The Bewilderness

Write off Miliband

Miliband has a strong knack for crystallising the fervour that gripped the media after Glasgow East. With the Guardian article and subsequent public appearances, he has attempted to prepare for a leadership campaign that has not yet begun. The timing of the article was designed to satisfy the dissent in Labour ranks over Brown's poor performance: a 'show and tell' before the silly season starts when everyone retires to the seaside.

Is his timing poor and his vision wanting? Like Portillo, Miliband hovers as the nearly man, prepared to take the crown yet keep his hands clean. All are aware of his appetites but he has broken ranks at a time when a contest will not take place and within a media frenzy, where it is not possible to put down a coded marker. Miliband wished to indulge in coded signalling to Labour and ended up as a rebel.

Attacked by the dogs of Brown, Miliband does not appear to be the lightning rod for revolt. Given this challenge, the Prime Minister will need to assert his authority. Various articles have grimly foretold Miliband's future on the backbenches or at the Home Office. But this manoevre will consign him to a powerless position, and he lacks the charisma to maintain his influence.

If Miliband is sacked, he may yet become a mere footnote: a meteoric rise, followed by obscurity and media harlotry. One of the dispensible figures of late New Labour who belonged to its final, mediocre expression under Brown. Noted for his lack of political nous.

Milibanditry

Miliband brings out a new article in the Guardian that endorses Straw's call to avoid a summer of introspection. Treading a fine line between New Labour's achievements (chalk up to Blair!) and problems (roadblock to reform), the Foreign secretary throws in dog whistles left and right. More public sector reform for the Blairites, remeber that windfall tax in 1997 for the Left.

Blatant disloyalty in a feverish atmosphere. Brown has Balls (but if he had the cojones), he should sack him.

The media's mundane miliband tour (or overreach for wonks)

Labour continues to mount a bid for the most fevered speculation undertaken by a political party. Every commentator has his day, carving up the victimied Prime Mentalist, opining on the state of the Union and urging various combos of Nulab faction to stick the knife in. As if anything but the fate of the Prime Minister could captivate the nation.

The words and outpourings of mediocrities deemed sufficiently ambitious are rent apart like some corpse goat to give the readings that media soothsayers prefer. From sorrow to anger, from fightback to catastrophe, the media catharsis has reached a frenzy and dismissal. We have seen this froth before. In the mind of a weakened leader, the narrative can gain a power of its own. Remember how Brown was bumped into and out of an election.

Could we suffer two years of this? Cabinet dwarves positioning themselves for a post election fight only to suffer fright night as they convert from sole trader to the dole. We already have the Miliband Tour, bring foreign policy to the benighted masses, contra chorus of raised eyebrows:

Amid mounting speculation that Gordon Brown will be forced to step down in September, Mr Miliband is to conduct a series of 'outreach' meetings around the time of Labour's party conference.

Mr Miliband insists the tour is designed to inform the public about the work of the Foreign Office. But his plans have irritated senior colleagues, one of whom described the visits as “blatant manoeuvring,” adding: “whoever heard of a Foreign Secretary touring the UK?”

Mr Miliband will use a newspaper article to call for Labour to develop radical policies to take on the Conservatives. However, it is thought to contain no words of support for the beleaguered Prime Minister.

I would suggest that Brown makes an example of those jostling too loudly for position. Miliband could easily be sacked without too much trouble; heading for the backbenches a diminished wannabee who blew his chance and was finally punished for hubristic ambition and lack of leadership. Knife one would-be Octavian and the others shoudl crawl back into their shells..

The Alzheimer fightback begins

The alzheimer fightback begins. Promising news on the drugs front with a promising new treatment called rember that is currently in trials and shows promise in reversing the effects of cognitive decline. There are two drawbacks to this treatment, neither of which are based upon the drug. One is the length of time that it takes to conduct clinical trials and bring a drug to market; five years is too long. The second is the National Institute of Clinical Excellence:

The drugs are expected to cost the same as current treatments for the illness such as Aricept, which are £2.50 a day.

However, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) the Government’s drugs watchdog, ruled that Aricept, which has been shown to improve the memory and day-to-day life of those in the late stages of the disease, was too expensive for widespread use in Britain.

Terry Pratchett, the best selling author who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, disclosed earlier this year that he was being forced to pay for the drug himself.

Drugs that alleviate and prevent dementia pay for themselves in the costs of long term care averted. Whatever system that NICE uses to cost a drug, it is clear that this does not take such matters into account. If the open market prevailed this would not be such a costly error. Yet, whilst the government impedes the entry of new treatments onto the marketplace through regulation and controls access to healthcare, the policy of NICE is a legitimate concern.

Spaceship Two, excellent news

It has taken longer than expected but Burt Rutan and Richard Branson have finally unveiled Spaceship Two, the launch vehicle for their Virgin Galactica sub-orbital tourist venture. The plane has been built by Scaled Composites, using a related design to the launch vehicle, Spaceship One, that contributed to the Ansari X Prize.

WhiteKnightTwo is a dual-hull quad-engine aircraft roughly three times larger than the original WhiteKnight. WK2 employs a different tail construction, using a cruciform instead of the WK's "T" style. The engines and cockpits are also located in different areas compared to the original WhiteKnight.

WK2 is the world's first all-composite full-sized aircraft. Everything apart from the engines and landing gear is constructed from ultra-lightweight composite materials. Even the newly patented flight control cables are made from carbon fiber.

Although the preparatory phase for Virgin Galactica has taken longer than planned, (with 270 prospective customers), this marks another public step into Newspace. Launches are planned between 2009 and 2011. It takes longer to start and then moves forward more swiftly than expected. Faster please.

Nulab: symbolism before leadership

Here is the single answer to all of the government's requirements: tax. Now, the Climate Change Misinformer, Joan Ruddock, may hail the measure of a plastic bag tax as popular and necessary. More than likely, the hard pressed consumer will notice that they pay another levy, and that this will increase their bill, yet do nothing for the environment. This is a small minded and retrograde step that the government has taken in order to achieve a modicum of environmental reputation before they annoy the Greens with another runway, nuclear power stations, or some other sensible policy. Symbolism before leadership, the hallmark of New Labour.

Coupled with the latest lord it over us levy is the recriminations from previous reforms that tanked: the tax credit system. This has been mishandled so badly that the government will have to write off a further £2.8bn. Victims of Inland Revenue incompetence used the Freedom of Information Act to prove that civil servants hid their own failures and charged the poor for their errors:

The evidence uncovered by the tax-credit victims reveals: The computer routinely wiped out claimants’ salaries, thus triggering overpayments. One claimant landed with tax-credit debts was told: “The computer zeroed your wife’s salary. It’s a common fault.” Duplicate rogue files caused errors and sent out multiple awards. One claimant was sent 10 letters in one day – but was still assured there were no payment mistakes. He was subsequently threatened with court action over the overpayments. Victims were sent letters claiming they had “no right of appeal” when they were pursued for overpayments caused by official error. A woman with two children said she had taken out a £7,500 loan to repay the tax credits after receiving one of the letters.

Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the Commons public accounts committee, said: “This is unbelievable. It shows no matter how many times claimants gave accurate information, officials still managed to screw it up.”

As per usual, no heads will roll, though any of these mistakes ought to be sackable offences. But the lack of accountability pervades the system: an arbitrary system where liberal measures allows individuals a chance of redress for now.

This leaves us to ponder the weakness of Brown, accentuated after a poor performance at Labour's  National Policy Forum in Warwick. The Prime Minister in tractor mode did not wake his audience, and after an 'oh my god' moment, the unions pool their finances for two years of lame duck Labour and union influence. This underestimates the danger of a wounded and paranoid leader, who has plenty of executive influence and feels cheated of his destiny. Brown's psychological flaws were brutally exposed by Bruce Anderson today. Tempers and tantrums, wayward behaviour and a dysfunctional government  may or may not be true. Yet, if the worst of these are right, then we may have an unpredictable Prime Minister, willing to use extreme measures to achieve his goals. He junked the referendum on the Lisbon treaty without just cause and paid an electoral price for breaking his promise (an impression that is not picked up by polls asking questions on specific issues). He is capable of breaking a whole lot more if he deems it necessary. We should beware if Zanulab comes to the fore.

Zimwatch: the mugabe men of yesteryear

Is it good news or bad news when the army in Zimbabwe starts to disintegrate? The forces of hyperinflation eat away at all state institutions, especially of it lasts for a prolonged period. State security in Zimbabwe has to make do with less whilst the elites get away with more:

Soldiers survive on minimal food and Cpl Choto said he had been hungry for "at least a year".

"Three years ago we got porridge, sausage, bacon sometimes eggs. We always got meat at least once a day," he said. Today, by contrast, soldiers get two plates of maize meal, known as "sadza", a day.

Choto alsoargued that peer pressure and terror were required to  force  army regulars to act against the MDC.  Sources are always difficult to assess. Knowing that the newspaper sells in the West and, perhaps aware of incipient decline, any soldier will impress upon the world the importance of collective action. "Under orders", a fear of reprisal, and the bidding of their leaders do not demand sadism, torture or murder.

Wheedling interviews from NCOs who now face accountability for their crimes may provide a rare signal that the Zimbabwean army is, indeed, close to collapse.

MSM 'science': articles of faith

The Independent had a science article on extinctions last Wednesday that pointed to rising or falling sea levels as the trigger for mass extinctions, not asteroids, gamma rays or earlier technological civilisations. I still think that the Permian extinction was caused by Cthulhu. This theory is timely and attractive to the glabal warmers: manmade activity causes sea levels to rise, killing habitats and causing a great extinction. This also happened in the past. Their logic then extends this correlation into culpability for the so-called rape of the planet.

Global warming has already led to changes on every continent. Scientists examined reports dating back to 1970 and found that in at least 90 per cent of cases, shifts in wildlife behaviour and populations could only be explained by global warming. The team also found that 95 per cent of environmental changes, from melting permafrost to retreating glaciers, were caused by an increase in global temperature.
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It is the appeal to nebulous authority and the blind refusal to acknowledge the uncertainty of our knowledge that renders the science pages of the MSM to be a disgrace: articles of faith replacing debate.

Blair went to war and brown pays the price

Benedict Brogan makes wise noises about the predictability of Labour folk speaking with forked tongues. To avoid the speculations of run-away comment in the press, Labour's contenders have been forced to display signs of support in the aftermath of Glasgow east. Both Jack Straw (Lancashire Mafia) and David Miliband (Blairites) have  talked to the media and declared their loyalty to the Prime Minister. Others have moved to disparage a leadership election as divisive and counterproductive.

The options for the Labour Party are now terrible, with a level of unpopularity that emanates from sources of disatisfaction deeper than mere economic downturn. It is as if Brown bears all the weight for Blair's misdemeanours. By parrotting on these events as the cause of their downturn in the polls, we hear a government that shirks responsibility and avoids honest engagement. Harriet Harman provides a small snippet that tells us how:

“I am telling you very clearly that our focus is on the national and international level to see the country through these very difficult times.

“It is hard to underestimate how sudden this economic shock has been – we must not forget that.”


Sunday speculators in the aftermath of the by-election rounds up the last political activity that we shall see before the autumn break. The level of froth poisons Labour's wellspring, inviting further division and dishonesty.

We have a broken Prime Minister, toxic politics and economic dangers. This is not a wholesome combination.

Lawrence and england

Lady Chatterley's Lover, and D H Lawrence's own explanation, the "Propos", do reveal how the consumptive both embraced and escaped his country. Lawrence encapsulated a rootless contempt for his background and his people. His last novel, rewritten three times, rails against the perceived deadened inauthenticity of English life; the mannered abstraction of a scientific worldview denying the consummate union of man and wife in a real marriage. Thus, science, technology, capitalism and money are unified into a system that saps and destroys what it means to be human.

This is not a particularly old or unusual message. Nevertheless, Lawrence weaves and reinterprets conservative themes in modernist frames. Authenticity will invigorate marriage and the nation of England. To view this focus as a conservative strand within Lawrence's writing is to surrender to political constraints, when the author restructured his sense of alienation against his country. The consumptive's exile pours out through the novel, as he tries to explain why using obscenities as norms becomes a marker for an honest world of sexual union, recreating an England worth living in for the author (though it does lend the novel an air of pomposity and a ambitious challenges for bad sex writers to the present day).

How sad that exile and censorship obliterated a state of the nation novel that set out an ideal of England, standing foursquare in a wider artistic tradition that speaks with more urgency today.