Letter from Great Britain – 11-14-20

“The Financial Jigsaw” has been serialised here and now is replaced by this weekly “Letter from Great Britain.”

NOTE – If anyone would like an electronic copy of the complete book, I should be pleased to email a free PDF on request to: [email protected]. Also a hardcopy of the book, “The Financial Jigsaw” is available priced at £25 GBP plus P&P in A4, workbook format, bound with clear plastic covers, printed locally on demand.

THE BIG news of the week is of course the result of the US presidential election.  At 11.30 EDT last Saturday the American newscasters, including the BBC, called the final projection of a win for Biden based on Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral colleges going in his favour.  It is rumoured that Trump has a secret way of identifying fake votes which has been promoted on the internet for a little while.  Only time will tell to determine if this is truly the case and Trump’s legal challenges are accepted by the courts.  A statistical analysis reported by ZeroHedge further indicates fraudulent voting: It-defies-logic-scientist-finds

By the time you read this, former vice-president Joseph Robinette Biden Jr might have gone from being presumed winner of the 2020 race to becoming president-elect of the United States.  He could be inaugurated as the nation’s 46th president on 20 January 2021, and, at 78, the oldest leader ever.

The influence of black voters as gatekeepers to the Democratic nomination cannot be measured in numbers alone.  It is the moral force within the party, the centre of the diverse coalition the Democratic Party represents against the white identity politics of the Republican Party and the nationalism of the Trump cult.

The 2020 electoral cycle revealed that the centre of America’s political universe is no longer the lobbying shops of Washington’s K Street or members-only sanctums at Mar-a-Lago; it is churches and community centres in places like Atlanta, Philadelphia and Greenville, South Carolina.

The black voters of the Democratic Party nominated Joe Biden. They stood in line for hours to hand him the electoral votes he needed to recapture the upper Midwest from Trump. They could yet decide who controls the Senate in the two seats in Georgia that are going to a runoff in January 2021.

Back in late February, Bernie Sanders was cruising towards the Democratic nomination against more than a dozen contenders. The left-leaning newspaper Nation’s political columnist had already drawn up a fantasy Cabinet. Biden’s campaign appeared dead in the water.  That all changed on the leap year date of 29 February, the same day the US recorded its first Covid-19 death.  Biden overwhelmingly won the Democratic Party’s South Carolina primary by gaining the support of black voters who make up 60% of the Democratic electorate in the state.  That opened the floodgates and on Super Tuesday three days later, when a number of states voted, Joe Biden won so decisively that the race was all but over.

SO, what has Biden in store for America?  Three scholars discuss Racism, Policing and Black Lives Matter protests; Read on for some enlightenment:

https://theconversation.com/biden-wins-experts-on-what-it-means

AND what has Biden in store for Britain?  Biden, who has Irish roots, has expressed negative views on the UK’s plans to override parts of the’ agreement’ – the internal markets bill that reneges on part of the EU withdrawal agreement – if no deal is reached with the bloc.  During the campaign, Biden said that “any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the agreement and preventing the return of a hard border”.

Johnson, who has not yet spoken to Biden, said there was “far more that unites the government of this country and government in Washington any time, any stage, than divides us” – despite a series of sceptical comments made by Biden and his allies about the prime minister.

The House of Lords is expected to vote this week to remove parts of the internal markets bill that would break international law by removing some of the commitments in the agreement, something Labour has challenged the government to concede.  Biden has previously called Johnson the “physical and emotional clone of Donald Trump” and allies of the new Democratic administration have been scathing about the UK prime minister.

Tommy Vietor, the former national security spokesman for Barack Obama, commenting on the prime minister’s congratulatory message to Biden, tweeted that Johnson was a “shapeshifting creep” and added: “We will never forget your racist comments about Obama and slavish devotion to Trump.”

We can generally agree that our leaders are not just out-of-touch with the common people but are positively useless.  And this may be why as far as Britain is concerned.  I went to boarding school in the 1950s and experienced the deprivations associated with that caustic institution; having said that, I really did enjoy most of the experience.

The whole British public edifice is now rotten, a class of people selected by birth for the nation’s highest offices.   But at least in yesteryear we were bred to be ‘tough’ – we learned respect and the responsibility of duty and fairness. The experience of being at a boarding school was to be always cold and always hungry; even if this brutalised your character, at least you ended up with a bit of backbone, fighting the sadistic Prefects for your very survival in-between the beatings.  It was clearly understood that, quite aside from the offices of state, we were first and foremost being educated to fight in wars, which are notoriously uncomfortable.

Contrast this with the current generation of those born to rule, which went to school in the 1970s and 80s with central heating and generous food.  Boris Johnson, David Cameron et al have all the noxious entitlement, but none of the self-abnegation. That’s why their judgment is so poor and their empathy so limited.  People who have always been warm enough have never had to consider the consequences of hardship or, indeed, anything.  This is how great dynasties have fallen throughout history: at the start, the overlords are hard as nails; it is when they become pampered that their privilege turns to fecklessness.

NOW – Britain will continue to suffer from the current lockdown.  “A study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the recruitment firm Adecco showed almost a third of UK companies plan to make redundancies over the final months of the year. Gerwyn Davies, the senior labour market adviser for the CIPD, said: “The best that can be said is that the situation is getting worse more slowly. Employment looks set to keep falling and the relatively weak demand for labour means that it is going to be a long and hard winter, affecting young jobseekers in particular.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/09/uk-faces-pre-christmas-economic-slump-new-covid-restrictions

BUT – I have been saying for some time that increased Covid-19 testing has caused fatally flawed results and a fraudulent lockdown.  Now I am supported by many doctors and scientists:  “Official data is ‘exaggerating’ the risk of Covid-19 and talk of a second wave is ‘misleading’; nearly 500 academics told Boris Johnson in an open letter attacking lockdown.  The doctors and scientists said the Government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has become ‘disproportionate’ and that mass testing has distorted the risk of the virus.  They said tests are likely to be producing high numbers of ‘false positive’ results and the Government must do more to put infection and death rates within the context of normal seasonal rates.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8925427/Official-data-exaggerating-risk-Covid

This leads me to the question of rising poverty in Britain.  Even before the scamdemic the 32 million British workers had a large percentage of members in poverty – ‘the working poor’.  A 2018 report details the distress suffered by this group of over 14 million people.  The ongoing lockdowns have made the situation ten times worse.  Here are some facts from that year – God knows what it is now.  The report identifies what it calls Britain’s “new class structure”. It also launched an online tool that lets people explore which “class” they fall into.

• The chronically precarious: the reliably broke, people in this group are typically on a steady contract albeit with low pay. 60% have less than £1,000 saved and they have low job satisfaction and little autonomy at work. Typical job: full-time sales assistant.
• The acutely precarious: usually broke but with significant income “yoyo-ing”. Work is often low-paid but, unlike the chronically precarious, irregular. This is a young group and 45% have a degree. Typical job: zero-hours hospitality.
• The flexi-workers: love their job, even if it doesn’t pay well: 83% are satisfied at work but 59% earn less than £21,000 a year. High levels of savings: many are redundant “second careerers”. They value autonomy above security. Typical job: freelance photographer.
• The steady-staters: feel well treated (90%) and well paid (69%), even if work is a means to an end. But they have low savings, and rely on work for income so are vulnerable to a shock. Their routine jobs are at high risk of automation. Typical job: public sector administrator.
• The idealists: mid-earning, passionate and often millennials (50% under 35), 70% think they make a positive contribution to society at work. They are most likely to rely on others, such as parents, for income. They are urbane and 25% have more than £10,000 saved. Typical job: charity employee.
• The strivers: these have regular jobs with high income and high savings, but worry the link between hard work and fair pay has broken: 73% are stressed but only 20% think their pay reflects their efforts. Typical job: middle manager.
• The high-flyers: the wealthiest group: 55% have more than £10,000 in savings. They are successful at adapting to automation, and the most likely group to value new technology. They report high job security, high autonomy and high fulfilment. Typical job: director of an IT services business.

This applies only to those in work; other groups, like the 12 million pensioners, are faring just as badly.  Economic insecurity has become the “new normal” in UK with at least 70% of the UK’s working population “chronically broke”, according to a study by the think-tank the Royal Society of Arts.  Full details https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jan/25/uk-workers-chronically-broke-study-economic-insecurity

AND here is a full analysis as at September 2019.  Hopefully we will get current statistics next year when the devastation of present policies is revealed. https://fullfact.org/economy/poverty-uk-guide-facts-and-figures/

Now that UK has left the EU, I will comment on relevant EU – UK events as they arise: 

The Foreign Office and No 10 are urgently trying to assess the implications for UK foreign policy of a Biden presidency, including in areas such as Brexit, climate change, the Middle East, China and NATO.  But after a phone call on Saturday between Johnson and European commission president Ursula von der Leyen ended with Downing Street saying “significant differences remain in a number of areas”, fears were growing that both sides could be slipping towards no deal.

Pro-EU Tories and diplomats are concerned that a no-deal outcome would cause early and serious tension between London and Washington and put the special relationship at risk, given Biden’s stated opposition to Brexit, support for European integration and support for the Good Friday Agreement.

Biden has made it clear that there will be no agreement on a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal if a no-deal outcome threatens the Good Friday agreement that he holds dear. His concerns over the threat to the agreement in the event of a no-deal Brexit reached new heights after Johnson recently forced through the internal market bill. Many saw the move as putting Brexit above the interests of peace in Ireland. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/08/boris-johnson-under-pressure-to-avoid-no-deal-brexit-after-biden-victory

To be continued next week.

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Author: Austrian Peter

Peter J. Underwood is a retired international accountant and qualified humanistic counsellor living in Bruton, UK, with his wife, Yvonne. He pursued a career as an entrepreneur and business consultant, having founded several successful businesses in the UK and South Africa His latest Substack blog describes the African concept of Ubuntu - a system of localised community support using a gift economy model. View all posts by Austrian Peter