You’ve probably guessed from reading my posts that I’m opinionated. And you probably think that I can’t abide others’ opinions. That second sentence is so untrue it would feel at home in the Guardian. What irritates the hecky-thump out of me are opinions based on lies, damned lies, skewed statistics, inconsistency, hypocrisy and an uncritical adherence to Zen-like group-think.
When I come across stuff like that, I feel compelled to counter with at least an alternative 'fact', whether it completely holds water or not. As long as it’s as defensible as, or more so than, the stance I’m criticising, it’s job done. I’ve come across so much tripe in the past few days that I couldn’t possibly write a blog on each topic; instead, here are some soundbites to get you grinning from ear to ear, or foaming at the mouth:
1. Why the fuss about Neil Parish MP watching porn on his phone in the Commons Chamber? I’m more bothered that he wasn’t giving proceedings (in the House, that is) his undivided attention.
2. Related to this is the push for babies to be allowed into the House and to be breast-fed. Again – give proceedings in the House your undivided attention at all times, or go.
3. Back to Mr Parish – at least he tried (but failed) to be discreet while watching porn and, after a little wobble, he fessed up and resigned. Angela Rayner, on the other hand, spouted vulgarity from her notoriously foul mouth in an open conversation then, in a related incident, lied about who had accused her of doing a Sharon Stone to distract BoJo. Everyone knows it was she what dunnit. She still hasn’t apologised. Who’s the more distasteful MP now?
4. Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are as guilty as BoJo for breaching lock-down rules, but at least BoJo has apologised. Now who lacks integrity?
5. BoJo was accused of forcing through a Lordship for his Russian mate. Turns out he didn’t, according to the Chair of the House of Lords Appointments Panel.
6. I recently got into a spat with a leftie (or at least an anti-Brexiteer) who accused Jacob Rees-Mogg of tax avoidance. I referred to a report that countered the accusation, which was dismissed as biased, yet there was no criticism of the source of the Moggy accusations, which was Twitter. Hmmmm.
7. I got into another spat with someone who said Brexit has damaged the UK economy, which must be true because the Office for Budget Responsibility said so. I referred to another expert economist who had refuted the OBR and its anti-Brexit rhetoric, and also to the OBR website for the CVs of its movers and shakers: the Chair is a senior economist at the Treasury, an adviser to the French Government, and a Division Chief at the IMF; the others sound equally as 'impartial'. Yet somehow the OBR is fine but my expert isn’t? Double Hmmmm.
8. Remainers suffered paroxysms of delight when the Guardian reported that Moggy had ‘admitted’ that Brexit was a failure (border checks are subject to another re-think because they are ‘harmful’). I read the full transcript of what Moggy had actually said and in what context, which of course bore no resemblance to the Guardian's claims.
9. There were also howls of derision when the Government’s Social Mobility Commissioner Katharine Birbalsingh was reported to have said that girls shun physics A-level because they dislike ‘hard maths’. These claims were called “terrifying”, “damaging”, “patronising” … by people who hadn’t read the full transcript of what she had said and in what context. Sound familiar?
10. Women screaming for bottomless supplies of HRT are doing us all a disservice. They’re making us sound like a basket-case inferior species that can’t cope once past a certain age. More dangerous is the dismissal of a woman as menopausal in need of a steady dose of hormones when there’s something else going on; I’ve shed the tears, got the T-shirt and shown perps the finger.
11. Males who ‘trans’ to female have ‘male privilege’ akin to ‘white privilege’ and should make reparations to females, starting with conceding female-only safe spaces and female-only sports.
12. As we are told ad infinitum, Maggie T was / is the devil incarnate. Well, she supported an active climate protection policy, was instrumental in the passing of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, founded the Hadley Centre for Climate Research and Prediction, established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and ratified the Montreal Protocol on preserving the ozone layer. She helped to put climate change, acid rain and general pollution in the British mainstream and called for a global treaty on climate change. God bless her!
13. And finally, I’m fed-up with the narrow-minded hysteria that water companies are cynically / deliberately / happily polluting our rivers and coasts with raw sewage, and are cutting back on investment so should be renationalised. I’m not denying or belittling the problem at all, but it won’t be solved by arthritic finger-wagging and denying / distorting the history, context, economics, science, motives, causes, impacts, mitigations and possible solutions.
Just to demonstrate that I can be constructive as well as argumentative, here’s some possible solutions:
a. Better educate the public re what they can and must not flush down the loob. Limit new development to sustainable levels with respect to sewage treatment capacityc. Mandate developer contributions for necessary improvements to sewage managementd. Limit storm water ingress to the sewage system by re-directing the run-off direct into water courses and onto ‘floodplain meadows’e. Pay farmers to create / return some of their land into floodplain meadows (can still be agriculturally valuable)f. Stop developing floodplains and farmland!g. Overhaul the remit and priorities of Ofwath. Pump more money (as opposed to sewage) into the Environment Agency.
Ta-da!
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