Observerwets nearly get it

The sister paper of the Guardian,the Observer, produced a rare nearly-readable edition today,with nearly bearable quantities of advertising, and almost tolerable sequences of trivial guff on popular culture -- even one or two reasonable articles that took nearly ten minutes to read (out of a more than 70 page tabloid). 

The articles included one that predicted crisis in agriculture for the usual reasons -- we can't get cheap labour -- and raised the recurrent nightmare of  expensive British strawberries at Wimbledon time. The horror! However, this time, it was not just Brexit to blame but an unforeseen economic growth in Eastern Europe that meant young, fit, English-speaking Romanians did not have to come to Britain for poorly-paid seasonal work. Jolly disloyal and selfish of them!

A priceless gem also glittered amid the shingle -- a very rare Observer editorial with which I agreed, a critical piece about the EU! It reported on the spat with the EU on the Galileo Project, which will launch a global positioning satellite to rival the US GPS system. Even though the UK paid its share to develop the project, the EU is threatening to exclude us from its use once we leave, possibly to teach a lesson to anyone else thinking of leaving . It also refuses to pay back any money.

Even the Observer sees problems with that. I quote from the editorial at some length:

The row between the UK and the EU over the €10bn Galileo satellite navigation project is turning nasty. For once, this unnecessary spat is not Britain’s fault. It is, of course, true that the argument over who can access this spanking new system, who builds it and who pays for it would not be happening if the UK intended to remain a member of the EU. But it is equally true that senior commission officials in Brussels, including the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, continue to exhibit difficulty in accepting post-referendum political realities. That’s a polite way of saying the EU needs to get over itself....

The commission must climb down off the high horse on to which it unwisely clambers at times like this. The arrogance and fetishistic inflexibility displayed over Galileo are exactly what alienated many British voters in the first place....

When EU officials claim, as they did last week, that allowing a non-member country (namely the UK) access to sensitive security-related information would “breach the sovereignty of the EU”, they seriously overreach. The EU, in and of itself, has no “sovereignty”. That is the preserve of the 28 individually sovereign nation states, which have agreed in some respects to pool it....

What is an affront to sovereignty is the commission’s refusal to contemplate reimbursing the €1bn the UK has invested in the project. The claim that to do so would be “against the rules” illustrates Brussels’ inability to accept that, like it or not, a democratic vote has torn up the rulebook.

When officials suggest that the continued, post-Brexit participation of British companies in manufacturing Galileo systems, including those with military applications, represents a potential security risk, they part company with common sense. The UK is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a threat to Europe’s security. On the contrary, it has spent a good part of its modern history, and its national budget, guaranteeing it – while other European countries duck their Nato obligations. 

Despite numerous, humiliating concessions on budget payments, citizens’ rights, financial passporting, a transition period and, prospectively, on customs arrangements, Brussels officialdom, with Barnier at its helm, still believes, deep down, that the UK wants something for nothing. This is undoubtedly true of hard Tory Brexiters, who have always underplayed the difficulties and costs of leaving. It may also be true of leading Leavers such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, although both have trouble distinguishing between public policy and personal ambition.

But it is certainly not true of many people in the UK. They already know, because the evidence is incontrovertible, and growing by the day, that the price to be paid for Brexit will be very high indeed. They do not need the commission’s gratuitous, self-defeating and deliberately punitive strictures to remind them of that chastening fact.

Brexit bus 'lie' revisited (again)

Larry Eliott, much admired (by me) lone voice for Brexit in a nest of Guardianista Remainers, has an admirably clear piece on funding the NHS in the Guardian today (front page in my early print edition).

The inevitable consequences of NHS crises are made clear:

British households will need to pay an extra £2,000 a year in tax to help the NHS cope with the demands of an ageing population, according to a new report that highlights the unprecedented financial pressures on the health system.
Two thinktanks – the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Health Foundation – have said there can be no alternative to higher taxation if there are to be even modest improvements to care over the next 15 years, adding that demands on the health service will continue to rise.

This will take place against an expected growth in personal incomes, of course, but it is still an increase in real terms. The tone is still a bit negative about these tax increases, for me. A better NHS also brings benefits, for example, but, more generally, what else should the State be acquiring money to spend on? All State spending is bad only for austerity merchants of course, doubtless in order to prop up the Government's credit-worthiness. Perhaps the assumptions will come out in the debate?

Paul Johnson, the director of IFS and an author of the report, said Britain was finally having to face up to one of the biggest choices in a generation.

 Larry also manages to sneak in a crafty rebuke:

The research was published as the Spectator reported that Theresa May had decided to increase the NHS’s budget by 3% a year for each of the remaining four years of this parliament. It means that, by 2022, the health service would be getting the £350m a week extra that was promised on the side of the Brexit battlebus in 2016. (my emphasis) The magazine’s cover story, on changed Conservative attitudes to NHS funding, stated that, in making her decision, May had overridden Philip Hammond’s concerns that such large sums would be difficult to afford. 

Just read the headline

Classic Guardian piece today on its front page (although it is relegated in the later online version). There is the classic  dilution of assertive headlines by more cautious comment, but little evidence of the famed 'news values' of balance andindependence.

The headline says:

UK has seen 'Brexit-related' growth in racism, says UN representative 

'Brexit has contributed [my emphasis] to an environment of increased racial discrimination and intolerance, the UN special rapporteur on racism has said'. There is a stronger claim too. Not only has intolerance increased but it has actually had an effect

“The environment leading up to the referendum, the environment during the referendum, and the environment after the referendum has made racial and ethnic minorities more vulnerable to racial discrimination and intolerance,” she said.  

What is the evidence? The UN rapporteur, one Prof Tendayi Achiume, looked at “The discourses on racial equality' before during and after the Referendum, and the 'policies and practices upon which the Brexit debate has conferred legitimacy'.  “Many with whom I consulted highlighted the growth in volume and acceptability of xenophobic discourses on migration, and on foreign nationals including refugees in social and print media.”

Consultees included 'Deborah Coles, executive director of Inquest, which gives legal assistance to families whose loved ones have died in state custody' [dispropotionately ethnic minority males]. And there is 'Stafford Scott, of race relations charity The Monitoring Group, who also gave evidence to Achiume, welcomed comments from Achiume about how police gangs databases disproportionately skew towards identifying black young people as perpetrators of gang violence, and which he described as “part of the process that sets up our community to be viewed as a suspect community by the entire state.” 

  Achiume seems to have had a busy time:

Achiume spent 11 days in the UK investigating the impact of Brexit on racial equality. But she went beyond that mandate, highlighting the scandal of misapplication of “hostile environment” policies on the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants, the disproportionate criminalisation of black people, and the “sustained and pervasive” vilification of Muslims via Prevent, the government’s counter-radicalisation strategy. 'Achiume also expressed alarm at the stark increase in hate crimes and incidents across the UK after the referendum to leave the EU.'

She mentions specifically the Windrush scandal  and the Lammy review of discrimination in criminal justice cases. She says the “Widespread enforcement of the Prevent duty is fuelling distrust among racial and ethnic minority communities, especially those who are Muslim.” andparticulalry criticises the vague criteria implied in Prevent policies.

Now I know my own limits as someone still interested in social science research instead of journalistic consensus posing as expert opinion, but I am a tad sceptical that consulting lobbying organisations is going to cover the issues of evidence. Nor does it seem easy in the research community [sic] to isolate causals from clusters of complex variables. There seems to be no attempt in the article at least to separate out factors operating before and after the Referendum: any claimed amplifying effects of the Referendum are not clear. 'Racism' also seems to remain as a compound factor, consisting of attitudes and practices,mostly concerning State policy, and it is combined with xenophobia.The implied link between State policy and public attitudes, marshalled during the Referendum campaigns,maybe, is not clear. To make one obvious point, A Rudd and T May, both architects of the Windrush scandal, were Remainers.

Perhaps the actual Report will be clearer. The Guardian might once have clarified a few points too, maybe even raised some critical issues.Even thinking of any problems, let alone helping readers grasp them, seems impossible with this irresistible combination of Guardian special interests.