escape route

I decided that escape was the best solution. To simply get away from the dystopia for a few days. To reset. In the sunshine. So here we are, at Heathrow.

“The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.*”

It's time to leave the country when the bookstores fill and flash warnings with political analyses and memoirs. Davy has made his self-indulgent and sorrowful attempt and plenty of others are attempting to cash in on the store visits. Why, even Ken Clarke has gone a Kind of Blue.

*Margaret Atwood may pronounce fair warning, but it amounts to another reason to leave. Enjoy the last moments of freedom of movement, read the book on a beach somewhere.

It has to be done.

our view from the man in a shed

There's an attempt to freshen the content for Cameron's memoirs.

So much has happened since he triggered the Referendum and Tory psychodrama that crashed the UK, it is not surprising he can't sleep at nights.

At least he has a choice of venue, with his Cotswold home and the west London one. Then there's his £25,000 shepherd's hut designed for writing, yet he preferred the garden. Or, come to think of it, the second shepherd's hut on his £2 million Cornwall holiday home.

In this recent publicity interview, he has called out Gove as mendacious, Johnson as appalling and acting with 'sharp practices' and that the Referendum campaign left him caught in a quagmire. That the pair of them "left the truth at home," when campaigning for Brexit. Hardly insightful.

"I think about this every day. Every single day I think about it, the referendum and the fact that we lost and the consequences and the things that could have been done differently, and I worry desperately about what is going to happen next."

Cameron accuses Gove of creating the false narrative (like Turkey or the NHS bus) although I suspect that Gove's assistant Dominic Cummings was significantly influential. He also mentioned that he offered Boris a top-five job to support him. Would Boris have behaved differently if it had been top-three?

Cameron's already received the HarperCollins reported £800,000 for the right to publish his memoirs. No wonder he can give away the profits from the book and audio.

the littlest yellowhammers sing the prettiest song?

Tap turns on the water. See the water flow. As the old CCS song goes.

Now we've got the new CCS being authorised and budgeted. The Civil Contingencies Secretariat.

Acorn makes a forest. Watch the forest grow.



The justification and financing of the CCS is so that the short term impacts of No Deal can be handled, from ND D1 onwards. Yellowhammer says it is for short term and unusually has been granted power to suspend normal legislation in emergency situations. Maybe Boris is jumping the gun on this one somewhat? Once the peak of chaos is over, the DExEU swings into action and runs the long game.


Everything works in PowerPoint, as they say.

What I'm interested in seeing is the risk register, which should show mitigations for the main areas. Instead we have an allocation of risk assignment to other Departments sprinkled around the Civil Service.


It's clever, because it also has three cross cutting areas of responsibility covering legal, communications and data. There's plenty of lines and gaps to fall down, even before we get to the politics of who can tell what to whom.

Pass the hot potato parcel, anyone? It's not clear from the diagram how something gets placed into YellowHammer or DExEU.

There's a gap instead of overlap between the two areas on the diagrams. Maybe this will all be resolved amicably in the case of any surfacing emergencies?



Particularly noteworthy is the choice of language used to describe the CCS role. Advice, guidance and facilitation. In the type of crisis being portrayed, this doesn't seem strong enough, but I suppose the other Departments don't want to be messed with?


It appears that the decisions from the CCS can be communicated not only through the communications hub, but also through the liaison teams to the operational centres. I can see this governance model working in a steady state, but perhaps less so in a volatile one? Maybe someone should illustrate who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed as well as communicated to?


At least there are some guiding principles, to aid the decisions and direction setting. I'm not sure that it is enough though, even if Mr Gove is definitively saying that it is?


The yellowhammer is an unmistakeable yellow-headed and pretty bird, singing from the tops of trees and bushes. Sometimes the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.

mad boris

No wonder everyone is twitchy. Comic book mad Boris has tapped authority to sanction via arbitrary decree, relying on absolute authority to enforce. It is, as Mr Bercow implied, rule by fiat. The deceptive clown is borrowing from the Presidential model, as exploited by the big twit of the United States.

He's probably got there under guidance from the shadowy one.

The Tories haven't woken up yet to the thought that shadester Cummings believes huge amounts of what the Tories did was wrong. Not least of which was the hurried invocation of Article 50. Cummings has been exploiting the dysfunctional wiring of power in Downing Street and was one of the early ones to call out that the state had made no preparations to leave and planned to make no preparations to leave even after leaving.

Some of that has been revised now, with Gove's appointment and DeExEU chugging out papers on borders, security and Ireland. We must not forget the Brexit checker tick-box system, which auto lists other useful documents.

I tried it for TheSixTwenty and look at what we've received.

Dive into it and there's soon a complexity of semiconductor topology patents and uniformity of EU geo-handling (Don't Geo-block a country). Then there's UKCA (UK Conformity Assessment) - which is a new thing. I assume that CE will still work? Ah yes..."The CE marking will only be accepted in the UK for a time limited period. The government will consult and give businesses notice before this period ends." No hint of dates?

It reminds me of the consultancy process to generate a thin book and a fat book. The fat book has alll the facts and figures in it to support the thin book. I'd hazard a guess that the fat book has to justify its production fee of around £nK per page.

Cummings has gone on to say (to the Tories): "It also increases the probability that others will conclude your party is incapable of coping with this situation and, unless it changes fast, drastic action will be needed including the creation of new forces to reflect public contempt for both the main parties and desire for a political force that reflects public priorities."

Mwah,ha,ha, as a villain might say.

So now we get Mr Speaker diving in. Blockbuster ending, anyone?

Pass the popcorn (CE approved).

strong and stable

We've had a few crazy days with the aspiring strong and stable Parliament. Buffooning Boris is being taken to court for his ducking and diving associated with closing Parliament. So much for the will of the people and democratic processes.

No wonder most of the other parties are so guarded around the lies of progress in the negotiation and the thought that Boris might simply hoodwink everyone to get Brexit passed.

But where to start? The pound? The stock market? British industry? Let's take a look.

The Pound hasn't done so well, dropping from 1.69 to around 1.22 against the dollar.

Maybe the stock market has fared better? Or maybe not. Here is the FTSE100 compared with the DAX and the S&P400.

I seem to remember I summarised British industry in January 2019. Slip slidin' away.

1. JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive Jamie Dimon said the bank would probably use Frankfurt as the legal domicile of its European operations after Brexit, though jobs could be put elsewhere as well.
2. HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver confirmed possible plans to move 1,000 jobs from Britain to Paris in case of a so-called "hard" Brexit, and said recent reforms from the French government would be positive, if enacted.
3. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are planning to spread their operations across a number of cities including Dublin and Paris.
4. Lloyds, Standard Chartered, Credit Suisse, Citigroup and Nomura are among the banks that are planning to expand or set up new offices in Frankfurt in light of Brexit.
5. Hubertus Väth, the managing director of Frankfurt Main Finance said: “All in all, we expect a transfer of €750bn to €800bn in assets from London to Frankfurt, the majority of which will be transferred in the first quarter of 2019.”
6. Nomura Holdings has set up new offices for certain operations in Paris and Frankfurt as part of its Brexit preparations, but says it headquarters remain in London.
7. Other Japanese firms, including Daiwa Securities and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, plan to move their main EU bases out of London.
8. Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI, said the failure to sort out Britain’s departure from the European Union was damaging Britain’s brand abroad and had joined a list of systemic risks to the world economy.
9. Ford has predicted that a no-deal Brexit will result in costs of $800m (£612m) during 2019 alone, in the latest in a series of stark warnings over potential disruption to British manufacturing.
10. The Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis has said it is stockpiling drugs in the UK before a possible no-deal Brexit, which it warned would be “hugely impactful” for patients.
11. Jaguar Land Rover, the UK’s largest carmaker, informed employees that it will shut down its four main factories for extra time because of “potential Brexit disruption”.
12. Airbus manufactures aircraft wings in the UK and employs 14,000 people in the country. Chief executive Enders stated: “It is a disgrace that, more than two years after the result of the 2016 referendum, businesses are still unable to plan properly for the future.”
13. The BBC is considering Brussels as the location for a new EU base after Brexit to allow it to continue to broadcast across the continent.
14. Sony will move its European headquarters from the UK to the Netherlands to avoid disruptions caused by Brexit.
15. Panasonic has already moved its headquarters to Amsterdam, mostly because of tax issues potentially created by Brexit.
16. BMW plans to shut its Mini plant for a month after the UK’s official departure from the European Union, to minimise the impact of a no-deal Brexit that it fears would cause a shortage of parts.

It's hardly stable, despite Gove's claims that everything will be fine if there's a No Deal Brexit.

Similar stories of uncertainty in the House too, with shambolic scenes intended to echo the time of King Charles I, when members held the Speaker in his chair to delay ending the session.

A glance at certain commonplace pub names would remind us that it didn't end well for the Ruler.

shiny-shiny matt-matt

Alongside Apple's further shift to a services model, they've announced their next shiny-shiny and matt-matt versions of the iPhone. It illustrates that services may well be Apple's way forward because the iPhone form factor and massively copied features have just about run their course. BCF was an old commercial motto. Better, Cheaper, Faster. It plays out with the new cameraphone having an extra lens and some wild new voltage management and super-fast AI processing.

I was amused to see the video of a red one being dropped. It didn't seem to suffer the same filigree glass fractures that one of ours has.

I've been using the iPhone XS camera for most of my snapshotting over the last six months, instead of a bigger DSLR. It has proved to be pretty good so long as I don't use the digital zoom, which shows a smudged blockiness to some of the pictures.

As an equivalent of a 35mm snappy compact it's fine and ideal for routine travelling around pictures.

I use the Nomad case and pocketable Moment lenses as add-ons occasionally and thought Moment would give a pragmatic impression of the update.

Sure enough, they already support the new iPhones and have several new cases. Interesting that the Moment add-on lenses are still only for the same two lenses that they supported in the XS.

Moment are really a photographer's brand and make lenses and equipment for video as well as stills. Need anamorphic? macro? It's covered.

It makes me wonder about a device that can take slofies, yet has respectable tiny near pro-grade video cameras on the back? Who will really exploit it?

Of course the usual trolling has started.

Blahs got more mega pixels. Blah blahs got more lenses.

I wonder if it misses the point that, like Microsoft in the 80s, Apple is targeting to raise the game of casual users? Another old tag line "Computers for the rest of us".

I'll stick with my X at the moment, it is already pretty amazing.

It just works.

virtual yorkshire

Zwift's London makes for an interesting route, with pubs, bus stops, crowds of shoppers,Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and cityscapes featuring the Shard and the Gherkin. Some parts are very familiar, but then there's a dive into a tunnel near Waterloo which mysteriously emerges on the lower slopes of Box Hill.

Then a similarly sudden return from the countryside where one is thrown out on the south bank near to Tower Bridge. Of course, it is edited highlights of a real cycle route, rather than the whole thing.

Now they've added a new piece of the UK. Yorkshire, for the UCI Championships. Apparently they sent out scouts to video and photograph the route so that they could render it into the turbo trainer. It's certainly got a very different look from New York or Innsbruck.

I've seen the video and glanced at the route. I'll need to try this too. Fire up the turbo time.

lemon or cbd?

I know I'll get this wrong, but with Greta Thunberg sailing to America to make a point about carbon offset, I couldn't help notice this slice of millennial news.

It's the other side of Greta's debate, featuring a new way to ship plastic-bottled water to millennials. It's all about c-Business. Using SMS messaging, it's possible to order a supply of Dirty Lemon drinking water from a dealer, who will text a chatty reply to say it is on its way. Reminiscent of the approach used by a certain type of dealer around the skyscrapers of Manhattan?

Now this isn't any ordinary water. It's served up in a colourful 16 oz shampoo bottle (that's about a pint) and in a chilled package of 6 bottles at a time. All for the modest fee of USD65. That's £52.77.

The stylish resistor-coding rings around the bottle make it easy to identify the type of water being consumed. +Lemon? +Charcoal? +Aloe? +Turmeric? +Rose? There's a pretty wide choice. There's even +CBD, which contains an entirely legal cannabidiol extract.

So now the Millennial Influencers can sit around drinking it on their Instagram pages and Ker-Ching it's become a secret must-have fad.

Now, this where I don't get it. Conventional wisdom says that if you're out and want a chilled drink, then the Co-Op's chilled water is a great bet at 49p for 2 litres. Add a splash of lemon, from a fresh but wonky one, at 20p each and there's a delicious cooling drink, without the additives.

Or perhaps a recovery drink?

Well, chilled semi-skimmed milk comes as 2 pints for 89 pence.

See this 1958 advertisement, which isn't terribly different from the millennial selfies of today.

Drinka Pinta Milka Day, anyone?

Of course, in the olden days the woman had to be paid to pose for the publicity shot. Nowadays the influencers form an orderly line to receive their free goods in return for the selfies. I should know, with the number of intriguing offers (rejected) that even this modest blog receives.

But back to the product. It appears that another drinks supplier has shown an interest in Dirty Lemon and its marketing. It would be wrong to say that it had anything to do with the drug-dealing SMS model (even if their store in Tribeca is called The Drug Store). The makers of that once cocaine-enriched drink Coca-Cola decided last December to put $15m investment into Dirty Lemon's holding company, Iris Nova. They like the whole idea of impulse texting a purchase.

And it is so easy to smile, once you've enrolled for the Dirty Lemon subscription, it is possible to drop into the store, pick up a bottle and go, simply remembering to text the big lemon so that they can bill you.

1/Take What you Want. 2/Text what you want 3/Get on with life, as their store posters explain.

And if you can't pick them up in person, Dirty Lemon will ship the chilled shampoo bottles full of water free of charge to anywhere in the USA.

I think Greta may have her work cut out.

gated

Cycling today led me to this unexpected view. It was tagged on my map as a wood, but seems to be more of a building site. The barbed wire wrapped around the gates and the big padlocked chain seem to be a fairly strong hint to keep out.

I turned around and tried to find the 'welcome' sign to the area, but to no avail. It turned out I'd been a trifle speedy and had missed the preceding gate, which, tucked away on its left-hand side, incorporated the sign and a path.

The route back took me past the celebration orchard, with its varied collection of local apple trees. Star of Devon, Fair Maid of Devon, Killerton Sharp, Sweet Alford and the dry cider favourite Slack Ma Girdle.

Maybe a crisp apple tonight, with the dinner?

plain bananas and dogs chasing cars

I've been idly wondering about brain width and capacity. The amount of thought allocated to the European Question back in 2015, compared with now.

The average person in the street and the typical media/news outlet probably allocated less than 10% coverage to what was happening with that there Europe.

Except when one of those scurrilous stories about bananas or kettles popped up, inevitably authored by Boris Johnson and echoed by that boozy cigarette-smoking investment banker.

Since the Referendum in June 2016, betting against the GBP seemed like a good idea to some of Nige's chums and the whole scenario for what would happen was uncovered as a haphazard set of lies.

But most people nowadays are suffering from coverage exhaustion, hence the vox pop 'just get on with it,' quotes, and those that pay it more heed are confounded by everything that is happening. Even the redoubtable Emily Maitlis seemed at a loss for how to summarise the end of Newsnight yesterday.

I've looked back at some of this blog's commentary. Some repeating themes: Punch and Judy. Graphs that go down. No Plan. The dog chasing the car.

Both the lead politicians have managed to catch the car. Bozza as the PM, Jezza for a new General Election.

Like the dog, they both have that familiar question.

that boy needs therapy

I’m not sure whether 'Rebels' is the right name for the people opposed to Boris Johnson’s implementation of Dominic Cummings’ plan.

Using that language plays to the Brexiteers' vocabulary. “Give them a framing language to teach them how to think,” as the influencers’ handbook might describe it.

Boris, with Cummings’ hand on the tiller, is reshaping the Tory party to be more extreme, more right wing and stamping on the faces of those that oppose, even long servers like Ken Clarke and Nicholas Soames.

It’s a weird strategy, with his recent run of four out of four defeats.

Now that the House of Lords has agreed to pass Hilary Benn's bill to seek an extension to the Article 50 by 5pm on Friday, it means an election is on the way.

It’s still a moot point about the way that the situation is being gamed. Boris wants a breakpoint, so that he can shift blame away. Blame the EU, blame the opposition, blame Mrs May, blame the Civil Service. nulla mea culpa, 'guv

So the law forcing Article 50 extension has managed to get ahead of the bat habitation regulation bill in the wilfully jammed procedures of the House of Lords. If Parliament is hung, it stops Boris Johnson from crashing the United Kingdom out of the European Union.

But there's still game playing afoot. The new law still leaves the worst case of ’No Deal’ hanging around.

Both parties are cynically using it as a kind of bargaining chip. Like playing with the countries wellbeing for their political power. Some might say ‘betting the farm’ although they don’t actually own the farm they are betting, and are our servant custodians.

We must not forget that Boris the Clown is crazy in the coconut. Losing his first vote is probably Guinness world record material and to simultaneously crash the party majority is a wrecking blob masterpiece.

Shadowy Dom marches on. He's promoting talk of reframing the election run-up. Derestriction of the broadcast rules, no reductions on political party spending, no restrictions on outside groupminfluences. It's as if Cummings has learnt from the last set of legal transgressions and tweaked the small print for the next fight. Farage and his offshore moneybags will be rubbing their hands together.

Johnson can now spend public/government money on campaigning, and make it look very official. Something that no-one else can match without significant off-shore assistance.