RAMBLING ON TO WHAT END

I had started to write a piece in connection with issues arising out of the current distribution of goods problem, or, as some would call it, crisis. It began: 

{{ The problems arising from the pandemic are clouding the issues arising from the separation of the United Kingdom from the European Community. The recent visit of the Prime Minister to the United States demonstrating what little influence he actually commands on the world stage is, in my view, the result of that separatist policy.  

Whilst Mr. Johnson advises Mr. Macron to “get a grip”, perhaps he should get a grip on his lack of any success over a trade deal with the United States, or significant deal with anyone else for that matter. His address to the United Nations about world-wide unity in the face of climate change, is yet more evidence of his diplomatic hypocrisy. On the one hand he sees separation and division from the European Union as beneficial for the United Kingdom, yet the world should come together for climate control and, presumably, pandemic control. Slightly confusing messages. An avowed separatist calling for unity is a bit rich. Cooperation and unity of purpose are not born from separation.

Scotland, of course is not entitled to form a similar view vis a vis the United Kingdom, in wanting to leave the British Union to join with the rest of the world and the European Union; but that is another matter.

His separatist deal has caused serious dissention in Northern Ireland and discontent in Scotland. The flow of goods throughout the UK has been disrupted, in part owning to the pandemic but in the main as a result of the effects of his getting Brexit done.  To keep claiming the current problems are mainly to do with the pandemic is hiding from reality. It is a convenient cloak for the disastrous policy of separatism. The claim that the economy will boom because there are so many job opportunities and that wages are on the rise, is again a smoke screen from the actuality. It is the same type of claim that 20,000 police officers will somehow magically appear on our streets. Where are they to come from? It is all very well to advertise the job, but people have to be qualified to do a job as well as having the desire to do the job. Those who can fit the requirements will be asking for better wages than the people who had previously occupied the position. It is only natural. But the available workforce has to be ready willing and able to do the work, and the employers have to be ready willing and able to pay the right wages. The conservative rhetoric that this is happening now, or just around the corner is so much wishful thinking. In the meantime, people are going to suffer, from the withdrawal of benefits, increased numbers of evictions, increasing debt, and the scrabbling round for more than one job to be able to make ends meet.

To hear politicians, on a basic wage of £81,932 a year (whilst the reported median annual pay for full-time employees was £31,461 for tax year ending April 2020) suggesting that people in receipt of benefits should work extra hours to make up the difference in their income, is appalling. They are on benefit because they earn well below the median income, despite being employed. “It will encourage people to find work” is the rational for removing a clearly much needed £20 a week. A full time employee on minimum wage earns just over £16,000 per annum before tax. The threshold for low income, calculated by HMG is 60% of median income or £18, 876 per annum. This is also referred to by HMG as the National Living Wage by the Government. Still, the extra £1040 for someone on minimum wage does not even meet the low income threshold or National Living Wage. To reach the threshold the minimum wage earner would have to work for an additional six and a half hours a week. That figure is even greater for the under 20’s and under 18’s entering the job market, assuming they even qualify for universal credit. Also, I haven’t notice that expenses on council tax, utilities, food and rent are reduced for the under 22’s so why should the minimum wage be reduced? The average rent for a room in the UK is £587 per month which, if deducted from the threshold, leave a national living wage of about £220 per week. So someone on over £1500 a week plus expenses, such as rent for a room, is in no position to be advising people to work extra hours to make up the difference.}}

 

That is as far as I got with my current ramblings. Slightly erratic and full of topic drift. I am not quite sure where I was heading; however I was sent today an opinion piece that appeared in the 23 September 2021 Washington Post by Robert Kagan, to bring me down to earth:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/23/robert-kagan-constitutional-crisis/

Mr Kagan is characterised as an American neoconservative scholar and critic of United States foreign policy and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism. This is a caveat to the article, but I believe it is well worth a read. It elicited nearly 6000 comments from readers. Mr Kagan is a well educated man, having attended Yale, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and obtained his PhD in American History the from American University in Washington DC. He was a registered Republican up until 2016 when he quit the Party and became an Independent.

He supported Hilary Clinton in the 2016 election. He has made a few wild allegations in his time but appears to be reasonably sound. He is married to Victoria Nuland who is currently Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President Joe Biden.

 

 

Whilst looking through the Opinion pages of the Washington Post, the Editorial Board of the paper wrote a view that:

 

 “Angela Merkel’s departure will be felt in a world that needs democratic champions more than ever”

 “After dominating Germany and, indeed, Europe for so long, Ms. Merkel leaves a legacy of sober, patient leadership, in which she both articulated and modelled democratic values. This was especially important at times when the leaders of other Western nations — including Germany’s European neighbours such as Hungary and Poland and, during the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States — did not. The moniker Germany’s first female chancellor earned among American admirers — “Leader of the Free World” — was extravagant but hardly baseless. Whether staving off the near-collapse of Europe’s common currency or coping with the coronavirus pandemic, Ms. Merkel kept her head while many about her were losing theirs. Germany reaped political stability, economic growth and heightened diplomatic influence.”

 

There is more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/25/angela-merkels-departure-will-be-felt-world-that-needs-democratic-champions-more-than-ever/

This piece also prompted a number of comments from readers and through American readers were complementary and favourable to Ms Merkel there were a number of comments from German and European readers who were far more critical of the German Chancellor and glad to see the back of her. It was interesting to note that some citizens of western democratic countries always seem to have a gripe about their current governments. This is of course a very healthy and necessary part of a democratic society, to be able to gripe about the current administration. What was also apparent from these comments, from readers round the world, was the clear distaste and revulsion of the Presidency of Donald Trump. He has very few admirers outside of the United States, save perhaps figures of his ilk, such as Vladimir Putin, the Myanmar Generals, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Viktor Orban and perhaps others of a kind.

 

In any event, referring back to Mr Kagan, should his prognosis actually happen, the world will have a very difficult time ahead and no doubt, in order to deal with what would become a very serious world crisis, some rather strange and unusual alliances may have to be formed. The disintegration of the United States into Trumpian anarchy “would display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution, and I suppose you know what that unfortunate movement led to”.

So my ramblings are just that, mental preoccupations with a variety of stuff that should cause me no anxiety, and yet it does. There is always something attractive in the idea that one can lead one’s life without any interference of any kind. To be able to do and go anywhere we like without recourse to any officialdom, living alongside it, able to drift in and out of civilised society at will. Respecting it without having to be part of it. Having complete freedom of choice, surviving as best one can, taking employment here and there making enough to get by and continue the ramble with zen like individuality. This is the stuff of the man with no name, the quest of Kwai Chang Caine, the life of John W ‘Jack’ Burns, but it usually ends up like Frank Chambers, Walter Neff and Joe Gillis.

 

The world isn’t like that anymore, if it ever was.