Blogging - What a load of rubbish! Getting it wrong!

Every so often, I write a blog, usually spending ages on it, then I realise it is as dull as dishwater and if someone else had written it, I'd think "How could anyone write such drivel". I know some of my readers (Hi Brian Coleman), think all of my blogs are drivel, but I get nice feedback on enough of them to think most must be OK. I don't actually mind when people tell me I've written a load of old cobblers because they disagree with me. I have strong views and share them freely, so that is part of the job, but occasionally people pull me for simply writing a duff blog and on occasion I have to agree.

Generally, the blogs I wrote about Barnet Council didn't fall into the complete drivel category. The reason was simple, I'd see something that no sane person would think was OK and lay the facts out. A reader may disagree with my analysis, but I cannot recall a single occasion where I was called out for having written simething stupid about Barnet Council. When I write about more subjective things, it is easier to waffle and talk complete nonsense, if  not careful. On a few occasions, readers have taken such exception that they've written and complained. The best example was when a reader, Andrew Evans, who was an atheist, took exception to my views about Richard Dawkins. My response was simple. Write a guest blog as a response and I'll share it. Andrew did and I was really pleased with his response. I thought it was a pretty intelligent exchange of views and the world is a better place when we do share our opinions in a civilised way. 

Although I am sure Andrew would categorise the blog he responded to as not one of my best, I thought it was actually pretty good. I tend to like provoking such a response, so it has to be classified as OK. The blog I wrote yesterday and didn't publish was not OK. I suspect that if Andrew had seen it and responded, he'd have conclusively given me a verbal kicking. I try and write blogs that people who hold diametrically opposed views will find interesting and challenging. Sometimes this is easy. Some of the blogs I wrote during the Brexit referendum campaign, I thought were very good and even staunch Brexiteers conceded I may have a point. One recently told me that he was dismayed to realise that I'd been right about the effects on Eastern Europe. But one thing I've learned is it is always the unexpected consequences that are most interesting, when the dust settles. A good example is that now Trump is in the White House, Brexit does have an upside no one, especially those in the Leave camp predicted. Having said that, I suspect that the early promise of a better deal for Britain is a pipedream, as all Trump really wants is a better deal for America. What really worries me is that Trump can kick us harder than Europe, because they are bigger. We will just have to see how that will play out and I genuinely think that Mystic Meg has as much chance of predicting Trumps next action as any other commentator. 

The one thing I know for certain is that if Mystic Meg could accurately predict Trumps next action, she'd be a rich lady as she'd be able to make a fortune shorting the latest stock market sector Trump has shafted. But for poor, humble, ill informed bloggers like me, Trump presents a real dilemma. The problem is that there is almost nothing interesting to say about him. He's Mr Marmite, those that love him and think he's a genius are convinced, those that think the opposite equally so. I suspect that Trumps saving grace is that no one knows what he will do next, so everyone is terrified of upsetting him. I think that the recent, outrageous missile attacks on Ukraine are Putin seeing how far he can push his luck. Unlike Trump, I think Putin is wholly predictable. The problem for every country with the exception of perhaps the USA and China is that we can do very little. What we do know is that Putin wants to decouple the USA from NATO. He wants this for one simple reason, if he acheives this, he can push Europe around. Whatever you may or may not think of Trump, Putin or any other world leader, in twenty years time, neither are likely to be around. Putin will be 92 and Trump 98. But I suspect that the legacy of their respective reigns will still be casting a shadow.

Personally, my assumption is that by 2045, the USA and Russia will no longer be the powers of note. I believe that this will be the century of China and India. Both have populations that dwarf the USA and China and both are growing far faster. Trumps policies seem to me to be aimed at putting the genie back in the bottle. I suspect that all he's doing is forcing these countries to open up new markets, that the US cannot dominate. It seems to me that the leaders of China are planning for the next 20 years, whilst I am not convinced Trump really knows what he will do tomorrow. China know that in less than four years, there will be a new President of the USA. Whatever happens, the direction will change. It may well change another three or four times over the next 20 years. China's economic policy is very likely to adapt, but remain focussed on what the ruling elite in China think is important.

Of course, there is always the unexpected. Few predicted the dissolution of the USSR and it is always possible that the central control of China may go the same way, but unlike the USSR, China is prosperous. People tend to rebel when the economy doesn't work for them and they feel there is nothing to lose. China is robust, I believe it will easily withstand the seismic shock of Trumponomics. It seems likely to me that Trumps policies will hit global growth and we will all suffer to some degree, but markets adapt quickly. Unless you buy into the conspiracy theory that Trump is simply generating a bear market so his mates can make a fortune shortings stocks (which I don't), the turmoil will die down fairly quickly. The trading models that do not respond well to unforseen shocks, will start to price in a 'Trump Announcement factor' and market swings will be less pronounced. The ride may still be bumpy, but it will be potholes rather than off the edge of the cliff.

But all of this is purely my best guess. I may be spouting a complete load of rubbish. Getting it wrong is a way of life for bloggers. When Boris won in 2019, I woke up in the certain knowledge that the Tories would run the country for a decade and Labour were in permanent decline. It appeared Nigel Farage was riding off into the sunset, telling all who would listen that "It was Nige who won it for Boris". We all know how that went.

Anyway, at the start of the year, I made a few predictions in my new years blog, here's the ones we can pass judgement on. I didn't do to bad, did I?

Politics

Donald Trump will not end the Ukraine war on day one of his presidency as promised.

Nigel Farage will continue to be the bloke most invited onto #BBCQT whilst claiming that the 'mainstream media' gives him a hard time.

The Weather

Winter will be cold and miserable and at the end of it, we'll be told it's the hottest winter on record.

So there you go! Bloggers do occasionally get something right, even in the most challenging of circumstances!

The NHS isn't NICE

I just flew back from a 2 weeks in Florida this morning. A bit of business and a lot of pleasure. I always enjoy trips to the USA and I'm always pleased to get home. The highlight of the trip was snorkelling off the Florida keys. Apart from the Great Barrier reef in Australia, there are some of the worlds finest reefs in the Keys. Swimming out to see the statue of "Christ of the Deep" (Pictured left - modelled on Christ of the Abyss in Naples Harbour) was a truly awesome experience.

Unfortunately I also spent a fair bit of time watching the coverage of the healthcare debate on the various news channels. Watching FOX News in particular reminded me why I don't buy papers published by Rupert Murdoch. I have a theory as to why the American right is so vehemently opposed to a government run system of national healthcare. I believe that they've realised that once the American public gets it, they may just twig that all the right wing nonsense about the superiority of the free market will be exposed for the load of old tosh that it is. I'm not completely blinkered about the merits of some aspects of capitalism. I've run a successful business for 30 years. I do it better than any of the council run initiatives I've seen. It's just that there are some things the state unquestionably does better. A quick hop over the channel to France shows what a properly funded nationalised rail system can do. This has delivered huge benefits to the nation. Closer to home, it is patently obvious to just about everyone (apart from our supposedly Socialist government) that the Post Office is something that just has to stay in public hands. As to putting men on the moon, only a government backed program at NASA could have done that.

The most obvious system though, isn't rocket science. The NHS, for all it's faults serves the population of this country superbly. I've got a sister and a brother-in-law who work in health provision in Florida. My brother in law was a top guy at one of the biggest healthcare providers in the USA, with responsibility for the healthcare of the US congress in the mid 90's. He's a fantastic doctor, who has saved more lives than many people on the planet have had hot dinners. He worked in emergency medicine for many a year and when he expresses an opinion I listen. His view? That the system in the US fails to deliver for an alarming number of people. Many others are stuck in jobs they hate, just to ensure their family are covered by a health scheme. The American system is, to my mind, a system of quasi serfdom.

Due to the spells of showers during our stay, I watched many of the live Town Hall meetings on CNN and FOX news. What outraged me was the way the networks, especially FOX, would edit these. The most telling interjection I saw was watching the live coverage of failed Presidential candidate John McCain taking a town hall session. Possibly 90% of the audience were supportive of his "anti (Obama's reform)" stand. If you watched FOX's edited highlights, you would most certainly have missed the most telling contribution. Early on McCain started running down the NHS. He said that with the NHS and NICE (the committee that decides whether we can get drugs), some Multiple Sclerosis sufferers have to wait up to 2 years in the UK for treatment. There was howls of outrage from the audience. This clip got widely shown in the edited highlights. What wasn't shown was a woman who stood up and told how a relative of hers in the USA had to wait 20 years for treatment until she qualified for medicaid, by which time she was totally bedridden. Other commentators told all manner of lies about the NHS. One lie which came out time and time again was that people over 70 are denied treatments and operations under the NHS.

I know this to be untrue. My mother, who sadly passed away last year, had an operation on the NHS to fix a degenerating vertebrae in february last year. The operation was a complete success. My mother suffered from cancer in 1970 and was cured by the NHS. She would have been uninsurable in the USA after that. My folks ran a small business. They would have been financially destroyed under the US system.

Time and time again, right wing US pundits slagged off NICE as a "Death Panel". Sure, there is a degree of rationing of life saving drugs. There is rationing of healthcare in the USA as well. The way it works there is that if you are poor and uninsured, you don't get the care you get if you are rich and in a scheme.

Before my mother had a massive stroke which robbed her of her eloquence in 2000, she was a fierce and passionate defender of the NHS to all and sundry. She remembered the days before it was introduced, when families were broken by the cost of paying for treatment for sick children. She was nearly killed by diptheria in the 1930's and so she was a passionate believer in immunisation and the good of public health schemes.

What disturbs me most about the US healthcare debate is the fact that they pay twice the amount of their (much greater) GDP than we do for health, but a whole section of their population has been failed by this system. The defenders of the private system shriek "freedom and choice" as their clarion call. People like my mother who got cancer have no choice. They just get dropped in America. Children of the poor have no choice in America. The rich and the powerful have a fine choice, but I judge a society by how it treats its weakest, most unfortunate members, not how it looks after it's richest and most powerful.

That's why I'm glad to be home.

I don't know what revolts me more, the American military or our Government

Just suppose you got home to find that someone had been in your house. Just suppose that you'd left the front door wide open and they'd walked in. Just suppose they'd left you a note on the table calling you an idiot for not taking care of your property. Just suppose they'd accidentally knocked a vase over and spilled some water on the kitchen floor. Just suppose you knew they'd looked through all your stuff, but clearly hadn't pinched anything. How would you feel? You'd probably call the police. When they saw the note saying that you'd left the door open, would you feel a bit stupid. After a while you might think that maybe the snooper had actually done you a favour. I'm pretty sure that PC Plod would tell you that you were pretty lucky and should be grateful that the visitor wasn't someone with more malicious intent.

How would you feel to find out that a snooper with special needs had done just that to the US military computer network. He'd been looking for evidence of aliens and found out that the Yanks couldn't be bothered to use proper passwords. He left messages on their computers saying that their security was rubbish. How did the US military react? Did they sack the people who'd exposed us all to the risk of world war 3 by their negligence? Did they immediately offer the guy a few thousand quid to test the rest of their network security. Did they send him a thank you for showing them that they were risking all of our lives?

Nope, they've spent the last few years trying to extradite him from Great Britain so they can jail him for up to 60 years. You see the bully boy US military don't like being made to look stupid. They don't like the fact that a guy in his flat in North London showed the rest of us that they weren't fit to run a whelk stall. That's why they are persecuting Gary McKinnon, an aspergers sufferer from North London. He though that the US government was hiding evidence of Alien life and contact, so he hacked into their system. He did it from his bedroom. He didn't conceal the fact. He left anti American messages on the systems and he left messages telling them how bad their security was. Uncle Sam doesnt' like it. As if that isn't bad enough, our own government is complicit. The useless and cowardly W*******rs who run our government bleat that "we've signed a treaty, there's nothing they can do" (shame on you Alan Johnson).

Well there is something quite simple they could do. They could ring up President Obama and tell him that Gary McKinnon did him a favour and that their persecution of him offends natural justice. They could tell Mr Obama that he should prosecute the people who were paid a small fortune to set the systems up and left us all vulnerable to terrorist activity by not using proper security systems. They could tell Mr Obama that we'll never deport Mr McKinnon because the extradition treaty was designed for terrorists and criminals.

I don't know what I find more revolting, the attitude of the US authorities in trying to blame Mr McKinnon for something which any fair minded person would instantly see is their own fault for being so crap or our government for going along with it. Lets face it, what will the Yanks do if they get really pissed off with us. tell us to take our boys home from Afghanistan so they can keep all the casualties to themselves?

Please can you do something for me. Can you write to your MP if he's Labour and tell him what you think of the spineless creeps in his Govenrment who have allowed this to go on for so long. If you live in a Lib Dem or a Tory Constituency, can you write to Gordon Brown and tell him that you think his behaiviour in this affair is shameful and it's time he showed a little bit of backbone.

Oh and just in case you wondered, I once hacked the US Military system and downloaded all the files on Alien encounters, it is absolutely ... Sorry I'll get back to you in a minute, someone has just knocked on the door.