"Jonathan, our second eldest, suddenly became a flute."

The family round robin letter is one of those alleged seasonal treats, like Brussels sprouts and Christmas pud, that's generally consumed out of duty, rather than for pleasure.* Except for Botnik's Holiday Update "To our wonderful friends and Bob", which is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Enjoy.



*I quite like sprouts, but then I'm weird like that (I don't even object to Christmas pud that much, although a little bit goes a long way).

I have a very bad feeling about this

If you've ever sneered about fragile, weak, over-sensitve "snowflakes", beware, for they have become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational snowflake!

“Left wing snowflakes are killing comedy, tearing down historic statues, removing books from universities, dumbing down panto, removing Christ from Christmas and suppressing free speech. Sadly, it must be true, history does repeat itself. It will be music next”

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if Nadine Dorries suddenly cried out in terror and was suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

Fidelis defensor

As noted by most of the commentariat, a lot has changed for Theresa May over the last year. But one thing has stayed the same:

Theresa May underlines Christian heritage in Christmas message

As I wrote in May:

There's something very regal about Theresa May these days. Regal in the specific sense of resembling the only UK monarch in my living memory, Elizabeth II. Years ago, I linked to an acute pen portrait of Our Dear Queen from a sadly now-inactive blog. Some of the parallels with our famously sphinx-like Prime Minister are striking:

Of course the monarchy can survive, or even flourish, when the monarch does a reasonable job, which in Elizabeth II's case has meant keeping her head down and never saying anything remotely interesting...she understands (unlike her eldest son) that a constitutional monarch is better seen than heard, and that the role consists in being rather than doing.
The present Queen may well be the most boring monarch in British history... She has been for sixty years a vacuum at the heart of the state. Anti-monarchists, like atheists, need something to get their teeth into. Just as it's easier to opposeMichele Bachmann's God than Giles Fraser's, it's easier to oppose a despot or a crowned fruitcake than Queen Elizabeth II... Where public affairs are concerned, the weight of inertia is typically huge. It certainly is in the case of the monarchy (or the NHS, or the BBC). Boring is good, or at least safe from too much scrutiny.
Heresy Corner

Dutiful about things that nobody in their right mind cares about any more, conventional, incurious, unimaginative, pious, platitudinous, out of touch with the world outside her privileged bubble, reassuringly dull, too bland to be objectionable, only there by historical accident, but still there for fear of something worse.

Yeah, I reckon I got that one about right.

My new favourite Christmas song

King of toys and hippopotamuses, full of the light of that stood at the dear Son of Santa Claus

He was born in a wonderful christmas tree

Run, run Rudolph, run, run Rudolph, run, run Rudolph, run, run Rudolph, run, run

Rudolph, run, run Rudolph, run, run

Rudolph, run, run

Rudolf the new born King.

I think Mariah Carey has finally lost Christmas. From a festive post on Janelle Shane's Letting Neural Networks be Weird. Our seasonal Bible reading is taken from Psalm 10010111:

And the wild beasts of the field exult about the sheep of thine anger

Their heart shall be abundantly satisfied with frogs...

Post-fact blues

"'Iconic' blue British passport to return after Brexit" says the BBC headline.

Desperate to salvage the tiniest scrap of anything that smells like good news from the wreckage of their shambolic project, Brexiteers are hailing this trivial change to the colour of a travel document as if it was the arrival of the Messiah come to bring peace on Earth and goodwill to all. "Hark!" the herald Nigel sings "Happy Brexmas! ... In the 2016 referendum, we wanted our passports back. Now we've got them back!"

What this headline (along with all the others) doesn't make clear is the small, but very important, fact that the UK could easily have done this symbolic makeover without leaving the EU:

...the most headdesk thing about the whole “we want our passports back” discussion is that there’s no EU requirement to adopt burgundy passports. It’s a voluntary guideline which member states are free to ignore. Croatia, for example, has retained its existing dark blue passports. It would have been completely possible and legal for David Cameron ahead of the Brexit referendum to say “we understand patriotic feelings yada yada yada, so whatever the result of the vote is, passports will be dark blue from 2020”.

All I want for Christmas is a public broadcaster that doesn't mindlessly recycle fact-free delusions with the solemnity of an exceptionally pious cleric reciting the Gospels. But it looks as if I've got more chance of finding a live unicorn that shits rainbows under the Christmas tree this year.


Update - kudos to Lizzie Dearden at the Independent for putting the record straight:

Blue passports could have been re-introduced without Brexit, Government admits

And for balance, here are some of my favourite reactions to this unnecessary and unimpressive piece of window dressing from the end of Lizzie's article:

...Neil Coyle, the Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, commented: “A new passport that make holidays more expensive, limits where people can work or study & costs billions.”

Many British passport holders born after 1988 took to social media to point out that they never owned the old passport.

“Couldn’t give a toss what colour my passport is,” said actor Samuel West. “Care much more about losing the right to live and work in 26 countries.”

Quite.

Football League shows Dons how to lecture Wombles

"AFC Wimbledon have been charged by the Football League for failing to use MK Dons’ full name during September’s League One clash between the side[s].

Wimbledon called the visitors Milton Keynes or MK, using the latter on the scoreboard, and did not use the team’s badge in the programme."

James Benge

I'm just waiting for the Association of University Teachers to get in on the act and point out that members of the MK team have no business calling themsleves Dons when not one single member of their squad has ever taught at a higher education institution. Guys, you either need to go back to Wimbledon, or break into academia (and that last point goes for you, too, Hamilton Academical FC).

I, for one, look forward to the day when the Dons will be known, not only for their fancy footwork, but for their esoteric, meticulously-researched lectures on number theory, or tax administration in the late Byzantine Empire.

Won't somebody think of the Solstice(s)?

We're so used to people complaining about the commercialisation of Christmas that we're in danger of forgetting the colonisation of this solstice (and the other one) by Mammon. At this special time of year, remember that a solstice is about more than:

"affordable dental and vision plans for individuals and families" (Solstice Benefits Dental Vision and Life Insurance Plan)

"help[ing] Fortune 500 companies seize new opportunities through groundbreaking digital solutions" (Solstice innovation and emerging technology consultants)

"24 HOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE" (shouty Solstice Sunglasses)

"one of our more decorated ships at sea. From world-class staterooms to specialty restaurants" (the cruise ship Celebrity Solstice)

"cannabis growers in Seattle, Washington, for medical marijuana patients and legal recreational marijuana users" (Solstice Medical Marijuana)

"artisan-inspired cuisine in an elegant and relaxed setting" (Solstice Restaurant, Vermont - dress code smart casual, dining style casual elegant, it says here)

"Health Care is Broken - We Have the Solution" (the never knowingly under-hyped Solstice Health Weight-Loss Program)

"a core-based, all levels, family-friendly yoga, barre, and pilates studio with babysitting on-site" (another thing called Solstice)

Let us take a moment to amid all this busyness and commercial hurly-burly to reflect on the true meaning of solstice.

Axial tilt- it really is the reason for the season.

Just thank Jólner that there's no solstital equivalent of the "War on Christmas" - yet. Although in a world where the US Environmental Protection Agency is banned from using phrases like "evidence-based" and the Gove-leaning parts of UK have allegedly "had enough of experts", it might only be a matter of time before we have to give equal time to axial tilt deniers, claiming that the seasonal darkness is God's punishment for humans abandoning family values and no longer being horrible to gays and that the light only returns because people make amends to the deity by sending their kids to crib services.

My solstice wish is that that this new dark age turns out to be as much of an unreal fear as the "War on Christmas" is, so we can all can enjoy a cool Yule this solstice and for many solstices to come.

"Melania said this was okay."

"I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."

The perfect festive gift for all the family...

... is, sadly, no longer available:

"Amazon pulls £450 circumcision training dummy from sale after fears over DIY surgery"

Oh well, I guess it'll have to be gift vouchers as usual this year...

Won't you remember the poor and needy at Christmas?

Is it just me, or is this a bit tone deaf?

"Michel Barnier is 'Scrooge' to rule out bespoke Brexit deal, City bosses say"

"Square Mile lobby group TheCityUK branded Mr Barnier a “Scrooge” for ruling out a bespoke agreement for cross-border frictionless trade between banks and other financial firms" it says here.

Frankly, I'm struggling to imagine the global megabanks of the Square Mile in the role of the warm-hearted but poor and put-upon Cratchits, being oppressed by money-obsessed, flinty-hearted moneybags, Ebenezer Scrooge.

He kept his powder dry

"...there were pieces of people flying past my nose and it was perfectly awful, but not so bad as being at school"

Unconventional war hero Neil "Bunny" Roger recalling the fighting at Anzio where, among other things, he saved the life of a wounded comrade who'd been abandoned in No Man’s Land.

It wasn't the flippant reference to his schooldays which marked Bunny out as unconventional - it seems to have been perfectly standard procedure for wealthy parents to scar their kids for life by educating them at some creepy mansion combining the worst elements of a Victorian theme park and a Spartan barracks* (Prince Charles's miserable time at Gordonstoun is perhaps the best known example).

It was more Bunny's reputation to for going into combat with a rouged face, wearing a chiffon scarf, while brandishing a copy of Vogue magazine which marked him out as a different sort of hero. Apparently, when his sergeant asked for advice about about advancing enemy troops, Bunny replied, "When in doubt, powder heavily."

More on the flamboyant career of Bunny Roger, war hero, dashing style icon, couturier, party animal and interior designer to King Zog of Albania at The Rake.

via

*When people without money subject their kids to such cruel and unusual treatment, they're generally required to explain themselves to social services or, in extreme cases, Jeremy Kyle.

Democracy's poster boy

Back in 2002, David Davis was all for keeping the electorate well-informed, so that political decisions were implemented with informed consent:

"Referendums should be held when the electorate are in the best possible position to make a judgement. They should be held when people can view all the arguments for and against and when those arguments have been rigorously tested. In short, referendums should be held when people know exactly what they are getting. So legislation should be debated by Members of Parliament on the Floor of the House, and then put to the electorate for the voters to judge.

We should not ask people to vote on a blank sheet of paper and tell them to trust us to fill in the details afterwards. For referendums to be fair and compatible with our parliamentary process, we need the electors to be as well informed as possible and to know exactly what they are voting for. Referendums need to be treated as an addition to the parliamentary process, not as a substitute for it." [my bold]

By 2017, not only is Dave cool with lying to voters and Parliament about what the executive's been getting up to but, never mind the electorate, it's apparently fine for even the executive to be ill-informed about the issues:

"What's the requirement of my job? I don't have to be very clever, I don't have to know that much, I do just have to be calm..." [my bold]

Fifteen years ago, he was a persuasive advocate for participatory democracy. Today, a "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster could do most of his job, apart from the lying.

via

Brevity is the soul of sh!t

When loathsome teen-bothering sex pest Roy Moore lost the Alabama Senate race, some twit inevitably came up with a conspiracy theory about the election being stolen. The theory's a twin-pack of malicious bigotry, suggesting that a Jew paid to get black voters illegally bussed in from out of state.

John Rogers duly came up with a forensic demolition of the fantasy logistics behind the alleged conspiracy in this withering tweetstorm.

Great response, but the numbers depress me - it took the twit responsible only one tweet to get the stupid out there and it took 15 tweets to address the sheer volume of idiocy contained in one sub-280* character outburst. At odds like that, mere facts are going to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of short, snappy slanders being generated quicker than they can ever be refuted.



*Corrected from "sub-140" - the tinfoil-hatter took advantage of the increased character limit when "Just reporting the rumor."

The sincerest form of flattery

Here’s an idea: let’s abolish the wheel. Let’s escape the tyranny of the circular device, and spend the money saved on axles, spokes and hubs on — oh, I don’t know — the National Health Service (NHS). Let’s take back control of rotation! But wait a minute. This can’t be done overnight. We shall still need some means of transporting ourselves and our goods until we have formally renounced the wheel, but before we have agreed on a new device. There’ll probably need to be an “implementation period” in which we remain “aligned” with the existing circular format.

Then, when we’ve finally got rid of the old system — let freedom ring! — we’ll need a new, bespoke mechanism. What we’ll want is our own round component that rolls around an axis; an independently designed disc that turns reliably to enable easy movement. Something that gyrates smoothly along the ground. I wonder what we should call it.

Matthew d’Ancona, in a piece titled "Theresa May’s new Brexit campaign is a mirage", published in the Gulf Times, where they presumably know a thing or two about mirages.

What seems to be going on is a reversed version of the branding exercise that a certain discount supermarket does when it wants to make its cheaper own-brand products look as close as possible to their popular branded equivalents, without actually crossing the line into outright counterfeiting:

Alcafé Gold Roast is a work of fiction. Any similarity to other brands of coffee, instant or gold, is purely coincidental.

But where the discount retailer wants its own products to look just like their almost-identical equivalents, the Brexit Delivery Team want their product to look completely unlike the thing they're desperately trying to duplicate in excruciating detail:

Government: "We are proud to announce an innovative new form of circular component, intended to rotate on an axle bearing."

Every Reman and Leave voter who's still awake: "It's a wheel, isn't it?"

Government: "No, it's totally not a wheel. Our old wheel was blue, with yellow stars on it. This is an entirely novel type of component - look, it's red, white and blue!"

Still, at least the government has found an excellent way to unite the whole country - simultaneously patronise and disappoint everybody who voted to leave the EU and everybody who voted to stay. Anyway, good luck trying to get your novel innovation past the patent office, guys.

Bordering on the sane

I woke up very depressed this morning, to a dreary chorus of crowing from the UK press about "progress" towards delivering the suicide pact between the lunatic fringe of the Conservative Party and the DUP.

But, in a world where creative ambiguity means that things like detailed planning and comprehensive risk assessments can simultaneously exist in excruciating detail and not exist at all, language doesn't always mean what you think it means. So it was with some relief that I turned to the Irish press, where Fintan O'Toole has been thinking about what the Irish border deal actually means. If he's right, the latest agreement may be good news for traitors, saboteurs and enemies of the people everywhere:

"This saga has taken many strange turns, but this is the strangest of all: after one of the most fraught fortnights in the recent history of Anglo-Irish relations, Ireland has just done Britain a favour of historic dimensions. It has saved it from the madness of a hard Brexit. There is a great irony here: the problem that the Brexiteers most relentlessly ignored has come to determine the entire shape of their project. By standing firm against their attempts to bully, cajole and blame it, Ireland has shifted Brexit towards a soft outcome. It is now far more likely that Britain will stay in the customs union and the single market. It is also more likely that Brexit will not in fact happen.

Essentially what this extraordinary deal does is to reverse engineer Brexit as a whole from one single component - the need to avoid a hard Irish border. It follows the Sherlock Holmes principle: eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the solution. The Irish Government, by taking a firm stance and retaining the rock solid support of the rest of the EU, made the hard border the defining impossibility. Working back from that, the Brexit project now has to embrace what seemed, even last Monday, highly improbable: the necessity, at a minimum, for the entire UK to mirror the rules of the customs union and the single market after it leaves the EU. And this in turn raises the biggest question of all: if the UK is going to mirror the customs union and the single market, why go to the considerable bother of leaving the EU in the first place?"

It is indeed hard to see how the UK can be outside the customs union and the single market (in any more than name) and enjoy a "free flowing" border with an EU member state, so I'm rather cheered up by Fintan's analysis. A second look at the UK press makes me feel even more optimistic. Apparently Nigel Farage* really hates this deal, which is also a pretty good indication that events are moving in a slightly less insane direction.

I'm not one of those people who use the faintest smidge of Irish ancestry to go big on the whole St Patrick's Day thing. But, going back a century and a half or so, a sizable chunk of my DNA can be traced back to County Mayo, so I hereby pledge that, if Ireland proves to be the final straw that breaks the Brexit camel's back, you can count on me never to ignore another St Paddy's Day.

Sláinte!



*Seriously, why is anybody still listening to the ex-leader of a fringe single-issue party which once reached the dizzy political heights of having one, solitary, MP (who they had to poach from another party and who subsequently deserted them)? Is it because the empty suit who's currently supposed to be leading Ukip has risen without trace?

What does Henry think about this deal? Nobody cares. Poor Henry.

Mad scheme gets green light

This is not good news.

"When politics becomes the whims and mad schemes of a small minority that only listen to themselves, unmodified by the normal checks and balances of a functioning democracy, it should be treated by the non-partisan media for what it is, not normalised as just more of the same...

...Those who brought us Brexit and backed or tolerated Trump have to be disgraced as the harbingers of disaster. Their control of the Republican and Conservative parties must end."

Open Democracy

If David Davis has been telling the truth all along, it's time to panic

As Arthur C Clarke said about intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, two frightening scenarios exist:

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

After David Davis's appearance before the Brexit select committee yesterday, I think that the search for intelligent life in the Department for Exiting the European Union yields a similarly terrifying pair of binary options:

1. David Davis is telling the truth now, when he says that the impact studies and analysis don't exist, but he was lying in the past when he said they existed in "excruciating detail"

2. David Davis is lying now, when he says that the impact studies and analysis don't exist, but he was telling the truth in the past when he said they did.

1. is terrifying because it means that the UK is taking the most significant peacetime decision in its history with virtually no planning or risk assessment. 2. is terrifying because the risk assessments exist, but Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union is pretending they don't, presumably because their conclusions are too frightening to share with the public.

I bet they do exist, in some form or other. I bet Davis has decided he'd rather take heat for misleading Parliament and the public than come clean about what Government knows Brexit means. https://t.co/DARDqHtgBF

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) 6 December 2017

Unfortunately for fans of neat correspondences, and for people who think that surely by now we must have reached rock bottom, a third possibility exists:

3. David Davis is telling the truth now, when he says that the impact studies and analysis don't exist and he was also telling the truth in the past when he said they did.

3. could be true if DExEU did analyse the probable impact, but the results were so horrific that they subsequently destroyed their work and ordered everybody who knew of its existence never to speak of it again. In that case, Davis could then have been technically telling the truth all along, with implications that are even more terrifying than scenarios 1. and 2.

I now think they DID exist and he’s destroyed them.

— Kate Edmonds #BFPE (@kate_edmonds_CS) 6 December 2017

Logically, there's a fourth possibility, that Davis was lying in the past and is lying now, but this one doesn't really make much sense to me. DExEU could have failed to do its homework when Davis was confidently assuring everybody that it was all well in hand, then cobbled something together at the last minute, but if that's true and the work exists, why stand before the committee and pretend that his department hasn't done it? Unless, or course, the conclusions of the department's  last-minute impact studies and analysis were as terrifying as 2., or as utterly horrific as 3.

Whatever the right answer, just be grateful that you're not David Davis. Or, as Monty Python sang:

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

Virtue-signalling? Seriously?

"Hypocrisy" said François de La Rochefoucauld "is a tribute vice pays to virtue." Nobody talks about virtue much these days, except for a few media types who never tire of scolding others for the modern sin of "virtue-signalling."

When somebody  complains about virtue-signalling, the odds are quite high that the complainer hasn't got anything very interesting to say, but has simply found a more impressive-sounding way to call somebody else a prig. As David Shariatmadari pointed out last year, the phrase might have a technical, social sciencey sound, but it doesn't amount to much more than saying "I bet you didn't really mean that good thing you just said":

1. Bill is saying something right-on
2. Virtue-signalling is when you say something right-on just to sound good
3. Therefore Bill is virtue-signalling

But 3. is not justified by 1. and 2. You can argue for something that happens to make you look virtuous because you genuinely think it is the best solution. That’s the case, for example, with most religious beliefs. Do we really think the pope is just virtue-signalling?

According to David Shariatmadari, the phrase was first popularised by the Spectator's James Bartholomew in April 2015, so if it ever had any specific meaning, (apart from being a longer, more pretentious way to call somebody a prig), it should have meant something back then.

And maybe it did. In 2015, just before the Brexit-Trump inflecton point, the economic and political elite was still trying to justify its hegemony with token gestures towards equality and diversity,  rather than just appealing to the post-2016 values of zero-sum nationalism and authoritarian xenophobia. In that specific historical context, the idea of empty "virtue-signalling" by an elite that wanted to look inclusive, while jealously guarding its exclusivity did actually make some sense, as this article suggests:

At the core of this ethos were ideals of “diversity,” women’s “empowerment,” and LGBTQ rights; post-racialism, multiculturalism, and environmentalism. These ideals were interpreted in a specific, limited way that was fully compatible with the Goldman Sachsification of the U.S. economy. Protecting the environment meant carbon trading. Promoting home ownership meant subprime loans bundled together and resold as mortgage-backed securities. Equality meant meritocracy.

The reduction of equality to meritocracy was especially fateful. The progressive-neoliberal program for a just status order did not aim to abolish social hierarchy but to “diversify” it, “empowering” “talented” women, people of color, and sexual minorities to rise to the top. And that ideal was inherently class specific: geared to ensuring that “deserving” individuals from “underrepresented groups” could attain positions and pay on a par with the straight white men of their own class. The feminist variant is telling but, sadly, not unique. Focused on “leaning in” and “cracking the glass ceiling,” its principal beneficiaries could only be those already in possession of the requisite social, cultural, and economic capital. Everyone else would be stuck in the basement.

If you'd said that David Cameron was "virtue-signalling", back in 2006, when he had himself photographed cycling to work (while his briefcase was being chauffeured to work in the car behind), you'd have actually made a specific point about token gestures.

But that progressive neoliberal moment is over. When Donald Trump wanted to distract attention from the fact that his much-vaunted tax reforms were going to do squat for the folk on Main Street, while handing him and his billionaire buddies tax breaks on their private jets, he didn't have himself photographed cycling to work, or hugging a husky.

Instead, he retweeted some hateful nonsense being circulated by a bunch of neo-Nazis, so his base were too delighted, and everybody else too horrified, to notice what was really going on.

Apparently, vice no longer sees why it needs to pay virtue anything.

Donald Trump - full of empathy and free of guilt?

Thanks mainly to the Twit in Chief, the topic of hate speech is trending again. There's a widely-accepted theory to explain what's going on with people who use demeaning, insulting language:

"If we’re experiencing guilt about our treatment of some person, or group, or class, and having trouble reconciling that guilt with our notion of ourselves as good people, our brains are extremely adept at resolving the situation by othering the people we feel that we’ve wronged. If we dehumanise someone, and distance our empathy with them, then we won’t have to feel bad about the shabby way we’ve treated them."

So we inoculate ourselves against our instinctive empathy with language that disables our better instincts towards others. This may be true in a lot of cases, but it doesn't quite ring true for a lot of Trump's own outbursts. The mindset behind a lot of Trump's own tweets seems closer to the one characterised in a recent article by Paul Bloom:

"At some European soccer games, fans make monkey noises at African players and throw bananas at them. Describing Africans as monkeys is a common racist trope, and might seem like yet another example of dehumanization. But plainly these fans don’t really think the players are monkeys; the whole point of their behavior is to disorient and humiliate. To believe that such taunts are effective is to assume that their targets would be ashamed to be thought of that way—which implies that, at some level, you think of them as people after all."

This so captures the essence of Trump that you could bottle it. His instinct to go for the emotional jugular, to goad and humiliate others, seems to be the flip side of his own limitless appetite for status, respect and adulation.

As far as I can see, Trump hasn't turned off his sense of empathy. He acts as if he believes that other people are like him and share his overwhelming neediness and desire to be respected and loved. He also seems to view social relations as a zero-sum game - there's only a limited amount of respect and love out there, so the best way to get some is to take it away from somebody else. So he uses his instinctive empathy, his innate feeling for the things that would most hurt him (loss of status, mockery, belittling), and turns them against his targets.

This isn't the behaviour of somebody who needs to overcome feelings of guilt about treating others in a shabby way. It's the behaviour of somebody who feels no guilt about inflicting distress. I suspect that acting badly doesn't make him feel ashamed - only losing status can do that.

If he was just one bad apple, however influential, this wouldn't be a problem. But, of course, he's not. Most of us share some Trump's desires for love, respect and status, although not in such grotesquely hypertrophied forms - he wouldn't keep on trying to humiliate people if it didn't sting.

And Trump fits into the structures and mechanisms of humiliation that we've created. His own T.V. show, The Apprentice was both the perfect vehicle for Trump and the perfect example of an engineered environment made for the perpetuation of Trumpist values. It's an arena where desperate supplicants compete for the patronage of the highest-status individual in the room, who acts as judge, jury and executioner.

Social media was sold to us as the opposite - an anti-hierarchical space which would democratise speech and give everyone a voice, but many aspects of it seem to have replicated the values of The Apprentice's war of all against all - the endless competition for followers and reach, the new opportunities it gives to the powerful and shameless to shame and silence the less powerful.

This sort of thing can only happen where inequalities of power enables bullies - if the person doing this doesn't wield power, you can walk away, or decide not to care. Maybe this partly explains the current fashion for rediscovering Stoic virtues* and the idea that, if we can't take up arms against the slings and arrows of outrageously powerful buffoons, we can at least suffer them with dignified equanimity. It might be worth a shot, as we endure the depressing wait for the day when the Trumps of this world finally overreach themselves and bring their gilded age of toxic inequality and status-obsession to an end.



*Is Stoicism the new mindfulness?

Furious celeb SLAMS Hull's Christmas trees as ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA

Any insufficient display of enthusiasm for things Christmas-related is usually cited, by members of the alt-right, as evidence for a mythical "war on Christmas" allegedly being waged by an improbable alliance of hard-line secularists and Islam's most inflexible God-botherers. The people behind this odd victim narrative have to get quite creative to come up with anything that looks like evidence for this apostate/heathenish plot (the zombie legend of Winterval, or subversive symbolism hiding on Starbucks coffee cups, among other outlandish claims), because of the overwhelming evidence that most people in the UK routinely celebrate Christmas without any fear of persecution.

Still, at least this means that if you do do something Christmassy, these silly people will get off your case, right? That must be what Hull City Council thought when they came up with the bright idea of decorating the anti-terror bollards around the city's Queen Victoria Square with Christmas trees. As a make-over, I think it works pretty well, but the local authority hadn't reckoned with the now-too-toxic-even-for-the-Daily Mail former reality star, Katie Hopkins, who tweeted, bizarrely:

"Do not use OUR symbols of hope to cover up for THEIR hate. Deport jihadi bastards."

Her (hastily-deleted) Twitter outburst is a useful way of reminding everybody else that there's obviously no pleasing these people, so there's absolutely no point in trying to appease, or reason, with them. Fortunately, now she's lost her soapbox at the Mail, it should be easier than ever to do the right thing and completely ignore Katie Hopkins and her incoherently ignorant opinions.

"We're going to build a wall and Ireland is going to pay."

Just when you thought that nobody could possibly out-stupid the Brexiteering eejits in the May government, Labour's Kate Hoey says "Hold my Guinness" and goes full Trump.

"Greed is good" revisited

"The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind."

Gordon Gekko was a Hollywood caricature of villainy, so obviously he was wrong, wrong, wrong. Or was he? Maybe there are worse things than greed, at least for certain values of greed.

I'm starting to wonder whether Gordon Gekko had a point, after reading this, by Andrew Rawnsley:

"The cowardly, the desperadoes and the unscrupulous will take the national conversation in darker directions. If they can no longer plausibly promise to make people better off, some pursuers of power will seek to create dividing lines around identity and nationality. That ugly trend is already manifest at home and abroad."

Rawnsley just gave an example of someting worse than a greed-driven political economy; one driven by spite.

If you vote for politicians because they're credibly promising to make you and your family better off, isn't that greedy? You could say that, but it's still better than voting for some bullying motormouth who can't make you any better off, but has a plan to punish the designated scapegoats.

What took him so long?

Crypto-fascist strongman stiffs his allies, cuts deal with fellow crypto-fascist strongman.

With a sort of tragic inevitabilty,  the only good thing to come out of the Syrian tragedy is being strangled at birth.

Remember this flag. It's what hope used to look like.

Conservative home and away

Daniel Hannan raised a few eyebrows this week when he used a Consevative Home article to vent about his fellow Brexiteer, Arron Banks. According to Hannan, it was the official campaign, Vote Leave, wot won it. In contrast, Hannan called the Arron Banks-funded Leave.EU campaign a "hapless and hopeless" "wrecking operation" which did nothing to help the Leavers win, but only functioned "as a vehicle to promote himself [Arron Banks] and Nigel Farage."

There's a perfectly rational reason for Hannan's attack. The media are delving into where Banks got the money that propped up Ukip and, along with the Electoral Commission, are looking at allegations  that officially separate pro-Brexit campaign groups illicitly colluded to share money and resources in order to breach campaign funding limits. The main reason for the article is to distance Hannan and his fellow Vote Leave Tory Brexiteers from the dodgy-looking geezers of Ukip and Leave.EU.

"There have been technical investigations into both Leave and Remain on compliance issues. But it’s Banks who is attracting the most fevered speculation about where his money came from. No proof of wrongdoing has been found, but the lurid nature of the accusation is being used to suggest that Leave won improperly.

To repeat, Banks’s outfit was not Vote Leave, or even an ally of Vote Leave...

...As far as the Electoral Commission’s investigation goes, Banks is as entitled as anyone else to the presumption of innocence. Being a boastful, belligerent man-child doesn’t make you a Russian agent."

In other words:

"You can't prove he did anything (we hope), but even if you find out that he did do something, he's got nothing to do with us. Move along, nothing to see here." 

So far, so Mandy Rice-Davis.

But the string of insults about the "hapless and hopeless" campaigning of the "boastful, belligerent man-child" reminds us that this is deeply personal, too. It's also the latest round in a long and bitter feud of easily-bruised egos taking place in the exclusive bubble inhabited by millionaire political donors and the politicians who court them. It's been going on at least since Banks stopped giving money to the Conservatives and started funding Ukip, but really came to a head when William Hague said that he'd "never heard" of the former Tory donor, causing Banks to increase his donation to Ukip from £100,00 to £1 million out of spite, or wounded self-importance.  For the careerists in the Conservative family, the political is personal.

It's a bit like watching members of a highly dysfunctional family plotting and squabbling over which one of them is going to inherit the family house. Only they're all so intent on making sure that no other sibling gets the house that none have noticed that the house itself is on fire. From the perspective of an observer on the other side of the pond, the flames engulfing the family mansion are only too obvious:

"The world recently commemorated the centennial of the Russian Revolution, which resulted from the flagrant incompetence of that country’s ruling class in confronting a moment of overwhelming national crisis. The barricades are not yet out in the streets of modern-day London, but a certain sense of déjà vu is appropriate. At the least, we are likely witnessing the slow-motion suicide of the Conservative Party, and, conceivably, of British conservatism more broadly defined.

In the British case, the crisis involves the nation’s referendum vote in June 2016 to withdraw from the European Union. Opinions may differ about the virtues of Brexit as an idea—I opposed it—but once it was decided, most everyone agreed that the process of extraction had to be implemented with great care and single-minded dedication. The actual response of the Conservative government has been deplorable to the point of unforgivable—inept, slipshod, insouciant, and ignorant of even the basic realities of law and process."

Philip Jenkins, writing for The American Conservative, was just getting into his stride there. Just wait until he gets down to the nitty-gritty of the "victory" Vote Leave and Leave.EU are both claiming credit for:

"After the referendum, Theresa May emerged as prime minister with a firm commitment to the principle “Brexit means Brexit.” Accordingly, she chose leading Brexit campaigners for key positions, including Boris Johnson as foreign secretary and David Davis as head of the new department in charge of exiting the European Union (DExEU) and chief negotiator of withdrawal. Liam Fox carries responsibility for international trade, which includes negotiating new agreements outside the old EU framework.

Painfully early, it became apparent that none of this Gang of Four had a clue of what they talking about in relation to Europe, nor did they understand the basic principles by which the EU worked. It is not so much that they approached the key issues wrongly—they did not even perceive them as issues. Throughout the referendum campaign, Brexiteers had trivialized the question of future relationships with the EU, suggesting that these would easily be decided in high-level summits within weeks rather than years. There was therefore not the slightest need to prepare detailed negotiating principles. As Johnson explicitly stated, the new British relationship with Europe would be exactly what it was at present, although omitting some of the features he found unpalatable, such as unrestricted EU immigration.

When Britain invoked Article 50, no government figure grasped the implications. Until quite recently, Johnson and Davis mocked the notion that Britain might have to pay a penny for the divorce bill. (The British government is now admitting a liability of some tens of billions, a sum that will definitely increase.) When the reborn Irish Question finally surfaced in their minds, Davis presented a vision of an invisible border made possible by as-yet undeveloped high technology, a prospect that has been commonly derided as magical thinking. Oh, and remember those vast new trading empires outside Europe, with all those lucrative deals being signed almost immediately? There’s no sign of any movement in that direction."

Come to think of it, my analogy of a dysfunctional family squabbling over the inheritance was altogether too kind. Vote Leave and Leave.EU arguing about who won the referendum are more like a pair of arsonists both wanting all the credit for burning down the house. "It would never have happened without me!", boasts box of matches guy. "But he was hapless and hopeless!" counters can of paraffin guy, "I was the one who did all the heavy lifting!" While all around, law-abiding folk shake their heads and wonder how anybody can be so thoughtlessly delinquent as to claim credit for replacing a perfectly good house with a useless pile of blackened, smouldering timbers.

Post-truth for dummies

A fish rots from the head down, so they say. First, our most high-profile, charismatic politicians find that they can get away with gaslighting their critics, by flat out denying the reality of whatever they've been criticised for. Now the big fish have got away with it, the minnows are trying the same trick.

This is what happened. A bunch of MPs voted against transferring the EU protocol on animal sentience into UK law. Some people didn't like it. Instead of addressing the issues, certain MPs have decided that if our most famous post-truthians can get away with gaslighting, they'll have a go. There are two forms of gaslighting being tried out here, respectively named after their most famous proponents:

1. The Johnson
"I have been misconstrued" ("How could you be stupid enough to believe that I said the thing I clearly just said, or did the thing I obviously just did. It's probably not your fault though - not everybody can be as clever as me.") . Here's Zac Goldsmith, doing a Johnson:

No, MPs did not vote that animals aren't sentient @Benfogle @domdyer70 @DeborahMeaden @sueperkins pic.twitter.com/eQLz6plfa9

— Zac Goldsmith (@ZacGoldsmith) 21 November 2017

2.The Trump
"FAKE NEWS" ("Somebody just disagreed with me? That's not even a real thing, it's FAKE NEWS, believe me.") Here's Rachel Maclean's Trump tribute tweet:

So disappointing to have to combat fake news. Neither I nor any other Conservative MP voted against animals as sentient beings. This government cares deeply about animal welfare and has done more to protect with more measures on the way. This is mischief making pure and simple pic.twitter.com/0nCkdaddwf

— Rachel Maclean MP (@redditchrachel) 21 November 2017

Zac, Rachel, if you're listening, you might think that pretending that you've been misconstrued, or fallen victim to fake news, makes you look big, or clever. It doesn't. What does it make you look like, I wonder?

Shameful bastards, denying what is obvious - animal sentience.
Let's not take this one lying down. #resist https://t.co/EqHeg8HKWz

— Sue Perkins (@sueperkins) 20 November 2017

Thank you Sue, you took the words right out of my mouth.

Top tip: "Shameful bastard" shouldn't be an aspirational role model.

"To insanity and beyond!"

'I don’t believe in science.' Man who thinks Earth is flat plans to launch self on a rocket

...“I don’t believe in science,” said Hughes, whose main sponsor for the rocket is Research Flat Earth. “I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that’s not science, that’s just a formula. There’s no difference between science and science fiction.”

USA Today

A proud day for the USA, but a bittersweet one for the UK's own delusional space programme, which was cancelled when interstellar colony ship enthusiast Aidan Powlesland failed to get himself elected as Ukip leader, robbing us of the chance to be the first nation to fire members of its unrealty-based community beyond the reach of Earth's gravity and experts, while probably winning us a bonus Darwin Award, too.

From the annals of questionable research

"Countries where people tend to value autonomy and harmony the most tend to drink more alcohol, our latest study shows. And countries where people are more likely to value hierarchy, security and obedience, tend to drink less alcohol."

Really? I guess it's time to pour myself a large vodka and drink a toast to Mother Russia, avatar of that famously harmonious society where everybody's too busy enjoying their world-beating levels of personal autonomy to get uptight about heavy stuff like hierarchy, security and obedience:

"Alcohol consumption in Russia stays among the highest in the world. According to the WHO in a 2011 report, annual per capita consumption was about 15.76 litres, fourth highest volume in Europe."

It's not too hard to guess where this study went wrong, just from skimming the article about it. This, for example, looks like a clue:

"We found that countries with populations that valued autonomy and harmony, such as France and Germany, tended to have higher average levels of alcohol consumption. However, countries such as Iran and Senegal, where people hold more traditional values dear, such as hierarchy and being part of a collective, drank less alcohol."

So people in rich countries like France and Germany are drinking more than people in theocracies where alcohol is banned, and/or poor countries where many people couldn't afford to drink as much, even if they wanted to? This doesn't exactly convince me that where a nation sits on the liberal/authoritarian spectrum is likely to be the most useful predictor of how much booze the people there are drinking.

I'm not saying it's aliens...

... because I really don't believe it is. But there is a tiny "I want to believe" voice in the back of my head, saying:

"Is this interstellar asteroid really ten times longer than it is wide? If so, are any of the other half million or so known natural asteroids so freakishly long and thin? Because if there are no known examples from a population that size of any other natural object being that shape..."

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe at least one other asteriod that skinny has already been observed and I just don't know about it. Or perhaps 'Oumuamua isn't really that shape at all, but has bright and dark areas that account for the variation in brightness as it spins.

That's what I get for reading Rendezvous with Rama at an impressionable age. I have to keep reminding myself that this is almost certainly a naturally occurring Big Dumb Object.



Update - according to Monica Grady, who ought to know, sometimes a cigar-shaped object is just a cigar-shaped object.

Gosh, is he terrified?

“Gosh I’m terrified.”

Millionare Ukip donor Arron Banks's sarcastic tweet from the 1st of November, when the Electoral Commission opened an investigation into whether he'd breached campaign finance rules during the Brexit referendum.

"Unless you set out in the next 21 days the source of these allegations and why you find them credible, we intend to seek a judicial review of the decision to investigate our campaign and the political reasons why."

Millionare Ukip donor Arron Banks, on the 20th of November, sounding considerably more rattled - and less cocky - as the ongoing investigations into his murky activities start hotting up.

Is he starting to worry that the Electoral Commission might belatedly start doing its job?

______

Update 21/12/2017 - well, Arron's had his 21 days, and then some, and I still haven't seen any sign of the threatened judicial review in the news. Then again, I don't know how long these things take. Or maybe it's been applied for and I just missed it, but it's unusual for such a relentless self-promoter to do anything quietly and without fuss, so my verdict of "all mouth and no trousers" still apparently stands, at least for now.

If he's really got anything, Banks is welcome to go ahead and prove me wrong. Otherwise, he's welcome to do us all a favour and keep his great flapping pie-hole shut.

"Goodbye, Mr Bond"

After Steve Mnuchin and his wife posed with a sheet of newly printed money for that photo, a few people commented that the couple looked like Bond villains. Was the multimillionaire former banker and hedgie embarrassed?  Of course not:

“I guess I should take that as a compliment that I look like a villain in a great, successful James Bond movie,” the treasury secretary told Fox News on Sunday.

Two things:

1. Who said anything about all Bond films being "great" or "successful"? Clearly, somebody's never seen Octopussy.

2. Talking of "successful", even the dimmest movie goer should have worked out by now that the salient feature of Bond villains is their total lack of success. Ever since Dr No in 1962, Bond villains have been reliably failing to realise their fiendish plots and coming to sticky ends, generally a few minutes before or after 007 destroys their life's work in a series of massive explosions.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld is the closest thing to not-a-complete-failure in the Bond-villain-verse, having at least survived several defeats. In his eight film incarnations to date, he has, however, lost comprehensively to Bond on at least seven occasions.

If you were being insanely generous, you could could call the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, when Blofeld manages to assassinate Bond's new wife, a score draw. But, as Bond has just comprehensively destroyed Blofeld's world domination plan, along with his supervillain base, this looks less like a draw to me and more like some sore loser knocking over the Scrabble table in a fit of pique.

I guess that when you've worked in a Wall Street that crashed the global economy, then for a guy who couldn't successfully make a profit out of the suckers queueing up to lose their money at casinos, your idea of a "successful" role model must be a little bit odd.

"One regular black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking, nauseous puddle-water to go, please."

Wake up and smell the coffee? No thanks, mine's a beer...

Certainly our Countrymens pallates are become as Fantastical as their Brains; how ellse is't possible they should Apostatize from the good old primitve way of Ale-drinking, to run a whoring after such variety of distructive Foreign Liquors, to trifle away their time, scald their Chops, and spend their Money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking, nauseous Puddle-water: Yet (as all Witches have their Charms) so this ugly Turskish Enchantress by certain Invisible Wyres attracts both Rich and Poor; so that those that have scarece Twopence to buy their Children Bread, must spend a penny each evening in this Insipid Stuff: Nor can we send one of our Husbands to Call a Midwife, or borrow a Glister-pipe, but he must stay an hour by the way drinking his two Dishes, and two Pipes. 

From The Womens Petition Against Coffee (1674)

A "glister pipe" was apparently a tube used for administering enemas.* If you think that millennials oversharing on the Internet is a problem, just consider that sharing photos of your smashed avacado on Instagram, although seemingly pointless, is at least a more hygienic form of networking than swapping enema pipes with your besties.

Talking of oversharing, The Womens Petition wasn't just a complaint about spouses frittering away the family money at the coffee shop, then coming back wired and super late. The anonymous pamphleteer was also worried that this suspicious foreign beverage was sapping husbandly libidos and wasn't shy about describing the supposed effects of:

...the Excessive use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE, which Riffling Nature of her Choicest Treasures, and Drying up the Radical Moisture, has so Eunucht our Husbands, and Cripple our more kind Gallants, that they are become as Impotent as Age, and as unfruitful as those Desarts whence that unhappy Berry is said to be brought.

For the continual flipping of this pitiful drink is enough to bewitch Men of two and twenty, and tie up the Codpiece-points without a Charm. It renders them that use it as Lean as Famine, as Rivvel'd as Envy, or an old meager Hagg over-ridden by an Incubus. They come from it with nothing moist but their snotty Noses, nothing stiffe but their Joints, nor standing but their Ears: They pretend 'twill keep them Waking, but we find by scurvy Experience, they sleep quietly enough after it. A Betrothed Queen might trust her self a bed with one of them, without the nice Caution of a sword between them: nor can call all the Art we use revive them from this Lethargy, so unfit they are for Action, that like young Train-band-men when called upon Duty, their Ammunition is wanting; peradventure they Present, but cannot give Fire, or at least do but flash in the Pan, instead of doing executions.

Whether this Seventeenth Century tweetstorm actually  persuaded any of London's coffee shop hipsters to kick their caffeine habit, I don’t know, but someone was eventually bound to question the dubious assertion that potency was best achieved by abstaining from coffee and having a few jars of ale, instead.

Nobody knows the true identity of the Restoration Twitter egg behind The Womens Petition. The author presented as female, but some people think it was written by an angrily anonymous male troll. Me, I think it was probably written by a hacked-off brewer, (most likely a bloke, as this was well after the medieval heyday of the alewife).

There's some interesting background on The Womens Petition, along with the full text of the pamphlet, here.


*and also for the Seventeenth Century wellness fad of blowing tobacco smoke up a patient's bottom.

Inspirational spiritual quote of the day #3

Tbh I'm glad Christians kicked off and Greggs apologised for replacing Jesus with a sausage roll. No other religion would stand for that nonsense.

— Idealist (@ClinicallyLuxe) 15 November 2017

*goes to mass and eats Jesus, who the church has replaced with a small piece of bread*

As far as I know, Greggs' Advent calendars will still be going on sale in selected Greggs’ shops across the UK from Monday November 20. Available, while stocks last, at a price of £24 (RRP).

#1

#2

Whataboutery for dummies

whataboutery

/ˌwɒtəˈbaʊtəri/

noun BRITISH

the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.

This is how a real expert does it:

"Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at [indiscernible] – excuse me – what about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?

... What about this? What about the fact that they came charging – they came charging with clubs in their hands swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do...

...As far as I’m concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day. Wait a minute, I'm not finished. I'm not finished, fake news. That was a horrible day...

...I will tell you something. I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people watched it. And you had, you had a group on one side that was bad. And you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I'll say it right now. You had a group – you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent."

A masterclass in mendacious obfuscation from one of the most practised bullshitters in the business. Often imitated, seldom equalled.

To show how it shouldn't be done, here's a bumbling amateur trying the same trick:

Brendan Cox, the husband of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox ... accused the 53-year-old MEP [Nigel Farage] of stoking tensions over a terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market. Mr Farage had appeared to blame the attack on Angela Merkel, leading Mr Cox to claim he was "blaming politicians for the actions of extremists".

In response, Mr Farage said: "Yes, well of course he would know more about extremists than me, Mr Cox. He backs organisations like Hope Not Hate, who masquerade as being lovely and peaceful, but actually pursue violent and undemocratic means.”

These two things look the same, but there's an important difference. Donald Trump was able to get away with muddying the waters with a libellous smear, by libelling something vague and nebulous called the "alt-left", which can't sue him because it doesn't exist.

Donald Trump's #1 superfan made the elementary mistake of libelling the anti-fascists at HOPE Not Hate who, unfortunately for Farage, do exist and, thanks to 16,000 supporters who crowdfunded their legal costs, could sue him for the slur. Farage has now been forced to withdraw his claim that the group employed "violent and undemocratic means", while still trying to weasel his way out of admitting his climb-down.

Poor Nigel. He really hasn't got the hang of this libel business, has he? Sad.

Weirdly, not a Daily Mash headline

" Estate agent says London's millennials should stop buying sandwiches, holidays and splashing cash on nights out in order to afford a house"

Top trolling from some gleefully callous sociopath at estate agents Strutt and Parker. Bonus points for mocking the victims of the Great British Housing Rip-Off with a virtuoso display of finger-wagging condescension.

I'm sure that millennials will just love being on the receiving end of an improving sermon from the bloodsucking  cheerleaders of the UK's dismally unproductive rentier economy:

According to the Resolution Foundation, homeowners born in the 1940s and 1950s gained an unearned windfall of £80,000 between 1993 and 2014 alone. In the early 2000s, house price growth was so great that 17% of working-age adults earned more from their house than from their job...

...As house prices have continued to increase and the gap between house prices and earnings has grown larger, the cost of homeownership has become increasingly prohibitive. Whereas in the mid-1990s low and middle income households could afford a first time buyer deposit after saving for around 3 years, today it takes the same households 20 years to save for a deposit. Many have increasingly found themselves with little choice but to rent privately. For those stuck in the private rental market, the proportion of income spent on housing costs has risen from around 10% in 1980 to 36% today. Unlike homeowners, there is no asset wealth to draw on to fund new cars or holidays.

Laurie Macfarlane

You won't believe what he looks like now!

Prince Philip looks far more cheerful now he's retired.

John Redwood sells out - tells investors "Don't invest in UK."

This is what Brexiteer John Redwood says in public:

'We'll be fine!' John Redwood issues fiery riposte to Brexit 'no-deal' doom-mongers

This is his private advice to anybody thinking of investing in the UK:

Redwood’s advice to investors is to flee the UK before the credit crunch bites:

I sold out of the general share ETFs in the UK after their great performance for the year from early July 2016 when I saw the last Budget and heard the BoE’s credit warnings. The money could be better put to work in places where the authorities are allowing credit to expand a bit, to permit faster growth.

Sounds sensible, doesn’t it?

No. It is an absolute disgrace for this man to give such advice.

You see, the Rt. Hon. John Redwood MP – to give him his full title – is a lawmaker. He is an elected member of the House of Commons. And not just any lawmaker. He is a senior member of the Conservative Party, which is currently in government and making a total hash of the Brexit negotiations. He is also a former Cabinet Minister and a member of the Privy Council.

This senior lawmaker is advising investors to stop investing in his country.

Frances Coppola

Words fail me.

Update - although words apparently don't fail John Redwood. He actually said this:

"'All they ever do is run the UK down' Tory SLAMS Labour attempts to release Brexit pappers [sic]"

What a piece of work.

Blue planet in crisis

Doubts around Theresa May’s leadership trigger sharp falls in Sterling: sea turtles "concerned."

Probably just another headline/image pairing mismatch by Google News's algorithm, although I wouldn't be entirely surprised to hear that even marine reptiles in the far-off Pacific are shaking their scaly heads in disbelief at the sheer magnitude of the British government's omnishambolic implosion.

Inspirational spiritual quote of the day #2

“Calling the bishops spineless nerds and sycophantic half-wits is not going to encourage them to adopt your point of view.”

Benedictine monk, Dom Mark Patrick Hederman, OSB, former Abbot of Glenstal Abbey, County Limerick, addressing the annual meeting of the Association of Catholic Priests.

"And if I ever catch you using that sort of language, I'll kick your sorry arse into the middle of next week, Crilly", added Bishop Brennan...

#1 here

Kanga falls into heffalump trap; Tigger worried

We now know which bedtime stories Nanny reads in the Rees-Mogg household. After Priti Patel blundered into the enormous trap she'd dug for herself, Jacob Rees-Mogg decided that it was too soon to rule out the idea that dastardly Remainer saboteurs had, in fact, secretly dug the trap thamselves, as part of a cunning false flag operation. To frustrate their knavish tricks, Jacob insisted that Priti's replacement should be "somebody who has accepted that Brexit is happening and will support it properly and won't be a frightful Eeyore."

It's a memorable phrase* although I'm not sure that the adventures of a Bear of Very Little Brain are really that relevant to the current situation. There is, however, a story involving a Fox of Very Little Brain which might give you a more accurate summary of where we are right now. It's called Dave, Boz and Lee’s Global Adventure. You really should ask Nanny to read it to you some time, Jacob.





*And politer than most of the things Remainers routinely get called - I'll happily settle for "frightful Eeyore", if the alternatives are "remoaner", "remainiac", "traitor", "saboteur", or "enemy of the people." If I need to dress up next Halloween, I'll probably go for a "frightful Eeyore" cozzie - it sounds a way easier look for an average-looking guy to carry off than "sexy vampire."

Adaptive homeostasis

Back in 2012, I was confident that people would eventually grow tired of "Facebook ... (which will probably go into unlamented terminal decline as the intrusive, stalker-ish changes required to effectively monitor, control and monetise its users become annoying enough to make many of them abandon Facebook and adopt The Next Big Thing, whatever that turns out to be)."

How wrong I was. Facebook is still there. The creeping intrusiveness has accelerated. But instead of getting angry, or even mildly annoyed, people are calmly adapting to an environment where the most outrageous privacy violations are treated as something perfectly normal:

Behind the Facebook profile you’ve built for yourself is another one, a shadow profile, built from the inboxes and smartphones of other Facebook users. Contact information you’ve never given the network gets associated with your account, making it easier for Facebook to more completely map your social connections...

...having acknowledged that people in your address book may not necessarily want to be connected to you, Facebook will then do exactly what it warned you not to do. If you agree to share your contacts, every piece of contact data you possess will go to Facebook, and the network will then use it to try to search for connections between everyone you know, no matter how slightly—and you won’t see it happen.

Kashmir Hill

Still not creepy enough for ya? Then check this out:

Facebook has a new strategy for combating revenge porn: It wants to see your nudes first, before an abuser has the chance to spread them.

As part of a new feature the social network is testing in Australia, users are being asked to upload explicit photos of themselves before they send them to anyone else, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

This is how the new feature works. First, you upload an explicit image of yourself to Facebook Messenger (you can do so by starting a conversation with yourself). Then, you flag it as a "non-consensual intimate image" for Facebook.

Louise Matsakis

Is it already too late to point out that absolutely none of this is remotely O.K?