A week is a long time in politics

 

Well that didn’t take long, did it? It took only about a couple of weeks for the sheer useless awfulness of Liz Truss’s government to become apparent, and in large part it took that long because all of politics came to a halt due to the Queen's funeral. However Rish! (exclamation mark) Sunak is certainly nothing if not efficient. Normally an incoming Prime Minister can count on a honeymoon period of goodwill during which the floating voter public and their own party are willing to give them the benefit of any doubt that is going. It took Liz Truss until the unveiling of her gob-smackingly bad mini-budget to destroy that goodwill. Rish! (exclamation mark) has managed it in a mere six hours.

Anyone who wasn’t a fully paid up member of the Conservative party had low expectations of Sunak to begin with. After all, this is the guy who spent the last two and a half years enabling Boris Johnson, got fined by the police for breaking lockdown, kept his US Green card and his wife’s non-dom status so the couple could avoid paying British taxes on their immense fortune, and then acted like he was the victim when it became public knowledge. Even so, what little credibility he had left was blown completely out of the water with the announcement of his cabinet of Brexit liars, fools, people whose hobby is pulling the wings off flies (allow me a little polemical hyperbole), and retreads from the Johnson premiership. 

At midday Sunak was promising to restore ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability’ to government. By tea time he had put Suella Braverman back into the post of Home Secretary, just a few days after she had been forced to resign for what turned out to be gross and repeated breaches of the ministerial code and then lying to the Prime Minister about it.

Braverman is, and I do not say this lightly, a truly repugnant politician, even by the appallingly low standards we have come to expect of the detestable party. In her brief tenure in office under Liz Truss, she managed to deliver a frankly infantile and petulant blast at her opposition counterpart, characterising those who still have a functioning moral compass and who oppose her institutionalised cruelty as ‘the tofu-eating wokerati’. Before entering Parliament her licence to practise law in New York state was suspended. According to human rights lawyer Shoaib Khan, “I can honestly say I have not met a single person who knows Suella Braverman, has worked with her or met her who has had anything positive to say. She’s just incompetent". He added, ” She’ll say things about law, which are plainly wrong and stick to it.”

The rise of Suella Braverman is one of the genuine mysteries of modern politics. She has no discernible charm, intellect or talent and projects cruelty like toxic radiation. She has lied about her experience, falsely claiming on her CV to have contributed to an important legal text book, a book whose authors assert that Braverman made no more contribution to than doing a spot of photocopying. The truth is that Braverman would be out of her depth as Under Secretary for Photocopying.

Braverman also said that her ‘dream’ was to see a plane packed with desperate asylum seekers taking off on a one way trip to an oppressive central African dictatorship. There’s a word for people like Braverman who delight in their own cruelty and take pleasure from the suffering and misery of others. That word is sadist. And no one who claims that his government will be characterised by ‘integrity, professionalism, and accountability’ should put someone who clearly displays sadistic personality traits in a position of power over vulnerable people, and certainly not when that sadist was sacked from the same job just last week for committing a gross breach of the professional standards demanded of those in such a position. Putting her back in charge of the Home Office is deplorable. It displays neither integrity, professionalism nor accountability on the part of Sunak. What it really displays is his political weakness and that his priority is to placate the warring factions of his deeply divided party in the vain hope that it will prevent them from plotting his downfall.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, we now also have the gurning mug of Michael Gove back in the Cabinet. A man who has form. A man who thinks that it is perfectly acceptable to tell the most blatant and intelligence-insulting lies as long as he’s terribly terribly polite while doing so. A right-wing iron fist in an outwardly velvet glove. But who is fooling?

We also have the return of Dominic Raab and his angrily throbbing temple vein, and just to pour caustic soda on the open wound, Gavin Williamson is back, the illegitimate offspring of Private Pike from Dad’s Army and Eva Braun (I know, more hyperbole). Even Tory commentator, founder of Conservative Home and G Beebies News presenter, Tim Montgomerie, was appalled by Williamson’s return to the Cabinet, tweeting : “A PM committed to integrity does not appoint Gavin Williamson to government.”Williamson is a man who, let us not forget was previously sacked from the government for leaking national security information. It’s a mark of just how appalling the re-appointment of Braverman is that no one is talking about Williamson.

This is a Cabinet which illustrates how tired and lacking in talent the Tories have become after Johnson’s purge of Conservative remainers. It’s a Cabinet cobbled together in an attempt to buy Sunak some time.

We now have Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and Gavin Williamson back  in harness, all of whom were sacked for breaches of the ministerial code. This, apparently, is what passes for integrity, professionalism and accountability, in case you were wondering.

On Wednesday it was Sunak’s first PMQs, and what we got was truly dire. It was the exact same shtick we have come to know and loathe from Boris Johnson, a copy of all Johnson’s worst lines, but delivered by a low energy nerd, even down to the tired old Corbyn and Brexit jibes. It was not just poor, it was also dishonest.

It’s only Sunak’s first full days in the job and he is already coming under pressure to sack his Home Secretary and his judgement is being seriously questioned. Suella Braverman failed to turn up to the House of Commons to answer the Urgent Question on her resignation and reappointment as Home Secretary. Waste of space Speaker Lindsay Hoyle conveniently waited until Braverman had scuttled out the chamber before announcing the Urgent Question on her reappointment six days after resigning for misconduct over a security breach. There’s accountability for you.

This, and Rish!’s (exclamation mark) lacklustre performance at PMQs will have done little to reassure jittery Tory nerves that he is the guy who can pull their failing party back from the electoral abyss. And good riddance to all of them when this happens.

GOATs? Government Of All Talents, my arse. GOLTs, more like it - Government Of Limited Talents.

Sojourn in Wiltshire October 2022: Part 1

It's half-term and we are spending the week in a rental cottage, just outside of Shaftesbury in Wiltshire. A time to explore the area and that of nearby Dorset.

On the way up, we decided to stop off at Montacute House, described in the National Trust handbook as: 'Montacute is a masterpiece of Elizabethan Renaissance architecture and design. With its towering walls of glass, glow of ham stone and surrounding garden and parkland, it is a place of beauty and wonder.' It was a shame that it was pouring with rain and we had to keep indoors for pretty much all of our visit. Hence a photograph of a rather wet drive and none of the exterior of the house.

On display were several life-size portraits of Elizabethan notables. Here are the head and shoulders of one such. I didn't take a note of his name but, to me, he looks thoroughly fed up with having to sit still for the artist. Or, perhaps, with having to wear that ruff to keep his wife happy? She starched it especially for the portrait and wear it he must.

Long galleries were originally used as spaces to exercise and spend time with friends where the inclement British weather wouldn’t interfere. Just the place for today. This one is the longest of its type in England, stretching the full 52 metres or 176 feet length of the house. It normally houses a collection of portraits from the National Portrait Gallery but these have been removed for maintenance of the Long Gallery.

This is a detail from what is arguably the most valuable item at Montacute - the Tournai Tapestry. The tapestry was originally part of a larger set woven in the Flemish town of Tournai between 1477 and 1481. It depicts a knight on horseback carrying a standard with arms of Jean de Daillon. It’s one of the few surviving tapestries from the fifteenth century and was commissioned by de Daillon himself, but it was eventually gifted to him by the city of Tournai. Then it disappeared for several centuries, turned up for sale in New York and then bought for the nation by a wealthy benefactor. It has been recently cleaned and repaired and it really is impressive. I think I read that it's the oldest tapestry in the care of the National Trust.

The weather was looking reasonable today - maybe a shower or two but nothing to put us off. We elected to follow a circular route that took it Tisbury at roughly the halfway point, with the promise of a teashop! My GPS clocked the walk at around 7.5 miles which was odd because the map we were following gave the distance at 5.5 miles. Something went strange somewhere. But, notwithstanding this, it was a good walk in the countryside with views and mostly on footpaths and bridleways.

Our walk began and ended at Old Wardour Castle. Once one of the most daring and innovative homes in Britain. It was built in the 14th century as a lightly fortified luxury residence for comfortable living and lavish entertainment. But the Civil War put an end to this and it is now a rather romantic ruin. It was featured in the Kevin Costner film 'Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves'. It survived two sieges before abandonment when New Wardour Castle was built nearby. But the new one is a castle in name only as it is really a large country house.

The original doorway that lead into the central courtyard. The facade was four floors high and was built to impress. 

At the centre of the castle, the Great Hall would have been one of the most elaborate rooms in the castle, along with the Great Parlour, where the household would have got on with their lives in relative privacy from the many servants and visitors.

A room on the second floor of the East Tower.

Climbing to the top of the East Tower bring you to the open sky and some fantastic views of the neighbouring lake and countryside. It really is a tall building and you pass through four floors to get to this point.

There is a 'Banqueting House', with Gothic battlements, overlooking the lake. It is thought to have been a place for refreshments for visitors to the castle in the 18th and 19th centuries. This is a detail from one of the small stained glass windows found there. Apparently, it can now be hired as a wedding venue.

The track of the path is easy to follow through this field of something or other. Was it maize or was it turnips? I couldn't make up my mind on this one.

St John's church in Tisbury. It is thought that there has been a church on this site since Saxon times, as it is known that there was an abbey in Tisbury in the 7th century which was destroyed by the Danes in the 9th. Between 1180 and 1200 an impressive Norman church was built here, and parts of this remain in today's church, despite a Victorian restoration. A yew tree in the graveyard is at least 2000, and possibly 4000, years old.

A detail of disciples' heads from a stained glass window.

The East Window in St Andrew's Chapel. It dates from the 1860s and is now in need of repair.

The sentiment on the inscription is worth reading and pondering on its modern resonance.

Looking eastwards down the aisle of St John's towards St Andrew's Chapel. The chapel is separated from the main body of the church by a large glass screen and this makes it a rather intimate and comfortable space. I expect that the chapel is used more often than the rest of the church.

A very practical sliding (watch your fingers!) latch on a gate. We haven’t come across this design before and there were two on this walk.

St Leonard's church, Semley - our last stop of the day. It originally dates from the 9th century and was almost completely rebuilt in the mid to late 1800s at the expense of the then incumbent. So, it's essentially a Victorian construct, with just a few bits and bobs from its predecessor.

This monument to George Armstrong has a history that is both interesting and tragic. The model of a horseman has been stolen twice: firstly, to be recovered within 6 months of its theft and, secondly, to disappear completely. What is there now dates from around 2009. George Armstrong's mother was the original donor of the statue. George was a veteran of the Second Boer War but was not eligible to serve in WW1, but not for the want of his trying. He suffered from depression and it was thought by a coroner after his death in 1915 that he had committed suicide at his home in Semley. Because of this, his burial followed the then practice for suicides, with his head facing west, rather than east for everyone else in the graveyard. Hence the orientation of the horseman.

In the Lady Chapel, is a large stained glass window of three lights, swirled about by paintings of semi-abstract flowers, along with others, most notably snowdrops, of almost botanic clarity. The dedication of the window was unexpected: WPC YVONNE FLETCHER 1958-1984 KILLED ON DUTY ST JAMES’S SQUARE LONDON. In the centre is a ‘METROPOLITAN EIIR POLICE’ badge of a star topped by a crown. It is an incident that those of us 'of a certain age' remember well. 
Yvonne, who was a native of Semley, was a police officer fatally shot during a protest outside the Libyan embassy at St. James's Square, London, in 1984. Fletcher, who had been on duty and deployed to police the protest, died shortly afterwards at Westminster Hospital. Her death resulted in the Metropolitan Police Service laying siege to the embassy for the next eleven days, and the United Kingdom severing all diplomatic relations with Libya. No one has ever been convicted for her murder and, I guess, never will.

Definitely Victorian stained glass because of its colour and rather heavy feel - Victorian drab is what I call it. I couldn't find any reference to it anywhere so I could be way off the mark.

Bad luck comes in threes.

 

We are in for our fifth Prime minister in six years and, if you live in Scotland, the tenth Tory Prime Minister you wouldn't have voted for. They, and that includes my mother-in-law, say that bad luck comes in threes and, right on cue, along comes the third Conservative Prime Minister this year. This time the Conservatives aren’t even pretending that there’s anything democratic about it, Rish! Sunak, with his exclamation mark of ambition, becomes Prime Minister despite having been rejected by his own party just six weeks ago. He does so without facing a single hustings, a single interview, or even the most cursory questioning, never mind facing any sort of vote, not from his party members, and certainly not from the wider public. He didn’t even make any public statements during the truncated leadership contest. Sunak become Prime Minister after party elders stitched it up by themselves behind closed doors, the kind of process you more normally associate with a tinpot dictatorship. It was traditionally said that the Westminster system, which hands almost unlimited power to the Prime Minister, is an elected dictatorship, now the Conservatives have dispensed with the elected part, we are just left with the dictator.

Sunak is the guy who, during his failed leadership campaign a few weeks ago, boasted about taking public money away from the most deprived areas in order to give it to leafy and well-heeled Conservative constituencies. We will now have an unelected multi-millionaire imposing austerity and spending cuts on the poorest and the most vulnerable, making them pay for the economic havoc caused by his own party. You can bet it won’t be Sunak, who, together with his wife, has an estimated fortune of £730 million, or his rich cronies who will suffer financially due to the Conservative created economic crisis assailing Britain. It will be benefits claimants, the low paid, and ordinary struggling households. Actually, not just them. We are not in those categories but it's going to affect us as well.

Let's not forget that Sunak is a right-wing Tory, not the Angel Gabriel. During his previous failed leadership bid, Sunak vowed to extend ‘vilification of the UK’ to the definition of extremism and people deemed to be guilty of vilification of Britain would be referred to the anti-extremist Prevent programme. Sunak vowed to “root out those who are vocal in their hatred of our country”. Peter Fahy, a former senior police chief denounced Sunak’s plan, saying it strayed into thought crime. The Tories are now trying to tell us that Sunak is a ‘safe pair of hands’ who can be trusted to make the right decisions on the economy, but Sunak told us in 2016 that Brexit would be good for the economy, an assertion which was obviously wrong then and is even more painfully wrong now. The questionable nature of Sunak’s judgement was also evident from his ‘eat out to help out' scheme during the pandemic which at great cost to the public purse was estimated by researchers to have been responsible for one sixth of Covid cases during the late summer of 2020. Then he handed over £37bn to his Tory cronies for dodgy PPE contracts which were never delivered. Sunak is no one’s saviour, certainly not ours, and not the Tory party’s either. Now, as he introduces a new round of austerity, his new scheme will be 'eat nowt to help out' the rich.

Unburdened by any public mandate as he is, Sunak has, entirely unsurprisingly, ruled out an early general election. This is because the Tories are terrified of the verdict of the people. If there was to be a general election within the next few weeks, the Tories would be facing electoral oblivion.

After accepting the crown, sorry, job, Sunak addressed the public with a brief acceptance speech that made Liz Truss seem like an animated and engaging public speaker. Then he left without taking questions. Why should he take questions? It’s not like he’s accountable to anyone. We shouldn’t be surprised that Sunak struggled with the auto-cue, and both looked and didn’t look at the camera at the same time After all, he can’t fuel up a car properly or work a contactless card machine. He has staff for that sort of thing.

The fact that a British Asian and practising Hindu has become Prime Minister has been hailed as a victory for diversity and inclusivity but, sadly, his party's policies are very much a defeat for the very same. However, it is genuinely moving that we have a Prime Minister whose wife is a billionaire, and we can all be proud that someone has finally climbed their way up from private school to Oxbridge to merchant banker to Prime Minister, taking in immense wealth and privilege along the way. Truly yet another man of the people.

Sunak’s coronation represents the final collapse of the democratic pretensions of the Westminster Parliament. We have an appointed Prime Minister who was rejected by his own party just a few weeks ago, who does not have the support of Conservative members or the wider electorate , and who is about to embark on a damaging new round of austerity for which the Conservatives have no mandate. An austerity which is only necessary because of Conservative lies about Brexit and their mismanagement of the economy. The Tories will try to avoid a General Election as long as they can in an effort to stave off the damning verdict that will surely be passed on them by the electorate, but the very best that they can hope for now is that he can salvage a few seats from the political wreckage that calls itself the Conservative and Unionist party.

The Tories have broken democracy, they have broken the economy, they have broken Britain and they have broken the union. There is a crumb of comfort in that among the damage that they have wrought, the Conservatives have also broken themselves. Here’s hoping it finishes them off for good. But I'm not holding my breath: it's amazing what can happen when you've got the right wing media on your side.

That's another fine mess you've got us into

 

The lettuce wins hands down. The Star newspaper had set up a live feed of a photo of Truss beside a lettuce and a caption asking which would last longer. Well, now we know, the lettuce wins hands down. This may mean that the lettuce will be the next Prime Minister, and it would certainly make a better job of it than Truss did.

As someone tweeted, this feels like the Tories had signed up for a month’s free trial and have only just remembered to cancel it. Truss’s six week reign as PM also included 10 days off for national mourning and two weeks off for the conference season. So it could be argued that she worked just 12 days as PM during her time in office.

Truss did not apologise in her brief resignation speech as none of it is apparently her fault. Shockingly, but not surprisingly, the Tories do not want a General Election but are planning an internal party lettuceship election to stitch things up amongst themselves. According to the Times, Boris Johnson plans to stand. May all the Gods help us if this is the case.

This is, of course, most likely (allegedly) what Johnson had in mind all the time when he backed Truss for PM. It stuck the knife into Sunak, which would have been reason enough, but by backing a weak candidate he knew was unsuitable for the job, he could position himself for a return to power once Truss failed. Although it’s unlikely that even Johnson realised just how quickly Truss’s administration would implode.

Since being forced out of office, Johnson has been in the USA giving speeches at £150K a pop. He missed last night’s vote because he is on holiday in the Caribbean, but he’d probably have missed it anyway because he has missed every vote since July. He hasn’t stopped claiming his £84K salary though. People briefing on behalf of Boris Johnson say he is expected to stand in the Tory leadership contest because, ahem, he believes it is a matter of national interest and for the good of the nation that he does so. Give me strength. He’s getting his lying in early this time. So that's the Tories this week, wittering on about the need for calm and stability in government, and how next week they can give the country a sober and sensible head, and along comes that lying corrupt balloon and the Brexit circus of grotesques that he brings along in his wake.

There were reports on Thursday afternoon that the head of the 1922 Committee said on Thursday that the membership would get a vote. These are the same clowns who inflicted Truss on us. If there was any justice, the Tory membership should be banned from having any say on who becomes the new Prime Minister and should collectively be sent to the naughty step to sit in darkness and reflect on just how out of touch and outright nasty they are. The Tories are now going to choose a new Prime Minister just six weeks after they chose the last one. You just can't make this stuff up.

I cannot stress enough just how few ****s I give about the opinions or feelings of a Conservative party membership which was entrusted with steering the ship of state and steered it straight into an iceberg. And now it seems that the Westminster system is going to let them do it all over again – and you know that they will give us back Boris Johnson, who was forced from office in disgrace just a few weeks ago. This is beyond absurd. 

We need a General Election now if democracy is to have any meaning. As has been pointed out by many, Liz Truss is merely a symptom of a fundamentally dysfunctional Westminster system. Are there many who still want to argue that Labour could not possibly do better than this complete and utter shitshow, because if they are still intent on arguing that – and you can bet that they are - they now have even less credibility and self-awareness than an ex Prime Minister who went head to head with a lettuce and lost. Do any of them have any nuggets of wisdom to share with us? A written constitution does not seem like a bad idea at all at this juncture.

And, right on cue, up pop the deluded few: “Let’s get this done and get on delivering on the manifesto that we got elected on. That must be our focus after all this.” Your party has had twelve years to ‘get this done’. Twelve years, twelve years in which you have wrought economic and political havoc, and now you want to ‘get this done’. It’s your miserable party which is done, and along with it, your career. We are sick of the Conservatives, sick of careerists and the revolving Tory door of talentless hacks competing to out Daily Mail one another – look where that has got us.

Even now, after all that has happened, it is striking that so many conservative MPs are still talking about what is “ best for the party”. Party still comes before country and constituents and democracy. It’s not a General Election that is needed, it’s a revolution, and every single sitting Tory MP should be disbarred from standing for re-election. But we know that the Conservatives are determined to avoid a General Election as they know that they would be annihilated. Johnson said that the last General Election was the most important in a generation, because that’s how long it would take for the Conservative party to recover. But whoever takes over will inherit a divided and broken party which is unable to govern. The instability, the plotting, the sheer self-interested selfishness, the corruption and the traducing of democracy and standards of decency in government. None of it will stop. And on top of it all we will have a government led by a Prime Minister who is implementing policies that no one has voted for, not even their own party. The infighting and navel gazing will only continue while people freeze, food prices soar, and trade with Europe continues to fall off a cliff. A pox on all of them and may the Gods help the rest of us.

Here today, gone tomorrow. Who is next in the queue?

King Charles III (I still find it hard to write that as he'll always be Prince Charles to me) may very well say "dear, oh, dear" as he recently met Liz Truss. "Dear, oh, (expletive deleted) dear" is what we are all saying. 

Liz has attempted to save her political career by throwing her Chancellor under the bus and sacking him for doing what she wanted him to do and making a screeching U-turn on her flagship policy, announcing that she will not after all be cutting Corporation Tax but will instead be going forward with the increase planned by Sunak and Johnson. Truss has just ripped up the policy which Tory party members elected her to deliver just a few weeks ago. This is a government in free fall. 

The PM's (and I still can't believe that I'm writing that) press conference on Friday was only a few minutes long but still managed to be awkward and excruciating. Truss’s press team had clearly taken the decision that the less time she was exposed to the media the less damage she could do. There were no apologies, no explanations, no acknowledgement that anything that has happened over the past few weeks was in any way her fault. However, in those brief few minutes she showed that she has no clue how to fund the tax cuts that she insists are necessary. Truss delivered a brief stilted statement, and looking like a terrified rabbit caught in the headlights, with long and uncomfortable pauses as she scanned the journalists in attendance desperately looking for a friendly face. 

She was asked why she wasn’t quitting as Prime Minister, and the Prime Architect of the economic chaos of the past couple of weeks said that she was staying to ensure ‘economic stability'. Truss took just four questions, two from right-wing newspapers, one from the BBC and one from ITV, no follow up questions were allowed. And then she fled the room. Even those supposedly friendly faces asked difficult questions, Truss is not just brazenly incompetent – she’s a coward – she had lost the room, she has lost the country and she has lost her party.

If you do a press conference at a time of crisis in your leadership like this, you stay and answer all the questions. Even Boris Johnson knew that. There was no opportunity to ask her what she meant about controlling the size of the state and does this mean that there will be a return to spending cuts despite her assurance to the Commons on Wednesday that there would be none. In her brief time in office she has already made a number of major U-turns and no one could have any confidence that her promise not to cut public spending should be any different.

Kwarteng has been replaced by Jeremy Hunt, the fourth Chancellor in as many months, a decision that Hunt will certainly come to regret. Chancellor Monthly, it’s the Tory party’s new magazine. Kwarteng is the second shortest serving Chancellor on record with just eight days longer in office, other than Conservative MP Iain Macleod who served only 30 days as Chancellor in 1970 before dying of a heart attack. I'm so old I can remember that.

It’s not just Truss and Kwarteng who have ruined what little was left of their political credibility. Scores of their supporters have been tainted as well, including our own MP, Scott Mann.

If Truss thought that blaming Kwarteng for a disaster she shares responsibility for, was going to restore confidence in her leadership, she is going to be sadly disappointed. Truss needed to deliver a reassuring performance at that press conference, but she did worse than anyone expected, even given the low expectations we have come to have of her. Truss has no political authority left. She has no support amongst her own MPs, who are now happily leaking the private conversations in Conservative MP WhatsApp groups in which they plot the quickest way to get rid of her.

Even the staunch Truss backer Christopher Chope is in dismay after Truss’s abysmal performance, telling Times Radio the Tory party is a ‘laughing stock’ and the Conservative economic agenda is ‘trashed’, adding: ‘I don’t know where to go from here frankly.’

Truss needed her press conference to reassure three constituencies, the markets, Conservative MPs and the public. She failed to reassure the markets, she failed to reassure Tory MPs, and it’s highly unlikely that she will have reassured the public. This is a Prime Minister whose remaining time in office is numbered. According to reports it is widely believed among Tory MPs that her press conference has only made things worse with one telling Beth Rigby of Sky News, the question is no longer should Truss go, but when should she go. The odds on Truss surviving the next few weeks have now shortened dramatically. Even her own supporters are in open despair with some plotting to replace her with a caretaker administration headed by Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak.

We have had four chancellors in four months and five prime ministers in five years – the way things are going we might be in for a sixth prime minister very soon, but in the meantime we are certainly in for more uncertainty and instability from a Conservative government that has crashed the economy, adding to the misery of hundreds of thousands of households who are already struggling to make ends meet due to the economic mismanagement of the Conservative party. So how is that ‘strong and stable UK’ that Better Together promised us working out for everyone? And a pox on everyone who still continues to believe that the Tories are fit to govern us. What a s**tshow we are living through. We don't deserve this.

I couldn't have put it better.........................

 A friend (thank you, DC) sent me to a link for the blog of a friend of his, Steve Tilley (you can access it here). Steve gives a very succinct and insightful commentary on this present Tory administration. I think it deserves a wider distribution so here it is (by kind permission of Steve). It's always comforting to know that there are others who are equally enraged/concerned about the way things are at the moment. And may a plague of boils affect all supporters of the shower in charge.

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Constant Deterioration

There is a joke told about a vicar who has just announced he is leaving. 

An older parishioner is talking to him in the coffee queue later. 'We'll never find another one as good as you' she says .

The vicar acknowledges this apparent kindness and suggests there are plenty of fine candidates out there.

'No, no' she says 'I've been here through five vicars and every one's been worse than the previous one.'

I thought of this joke during the budget. 

In 2010 we had a Conservative led coalition which decided on austerity. Showing his working the appalling David Cameron announced that it was always good to fix the roof when the sun is shining. Then he took all the extra money he and his journeyman chancellor collected and put it away to use to fix the roof on some future date when roof-fixing was more expensive. In his metaphor the roof was debt not infrastructure.

Coming to the end of his five years (remember the Fixed-term Parliaments Act?) he then made a reckless promise which he never expected to have to keep because the sound of the boos of the crowd when any member of his team presented Olympic Medals must have still been ringing in his ears. Unexpectedly winning a small majority he was stuck in a corner with the promise of an in/out referendum on EU membership. This led to the first stirrings of Boris, probably not because of his enthusiasm for democracy but the idea of some in/out action. Meanwhile Cameron insisted that the government would act on the result of the referendum.

We are familiar with 2016 and the marginal, probably rigged, referendum which divided the country and even some families. Reminds me of the old joke about a stranger being approached in Belfast during the troubles. 'Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?

'Actually, I'm an atheist.'

'Yes, but are you a Protestant atheist or a Catholic one?

Are you a remainer or a brexiteer?

Neither, we've left. 

Yes, but are you a...? Well it doesn't quite work but it should.

Cameron resigned, because he was a staunch remainer, humming a little hum as he went and the obvious choice for replacement was someone who had campaigned for remain as he had. Theresa May's big idea was to get the country behind her so she held a General Election and lost her slender majority. Nevertheless she got to a point where she had a deal with the EU but her party voted it down. She resigned and Boris Johnson replaced her, immediately going to the EU and negotiating a worse deal than the one just rejected. He took this to the electorate in 2019 and got a majority back for his 'oven-ready' deal which his party then approved. Ian Duncan-Smith told us it didn't need any more scrutiny because every line had been scrutinised over and over again. Never over-estimate the ability of a quiet man. Shortly afterwards Johnson and Co decided it wasn't very good and tried to put it back in the freezer. Sadly no-one has yet invented an uncooker.

Meanwhile the world got Covid 19 and our under-invested (austerity, remember) healthcare providers and government of all the finest minds that thought Brexit was a good idea, were a bit slow to act and a lot cronyist in their contract allocation. During this time Johnson lied again and again to his colleagues, Parliament and even the late Queen. His home became the most-fined address in the UK having broken lockdown regulations.

It took just over two years for the nakedness of the new emperor to become apparent to his colleagues and then there was a bit of a wait for the letters of no-confidence to arrive with the entire cabinet acting like naughty children. Almost everyone had a go at being Education Secretary.

So Johnson was forced out and the single transferable vote system to find a new Conservative leader (yes, even they use it) gave us another Remainer who alleged she had seen the light and said she would be making unpopular decisions but wasn't sufficiently clear that this was because tanking the UK economy is, by and large, unpopular with everyone. As I write our savings are looking precarious, our rivers full of shit, our mortgages unaffordable, our hospitals in meltdown and I really have no idea who is Education Secretary without googling it. Our Home Secretary rejoicing in the idea of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda is not only cruel and unpopular with almost everyone - it seems to have persuaded India to pull out of a trade deal. Our PM failed to be immediately clear that the French were our allies, when asked. I've lost count of how many Tory MPs are currently suspended while sex crimes are being investigated. The Truss weeks (she can't survive months, surely?) feel like we are being used as the toys of someone who fancied playing with a country to see what it was like. Get UK22 for the PS5 and see if you can do better. If you press the 'Blame Brexit' button you have to start again.

This has been the worst twelve years of UK management I have experienced in my life. I think it's going to get worse. I'd love to be wrong.

Penultimate stretch of the Cornish Coastal Footpath.

This week's walk was a total contrast to last week's - Cornwall rather than Devon, coastal rather than moorland and as a couple rather than with a group. And rather special because this was the penultimate stretch of our circumnavigation of Cornwall via the eponymous Coastal Footpath. By the end of this walk, we would be left with a final stretch of 2-3 miles that would take us up to the Devon border at Marsland Mouth. But that's me getting ahead of myself, we had to get this one done first. Reputed to be some of the hardest miles to walk, and rated severe in all walking guides I've read, we were ready for a challenge. We were not disappointed.

The best way of doing this particular stretch was as a linear walk - my attempts at finding a reasonable circular route failed. So we parked at Morwenstow by the church, booked a taxi to take us to Sandymouth Bay and walked back from there. It came in at 5.3 miles. Sounds easy. But take a look at the elevation profile on the right. It says it all and any other comments from me would be superfluous. This was about half the distance of our previous walk and a reasonable estimate would put it at four times as much effort.

A glimpse of Sandymouth Bay just down from the cafe - their sausage baps are highly recommended as good preparation for a walk.

The geology in this area is unique and it's all down to the Bude Formation - a series of dramatic folds in the strata. Here, on Sandymouth Bay, are upstanding ribs of sandstone - a hard stone which is resistant to erosion. Those in the geological know will immediately recognise the anticline as the ribs plunge downwards towards the sea. 

Looking back towards Sandymouth Bay from the first incline on the Coastal Footpath - there were more to come.

A little further on and we were looking over Warren Gutter Beach. 

Next up was Duckpool, with more of the sandstone ribs. They come from the Upper Carboniferous era, or so I read. Geology really isn't my forte but I can recognise folds and ribs when I see them.

Looking down on Wren Beach.

Wren Beach from the east. And guess what that is in the middle?

Looking back down the coast westwards across Bude Bay towards Pencannow Point by Crackington Haven. Quite a view, eh? It's equally as good in the opposite direction as well. Lots of cliffs which means lots of ups and downs.

The satellite dishes of GCHQ Bude (formerly called the GCHQ Composite Signals Organisation Station, Morwenstow) are visible for miles around. This is a satellite ground station located at Cleave Camp, between the small villages of Morwenstow and Coombe, operated by the British signals intelligence service (GCHQ) with some heavy help of the USA. It's a listening post for telecommuncations of the highest military secrecy. It is on the site of the former World War II airfield, RAF Cleave, and you come across the foundations of some of these old building as you go by. There are currently some twenty one satellite antennae of various sizes. Given all this communication hardware, it comes as a bit of a surprise that there's no mobile phone signal in the vicinity. 

We came across a single patch of Common Toadflax (Linaria vulgaris), just before we dropped down to Stanbury Mouth. A little splash of colour in the otherwise barren edges of the footpath. The name Toadflax, by common consent, stems from the resemblance of the mouth of the flowers with the wide mouth of a toad. The general similarity of the plant in early summer to a Flax plant, accounts for the latter part of its name (hence Linaria from linum - flax). The light orange and yellow flowers also give it its country names of Butter and Eggs, Eggs and Bacon etc.

The footpath down from Harscott High Cliff, on the right, to Stanbury Mouth and Beach. And it was as steep as it looks. Climbing up to where I took the photograph was pretty steep as well. At an earlier point on the walk, we said to each other "this walk isn't as hard as we thought it was going to be". How wrong we were.

Looking towards the rather aptly named Sharpnose Point.

You can, if you wish, take the narrow footpath out to the end of Sharpnose Point but, given the rather strong winds at, we thought we'd reserve that for a calmer day.

There's no name on the map for this little beach but it's at the bottom of a cleave called Tidna Shute and the cliffs above are called Vicarage Cliff. These are where a past vicar of Morwenstow Parish walked and rode about. Our final ascent of this walk was up from the bottow of Tidna Shute to the top of Vicarage Cliff. Tough but we managed it. Not bad for two septuagenarians, if I say so myself.

And now for something completely different - the smallest building in the care of the National Trust. One of the most unusual surprises on the Coast Path is this little driftwood hut built by the eccentric Victorian vicar of Morwenstow, the Reverend Robert Stephen Hawker, who liked to smoke a pipe of opium here now and then with his literary pals Charles Dickens and Alfred Lord Tennyson. It is easy to understand why he chose this spot for it. There's room for three with their drug paraphernalia.

Hawker’ s Hut is known for its graffiti. Mostly it’s of a rather mundane nature (‘Charlie and Alfie wuz here’ sort of thing) but I really liked this one. ‘Correlation does not equal causation’. "Correlation is not causation", "Correlation is not causation", "Correlation is not causation" is a statistics mantra. It is drilled, military school-style, into the heads of every budding statistician. "Correlation is not causation" means that just because two things correlate does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. Despite it embodying a very important truth, the phrase has not caught on in the wider world. It's easy to see why. Our preconceptions and suspicions about the way things work tempt us to make the leap from correlation to causation without any hard evidence. Lazy journalism and unthinking analysis quite often ends up with "correlation must be causation" and that's why unfounded and misleading, even dangerous, false links are made. Try 'going to Eton produces intelligent politicians'.

The leaning tower of St Morwenna and St John the Baptist Church at Morwenstow. Not really. Not sure what went wrong there but it was good to see the church at the end of our walk.

But not as good as seeing that the Tea Rooms were still open! What better way to end a walk? Hopefully, we'll be able to celebrate here when we complete the last leg. That might even call for a full Afternoon Tea.