Friday 3 January 2020

Okay, Here's the REAL Reason Laboure Lost the 2019 Election.

In one word?

Credibility.

Brexit Credibility:

Labour did not put forward a credible Brexit plan. We all know that a commitment to a second referendum is a slap in the face for the voters in the first referendum. Unless Remain was taken off the option list. Failure to remove remain as a option (that question was settled in 2016) just looks like a back-door attempt at remain.

Labour lost credibility on their reasons for supporting remain. The depressed Labour heartlands know only too well that supranational organisations like the EU work for big corporations. Any organisation that supports unlimited immigration only suits businesses that want cheap labour.

So, Labour failed to be credible on Brexit and in fact effectively stuck two fingers up to those in the North fed up of poor paying jobs and who want wage growth.

Financial Credibility:

Labour did not put forward a credible financial plan. Milking the rich and the corporations is not a credible plan. The rich just move abroad and the corporations just shut up shop, costing jobs.

In every interview, John McDonnell was pulled apart. Just saying or wishing something will happen is not the same a producing a credible plan that cannot be argued against.

We all knew Labour's proposed financial plan would cost jobs and increase taxes and borrowing. Not credible.

Leadership Credibility:

When shadow cabinet members can be in different channels at the same time and spout different policies, you know there is a crisis of leadership in the party. Everyone should be speaking form the same hymm sheet. But Labour MPs time and time again came up with different lines. Even to the point a single MP would be seen on one channel saying one thing and then something else on another channel whilst a third policy would be put out simultaneously by another MP. Just not credible.

Jeremy Corbyn came over as the old duffer that couldn't control his party, he wasn't a credible leader. John McDonnell was almost as bad, with an aftertaste of malice.

Policy Credibility:

Historically Corbyn and McDonnell had a poor record of backing what are perceived as direct enemies of the UK. Hesbollah, the IRA, you name it: Corbyn and McDonnell had always fraternised with the enemy. That's not good policy. IF they had framed it as opening dialogue with the enemy to facilitate peace, then that narrative might have gained traction. But open fraternisation is not a good policy.

Add to that the policies that were allowed to spring up at Labour conference this year, the party lost all credibility regarding their policies.

Labour could not come up with a coherent policy message.

In the end, Labour voters could not bring themselves top vote for a weak leader, who could not control his party, nor speak up against the big corporations. Corbyn could not speak out against uncontrolled immigration and the damage cheap immigrant labour was doing to working class wages.

Corbyn had time and time again historically sided with people who were outright enemies of the UK. The IRA bombed Warrington, Manchester and Birmingham. Those working class communities don't forget. nor forgive.

Labour are already looking as though they have not learned the lessons. The candidates for the leadership election are too Southern, too privileged, too authoritarian and just not credible.

Without credibility Labour will be walking in the wilderness for some time.

The Challenge and the Opportunity of Artificial Intelligence

There's no doubt that Artificial Intelligence poses a great challenge to Governments across the globe.

Not only directly, as corporations like Google and Facebook use A.I. algorithms to manipulate information as they do at the moment, but in the future as A.I. rolls out and affects the employment market.

The last challenge like this was during the Thatcher years when mining and heavy industry in the UK became uncompetitive and suffered badly. I well remember the nightly lists of companies closing and job losses incurred on the Ten O'clock News.

Those communities heavily reliant on those industries have still not recovered 3 and 4 decades later.

I've blogged before that this new wave, the A.I. wave of redundancies and job losses won't be confined to the working class. It will be a predominantly middle-class problem. The working class jobs have all been automated. The middle class, the thinkers have been more or less unaffected. Not any more. A.I. is a direct threat to the sort of thinking jobs that were historically safe.

Being a middle-class phenomenon, it's a greater threat to middle-class political parties. How they manage the revolution and support the middle class determines if they stay in power or suffer the same fate as the Labour party.

Brexit produces an  exciting opportunity for an enlightened UK government - if it choses to be enlightened.

Free from the shackles of sclerotic EU legislation, a UK government could (much in the way that the Thatcher era government championed IT) start to champion cutting edge technologies like A.I.

A good start would be to start to move education system away from it's current blurred focus on vast quantities of graduates. The QUALITY of the graduates has to change. There has to be a laser-like focus on producing the brightest and the best and bringing them on. Education has to change from merely providing mediocre education for all, to focussing on identifying the brightest and the best from ALL walks of life and providing the streams to suit them that allows them to attain.

This is my biggest frustration with education at the moment. The leftist ideology says that everyone gets the same education. But.... what happens to those bright and talented in a "one-size-fits-all" education system? They fail to attain. They become bored, they are never challenged by a grey, bland just-for-the-sake-of-it education system.

Education I've said before is a strategic resource. It cannot be allowed to be just for the sake of it. It has to provide talent the country can use. An education system that provides a university graduate that eventually ends up sweeping floors is not fit for purpose. All that money, all that time, the resources, the teachers, lecturers, the talent of the graduate, are all wasted. If you are a teacher or a lecturer that is happy to churn out graduates that eventually end up wasting your time, you shouldn't be in the job.

A primary focus has to be on changing early education to identify talent.  Once that's in place, secondary education has to then focus on growing talent, providing multiple streams. Stem, Creative, Historical, Vocational and Caring subjects (to cater for an increasing elderly population) streams should be available.

How these specialist subjects are provided needs some work. But several specialist streams could be provided by a single school.

Further education then works to make experts out of those specialists. Not just in STEM subjects, but in Care, in Vocational subjects like Building, Plumbing. We need people that can manage whole projects as well as wire a plug or plumb in a boiler. But those managers also need to have practical experience of how a plug is wired or a boiler is plumbed and how long it takes.

Anyway, I've digressed. Back to A.I.

Hopefully, with an education system producing the brightest and the best in specialist subjects, we can then tailor that system to produce A.I. experts. Or graduates ready to exploit any emerging technology. I'm sure A.I. will become a feature in the lucrative market of weapons technology.

Britain can then exploit this boom, rather than be exploited. If necessary Government can invest in innovation, although the best would be private investment. Possibly government can kick-start innovation and then hand it over to private business for a price, with a decent and almost immediate return on the investment.

Eventually after we become the world expert on emerging technologies, the UK can go on to export its intellectual property and it's experts across the globe. Just like we did with Scottish shipwrights and Boiler makers, Cornish and Welsh miners back at the start of the industrial revolution.

Or we could do things the Leftist way and tax every A.I. or every company using A.I. to offset the cost of providing benefits to people made redundant by new technology thereby making the UK the most uncompetitive country to use A.I...….. in the world.

Tuesday 31 December 2019

Denial of the Labour Kind. Chapter 3. Descent into Madness and Delusion.

Okay, this should be the absolute final chapter but I suspect the results of the Labour leadership election will provide at least one more chapter on the Labour party's reaction to losing the election.

Today I'm talking about delusion. Dangerous delusion.

Already Labour supporters on the far-left are having discussions on whether the "idiots" who voted Tory should be allowed to vote.

"Allowed" to vote?? Do they not understand the concept of one person, one vote? Do they not understand the fights and struggles common men and women had through history to attain that outcome?

It seems the far-left consider voting (as with many more of their "considerations) something that can be changed to suit them. Only allow those with the right way of thinking the ability to vote. Give it to foreigners and new immigrants instead. In fact only give the right to vote to people who will vote the "correct" way.

Totalitarianism, in fact: For the party, of the party, Nothing against the party.

It's this delusional group-thinking, this mass hysteria that drags countries down into the depths of Madness. It's the mass hysteria that pulled Germany into Nazism, it's the sort of group-thinking that enabled the purges in Stalinist Russia, it's the thinking that facilitated the millions killed by Mao, the killing fields of Pol-Pot.

That is where the far-left are at the moment. In a state of madness. The state of madness that denies reality.

The mindset that says they won the argument but lost the election.

The mindset that says there are more than two genders.

The mindset that says that genders are in fact a social construct.

The mindset that wants to facilitate mass immigration and doesn't think there will be consequences.

The mindset that wants to remove the right to vote from those with wrong-think.

The mindset that thinks taxing the rich is the answer to everything.

The mindset that says you can work less for more money without increasing productivity.

The mindset that says men and women are exactly the same physically and mentally.

Time and time again, I see on twitter these people, these dangerous people talk and my mind boggles. You cannot debate these people. They refuse to discuss alternative viewpoints.

They are in fact, mentally ill, locked in some form of mass hysteria, wishing for a better place and see
that force coercion, bullying and denying rights are a means to gain that goal. Whilst campaigning against coercion and bullying.

The latest is the delusional arch-remain-losing-denier, the king of black-is-white refusal to accept reality Keir Stamer is the lead contender for leader of the Labour party.

Despite him being the arch remainer in the cabinet, the guy that most wanted to go against the democratic will to leave the EU, the guy that almost certainly cost Labour thousands of seats and undoubtedly the guy the Northern "Red Wall" would least vote for.

He's in Prime position for Labour leadership and another decade of Labour political irrelevance.

Despite Labour's protestations for more equality, no female in the lead role than I see.

No Northern candidate in the running. More Islington/Chelsea middle-class-Marxists.

Bye Labour, condemn yourself to more years in the wilderness.

Monday 30 December 2019

Priviledge

As I get older, I tend to connect more and see more. Despite the old grey matter failing me at times, I can still spot trends and make associations.

The more I see of politicians and the media, the more I see a cabal, a clique of people. On the screen all you see is a group of apparently unrelated individuals.

Time and time again, I hear back stories that someone knew someone else's parents, or they worked for someone, or were a friend of the family way before they became famous, or got a high-flying job, or got into politics. I very rarely hear a back story where someone with no previous connection to anyone else made it to the top in media or politics.

This is where the matter of privilege comes in.

No matter what field you are in, you cannot get ahead without some form of privilege or patronage.

This is the unseen ceiling to true equality.