Bang bang, lie down, you’re dead

Hector Drummond Posted on by

This is actually a good idea:

German soldiers used broomsticks painted black instead of guns during a joint Nato exercise last year due to severe equipment shortages, it has emerged.

 

The incident took place during exercises for Nato’s rapid response force, formed in reaction to the Ukraine crisis, which is supposed to be ready to deploy anywhere it is needed at very short notice …

 

The troops were missing 31 per cent of their MG3 general-purpose machine guns, 41 per cent of their P8 handguns, and more than three-quarters of their Lucie night-vision devices.

 

Soldiers resorted to painting broomsticks black and attaching them to Boxer armoured vehicles to simulate gun barrels.

The reason it’s a good idea is that the modern welfare state costs a gargantuan amount of money, so the military can’t expect to keep being given money for non-woke things like guns. Quite often they’re going to be having to pretend to have guns. And they’ll need to practice that to make it convincing.

So Germany is ahead of the curve on this. Black broomsticks look convincing from a distance. Whereas the French, for example, won’t have put in the necessary hard yards, so when the next war comes, they’ll have to improvise on the spot. But picking up a rock and pretending it’s a grenade doesn’t work so well if you haven’t previously prepared by painting it green.

And there must be thousands of old Dolph Lundgren life-size cardboard cut-outs that can be used to make an army look bigger. I bet the Germans have bought all those up, ready for action, whereas the British will naively expect real soldiers to be fighting by their side.

21st century kit

Hector Drummond Posted on by

An Andrew Neil beration:

They sent the German army into the Atlantic NATO exercise with broomsticks for guns.

I don’t think Andrew understands that using broomsticks instead of guns is going to be the policy of the new EU army. It’s safe, sensitive, and causes far less deaths.

Update: Perry de Havilland of the famous blog you don’t need me to say the name of asks me:

Is the broomstick thing actually true? I’d love to see a source.

I would have guessed that it was odds-on to be an urban myth, but it seems it was true:

German soldiers used broomsticks painted black instead of guns during a joint Nato exercise last year due to severe equipment shortages, it has emerged.

 

The incident took place during exercises for Nato’s rapid response force, formed in reaction to the Ukraine crisis, which is supposed to be ready to deploy anywhere it is needed at very short notice …

 

The troops were missing 31 per cent of their MG3 general-purpose machine guns, 41 per cent of their P8 handguns, and more than three-quarters of their Lucie night-vision devices.

 

Soldiers resorted to painting broomsticks black and attaching them to Boxer armoured vehicles to simulate gun barrels.

What the article doesn’t report is that the night-vision devices were replaced by soldiers cupping their fingers around their eyes and squinting. I’m not even going to talk about how the P8 handguns were replaced, as I think anyone with hands and fingers can guess…

 

The Biscuit Factory Vol. I: Days of Wine and Cheese serialisation. Part 75

Hector Drummond Posted on by

2002-03

Winter break

Fourth week of January

Thursday

 

Ren is trying to have a sleep-in, but all he’s really doing is moping about Wren. How could he have let such a sensational young woman like that slip through his fingers? Why did it matter that she’s only twenty-one? That summer will burn forever in his memory, not as a brilliant memory to cherish, but as a mocking image of what his life could have been like if only he hadn’t been so stupid and proud. If only he hadn’t assumed that someone else like Wren would be along within weeks. He misses talking and joking with her even more than he misses the bodily entrances and exits. Perhaps he should go back to moping about Lily instead.

The phone rings. It’s Miles. Has he seen this morning’s newspapers? No. Miles says that two of the papers today carry reports of a Lucius Birch, Professor of Psychology at Grayvington University, being suspended for possible academic fraud. The reports say that Grayvington University has refused to comment, and Lucius strongly denies the accusations. Lucius, it is said, is expected to make a public statement soon.

It’s not surprising that the papers have now got the story. Ren heard from Miles a few days ago that Lucius, according to Lucius, has been rewarded by the University for his hard work and success by being given a sabbatical for the semester. Sabbaticals are never given out like that, and certainly not at such a late stage, with such little notice – Lucius was supposed to start teaching his usual Social Psychology class next week, and now someone else will have to do that at the last minute. Although there’s been no official announcement about Lucius being suspended, and Robot is still saying nothing, it’s clear to those in the know that it’s a suspension, not a sabbatical.

Then rumours started up on the UK Psychology e-mail lists. First a rumour was passed on that a Psychology Professor has been sacked for faking data. Then the rumour changed to the Professor being suspended. Then someone posted some hints that those in the know could use to identify who it is. Then the list owners shut down the discussion, but too late to stop a lot of people from being able to work out who the person is.

Ren feels a little pang at hearing that the papers are now reporting the accusations against Lucius. He would have liked to have broken the story via an article somewhere himself, listing all of the claims against Lucius, but not only are his hands tied by the University, as an academic (and a sort-of colleague) he couldn’t do that without giving Lucius a chance to explain himself. And what if it somehow turned out that Lucius hadn’t faked anything?

Ren asks Miles to try calling his old girlfriend Tanja, who now works for the local rag The Daily Gravy (shortened from its original name, The Daily Grayvington), to find out what she’s heard. Tanja started a couple of years ago as a freelancer contributing the occasional arts-based story, but now she’s on staff, and she usually covers University-related stories. They still stay in touch, due to Tanja still having feelings, or rather loin-based desires, for Miles.

Later on, when Ren is at his office searching the internet for Lucius-related stories, he gets another call from Miles. Tanja said that Lucius has called a press conference today. She wouldn’t say where, though – she says it’s press only. Miles thinks she’s buddies with Lucius these days, through Tony Shaver. Miles knows that a lot of press conferences in town are held at the Royal Square Hotel, so he has just called them to ask what time the Lucius Birch press conference is, and they said 11:30. It’s 11:15 now. Ren tells Miles to get in his car and pick him up outside the Terminal Building ASAP.

 

When they get to the hotel, there’s nowhere to park, so Miles drops Ren off and heads for a multi-story car park. By the time Ren has found the room, he can hear that the conference has started. He pauses outside the open door to listen.

‘…victim of a right-wing conspiracy to de-legitimise my research, led by a right-wing academic called Ren Christopher.’

That’s my cue, thinks Ren.

‘Hi-de-hi campers!’ he says loudly, entering the room. All the heads swivel towards him. ‘It’s right-wing conspirator Ren Christopher here. My ears were burning so I thought I’d pop into my Rupert Murdoch-funded teleporter and beam myself straight here.’

There’s a dozen journalists, including Tanja, some photographers, and two camera crews in the room. A woman waits at the side of the room at the front. It’s not Lenora Helminth, though – she and Lucius broke up last year. I wonder if Lenora got a whiff of what Lucius was up to, Ren thinks.

‘What are you doing here?’ demands Lucius, looking very angry. I hope he tries to punch me, thinks Ren.

‘I’ve come to hear all these exciting tales you’re telling about me to the press,’ says Ren.

‘You weren’t invited.’

‘Invited? Is this a private press conference? I thought this was all about making a public statement?’

‘Get out.’

‘Seeing as you’re talking about me, I think I’ll stay for a while, old chook.’ Ren hopes this will prompt Lucius to rush over and try to punch him, or manhandle him.

‘Dr Christopher, do you want to say anything about this issue?’ asks one of the journalists.

‘I may have something to say, but it’s only fair to let Professor Birch have his full say first. It’s his press conference.’

Lucius continues on, clearly flustered.

‘I will say again that the accusations against me are false.’

‘What are those accusations again, exactly?’ says a journalist.

‘I’d rather not give these baseless accusations further legs by specifying them,’ says Lucius.

‘But whatever they are, they’re false?’ says the journalist.

‘Yes,’ says Lucius.

‘Can you explain why they’re false?’ asks another journalist.

‘I’m not a liberty to do that either.’

‘So what was the point of calling a press conference if you’re not going to say anything?’

‘To assert my innocence in public. Look, my hands are really tied here. The University has asked me to not to comment in public on anything specific. But my name has been dragged through the mud by your organs this morning, and I feel I am entitled to at least stand up in public and say that I am not guilty of…’

‘Of academic fraud?’

‘It is absurd to even use that phrase in connection with me.’

‘But your University of accusing you of it?’

‘No. No, they are not. Let me make this very clear. My University has not accused me of anything at all. It is Ren Christopher who is accusing me, an armchair philosopher who doesn’t understand the practise of scientific research. The University is just looking into the situation. They are trying to work out who is the liar, him or me.’

‘So you’re calling this man here, Dr Christopher, a liar?’

‘Yes I am,’ says Lucius. Desudation is starting to drip from his brow. The journalists turn back to look at Ren. He’s lying back comfortably in his seat, one arm draped over the next chair, not paying attention.

‘Oh,’ says Ren. ‘Has he accused me again? Well. Naughty boy. You know I do feel for Dr Birch being named in the papers this morning. At the moment he is an innocent man, and he is entitled to say something publicly in view of that. But I never said anything publicly about him, and now he’s saying in public that I’m a liar, when all I have done is provide the University with an analysis, performed by several people, not just me, pointing to… irregularities… in Professor Birch’s research. Irregularities which I’m sure he can easily clear up. Just a pity the newspapers got involved, and a pity that Professor Birch resorted to public mud-slinging.’

‘I am just…’ begins Lucius.

‘What was in that report, Dr Christopher?’

‘Oh, well, that’s not public at the moment. And this is Professor Birch’s stage. I wouldn’t want to rain on his parade. Perhaps he can clear everything up now for us, and close the case.’

‘Professor Birch,’ says a reporter, ‘there are rumours online that no-one has seen you or any assistant do any data collection for your studies for years. Would you care to comments on those accusations?’

‘They’re not accusations. They’re merely observations on my mode of working, which is to go out into the field to collect data, rather than do it all in the artificial environment of a University laboratory. There wouldn’t be any issue about this at all were it not for the muck-raking of my political enemies.’

‘Those enemies being Dr Christopher? Anyone else?’

‘I don’t know who’s behind him, no.’

‘You think he’s being funded to do this? Who by?’

Ren is grinning at all this. He can see Lucius getting more and more nervous. It would have been so much easier for him to tell lies about Ren if Ren had not been here. Perhaps he should move on to blaming something more amorphous and less present, like the Jews.

A journalist turns to Ren. ‘Perhaps you would like to reply to this, Dr Christopher?’

‘He’s not entitled to say anything,’ yells Lucius. ‘It’s not his press conference.’

‘Oh Lucius,’ says Ren. ‘I can easily invite these gentlemen and ladies to my own press conference in the corridor in five minutes time. But perhaps I can turn pressman myself, and ask you on behalf of my blog – yes, I too qualify as a reporter, of sorts – a question.’

‘No, no questions from you,’ says Lucius, as Ren gets out some pieces of paper from the inside pocket of his coat.

Lucius looks desperately at the woman at the front, as if he wants her to manhandle Ren out of the room.

‘This is Professor Birch’s celebrated “Dirt and Discrimination” paper that appeared all over the international media a few years ago. A study undertaken at Grayvington’s own dear old train station. But look! Here is a signed letter from the General Manager at Grayvington train station, who swears that neither she nor any of her staff have any awareness of any such study taking place at that time in the train station.’

Lucius’s face turns from very red to very white in an instant.

‘Hey, that was a neat trick you did with your face colour then, Lucius’ says Ren. ‘It’s like you’ve had an internal eboulement.’

‘We did a, er… guerrilla study,’ says Lucius.

Ren is tempted to say, ‘You used gorillas to ask the questions? Is that why never needed help from grad students?’ But he decides against it.

‘I didn’t get permission,’ Lucius continues. ‘I just went in and did it anyway. I thought if we asked they might say no.’

‘So you’re saying, then,’ says Ren, ‘that somehow you did all these tests at a train station, a train station with a foyer that isn’t all that big, and none of the staff noticed? They didn’t notice you getting lots of commuters to read stuff and fill in forms? And then somehow you single-handedly made the train station dirty, and swapped all the signs around, and none of the staff said, “Hey, why are you putting dirt and litter everywhere in our station?”’. And then you left it like that while you got more commuters to read stuff and fill in forms. And then you cleaned it up again, and put everything back to normal, and still none of the staff noticed?’

‘Yes,’ says Lucius firmly, his jaw twisted an an uncomfortable angle. ‘That’s the end of the conference. Thank you for coming.’ Lucius turns to leave. The journalists besiege him, shouting questions at him. The photographers decide that this is a good time to take lots of snaps.

‘Lucius!’ shouts Ren. ‘Lucius! Don’t go doing anything silly, like going to the roof and jumping off.’ Although he says that semi-seriously, he also hopes that Lucius will come over and try to punch him for saying it, right in front of the cameras.

Lucius escapes the pack with his female friend through the side door, which is then locked from that side, or else someone is holding the handle firmly. The press decide to lay siege to Ren instead.

‘Have you got anything more to say, Dr Christopher?’

‘Not really, it wouldn’t be proper to do so while the investigation into Lucius is ongoing. I just wanted the chance to defend myself against accusations made against me in public. By the way, did anyone see that episode of Seinfeld last night? It’s the one where Lloyd Braun is selling all those computers over the phone, and poor George can’t sell any. Old Lloyd is racking up the sales, he’s just relentless, it’s too good to be true, he’s leaving George in the dust. And then it turns out that Lloyd’s phone isn’t even connected. Very nice episode. I recommend you catch it sometime soon.’

What a silly hunt

Hector Drummond Posted on by

The Telegraph is trying to whip up some interest:

it’s fair to say, reflecting on my many conversations with party members, that a significant number of members are less certain about their vote now than when the contest begin three weeks ago – particularly as they have seen the wider public warm to Hunt. Indeed there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of members changing their minds and switching their vote.

I dont believe this garbage for a second, but I’m almost hoping it’s true. Because making Hunt the Conservative leader would kill the Tories stone dead. They’d virtually fall from the sky that moment.

Thank God for Steve Bell, he literally wins elections with his cartoons

Hector Drummond Posted on by

I am serious — Steve Bell, the long-time Guardian cartoonist is a national treasure. He should be knighted one day, and buried in Westminster Abbey. For over twenty years the Guardian has chosen to publish his political cartoons. This has been a Godsend to right-wing political figures, because Bell’s cartoons are probably the least funny cartoons in the history of publishing. For the average person seeing one of his cartoons produces a feeling of incomprehension, and a vague feeling of sadness at the waste of a life. The one thing is does not do in anyone, other than a committed and slightly dim left-winger, is produce feelings of mockery and scorn for the right-wing figure depicted.

Can you imagine how things might have been different had the Guardian employed a cartoonist with a sense of humour? (Bell is like the prototype for all these modern comedians who insist humour must not be funny.) A cartoonist who really could skewer politicians with a few lines and a few choice words? A cartoonist who could really change minds and attract more converts to the left? The left might have triumphed across every corner of the country if they’d had a left-wing Matt taking up half-page spreads.

Humour and sense are poor substitutes for naked hatred. Steve Bell gets that. He’s always got it. He wrote the book on it. The book makes no sense, and isn’t funny, but the hate oozes out from between the pages, so shut the hell up, Zionist.

 

But luckily for us they are humourless arses who decided to employ a man whose cartoons wouldn’t have even been good enough to make it into the student rags that I used to work on. Even the left-wingers on staff at those places would have literally screwed these cartoons up and thrown them in the bin, shaking their heads at the dearth of talent on their side. But the Guardian employed this man, and thus guaranteed that any average person who was unlucky enough to catch a glimpse of his work was so repelled that they resolved never to vote for the left, and never to read the Guardian for as long as they lived, not even if they were desperate to know the cricket scores and someone was handing out copies of the awful thing for free.

Long may Steve Bell reign as the right’s greatest weapon.

Update: Soak in some more genius:

Subtlety be damned. When a take is this spot on you’ve got to just publish it, even if most people will think it ludicrously partisan and crashingly unfunny.

Philip Hammond lies ands lies, and then lies some more

Hector Drummond Posted on by

The Chancellor warns over Johnson and Hunt’s plans to cut taxes and spend more, which is fair enough. (Personally I think the tax cuts are a good idea, but not the extra spending.) But what is astonishing in what Hammond has said is the brazen chutzpah – in other words, the brazen lie – in saying this:

He [Hammond] added: “My concern is that this Government has built up a reputation for fiscal responsibility and the British people have worked incredibly hard over a decade now to rebuild our public finances and I think it’s very important that we don’t throw that away.”

Fiscal responsibility? This government? Does Hammond think we’re buying this crap? Let’s have a look at how much of a deficit the Conservatives have run since 2010 (source: ONS):

 £ billion
Financial years 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14
Deficit 141.7 124.0 124.0 99.9

 

£ billion
Financial years 2014/15 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18
Deficit 89.9 75.5 47.0 42.9

 

2017/18 refers to the financial year ending March 2018.

The deficit for 2018-9 seems to be £24.7 billion.

Lots of of the lying little spods in government started out looking like this.

So since they took power in 2010 the Tories have been spending far more than they brought in. They have run a deficit every year they’ve been in power, despite constantly forecasting that soon they wouldn’t be running any deficit (and despite having gargantuan amounts of tax coming in). They’ve added many hundreds of billions to the national debt, yet Philip Hammond can sit there with a straight face and talk about fiscal responsibility? Hammond presides over some of the highest government spending in the country’s history, and the little turd has the temerity to pretend that he’s been cautious? I say take it out of his own wages. Sell him into slavery to make him start paying some of it back.

How not to argue for HS2

Hector Drummond Posted on by

The Chairman of the Midlands Industrial Council, one Johnny Leavesley, tries to present a case for HS2. And does a piss-poor effort. He starts off acknowledging that the case against seems pretty good, admitting, for example, that “The sums involved are vast”. So what’s he got in favour?

Our economy needs rebalancing. It is a great legacy of David Cameron’s and George Osborne’s that they recognised this and took the first steps to sparking economic regeneration in the regions. HS2 is a catalyst and long-term support for the policies stemming from that intent. There have been decades of underinvestment in the North and Midlands, especially in public transport.

It may be true that the economy needs ‘rebalancing’, but where’s the argument that building a hugely expensive train to London that will take decades to build is the way to make up for the shortfall in funding to the North and the Midlands? Have the people of the North and Midlands been asked? There’s no argument for this at all, and all Leavesley can do is admit “I only wish the building of HS2 started at the other end”.

There are undeniable construction advantages.

What’s a ‘construction advantage’? I can understand what that would be if you compared two projects, and one was said to have a ‘construction advantage’, but how does it apply to one project? I think he means that there are economic advantages involved with the construction side of things, these being:

An estimated 100,000 new jobs will be created, most of them skilled.

It’s rather astonishing to see this sort of arguing from a supposed expert. The jobs cost money to create. Tens of billions, in this case. The government can always create jobs by spending a lot of money, but as we know the inefficiency of governmental spending means that almost always more jobs are lost than created. You can’t divert £65+ billion pounds to one part of economy and only talk about the jobs created in the sector where you funneled that money, and ignore the actual and potential jobs that were lost in the rest of the economy after £65+ billion was sucked out.

All the economic activity generated will be virtuous in myriad ways

This has to take the cake for the most vacuous justification for a massive government spending spree I’ve ever seen. ‘Virtuous in myriad ways’.

not least in creating profit and, thereby, increasing tax revenue from a growing economy.

What about all the profit that would have been created by letting people keep more of their own money? Besides, this is basically saying “We spent £65 billion of taxpayer’s money, but hey, we’re getting a bit of tax back as a result. Totally worth it”.

Peak periods are far too congested. Most of us in these crowded islands live in a broad central belt flowing from London to Leeds. Most journeys shunt through there as well. A new railway will not only create capacity in itself but free space on existing lines, especially the West Coast Main Line, reducing passenger and freight costs.

Or you could invest in those lines directly, making enormous savings. Or build some more roads. Or airports. Or let a private company build the railway, and then we can find out the real cost of it, and they can decide whether it’s worth it — as Leavesely himself admits:

To declare an interest, HS2 will go through a field and a derelict barn of mine that I had plans for. There will be compensation, but it won’t be close to what I would otherwise have generated.

If a private company had to genuinely buy the land for the railway instead of having the government steal it for them, they might discover that commuters, seeing how enormously expensive the tickets will be in that scenario, decide that they don’t really value getting to and from London a few minutes faster that much after all.

Connectivity, meanwhile, is an overwhelming agent for economic good.

A extremely general statement. Doesn’t it depend on what’s being connected? And how much it costs to do the connecting? And how much of an improvement it is on what currently exists?

Technocrats speak

Technocrats? My word. How can we argue with ‘technocrats’?

Technocrats speak of its “agglomeration impact”, but you can think of it as something that stimulates cross-regional employment opportunities and foreign investment.

Personally I’m starting to desire something a little more detailed, and not so much of the glossy brochure talk.

Other advantages will arise from regeneration close to stations

Where’s the evidence that this is worth it for people who don’t live close to stations?

Also, around my way the people who are going to be close to the stations don’t seem very happy about it at all. They see it as a curse on them. Perhaps Johnny should go have a talk to them to convince them they’re wrong.

increased land values

For some. And why is it a good thing for everyone else if house prices go up?

shorter and more reliable journeys

A bit shorter. And the reliability claim rather requires us waiting and seeing, doesn’t it?

a more even geographic spread of wealth and economic activity.

Where’s the evidence that this will happen? This article is full of assertions rather than arguments.

In fact, our ambition should be to build more High Speed railways in other regions, routing not just to London but between our other great cities.

How about we start with them first, and see how they go?

We have come so far in the planning that it would be a national embarrassment to cancel HS2 now. There have been enough of those. It would be a Pyrrhic victory for saving money.

Johnny seems to have never heard of the sunk cost fallacy.

Our continued national prosperity requires imaginative and bold investments.

Again, a dubious claim in need of its own argument, rather than an argument for HS2.

(A ladder to the moon is a bold and imaginative investment, but hardly one that will contribute to national prosperity. Spending proposals need to be assessed on their own merits, not justified under some sweeping generalisation.)

Jeremy Hunt has come out in support of HS2 and I admire him for that.

I think we can safely conclude this article is a failure.

Update: We can also draw a similar conclusion about William Hague’s latest article, as he concludes:

Here again, I am logically and inescapably drawn to vote for Jeremy Hunt.

(The mere existence of a William Hague column suggests Hague is owed some favours, as I can’t imagine who would be interested in his opinion on anything any more.)

Much will rest on Boris’ Cabinet

Hector Drummond Posted on by

The only thing that can save Boris Johnson, and the Conservative Party, is his Cabinet:

BORIS Johnson will make everyone in his Cabinet promise to commit to leave the EU by October 31 – or they’ll be sacked.

 

The frontrunner to become Tory leader says that he will expect everyone in his top team to agree with his policy to leave, deal or no deal.

Having an all-Leave cabinet will tie Boris’s hands, and make it hard for him to fudge Brexit. That’s what has me most optimistic about things. Having your whole Cabinet turn on you would make things pretty difficult.

Still, remember the old saying about never underestimating the Tories’ capacity for betrayal and incompetence.

But now that the Brexit Party is pretty much ready to go the Tories have had their warning:

Nigel Farage has promised that his Brexit party will have candidates ready to fight in every Westminster constituency within days, as he said he would battle hard even against a Boris Johnson-led government that promised a no-deal departure.

But it’s still the fake May-style Brexit that worries me. Is that what we’ll end up with? Will that fool enough people to make it seem like Brexit? Will Steve Baker be our only line of defence on this? Or will we end up with an indefinite transition period?

Update: One of things we have no clue about in regards to Jeremy Hunt is, who’s going to be in his Cabinet? It’s all very well talking about a £20 billion No Deal ‘war chest’. What good is that if you have the likes of Amber Rudd and David Gauke making decisions? This is another reason why Boris will win.

Guardian Towers is too high for them to notice the smell of death coming from Labour

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Dim Marina Hyde of Guardian Towers is puzzled:

Of all the hills to die on, why on earth has Labour chosen Chris Williamson?

 

The party’s baffling decision to re-admit an MP accused of antisemitism comes as faith in the leadership is faltering

It’s only baffling if you haven’t a clue what’s going on with Labour. It makes perfect sense if you understand that Labour is full of people who think that rich bloodthirsty Jews run the world, and they have secret meetings to where they command the Jewish people to vote Conservative while pretending to everyone else that they are lifelong leftists who always vote Labour. Secret meetings where they hatch their plots to crush the dreams of ex-SWP members. Those sort of people infest Labour now, but Marina hasn’t noticed.

The rest of Marina’s column reads like all her other columns, ie., like an impression of a typical student newspaper article that she dashed off in ten minutes. For example:

But to only slightly misquote Gary Busey in Point Break: I was in this bureau while you were still popping zits on your funny little faces and jacking off to the lingerie section of the Sears catalogue. Furthermore: listen, you snot-nosed little shits! I was taking shrapnel in Khe Sanh when you were crapping in your hands and rubbing it in your faces. Gotta say I don’t feel like Busey would have spent three years parroting lines like “jobs-first Brexit” or all the other bollocks you’ve dutifully disseminated on behalf of central command. Now dears, may I offer you another steak?

Apparently there are some people who regard themselves as advanced human beings because they submit themselves to read a whole column of this sort of stuff. In fact, multiple columns. And they’ll do so every week, for years on end. That’s why you never meet a sane Guardian column reader. Sure you might meet sane people who browse the news stories in the Guardian. But you’ll never meet a sane one who’s dutifully read every Marina Hyde column week in, week out, for more than five years.

Call the bluff of those MPs who threaten a no-confidence vote

Hector Drummond Posted on by

A lot of Conservative MPs are making big claims about bringing down the government if they try to pursue a WTO Brexit. I say: call their bluff. They won’t do it. As soon Boris becomes PM (assuming he does), he needs to lay down the law: this is what is happening.

The Brexiteers who threatened a no confidence vote turned out to be bluffing. May knew that, and that’s why she never gave them anything. The Remainers who are now saying it are also bluffing, far more so than the Brexiteers, because they know they will almost certainly lose their seats. More than that, they will lose whatever ability they had to prevent Brexit, because as non-MPs they will be powerless. They don’t really want an early election; what they really want is to use the threat of one to get their way.

(The only one who isn’t bluffing is Ken Clarke, because he’s on his last legs and has clearly had enough.)

I really do think that the Tory Remainers think that the game is not up, and they can turn things around in two years, so they are going to cling on to Parliament for dear life. So ignore their threats.

Anyway, if you start trying to placate those who threaten the vote of no-confidence, you just encourage them. They need to be told to get in behind the party, or face deselection. If there is to be an early election, so be it. Don’t show weakness, it just gives them ideas.

Not that Boris would do anything like this, though. Sure he’s got more backbone than the average Tory MP, but he’s no Trump. That’s another reason why the Tories have no future. The number of them with a spine wouldn’t even form a cricket team. And the vaunted members couldn’t even manage to deselect David Gauke yesterday, one of the key fake Brexit men. If the Tories had a future they’d have deselected dozens of the traitors by now, but there has been depressingly few such cases. (Technically speaking they haven’t even deselected anyone. There have votes of no confidence, which in practice may amount to the same thing, and Boles, Soubry et al walked before they were pushed, but no-one has yet officially been deselected.)

What is perhaps more likely than a no-confidence vote leading to an early election is a no-confidence vote leading to an attempt to cobble together a Remainer coalition government. It’s hard to see anything like that holding together for long, though, and hopefully not long enough for Labour to push through their own surrender document.

The Biscuit Factory Vol. I: Days of Wine and Cheese serialisation. Part 74

Hector Drummond Posted on by

2002-03

Winter break

Mid-January

Monday

 

Ren is in Robot’s office discussing Lucius. Robot is temporary Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences while the usual Dean is on sabbatical, and as this is the Faculty that Psychology belongs to, Robot is currently the man in charge of deciding what to do about Lucius.

What Robot wants to do is to delay making any decision for as long as possible, until the regular Dean comes back, so he has to be the one to deal with the mess. Ren, Ken and Halberd went to see Robot a week ago and presented their analysis of his work, leaving out what they know about the train station study. It was, as Robot agreed, a damning analysis. They showed that there was a very large amount of results that were too good to be true. The Cronbach Alpha scores were very low. Whole rows of results in different studies were exactly the same, suggesting they’d been copied and pasted. There were many other statistical oddities. And many studies had supposedly taken place at high schools there was no record of. Lucius had thanked teachers who didn’t exist. Enquiries within the Psychology department, made in a discreet manner that hopefully wouldn’t raise any warning flags, had failed to find anyone who had ever collaborated with Lucius on doing data collection. He always insisted on doing it alone.

All of these things in isolation could possibly be explained. For instance, perhaps Lucius had disguised the names of the schools, and the teachers. Perhaps they wanted to remain anonymous. But taken all together, it pointed one way: a wholesale creation of data. Lucius has to be investigated, as well as being given the chance to defend himself. But Robot just wants to wait.

‘Wait for what?’ says Ren. He knows what Robot is thinking: wait for the regular Dean to come back. But Robot won’t say that.

‘Wait for, ah, wait for things to become clearer.’

‘How are things going to become clearer?’

‘Well, in time things might… over time things look…’

‘If you don’t act, then it’s going to come out, and Grayvington, and you, are going to look bad because you knew what he was up to and you let it continue.’

‘Going to come out? You all said you hadn’t told anyone?’

‘We haven’t told anyone explicitly, but we’ve been making enquiries, as discreetly as we can of course, but there’s a limit to how discreet you can be if you want information. Like me calling Lucius’s old University recently to see if he really had done the research there that he said he had. I pretended it was me wanting to hire their rooms, and said that I’d heard on the grapevine that Lucius might have done so too. Which he hadn’t. So I didn’t ask them outright about Lucius, but they might be suspicious. Plus Ken and Halberd have been talking at conferences with other people about fraud in their field. Apparently some other grad students, from other Unis, have voiced their suspicions about Lucius, and they’re probably getting these suspicions from their supervisors. Before too long someone’s going to put two and two together.’

Ren suspects that a few people in Lucius’s field have already put two and two together, but they’ve chosen not to say anything for political reasons.

‘I wouldn’t like to be the Dean in charge when somebody from another University discovers what Lucius’s been doing, and Ken and Halberd and I will have to explain to the world that we told you all about it and you decided to do nothing.’

‘I’m not deciding to do nothing,’ says an irritated Robot. He doesn’t like having a junior lecturer talk to him like this, but he can hardly say that in this situation.

Robot sits silently, visibly churning.

‘All right,’ he says eventually.

‘All right?’ says Ren.

‘I think we will have to act now.’

‘Good. What are you going to do?’

‘You’ll have to leave that with me.’

‘Okay. Well, you have the report we gave you.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ says Robot.

Yes, thank you Dr Christopher for getting me this shit sandwich from the Shittiest Ever Sandwich Company, and stuffing in into my mouth and making me eat it, is what Robot really means. Ren takes his leave.

 

2002-03

Winter break

Third week of January

Tuesday

 

Ren knocks on Robot’s door.

‘Sorry to bother you, Grant.’

‘That’s all right. Is it a question about the exam marking? Everything going all right with it?’ asks Grant, with obvious insincerity.

‘Same old. But it’s not that. I was just wondering what’s happening with the Lucius investigation.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about that.’

‘What?’

‘It’s none of your business any more. It’s out of your hands. I should also remind you to say nothing about it at the moment.’

‘You’re not still sitting on it, are you?’

‘No. Look, it’s started, so you need to let the process happen. I expect you’ll be called in at some stage soon to say your piece. But apart from that it no longer involves you.’

‘It does involve me, I’m the one who exposed him. Or should I say, I’m the one who exposed the possibility that there are issues with his data? But yes, I’ll keep quiet for now.’

‘Make sure you do.’

‘What’s he saying? Has he admitted it?’

‘That’s none of your business at this point.’

‘All right, all right. Good luck with it.’

‘Good luck? Nothing good will come of this, whether we have good luck or bad luck.’

‘Clean the stables. Think of it that way.’

‘Thank you for that. That’s a nice viewpoint to have from a distance, but you’re not the one having to deal with all the ordure up close.’

‘Well, you don’t get the extra money as Dean for sitting on your arse all day just doing the usual. You get it for dealing with hard cases, and making difficult decisions.’

‘Just go, Ren.’

‘Back to the exam marking grind? Okay, but you may hear me bashing my head against the wall a few times this afternoon,’ Ren says, closing the door before he can hear Robot getting really angry with him.

Modern life is rubbish

Hector Drummond Posted on by

More sub-Guardian garbage from the Telegraph women’s section:

We need consistency across the board. The same plastic, foil and clingfilm regulations must be applicable in every council area, to put an end to the current confusion. The issue of recycling isn’t going to go away – quite the reverse – and that means we need greater investment in facilities and more stringent enforcement of regulations.

The only reason the issue of recycling isn’t going away is because of chattering-class morons like Judith Woods making recycling the centre of their spiritual life. I’m no great fan of traditional religion, but even I’d rather have an awe-inspiring church and glorious organ music than to be worshipping amongst scraps of paper and cardboard and bits of fricking plastic and thinking this counts as spiritual nourishment.

The Establishment hates Boris, but that doesn’t mean he’s the Brexit man

Hector Drummond Posted on by

There seems to be a lot of this sort of thinking happening at the moment:

The Establishment is clearly trying to smear Boris in any way possible. They’re frightened of him. He’s the anti-Establishment candidate. They must fear that he’s really going to achieve Brexit. So he’s the man for me. If they don’t want him that much then I do. I’m going back to the Conservatives, and believing in Boris.

I’m not so convinced. Sure the Establishment doesn’t want Boris. But the Establishment currently gets the screaming abdabs at anyone who doesn’t completely toe the party line. It doesn’t mean that Boris is really going to do anything radical. If he was that radical he wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a mainstream political party, or the mainstream media. Look at Tommy Robinson, for instance. Now there’s a real threat to the Establishment, but he is simply made invisible.

So while Boris will undoubtedly do some things the Establishment won’t like, it doesn’t follow that a real, No Deal Brexit is one of them (see my post from this morning on this topic).

I really hope Boris does surprise me, and gets us a real Brexit, and overthrows the PC tyranny, and rolls back the state, and so on. If he does then I’ll gladly eat my words. I’ll put up a picture of the man in my own home. But how likely is it really? Does he have a history of actually enacting bold and radical ‘populist’ conservative policies, as opposed to just big talk? No. Does he have a history of sucking people in with his charm, and then disappointing them? Yes. Is he an egomaniac and huckster mainly concerned with himself, rather than any political principles? Mostly. Resigning his Cabinet post over the WA showed some principles, so I’ll give him that. But mainly he’s proved himself to be a Cameron-type, in that his main driving force is his desire for personal prestige.

Let’s face it, which is more likely? Boris attempting to prorouge Parliament as soon as he gets in, or Boris attempting to get Parliament onside with some compromise sellout withdrawal deal? If you think it’s the latter, please explain in comments what reason you have to think that, because I don’t buy it.

Update: Sure the ERG might try to steer him in the right direction, but he doesn’t really need them any more. As we saw with May, the PM has a lot of power over Brexit and there’s not much anyone can do about it. And I can’t see the Brexiteers going for a party no-confidence vote in Boris if he lets them down. They’re more likely to just jump ship to the Brexit Party.

The chances of anything coming from Mars are… the same as Boris getting us a No Deal Brexit

Hector Drummond Posted on by

If you’d ask me a few days ago what the odds are on Boris Johnson actually doing a No Deal Brexit would have sung you the bit from Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds:

The chances of Boris getting No Deal

Are a million to one, he said.

The chances of Boris getting No Deal

Are a million to one, but still he comes.

Now Boris confirms this:

Boris Johnson has said the chances of a no-deal Brexit are a “million-to-one against”, despite promising to leave on 31 October whether or not he has managed to strike a new agreement with the European Union.

 

Johnson, the frontrunner to be prime minister, told a hustings that the chances of a no-deal Brexit were vanishingly small, as he believed there was a mood in the EU and among MPs to pass a new Brexit deal.

Boris has no more intention of letting a No Deal happen than Theresa May did, or Jeremy Hunt does. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at his own plans:

Plan A was “to get an agreement that is better than the current one you’ve said and to get out on October 31st.”

This would mean removing the Northern Ireland backstop – which critics say threaten to keep the UK tied to the EU indefinitely – from the agreement.

So his main plan is just to get May’s deal through with only one of the disastrous elements removed. Great.

But, you may reply, this is all just pretence, he knows it can’t happen so really his aim is No Deal.

If you think that, you might want to take a look at his Plan B:

If the revised Withdrawal Agreement were blocked by MPs or Brussels, Plan B would see the UK leave on October 31 and continue to adhere to EU regulations until a free trade deal were signed.

 

Under this standstill agreement “the UK and the EU [will] keep going with the existing arrangements until such time as we’ve completed our free trade agreement and we use that period to solve the questions of the Northern Irish border”, he said.

This is the real plan in case A fails (and maybe the real plan all along). We ‘leave’ on October 31, but in effect we stay in the EU for the indefinite future, until a free trade agreement is signed, an agreement which the EU will have no incentive at all to move their feet on. The EU will in fact have no reason at all to offer us a good deal. What can we do about that? Nothing at all. Either we stay in indefinitely as a sort of ghost member, which will suit the Establishment fine, or we eventually sign up to anything just to get out of limbo, which will be just as bad or even worse, because we’ve seen how ruthless the EU is about what they expect us to sign up to. (Note what complete shitheads they’re being with the Swiss at the moment.)

A No Deal Brexit is only Plan C for Boris:

The final option was Plan C – preparing to exit the EU on October 31 without a trade deal.

But as we’ve seen, he thinks this is a million-to-one. It’s A and B he’s really after. With both of those he can say that he kept his word to get us out by Oct 31, even though A will be fake Brexit, and B will be even faker Brexit. But technically we’ll be out.

Update:

Update 2:

In an interview with Conservative Home Johnson has said:

“I want obviously to have a broad range of talent in my Government, the Government that I will lead, but clearly people must be reconciled to the very, very, very small possibility [of No Deal], and I stress it will be a very, very small possibility, that we would have to leave on those terms”

It seems to me that he thinks it’s all about getting a fake Brexit by Oct 31.