete strangers sucks indeed. Yet, now many tens of thousands of first-year students are being forced to do this – and there’s no escape.

Pile Up The Stress

Another thing which needs to be remembered is the people being subjected to this; mainly those in their late teens and early 20s. First year students will be getting it worse of all – for almost none will be familiar with the situation of you actually living away from the parental home. For a decent slice, this will be the first time they’ve moved away from where they grew up too. Okay, this is kinda theoretical an issue for me (due to being said Kid From Care) but I’ve seen the reactions from enough to know this can be a Big Thing.

In these cases, people end up creating ersatz ‘families’, through friends and so on (this also happens in places like children’s homes). Yet, with the massive restriction on socialisation – how will said students make the friends? Online can help plug this gap, yes; but we are social creatures, and as anyone in elder care knows, loneliness can kill.

Financialisation…

However, the most important issue is that students are paying the best part of twenty thousand pounds for the privilege for renting a room and watching Zoom lectures. As a few people have pointed out, most of these could have done this for half the price with an Open University course from their own bedrooms. A situation exacerbated by the fact the chances of part-time work will be even less than before, what with the combination of student-related closures and the general recession we’re about to enter.

This leads to the obvious question; why. As in; why were Universities re-opened ‘as normal’? Anybody who’s been a student or parent of one knows diseases spread like wildfire, like meningitis. We also knew that coronavirus was bound to flare up again in the autumn. That students would be the ideal vessels to deliver said infections back to larger family units over the Christmas period, just like primary school kids giving their families head lice. And the answer is depressingly simple; money.

Universities are now de facto businesses, always looking to get more ‘surplus’ out of their students. As they’re unable to raise their tuition fees above the nine-and-a-bit grand per year, they’re reliant on ‘extras’ to puff up the surpluses – Halls rentals, selling advertising space, sponsorships, retail unit leases and so on. No physical students, no income – not even from the vending machines.

This is even more serious an issue for most universities are wallowing in debt. A massive glut of spending on Shiny Stuff to impress possible customers, a thick padding of administration staff, the use of marketers, brand managers and so on. Naturally, said debts need to be serviced; and as their best money-makers – international students – have been crippled by the pandemic, they need to sweat their remaining customers – UK students – as much as possible to make up for the shortfall.

…And Commodification

You’ll notice I started to use the term ‘customer’ in the last paragraph. For that is what students have become to their university administration – sources of profit, nothing more. In the administration’s minds, a ‘university education’ is just another commodity to be bought and sold at whatever the markets will bear. Don’t blame them for this; it’s the logical conclusion to the series of marketisation reforms which began in the early ’90s and culminated under the Cameron pseudo-Coalition Government twenty years later.

To their credit, universities generally realised this, asking for government assistance over the summer. This being denied, they were forced to get their UK-based customers back into the campuses, simply so they can get their rental income. While they’d prefer the customers to be able to make more a financial contribution by consuming other things such as retail, they’ll be content enough to charge perhaps £500 a week for Zoom lectures, a box-room and free Wi-Fi.

I wonder if we can put a mark-up on ‘room service’ food deliveries?

End Of The Line?

My thought is this; two can play at this game. If a student is just a customer and education just a commodity, well I’ll say to the students of Britain – you’re being short-changed.

You were partly paying for an ‘university experience’ which may for the most of this year be variants of sitting in a small room with your laptop. You were deceived into thinking it was okay to come back to campus. While you were clearly aware that it wouldn’t be exactly like normal, you at least didn’t think it would be a variant of a 33-week house arrest.

If this was a restaurant and you only got half a meal, you’d get a discount. If you went on holiday and all the entertainments were shut, you’d have reasonable grounds for some recompense. Yet as universities are not de jure companies, you’re apparently exempt – a line being backed up by the government, who basically don’t give a shit about you on this case.

But while Coronavirus threatens to kill or maim British universities, it’s mainly due to the fact they were not in rude health beforehand. The staff and students alike have been more ruthlessly ‘sweated’, marketisation has corrupted standards, teaching has degraded, it’s become overly reliant on international – particularly Chinese and Indian – students, and worst of all – their ‘final product sold’ is becoming hugely devalued.

Bankruptcy or bailout; this will be the ultimate decision at the Government’s door. Or more likely, bankruptcy and then bailout when the Ministers realise the Deans weren’t exaggerating…

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Coronavirus 2020 series.