Scrapbook for May 2017

24.05.2017 – Still on your own

At a decent interval after the nail-bomb attack at a concert in Manchester on Monday 22 May that killed 22 people and mutilated many more we would just like to point out that since the last outrage two months ago on Westminster Bridge the (in)security situation is still the same as it was then. Nothing at all has changed: you are on your own against terrorism. Nothing the useless Amber Rudd and the COBRA committees have done in the meantime has reduced the vulnerability of the people to attack.

Even that mad lefty Morrissey now gets it. When even he finally gets something, you know the situation is serious.

20.05.2017 – That Tory manifesto

Many of us free-market, laissez-faire, right-wing thugs were shocked by Theresa May's speech to the Conservative party conference last October. Her miserable track record of political and ideological incompetence up until then had given us no grounds for hope, but the bossy ramblings of that speech came as a bit of a shock.

We concluded then that:

The 'the-government-is-your-best-friend' model has never worked so far in the history of the world, probably because a government really isn't your BFF. Is this policy brave, foolish, stupid, or just ignorant? We shall see. Our bet: the last three.

Now the public in the UK is being asked to vote for her by name – a difficult task since her name is only on the ballot paper in one constituency out of 650 or so. No party leader in the history of British democracy – not even those megalomaniacs Churchill, Thatcher and Blair – has ever demanded such presidential voting of the electorate.

The Conservative party election manifesto has now been published. Leaving aside all the usual contradictions of 'triangulation', such as lowering energy prices while meeting a lunatic 'carbon reduction objective', the general tone is hysterically bossy. She has rebranded the Conservatives in her own image: as a bossy, dim, unimaginative, interfering group of social engineers. We need a short form for that.

Let's call it the 'Nasty Party'.

18.05.2017 – The path of healing

The USA will have a chance to be whole again when its top lawyers stop branding themselves with blackletter typefaces.

18.05.2017 – Our Swiss sunbeam expert writes, apropos our piece on the upcoming Swiss energy referendum:

Solar power, because it meets the ingrained Swiss need to be 'clean', will be required to play a large role in Switzerland's 'emissions'-free energy future. Sooner or later reality will intrude, a reality that is already quite clear:

This map shows the percentage of the theoretically available sunlight (i.e. top of the clouds) that actually reached Swiss soil over the last thirty years.

The lowlands in the north, where most people live, get little over a third of the sunlight that could fall on them. For many days of the year a large part of these areas are under a blanket of 'high mist' – or 'low cloud', if you will. The scale only goes up to 60%: in the last 30 years even the sunniest places have never seen more than two-thirds of the theoretically available sunlight.

Even during the time that sunlight is reaching the surface, it is only energetic enough to be useful in the two to four hours around noon, depending on the season. In winter, when you really want that energy, it is at its scarcest.

There is also the important factor that specialists in this field refer to by the technical term 'night', defined as the period when you want to cook, watch TV and charge up your Tesla ready for the morning's commute.

18.05.2017 – The rich: not like us

It is true that the display of copious spending on something like a wedding is unlikely to endear the participants to the mob. But we Jacobins sometimes have to calm our palpitations and steady our breathing.

If the couple comes from near-royalty and the financial world, the guest list is going to be long. We cannot begrudge them the logistical necessity of two huge marquees and however many portaloos they will need to capture the droppings of all these guests. Said droppings will be, in any case, a better class of excrement, at least. 'Pippa Passes', indeed!

And, let's face it, if you are festooned with bling, a few full-length mirrors are the least you can expect.

The comfort is that such quantities of cash are always better being spent than hoarded. The manufacturers and installers of gold taps, full length mirrors and glass marquees will have food on their own tables because of this couple; the providers of portaloos will coo with pleasure; even the humble serfs who empty these devices will be cheered should they come across the solid, green, vegan bullets of their future monarch accompanied by one sheet – only one sheet, mind you – of Prince's Trust Monogrammed Sustainable Lavatory Paper.

The couple's only error is to allow us brooding plebs to glimpse all this, our noses pressed against our monitors. Just wait till it's Harry and Migraine's turn…