Starmer, McSweeney and Mandeson

 

My thinking, for what it is worth as I have no inside track, is that many people thought appointing Mandelson was very clever, that includes Kemi Bandenoch and Nigel Farage. Mandelson was just the slightly sleazy character with links to Trump who might be good at keeping in with Trump.

Almost certainly not true but it is not clear quite how nasty and vicious Trump is.

It is also true that Mandelson had been caught out in dodgy activities in the past but nothing suggested that he would sell government secrets to outsiders. Many politicians are influenced by friends and large donors but most do not sell secrets, they just make appropriate decisions.

Another important figure is Morgan McSweeney who was Starmer's chief of staff when he became PM but was also crucial to Starmer becoming leader of the Labour party. He his a protogee of Mandelson, definitely on the right of the Labour party . He help set up a faction within the Labour Party called Labour Together which campaigned against Jeremy Corbyn. It might be that McSweeney identified Starmer as the person to take on Corbyn and made himself an essential part of Starmer's team.

The problem is that Starmer is not a natural politician and does not come across as a man of the people. He is very much the lawyer who argues his cases very carefully. There is a feeling that his knighthood makes him more of a toff. He got it for being head of the DPP, and goes with the job. It might be his difficulty with the civil service goes back to having been head of a big government service and possibly being used to his orders just being obeyed and trusting those below him just to getting on with things. Perhaps he trusted McSweeney too much, others assumed that when he spoke it was always with the support of the PM but he might not have been  consulted, not clear how much McSweeney always cleared with Starmer.

The other issue appears to be the claim that the Foreign Office does not have to worry about vetting of their staff. There might be some truth especially if they were using double agents in some of their posting:) 

It could be messy but I think it unlikely that Starmer was aware of all that was going on, and jst assumed that things would happen. Starmer does not appaer to make friends abd be very clubable. Once this may not have mattered but with television and modern media polticians are much more exposed as people. It is not competence does not a valuable talent anymore but Starmer seems to have shown both a level

Do not trust simple solutions and things are complicated?

 

 It is relevant to explain that I am a mathematician. One of the things about mathematics is that you sometimes get things wrong. This seems to be a problem in the world of politics and even when you know you're wrong and admit it, you get criticised for being wrong, not praised for being honest.

The other important lesson it is possible to learn from mathematics is that often the soution to a problem is complicated. Therev are two differnt ways this can happen. One is to show that the answer is right but also sometimes the answer is complicated. To illustrate with an example from an area that I have worked in. There are some objects which are called "Finite simple groups". In this context it does not  matter what they are but what does matter is that nearly all of them have nice coeherent descriptions except for 26 examples. This is fact. The descriptions are complicated and, when using the descriptions, these 26 exceptions have to be considered. It is irritating but illustrates the point: life is not simple.

This is why I never trust anyone who tells me that have a simple solution to a problem. Or even that they have a solution. It would be comforting if there were people who were so talented we could trust them to solve all our problems. I am sure there are some people who can solve some problems some of the time; doctors can cure some illnesses but not always. Plumbers can mend some plumbing problems but we would not expect them to cure cancer. Which leads me to wonder why people follow individuals who claim that they have solutions and everything will magically get better. 

There are too many examples today, from Trump and Farage on the right to Corbyn and Polanski who are more on the left. It is not just the individuals but those who put so much hope into them. The problem is that there are those who put their faith into "simple" solutions, whether it be religious or political beliefs. Tax the rich, let the market decide, be a christian/hindu/islamic country and all our problems will be solved.

Surely it must be clear that this is nonsense, is it just that we want to believe there are simple solutions! 

 

 

 

 

Andy Burnham amd Suella Braverman

 You might wonder what the connexion between these two politicians is? Fundamentally they have both shown that they're more interested in themselves than anything else.

A brief comment about whether Suella Braverman who has always shown herself to be more interested in Suella Braverman than anyone else. Her behaviour as a Tory minister clearly illustrated this phenomenon. As with most Tories leaving the Tory party and joining Reform a big argument seems to be that Britain is broken. This is not true, it might be having some difficulties, but if you're trying to claim that the current government is failing this is a good line to push. However many of the faults that we now see were caused by the 14 years of the Tory Government. Suella Braverman seemed to be a major part of that government holding various cabinet positions so is she responsible for the problems. It seems odd that she now thinks that as a member of the Reformal Party  she is somehow going tosolve the problems that she helped create in the first place.

Let us now turn to Andy Burnham. I voted for him as leader when he stood on a previous occasion. From that you can deduce that I was a supporter of Andy Burnham and would have liked him to have been the leader of the Labour Party. You can also deduce that I was and still am a member of the Labour Party, something I am still proud to be Despite some errors they have been making.

it is worth thinking about why he chose to put his name forward for the coming by-election. There seems to me no reason that one would want to give up being a mayor with real power to becoming a backbench MP a role he has already played. The only reason for wishing to resign as Mayor to stand for parliament was to challenge Keir Starmer as the leader. It was an act not to help the Labour Party or the country but to pursue his own personal interest. The mayorship only has two years to last and almost certainly there will be by-election pretty soon after that or just before it if you really want to be an MP. The trouble is I don't think he wants to be an MP, he wants to be Prime Minister. If he got elected in the by-election he would further destabilise the existing government which is despite many people's beliefs trying to do a good job. It is being destabilised partly by the House of Lords which is determined to frustrate some of the more useful left of centre policies, as with the employment bill and with the leasehold reform bill, the latter still being held up by the right wing House of Lords. The reform of the House of Lords is  amajor issue which I hope to write a blog about soon.

 

In conclusion I do not see either of these politicians behaving in the best interests of the country at this point in time. This does not surprise me when it comes to Suella Braverman but disappoints me enormously when it comes to Andy Burnham who has allowed his popularity to get in the way of his better judgement. 

Is Donald Trump just a typical american?

In this I wish to discuss how we perhaps misinterpret Donald Trump. Americans jave a great belief in the "Excepionalism of the USA", perhaps than most people have about the place they live. I frequently watch on Youtube various postings about Americans misunderstanding Europe, not just Europe, really the whole world. Many Americans do not seem to realise that outside America is not the same as America. This might seem an odd statement at first  but the first time Americans visit other countries they always seem surprised that things do not work the same. One rather trivial example is that ice is not poured into glasses and water automatically. This may be because we live in countries which aren't quite as hot but the use of ice is not a universal activity. Also though the dollar, that is the US dollar, is a very powerful currency it is not universally accepted as cash in most parts of the world. Even years ago when I worked at chemist shop in Aldgate, especially on a Sunday when most other shops were closed, Americans would just pass me a handful of cash and say "can't sort out your money, just take what you need". I think Donald Trump is just like these Americans who seem not to understand at all that the rest of the world is not America and when he says things he expects other countries to behave exactly as he thinks USA would. This comes as a surprise. That is not to say he is not a very dangerous man The reason for his danger is the  ridiculous position of authority he has achieved in the United States of America as well as the leeway given to him by their legislative branch which is meant to hold the executive under some sort of control.

Of course it's also the issue of his clearly failing mental state but this is combined with those around him pretending it isn't happening. Just listen to his press secretary pretending he didn't say Iceland when he meant Greenland Of course it might be that he really does think Iceland and Greenland are the same place. When I was in America, many years ago now, in a university town where you might have assumed a reasonable level of education people had no idea where New Zealand was and thought somehow it was part of Australia. (It is actually  separated by a large sea 1000 miles away.) Another example of the American ignorance of the rest of the world concerns a friend who had taken a degree in English from an English university but had been born and brought up in the West Indies where her father was Scottish and a consultant surgeon and her mother was Canadian. The university was trying to insist that she should take an exam to prove she was fluent in English Not seeming to realise that most of the West Indies speak English as their first language and that she had a degree in English from an English university. They eventually relented when they realised that her mother was Canadian and they were aware that Canadians spoke English. A similar example from the same place was of a Swede who spoke very fluent and good English but she pronounced hot as hot and not as they tend to say in the midwest hat. They kept correcting her, not accepting that there is more than one way of pronouncing English words and and not everyone speaks with an American accent.  Talking to an American in the UK who had spent some time here, she explained to me that one thing that worried her was that when she was listening to someone on the radio she could not discern whether the person was coloured or not. This obviously surprised me because I could not understand why you would expect this. Obviously in America there is a coloured accent which seems to cover the whole country. These are all examples I personally have had which shows the failure of many Americans to understand that the rest of the world is not America.

I do not know how much Donald Trump has travelled outside of the United States of America But I do wonder whether many of his attitudes are coloured by his lack of experience of the rest of the world and, when he does travel as president, he is surrounded all the time by the trappings of America. One of the problems is also that Americans seem to have very little understanding of either their own history or that of the rest of the world. I'm not sure if Trump is aware of the War between the United States of America and Canada in 1812. (It isn't clear that Canada was at this point defined as Canada so the war was actually between the United States of America and the UK. This war lasted for two years and ended up exactly where it began, that is the border between Canada and the USA were defined after that war and were  exactly where they were before the USA invaded. Trump has often claimed that the USA has defended Canada though I'm not sure what evidence he has to justify this claim. It is worth noting that the USA did not enter the Second World War until the USA was invaded by Japan at Pearl Harbour. The Second World War between the UK Canada etc started on September the first 1939.  This is approximately two years before the USA entered the war. I'm not sure one could argue that the USA rushed in to help Canada in that war. Another thing which has surprised me has been the Americans do not seem to realise how much support they have given to the IRA over the years. When the twin towers came down  in 2001, I was working with a group of Americans in the UK. Obviosly we were appalled but what surprised me was their horror that anyone could blow up a civilian target as an act of terror.  When I pointed out that IRA had done this for some years in both Northern Ireland and mainland UK they seemed completely suprised, especially when I pointed out the the famous St Patrick's Day parades always raised money to support organisations which helped the IRA.

As Mencken said "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."  Despite his other faults he seems to have been right about that.

Palestine Action is just the Reform Party

 At the end of the 19th century Theodore Herzl promoted Zionism, that Jewish people should return to Palestine to escape anit-semitism. Recall that the idea of the return is based on the expulsion of jews from Israel by the colonial power, Romans, in the first century of the christian era. 

In 1917 Chaim Weizmann, then a chemist in Manchester persuaded Arthur Balfour to make his declaration. Weimann was a jewish refugee from Byelorussia who believed in Zionism and became the first president of the state of Israel, partly in return for his contribution to the british war effort, see below.

 There had been migration from eastern Europe under  Ottoman rule but possible under 100,000 but after the end of the first world war jews, mainly from Europe began to move to the by now UK controlled Palestine. In these cases they came as refugees fleeing what they saw as being places where they were victimised and dicriminated against. 

However they often came with support bought land and farms and developed communities both kibbutz and small settlements, some of which grew quite dramatically, Tel Aviv. As the numbers grew, especially under the mandate granted to the UK to rule Palestine the majority population, mainly Muslim resented the refugees. After all Palestine was for the Palestinians, just like England is for the English. 

Whilst many Palestinians got on with the newcomers, did business with them, some began to campaign and persuaded the mandate authorities to try to control the immigration of jews into Palestine. This is the same attitude we see from Reform and their supporters. Palestine Action are just the heirs to the campaigns against Jewish immigration with the same philosophy as their modern counterparts in Britain represented by Reform. It is interesting that so many on the left joyfully march under this banner.

 

 

  This come from https://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2008/05/12/140508_israel_weizmann_feature.shtml

Cordite and conkers

Cordite - used in the manufacture of ammunition and artillery – was in short supply and Britain needed to produce its own. For that, a chemical called acetone was required.

Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister (1902-05)

When supply routes were cut, Lloyd George, as Minister of Munitions, turned to Dr Weizmann after learning of a development which could aid the war effort.

Working in Manchester, Weizmann had discovered a fermentation process to produce large volumes of acetone from maize.

When supplies of maize ran short, it was even supplemented with horse chestnuts – or conkers – avidly collected by British schoolchildren!

Balfour declaration

Lloyd George’s gratitude was evident and led directly to British approval for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people - the state of Israel.

UK Zionists (c) M'cr Jewish Museum

Certainly, Weizmann’s scientific assistance brought him into close contact with British leaders, including the then Prime Minister and later Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour - whose constituency coincidentally lay in Manchester.

Then, on 2 November 1917, soon after Britain's acquisition of Palestine in the First World War, came the statement the Manchester Zionists had been waiting for: the Balfour Declaration.

Dr Weizmann who’d been waiting patiently outside for news outside the cabinet office in Downing Street was, of course, delighted. He celebrated into the night, apparently joining fellow Zionists in a Chassidic dance at a Chelsea restaurant!

 

  

An open letter to my MP, Clive Lewis

 Dear Clive,

Whilst looking down the list of MP's who voted against the government on the Welfare Bill I was not surprised to see your name on the list. As time has gone on since you were first chosen as the candidate for Norwich South and elected to parliament you have somehow become more and more irrelevant. It seems that you have drifted into taking positions which are more to do with posturing than with having any real effect.Perhaps I should have realised this early on when I attended an event shortly after your selection when you gave a speech which you devoted to attacking the Blair government. At no point did you offer any praise for the good things that goveenment had achieved. This is even more curious given your recent support for the Winter Fuel Payments and programme started during that governmet. Surely one role of Labour MPs is to promote the good things that the Labout party and government are promoting. Recent examples are the changes to employment law, banning  no fault evictions, VAT on private echools. All good actions which MPs should be crowing about on whatever platforms they choose to use.

What the Labour government appears to have lacked is any imagination and careful planning for the legislation they hope to bring forward. Perhaps this stems from the Corbyn era which was more concerned with infighting and taking left-wing positions than thinking seriously about long-term issues. Details of the  actual legislation required and how to handle the inevitable media uproar do not seem to have been thought through.  

There have been two issues which have led to much soul searching amongst Labour MPs and Labour supporters. Both have the difficulty of taking away something people have and have come to see as a right. (Note this phenomenon occurred with both non-dom status and exemptions from inheritance tax for farmers.) The first has been the Winter Fuel Payment which needed to be reduced. The sensible way would have been to admit that it is just an increase in the state pension. Once you have done that it becomes much easier to deal with. To preserve the fiction that this is to do with winter fuel costs, make the extra payable in three instalments paid during the months of December, January and February. Make it more generous by giving it to all state pensioners whether they share accomodaton or not.  In current terms make it £75 for each month. Since some people receive their pensions weekly and some might get 4 payments in that three months, the extra payment would be paid in the first payment in those months. Finally, how to pay for this? As this would be part of the state pension, it would automatically be eligible for income tax. 

The other controversion decision is the continuing argument about personal independent payments and the rising cost of in work benefits. One way to alleviate some of these problems might involve doing more to encourage employers to employ people with some levels of disability. This especially true for small companies who would find it difficult to cope with people who cannot come into work reliably. Having an employee who every so often has to have three or four days off work, especially at short notice can be difficult. It also puts the other employees in a difficult position who may end up carrying a further burden during those periods. There can also be added costs for the employer in both sickeness pay and overtime payments to cover for the lost time. One solution might be to cover those costs for employees who have acknowledged health issues. Perhaps any cost savings caused by cuts could be used for this and thus get those less severely handicapped back into work.   This would need to be carefully monitored by the DWP.

U turns are good for you!

 For many years it has always seemd odd that people are praised for being single-minded and not being willing to admit to being wromg! Did Maggie Thatcher start this trend with her saying "This lady is not for turning". If she actually said that, I must admit that I have not checked. An interesting example was the recent statement by Paul Johnson, just retiring as head of the thinktank Institute for Fiscal Studies, who praised George Osborne for being single minded. I see no credit in being single-minded when the person is wrong. That is incerdibly dangerouswhen the individual has power. The opposite can also be dangerous as in Donald J Trump who has no mindedness at all.

As a mathematician being single minded can be helpful if the thing you are single minded about is true and you succeed. I have written two papers which showed that something that seemed clear was false. And once it is false it is false. Whilst some have become famous for their devotion to  one problem, famously Fermat's Last Theorem, Andrew Wiles, many have spent a lot of time and failed and probably and they have been forgotten.

What I fail to understand is that is seen as wrong to change or adapt a policy when it is not working. The implication that every policy will work out exactly as has been predicted is living in an unrealistic world. There is need to make plans and to base those plans are what one haopes is both a realistic analysis of the situation and a model of how things will turn out. Both of these are like;y to be wrong, hopefully only in minor ways, but the need to be flexible is essential. Why is this to be seen as failure rather than trying to get things right. 

Take a recent change of policy by the governement concerning grooming gangs. It would appear that the recent report, commisioned by the Labour government brought up issues that neirher Casey nor Starmer were fully aware of. Sensibly Starmer and the government have accepted and are going to implement the proposals made by the report they have commissioned. This might not have been needed if the recommendations previous reports had been acted on.

The only people who never makes mistakes are those who never do anything. This leads to the daft situation when those who do nothing and therefore make no mistakes are rewarded rather than rewrding those who get things right but make some mistakes. I was thinking about this when I was head of a mathematics and we were condifering who to make offers to. Departments were judged by how many students failed. Rationally one way to reduce failures is to only admit those who one thinks are 100% likely to pass. This has the disadvatage of meaning a significant group of students who would do welkl gat rejected. Another solution is to make the exams so easy that every student passes. I assume that the thinking behind the judgement is that deciding who will do well is reliable, anyone who believes such judgemnts is sadly mistaken.

Let us be proud of politiciams who have the ability to recgnise when things need to be changed and have the courage to make the changes. 

Facing north

 We moved into a flat nearly two years ago. One thing that was concerning was that it faced north. In the UK that seemed worrying as you rarely get the sun, especially in winter. But we thought that with global warming it might be a benefit, Had not thought it would be happening so soon. 

Over the last few days the flat has been at a consistent 24C which is very comfortable, no air conditioning needed so no power being used. The one problem is traffic noise when the balcony windows are open. Motor bikes are a serious problem. Our falt overlloks one of the main routes out of the city centre, one way out. Motor bikes are a special problem, they seem to love making as much noise as possible, is it part of the fun!