What to do about Donny’s threat to back him or else? Tell him to fuck off – politely, of course, by simply ignoring it and him. Yes, America’s economic power is still mighty, but he is becoming an irrelevant figure of fun more and more by the week (and thus screwing things for his White House cronies)

Occasionally, I am asked on Quora to answer this or that question. One of the most recent was

Does Europe, including the United Kingdom, have any realistic option other than acceding to President Trump’s demand to take over Greenland? It would help if he could say why exactly he wants Greenland.

Here is my response, and I am posting it here and now, because if I am right and Donny will be carted off shouting and screaming sooner rather than later, it would help. It might even gain me the, wholly spurious, of course, reputation as a visionary. And if I am wrong – who’s going to remember this post?

We certainly do, and it is simple: defy Trump and carry on defying him until he is no longer in power, and that might well be sooner than many think.

Trump faces a range of enormous problems, most political and some personal. Imminently, the Supreme Court will rule on the appeal against a court’s judgment that he does not have the constitutional authority unilaterally to impose tariffs.

Their decision is likely to go against him and cause him all kinds of problems. He might – he is not the sharpest blade in the box – try to tough it out, but that would compound his growing problems

Perhaps worse, if that is possible, what seemed like an iron grip on the Republican right is weakening considerably with a growing divided in MAGA with many supporters, for example, upset with many of his recent actions, not least that the man who assured them ‘no more foreign wars’ bombed Caracas, kidnapped the Venezuelan president and is talking, apparently seriously, of invading Greenland.

It also doesn’t help Trump that despite his, wholly fantastical claims that the US economy is thriving and he grades it A+++, relevant economic data, little by little, his demonstrating the opposite: it is not thriving and inflation is creeping up.

When prices for basic groceries, second-hand cars and rents (due to a decline in new home sales) are rising, it doesn’t matter what the man in the Oval Office is assuring you – most recently that it will all come good by the end of 2026! – it ain’t true!

MAGA men and women are reportedly also increasingly uncomfortable with the antics of ICE agents – yes, they might agree that ‘illegals’ should be apprehended with a view to deportation, but not like this. Some knuckle-draggers (with whom I have been mixing it on Truth Social until my accounts are banned) don’t mind at all, but many more don’t like the violence.

This creeping erosion of MAGA support also loosens Trump’s grip on the several hundred spineless Representatives who hitherto had bowed and cowed to him at every turn with both eyes on the threat that if they,

Demented? I’m not demented! I’m a wholly stable genius and I’ll bomb anyone who doesn’t agree with me, then I’ll sue what’s left of them for billions!

did not, they would be ‘primaried’. So what? they ask themselves, it doesn’t look certain look all that certain I would lose my seat. And, of course, those congressme and women who will not be standing anyway and the senators who will not be up for election and now casting about to establish where they left their spine.

Furthermore, although the ‘mid-terms’ are still nine months away, it seems very unlikely they will not become an electoral disaster for the Republicans, not least because, apart from the possibility that alternative non-MAGA Republican candidates might stand for election, the crucial independents have long lost faith with Trump and given they swung the vote his way on November 5, 2025.

What should worry Trump is that talk of ‘the 25th’ – invoking the constitutional amendment allowing for a president to be removed from office if he (no she, so far, natch, this is the macho ol’ US of A) – is also being whispered in Republican circles, the principle being ‘save what can be saved’. The far-right – Miller, Vought and Thiel – have a ready-made stood in VP Vance to replace Trump if and when, and when is looking more likely.

There is not doubt Trump suffered a mild stroke a month or two ago, and it is disconcerting that he now has visibly to fight off falling asleep in meetings. But arguably worse is that he shows definite signs of not being ‘all there’, unhinged, if you like, hence his, frankly, inexplicable recent decisions.

Talk that he might be suffering from frontal lobe dementia – as his father did in the last ten years of his life – are not mere Democrat mischief-making. So, the White House movers and shakers ask themselves, can we take the risk? Maybe it is time to put Donny out to pasture?

Thus, in short, what options does the UK and Europe have about Trump’s demand to own Greenland? Just the one – hold out till the old fraud is well under lock and key in some very comfortable, secure hospital in rural Pennsylvania. The new regime might show itself to be just as fascist but perhaps not quite as looney as the current one.

For 80 years we enjoyed liberal democracy – is the tide now going out? Everyone and his dog seems to think it’s now cool to be a right-wing cunt

A few years ago, I mentioned to my daughter – now 29 – that I had an ongoing but very definite feeling that rather far-reaching unwelcome changes were on the way. I most certainly could not put my finger on it, but it was a foreboding sense that the, frankly rather cosy, world and world order we had until then been accustomed to were on their way out.

I should, however, also point out that of 1,001 folk who predict the future or confess to such forebodings, 1,000 will get it wholly wrong and we only remember – and celebrate as some kind of visionary – the lucky schmuck who did ‘get it right’.

He or she – though almost probably a ‘he’ – will be only to happy to bask in glory and henceforth also consider themselves to be far-sighted and, of course, even more worth paying attention to.

As I was already 45 years old when my daughter was born (I shall be 77 in November), I had been more accustomed than her to the then current world order and had rather more memories and experience of what was a comparatively cosy world here in Britain and other Western nations, though if anything that world had become even more cosy in the 29 years of her life.

My description of ‘comparative cosiness’ will undoubtedly outrage some, given that many are always keen to be outraged as often as possible about any number of matters – if they’ve not been outraged at least twice before lunch, they are decidedly miffed.

Thus the ‘left’ – the quote marks are intended to indicate that the description is so flexible and malleable as to be more or less meaningless – will shout at me for ignoring the poverty that exists in the otherwise affluent West and other social injustice of many of our governments’ arrangements.

The ‘right’ – ditto – will scream at me for ‘ignoring the danger’ posed by ‘illegal aliens’ and ‘Muslims’ and how bloody lucky we were to ‘get out of Europe [they mean ‘the EU’] in time!’)

However, I suggest life for the vast majority in the Western world has been ever more than acceptable than not: we do not in the West, as in the former Soviet and now non-Soviet Russia, run the ever-present risk of falling to our death from a high window if we step out of line. We do not, as in China, Iran, North Korea and too many other countries, risk a long term in jail for speaking out against the ruling party and its apparatchiks.

Not as hopeful as many might like, eh?

Incidentally and bizarrely, along those lines rather too many in the US accept as ‘fact’ the claim, by J D Vance and Elon Musk that Britain – my home country – is now a fascist state.

As ‘proof’ they cite our laws on protecting free speech and that folk can be hauled before the courts and tried for ‘hate speech’. So many MAGA cretins insists ‘there is no free speech any more in the United Kingdom and it is now a fascist country’.

That those laws are specifically designed to protect sexual and racial minorities is a detail they conveniently and unsurprisingly ignore. They also insist that Britain is now overrun with gangs of Muslim rapists and that women are afraid to go out at night.

. . .

Economically, the West has certainly had its ups and downs in my lifetime, but compared to the existence of previous generations over the past two centuries, life has become progressively ever easier. We can, for example, insure ourselves for anything.

That doesn’t prevent catastrophe but does mean that if and when catastrophe struck, the consequences were really not as dire.

On the other hand if you were a rich or even not-so-rich bod in the 16th and 17th centuries when you lit your home by candlelight, an overturned candle leading to you home being burned downed could mean ruin – there was then no such thing as ‘home insurance’.

Yes, we still develop cancers, suffer heart attacks and can unexpectedly face unemployment. But in the second half of the 20th century we, at least in Europe as well as elsewhere, became entitled to free or subsidised health care, and could apply for a range of state benefits to help us when we need assistance. There is also a greater range of legal protective remedies for everyone.

It might not be too much of a stretch to suggest that one reason for the comparative ease of our lives since the end of World War II is that most countries in the ‘developed world’ politically operate a system of ‘liberal democracy’.

In fact, living in a ‘liberal democracy’ seems so much the norm now that many of use can’t conceive of not doing so. The intrinsic problem is that metaphorically ‘liberal democracy’ might have made us fat, soft and lazy.

. . . 

Twenty-four years ago [in 1992], an American historian, Francis Fukuyama, suggested that mankind had more or less reached the final stage of its development. He did so in his book The End Of History And The Last Man, and his thesis might well be – satirically – be summed up as ‘well, that’s it, lads and lasses, we’ve reached perfection. Enjoy!’

Even at the time when I read about its publication, the title and Fukuyama’s claim, I remember thinking ‘and who the fuck do you think you are kidding except yourself?’ But apparently I was in a minority and others did opt to kid themselves – almost predictably, Britain’s Sunday Times, in full pontifical mode, described Fukuyama’s work ‘as one of the 12 most influential books since World War II’.

The book appeared in the wake of one very significant change in recent world history: the mighty Soviet Union collapsed in on itself in pitiful ignominy in 1989 and its many satellite dictatorships behind ‘the Iron Curtain’ followed suit.

Certainly it will be clear to future historians that the writing was on the wall for Communist Russia and its political minions: most were economic basket-cases and their systems were decaying ever more by the year. But at the time it, almost, seemed to come out of the blue.

This, all the wiseacres predicted, was the time when ‘Western values’ and capitalism would take over. And no free market can exist, to the thinking went, without political freedoms as in the political freedoms guaranteed us by a liberal democrat system.

Really? Don’t you think that China and Vietnam, economically and commercially very successful, politically less free than we in the West would like, disprove that point wholly and reduce it to the status of triumphalist nonsense?

Nevertheless: drum roll please as ‘universal liberal democracy’ is about to take over and humanity could now at long last breathe a sigh of relief. Nirvana!

NB Both China and Vietnam had some way to go to establish their successful economies at the time Fukuyama was spreading the good news.

In tandem in the early 1990s was the development of the internet or as it was then called ‘the worldwide web’. It too, in its superhero guise of ‘the information superhighway’ – and I did not make that up – would ensure peace, peace, prosperity and peace everywhere.

The reasoning ran that as ‘information’ became readily available to everyone with a web connection, democracy would spread and creep into every nock and cranny where so far it had never thrived. Once again, rejoice!

It didn’t quite happen like that (and I can’t resist adding a mealy-mouthed ‘of course’ in a ‘told you so voice’). Most recently, the totalitarian dictatorship in Iran was instantly able to close ‘the information superhighway’ and the ‘free flow of facts and information

Fukuyama argued – this description is from Wikipedia – that ‘the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and Western free-market capitalism, as well as the Western lifestyle may represent the final step in humanity's sociocultural evolution and political struggle, alongside becoming the final form of human government, an assessment meeting with numerous and substantial criticisms’.

That’s the theory. The practice has, though, several years on, turned out to be rather different. And an irony is that it is the Achilles heel of ‘liberal democracies’ which has meant it might now slowly all be coming unstuck.

Certainly there are many ‘understandings’ and ‘interpretations’ of what living in a ‘liberal democracy’ entails, but I suggest one of its prime and essential principles is that ‘all votes are of equal value’ – everyone has a say not matter what they believe politically and to which mast they nail their flag.

A liberal democrat – note, small ‘l’ and small ‘d’ – will assure you, because for her or him it is axiomatic, that no ‘intelligent’ and ‘rational’ man or woman would ever not subscribe to the ‘broad range of liberal democratic values’. It’s as obvious was wiping your bum after taking a dump.

‘Yes,’ our liberal democrat will carry on in the manner of an Anglican / Episcopalian clergyman hoping to persuade you that ‘the church’ is now very broadminded and long ago divested itself of its former reactionary tendencies, ‘there is a broad range of values in a liberal democracy, raging from those espoused by – presumably intelligent and rational – Conservatives to those espoused by – presumably intelligent and rational – Left-of-centre socialist to those.’ 

It all again ends with a ringing chorus of ‘rejoice, rejoice for we are all in this together’. The exceptionally irritating might even repeat the, by now distinctly clichéd line, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’ apparently misattributed to Voltaire. That sentiment, they believe, proves how exceptional broadminded they are.

But things seem to be changing, and the – I’ll say it – complacent to downright smug confidence of card-carrying liberal democrat’s is increasingly taking a battering.

A case in point might be – though this is my interpretation – the conviction of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in the 2016 US presidential election that no one in his or her right mind would elect a total fraudulent buffoon like Donald Trump.

But they did and did so again eight years later in November 2024.

Here in Britain there seems – to me – to have been a similar smug complacency in play in the June 23, 2016, Brexit referendum: no one but no one in her or his right mind, our assorted bien pensant believed, would ever vote to leave the European Union!

But they did – as in a British majority did, Northern Ireland and Scotland overall voted to Remain – and the UK left, to its own demonstrable economic detriment.

As I say, things are changing and the tide of ‘liberal democracy’ worldwide seems now to be on its way out to sea

rather than coming in. It seems that in Europe and certainly in the US, more and more people are attracted to the political outliers, to the point where they are no longer outliers.

Here in Britain there seems a very real prospect of the Conservative Party (the Tories) the hitherto traditional home of those who identify politically as ‘conservative being eclipsed by Reform UK, now led by that disreputable carpetbagger Nigel Farage (right, doing his bit for the cancer industry).

But I shall not here delve any further into what seems to be going on as it would be yet another detour and I must, must, must avoid though.

Pertinently, though, is that where the Conservative Party likes to tout itself as a ‘broad church’ and can comfortably encompass those on the ‘not too far right’ as well as what were once referred to as One-Nation Tories, bods who had a social conscience, Reform UK nakedly and proudly parades its intolerances of pretty much everything.

Nothing new there, that a far-right party should do that, but Reform UK is gaining widespread voter support, drawing support not just from the Tory Party but, apparently, from former Labour supporters. And – that Achilles heel again – those who dress towards ‘liberal democracy’ where every vote counts must lump it. There is fuck-all they can do about it.

Cross the Atlantic and examine the situation in the United States: the far-right is most certainly on the rise there and although Trump’s bizarre behaviour seems to be alienating increasingly many independents (upon whose votes he will have to rely), it would seem his core support his still holding firm.

Thus his extraordinary programme of deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Democrat states, ostensibly to round out ‘illegal aliens’ but certainly intended to intimidate the folk who live there is proceeding with impunity.

Two undoubtedly patriotic ICE agents serving their country and keeping it free of nasty free-loading foreigners, though their prime means of doing that seems to be stuffing their faces with burgers and hot dogs – you don’t get to be that fat by chance alone

And it is not an exaggeration to point out those ICE agents (two pictured here) have had almost no training and seem to have been recruited from the several far-right white supremacist gangs who turned out in DC on January 6, 2021, at Trump’s behest to ‘stop the steal’.

Worse than that, they seem to have absolute immunity for any of their actions, which now include the extra-judicial killing of a female protester, with the Trump administration claiming the death was justified because she was a ‘domestic terrorist’ who had attacked the ICE agent who shot her dead.

Further afield, the far-right is on the rise – as in ‘liberal democracy’ and its values are in retreat – in many other countries, from Germany, France, The Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czechia, Sweden, Denmark and Italy.

I can’t speak for the Near, Mid and Far East as I don’t know enough about their affairs, except to say that many were never ‘liberal democracies’ in the first place – try Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar.

. . .

It is all very odd. There is a firm belief that ‘history’ is essentially a slow progress towards enlightenment. The belief began in the Enlightenment itself (cap E) two and a half centuries and has, to use a clumsy phrase, ‘ruled the roost’ ever since: it is summed up in the word ‘progress’.

The obvious objection, however, is that ‘progress’ and what is ‘progress’ is is as clear as mud – you pays your money and you makes yours choice.

A good example might be our attitudes to male and female homosexuality. In many countries, same-sex marriage is not just legal but now well-established can commonplace, and the ‘liberal democrat’ cheers. But is that ‘progress’?

Well, yes it is ‘progress’ if ‘progress’ is understood simply to mean a development; and ‘developments’ are morally neither here nor there. It is us who declare them to be ‘a good thing’ or ‘a bad thing’, yet for many the notion of ‘progress’ (as in ‘social progress’) a priori ‘a good thing’. Is it really? Says who? 

And thus we are back to the dilemma faced by all moral philosophers that there is no ‘fixed point’, no universal absolute imperative.

Is ‘progress’ a ‘good thing’? I am not going to answer that question because I don’t think there is one, just as there is no answer to the question ‘how long is a piece of string’.

You needn’t fret, however, because there will be several thousand folk out there only too happy to provide you with an answer and while they have your attention, equally as happy to lecture you as nauseam about many other moral questions.

Me? That’s not really my bag.

Ah, LIfe! Where would we be without it! Certainly not in a world drowning in debt with a lunatic as president of the United States. Become a vegetarian, Donny, at least you'll lose some weight – ever seen a fat vegetarian?

Two days ago I posted on this blog and kicked off by describing that, like it or not, there is just one certainty in this life, that sooner or later we will fall off our perch. That is, frankly, as unoriginal an observation as one might make, yet ironically we all tend to scoff and regard it as at best a negative, at worst nihilistic position to adopt.

If that is your attitude, perhaps you should consider that ‘life’ or ‘nature’ or whatever you choose to call it is ‘amoral’ – it is neutral. ‘Morality’ is essentially ‘man-made’ (and to some extent cultural) in that sense, and the best minds in history have attempted and failed to ‘prove’ that there is some ‘independent’ imperative to do what is ‘good’ and refrain from doing what is ‘bad’.

Before the Enlightenment when, as far as we know, there were no ‘atheists’ and everyone was urged to obey the will of ‘god’ or ‘the gods’ there was most probably little debate about ‘morality. Some in Pagan’ religions might well have questioned what ‘the gods insist is done’, especially as in pantheon there were many rival gods and you were free to hitch your wagon to another god if what he or she commanded more to your liking.

It got way stickier, of course, in monotheistic religions where questioning ‘god’s will amounted to serious blasphemy and would well end in you being killed.

In nature and ‘life’ there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’, though observing other mammals and especially primates seems to show that their behaviour tends promote what benefits ‘their group’ of which they are a member – whether pack, herd, flock, call it what you will.

There are instances where a ‘group’ member is banished by the rest of the group for some kind of unacceptable behaviour, but that is way off showing that those mammals have a concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. It is also quite

possible that a kind of evolution played a part in the development of what was ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ behaviour in that groups which tolerated behaviour which did not benefit ‘the group’.

It is essentially mankind’s innate tendency to anthropomorphism, in this case to assign moral values, when we look at the world around us and which moves us to treat as ‘awful’ when a lioness stalks, takes down, then kills a young antelope.

Another aspect of an unconscious anthropomorphism as in attributing our human notions of ‘cute’ and ‘ugly’ to manifest itself int he current mania for ‘wildlife preservation’: I’m struck that no one goes all gooey over the Tasmanian devil (right), the jackal or alligators.

. . .

What could be described as our confused double standards might be demonstrated by our attitude to ‘higher’ animals, other primates and other mammals as a source of food. For millennia, with notably and demonstrable exceptions, mammals have preyed on other mammals or insects for sustenance.

There are also abundant herbivores thought we can be pretty certain that mammals and other animals that have a plant-based diet did and do so for ethical reasons, that killing another animal for food ‘is wrong’.

Well, we gorillas finally decided to move into a wholly vegetarian space after some of us read Eugene Mahlzeit’s fascinating and, frankly, compelling analysis of the economic and ecological damage the world’s still very widespread culture of carnivorism and how future generations will increasingly suffer from a kind of spiritual malaise as the impact of their meat-eating becomes ever more apparent worldwide. We were also getting very fed up with all the stringy bits that stick in your teeth and are a right bastard to get rid of

Yet among us humans, vegetarianism of the ‘principled’ stripe is firmly rooted in the belief that it is ‘wrong’ to eat meat and that it is thus wrong to rear and slaughter animals for consumption.

The question might then be posed to convinced vegetarian that when considering ‘less evolved’ animals, those that might be categorised – clumsily, of course, but here usefully – as ‘lower’ animals where is the ‘cut-off’ point when it is not morally wrong to slaughter other ‘lower’ beings for consumption.

In response we might be treated to a fair amount of waffle, ranging from confused logic this way to evasion, ‘redefining what the question is / should be’ and instances of that oh-so irritating line ‘well, it does epend on what you mean by . . .’ But a definitive, respectably intellectual answer there will come none, simply because there is none and can be none.

Another bod so questioned might respond ‘yes, exactly! And that is why I am vegan. I don’t eat eggs, drink milk or eat cheese, fish or touch anything derived from a living being’. The cynic in me might suggest that rather too often a kind of metaphysical halo will appear above the head of said vegan as he or she wades on, but perhaps that is unfair.

Who knows? You decide:

I am neither vegetarian nor vegan, although de facto I don’t each much meat at all, and at my age – no longer 50 as you might by now have guessed from my general crustiness – would not choose to eat a steak, however well-prepared.

What meat I do eat is what my English wife (and who is not a great cook sadly says the guy who does like food) presents to me. This will be a little minced beef in a chilli or a pasta dish. I don’t like her roasts or here roast chicken because he is not a good cook at all (and, thankfully, doesn’t read this blog).

But though I am not a vegetarian nor a vegan, for the past 29 years, I have felt uncomfortable about the notion of rearing pigs, cattle and sheep simply to eat them. Shamefully, perhaps, that doesn’t suggest to me at all that I should not even eat the little meat with which I am presented. But – well, there you go: I’ll settle for your disapproval and possibly even outrage.

The moment I began to feel uncomfortable was on August 6, 1996, when my daughter was born. And – harking back to the immediately previous post on this blog – that really was ‘a watershed’ on my life. Nothing was the same

Not my daughter, of course, but one of the long-horned, shaggy coat cattle that live on the more and who is some mother’s child

again afterwards.

I can still distinctly remember when, a week after her birth, I held her in my arms standing by a window in our bedroom and ‘showed her the world’. I doubt very much she knew what the hell was going on, but I was struck by the ‘miracle of life’. There I’ve said it. But it went a lot further than that.

I obviously knew she was to be born and for nine months I had lived with my wife’s tummy getting bigger and bigger. But when she was born, it was as though she had come from nowhere! Suddenly, there was a new person in this world!

Here I might add that from the first moment of her life, popping out of here mother’s womb, a little blue, scrunched up and nothing like the newborns you are shown on television and in films, she was another person, a person in her own right.

‘Life’, living beings, are all about us and from that moment on I became much more conscious of that: we live next to a farm here in North Cornwall where my wife grew up – our cottage and the farm are just a stone’s throw away – and were my brother-in-law rears beef – for consumption after the have been slaughtered.

But it was ‘life’ in all its forms: not just the cows and many cats which proliferated in his barns, but rabbits scurrying across Bodmin Moor just up the road, the sheep grazing there, the badgers, foxes, stoats, weasels, dormice, rats, squirrels that live all around: in all and each of them I saw ‘life’ and realised I had never been conscious of ‘life’ before.

But there was no cut-off point: the trees, grass, bushes, worms, spiders, ants – there were and are also manifestations of ‘life’.

Don’t worry, I am not going to run all dewey-eyed and pretentious about some kind of conversion to fucking ‘Gaia’ and how we don’t value ‘the planet’ as we should.

We don’t, but frankly given the amount of famine in the world, the ways many not lucky enough to life in our western civilisation might face disease and death daily, it is a particular self-centred and insensitive man or woman who plays all that down in favour of ‘saving the planet’. Yes, ’save the planet’ but not at the expense of many.

NB One of the crassest comments I have ever heard was in a conversation when someone mentioned ‘famine’ and someone else commented that ‘it’s not as bad for some who because they are used to it’.

. . .

The Christmas before my daughter was born, my brother-in-law and his young family went off for three days over Christmas and my wife did all his farming duties and I helped her. And among the young cattle she was feeding were two calves who, unlike the other 50 or 60 odd were not at all shy. The did not retreat when I reached out to them over the gate, and I would have been able to feed them by hand had I wanted to.

It seems, and I am not ‘the expert’ and am just repeating what I have been told, that some beef farmers keep a bull to inseminate cattle and and specialise in rearing their herd from birth. After a year or so, these young calved are then sold on to other beef farmers who specialise in raising the calves for sale and slaughter.

My wife explained that the two bold calves who did not shy away from me had very likely, for some reason, been hand-reared and unlike the other calves had not learned to be ‘afraid’ of humans. Far from it, they seemed glad of my hand reaching out to them and, believe it or not, I felt about those two as one might feel about a pet cat or dog. (We have a Jack Russell.)

Please don’t read too much into that: I am no card-carrying milquetoast why-oh-whying about man’s inhumanity. But – there’s always a but, isn’t there? – I began to see ‘life’ everywhere. It was those calves and their far shyer companions in the herd, dogs, cats, rabbits, foxes, horses, birds, yes, even chickens and pheasants (of which we have many in this rural neck of North Cornwall).

And now I must be off to go shopping. Lord, isn’t ‘life’ exciting for some.

Pip, pip

Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble: AI stock, Dutch black tulips, cheap debt anyone? Roll up and buy, buy, buy and make some a fortune

This post is already at 2,500 words and getting rather too long. So I shall call it Part I of a post which was intended to witter on about the tide going out on ‘liberal democracy’ and the global rise of the right.

It’s my fault because I kept side-tracking myself and then, getting back to writing it again committed my usual sin of adding bit here and there as I re-wrote it. So if you want to, come back in a few days / weeks for Part II.It cannot have gone unnoticed that in just eleven months and – at the time of posting – fourteen days, the world is in many ways being turned on its head and that the process is just starting.

And I mean turned on its head completely from top to bottom: what was once up is now down, what was right is now left and for many what was once ‘a fact’ is now ‘fake news’. Furthermore, this wholesale disruption will carry on for some years yet before the world has had enough and returns to a period of comparative stability and calm. The most recent development [and this occurred just

two nights ago, and after I first began writing this post] is Donny Trump bombing parts of Caracas and having a hit-squad ‘extract’ Venezuela’s president. Frankly, it was – is as the farce has only just begun – like the script for one of those screwball satires about ‘the President of the United States’ Hollywood produced when criticising the man was not fraught with danger.

Folk who read history will perhaps not be quite as surprised as most by this topsy-turvy turnabout in world affairs as some: they know that nothing is certain in this world except, of course, death.

Throughout history such upheavals, in fact, occur regularly: from the point of view of an ordinary Jill and Joe celebrating the the New Year on January 1, 1914, they will have had no inkling of the cataclysm that was to come just eight months later and ending in what a middle-brow historian composing a piece for one of the weekend paper supplements might call ‘the new world order’.

World War I was – again the line our middle-brow historian might use – ‘a watershed’, but there have been any number of such watersheds over the millennia, many of which in the smug ol’ West be unaware as we tend to think ’the West’ is the centre of the world and that’s where ‘the important things happen’.

For example, anyone a tad surprised by the current latent hostility of China and its leaders to the West should understand that, with a proud history going back several millennia, China was utterly humiliated in the 19th century, not least by Britain when it cynically set about getting more or less all of China hooked on opium to ‘create a market’ and make more moolah.

The lack of any certainties in life is something we are all obliged to learn sooner or later – some learn it sooner, others later thought the wise accept the lack of innate stability and certainty in this world sooner.

As pre-teens we will be upset when we realise that, for example, Santa doesn’t exist, and a little later in life that Mum and Dad – though it’s usually Mum – can’t put everything right as we once believed they could and would.

Then there’s that horrible moment when we develop our serious first crush – and chose to call it ‘being in love’ – but discover that inexplicably the object of our ardour simply does not feel the same as about us. That is when – I should imagine most of us – start to write truly dreadful verse (and chose to call it ‘poetry’).

These are trivial examples, of course, but those certainties are as unavoidable as sprouting our first pubic hairs. Were I writing for the Sunday Times or the Observer – if you live elsewhere in the world, please substitute the name of the middle-class, middle-brow Sunday paper of your choice on which you rely for your opinions – I would describe them and the other such shocks of ‘growing up’ as ‘rites of passage’.

But thank the Lord I’m not writing for one of our ‘serious broadsheets’ because writing a post for this ‘ere blog allows me to show off a little less and still hope to be cut a dash.

If you are unlucky enough not to live in the smug ol’ West but live in Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, parts of Nigeria, Gaza, Southern Ukraine, Myanmar, the Congo, in one of the less salubrious parts of the United States (of which in that fabled land of milk and honey there are more than the American national myth cares to acknowledge), in Russia or in one of the many, many other global spots where life is not exactly a bowl of cherries, your certainties might be considerably harsher.

So you will have enough on your plate than to take time off to read my witterings. Your troubles will be a great deal more pressing than to cope with the anguish of discovering that Santa doesn’t exist – and what might that say about the Tooth Fairy? No, surely not, not the Tooth Fairy!

. . .

The problem is that all of us, including me, still can’t let go of some central beliefs, however much we like to think we can. So, de facto, do believe there are certainties, to the point that in the still comparatively safe old Western world, we are certain that in the long run ‘it’ll all work out – there might be a hiccup or two, but don’t fret!’

That is rubbish, of course, quite apart from how ‘long’ the ‘long run’ is. I wonder how certain German Jews were in 1933 that the danger had passed when at the November general election the number voting for the NSDAP had declined by just over 2 million compared to three months earlier, from 13,745,800 on July 31 to 11,737,000 on November 6.

Phew, they might have thought, rather too well aware of the murderous anti-semitism of rather too many National Socialist sympathisers, who finally got to give officially sanctioned expression for their hatred on the Kristallnacht.

That progrom will have cured any Jewish doubters of their faith in certainty of any kind.

What will then have been certain to them that they had to get the hell out of Germany and Austria if they wanted to stay alive, though of course, that was not easy all. The few who had already sold up or were trying to do so fell victim to the greed of their fellow Germans, many friends and neighbours, who knew of the desperation of the Jewish sellers and acquired many a valuable business at a snip.

So I wonder how certain Germany’s Jews were in 1933 that they would still be alive and as free as their fellow Germans in 1938? Completely, I should think – did any ever any of them really think they might carted off to be murdered? Of course they didn’t.

In just five years, hundreds of thousands of Germany’s half a million Jews who had not had the foresight to sell up move abroad found themselves banged up in Oranienburg, Esterwegen or Dachau, along with any number of homosexuals.

. . .

As I see it and as I fear for the worst in 2026, the world is again to find out just how fast it can be turned on its head. And ironically for that America’s Cretin-in-Chief, Donald J. Trump, can’t be blamed.

Certainly – no word play at all intended – his idiotic behaviour is perhaps accelerating and exacerbating the coming change, but the growing troubles which will hit the world in 2026 can’t all be laid at his door however much I’d like to do so. Most of it has been long brewing.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but in a sense ‘history’ does not happen overnight and every development is a development of previous ‘developments’ in a long chain of such developments since mankind first fucked up the world.

In theory, a clever historian might convincingly be able to trace the collapse of the Soviet Union thirty-five years ago and thus the eventual rise of Vladimir Putin back to the signing of the English Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215.

That is a ridiculous example, of course, chosen because it is ridiculous. But it does make a point and is not quite as ridiculous as at first blush it might seem: we can quite clearly trace various legal and political principles back to the Magna Carta and King John being forced to sign to avoid growing trouble with his barons.

Note, being the stupid dick John Lackland was, he more or less then ignored the promises he had made when signing up within months, leading to further trouble. As it was, he died suddenly just sixteen months later, but I don’t doubt that had he not died, the barons would have kicked him out sooner or later.

To flesh out my point, although the Magna Carta did not directly mention the principle of habeas corpus – that if someone is arrested and held, he or she must be brought before a court and to demonstrate what they have done to warrant their detention – but that principle went on to become a central tenet in all legal systems in non- authoritarian countries.

A similar ‘development’ of the kind that pockmark history and are seen as a ‘cause’ of later developments might be the dismissal of Otto von Bismarck in 1880 by Kaiser Wilhelm II, allowing that rather stupid,

tactless, arrogant and self-regarding man – a kind of German Donald Trump – to take over running Germany directly and make all the mistakes Bismarck would most certainly have avoided.

Bismarck was not necessarily a good egg, but he was canny, cynical, manipulative and intelligent, all attributes which Kaiser Bill wholly lacked, and we all know what a mess Kaiser Bill made of Germany and Europe when he took over ‘leading’ the nation.

. . .

Historians outlining ‘developments’ in the past leading to the crap which is about to unfold and who are hoping to establish a chain of cause and effect’ will certainly mention the mania of barmy investors of several centuries ago piling into Dutch black tulips.

It was simple: Holland’s black tulips suddenly became the ‘must-have’ for folk with rather more money than sense, so as more were bought, the higher the price rose.

As the price rose, greedy investors realised they might turn a pretty guilder by investing in a stock of black tulips, then selling down the line once the price had risen ever further.

As investors bought, the price carried on rising, leading to more greedy investors deciding they could wanted some of the action and they piled in, too. What was there to lose?

Well, everything as it turned out. As was bound to happen, the price bubble burst and prices began to fall ever faster. I cannot establish why the bubble collapsed, but it is the nature of bubbles to collapse when the reach a certain size, whatever the City soothsayers and charlatans insist that ‘this bubble is different’. It isn’t and never will be.

As for the tulips, another universal truth is that fashionistas are fickle as fuck, and like all fashions, black tulip stopped being ‘must-haves’ to become ‘awfully last year!’).

As the price began to drop, the process went into reverse, with owners sitting on a stock of tulips (actually, probably buy contracts which they no longer wanted) selling up while they could and asking ever less just to get rid fo the bloody tulips. So the price fell even more.

That same process of a bubble being created was repeated a little later when stock in the South Sea Company caught the wind, started rising and everyone wanted a taste of ‘a sure thing’. They bought and bought, the stock price when up and up until suddenly no one wanted it.

So they sold and sold and many were ruined. At root, of course, was naked greed, that desire of ‘something for nothing’. Some, of course, were wise enough to accept a modest profit and got out in time.

A similar greed and neurotic fear of ‘losing out’ occurred in America in the mid-to-late 1920s when all stock

 

On Black Tuesday in October 1929, this was the safest job on Wall St

went up and up, then up even more as everything sold. Pretty much any stock they could lay their hands on was bought until of a sudden the market collapsed.

The same scenario played out at the turn of the millennium when ‘the information superhighway’ was sexy and everyone was ‘gaining a web presence’ though I’m not to sure that was how it was described them (and don’t both phrases sound very, very silly just 30 years on?) and America experience the ‘dot com’ boom. That stock bubble also ended in bust and many losing a lot of money

Then came the 2008 ‘financial crash’. At the heart of this was not a stock price bubble, but a house price bubble. Yet there was greed galore, and financiers and investors also lost the plot entirely. This consisted of banks, financial institutions and greedy jokers of every stripe turning a cheap dollar by collecting a commission for every sale of debt they made. Come again, you ask, selling debt?

Well, it had occurred to one wiseacre that there was a market in buying and selling debt – those who held the debt – were owed the money – did not really want to hang on for months, years and tens of years to collect their moolah, so they simply sold that debt to someone else – a dollar in the hand was worth two in the bush.

Then, of course, the various ‘debts’ thus bought were also sold on, and folk began to sell collate them and sell ‘debt packages’. These were known as ‘collateralized debt obligations’ (CDOs) and ‘mortgage-backed securities’ (MBSs). Why would they do this? Well, every time a ‘CDO’ and ‘MBS’ was sold, a commission was earned – the whole sodding point of the exercise.

The shysters in the city went one further: why not try a spot of recycling? So CDOs and MBSs were bought up, split up, repackaged and sold as new CDOs and MBSs and a new commission was earned. It was the mortgage element in each CDO and MBS which was the problem. Everything was fine and dandy while house prices were shooting up. And then, as it had to, it all suddenly went pear-shaped.

Why? As house prices had shot up, more and more folk wanted in on the action: the equation was as simple and as dangerous as with Dutch black tulips, South Sea Company stock and every other bubble – buy now, see the price rise, then sell again and pocket a tidy profit.

Brokers were only too happy to sell the punters a mortgage, pretty much no questions asked, of which the central question was ‘can I / you afford to pay back the premiums on this mortgage?’ Increasingly many could not, but the brokers didn’t care: if and when John and Jane Doe defaulted, they had already sold on that particular ‘debt’ to some other shyster, they had their money so and – well, what the fuck? 

And said schmuck had also sold on, as had the next schmuck. Oh, and with a commission earned on each sale. As an increasing number of folk had taken on a mortgage way above their means on the ‘understanding’ that at some point they would sell their house as it had gone up in price and pay off it, the price of houses went into reverse.

As usual the whole number only worked when it worked: so when the price of black tulips, South Sea Company stock and now house prices fell as more and more folk defaulted on their premiums and the properties repossessed. Yet again, everyone was screwed (except those canny sods who had earned a commission every time the Good Lord farted).

One consequence of all this was that the market in debt ‘packages’ also collapsed and everyone with a huge stock of CDOs and MBSs held a fire sale. Except that no one was buying for the simple reason they had no idea what they were buying.

The problem was that the various debts and mortgages packaged and re-packaged many times into CDOs and MBSs were of several kinds – some were ‘top-quality’ debts where the debtor was most certainly able to settle when the time came.

But others were pure garbage, especially rather too many of the mortgages. And who wanted to spend good dollars on garbage.

The essence of the problem was that no one knew which of the debts in the package were ‘good’ debts and which were garbage. So the trade groudn to a halt more or less from on minute to the next as no one now could trusted anyone else to buy debt – even the seller holding the various CDOs and MBSs knew which, if any, were kosher.

. . .

Here’s a useful diagram explaining what goes on in a stock bubble and why almost all investors get their fingers burned. So will all the AI cheerleaders be the exception?

That brings us up-to-date: we have a new stock bubble. Everyone and his god with a bit of spare cash is hoovering up stock in ‘AI’, in just about ten or twelve companies AI is the future, see, and AI will pay off.

The trouble is that to date none of these AI companies has yet turned a profit, let alone a worthwhile profit: the ‘attraction’ of AI is still 100pc ‘potential’.

Yippee, you might say. Well, perhaps more fool you. So far those holding AI stock are not exactly in the toilet, but it might any day be a whisker away from being awarded that honorific.

A side irony is that ostensibly Wall St is doing fine – ostensibly being the operative word. Look, folk say the S&P 500 figure is fantastic. Take a closer look, however, and it is just the AI stock price ‘gains’ made by that small handful of tech companies who are ‘doing well’.

‘Valuation’ is simply the stock price multiplied by the number of stock held, but the ‘value’ of a company is something entirely different (and rather harder to establish.)

Because the ‘valuation’ of those companies is sky-high – a consequence of the ever expanding bubble oa folk jumping in on the AI ‘phenomenon) – it is skewing the actual state of health of the S&P 500. The other 488/90 in the S&P 500 are just bumping along in a pretty mediocre way, but ‘overall’ Wall St is ‘doing fine’. 

It is, though, the health of those 498 non-stock companies which is a far better guide to the state of the American economy than the AI outliers. Will it all end in tears? Stay tuned (but maybe lay off the AI stock).

If you want to read up on why AI might be nothing more than the lateest bubble try here, a piece by JP Morgan bank.

Half of America is worried – but really not worried enough

A little earlier the following (see piccy) arrived in my Truth Social feed and I was moved to reply as follows:

Look, I am wholly on your side in matters Desperate Donny and the Mango Messiah, but picking up on this and that point such as you do does nothing - it has gone WAY beyond that.

That gang of fascists thugs don’t give a flying fuck whether or not an act was a crime or a misdemeanour of a civil offence.

An analogy might be the Gestapo in Nazi Germany throwing someone into jail who then complains ‘but you didn’t read me my rights!’ Who, I wonder, will give a fuck?

From where I sit in Europe the US is in FAR bigger trouble than you on the ground might think.

It would NOT be too dramatic to suggest that the current situation with Trump and Miller and Vought, Noem, Hegseth, Bondi, Patel etc can go two ways only and one of those way will conclude in civil war.

Trump is slowly getting his ducks in a row, of which the most crucial was SCOTUS: does he or does he not have a majority of SCOTUS in his pocket? That will be the crunch and it is not looking great.

It’s all very well for court after court to rule against Donny on this or that matter, but the final appeal will be to SCOTUS. And SCOTUS has already crossed a red line by declaring ’a president cannot be held criminally for responsible for a presidential act’.

Here the dangerous weasel phrase is ’presidential act’ - essentially so fucking vague as to be meaningless. And when push comes to shove guess who will judge whether an act was ’presidential’ or not ? Right first time: SCOTUS - which has already crossed that red line.

WWI began, in a sense, by accident. A civil war in the US would - will? - also break out by accident. The country is already starkly and wholly divided down the middle. So set about making sure it does not happen. Take nothing for granted.

Remember, those opposed to Trump also have guns and can also be hotheads. This could get very much out of hand and perhaps we don’t want to be able in 50 years to be able to write history and political science dissertations on ‘Well, who was responsible for it all?’

‘A house divided’ – never a good thing. Bye, bye the united United States? If you value your unity, get rid of the orange cretin, a fraud, a fantasist, fat and old

Recently I’ve been wanting to write again about one Donald J Trump, but each time I held back, for one simple reason: there’s nothing much new to say.

From where I sit in the far south-west of England, America 3,000 to 6,000 miles away, seems deeply, deeply divided into two: those who – still – think the sun shines out of Donny’s arse, and those – like me – who think he is the mother of all cretins, dumb, self-deluded and living in a fantasy world all of is own.

Thus if I were to write here to remind you that ‘water is wet’, you would be entitled to ask ‘OK, so why are you telling us?’

Those two irreconcilable halves of America might not, though, be the full story. Conventionally, it was assumed that at the presidential election last November which resulted in Donny winning the electoral college vote by 86 electoral college votes (312 to 226 for Kamala Harris) was not a simple ‘Democrats v Republicans split.

Many of those who voted for Trump are thought to have been independents, registered or othwerice, who de facto voted against the Democrats. Many are thought to have been Republicans who wanted a conservative president and although they had no time for Trump himself, held their noses and ticked his box as he was the only GOP candidate on offer.

This is all speculation, of course, and as a rule I don’t have a great deal of respect of speculation and regard it is imply ‘guessing’ with with a posher accent and and a spurious air of authority.

What we can say, however that a result Donny, never one to tell the truth, even on a good day, likes to spin into ‘a landslide’ was nothing of the kind. He won the popular vote by a very anaemic 1.5% – that is 2,284967 votes of a total 152,320,193 cast –, not ‘a landslide’ in anyone’s book, I suggest.

And if you, dear reader, are into ‘speculating’, you might care to ‘speculate’ how many of the 77,302,580 who voted for Donny were ‘MAGA’ supporters. Not as many as Donny might have persuaded himself, and nine months in with prices and inflation creeping up I suspect there might now be fewer prepared to accept Donny’s spiel.

But even that is more in the line of ‘water is wet’: it is simply retreading old ground and, frankly, why?

What is worth writing about, though, is how Donny’s second term in the White House is developing in the United States, and it is far from encouraging: the problems are no longer economic, although they are not also becoming more severe, but political.

. . .

As we live day-to-day, week-to-week, we have a rather skewed concept of ‘what is going on’. Developments ‘in contemporary history’ – which is admittedly is a ham-fisted phrase but I can think of no alternative at the moment, let alone a better one – do not seem to happen very quickly.

It might sound daft to say so, but for a week to pass we must live through seven days and for month to pass we cannot rush through the weeks – it will always be four weeks. So looking around, when we can’t spot much activity we assume ‘everything is in hand’. Of course it might not be – it is just taking longer to work its way out.

I enjoy reading history and at present I’m reading about the English civil wars (there were actually two, a long one, then a short one), and when we read history, we do gain a sense of ‘development’ and that ‘development’ does not happen in one weekend.

A good example would be ‘the outbreak of the First World War’ (then called The Great War as at the time no one was planning a ‘Second World War’).

The Dick and Dora version known to most would have ‘war starting’ on June 28, 1914 when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist.

In fact, the war had been several years, arguably at least 36, in the making from 1888 when Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm was crowned after the death of his older brother Friederich III and immediately found himself at odds with Otto von Bismarck.

Neither Bismarck nor Wilhelm were ‘nice’ people, but Bismarck was considerably brighter than the Kaiser and certainly more strategic (and, like Trump, thought himself to be rather a smart cookie although he was anything but).

After several bad disagreements in council with Wilhelm, who arguably childishly wanted his own was – after he ‘he was the emperor – Bismarck gave in and resigned, and Germany was in the hands of something of an idiot, much as America is now.

In Wilhelm’s fumbling hands, the elements that led to war in August 1914 one by one fell into place. Like Trump, Wilhelm had an inferiority complex which manifested itself, as in Trump, in brooking no opposition of any kind and demanding total loyalty. There was thus no one to give Wilhelm good advice when it might be needed, just as is the case with Trump (and like Donny, Wilhelm also became a figure of fun in private).

I’m quite prepared to accept that Scott Bessent and one or two others in Donny’s cabinet who have financial and economic experience are fully aware of the stupidity of Donny’s economic policies but, for whatever reason – status, perhaps – prefer to keep schtumm.

The point is that WWI like all other wars did not suddenly ‘break out’, and bearing that in mind, we might care to look at several unusual developments in America since Donny took office which could indicate how the growing disaster that seems due will evolve.

. . .

One not so obvious starting point what I suggest might be an uncomortable period in both American and global history might be a decision by the supreme court of the United States (SCOTUS) on July 1, 2024, which was by any measure extraordinary. Until then, a US president could not be sued in a civil court for any acts he (or she, but ‘a she’ is still to come) had undertaken in the course of his (or her) presidential duties. The new ruling was that the same applied to any criminal acts a president might similar commit.

I am not a lawyer and will not claim that my thinking is always straight or the best. But SCOTUS’s ruling strikes me as dangerous. But the impossibly vague nature of what a president might claim was a ‘presidential act’ promises huge confusion.

SCOTUS’s handling of the issue came after Donny summoned his followers to meet outside Congress on January 6, 2024, to protest.

Although he never openly said so – he has the kind of peasant cunning one finds in many backstreet thugs which combined with an essential stupidity makes them very dangerous and was wise enough to be clear – he claimed he had lost the election the previous November because of fraud and the result should not be certified.

His mob eventually and literally invaded Congress, and he was subsequently indicted for insurrection. But eventually SCOTUS, which had a Republican majority, let Donny off the hook. To quote from the preface to SCOTUS’s ruling:

A federal grand jury indicted former President Donald J. Trump on four counts for conduct that occurred during his Presidency following the November 2020 election. The indictment alleged that after losing that election, Trump conspired to overturn it by spreading knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the collecting, counting, and certifying of the election results. Trump moved to dismiss the indictment based on Presidential immunity, arguing that a President has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions performed within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities, and that the indictment’s allegations fell within the core of his official duties. The District Court denied Trump’s motion to dismiss, holding that former Presidents do not possess federal criminal immunity for any acts. The D. C. Circuit affirmed. Both the District Court and the D. C. Circuit declined to decide whether the indicted conduct involved official acts.

After hearing oral arguments from both sides, it made its ruling on presidential immunity.

Quite how ridiculous that ruling is – and were there any doubt about my opinion of Donny, that last sentence should lay to rest any doubts – might be gauged from the following: in response to a hypothetical question from

one of the justices, John Sauer, Trump’s attorney argued that if it were deemed to be a ‘presidential act’ within his duties, a president who a political opponent murdered would be immune from prosecution.

That pretty much sums up the dangerous state America now finds itself in but that was over a year ago – there have been other more sinister developments. What is remarkable is that this bizarre ruling form SCOTUS seemed almost to pass with comment in a nation that had hitherto prized itself and posed as the world’s beacon of freedom and democracy.

I shall leave to one side Donny’s ridiculous programme of ‘reciprocal tariffs’ he unveiled on April 3 in the White House Rose Garden (now apparently a parking lot. Oh well, this is Donald Trump after all).

Donny’s quite blatant authoritarian tendencies became very clear when sent out his ICE goons to round-up ‘illegal migrants’, all based on a ridiculous claim that ‘the country was being invaded’. ICE made one terrible mistake and detained and deported to El Salvador, but Donny then doubled down and tied himself in knots rather than give way.

There are further details, at each point underlining how stupid Donny’s administration is, but I shan’t go into them here except to add that a charge of ‘contempt of court’ is just one of the complications Donny’s gang of morons have landed themselves with.

It gets worse: claiming another ‘national emergencies’ because allegedly crime it out of control, Donny had state national guards sent on to the streets which looked very much like the military taking over policing duties, certainly forbidden under the constitution.

The suspicion is that Donny wants to set precedents. And notably he only claimed ‘crime was out of control’ in blue states, although the stats show that crime is a bigger problem in red states. But Donny is not one to allow details to deter him – and, anyway, the whole point of the exercise was to have a semi-plausible excuse for sending in the national guard: the stats are irrelevant.

Most recently there was one of the oddest developments: Donny had Pete Hegseth, the former Secretary of Defense, now Secretary of War, summon all American senior officers from around the world for a meeting in Virginia. They were not told why or what the purpose of the meeting was.

Two suggested explanations, both fundamentally nuts but sadly not at all implausible, are that Donny wanted to ’test loyalty’ of the armed forces leaders who were expressly told that it they did not agree with the policies and policy objectives of the Trump administration, they must resign.

This, of course, put them in a terrible situation: if on principle they did resign, they are out of the game and would have not clout at all. If they do not resign, they might well feel themselves obliged to undertake actions with which they do not agree.

Furthermore, this whole business is horribly reminiscent of Hitler’s antics when he manoeuvred himself into controlling the German army as well as setting up a kind of alternative army in the SS.

. . .

Despite all the bullshit coming out of the administration, America is not thriving economically and it is very, very likely that the Republicans will be wiped out of the House of Representative and lose senators in the mid-term elections. And Donny knows this.

So there are quite serious suggestions that he will somehow ensure there are no mid-terms, perhaps by claiming there is a national emergency and declaring martial law.

Does that sound mad? Of course it does, it sounds absolutely fucking bonkers! But equally as bonkers would have been to predict that Donny would resist the peaceful transfer of power in January 2024 and do his best to stope the election being certified. But that is exaclty what he did.

Most distressing of all is the apparent supine attitude of the opposition Democrats who apart from notable exception seem to be doing nothing.

The real danger is – and this is where many will decide I have lost the plot – another American civil war. Did he really suggest that? Yes, he fucking did.

Unlike in Europe, America is awash with guns and there are some very odd attitudes to gun deaths: this is what St Charlie Kirk, MAGA’s very own Horst Wessel told a Turning Point rally in 2023

The 21 victims murdered at the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022, whose deaths, however, were ‘worth it’ according to Charlies Kirk, MAGA’s very own Horst Wessel. Ironically, though Yanks rarely do irony unless they are Jewish and have a sense of humour, Kirk was also a gun death victim. I wonder whether his wife and the mother of his two children agree that his death was ‘worth it’? Doubt it

It just takes hotheads on both side for the whole thing to get way out of control. ‘Getting out of control’ is how most wars start (except Vlad Putin’s ‘limited military action’ – that was planned, though it was planned to be done and dusted in a matter of weeks. Now more than three years on and almost a million dead . . .)

With luck, America will get through this. But will it get that luck?

The final irony is that none of this should come as the surprise it seems to be to many folk. Trump has always been very clear that he does not believe in democracy, wants to rule like a king, doesn’t give a shit about anyone except himself and loves no one but himself.

He is also a sandwich short of a picnic, but that is just the icing on his cake.

 

Are Apple now really just a gang of hypocritical, greedy wankers without a new idea in their bones or is that just malicious hearsay? You decide. Me, I decided long ago – read on

Here’s a notable development – remember ‘Apple, Think Different’? Apple at the forefront of innovation, in the avant garde of a brave new world, Apple [add your own hyperbole]? Well, Apple is failing, slowly but surely.

It is not that since the death of Jobs and the departure of Jonathan Ive Apple have lost something essential that made Apple Apple. It’s also that with the rise to leadership of one Tim Cook - whose Apple background was not in any way technical but always commercial - making money seems to be the raison d’etre of Apple.

Bugger Apple’s previous reputation for making imaginative products with user-friendly software, now it has become recycling old ideas, the challenge always to be how to disguise the fact that recycling is going on.

But let me be fair: I don’t have an Apple computer but apparently its M Series of chips are a winner. That, though, is the sum of the winning. Apple glasses are not being bought simply because they are a gimmick.

The iPhone is simply recycled year in, year out with small cosmetic changes to give the impression of being a ‘new model’. The same is true of its Mac OS and IoS operating systems: changes are minimal and, frankly, pointless.

Two days ago I upgraded from IoS v18.6 to v26 on my iPad. I immediately noticed a difference in that it began to lag. My iPad is only four years old so not ‘old’ or ‘obsolete’, but it is now lagging. This morning I tried to downgrade to the previous IoS, v186, but as it is no longer ‘signed’, that is impossible.

So I am no stuck with an iPad which is no longer as much use to me as it was. Somewhat miffed, I went to the Apple Community forum and - headlinong my contribution clearly as ‘Not a question but a complaint’ asked why we could not longer downgrade and what the reasoning was.

In my post I went on to criticise Apple in similar terms as I have above. Several hours later I was informed my post had been deleted. Apple might argue that its community forum is not the place for such criticism, but I would suggest the opposite is true. I immediately posted again twice in response, but each post was gain deleted, notably within minutes.

Here is the text of my original comment

Here is my second comment, this time being pretty straight about what spineless wankers Apple are, though, er, not expressing myself in such plain English

OK, I’m not kidding myself on that this signifies the slow collapse of the Western World. But anyone here who can still remember the Apple glory days – how using an Apple compared to a Windows machine was straightforward and how the slogan ‘It’s an Apple’ did somehow convey quality and reliability.

Looking back, I don’t at all mind conceding that we were all a little naive and overexcited by the ‘possibilities’ of the – then new – technical age. And that naivety – I bought my second computer in 1999, sadly only an Apple clone because I couldn’t afford the real thing (I had very briefly owned a desktop which was still running DOS but it was stolen within weeks when my house in Groton Road, Earlsfield, was burgled over Christmas.)

This was in the days when the internet masqueraded as ‘the information superhighway’ and that astonishing institution was about to usher in a new age of democracy when totalitarianism had no hiding place.

The giveaway was Apple’s little puppy rushing around wagging its tail and Windows had – wait for it! – a fucking talking paper clip which passed on wise advice and warned you if you were using non-PC language. And Lord weren’t we all charmed and excited!

Me, working in newspaper production as a sub-editor – I had given up on reporting after six years as my heart wasn’t in it but more on that another time if the demand is there – was excited by ‘desktop publishing’ with Quark Xpress.

That software was then the only game in town and took users to the cleaners when I first started using it (in a newspaper office, so I wasn’t paying for it) 35 years ago, those shysters took everyone to the cleaners and charged about £800 for it! By my reckoning that would now, in 2025, be about £1,560. But newspapers – at least those that didn’t operate a mainframe had no choice.

Now, ‘the net’ is useful, certainly – I do all my shopping and banking online – but it has also thrown up any amount of nastiness, not least access to child porn for those who want it.

In brief, we have come a long, long way since Apple and Google – fucking ‘Don’t be evil’ for fuck’s sake! – posed as the future in which we were all going to be better people.

OK, I’ve come off-topic now, but it is sobering to find that Apple is now aping one Donal Taco Trump in denying the reality of anything or everything that puts it in a bad light.

So, all together now

In which, inadvertently, I create my very own mob

Many years ago, I organised a disruptive political protest and learned something about an odd aspect of human behaviour. Perhaps I should tread carefully and write that I learned something about an aspect of human behaviour in the ‘civilised’ West and in Western cultures (there are several, though all are related and they are distinguished by ‘local’ cultural variations).

On the face of it I was the most unlikely bod to engage ‘politically’, or better, to seem to engage politically. And I must confess that my motive was ‘fun’ and my tongue was firmly in my cheek.

It was in about 1969 or 1970, and I was about 20 or 21 and knew little about politics and understood less and was even less interested. As a Roman Catholic-born – cradle-Catholic – product of the English public school system – ‘public’ as in ‘private’ in that wacky way we Brits like to confuse the world – I was expected to, or better it was assumed I would, cleave to soft-centred small C conservatism.

I didn’t, however (and as I’ve ‘grown up’ and seen a little more of the world, I find, despite what is expected of ageing gents, to be drifting to the left, though to social democracy not to all out communist fascism).

For some reason, as the child of a German mother and British father who attended German schools for four of his formative years and was in many ways more German than British, I didn’t feel particularly British when we returned to live in Britain from West Berlin in July 1963 and the whole ‘public schoolboy’ schtick just didn’t catch with me.

For three of the previous four years I had attended Das Canisius Kolleg, a Jesuit college in Berlin-Tiergarten (just over a mile through the park to the Brandenburger Tor) whose ethos was one of positivity and ‘doing your best’.

Then in September of 1963, I began life as a boarder at the Roman Catholic Oratory School in Woodcote, Oxfordshire, where it seemed to me the ethos – that is the true ethos of the boys who made up the school rather than the ‘official’ ethos the school might have thought it was inculcating – was almost nihilistic.

I must stress, though, my line about ‘it seemed to me’, as now, in later life, I am far more aware how perception is far more potent than what what might, ludicrously, be called ‘the reality’. I am not denying ‘reality’, as such I am suggesting that there is no one ‘reality’ but pretty much as many ‘realities’ as there are men, women and children on this world.

So to speak of ‘reality’ is in one sense a little pointless.

I had been looking forward to ‘going to boarding school’ because after spending my boyhood reading Billy Bunter (below) books, I anticipated it to be an enjoyable romp of jolly japes, but it was anything but. Of my year’s intake 

49 boys, 47 had attended a ‘prep school’ for at least four or five years and, to be blunt, they had already developed the shell which protects our inner selves from the world. I had not and I was miserable and homesick for what seemed like and extraordinarily long first term of fifteen weeks.

I now know that many boys and girls, men and women have a sense of alienation in one way or another. Perhaps, depending upon the situation and circumstances, such alienation is quite common.

But for me it was partly ‘not feeling English or British’ and not relating to a great deal of what the others seemed – that word again – to have in common. I hadn’t had The Wind In The Willows read to me, I had never played ‘pooh sticks’. Much, perhaps all, of my childhood had been German what with even before moving to Berlin my mother read stories to me in German.

So although when I arrived at Dundee University at the beginning of October 1968, with an impeccable ‘boarding school’ accent and no doubt many ‘public school’ behavioural tics, I did not quite fit the bill, especially in the political role into which folk were ready to give me.

. . .

Until just a year earlier, Dundee University had existed as Queen’s College, St Andrews, but then gained its independent status as part of the then Labour government’s determined expansion of university education.

This expansion meant – in fact, to achieve this was its prime reason – that the intake of colleges and universities was from a far broader social spectrum, notably of young men and women who not ten to fifteen years earlier might never have considered attending university.

Anno domini 2025, modern Britain, rather smugly, likes to see itself – perception and ‘reality’ again, you’ll notice – as classless; but as far as I am concerned, the only difference is that more than 60 years ago ‘class’ distinctions were simply more obvious (and let’s face it snobbery will never go out of fashion).

Pertinently, the 1960s – the ‘Swinging Sixties’ and always remember that these silly, though catchy, descriptions are all invented by national newspaper sub-editors (US copy editors) – became an apparent sea-change in social attitudes, though it didn’t really take off until the Labour Party under Harold Wilson won the 1964 general election.

In fact, there had previously been several such broad, though slow, changes from the mid-1950s on. I suggest they occurred as boys and girls – though it was still very much a male-dominated society – born just before World War II came into their own, found their voice and made themselves heard.

In other words, it was the same old story of a new generation demanding that the previous generation made way!

‘Deference’ went out of the window, it was the heyday of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, it was reported that ‘the working class has found a voice’ and novels, plays and films became ‘gritty’ observations of ‘how the other half lived’. That, not uncommon phrase then used, is very, very telling.

One such change was that the new young generation – who I suspect were not quite doing any more shagging then in earlier years but were certainly talking more about – also found their voice, especially those on the left.

This was 1968, the age of ‘student politics’, though if any of that gang had more than a fleeting knowledge of history, they would have known that ‘student politics’ were as old as the hills, as old as greed, altruism, incest and gullibility.

Britain’s young might, with Labour in charge, believe it had it’s ‘left-wing’ government, decried by those on the right as ‘socialists’ (which description was enough to frighten the horses in many a shire parlour), but it was not very left-wing at all and certainly not at all left-wing enough for many of the protesting firebrands.

It wasn’t that many of Labours MPs were more than nominally middle-class, many were not actually socialist but social-democrats who broadly aimed to achieve the same improvements for those at the bottom of the pile. They certainly did not sign up for the hard ideology of ‘all means of production must be nationalised and in the hands of the working man’.

That phrase gives me occasion to trot out an old joke of mine when politicians pledge to take care of the ‘hard-working’ man: ‘So what about the rest of us?

This, then politically naive, young man was well aware of the iniquity of America’s Vietnam war but couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about.

Then there were the protests about the apartheid regime in South Africa and how that nation’s, then all white, cricket team should not be allowed to come take part in a Test series in Britain. The various protests even involved

 

The Oval cricket pitch in Kennington, South London, was surrounded by barbed wire in March 1970 to try to protect it from anti-apartheid protesters intent in disrupting the South African tour by digging up the pitch

digging up a cricket pitch and grounds being defended by strands of barbed wire. But, I wondered, why couldn’t they just sit down and sort it all out. Surely to goodness, was it really that hard?

. . .

The ‘protest’ I organised was against Tony Benn, then still Anthony Wedgwood Benn, who at the time was Labour’s – if my googling is correct – minister for technology, but despite his slow drift leftwards from a ‘soft-left’ stance, he was something of a hate figure for the hard left.

For the non-lefty young he was also disliked because previously as Labour’s ‘postmaster general’ he had begun the government process of outlawing the ‘pirate radio stations’ swimming in the English channel, though by the time

the relevant bill outlawing the stations became law, he had just been promoted to technology minister.

In my book Tony Benn (right) is something of a good egg. He was born and brought up in a ‘progressive’ household (in brackets because I don’t much like the word, but I use it because most will know what I mean).

Both his grandfather and his father were Liberal MPs, but his father crossed the floor and joined the Labour government of Ramsay McDonald in 1928 (when Tony Benn was just three).

When Tony Benn was seventeen, his father was created Viscount Stansgate and when he died in 1960, Tony inherited the title, although he had previously several times, unsuccessfully, tried to renounce his succession and as a peer could not longer sit in the Commons

Finally, in 1963 because it, too, had useful MPs who were due to inherit titles and would thus have to leave the Commons, the Conservative government passed an act allowing peers to renounce their titles. Benn did so and won a seat in a by-election the same year and remained a sitting MP for the next 38 years.

Benn’s drift to the left and to becoming something of a saint of the left began after Labour lost power to Margaret Thatcher in 1979, although he claimed it had started more than a decade earlier when he was in Wilson’s 1960s governments, partly with his impatience by how the civil service was frustrating many attempts at reform.

When I organised my ‘protest’, Benn was still regarded as just another Labour minister, and few if any thought of him as the figure of the left he would become.

. . .

My ‘protest’ began in the students’ union coffee bar on the morning when Benn was duet to give a speech in the, then still new, lecture hall of Dundee’s social science building. And I have no idea why I thought of ‘organising’.

But for some reason I suggested to those I was sitting with that we should go to the meeting and disrupt it. It was certainly not a political gesture on my part.

As I say, Benn was not a figure of the left and on the face of it, this seemed to many a good idea, so a gaggle of us, I should think about six or eight of us, possibly more, took ourselves off to the social science lecture hall and sat up far at the back.

We began, again I should imagine at my instigation, to chant ‘give peace a chance’ and bang our fists in the desks in front of us. And that, dear friends, is all I remember of the ‘protest’ itself.

Whether Benn was forced to abandon his speech, whether we finally gave up and departed and left him to it I have no idea and no recollections at all. As I say as far as I was concerned it was simply a hoot and while it went on it was certainly good-natured.

When we left, we retired to the coffee bar and sat down, talk began of staging another protest, although there was no obvious reason to do so or cause to protest. And it was then I noticed something odd and, for me, quite disturbing.

The small, good-natured group who had returned to the coffee bar had been joined by several others who had somehow heard all about it and before my eyes in a matter of minutes that small good-natured group was evolving into a small mob. It was uncanny and I was not imagining it.

As we can walk into a room and sense joy or sorrow or whatever is the mood of the room. Well, the mood of the group I as sitting with definitely changed and not for the better: it turned dark and nasty.

It was no longer a case of ‘what fun can we have doing something similar’ but more, far more, what ‘damage’ can we do now? And there was a very definite desire to cause ‘damage’ of some kind.

I had inadvertently and innocently created a mindless mob. Or better, the mob had created itself, drawing on the darker elements which, to a small or greater extent, are a part of our psyche.

It was at that point I wanted nothing more to do with whatever they were hoping to do and I never heard reports later that they had done anything. But I could not deny that I had witnessed something which I did not like at all but for which is was, though indirectly, responsible.

I am not suggesting that I don’t, in one way or another, also have a darker side and I could give several examples – but shan’t – of my behaviour of which I am not proud and would condemn. But there and then in the coffee bar, I wanted nothing to do with the small mob I had created.

It did, though, give me an insight as to how, on both the left and right violence can become almost natural, evolve from nowhere and almost seem legitimate. Very odd.