Why Gold (and Silver) Standards Don't Work: Part III - Human Meddling

A few posts back I noted that, originally, "standards" were just official exchange rates. Here I want to quickly elaborate upon why the real world market gets skewed when humans try to fix these rates.

Let's create a simple example. It's the ancient world and copper is one hundred times more abundant than silver. Making the real world market value of an ounce of copper equal to 1/100th of an ounce of silver.

(I'm just using simple numbers here to make things easier. Also, of course, prices aren't just a reflection of relative scarcity. Usefulness and desirability play a part. If a new invention comes along that requires lots of copper, the market value of copper might go up in relation to silver regardless of abundance.)

Anyway, in this simple example, one ounce of silver is worth about one hundred ounces of copper. Naturally, however, this real world value fluctuates.

So, to simplify the complex world (just as I'm doing here with this simple example), a state - let's say an ancient empire - might set an official rate for the purpose of tax collection or issuing coinage.

They then decree: "One ounce of silver is equal to one hundred ounces of copper."

Now, as long as the real world values don't stray too much from this official statement, things work okay. But once the real world market moves too far things start to break down.

Let's say more copper mines are discovered and more copper floods the market. Lowering the value of copper. Perhaps shifting the real world value from an ounce of silver being equal to approximately one hundred ounces of copper to one ounce of silver equalling approximately one hundred and twenty ounces.

This would then mean that the official decree - the official exchange rate - would need changing to reflect this changing reality. However, doing this is often difficult and unappealing, as it might mean having to change the entire system of coinage.

For example, let's say when the ratio was 1/100, copper coins were minted with this value stated on the actual face of the coins. A one ounce copper coin being labelled as being worth 1/100th an ounce of silver. (Similar to how one hundred pennies are stated to equal a pound, or one hundred cents equal to a dollar).

Originally, when the real world ratio of copper to silver was approximately 1/100, this reflected reality. However, as the value of copper goes down this stops being the case. Now the real world value is 1/120, but the coins are still pegged or labelled as 1/100.

When this happens the copper coins cease to be traded as pieces of actual copper and effectively just become tokens (or IOUs) that happen to be made out of copper. Each coin promising the holder 1/100th an ounce of silver, regardless of the physical value.

So, the state - our ancient empire - is officially stating that one hundred one ounce copper coins can be exchanged for one ounce of silver. Even though, in reality - on the open market - one ounce of silver is actually worth one hundred and twenty ounces of copper. So the state is trying to force a false reality onto the world.

And, as the state has the power to issue currency and force people to pay tax in that currency, people are forced to accept it.

(For the record, this isn't necessarily out of malice, or even greed. It's largely just a consequence of humans trying to impose order on a complicated world. Take the current UK government capping bus fares at £2, for example. Then having to increase this cap to £3. Sooner or later reality catches up, and someone has to pay the real world cost.) 

It's once rates become fixed in this way (i.e. become decoupled from actual reality) that the "standard" becomes a standard as we would think of one today. Where everything is pegged to that one commodity (be it gold or silver), and all coins (or paper notes) made of anything else, just become tokens promising payment in that one commodity.

Meaning you end up with situations where the actual value of the metals in the coins bears little resemblance to the face value. Where everything gets skewed by the "standard." Including the commodity used as the standard itself.

So, money started to break down long before the modern era of fiat currencies and digital/paper dollars. It's been a slow eclipse over centuries. Perhaps millennia.

Update: Not So Golden

In my last post I said I'd sold my gold for circa £300 profit. That was somewhat premature, and my hoped for approximate £300 dwindled to an approximate £100. Yet another lesson in trying to play with the bigger boys.

I ditched my gold via Cash4Gold, which straight up looks like a mistake as I type it. I naively assumed they'd offer me something in the ballpark of the spot price; thinking they make their profit selling back at retail. I suspected I would get more selling on eBay (though I've never tried it - perhaps that would be a nice little experiment), but wanted to forgo the effort, so just went with the top of the search engine easiest option. I'm too lazy. A grand don't come for free as they say.

Anyway, the guy originally offered me around £650 - this is for an amount of gold worth closer to £1100 at the current spot price. I refused it. He then offered £824, with the old, "C'mon, what were you expecting, I have to make a profit!" Reluctantly, I accepted. You have to wonder what these guys are giving the little old ladies and single mothers selling their unwanted jewellery.

Again, if I wasn't so lazy, I could've just went to a local pawn broker to see what the standard offer would be. So I only have myself to blame for my country-bumpkin, farm-boy-in-the-city style naivety lol. The journey from buying to selling has been a good education though. When you start buying you quickly realise you're paying a big retail premium over the spot price. That's excluding postage (and VAT if you're buying silver in the UK). Then when you sell you realise you're selling back at a big discount.

I'm sure you can actually sell for a fair price if you put more effort in than me, but again there are practical costs and issues. Sending expensive items through the post. Having the certainty that the person receiving the item has actually received it - it could get stolen, or they could receive it and say they haven't, then refuse to pay. Meaning you'd have to pay to post it in a way that requires a signature, and pay to insure it. Added to this you have the time and effort it takes to list something for sale and deal with the enquiries. In the end I've made about £100 profit - largely, if not wholly, through luck. I could've made that by doing an extra shift at work.

So, all in all, I'd have to say my experiment in buying precious metals hasn't really worked out. Even with such a mega increase in the gold price.

Would I buy gold again?

I think if I ever buy gold with a view to making profit (or just outstripping inflation) I'll probably buy paper gold, dare I say it.* That's speaking as a pleb who's trying to make/save enough money to pay for a deposit on a house at some point, not as a wealthy person trying to protect that wealth.

If I do buy more physical metal I think it'll be silver, and I wouldn't be buying it with a view to making profit or even breaking even. I'll more be buying it as a nice little gift to myself - a gift that has the added luxury of retaining value and acting as a safety net if you ever do need money.

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*This also adds an interesting addendum to the last post about gold standards. The difference between the paper (or digital) representation of gold and the gold itself. The physical gold needs to be stored/transported/secured/audited/insured. Which add extra real world costs. Meaning the two things can't ever truly be the same. Though one may stand in lieu of the other.

(Incidentally, I'm using Dezgo to generate these images. The one above was generated from a prompt asking for a 'richly coloured Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting showing lots of gold coins.' I quite like it, odd though it is.

https://dezgo.com/text2image/sdxl )

I'm Off The Gold Standard

I've just sold my gold.

Back in 2021 I bought some gold to ward off inflation. Like a crucifix to ward off vampires. Though I felt somewhat vampiric myself being so materialistic and self-interested. I didn't buy an amazing amount. About half an ounce in total, and it cost me about £750 altogether, premium and postage included. I'm now selling it for the spot price, so I should make about £300 profit approx.

I don't know if it's wise to sell now, but it feels like a good time to take the money and run. Reinvest it elsewhere.

The Gold Standard

It's got me thinking about gold standards again though. I've been watching all the various goldbugs on YouTube. The opinions are always interesting - they certainly make good criticisms of the fiat system. However, I think they don't quite get it when it comes to gold standards.

I've stated before that gold standards don't work.

Gold Standards Don't Work

Gold Standards Don't Work: Part II - Goldilocks Knows

Warm Silver Porridge: Not too hot, not too cold - just right!

To get a better sense of this, it's useful to look at why historically silver was used as a "standard."

Silver is a natural intermediary between copper and gold. So it's natural to use it as a measure.

Let's imagine you live in earlier times - in the age of metals - and you have five ounces of silver saved in a bank, and an IOU from the bank saying they owe you that five ounces of silver. In theory, you could redeem that money in copper or gold instead. However, it wouldn't be as practical.

Say, at the time, one ounce of silver was worth fifty ounces of copper, and one ounce of gold was worth fifteen ounces of silver.

To redeem the equivalent of that five ounces of silver in copper would mean having to carry a big, heavy bag of two hundred and fifty ounces of copper out of the bank. Likewise, redeeming it in gold would mean having to take out a tiny 1/3 fraction of a one ounce gold coin. Which would be harder to break down if you wanted to split it further. So, five silver coins is much easier. Like Goldilocks (or rather, Silverlocks) - not too big, not too small.

It's like paying a bus fare. Using a £50 note to pay a £3 bus fare isn't practical. The bus driver would be quite annoyed. Similarly, paying it with three hundred 1p coins would be annoying and impractical too. So things in the middle - £1 coins, 50p pieces, £5 notes - are more appropriate to the task.

If banks or states used copper as a standard it wouldn't be very practical for wealthy people saving/borrowing/trading/paying tax in large amounts. On the flip side, a gold standard wouldn't be very practical for poorer and more regular people with their much smaller amounts. Some that may never have even seen a gold coin in real life before. So silver is the happy medium.

It's Only Natural

Historically there were silver "standards" not because people chose to have silver standards, but because that was just the most natural way to do things.

On top of this, it also wasn't a "standard" as we would think of a "gold standard" now. They weren't issuing paper currency backed specifically by silver (though banks might issue written IOUs). The "standard" was just the official measure. Gold, silver and copper coins were all equally valid and used for trade. The standard just stated what the official conversion rates were.

So, to give a simple example, let's say all citizens have to pay one silver coin in tax. However, there are poorer people that don't have access to silver, so have to pay in copper. The state then says how many copper coins equals one silver coin so people know what to pay. Of course, in the real world, the value of copper in relation to silver is changing all the time. So the official rate is there just to make tax collection simpler. It could be they set the rate as one ounce of silver being equivalent to forty ounces of copper. That being a close approximation to the real market value at the time. However, this wouldn't be a good approximation forever, as values fluctuate. Therefore, sometime later, the official rate might be changed to better reflect the changing real world market values. Maybe changing to 41 to 1 instead, and so on.

So, again, these official rates were approximations of a real world market where people used metal coins - of all different metals - that had actual physical value relating to their scarcity. That floated around relative to each other, and kept each other in check. If gold became too scarce people would use silver, and vice versa. Like in the simple example above, where you could pay your taxes in copper if you didn't have silver.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, in the real world market place anything can be a currency. It's only the demand that tax be paid in a specific currency that moves things away from this more natural state of affairs. You could make that argument that the poorer people with copper coins in that simple example earlier could have just converted them to silver to pay their tax (i.e. buy one silver coin with their forty copper coins). However, if people had to get the actual silver, that demand would push the value of silver up further. So the real world silver price would get skewed by the demand this special status creates.

Likewise, if you have a gold standard where everything must be paid in gold, you end up with an unnatural economy.

Anything Can Be Currency In A World Without Tax

Magica de Spell vs Scrooge McDuck

Maybe a good moment to do an update.

What have I been doing?

I'm currently just about to enter the third week of three weeks' holiday. As I've been off work, I've been working on my fictional novel(s) - plural, it's two books. Yes, this is the novel that I began long, long ago, sometime in between the Brexit vote and the Corona pandemic. It's the never-ending story of the story. I've actually done a lot in the last two weeks, so I'm ahead of schedule. It's coming along nicely, though when the end date will be is anyone's guess.

I've also been saving. A few years back I started posting on here about my foray into buying stocks on eToro. Stupidly I was buying Russian stocks back then. Those, minus the Polymetal ones, are still sitting in my account - like cryogenically frozen heads that are destined never to be reanimated. The Russian stocks aside though, I've done alright. I've saved and saved and saved. Opened ISAs. Been quite sensible. So that's became a little hobby of mine. I'm worried I'm getting a little too invested though, no pun intended. A few months ago I ordered a Tesco Club Card and a Sainsbury's Nectar Card in the hope of saving more money. So I'm beginning to feel like Scrooge McDuck.

I do have to continually remind myself though that I'm in my early 40s and still living at home with my parents. So I really do need to get my act together. I spent the entirety of my 20s and 30s idealistically eschewing money in all its forms, so I need to get my hands dirty and have one foot in the dark side now. The pragmatism that comes with age. Very belatedly in my case. A few posts back I was being all lovesick. I actually thought I'd grown out of getting smitten. So getting caught by one of the poisoned arrows from Cupid's quiver upset my applecart a little. It's amazing how much more 'living at home with your parents' stings the pride when there's a woman on the scene. Suddenly competitive urges kick back into gear. The pattern of my life has tended to be that women act as catalysts. I don't get my own way, but I get the lightning jolt of inspiration. So I suspect the pattern will continue here. It's a positive experience, whatever the outcome. Perhaps it's my cryogenically frozen body that's been reanimated.

Politics UK

A little less of me..

I've stepped back from politics a fair bit. I still follow things, but in a much more passive way. I'm detached ..or you could say distracted. The big thing at the moment is the coming budget. I've never known a budget get talked about so much. The amount of foreshadowing has been incredible. It's also fitting that I mentioned Scrooge McDuck earlier, as Rachel Reeves always reminds me of Magica de Spell. It's not that I think she's especially villainous - in truth, I think she's a 'safe pair of hands' vehicle for whoever's actually running the Labour Party. It's more that I think she genuinely looks like her - I think it's the raven hair. That might just be me though, and my strange cartoon-world brain.

(Rachel Reeves)

Obviously, I'm on the other side of the fence to Labour. I preferred the Liz Truss economics. In hindsight it was quite fitting that the mainstream compared her to a lettuce, as her policies felt light, like a salad. Whereas now we have the heavy syrup of the state, glooping over everything. With my new found love of money I'll be paying attention to the details of the budget. Lamenting the intrusions. However, I can't help but have a touch of sympathy. I get what Keir Starmer was saying when he was trying to articulate the difference between people who rely on money made through work and people who rely on money made through money. Having spent the last few years playing the stock market - albeit in my tiny way - I know only too well that I'm making profit sat on my arse doing nothing. That I'm just taking advantage of inflation and the upward flow Ponzi scheme we live in. And that if I had millions in the bank, not thousands, it would be very easy to make a living just buying the S&P 500.

The £12 p/h I make doing my normal job is much more hard-earned than the £12 dividend I may get from holding stock in Aviva or the National Grid. So, though I think the lurch towards more anti-business statism will be bad, I'm not especially annoyed by it. I did say after Labour won the election that I was going to show some goodwill towards them. So far, overall, I've been true to this, and I've just been happy to let them have their go at running the country. We'll see where we are in 12 months' time.

Politics USA

Of course, the big thing at the moment in the US is the election.

(..I've just took some Linda McCartney sausage rolls out the oven. This fact, and what I've just written above about Labour, reminds me that I'm still quite left wing after all.)

Today the Trump/Joe Rogan interview dropped. I listened to the first half in the early hours of this morning, before falling back to sleep. I like Trump, and I hope (and expect) that he'll win. What struck me most about the interview however was Trump's age. I was listening rather than watching, and the juxtaposition of Rogan's zesty voice against Trump's more hushed and raspy voice was noticeable. To be fair to Trump he's been campaigning non-stop. It's truly incredible, and actually quite inspiring, to see a 78 year old man have so much energy and clarity. Still, you can't escape the age factor.

I was thinking maybe this would be a good thing. We'll have a mellower Trump. People fear (some people hope) that he'll be more aggressive in office this time round. But he looks more mellow, and I expect that he'll delegate more. It's hard to make predictions, but I feel hopeful. My expectations aren't high, but I'm hoping things will get a little less crazy and a little more competent.

State Education: A Modern Cargo Cult

I'm back. Setting the world to rights. The GREAT WORK continues..

A few weeks back I was having a conversation with a friend about education. My argument was: sending people to school doesn't make a blind bit of difference in regards how well-educated they are.

He wasn't buying it.

I was stating my case a bit extremely (as I'll no doubt do in the following paragraphs), but essentially I was giving my true opinion. I've made the argument before. That mass literacy is a consequence of the printing press. Not a consequence of the introduction of formal education. I've likened it to mobile phones. Most people in today's society are mobile phone literate, yet no one is having formal lessons in how to use a mobile phone.

People have access to the technology. They want/need to use mobile phones for various reasons. So they learn to the standard required for whatever it is that they want to do. Naturally some people are smarter and more able than others. Likewise, some will be more/less interested in using a mobile phone than others. So there's a natural variation in ability/mobile phone literacy.

I would make the observation that it would be similar with reading and writing. If school was completely abolished tomorrow, people would still learn how to read and write. As they'd just take it upon themselves to do it. As they do with mobile phones. Again, they have access to the technology (books, laptop keyboards, pens, paper, all the written words that surround them from birth, on shop fronts and t-shirts, and so forth). And they would naturally want/need to read, to enjoy all those things, and engage with the world that surrounds them. Again, with some people naturally being more able than others, and some needing more informal help than others. Just as an old person may need a family relative to help them out with their smartphone now and then. I think it's even possible that without formal education getting in the way, society would be even more literate as a whole.

Now this is a hard thing for a person to grasp. My friend definitely wasn't swallowing it. However, it betrays a real lack of faith in human capacity on the part of people who can't grasp it.

Do you really think people wouldn't want to learn how to read a letter or type a text? That they'd happily go through life not knowing how to text a friend, or a member of the opposite sex?

They take it upon themselves to learn how to send one, why wouldn't they take it upon themselves to learn how to read one?

Do you really think people wouldn't want to know how to read the latest news headline, or the names on the shirts of their favourites footballers - or their own name even? And do you really think parents wouldn't want their children to know how to read and write; and that, in the absence of school, they'd simply not bother trying to help them learn?

In fact, even now schools still place responsibility for reading and writing squarely on the parents. "You need to read to little Billy more at home," etc. Parents, in turn, often sit back, thinking, "I send them to school, I do my bit. The teachers know better than me, so I'll leave it to them." A fatal mistake. As the correlation between homelife and success in school is all too apparent. (Or to a parent perhaps you could say.) The kids with pro-active parents doing well; the kids with feckless parents faring badly - and the kids from feckless parents generally remaining feckless themselves, in spite of ten years of schooling.

If you consider what the average person leaves school with you'll see that it's just the basic stuff they would've needed anyway in everyday life. They are able to read and write well enough to read a magazine or send a text. They can do maths well enough to pay for their shopping, or to tell the time. And little more.

For example, people often spend five years learning French. Yet can't actually speak French to any real degree when they leave school. Why is this? It's because they have no need/want to learn it. It's not useful for everyday life, so people don't make the effort to take it on board. Meaning it's all pretty much a pointless going-through-the-motions exercise. I would bet good money that things would be little different were there no formal school at all. That people would still reach adulthood with the same basic levels of maths and English needed in everyday life. As it's everyday life that drives people to learn these things, not school.

Again though, this will be hard to swallow for almost all people. As we're so ingrained with this idea that general literacy is a gift of the education system.

I would say, try this thought experiment:

Imagine you live in a world where everyone has an hour of 'mobile phone lessons' each week, from the moment they enter the school system. Then imagine someone like me coming along and saying, "Y'know, all this is pointless. You could scrap all these lessons and people would still be just as mobile phone literate as they are now."

What would you think?

Would your reaction be, "No, but how would anyone know how to send a text or install an app if we didn't have lessons teaching them!" ?

It Really Is Like Religion

Take praying. Praying is good, and doing it - and encouraging others to do it - is good. However, society/states see this goodness and then try to force everyone to do it. For example, Muslims have to pray five times a day. I would argue that you can't really force people to pray though. Sure, you can force people to turn up at a church or mosque. You can force them to get on their knees and do some of the performative acts associated with praying. But, you can't force their mind (or perhaps soul) to contemplate God. That's something that a person can only do themselves, through choice and desire. It's internal to the person.

It's similar with education. You can force someone into a classroom. You can force them to sit at a desk in front of an open book. But you can't force the mind inside that person to seek that knowledge. Yes, some of the people in the classroom may be choosing to learn whilst they're there, just as some of the people in the church may be choosing to pray. But those people - who are choosing - would be doing it anyway. So they don't need to be forced.

Everyone else is just doing a performative act. It's a counterproductive charade of true learning. A cargo cult false imitation, of what genuine learning (or prayer) actually is. People are so enamoured with the cargo cult charade though that they cannot disassociate actual learning from the appearance of learning. Hence, when someone like me steps up and says, "This is all pointless." The cry comes back, "So you think people should just stop learning?! That it would be better if no one learned anything!"

As if I'm arguing against learning (or praying) itself.

"If we didn't force people, no one would do it!"

Yet none of those people are actually doing it. They're just going through the motions. It's a silly dress-up cargo cult. That educates people in actuality about as much as a straw aeroplane flies.

Fools' Harbour

You could take a pair of scales; put a woman on one side and the whole world on the other, and they'd perfectly balance out. I think this is how God calibrated the mind of Man.

It really is awesome the power a woman can have on a man. I've said before that true love is the devil, and the devil is the human heart. When a woman captures your gaze, and the fever takes hold, everything else in the world - in its entirety - can't lift the captivation. The spell, charm, trance, attraction. Food loses its taste. Fascinations with the world fade. World affairs seem nothing. World War could break out, and it wouldn't cure the sickness. Woman is a spectacular creature.

I feel my own life has been an ebb and flow of love sickness. I'd like to write these posts completely openly, like some failed Casanova. Pouring out all the awkward moments and delusions. The meaningful looks and glances. Like some font of catharsis and record. But it's all too personal. Naturally it intrudes on other people and their lives too.

It's painful how meekness and goodness can be loathed by a woman's eyes. Their disappointment in your weakness. The soul's battle between pleasing a woman and being a good Christian. The pull of the woman versus the pull of the world.

It's inspirational, for sure. The artist, wallowing in obsession, aching to match or echo the beauty that plagues him. The push - the hard kick to the stomach - to be strong and good. To become a Man. To become a King. Embodying both greatness and goodness. TO BECOME WORTHY.

The princess, anointing you, as you make your lonely way to slay the dragon. The desert girl, whose gentle eyes, like water, sustain you on your long journey. The moody blonde, demanding victory with her swan-like beauty.

One Staffroom or Many?

One more point and post, before I move onto playing everything with a straight bat again.

I likened the ruling class to a school staffroom, but is there just one group of "adults," or are there many? Essentially, are there different factions at the top? Or is it just one group of people, who are all on the same page?

In my personal opinion, I think there are different factions. (Though, no doubt, the lines naturally blur somewhat.) I think this is to be expected whatever the situation. There are always factions at court, even if it's just a single court.

Looking at the "riots" through this lens the single group notion would suggest a Hegelian dialectic type thing. The David Icke classic line, "Problem, Reaction, Solution." Meaning the riots were stirred up completely to manufacture calls and justification for the response - facial recognition and whatever else.

The factional view would posit something different though. That the faction stirring up the riots were trying to put pressure upon the faction running the current British government.

Again, it could be a complex mix of these things. Such is the 'wilderness of mirrors' nature of our modern political world.

One thing that lends weight to the different factions idea is the heavy-handed way Keir Starmer's government has dealt with the rioters. (If reports are to be believed.) This suggests that the government wants to nip the riots in the bud and quickly put a stop to them. Personally, I think the response has been disproportionate and unfair to the individual idiots caught up in these riots. However, anything other than a heavy response would give the green light to further protests. So the government has to do this really. It's the right thing to do from a pragmatic point of view.

Fortunately, things seem to have calmed down now. Hopefully, they stay this way.

Potemkin Riots

I haven't posted on here in a while. In that time it's been eventful, so you would expect I would've done so.

We've had riots in the UK.

Including in my own town: Middlesbrough 😡

I haven't posted as I knew it would be wise to wait until I'd chilled out a bit and gathered some perspective. My general view is that the riots were djinned-up i.e. that they weren't entirely organic. I had my little hissy fit about that on Twitter at the time though, so now I want to leave any 'conspiracy theories' behind and get back to playing things with a straight bat.

I do try hard these days to avoid poking behind the veil online. Sometimes though, these things go far too far, and I get sucked back in. The fiery big-mouth of my younger days suddenly reappears. I think when houses, cars (and sometimes people) in your own home town are being damaged it's probably justified, but now the moment has passed it's probably also time to let sleeping dogs lie. (Or lying dogs sleep maybe.)

On here before I've compared governments (and the media) to school headmasters.

The school headmaster steps up during school assembly. He tells a sombre story about some serious event.

In a faraway town, in another part of the country, 'little Billy' and his friends thought it was funny to go and play games down by the railway lines. Unfortunately, one of little Billy's friends didn't realise a train was coming when he jokingly pushed Billy onto the tracks..

The story itself is made-up. Little Billy never existed. His tale entirely fabricated by the headmaster.  However, the headmaster doesn't tell this story in order to mislead the children. He's not rubbing his hands together like some evil genius in the school staffroom behind the scenes. He tells it as he doesn't want the children playing on the railway tracks and getting hurt. Yes, the made-up "Billy" doesn't exist, but elsewhere, other children - real children - have fallen victim to such tragic circumstances. It would be somewhat morbid and disrespectful to use those actual examples though. Dramatising and sensationalising a real child's death, just to make a point in a lesson or school assembly would be quite crass. So the tale of "Little Billy" serves as a more appropriate stand-in. And the headmaster presents it as real to the children listening, as a real story has a much more emotional impact than one that is admittedly fictional. So will be much more likely to dissuade the children from heading down to the railway tracks.

From Headmaster to Music Teacher.

We can take this example further. Let's say you're a child sat in that assembly, and you don't quite believe the tale your headmaster told. Maybe there were inconsistencies, or the plot just didn't ring true. Perhaps the headmaster hammed things up a bit too much in his dramatic performance of it.

You then cheekily ask the music teacher about it in your following lesson. "Sir, the headmaster just made that story up, didn't he."

What does the music teacher respond with?

Obviously, he isn't just going to say, "Yes, the headmaster is a liar." For a start, he wouldn't last long in his profession if he was going around calling other teachers liars. But more importantly, he understands perfectly well why the headmaster was telling the story. It was done with a wider good intention in mind. The point of the story much more important than the white lie it contained.

So he gently tells the child off for accusing the headmaster of lying, and advises him to focus on the actual message of the story.

[Incidentally, (and I am poking behind the veil a little bit here 😈), when people ask, "How could so many people take part in such a BIG conspiracy?!" This is part of the answer why. Because all those people are teachers in the staffroom, so to speak, who understand it's perfectly normal and routine for adults to tell stories to children (the public) to get children to take on board a message, or behave in a certain way.

It's just the way of the world to some extent. A thing most people only learn when they become parents themselves. If you get my drift.

Likewise, just as real children sometimes get killed playing on train tracks, there are sometimes real terrorist attacks too. Carried out by real terrorists. And similarly, it's difficult to use real, actual examples to promote awareness, or to help the public understand the dangers.

- (As with earlier) it's distasteful using real deaths.

- The families might not want the deaths being used in such a way.

- The families might not want the public attention.

- They might not be very good at speaking in public, or appearing on camera (as most people aren't).

- Publicising a real terror event may compromise spies/whistleblowers/informants/witnesses/etc.

- It may take years for such crimes to be processed through the courts, meaning they can't be publicised immediately.

- Real life is often very messy. So it's much harder to present the public with a clear, easy-to-digest narrative when using real life examples. With a simplified, scripted imitation of a real event it's much easier.

- And so on.

So there are logical reasons why "tales from the headmaster" are sometimes used at the national or international level. Again, it's not because the headmaster is evil, and enjoys deceiving people (though he might take it to an art form at times). It's because he wants to protect the children or maintain order in the classroom. The only problem is, we, the childlike public, have to trust that the stories are solely being used as illustrations to inform the public about similar, real life situations. And aren't just being used to push the interests and personal politics of the people telling them.]

Anyway, that big detour aside, this is where I find myself these days. Do I want to be the honest, but brattish child, disrupting the class, and pointing out holes in these various dramas? Or do I try to be more like the sensible, but slightly less honest music teacher? Paying lip service to the stories of the headmaster. Understanding that this is just the normal way people higher-up in the social hierarchy manage those that are lower down; and that they're trying their best to manage difficult and sometimes dangerous situations.

Personally, I don't agree with it all in principle. Adults shouldn't be treating other adults the way adults treat children. Especially in supposedly democratic countries. Were I school headmaster I wouldn't be doing it, and I'd get the cane out and ban all the other teachers from doing it too. However, maybe I'm just naïve. Perhaps the response would come, "Ha, good luck with that, you try managing and keeping safe millions of sheep-like and emotional people without using these techniques."

Either way, I've reached a point where, though I discuss the wider methods, I never discuss the specific individual events anymore ..unless those individual events are happening in Middlesbrough, that is.

Boom Boom Boom

So Biden has dropped out. In a whoosh everything has happened, rapid fire.

June 27th: Trump/Biden debate - which led to the clamour for Joe to go.

July 13th: Trump assassination attempt.

July 15th: Trump VP announced

July 21st: Biden out

It looks like Kamala Harris will take over. So now the last slot to be filled is the Democrat VP pick. Which should tell us a lot.

Obviously, with the Trump brouhaha, it seems Trump is nailed on for victory. That these stars are being aligned directly for that. The powerful people at the top have made peace with him, and now we're all going to get some type of closure. A release valve. Discontent pacified. A great smoothing-over. The cancellations of leftists adds weight to this notion. The people at the top now willing to pull their levers on behalf of the right. A visible shift. The talk of prison sentences for Trump gone. (And, of course, the simple fact that they could've gotten rid of Joe long ago, and stuck an A-list Democrat candidate in, but didn't.) So the Hollywood stars align.

It makes so much sense. I think it's totally wrong to be cancelling Home Depot workers because they've said something nasty about Trump on Facebook, but that aside, the general trend I can applaud. It's the sensible course to chart.

Having seen so many twists and plots, I always feel like I'm sat at the Red Wedding though. That I'm sat hearing Hulk Hogan tell me how great I am, with a big smile on my face, as daggers hide beneath cloaks. Ready, not only to do me in, but to mock my naïve stupidity as they do it. My mind can't help but go to the worst case scenario.

So, at the moment, I think the best, but fear the worst. Some of the instant cope I've seen from people on the right lends itself to the fear. People saying that Kamala will be easier to beat than Biden, which obviously isn't true. Biden was literally senile. Anyone, even Kamala Harris, will be an improvement. How can they not be?

Kamala Harris actually reminds me of Rebecca Long-Bailey. Likeable, but a bit light in the head. The Labour leadership contest seems such a long time ago now. As that was taking place, Covid was springing up from the ground, like a maleficent aether. On this very blog those two things overlap. The one seeming so very innocent compared to the other. I remember typing those Labour leadership blog posts at the time. I had the dread of the coming Covid nightmare all through January and February, but I was trying so hard not to be a conspiracy theorist. This time I'm also trying hard not to be a conspiracy theorist. Though with Covid there was instinctive dread in my stomach, here there's instinctive hope. My instinctive judgement - my reading of the tea leaves - says things will indeed be smoothed-over.

Is it any wonder my mind can't help but race towards Red Wedding scenarios though? We've seen so many events, moments, and shakedowns - and three months is a long time, so a lot can happen. Plus, the world - and human culture - is a complex thing. So organic events can overtake written scripts. When the right surrendered the moral high ground, by advocating the cancelling of people on the left, they made a big mistake in terms of culture war. They surrendered moral authority. You'd think people wouldn't be so stupid to do this when fighting a culture war. You almost assume it must be deliberate. However, people find it hard to read culture - it requires a bit of female-brain. Men tend to be analytic. They love rules and theories. "Machiavelli said this ..therefore we must take this course of action." Ideologies are always inferior to real life though. And they dull the senses. A person operating on instinctive real-world judgement instantly sees that harassing a middle-aged woman who works at Home Depot makes you look like an idiot, but if you're subsumed by a set of rules that says you must do it, the instinct takes a beat seat. And real life takes a back seat to memes and theories.

I'm getting a bit far from the original intent of the article, as I often do, so I'll leave it there.

Learning To Lie

It's super hot. Sleep is a virtual impossibility in this heat. I was in work today, so last night I had to force myself to sleep through it. From a possible eight hours I think I got about three. However, I'm off tomorrow, so I have the luxury of not caring tonight. So, with tired eyes, I'm posting..

I'm not sure what I have to say, but I feel I should post. Over the last few days or so I've been a little arsy and impetuous over on Twitter. Watching the right behave as badly as the left in response to the Trump brouhaha was annoying. Of course, I also promised to try to show goodwill towards the new Labour government as well, but seeing the media love-in over that has made that difficult too. I think I've exhausted my humpiness now though, so my pragmatic self can regain control of the wheel. I must admit it was nice to shoot from the hip a little. You feel so much more alive and youthful when you're acting on your actual emotions.

It stills amazes me how much I care about the truth. I always wonder where this feeling comes from. Is it something innate I was born with? Or is it a consequence of how I was raised? Was the importance of honesty just drilled into me? Did all those Christian school assemblies I scorned make a difference after all?

I really hate lies. Though, saying that, what actually triggered me was seeing lies being enforced. I watched one livestream where audience members in the live-chat were shut down pretty aggressively by the talking heads taking part. I just can't stomach it. The desire to dumb the inquisitive senses of others. That a course of action has been taken, and everyone else must pay lip service to it. The pecking order is never more visibly apparent than in moments like these. Suddenly the talking heads that feign friendship and common cause show their teeth.

Also, this idea that, because the lies are being told by people on your side, you'll be cool with it. Like this idea that it's now somehow okay to censor the left, "cos they're the enemy." It almost goes beyond right and wrong. The ego takes over. It's an insult to me personally. I don't want to be a snake.

I'm getting hyperbolic again now ..and I shouldn't. I know how the world works. I've learnt that we live in an imperfect world. I've even written pieces like this one: The Spring, showing how natural and inevitable (even necessary) systems of secrecy and lies are. Yet still, I hate it. I just want to live in a world where I can have honest, open conservations with other humans, without having to worry about hitting the tripwire.

Manier Things To Discuss

On election night there was a moment that summed up post-Brexit politics quite neatly for me. Alastair Campbell corrected the grammar of Nadine Dorries live on air. The classic, "It's not less, it's fewer."

https://x.com/lemonadelush/status/1808976529440878641

There were subsequent back and forth points made on Twitter about who was correct, as though Nadine was talking about numbers, she used less in the phrase "less than a handful" - and a handful isn't a discrete amount. Personally, I don't care. It's a silly language rule that I just completely ignore anyway. I'm not bothered about the brownie points.

(You can kind of see how silly it is by the fact that we don't hear similar debates when people use more. If someone says, "there are more people," no one interjects, "Akhschully, it's greater people." Which wouldn't work anyway. Many is pretty much the opposite of few - too few, too many - so we'd probably need to invent the word manier. "..Akhschully, it's manier people." Imagine how annoyed these language nerds would be if we just started inventing words though.)

Anyway, it was just the latest example of people on the anti-populist side of the divide making appeals to technicality. It's been a recurring theme, that I've mentioned on here before (The Remain Brain vs The Leave Perceiver - 2019, didn't realise it was so long ago!).

Seeing the media coverage, and the number of seats the Lib Dems won, got me thinking about this class of people once again. I'm not quite sure how to box them. Remainer is a bit specific, and doesn't fully capture it. I was thinking unserious people that take themselves seriously, but that's probably unfair - and incorrect too. What inspired that descriptor was another media snapshot. This time an exchange involving Steve Baker, Ed Balls and George Osborne.

https://x.com/GMB/status/1809114873894228261

Osborne and Balls were laughing and giggling, like it was all just a big game, as Steve Baker was making a serious point. To be fair, their party had won, and Baker had lost his seat, so naturally moods would be different. And yes, Osborne and Balls are of the same party. Technically Osborne is a Conservative, but these party structures and labels don't reflect actual political reality anymore. This is another theme I've touched upon before.

https://x.com/NeilSco17180435/status/1759197809515925952

I feel like this election finally crystallised many of these things. Which, I guess, means it's the end of one era and the beginning of something else..

//////////////

More, More, More

This is a bit off topic for this blog, but I can't help but make mention of the words less and more in regard their mechanics. That is, the way we make these words using the mouth.

More is a very natural word. We make the "M" sound by simply opening and closing the mouth. It's an easy consonant to make. I'm almost certain that this is why so many words denoting mother begin with M. More is the sound a child naturally makes when it wants more milk.

Likewise, less is similarly fitting. We make the "L" sound by lifting our tongue to the roof of our mouth. We have lots of lifting type words beginning with L - lift, lower, level, levitate, layer, lever, etc. The word less begins with us lowering our tongue from the roof of our mouth to make the L sound. Then ends with us bringing or teeth together to make the "S" hissing sound. Making our mouth smaller - almost closed. (If you make these words in your own mouth and note the position of the tongue and the lips this becomes easier to understand.) So, with less, we lower the tongue, then make the mouth small. So the physical action of the mouth mirrors the actual meaning of the word.

I should really do fewer for thoroughness. Here the "F" sound is made by biting the bottom lip (again, try it with your own mouth to see). I guess you could say that grabbing the bottom lip fits neatly with the idea of something being lower or less. With the "R" we then curl the tongue backwards, though often people don't pronounce the R. (With my terrible Teesside accent I pronounce it few-a.) So the R doesn't really add too much in regard mirrored mechanical meaning - though you could maybe make the claim that bringing the tongue inwards - the recoiling motion - naturally implies a lessening or retraction. (The "W" in the middle, though technically considered a consonant, is actually just a transition between two vowel sounds.)

Vowels are open mouth vocalisations. Essentially letters/sounds we can sing or sustain. Aaaaaah, Ooooo, etc. So the relative openness of the mouth could also be said to carry meaning. With "Aaaaaaah" we open the mouth wide - so it's fitting for big or wide things. With e or i sounds - "eehhh" - the mouth is smaller. So you could say the "eh" in less and fewer also fits with the concept of less-ness.

(Actually, phonetically we pronounce the word fewer very differently to how it's spelt. For a start, that initial "F" is immediately followed by a "Y" sound. Then, the first e is pronounced more like an Ooo. We write fewer, but we say F-you-er. Written language is messy.)

In regard the mechanics of the mouth the word less seems more apt and pleasing than the word fewer. Perhaps this is why people naturally reach for it. Maybe it just feels more intuitive.

My Advice For Reform

Firstly, congratulations to Labour. This isn't what I wanted, but we do live in a democracy, and they've won. So they do have a clear mandate from the people - at least a mandate to deliver the things they've pledged to deliver.

(In fact, on that topic, Starmer did make this statement the day before the election, which seems worth making note of:

("I've been really clear about not rejoining the EU, the single

market or the customs union..")

That seems pretty emphatic.)

So, I'm happy (or, at least, I'm going to try) to give them a period of grace and goodwill. Obviously, my fear is things will be bad. We now have a parliament entirely dominated by managerial technocrats - 412 Labour MPs, 72 Liberal Democrats, and 121 (for the most part) wet Tories. People like Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liz Truss, Steve Baker, and my local MP Simon Clarke all gone.

This was a terrifying prospect before the election, but now it's a reality I calmly accept.

I think it's important to act in hope after an election. Again, to offer some goodwill towards your victorious opponents, and to not prejudge their efforts in government. To give them some time to prove your fears wrong. To acknowledge if they get things right.

Perhaps it won't be so bad after all.

REFORM

Reform picked up five seats, which is a huge silver-lining. I think five is a very impressive total. Even after the exit poll predicted thirteen I wasn't confident they'd get more than one or two.

My immediate thoughts are two-fold:

Firstly, Reform need to make sure they diligently serve these five constituencies. They need to be present, do the boring things, and resist the temptation to simply use these seats as a platform for wider activism. If they get a reputation for not being local, loyal and serious it's curtains for any grander ambitions.

Secondly, I think they would be wise to be absolutely forensic with any statements made going forward. Cavalier mouthing off and high drama might undo them. As if they cause too much trouble in parliament, the committees and kangaroo courts will be back in no time. "Disrepute!" "lying to parliament!" "financial irregularities!" Don't think in this current era that only the public can remove people from parliament.

(This is quite a negative suggestion, and it goes against my earlier desire to offer goodwill to Labour & Co. However, I'm not saying this type of chicanery will definitely happen, I'm just pointing out that there's a very realistic possibility that it could.)

Tony Blair: The Cristiano Ronaldo of Politics

What does Tony Blair actually believe?

In that last post I mentioned I'd been watching a documentary about the Blair/Brown years. At the point of writing I'd only watched up until the third episode, so the Iraq War hadn't been fully dealt with. Since then I've watched the last two.

What struck me the most was the emotion, especially of Blair. It's easy to forget these politicians are human beings. When you're reminded of this fact it's hard not to feel a greater sympathy. It also returned me to a topic I've considered a few times over the last few years. Namely: what does Tony Blair actually believe?

He can be difficult to pigeonhole. Is he a Neocon? A globalist Europhile? Is he a Marxist revolutionary hidden beneath the guise of a moderate centrist? Is he a Tory Boy in Labour clothing?

(In fact, I'd forgotten about this last one. I remember, vaguely, from my teenage years accusations that he was a Tory - a child of Thatcher, that had somehow snuck into the Labour Party to transform it. A lot of the footage from the 1980s and early 90s I'd never seen before, and watching it, it was very easy to see why people would have thought so. He was indeed very "Tory Boy" back then. I can see why he fooled so many actual Tories into thinking, "Don't worry, we can give him a few years running the country, he's basically one of us.")

Anyway, I've generally come to the conclusion that Tony Blair doesn't really believe in anything. These documentaries only confirmed this notion. (The "Tory Boy" recollection being the clincher.)

What I think defines Blair is personal ambition. A sheer desire to be successful. It's easy to assume that politicians must have some kind of ideology. Some worldview that they want to implement. However, this isn't really how humans work. We have an inbuilt impulse to be successful. A will to thrive and survive. A gorilla doesn't become the dominant gorilla because he wants to implement capitalism or communism in the jungle. He just does it because it's his nature. He doesn't know why he does it. He doesn't stop to ask.

We're all like this to some degree. If I play football I want to win. I rarely stop to consider why. I just do. And, of course, we all know people that are very competitive. That can't stand to lose even if it is just a friendly game of football. We naturally want to win in life, whatever we find ourselves doing - some people more so than others.

If we take a very driven footballer as an example, let's say, Cristiano Ronaldo, we can see how extreme his will to win is. The lengths he goes to. The amount he pushes himself. His eagerness, you could even say need, to score the most goals, or win the most trophies. To be the centre of attention. But why does he do this? Is there a grander purpose to it all? Does he want to acquire all this fame, money and reputation so he can implement some utopian political world order? Of course not (at least, I don't think he does!). He just wants to be successful. It's human nature. And in the field he finds himself in: football, that means scoring goals, breaking records and winning trophies (along with signing mega contracts and sponsorship deals).

(Actually, as another aside, there was a nice moment in the Euros last night where Ronaldo unselfishly passed to set up a goal for another teammate, from a position where he would've normally had a shot. It was almost a redemption arc, noted and memed by people on Twitter. As if, in the winter years of his playing career he's suddenly realised he can get a deeper joy from being a team player, as opposed to the star attraction.)

I think Tony Blair is a Cristiano Ronaldo type politician - and in politics one of the benchmarks is "progress". Particularly for politicians born in our era of history. So I think if he has a political leaning it's more just a vague attraction to the notion of "progress." His messianic (this term was actually used to describe his personality in the documentary series) ..his messianic desire to be personally successful manifesting as a need to be on the progressive side - that is, the winning side, in terms of historical narrative - of any particular issue.

If we look at some of his defining themes or decisions we can see this.

Pro EU/wanting Britain to join the Euro

At the end of the 20th century the general consensus was that nation states were an outmoded thing of the past, and that big regional blocks (if not single world governments) were the natural way of the future. So, naturally, Blair took the side of progress.

Iraq War

Likewise here. We'd reached the end of history after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The march of democracy was inevitable. It was just a case of pushing over the last few dominos of the past, with their little Hitler-esq rulers. Again, the right side of history was obvious.

Technocratic Solutions

Blair has always been a big technology guy, be it digital IDs or whatever else. Alas, a recurring sentiment you'll often hear from Blair when he addresses forums, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, goes along the lines of this:

"Listen, I don't have a clue about mobile phones, I have to get the younger guys to help me use the damn things, but, y'know, it's the future, and we have to embrace it."

Normally, it's the job of older people to be a break on change - partly as a consequence of this natural confoundment at the latest trends and fashions. However, the 1960s generation - the boomers, so-called - absolutely defined themselves as change-agents. In complete opposition to the old fuddy-duddies and squares that were the previous generation - who resisted the "inevitable" march of progress that came in the 20th century. So, the hippie generation grew up with this ingrained way of thinking, "..When I'm older, I'll be down with the kids - even if I don't quite understand what exactly it is they're doing. I'm not going to make the mistake the previous stuffy generation made, when they stood ignorantly in the way of progress."

So, as technology is viewed as the future, and pushing against it is seen as luddite, once again, Blair chooses to be on the side of progress.

Thatcherism

Finally, we can return to the "Tory Boy" accusation that I'd so forgotten and disregarded. Here too, the same was true. Thatcherism and the liberalisation of the markets was the future. The Labour Party, on the other side, very much stuck in the past. So we see yet another variant of Tony Blair seeking to be on the winning side of history.

And the notion of "winning" really defines Blair. He won three terms, and in his various Labour speeches he returns to the theme time and again. That desire to be successful overriding everything else. A few months ago I posted on here, recollecting a memory of someone calling Blair the literal Anti-Christ. The comparison with the Devil, and labels such as the "Dark Lord," pop up in relation to Blair quite commonly online, at least in more conspiratorial spheres. Obviously, it's a tad silly. However, there is definitely a slight Faustian spirit to Blair. The will to power, the ambition, the sheer desire to breakthrough and achieve success.

I've criticised Blair many times in the past. I think I've been wrong to ascribe malign intentions though. Watching the documentary series I couldn't doubt the humanness and sincerity. I have to admit it seems like he sincerely wanted to achieve peace in Northern Ireland, and I don't doubt he wants it for the Middle East now.

I always think the human ego is like a wild horse. It can get you to places, but you have to learn to tame it and keep it under control. Some people advocate the complete suppression of the ego. The rationale of this initially feels attractive, but to me it always seems like a rejection of life. A desire to retreat into neutrality and nothingness, instead of actively seeking goodness. I think the wild horse of the ego can be employed for good and for bad.

The sheer horsepower of Blair (and Ronaldo) is impressive to behold.

Euros during the Euros

I've been watching a documentary series about the Blair/Brown years. It's hard not to be impressed by Gordon Brown. Weighty, intellectual, that dour Scottish sense of moral purpose. I can't help but like him when I see this younger footage. Even when he's doing things that I don't agree with, like making the Bank of England independent.

Blair, not so much. Though, even with Blair, you have to admire the sheer will to power.

Watching the series just reminded me how much the issue of Europe figures in each political era though. In this case Blair having a zeal for taking us into the Euro. Of course, as ever, no one actually voted for this. The issue becoming visible only after the landslide win ..a win that was all about a "New Britain," not a "New Europe."

We see the same in the Major era. The ERM was all about streamlining European currencies in preparation for the Euro. The public, again, weren't told that was the case. The line was that it was good for the economy - that pegging ourselves to the Deutsche Mark would instil economic discipline. In the end it crashed the pound and cost the country a lot of money. Yet, despite failing, less than ten years later the Euro was fully underway regardless. Fortunately, without Britain (in my opinion).

It's incredible to watch so many politicians throw away so much political capital on this ideological vision of a new world. It's unceasing. And politicians that don't believe in this vision - who just want to deliver for their voters - constantly have their hands tied, as they're having to fight a constant rearguard action. How much time and money and effort have we all spent just to keep Britain as Britain? Just to hang on to the status quo, in the face of this undemocratic undermining of the nation state.

And it is undemocratic. Nobody ever voted for an EU flag, parliament and anthem. It's always a constant salami slicing; shaving off our sovereignty bit by bit. Inching us ever-onward into the EU. Before you know it the family silver is halfway out the door, and when you realise it's going you're told that somehow you'd agreed to this - and that you're just making a big fuss in trying to stop it.

Just this morning I saw a tweet from Rory Stewart urging Labour to re-join the EU Customs Union after they win. Stating, in capital letters, it's NOT the same as re-joining the EU. Again, that salami slicing. Feigning that this will be the last cut ..after that, no more. We know - from experience - this is never the case though. That people like Rory Stewart want us fully in the EU, in spite of their protests.

Likewise, it needs to be reminded, that not only did the British public vote to leave the EU, and vote Boris in at the last election to Get Brexit Done, but, even now, Labour have to pay lip service to this as re-joining remains so unpopular. So, again, as in the past, whatever they do, they will have no mandate for it, and will have sneaked it out the door once again.

Finally, this is another thing that's so annoying (I've talked about this on here before). The constant word twisting. Endlessly we're asked "What are the tangible benefits of Brexit?" This idea that sovereignty and who governs us and how aren't that important. That pro-EU advocates are just so much more pragmatic and realistic. It's such a dishonest line though, as the EU advocates are just as invested in an abstract ideology. As the history above shows, they're obsessed with building their vision of a new world. And it doesn't matter what the economic risks are, or how much political capital they waste on it. They're just much less upfront about this. They pretend they don't believe in the EU project, as they endlessly pursue it.

When you look at the big picture (as you sit watching these political documentaries) it's impossible not to see this, but many people on Twitter live only in the latest TV moment. The argument reduced and fixated on the latest little salami slice.

The Alchemical Election

Go home, return to your farms and villages. The battle is lost..

Here we are, in an election campaign, and so far, I've posted nothing. Normally, in times like these, I'm posting daily, charting the action. So, what's up?

What's up is we're in praying for a miracle territory. Labour are heading for total victory, and our forces are fleeing in disarray - divided and betrayed. The Tories, either by incompetence or design, have surrendered parliament, and Reform have stepped onto the battlefield like Viking berserkers, swinging swords in all directions, sparing not even the most ardent of Brexiteer Tories.

Peter Hitchens, like a wise wandering druid, has been begging people to vote tactically, to block Labour, but no one is listening. (Actually, I'm sure some people are listening, but I'm being melodramatic - let me have some fun.) Whilst the online right cry for "zero seats," all bloodlust and mindless emotion.

Obviously, as you can see from my framing of things, I think Peter Hitchens is broadly correct. However, at the same time, Reform can, no doubt, win some seats -- and that would be a huge breath of optimism in an otherwise bleak, black fog. So, now the chaos has begun, I'm not quite sure what to state publicly.

With that in mind I'll just state what I'm doing personally.

Farms and Villages

Where I live there are two constituencies: Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, and Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.

Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, which is my constituency, is a super-safe Labour seat. So, consequently, my vote will probably make very little difference. Middlesbrough South is a little more interesting however. That seat flips back and forth. Currently, it's Conservative, and Simon Clarke is the MP. As far as Tories go, he's one of the better ones. So, if I lived there, I would definitely vote Conservative. In fact, on election night I'll probably be paying more attention to this seat than my own.

As for my own, I'll likely vote Reform. Also, as a side note, my current MP is Andy McDonald, which adds another minor tactical dynamic. I don't like Labour and have plenty of criticisms, but he's a bit more of a Corbynite than a Blairite, so potentially he could be a thorn in the side of Keir Starmer at some point over the coming years. And, he is at least sincere in his views, as much as I would disagree with them. So, if both seats stay the same, I would happily take that as a win right now. Making my vote even more of a free spin.

Re-Farm

I actually donated £50 to Reform a day or so before Nigel Farage announced he was running. When I did it I felt a little bit like an alchemist throwing mercury into the fire. With the writing seemingly on the wall regarding the election it just felt like it needed something. Obviously, £50 in the grand scheme of things isn't very much. However, I think all the donations people made that weekend did make a difference. It seemed like Reform were testing the public mood to see if the support was there, and it seems it was.

Ever since then I just think, "alchemy," whenever I tune into the election. There's no overall narrative, you just hope that somehow people get things right in their own constituency. That somehow we get a bit of magic that upsets the apple cart. I always believe that, if you give the British public options, they'll get it right more often than not. I'm not especially optimistic this time round - we could end up with a bit of a nightmare. We do at least have a bit of fizz in the cauldron though now.

This is partly why I'm not as mouthy and vocal as I normally am. All you can really do is just go back to your farm, village or constituency and cast your vote ..and trust people in other parts of the country to do the same. It's very difficult to tell other people what to do when the options they have locally may be completely different to your own, and when things may be changing in ways that make it difficult for outsiders to grasp the vibe in a particular area.

I know where I live. I might, over the next few weeks, take a deeper look at some of the other seats on Teesside. Beyond that I really don't know ..and I definitely don't trust polls enough to start painting by numbers.

Orange Orchard Economics

This is just a quick post to distil my views on the empty high street problem.

Partly thanks to online retail, highstreets and city centres are dying - this is something pretty much everyone agrees is happening. Though pointing out the problem is easy, solutions aren't as forthcoming. Here's my plan:

1) Accept that we need less high street shop space. i.e. stop trying to artificially prop-up retail space that simply isn't needed in this online age.

2) Make it as easy for people to sell things on their local high street as it is to sell things on eBay. That is, create a public market space where people can hire kiosks/shop space by the hour, for a small fee. In effect, a local market place open daily, and open to everyone.*

3) Retail space that isn't needed repurposed. With some sold for new housing and some earmarked to become public parks and orchards.

4) More allotments. A greater emphasis on meeting demand for allotments in town planning. Viewing towns not just as spaces for housing and retail, but also as spaces for gardens, nature and food production. In summary, recreating the village green in macro.

*If the idea of selling things on your high street as easily as you would on eBay sounds strange, pause and think about it for a moment. Why is it so hard to sell things in the very town or city where you live? Is it really any wonder high streets and local economies are dying when they're so inflexible and difficult to enter as a seller. Perhaps if politicians stopped trying to strangle and regulate the online world, and instead tried to imitate it, local economies would re-bloom. After all, originally, in earlier times, it would've been perfectly normal for individual people to turn up at their local market place and flog their wares. It's only over-regulation that has stopped this organic process from continuing into our current era.

Again, you can list a bunch of items for sale very easily on eBay, or sell your homemade arts and crafts on a platform like Etsy. So why is it so difficult to take these very same items down to your local high street or town centre and do the same? Why is it so difficult to set up a stall, or book a slot of space on a morning or an afternoon?

Preserving Folk Memories

A few weeks ago I went to a folk night. In a small, little pub. All older folkies singing their traditional ballads, and younger art school types picking up the mantle. I feel I need to put it down in writing as it was such a snapshot of Britain as it is at this moment. I really felt like I was sat in an Adam Curtis documentary. The jarring mesh of imagery, along with the the music, creating a sad dystopian cinema reel. The people being filmed, here only by my eyes, having no awareness of how transitory their culture was. Or how lost and peculiar their world would look to anyone watching back in ten, twenty or thirty years' time.

The people at the folk night were all very left wing. Some had little Palestinian badges on their jackets. At points the traditional folk songs were slightly reworked to include lines about Palestine. One young girl sang an acapella song about immigration, the theme being that the people arriving are no different to you or I, and that they should be universally welcomed.

What I found most interesting about it though, was that everyone in the room was white.

It was such a stark contrast to my journey there. To get to the little pub I walked through Middlesbrough. From the sprawl of council estates in the east, past Albert Park, then the long, lazy walk down Parliament Road. My nanna lived near Parliament Road, and my mam grew up round there. Consequently, that journey is a journey I've made a million times before. I have memories of being pushed in buggies down those roads. Of getting ice creams and lolly pops from the shops along the way. I remember pubs that aren't there anymore. The White Rose, which is now gone, and the huge - to my infant eyes - Westminster Hotel. That building still stands, but it's now home to a takeaway and minimart.

As a child it was the scale and imagery that impressed me. I never once stepped foot in those pubs, I just remember the signs. "Why is there a picture of Big Ben on a pub sign?" I would wonder. "Why does Yorkshire have a white rose?" I would ask. It's all minor stuff, but it colours the landscape.

Anyhow, now things are different, and as I walked through the area I was naturally aware of this massive change. In my childhood, in the 1980s and 90s, the area was still mainly white English. Sure, the town centre was always a bit more diverse than parts of the town further afield, but still, it was majority English. Now, however, the demographics have starkly shifted. On the evening of the folk night ninety percent of the people I passed were non-English. There were two English drug addicts sat on the floor outside the shops. The odd English person coming and going, but aside from that it was totally non-English.

And I'm not making the point here that this is good or bad (I really am past the politics of it all now), I'm just stating that it's impossible not to notice the sheer change.

So, anyway, I made this familiar journey, mindful of how much things have changed ..then I stepped into a little pub, and suddenly found myself in a room full of white English people -- white English people that were all singing traditional English songs, no less. It was like a little cocoon.

How could I not notice this stark contrast?

And, likewise, how could I not notice the irony? That these left wing people were singing in favour of open borders and diversity. Yet, they were choosing to spend their free time surrounded entirely by other white people. Singing traditional English folk songs. It was revealed versus stated preference, illustrated perfectly in the wild.

I mentioned this to one of the people I was with, "Don't you think it's weird that they're all singing about diversity, yet every single person in this room is white?"

He looked around, "Yeah, that's true - I didn't notice that. It never even occurred to me."

"This is probably the most conservative thing you've experienced in a long time," I pushed on, "..a room full of white people, preserving their white folk songs, cocooned from the changing demographics outside ..but they're all left wing."

Of course, as I pushed on, I only pushed myself towards the, "Is he a racist?" bracket, and I could see some of the eyes apprehensively thinking, "He's one of those right-wingers, isn't he." Like I'd rolled up my sleeve to reveal a swastika tattoo or something. I tried explaining that I wasn't making a judgement about the changing demographics, just an observation of it, and an observation of some of the hypocrisies and muddled thinking surrounding it, but alas, it's a hard topic to navigate. Especially when you've had a few pints of some weirdly named ale, and it's slowing your judgement.

I felt a little sad and emotional listening to all the people singing their folk songs - that was probably partly the alcohol too. They were all really nice people, and they all sincerely meant well. It wasn't really the place for my disruptive, dragon-like observations. As I sat there I couldn't help but wonder if people would still be singing those songs in fifty years' time, or even twenty. Again, it was very much like an Adam Curtis documentary, where you're watching rare, old footage, of a world that once was. Grainy film of some middle-aged English woman, singing her gentle folk ballad - interspersed with footage of the changing world outside. The discordance as the camera pans over a kebab shop, as some folk balladeer warbles in the background.

Sadly, I couldn't capture it on film, so I can only capture it in writing.

Welcome to lifejak

This is what happens when a scene becomes bigger and women start getting involved..

It's like being in a band. You're seventeen/eighteen/nineteen and you start a band. There are three or four of you. You're all mates and you're into the same music. You have your little in-jokes. Everything is about the music, and you all share the same dream. You start rehearsing, you write a few songs. You maybe get a few gigs. Everything's going great

..then one of the band members gets a girlfriend.

Let's say it's the lead singer, and the girl is "Chloe". Suddenly she's hanging around all the time and giving her opinions. Then, one day, you come into rehearsal and the singer says, "We've got a new band logo, we're gonna put it on all our fliers." And ..or course, you can't say anything, as the logo was designed by Chloe. She just took it upon herself to make one. You're then in the position where you either just accept this, and allow the aesthetic of the band to be ruined. Or, you say something, cause a big drama, and look like a bad guy. As Chloe was "just trying to help." Plus, "She's spent all this time making it, and it looks great!" The singer blinded by his infatuation, even though, deep down, like everyone else, he knows it's just not that good, and that if anyone else had made it he'd be much less enthusiastic.

Anyway, this all has that vibe.

And before any woman reading this gets completely irked off, I'm not saying women can't be in bands, or can never be part of the gang. If you're in a band and you need a drummer, and someone says, "Michelle's a drummer, she's looking for a band," that's different. In that situation Michelle is playing drums because she wants to, and she's now in the band because you need a drummer. It's not a boy/girl thing, and Michelle is being judged by the same criteria any other drummer would be judged by - i.e. is the music good, is the vibe there.

It's similar with memes. Obviously, everyone - male and female - is free to draw memes and upload them online. The problem here is that women are getting a free pass, because men are attracted to them. So we have a situation where more women are entering the space, plus more people in the space are getting wives and girlfriends. So, like the singer, they're allowing their boy/girl tendencies to skew their judgement. It's understandable, but it's not aesthetic, and someone needs to say it 😠

Normie Swarm

It's also got to be said that the meme popularity is partly a consequence of more normal people entering the space. There's nothing wrong with being normal, most people are normal, but if you like things to be a bit more interesting it's not so good. As everything ends up a bit Facebook or Saturday Night TV.

Earlier memes were good because they were insightful. Like the soyjak meme was good because it distilled down to a meme a type of person we were all familiar with, but didn't have a name or clear archetype for.

For instance, I remember the first time I saw the meme. It wasn't even the actual soyjak, it was just an image where someone had cut and paste together lots of people making that face.

My natural reaction was, "Ha, that's true, those people do actually make that face."

I'd seen people making that face before, but had never actually thought about it. It was only when I saw the meme - that is, when someone else pointed it out to me - that I consciously noticed it. And this is the thing. It's easy in hindsight to see these things, but it takes a bit of insight to be the first person to see it. To be the first one to notice the pattern and then point it out to other people, in a way that's easily communicated.

It's like stand-up comedy. A good comedian makes an observation about life, articulates it, then we, the audience, get the, "Haha, yeah, that's happened to me too." It's like a little lightbulb is turned on in your head, where suddenly something becomes much clearer. Thanks to the comedian's craft and insightfulness. Lesser comedians tend to be derivative though. Repeating familiar, well-trodden observations or formulas. So there's less originality and true insight.

Like when Peter Kay originally became massive. "GARLIC BREAD! ..Garlic? ..Bread?!" It was funny because he was original and he had his own style. He was the first person to do that sort of stuff in that sort of way. So we'd never seen it before. However, five or six years down the line, when you then get second tier, copycat versions of Peter Kay, doing that same sort of stuff if just gets tired.

It's the sort of, "Remember this from your childhood..", or, "My family member does this.." stuff you see getting shared on Facebook every day.

These memes, likewise, are just, "My wife says this..", only with a wojak in the picture.

Again, there's nothing wrong with this. Most people like familiar things. We can't all be on the cutting edge of the zeitgeist 24/7  ..and yes, I'm definitely being a bit of a dick pointing all this out. If people are enjoying it I shouldn't be whinging about it. No one's forcing me to join in. Plus, everything runs its course. The era of wojaks was never going to last forever.

I guess it has to go down as a win too really. Didn't we want the normal people coming round to our way of thinking? Wasn't that the hope?

I just wish it was on Facebook and not on my Twitter feed.