One could be amused or seriously dismayed at the state of democracy in the US. Even as we in the UK are seeking terminal boredom in the hope of accidentally finding competence, so the US seems to be polarised around Trump and Biden, with immense amounts of hate spilling in all directions. I have wondered if there are nudges from other nation states or whether even if possible, they would be completely unnecessary.
Public opinion has polarised, as evidenced by the statement Approximately 80% of Republicans believe the Georgia indictment over election-rigging is politically motivated, compared to about 20% of Democrats. We complain in the UK about our biased media, but the US bias is far stronger; the word one might use to describe their media is partisan. Biden is trying to keep out of the case—politics and justice are supposed to be well separated, though I've long thought this a grey area over there, greyer than over here. Trump remains a loose cannon and, despite the sentences handed down to the front men over the 6th January (the assault on the Capitol), the rhetoric has not softened. The question asked is whether Trump will in any way be penalised, irrespective of wrongdoing. The Republicans could easily bring this whole mess to some sort of halt, but there seems to be a consensus that his behaviour is in some way what they want to preserve, almost as if he represents behaviour they wish to be able to use at will.
The right to free speech is weakened in the UK from the fear of offence and with long-running campaigns for truth, honesty, integrity and probity we are reaching a time where public statements rarely even address a question posed. Anything said with strength is immediately howled down by whichever interested party can find enough outlet to be heard. Which drags us down, repeatedly, so that nothing gets done. We need a solution and it needs to be political.
Meanwhile in the US of A that same right of free speech means that publicly lying has become acceptable. Trump is but an example, though used as an exemplar. Fox News is openly biased. This leads us to polls showing worryingly high levels of support for political violence, with as many as 30% of Republicans believing that taking up arms for a political cause could be justified. There is no easy way for this to end well.
Suppose Trump is convicted and even jailed; he then becomes some sort of martyr and we can be sure that his publicity will continue unabated. I cannot see any acceptable route for him to be silenced. Until the USA cleans up its media and/or the ease with which misinformation and disinformation is perpetrated—propaganda—there is no available solution.
The UK is only marginally better. Johnson, our version of Trump, has shuffled off to make money. The Truss premiership was awful and gave us another expensive lesson; this may be sufficient nudge for us to agree that we need to be able to trust politicians to be boring and safe and, eventually, marginally trustworthy. If that doesn't happen I can see swathes of the population deciding that politicians are worthless. How extreme apathy needs to be before the politicians themselves clean up their collective act, I have no idea. They quite clearly rarely represent their constituents; they represent the party members who bend their ears and the rich who buy access and, one often suspects, effectively buy opinions and attitudes. I remain confused how we have 'a business vote' and I'm increasingly certain that we, too, need to clean up our politics.
What I think we need is for the funding of politics to be drastically changed. I strongly disagree with the idea that an MP can hold down other jobs and, while I've previously felt is useful that an MP might also be a practising professional such as a medic, teacher or lawyer, I now think that their political work should be sufficiently demanding that they cannot do anything else but fill the political role. They cannot be company directors (more income) and I don't think they can be allowed to waltz straight from MP to such posts, so there has to be some gardening leave equivalent. I think we need for our politicians to be transparently open and provably honest. I also think they need to be granted some private life. I would hope that, by stifling the access of the rich (companies quite as much as individuals), MPs might come to listen to their constituents but most of all to begin to understand.
I have an invitation—today, I realise— to go talk with or listen to my own MP this morning. I've met him and was convinced very quickly that he cannot hear any more than he can see. I shall not be going.
Our current government and out next government have serious difficulties in financing what needs to be done. Many years of shoving responsible actions off to the future are coming home to roost. Which we have seen, repeatedly and implies a need for more radical reforms. The Conservatives laud what they call small government, small state spending and reduced taxes. That sells to the voters who are persuaded they'll have more of their own money to spend. What happens instead is that the functions of state are sold off, one way or another, so that all that really happens is that the state spending shifts to more nearly consumer spending. For example, in selling off the water companies vast sums have been issued as dividends on shares when (most of, say I) this very same money should have gone to maintenance of the network. The regulator is politically controlled, whatever we're told, so we move steadily to a failed water supply that, when we get around to fixing it, will still be paid for by the consumer. So those dividends came out of our pockets and went elsewhere, quite possibly off shore — in what way did the customer get any value from this? If we were to nationalise the water companies again we're still immensely out of pocket. We've had the same happen to public transport so that one result is we use the roads at a time when we need, thanks to screwing up the planet not just the economy, all to be travelling less. We could, but be won't.
We have very much the same close to home for all of us as our local councils are going bust. For several reasons; steady demand from central government that they deliver statutory services on steadily less funding; because of this many assets have been sold off and continue to be sold off. Where borrowing has occurred, the sudden shift in the financial climate means that the cost of borrowing has gone from insignificant to utterly unmanageable. Yet again, starving the system of money is coming home to roost.
The recent fuss about RAAC, failing concrete beams, is just typical. Notice has been shared since the mid-nineties that we have a problem, that this cheap construction requires maintenance and, where maintenance has been skipped, replacement. But no, what has happened is that schools, very like councils, have been financially stressed to the point where nothing is done. I notice that it is worth wondering who owns a school site and in consequence to wonder who owns any building. In consequence, to wonder quite who has been failing to spend and whether we have more of the water-company dividend game. Whatever, we're in the same position generally, we're going to have to stump up the money from somewhere and that means we the public will end up paying for it. Somebody somewhere has made profit, and I'm pretty sure it was not Joe Public.
What scares me in the political sphere is that, whatever the next government does to rectify matters, the opposition will be screaming about the costs, where whatever results are achieved will be irrelevant to their argument. Which will have the desired effect and they'll be re-elected with the guarantee that we return to the feeding from the trough. I'd argue for us leaving the country, but I don't see anywhere significantly less bad. We actually need a revolution.
Could that occur without bloodshed, I wonder? I want to go green and I want to be able to go green. I am convinced that we don't need so many people, that we don't need to always have economic growth and that we are in many ways using very much the wrong measures for success. We're going to lose the planet because we're so much more interested in being ahead of the other rats. Worse, the more people who see this, the more that the folk who're left see only more Advantage coming their way.
Short-term thinking is very bad when one needs long-term effects.
This is not going to end well.
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Apparently, something to do with whatever the post-truth era is, there is a distinction to be made over the speaking of untruth. That is, that the speaker believes what they say to be true. So, while the spout of rubbish from the mouth of Trump passed 800 during his presidency [4], it appears that trumpians give him their support because they believe not only what he says, but that he believes what he says. But it occurs to me that this is key to the behaviour of a 'skilled' liar; at the time of speaking the known untruth, one has to, however temporarily, believe that the content is true.
I happily distinguish between knowledgeable lie, geneuinely trying to mislead and genuine mistake. These can occur when believing that a statistic tells some particular truth but, in trying to make slick, joined-up English, the very necessary detail attached to a fugure is lost or, worse, its detail is abandoned so that the figure as described is misunderstood to be something quite different. That is why politicans should poiint to where they found their evidence (so that reporters can do that too); why politicians should correct themselves whenever possible or necessary, and why reporters should do the parallel checking, not simply settle for 's/he said'.
E.g. Boat people this year is about 21,000. Guardian, Sept 2023. The BBC found the same source, saying 20,000 had crossed to the end of August, and comparing that with the 46,000 crossing in 2022. The context would be that the small boat arrivals account for 45% of the asylum applications for 2022. Asylum applications June'22-June'23 were 78800 (which is 97400 people), up 20% on the previous year. Gov.uk, see §2. Asylum seekers as a proportion of migrants is harder to sort out; if you google about migrants, several of the answers are about small boats; visas granted is about 3 million; the current [6] net migration rate is about 0.224%, which says 150,000 more have come in than went. [6]. Does this say immigration is a problem? We said we wanted 'control', which translates as somehow having 'who we want' entering the country. A liberated, pragmatic approach would work at accepting who gets here and then turning these people into productive assets.
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/us/politics/trump-election-lies-fact-check.html
[5] https://fullfact.org/about/policy/reports/full-fact-report-2023/report/
[6] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/net-migration
We're about to enter party conference season. Would you, if involved, want to air ideas in public, giving you opponents time to bring down any and every good idea? I don't think so. Given our recent political history, I'd want the party to look safe and electable, to get the biggest possible working majority and only then to wheel out the ideas. Which would mean that the manifesto(s) of those who thy they might actually be elected will be remarkably short of ideas. At best, a royal commission for this or that. But what we need is not more study but the study to have been done and action to occur. Anything less means that the very next election will undo any good work. We need the soft revolution that breaks the chains holding us back. While I never wanted Brexit, we did the stupid thing and now we have to make it work. But with brains, not stupidity.