HERE AND THERE

I try to keep cheerful but the wind this week is not blowing in a favourable direction. The UK has supposedly the highest Covid infection rate in the world (if we accept, as we should not, the figures from Russia, Turkey, India, China and dozens of other unreliable states) and while restrictions have been relaxed, many voices are calling for their early re-imposition. Inevitably epidemiologist Prof Neil Ferguson, arch doom-monger and influencer, has added his tuppence-worth of predictive gloom about new variants and the rate of contagion. Some other “expert” forecast “possibly” cases of 100,000 per day in a few weeks – I suspect yet another gross exaggeration. The medical profession seems to be oblivious of the necessity of maintaining public morale and that of ordinary NHS workers. Milton would have given the attitude of these experts short shrift:

                                            Dismal Jimmy Prof Neil Ferguson

Hence loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn,

      'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy;

Find out some uncouth cell,

      Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-raven sings;

      There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

      In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

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Another event to endure from 30 October to 12 November will be the COP26 United Nations climate conference in Glasgow. Gallons of eyewash will be pumped out, grand-standing-resolutions will be passed, hot air will warm the globe even further and all past troubles will be blamed on white imperialists and their successors. Our woke elite will revel in this fiesta of cant – we will be blessed by the gracious presence of Obama, Biden, the ineffable Greta Thunberg and the inevitably ageing Her Majesty the Queen

 

Of course, precisely nothing will be achieved. The worst polluters, Russia and China, are only sending junior delegations, not their leaders. The resolutions will be kicked into the long grass by the harder-headed governments in the cold light of day. Boris made a good joke of the purported movement towards heat-pumps rather than gas boilers with his flippant assurance;

 

The Boiler Police’s Greenshirts aren’t going to break down your door with their sandal-clad feet and seize your trusty old combi at carrot-point.

No Western government is going to commit political and economic suicide by kowtowing to the minority ravings of climate warriors, anti-vaxxers, Greens and LibDems. Yes, global warming is an issue. It can only be tackled on a realistic and affordable time-scale. The UK does not need to be a pioneer. It still has large reserves of coal, shale and lithium. We should press on with fracking shale and lithium extraction. Coal-fired power plants should be re-opened and precautionary coal supply contracts signed with friends like Australia and South Africa. Nuclear power generation should be enhanced, if need be, in cooperation with the insufferable French.

Meanwhile scepticism on climate change is my order of the day.

I mention the French and I am struck by the poor quality of recent Presidents. Sarkozy, Hollande and now Macron have not filled the office with the distinction one has come to expect. All three have displayed a compound of petulance and arrogance, which I find deeply unattractive. Of course, the French are not easily regulated – as de Gaulle observed:  How can you govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese?

French politics seem historically unstable. As in the UK, an increasingly conservative electorate is dismayed by an increasingly woke and lefty metropolitan elite. Presidential elections are due in April 2022.  The Jewish-Algerian Right-wing pundit Eric Zemmour is the current darling of the anti-Macron faction and strikes a sane chord. I wish him well.

                                Eric Zemmour, probable candidate

Political violence is a deplorable area, widely incited, and the slope is slippery from Insulate Britain blocking the motorways, to Michael Gove being harassed in the streets of Westminster to the foul murder of Sir David Amess in his constituency surgery. Yet we must not despair: I trust the resilience of Fred and Ginger who advised:

Nothing’s impossible I have learned

But when your chin is on the ground

Pick yourself up, dust yourself down,

And start all over again

SMD

21.10.21         

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2021