Another Fine Mess

 

Becoming a Writer

Identity Politics

 

Are you being serious, Mr Witkoff?

 

https://open.substack.com/pub/philipbrianhall/p/are-you-being-serious-mr-witkoff?

Freedom of Speech

In an increasingly polarized society, we are losing respect for freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is an essential ingredient of liberty, as political philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment showed clearly. Without freedom of speech, societal and scientific progress stalls, error is allowed to flourish unchecked, ideas cannot be examined to establish their truth or falsehood, the human capacity for logical reasoning atrophies, and eventually, as J S Mill pointed out, even true beliefs become ritualized dead letters that we recite without understanding, and without the intellectual capacity to justify them.

Freedom of speech is thus essential to society. However, for individuals, freedom of speech is not always comfortable. Mill set his limits to freedom of speech at the point where it was likely to cause serious harm to a person who was spoken about. For example, it would be legitimate to criticize a person’s behaviour whilst speaking in a calm meeting, but illegitimate to employ the same words to incite a mob outside that person’s house.

My point is, we have inculcated in recent generations the notion that giving offence is wrong, that people who give offence are therefore wrong, and in order to prevent them from giving offence they should not be allowed to speak at all. In order to prevent them speaking, it is deemed reasonable to employ abuse, shouting down, deplatforming, and sometimes even violence.

Let me give an example in order to show that protecting people’s feelings isn’t necessarily good, even for them, let alone for society at large. In order to learn my trade as a writer, I had to subject myself to a lot of criticism. At first, I didn’t like it one bit. Not all of the criticism, as I thought, was even valid; some of it was upsetting or came as a shock. But the fact is, some of it was right, and necessary to my improvement; it took me a while to admit it, but without this criticism, I simply wouldn’t have learned enough to be professionally published. I could have protected my feelings by refusing to listen to anybody who didn’t see fit to praise me, but I would have unknowingly paid a great price. In practice, I still need constructive criticism because I’m a long way from perfect at what I do, even after all this time.

The crucial issue therefore is, not only is there is no right not to be offended, but being offended is a necessary part of human development. You do not suffer serious harm by having your feelings hurt. It may even do you good in the long run.

It has been truly pointed out that everyone is offended by something, and you can’t ban everything.

Today, however, various groups and institutions have mistakenly taken the view that certain sensitivities should be protected from criticism because of the sincerity with which they are held, or because of their cultural origins, or whatever. In consequence, we have opened the Pandora’s Box of trying to work out what might offend other people, and being vicariously offended on their behalf. It is not infrequently discovered that such proxy offence-takers are far more sensitive to imagined slights than the directly-affected people themselves. Self-styled righteous indignation rarely troubles itself with complexities and nuances. The path of emotion can lead to falsehood as easily as to truth.

An important axiom to remember is that a person who loses his temper loses the argument. It is much more effective to offer a rational refutation than to offer abuse. Assuming our interlocutor is rational, we are bound to conclude that if he had a rational counterargument to our position, he would use it. Therefore, by resorting to abuse, he shows he has run out of good reasons to object to our point of view. He simply can’t allow himself to admit it.

Sometimes there is no single perfect answer. There may several good answers which different people may genuinely prefer for different reasons. Not everyone who disagrees with us is necessarily wrong. Sometimes we must agree to differ.

Sometimes an issue is so complex that several people can each hold a piece of the truth, whilst failing to realize that their differing points of view are not actually as contrary as they may superficially appear.

At some time or other, you may even be wrong. Consider this: if our opponent proves his point through rational argument, we have gained a truth and given up a falsehood. We should be grateful to have learned something, not angry we lost. That response is what distinguishes a true lover of knowledge.

Needless to say, all these things are a great deal easier said than done. But in the long run, it’s truth that sets us free, and prejudice that mires us in ignorance.

Old Sheffield Plate

 

Old Sheffield Plate chamberstick by Matthew Boulton. The snuffer, being regularly in contact with a candle flame, has had more polishing and shows copper bleeding.

From my extensive research among for sale advertisements, it appears that a good many people believe Old Sheffield Plate is anything that is old, silver-plated, and made in Sheffield, England.

This is a misconception. Most of the elderly silver plate that people would like to be rid of today, because nobody enjoys polishing it any more, is electroplated and probably no older than 1840 at the earliest. If you examine the underside of such items, you will frequently find, among other marks, the letters EPNS or EPBM. You may or may not find a maker’s name, and / or mark, and / or a place of manufacture.

Electroplating, as the name implies, depends upon the availability of electricity. An object is first made out of base metal, usually the so-called nickel silver, (which doesn’t contain any actual silver at all, but is an ally of copper, nickel and zinc) or else Britannia metal (which is cheaper than NS because it is mostly tin). The object is then immersed in an electrolyte containing silver ions, and the current causes a thin layer of silver to be deposited all over the external surface of the object.

EPNS thus indicates Electro-Plated Nickel Silver and EPBM stands for Electro-Plated Britannia Metal. If you polish vigorously enough to remove the surface layer of silver from either of these, you will expose dull, greyish-silver patches of metal that can’t be shined. Electroplating of pure copper also took place, which can be confusing to the OSP collector.

Old Sheffield Plate was first introduced a century before electroplating, and was intended to appeal to the burgeoning middle classes, who were making money out of the Industrial Revolution, but who either couldn’t afford solid silver or thought it extravagant. When items were new, only an expert could tell OSP from solid silver, so the appearance of wealth could be created without the expense. To aid in the deception, a lot of early OSP was completely devoid of makers’ marks, and later much was marked with a series of letters which, absent close inspection, might be mistaken for sterling hallmarks. Other pieces were simply marked with what we might today call a logo, that is, a symbol denoting the identity of the maker.

Probably the twin suns maker’s mark of Matthew Boulton, registered 1784. The H is likely to be the craftsman’s personal mark, which could be used in calculating his wages.

Unlike electroplating, the process of making OSP begins with making the silver plate. This involves taking a block of solid copper, laying on it a sheet of solid silver, and fusing them together in a furnace, causing a thin middle layer of copper / silver alloy to emerge at the junction and form a permanent bond. The block is then rolled in a mill until it is a thin sheet which is silver on one side and copper on the other. The desired item is then crafted from the sheet.

This was a more expensive process than electroplating, because the silver is involved from the very first, and you couldn’t economise by placing base metal items in stock until an order came in, at which point the essentially already finished product could have the silver layer added. With OSP your only viable economy was to tin interior surfaces that were rarely seen, such as the inside of teapots, rather than putting another layer of silver on the other side of the block where the interior was to be exposed, such as a fruit bowl.

This egg cup was made of double-sided OSP, but the interior silver was either thinner or has been partially polished away. You can clearly see, on the outside, the originally disguised seam, showing that the bowl was made from sheet, not pressed out in one pie

Not all OSP was actually made in Sheffield. Although Sheffield ware was deemed the best, Birmingham overtook the original city’s producers in quantity. Some production by the same process was undertaken in France about forty or fifty years after Sheffield had invented it.

To my eyes, OSP looks a warmer silver than EP, which seems to me quite cold. It may just be my imagination. Certainly, when you over-polish OSP, you see a warm tone of copper ‘bleeding’ through the silver, especially on exposed ridges. Since, with limited exceptions, even the youngest OSP pieces are approaching their second centenary, the collector can, these days, tolerate a limited evidence of the copper underneath, but personally, I don’t really care for pieces so worn that they resemble copper objects with a bit of residual silver trim.

It’s a wonderful thought that your coffee pot might have graced the table of some affluent merchant’s dwelling decades before the independence of The USA, your tankard may have sailed the seas with an officer of Nelson’s navy, or your candlestick lighted Jane Austen’s way to bed. And though yours may have had a more prosaic history, somebody somewhere probably has those very pieces, because these things last a long time.


The great thing is that small pieces are still relatively inexpensive. But, like any silver, if you expose it to a lot of fresh air, it will oxidize and tarnish. Ideally, it should be displayed in a glass fronted cupboard with a tightly closing door. You don’t want to polish it more than you have to, because each oxidization and polishing away of the oxide erodes the silver coating.

Tariffs - The Video

 My YouTube Narration

Choosing Words Carefully

JD Vance seems to believe that Donald Trump is a man who chooses his words carefully.

Donald Trump seems to believe that the statement, "Mexico will not be required to pay tariffs on anything," makes sense.

I can hardly believe he said that. Is there a chance he was misreported?

I'm sure Mexico is relieved to hear that the amount it will pay in US tariffs is, always was, and always will be zero. A US tariff is paid by US importers and / or US customers.

Does Trump not know this? He doesn't actually believe he has power to tax foreign countries, does he?

Could anyone suggest to me what Trump might have said on this issue had he not been choosing his words carefully?

The Good Samaritan II

And lo, it came to pass that while the man who had fallen among thieves still languished in his sick bed, hovering between life and death, The Good Samaritan sent in a bill for his services.

“Alas, I cannot pay this,” the man said, “for I am not yet well enough to work, and the thieves have robbed me of half my possessions.”

“That’s all right,” said The Good Samaritan, “I’ll settle for the other half.”

“But if I give you such of my wealth as remains,” said the man, “I will have nothing to hand down to my children, and they will surely starve.”

“Not my problem,” said The Good Samaritan. “It was your fault for allowing yourself to be mugged in the first place. You should know better than to try to walk between Jerusalem and Jericho. I happen to know the leader of the thieves very well, and if you’d only asked me beforehand, I would have arranged for him to take a mere quarter of your possessions, and you wouldn’t have had to suffer so much of a beating either.”

“I’m sorry, I did not know that,” said the man.

“That’s because you’re an arrogant fool,” said The Good Samaritan. “Now sign over the rest of your possessions to me, and be quick about it.”

And after saying these things, The Good Samaritan went down to the pub to have a drink with his friend the Chief Thief, and they laughed together about how they had between them taken the unfortunate victim for all that he had.

Video narrated by the author

Approval Ratings

It is necessary to distinguish between approval ratings and net approval ratings. The former simply measures approximately what proportion of the electorate approve of someone or something; the latter measures the proportion who approve minus the proportion who disapprove.

President Trump’s approval rating was recently measured by Emerson College Polling at 48%, and his net approval rating at plus 6. This reveals that around 10% of the electorate are neutral. If there were no neutrals in the USA, Trump’s net popularity rating could be as low as minus 4. In other words, he is probably not supported by the majority of the voters, though that is within the polling margin of error.

President Zelensky’s approval rating currently stands at 57%. If there were no neutrals in Ukraine, that would give him a net approval rating of plus 14. For his net approval rating to be plus 4 under these same circumstances, he would have a minimum approval rating of 52%. In other words, he would still be supported by the majority of the population.

Of course, it is quite tricky to hold an election when your country is one fifth occupied by an invading enemy, (where any expression of support for Kyiv can have fatal consequences), six and a half million refugees have fled the country, a couple of million have been internally displaced, and innumerable children have been kidnapped and taken to Russia.

For the purposes of comparison, The current UK government’s net approval rating has never been higher than minus 2 and is currently minus 54.

UPDATE: Numerous new polls were commissioned for the completion of Trump's first month. All four of the ones I've seen confirm that his net approval rating is in minus numbers.

Alexei Navalny - Patriot

Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison one year ago. Everyone knows the word ‘died’ is a euphemism.

His crimes? Telling the truth. Opposing Putin. Surviving an assassination attempt by the FSB. And latterly, opposing the invasion of Ukraine.

Having the nerve to go back to Russia just when the kleptocracy thought they had got rid of him.

The question even his supporters, let alone his enemies, repeatedly asked of him was “Why did you come back?” On the face of it, it looks like stupidity. He knew he would be arrested. The only issue was, would he be arrested openly at the airport or more quietly?

He struggled to make people understand. He had run for political office. He had toured the country promising to tell the people the truth. His example had encouraged others to make a stand for freedom and democracy. They had been persecuted and imprisoned like him. The bulk of those who supported him were not in a position to leave the country.

But most importantly, he had promised never to desert the people. There ought to be one politician in Russia who did not lie.

And so Navalny went back. And he was imprisoned. And every month a new fraudulent charge was brought against him and new sentences were handed down. He actually found it amusing that he could be accused of committing serious crimes while in solitary confinement. His persecutors could not break him. As long as he lived, his mere existence was a testimony against the regime.

He accepted that the dictatorship would probably kill him. He thought his death would speak louder than his life. In his autobiography, “Patriot”, the last entry in his prison diary was dated January 17th, 2024. In it, he still held fast to a simple philosophy. One day Russia would be free. One day the crooks and thieves would be gone, and his countrymen could breathe free air and flourish in peace.

We all owe it to Alexei Navalny’s memory to hold fast to that same philosophy. Even when the night is darkest and the power of the barbarians seems unstoppable.

Speak truth to power. Always.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/PATRIOT

The Return of Appeasement

At what point should we expect US citizens to start singing “Buddy can you spare a dime” or dancing cheek to cheek?

Do I hear any takers for my Packard 745 or my Buick Marquette?

How about my dad’s old trilby or my grandfather’s fedora?

Forgive me for asking, but it appears the 1930s are back with a vengeance on the western shore of the Atlantic.

We began with tariffs, which, as I already noted, did a fantastic job of ushering in The Great Depression and shutting down large chunks of the world’s economy.

Now it seems we have resurrected Appeasement, the peace at any price policy which gave such encouragement to Nazism and Fascism, resulting in more land grabs and eventually the Second World War. Neville Chamberlain? Ha! Stand aside, loser. You may have invented the idea of excluding the victim from the peace talks, but you wait until you see me carve up the victim and hand over a fifth of their country without even a by your leave. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Hey, all you dictators out there! Just invade your neighbouring peaceful state, commit innumerable war crimes, and then come and talk to POTUS about how you can keep your ill-gotten gains, take time to replace your expended arms and ammunition, and get ready for your next aggression! Because everybody wants peace, right? And making peace is so easy if you give the aggressor everything he wants before the negotiations even start.

You know what? We’ll forget that you and the US both guaranteed the sanctity of your neighbour’s borders thirty years ago. We’ll just take your word for it that you have no more territorial claims. I mean, we know you broke your word twice already in that time, but we’re willing to let bygones be bygones. We’re going to trust you if you promise not to do it again.

And don’t worry about being an indicted war criminal, because we don’t recognise the court that indicted you. Hell, I don’t recognise the courts that indicted me. So we don’t even recognise our own courts let alone international ones.

And don’t worry about our European, Japanese and Taiwanese allies. Who cares what they think? If they want defending, then they should pay 5% of their national income to defend themselves. Like we do. Or don’t? One or the other, I forget which. And we have to defend on two fronts, not just one.

Just oblige me by not moving into the rest of Ukraine before I finish my term, huh? Don’t make me look bad, the way Adolf did to Neville.

Tariffs 2

I am afraid that DJT did not read my little article last week about tariffs. And that’s after me deliberately not entitling it “Economics for the economically illiterate.” I didn’t want to be provocative, you see.

I understand that the executive orders instituting the new US tariffs also contain anti-retaliation clauses. In other words, if the US tariffs are answered by corresponding tariffs against US exports, which is the usual, almost instinctive, reaction, The US will raise tariffs again in retaliation for the retaliation.

Welcome back to 1930, folks. Only, please remember that the last time the world travelled this road, it didn’t work out so well.

Tariffs

I am struggling to understand the sudden enthusiasm in the USA for the introduction of tariffs.

 
Tariffs are essentially a sales tax. It so happens that these sales taxes apply only to goods supplied to the US by other countries, but that does not alter their fundamental nature; a sales tax is a sales tax.

 
When you apply a sales tax to any product, its price rises. It may be that the supplier is able to absorb a portion of the new tax by reducing his profit margin, thus avoiding the need to pass the whole tax on to the consumer, but it will be a rarity for the price to the consumer not to rise at all. If the consumer goes on buying a product that has been subjected to a sales tax, then the consumer spends more on that product. In other words, price rises resulting from tariffs are paid by those who continue to consume imported goods.

These continuing consumers, therefore, must divert a portion of their spending that would have gone on other products to paying the higher price of the imported product. If that alternative expenditure would have been on domestic products, then the expenditure of those consumers on domestic products will fall, and the incomes of those who produce these domestic products will necessarily also fall.

Of course, some consumers will be deterred by the higher price from purchasing the imported good. The volume of imports will probably fall. This means the foreign suppliers of imported goods will have less income with which to purchase US goods and American exports will accordingly fall, along with the income of American workers who produce those exports.

There remains a question of whether domestic production will rise to replace the reduced imports. Domestic production that was able to compete at the previous import price would presumably already be doing so. Domestic production that is now able to compete at the new import price, but was not able to compete at the old import price, is probably going to avail itself of the diverted demand, but, by definition, only at a price that is higher than the old import price. So again, it is the consumer who pays, only he pays extra to a domestic producer rather than paying a tax to his government.

It has long been an accepted economic principle that more trade is generally good, in the sense of raising incomes all round, and that less trade is bad. Trade wars impoverish everybody in the world.
Protectionism may be justified when a foreign country’s government is breaking WTO rules by unfairly subsidising its exports, but if the foreign country simply happens to be better at producing a particular product than you are, then it makes sense to divert the domestic resources currently deployed to producing inefficiently into producing something else efficiently. That way trade will continue to increase and everybody benefits.

I acknowledge that the above outline may be seen as Economics 101 by those who know something about economics. I also acknowledge that I have glossed over problems of transition and restructuring.
However, this explanation was inspired by a vox pop interview in the US, in which a gentleman firmly asserted that tariffs on Chinese goods would be paid by the Chinese government. Oh, yes. And the only thing stopping pigs flying in the USA is that porcine aviation is prohibited by US law.

Be careful with extremist terms

Insofar as Fascism is defined as a totalitarian state apparatus which brooks no dissent or alternative viewpoints, it seems from my side of the ocean that The USA has been in such a condition for many years. What else is a politically-correct cancel culture? Monochromatic approaches to complex political issues, demanding yes / no answers when questions require nuanced judgements, intolerance of any stance which diverges from one's own - all this is the furniture of Fascism, simply going under the name of anti-Fascism.

Any society that is so far polarised as to view a democratic change of administration as an existential threat is already being destroyed from within, and the process needs no assistance from external enemies. Governments of any stripe are seldom good in themselves; they are usually no more than necessary evils, required to save mankind from the darker sides of our own natures. Mostly, democratic governments achieve this modest goal. Other polities frequently don't.

Be careful with historical values

For some reason, I can’t seem to restrain myself from intervening in discussions of UK history being conducted by Americans. My contributions are not always appreciated.

It does seem to me, though, that there is a serious problem of the retrospective application of modern values to the past. The most recent example I came across was a debate over the succession to King Henry I, which resulted in a civil war between Henry’s daughter Matilda and his nephew Stephen.


Many participants assume that Matilda was the rightful heir because she was Henry’s only surviving child and named as successor in Henry’s will, thus making Stephen a usurper. Sadly, things are not so simple. There are four principles of succession involved here., as well as other considerations:

1. Primogeniture was more Norman than Saxon;
2. Selection by council of the best man to defend the kingdom had put Harold Godwinson on the throne in the second half of the 11th century, while
3. Victory in battle had made The Conqueror himself king.
4. The power of a king to will the succession was disputed even as late as the 16th century.

There was precedent for a woman to rule (but not necessarily be crowned queen regnant) - most importantly, Aethelflaed of Mercia. However, war was a regular feature of life at the period and female war leaders were rare.


In short, we have to avoid the error of supposing that primogeniture was well enough established to be universally accepted in the early 12th century, and even more so that those who denied it were by definition rebels.

Whodunnit? Richard III, Henry VII or A N Other?

In all the ballyhoo surrounding the "discovery" of bequest of a "chain which was of Edward V" in the will of a distant relative of James Tyrell, there has been a great deal more heat (and impoliteness) than light.

To begin with, the mention of the chain has been known about for several years, and nobody made a fuss before. This is because it cannot offer conclusive evidence either way as to the fate of the Princes in The Tower.

It could have been a false attribution. If there are enough guaranteed pieces of the true cross to make several trees, why should this not be another fake relic?

It could have been taken from a body by a murderer. Murderers do sometimes take souvenirs, though these days at least they tend not to publish the fact.

Equally well, if the princes were smuggled abroad in mufti it would have been a serious giveaway to be found wearing royal jewellery or carrying the same in one’s luggage. To give it to one’s smuggler out of gratitude, or to hand it over to him for safe keeping, would have been the most natural thing in the world.

Ricardians and Henricans can bore each other to tears with this. The press can post as many lurid headlines as they like.

It can and does prove precisely nothing.

How to stimulate economic growth in the UK

 

1. Increase the payroll tax by £25 billion, ensuring employers need to shed workers.
2. Increase the minimum wage substantially, ensuring employers hesitate to hire new workers.
3. Increase job protection rights from day one of employment, meaning if a worker proves unsuitable he can’t be dismissed even though he is costing a firm money
4. Ban new oil and gas production.
5. Set the world a good example by an impossibly early arbitrary target for net zero, ensuring UK manufacturers’ costs are too high to be competitive.
6. Insist that car makers produce more electric vehicles than anyone wants to buy, ensuring closure of car factories
7. Introduce an inheritance tax that will eliminate family farms and ensure productive agricultural land all passes into the hands of financial institutions
8. Do the same for family businesses to ensure that they are also driven out and take all their capacity for innovation with them.
9. Impose a sales tax on private school fees, forcing some school closures, transfer of pupils to the state education system, loss of teachers’ jobs, loss of invisible exports (foreign pupils).
10. Describe all the above as a budget for growth.

After such an intensive stimulus package, you can act surprised and complain that you are not satisfied with the next set of growth figures.

Upon Which Foot is the Shoe?

The USA cannot be miserable at its own majority choice, can it? The Democrats are upset, but they can't, at the moment, claim to represent the USA. In fact, being disabused of the notion that they do represent the USA will, in the end, prove a good thing for some Democrats, as they are forced to recognize that they can't go on simply cancelling those who disagree, and must actually learn to talk to them.

The USA, at least, has the consolation of getting the president that the majority of voters wanted. That is, at least, a democratic choice.

For the time being, on this side of the Atlantic, we are contending with a freak result produced by a defective electoral system, with very little input from the people. (34% of the low turnout vote = supermajority).

I find myself irked by every mention of the word 'mandate' by a Labour minister. UK people certainly voted for change, in that they knew who they wanted to throw out, but who they wanted instead was obscure to say the least. What we are getting now is more partisan than popular.

But we had an opportunity to improve our voting system not that long ago, and we rejected it. It's too late to complain about the rules of the game, but we might take the opportunity to prevent repetitions of this travesty. We won't, of course, because the temporary beneficiaries of a broken system cannot envisage the day when the shoe may be on the other foot.

This is the price we pay for an adversarial party system. Julius Nyerere argued for a one-party state in Tanzania on the grounds that the country lacked the talent needed to waste some on opposition.

 
Loyal opposition, however, which holds the government to account without undermining the state, is an important check upon absolutism. But a loyal opposition has to show by argument why the government has erred, not just throw up its hands in horror.

Aesop's Fable #44: The Frogs Who Desired a King

Some people wonder why the frogs ever asked Zeus for a king in the first place. Were they not happy enough in their original free state? What was so bad about gambolling around in their pond with no-one to tell them what to do?

Most of the philosophers who have considered the state of nature concluded that it was a pretty rough and ready state of affairs, in which the strong preyed upon the weak and the weak had no redress because there was no system of justice. Rousseau, by contrast, imagined a noble savage who lived in tune with a natural world that he understood and in which he felt comfortable.

Well the frogs weren’t comfortable, or they would not have asked for someone to be in charge, who could act as a fount of justice.

Now, when Zeus threw a log into the pond, the frogs didn’t realise what they had been given. This was a nominal chief citizen, who wouldn’t actually do anything, but in the name of King Log, the frogs could have organised for themselves an elementary legal system to prevent bullying and exploitation, while in other respects remaining free. They could even have given the log a name: Emperor Claudius, for example, or perhaps Joe Biden.

But no, The frogs were not satisfied. A King ought to do things. A king ought to be able actively to improve the livelihood of the citizens. Well of course, who would not want that? Did no philosopher frog say, “Hang on a minute, chaps, the power to make moral choices may just as easily result in bad as in good?”

And so the frogs discarded King Log, who had been quite a good king, all things considered, and demanded a replacement. Zeus sent a water snake (or heron, in some versions) which began to devour the frogs.

The frogs complained to Zeus that this wasn’t the sort of king they’d wanted at all, but Zeus replied that they must live (or perhaps die) by the consequences of their own actions.

And Emperor Claudius was deposed and succeeded by Emperor Nero.