Re-writing history

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Putin is now claiming that Poland invaded Russia at the start of the Second World War and that the Poles and Nazis amounted to the same thing!  Could this just be a joke in bad taste?

It is , in any case, total fake news.  Stalin signed the Stalin Ribbentrop pact expecting to acquire a hunk of Poland and to dissuade Hitler from expanding Eastwards and threatening Russia.  He seriously miscalculated, and had mis-judged Hitler’s malignity.   Poland had a good air force but was absolutely incapable of “invading” Russia.  It was the victim of both juggernauts on either side. Hitler invaded Poland and kept going until the battle of Stalingrad stopped him. Stalin is supposed to have been shocked.  He had supped with the devil and had been doubled-crossed.  There are no insuperable frontiers to Russia from the West, as Napoleon realized in 1812.

What our current foreign policy wonks seem to have discounted is the desire among Russians to recover their empire and sphere of influence which, most importantly, included Ukraine. For centuries the Tsars controlled some or all of Poland, but Ukraine was the Russian Empire’s bread basket and essential for any kind of healthy Russian economy. The Russian sphere of influence included the three Baltic countries, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria as well.  They also, on and off over the centuries, controlled most of Poland.   Putin, with America (temporarily we hope) in his pocket, is on a roll at little expense.  The EU is rightly conflicted about expanding further Eastwards.  This is the moment for Russian self-assertion.

All very foreseeable to those who know the history.  Regrettably, that knowledge is in short supply, history and the liberal arts being shunned as more people take business study degrees.  I think this regrettable. Don’t get me started!

Fired Boeing head gets $62 million

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Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing boss fired last month, will receive equity and pension benefits worth $62m.  This was the head of a company whose staff have quietly told the Press that management are incompetent and interested mainly in maintaining profits and share price.  346 Passengers are dead because the company sold planes whose electronics were faulty, and, it appears, the top management knew it and just kept their fingers crossed.  And, by the way, his successor in charge of this ”flagship” corporation, David Calhoun, will receive an annual salary of $28 million p.a., plus a long- term incentive reward of $7 million.

Oh, and the executive in charge of the commercial plane division, and recently also fired,  is receiving a lump sum $14.75 million.

Meanwhile, the same day as this news broke about Muilenburg’s pay-off, one of the largest parts suppliers for Boeing’s 737 Max plane, laid off 2,800 employees. 24 companies who supply Boeing , and rely on their business, are also in limbo and under threat.  The workers only, of course.

How can anyone claim that this situation is fair and just?  How can they say that capitalism, current American style, is working?  It breaks every principle of moderation and fairness (look after the company politicians, to hell with the workers!).  Locked into the “good ‘ole boy” network of more money than they can spend, the elite seem unable to think about the long-term consequences of their greed.  The “swamp” is not the Washington civil service; it is something else entirely.

Will someone come on this blog and explain why they think the system works for the  American people?

 

Hate crimes

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History shows that violence generally climbs in election years, and given the media-fueled polarization of Americans just now, 2020 bodes to be especially combustible in the United States (it has been such in the UK).  Unlike 2001, when hate crimes peaked in the aftermath of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 assaults, this time the threat of violence is largely homegrown.

Far-Right violence has been on the rise in the US. Hate crimes nearly tripled in 2016  rose nearly 8 percent in 2017 and 12% in 2018. Targets  were mostly black, Hispanic, Jewish, and Muslim people, all harmless human beings.  A 2018 survey of thirty major cities found that hate crimes against whites rose 15.5% to ninety-seven incidents.  While hate-driven attacks are small in number (5,565 out of 1.2 million violent offenses reported in 2018), by design they have an outsize impact.

“The Racial World War starts today,” white supremacist James Harris wrote in 2017  “God has ordered us to eliminate the Negro races from the face of the earth for the good of all mankind.” Oh, really? Then he went out and  stabbed Timothy Caughman, a middle-aged African-American man, in the back.

White supremacists are not alone. Politicians and crass people on social media join in as well. Then there is Russia, endeavoring to divide and break up Western institutions, exploiting the internet and stoking racial hatred.  They are at it constantly, as you read this.

Hatred has no place in our political discourse.  Democracy is in peril, let alone tolerance and decency.  Social media companies are grudgingly tackling only the most egregious examples of crudeness and hate, in little ways and in bits and pieces, denying culpability and issuing pathetic excuses about freedom of speech.

Those of us who support liberty do not equate it with saying vulgar, violent and hurtful things in public.  Nor are blatant misrepresentations and lies acceptable.  To suggest otherwise is to support license and violent language, coarsening public discussion.  It was never this bad before Twitter and Facebook et al.

Speech is not “free” if it comprises caustic tweets and violent outbursts that loosen the bonds of society and breed hatred and distrust.  Such speech comes at terrible cost.  Weigh up the pros and cons of social media and I believe the scales tip toward  strict oversight.   And normally this would not be thought Epicurean or in the tradition of Western tolerance.

The British NHS dismantled

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(This post is longer than usual, but most important, because it illustrates how the priorities of society have been perverted and corruption rules.  It is not generally known to the British public, having been imposed by stealth.  Epicurus, a kind man, would have been appalled)

“Since 2017 Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) have taken over National Health Service (NHS) purchasing as well as the provision of NHS services. ICSs decide who gets the services, which are free and which have to be paid for by patients. The idea is that the less care offered patients the more money is made by ICS’s. Since 1977 it has been Tory policy to return healthcare to private ownership by stealth, fragmenting once fully integrated services into competing and commercially-driven units. This to be done without public scrutiny or debate, little by little, and scarcely noticed by the ultimate customers.

“The first thing to be privatised was hospital cleaning.  Then, in 1997, the Tories created an “internal market” – service purchasers and service providers – hospitals and GPs had to compete for “customers”, the successful being rewarded by greater funding. It was explained in parliament that “in competition doctors would impose on themselves controls they wouldn’t accept if imposed upon them by government.’

“Legislation in 1990 and 1997 then turned NHS hospitals into trusts (commercial businesses) that then went on to build their own hospitals.  The result is that the NHS developed a huge 80 billion pound debt as trusts tried to compete and be self contained. The 2012 Health and Social Care Act enabled trusts to raise 49% of their budgets from private sources, including the charging patients. 60% of the NHS budget was, under the Act, given to Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG’s), comprised of GPs  and other doctors, the object being to commission services from both private and NHS organisations.

“Because the latter had no business experience, private consultants (KPMG, Price Waterhouse and others) actually ran the business side and effectively began  overseeing the day-to-day franchising of NHS services.  The Health Minister was removed from responsibility for healthcare provision, and a man called  Simon Stevens was put in charge.  Stevens had previously led the opposition to Obamacare in the US.  Stevens created the NHS England’s Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STP’s), which were intended to save 5 billion pounds  a year by 2020 by reducing access to to care (my underling).

“The STPs  divided England into 44 areas , which were pressured to amalgamate hospitals, shrink specialist units and cut the number of hospital beds (the bed-to-patient ratio is now on of the lowest in any developed country).  Accident and emergency units which require expensive equipment and a high number of staff are being cut from 144 to about 50.  GP services are being replaced by nurse practitioners and pharmacists..  Patients are exhorted to consult private, for-profit healthcare organisations (Doctaly, GP at hand and myGP).  This is the signal for US healthcare companies to enter the market , with their huge resources and equally high charges. 1000 GP practice have closed since 2014 and the number with more than 20,000 patients on the books has tripled. Non-urgent operations such as hip replacements and increased waiting times for everything have encouraged  patients to seek private treatment.  Over the last few years American firms have appeared on the British market in a big way:  Medtronic, Qualcomm Life, Kaiser, IBM, Optum, Centene, Priory Group.

“All this has put up operating costs , since private companies have higher overheads, have to offer shareholder dividends, and pay their CEOs more than if government was still funding health (overheads of American health companies are estimated at $3.6 trillion).  Management and administration of the NHS now costs 14% of NHS spending. It is estimated that privatisation has probably added at least 9 billion pounds to the NHS budget.

“And now Stevens is asking the Government to scrap Section 75 of the 2012 health and social care Act, which in practice means de-regulating the health sector entirely and making ICS’s more attractive to profit-making US companies.

“Meanwhile, surprise, surprise, NHS property and land assets worth 10 billion pounds are being sold to private developers!”  ( John Furse, London Review of Books, 7 Nov 2019. )

My comment: This all amounts to a form of theft from the public of the most respected and necessary public service, to the benefit of those for whom money is all that matters. One’s strong impression is that efficiency has fallen and morale is bad.  Certainly, there is much more complaining. My sister, who does not have much money, was told she had to have a hip replacement.  But no surgeon was available on the NHS for months ahead, so in pain and desperation, she had to pay out of pocket for the surgery.  Never mind. Who in government cares? The important thing is that important people are making tons of money.  This is a huge and un-debated scandal.

Why is this information on an Epicurean blog site? Because it offends against all ideas on moderation and any form of social welfare and care for the sick and poor.  And the sick and poor voted for the Tories unaware of what was going to hit them! You couldn’t make it up!

Harry and Megan

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Yes, I know!  You have better things to do than think about them.  But……

Some years ago my wife and I were walking down a London street when we encountered a group of photographer on the sidewalk, looking expectantly across the street at a block of flats.

“Who are you waiting for?” I asked one of the photographers.

He replied,  “We are waiting for Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant”.  (movie stars, in case you have forgotten).

I asked, “Will you be able to interview them?”

“Oh, no, “ he replied “We just take the pics.  The reporters come along later and make up the story”.  (This is absolutely true)

If moderation is the keynote of Epicureanism then the British trash news industry gets zero out of a hundred. Much of what they (there are too many of them, which is part of the problem) print is imaginative fabrication, entertainment for those with too little else to entertain them and too scanty an education to look beyond gossip.  But it is also scurrilous, crude, divisive and hurtful.  Were I dictator I would ban the whole lot of them and tell them to do something useful.  But I am not and I can’t.

I happen to be a great supporter of the Queen, and would rather have her as head of state than Boris Johnson.  She and her family, for all their human faults, deserve better than to see the institution trashed by the gutter press.