Holocaust Memorial Day 2020

Tomorrow marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army.

Among the events being held to mark this is a reading at the former Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands of the names of the 102,000 Dutch Jews, Sinti and Roma murdered by the Nazis.

My Dutch is very limited, but hearing how young many of these people were when they were gassed - if they managed to survive the horrendous journey - brings it home in a new way. The footage we have is of the teenagers and younger adults who survived - not the children and older people who were murdered on arrival at places like Auschwitz.

The more one reads about the Holocaust, the more horrific it becomes. 

The Wannsee Conference wasn't where the decision was taken to try to kill all 11 million Jews then living in Europe. It was a high-level planning meeting to determine how to put into effect a decision already made.

People came up with plans for all this, printed forms, typed reports, designed structures. This was the calculated and considered destruction of an entire ethnic group.

Yet it was just part of a wider plan that would also have, if completed, reduced Slavs into a semi-literate slave people and created a vast Nazi empire across Europe through puppet rulers or direct annexation.

The Nazi regime were the biggest criminals this world has ever known. Anyone who claims otherwise is at best wrong and at worst a bigot.

Blog plans for 2020

1. Finish the current timetable article I'm working on. This might take a while due to other things getting in the way.
2. Probably do another one - I'm thinking BR Southern Region's summer 1970 timetable.
3. Possibly post some photos.

Christmas 2019

In what has been a turbulent and frankly unpleasant year in many regards, where dodgy political leadership dominates in many countries and the opposition to it is often nearly as bad, it can become rather easy to lose hope of things ever improved.

This is where my faith in Jesus helps. The Bible foretells of a time when tears will end, suffering will cease and justice will be given for all. Those who have caused so many of the problems that we face today will have to face judgement. I'm looking at you, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

The good - and getting that status is easy than you might think - will get their just reward in paradise.

That is one thought that keeps me getting up in the morning. Another is that while I can't solve all the world's problems, I can help where I reasonably can.

So, help where you can. It will be appreciated one way or another.

Merry Christmas and I wish you a lovely New Year.

The next five years

Boris Johnson, after his emphatic win eight days ago, is secure in power for the next five years bar anything major happening in the Jennifer Acuri department or something that we can't yet see coming.

Johnson's coalition is reliant on a range of groups, including ex-Labour working class voters in the North; they switched en masse in the election and could just as easily switch back for a good Labour leader.

Unfortunately, I am not sure that Labour is going to end with a good leader; they may well try 'Corbynism without Corbyn' and without him for the media to pounce on, the policies might be subjected to more scrutiny instead. Many of them are popular, but a large feast of goodies was seemingly not.

The big question is Brexit. The Withdrawal Agreement will get through mostly intact - there will likely be some minor amendments during the course of passage; the Lords might want to add some bits that Johnson will accept to get the bill through by 31 January.

We will leave in an orderly manner then. The trade deal will the next more difficult stage. The EU holds most of the cards here; a No Deal would be far worse for us than for the remaining 27 members of the EU.

I personally expect a lot of noisy in public negotiations over the course of 2020, resulting in something that Johnson will call a deal, but will in reality be a very much interim agreement with more difficult issues punted until later on.

Free movement will end, of course, and the UK will move to the ETIAS visa waiver programme. I will almost certainly get a ETIAS waiver on a standing basis as soon as I can. I strongly suspect there will be real difficulty filling jobs in some sectors with British workers; our culture of handing off 'dirty jobs' to other people that frankly goes back to the British Empire is coming back to bite us in the proverbial backside.

Rejoining? Not before 2040 at the earliest and certainly not as a UK.

Scotland will likely be refused a second referendum in this parliament, but come 2024, the SNP will make it a condition of any support for a Labour minority government... if there is indeed a hung parliament.

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes: Analysis of the 2019 General Election

The biggest Conservative win since 1987 has secured Boris Johnson his place in history. He will, for whatever happens after, be the person who takes Britain out of the European Union at the end of January. For all the incompetence, venality, lies and outright dodgy behaviour was not enough to stop him from romping home.

There are a number of reasons why this happened and a lot of them ultimately boil down to Jeremy Corbyn, along with his top team. In no particular order:

1. The utter gridlock and paralysis of the House of Commons in the last Parliament provided a powerful enemy for Johnson to use on the campaign trial.
2. 'Get Brexit Done' is a powerful and basic slogan that is easily understood. 'For The Many, Not The Few' needs explanation as to who is who... and tends to put off the self-defined few.
3. The media were hostile against Corbyn, yes. However, Corbyn made no serious attempt to persuade them to his way of thinking, instead railing against them, which doesn't tend to make someone like you. Hostility against the Labour Party by the British press is a fact of life and a better leader could have dealt with it.
4. Labour made gaffe after gaffe over the last few years that could have been easily avoided, Diane Abbott being a case in point. This handed the media ammunition to use against Labour.
5. The vile behaviour of Corbyn's 'outriders' towards anyone who did not bow down and worship the Dear Leader was more ammo for the media. It put a lot of moderates off voting Labour and of course led to a slew of defections. Insulting potential voters never works.
6. Antisemitism: this not only hit Labour with the Jewish vote, but gave major ammo to the media and trickled through to others who found the whole thing deeply repulsive, myself included. Also Jews are seen as far more integrated into British society than Muslims and Islamophobia more acceptable, alas.
7. All the defectors lost their seats. Change UK failed to define itself quickly enough, didn't have any clear policies and then split before it could do anything useful. It was an utter failure, which is a pity.
8. The Lib Dems had a leader tainted by her involvement in the coalition, lack of decent headline policies and as they were seen as unlikely to win in many seats, Remain voters went for tactical voting instead.
9. Labour's Brexit policy was too slow in developing and even then wasn't clear. Corbyn's failure to take a clear stance managed to annoy both Leavers and Remainers.
10. There was no serious attempt by Labour to form any Remain Alliance; it was 'my way or the highway'. Now we have crossed the bridge of Brexit.
11. Labour's policies failed to acknowledge the real aspirations of many to become wealthy. They were also a whole litany of shopping items that couldn't be boiled down into a single poster.
12. Corbyn had a metric tonne of baggage that could be used against him relating to the IRA and Islamic terrorism. It was highly prone to misinterpretation at best.

Where we go from here is the subject of further posts; I will do those at a later point.

General Election 2019 - Results

I'm going to do a fuller post in this when I'm less sleep deprived, but my reaction to the exit poll was "Woah!".

My thought this morning is that a lot of people need to get out of their echo chambers more, because in retrospect, this was pretty obvious.

General Election 2019 predictions

My 2017 prediction makes for interesting reading now

This prediction is made therefore with little actual confidence.

The question that this election ultimately rests on is whether Conservative gains from Labour in Leave-supporting areas in the North will exceed Conservative losses to the SNP in Scotland and the Lib Dems in Remain-supporting areas in the South of England.

Corbyn is toxic among many voters. Whether the 'smears' are true or false, they have worked and Labour's abysmal handling of antisemitism has not helped in the slightest.

Johnson isn't exactly popular among the wider electorate; I doubt you will get any huge fans of him anywhere. However, his 'Get Brexit Done' message has a certain powerful resonance that Labour's fudge doesn't.

The economy isn't great, but nor has it tipped into recession. "It's the economy, stupid" remains true and while we are likely to have another recession sooner rather than later, Johnson is lucky to have called the election when he did.

So my prediction:

• Conservative overall majority of under 25, quite possibly under 15.
• Labour end up going backwards significantly and end up under 250 seats. Corbyn resigns and his replacement will be someone who carries forth a lot of the policies with less of the baggage.
• The Lib Dems will significant vote share gains, but barely any seat gains. 
• The Brexit Party will lose a bucket load of deposits.
• All the defectors and independents will lose their seats.
• The Alliance will gain a couple of seats off the DUP in Northern Ireland.
• We leave the EU on 31 January 2020 and enter the transition period; however, there will not be a 'No Deal' at the end of 2020 - there will be something that Johnson, who may be a coward but isn't that much of an idiot, will call a 'deal'. Trying for 'No Deal' would be politically suicidal and likely stopped by a Commons where 'Leave' means a lot of different things. Free movement will end after 2020, however.
• 'Austerity' will be officially dead and the Tories will try to repudiate it. What changes they make won't be enough to deal with some pretty major deprivation issues.
• The Fixed Term Parliament Act will be repealed and replaced with something that eliminates the 2/3 requirement for an early election.

56 Years of Doctor Who

Well, the Series 12 Trailer is out. It's rather staggering to think this is the twelfth run of a revival in a world where many shows don't even get twelve episodes total.

Got to say that I'm rather impressed with the trailer. It looks like it is going to be a lot of fun and hopefully some of the writing has improved; Chibnall's scripting was a major complaint among even those who like Jodie Whittaker's daughter.

No air date yet, mind and I think we're going to have get used to a season every 18 months or so from now on... well, 15 or 16 in this case.

But I'll frankly take what I can get.

Remembrance 2019

The First World War has nearly passed out of living memory - the oldest person alive, aged 116, was 15 when it ended and lived in Japan. All those who served in any combatant capacity on the various fronts have passed on.

It's very difficult to see a bunch of people in a black & white photograph as 'us', but they were. Peter Jackson's superb They Shall Not Grow Old, with colour images and reconstructed sound, helped really bring home the reality of that conflict. The slang may have been different, the fashion definitely so and the weapons far less advanced than those that appear on today's, still bloody, battlefield, but the emotions these people felt would have been just the same. Fear, disgust, friendship, relief, sadness, pain.

Let's not do this again and let's work to end the scourge of war worldwide.

We will remember them.

General Election 2019

There may be something of a resolution depending on the result of the general election. A Conservative majority would see the Withdrawal Agreement ratified and we'd move over to negotiating a trade deal during the transition period, which may get extended.

A Labour minority government (a majority is very unlikely) would give us another referendum, probably ending up with us remaining in the EU.

If we get a continuation of the status quo... who knows?

While I find the current Conservative government highly distasteful, I can't bring myself to vote Labour with the current leadership. Since I live in a safe Conservative seat, I will likely vote Lib Dem to help boost their national numbers and make a clear case for Remain.

Where next for Brexit?

After yet another government defeat yesterday, Boris Johnson sent a photocopy of a letter to the EU Council asking for another extension along with two further letters calling for them to reject the extension because he thinks he can get the deal ratified this week.

I'm not so sure; definitely not in its current form that's for sure. A lot of the amendments tried in the May era narrowly failed - but some of the people who helped vote them down were in ministerial positions and obliged under collective responsibility to vote against. These have now been purged from the front benches and some cases right out of the party.

Quite a few of these amendments will turn up again... and may well pass.

We're also very likely to get another extension from the EU27 and this whole process goes on and on...

Turkey, Kurds and Trump

The primary responsibility for the Turkish invasion of Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria is that of Turkey itself.

However, Trump's decision to withdraw US forces and betray the Kurds who had done the bulk of the fighting and dying fighting Daesh gives him a very high level of secondary responsibility. Especially due to the sudden nature of the withdrawal. 

Also, Trump seems to be of the "let the [offensive term for Muslims] kill each other" infant school of thought that is oversubscribed in Western society today. I've never liked that view. 

Utter humiliation for Boris Johnson

I tuned in for the tail end of the Supreme Court judgement. While I'm not in favour of having criminal trials broadcast on television, these appeal court judgements are something that I am perfectly fine with.

And, wow, it was damning for Boris Johnson. The summary and the full judgement available on online make clear that the 11 justices view a five-week prorogation as unjustified just to create a new Queen's Speech... as well as unlawful. To quote:

61. It is impossible for us to conclude, on the evidence which has been put before us, that there was any reason - let alone a good reason - to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks, from 9th or 12th September until 14th October. We cannot speculate, in the absence of further evidence, upon what such reasons might have been. It follows that the decision was unlawful. 

The prorogation is null and void - the 2017-19 session is back on from tomorrow at 11.30am - and this crazy process has yet more twists and turns.

If Boris Johnson had any morals, he'd resign over this. I guess we'll have to kick him out via a Vote of No Confidence instead though...

A Bad Day to Wear Red (Review: 'Star Trek' 2.13, "Obsession")

While collecting samples of a very hard element, Kirk's landing party is attacked by a killer cloud. A cloud that Kirk has seen before. He's determined to hunt this thing down, because this time, it's personal...

****
This is a very bad episode for fans of red shirts. No less than five are killed during the process of the story, none of them in particularly pleasant manner. Another, the main guest star, has a major attack of survivor's guilt and also tries to Kirk Fu Kirk, which could have gone a lot worse than it did.

Survivor's guilt is a big theme in this episode, although not named as such. It had only recently been identified - and would later become combined into the broader diagnosis of PTSD - initially among Holocaust survivors. I'd imagine there were a lot of cases of it - especially among survivors of an attack that killed a large number of their comrades - but this was one area of PTSD that hadn't been identified at the time of the war; battle fatigue (aka "shellshock") was something that had been dealt with a lot better then.

Kirk's survivor's guilt is prominent in this episode, manifesting itself in an obsession to go after the creature at the cost of a time-sensitive medical mission. William Shatner may have a reputation of being a massive scenery chewer, but here he plays it fairly restrained, his anger and determination clearer to see without throwing something at a vent that jams it open, unlike Stephen Brooks' one-shot Ensign Garrovick.

This is a strong episode for everyone except Uhura, who doesn't have that much to do and Sulu, who isn't in it. Spock demonstrates that Vulcan logic isn't perhaps the best thing to deploy in a counselling role.

As a final note, the version on Netflix is the original broadcast version, not the remastered one, which makes an interesting viewing. Mind you, the dated effects don't really detract that much.

****
Conclusion

An excellent episode, helped by Shatner playing it pretty restrained and with a strong overall story. It's very much a hidden gem and deserves wider recommendation.

9/10

A massive week in British politics

The week I pick to go on holiday to the Isle of Man... and British politics goes even crazier than it has been lately.

Boris Johnson's majority was eliminated, pretty much through his own actions. He should have never made the Benn act vote a confidence matter, but he doesn't seem to be getting very good advice lately. Now, with Parliament prorogued until 14 October, he faces the prospect of being forced to ask the EU for another extension unless he gets some new deal by then, which isn't very likely.

So, what next? Possibly more MPs standing down; maybe even further defections from the Conservative Party.

I think we are likely to have a November General Election - whether it is during a No Deal scenario or after another extension, it will be very bad for the Tories.

We might just get Prime Minister Corbyn...

Forest fires in the Amazon

The rather large fires in the Amazon forest have led to considerable world concern due to their potential impact on the effects to combat climate change. The fact that these fires are now routine and this is apparently below average fire activity is concerning.

It's good that EU nations are threatening to block the Mercosur trade deal unless Bolsonaro takes more action on this whole affair.

While people in the West can consume less meat, it's not going to do a thing unless wider action is taken to change agricultural production practices and indeed take other needed action. This is a global problem and it needs global solutions.

Unfortunately, the leadership sadly is absent in several key countries at present and I fear it might not turn up until it is too late.

In fact, it probably already is too late; we're going to have to move sooner rather than later to contain the damage corporate and other greed has caused. Which likely means building new, sustainable, cities for the refugees of the coming storms - literal and metaphorical.

Get Off My Space Lawn! (Review: 'Star Trek' 2.12, "The Deadly Years")

"The Deadly Years" is very much Trek by the numbers. Crew beams down to colony, discovers strange thing going on that starts to affect crew...

In this case the strange thing is that a bunch of young whipper snappers have all turned into old folks, four of which are already dead and the other two (both played by genuine old people, included the earliest born actor to ever appear in the franchise, who was born in 1882 in Switzerland and has a noticeable accent) are heading that way.

All of the landing party are affected, except for Chekov, who is immune for some pseudoscientific reason. With the three main characters plus Scotty all rapidly ageing, the makeup department get to have some fun making the characters look old. This is mostly a ship bound episode; the battle scene later was reused footage from a previous episode and I'm assuming the stuff on the remastered Netflix/DVD version is added specially.

It's interesting to see Kelley and Shatner playing in advance the old men that they would later become in real life. McCoy becomes even more crotchety - and even more Southern - than he normally is. I'm not sure what happened in RL on that front. Kirk on the other hand goes pretty much senile, what Shatner turning in an excellent performance here. It's good to note the now 88-year-old Shatner still seems very compos mentis, although alas Nichelle Nichols, just two years younger, appears to have advanced dementia.

The guest cast... are mostly pretty poor, especially one Commodore. Except for the old guy at the start. He's nice.

The science in all this stretches credibility by a long chalk, with a very quick recovery by Kirk once the solution is found. I'll let it slide partly because of the cool way in which Kirk deals with three Romulan ships without firing a shot.

We also have another old flame of Kirk, who again gets his shirt off and a comedy last scene. Like I said, Trek by the numbers.

Conclusion

For an episode whose deus ex machina involves radiation, it seems appropriate to use the classic line from Chernobyl.

"Not great. Not terrible."

7/10

Guess we're not having a silly season

With the current Brexit date two and a half months away, no-one is going to be getting a rest from politics.

Johnson is determined to get us out of the EU on 31 October come what may, seemingly without caring without constitutional norms he wrecks in the process.

Labour (which can't be called a Remain party) and the Remain parties are arguing in public over the shape of a Stop Brexit unity government; compromise is for many something the other side needs to do, not them.

I'm hoping - and indeed praying - this all gets sorted out before we have a No Deal Brexit... because otherwise it will need to be sorted out after.

Everybody Was Kirk Fu Fighting (Review: 'Star Trek' 2.11, "Friday's Child")

It's been a while. It's been a serious while. Like two years. A plan to watch all the episodes of Star Trek for the 50th anniversary fell completely by the wayside... and I've decided to rectify that.

With a flood of new Trek content coming over the next couple of years (Picard looks great), it does seem rather appropriate to go back onto this.

I'll link to the previous episode I reviewed here.

I'm going to be aiming for medium length reviews every week or so, but I can't guarantee anything...

****
So, "Friday's Child"... is full of woe. In multiple ways.

The Enterprise arrives on the planet Capella IV to negotiate a mining treaty with the warrior culture that inhabits the planet while wearing some very silly outfits, only to discover a Klingon representative has gotten there ahead of them. A coup happens and our main trio must flee with the pregnant wife of the former leader. It's suggested that McCoy might be the actual father... which sounds something more like Kirk would do.

There is an episode with a lot of problems in it. The guest cast is poor all around, with phoney accents and bad acting a plenty. Julie Newmar's whatever accent as Eleen is badly distracting, I'm not sure what Tige Andrews was trying to do as Kras the Klingon and Maab just looks silly throughout.

In fact, the whole Capellan portrayal is, shall we say, very much of its time...

We have some frankly dubious scenes where McCoy decides to touch Eleen's belly without warning, gets slapped twice... then slaps her back. With this show of  'male dominance' he then becomes the only person allowed to touch her!

The fight scenes are ridiculous with Kirk Fu galore and a lot of clearly polystyrene rocks.

Where this episode works is whether Lieutenant Commander Scott, Uhura and Chekov in fine form back on the ship as they deal with a reported distress call that is in fact fake. Scott's willingness to take firm decisions is great and we get a wonderful bit of him doing the 'Captain's Log' live on the bridge.

Finally, it is a law universally acknowledged that any pregnant guest character must give birth in an awkward situation... although we don't actually see the birth itself, probably because that wasn't acceptable in 1968.

Conclusion

This is really a rather poor episode, only saved from being awful by some very strong Scotty material.

5/10

Mass shootings in the US

With two mass shootings in the last 24 hours, apparently by white nationalists, the United States needs serious action on both domestic extremism and firearms control.

Unfortunately, there is no realistic prospect of either happening. Not with a President who is actively pouring fuel on the fire with comments saying that his opponents should go back to where they came from.

Trump is the worst US President in my lifetime end of. It's fortunate that he's incompetent, because I fear what an actual competent demagogue would do.