Author Archives: Tim Newman

Beating Kurds and Away

Posted on by

A couple of days ago Turkey decided to send its army south over the border into Syria and start massacring Kurds. Apparently this was Trump’s fault, as he’d withdrawn the couple of hundred US special forces who’d been helping the Kurds fight ISIS, and many people saw this as giving a green light to Erdogan. I’m going to take the lazy blogger’s option of simply repeating what I said last time this happened back in December:

I have a lot of sympathy for the Kurds. They seem less insane than anyone else fighting in Syria, more organised than anyone trying to manage territory in Iraq, and they are well-disposed towards America and their allies. They’ve been screwed over by the major powers on several occasions, suffered terribly at the hands of Saddam Hussein and ISIS, and been oppressed by the Turks. I would like to see their lot improved, and I will be deeply unhappy if the Turkish army move into Syria and start massacring them. If somehow they find themselves in possession of advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry with which they can inflict heavy losses on their enemies, I’d not be too upset.

However, let’s get realistic here. The US was never in Syria on behalf of the Kurds. US forces on the ground may have formed informal alliances with Kurdish groups, but there was never a US policy of protecting Kurds in Syria, at least that I’m aware of. To begin with, what do people mean when they say America should not abandon “the Kurds”? Do they mean the Kurds in Syria fighting Assad and ISIS? The Kurds in Iraq, who run a peaceful, semi-autonomous region subordinate (in theory) to the government in Baghdad? The Kurds in Turkey? And with whom should the alliance be made? The PKK? The Peshmerga commanders?

I asked a few people on Twitter who the Kurdish leaders were, what were their names. Nobody knew. When people talk of Palestinians we know they fall under the leadership, however flawed, of the PA and Hamas. We know the names of the leaders and what their policies are, and these people regularly attend meetings with the large powers and mediators to discuss their aims. But who represents “the Kurds”? What do they want? If Trump is “betraying an ally” this suggests an alliance was formed and promises given. Okay, but when, and by whom, and with what authority? Did any Kurdish leader meet Trump or a member of his administration? Did they meet any of Obama’s? Nobody who is screaming “betrayal” can answer any of these questions: they want war to continue indefinitely in support of an alliance they can’t describe on behalf of people they know nothing about. If this is what passes for political wisdom in the US these days, it’s little wonder they’ve been neck-deep in unwinnable wars since I left university. Fighting a war used to be a serious undertaking, now it’s something advocated on a whim to spite one’s domestic political opponents.

If Americans want to fight a war on behalf of the Kurds, they need to first come up with a clear strategy. What are the objectives, and over what timelines? And on behalf of which Kurds are they fighting? If they attempted to draw up such a plan, they would see why they need to give the matter a wide berth. The Kurds are not some homogeneous bloc, they are fractured along several lines and were they somehow to get their own state it would likely be completely dysfunctional as the various groups squabble among each other. There’s also the small matter that the most capable Kurds are invariably socialist; I get the impression a lot of Americans don’t know that. If America were to support the Kurds in any meaningful sense it would entail severely distabilising the national government in Iraq, as well as taking on Turkey in a big way. I’m not saying these are necessarily bad things – I’d like to see Turkey booted from NATO and Erdogan put in his place – but they need to be part of an overall strategy which the political classes in Washington simply lack the competence to put together, let alone pull off. Hell, they can’t even agree to protect their own borders.

Most of the meltdown we’re seeing from the American political classes is yet another example of Trump doing X and therefore they must oppose it. The rest is from people who think American soldiers should be sent to fight and die in pointless, century-old sectarian feuds in the Middle East because otherwise the country’s reputation will be tarnished – as if it’s currently held in high regard.

The most moronic take is that Turkey’s assault on the Kurds plays into Putin’s hands, as if Russia gives a damn about either of them. If anything Russia would prefer Turkey stays out of Syria, given they’re firm backers of the Assad who, presumably, would like to run things without interference from his neighbours. We’re at the point where if Trump exploded a thermonuclear device over Moscow during rush hour, half of America would say he was acting on Putin’s orders.

To my knowledge, Congress never approved sending US troops into Syria so they have no business being there in the first place. If the Europeans carping from the sidelines feel so strongly about the Kurds, they are free to send their own soldiers to protect them, assuming they have any, their guns work, and they can get there. And all those ISIS prisoners in Kurdish jails? Well, why were they still breathing?

Share

Faux Food and Cambridge

Posted on by

Last weekend I had a visitor from London come and stay with me in my humble serviced apartment in Cambridge, and we went for a wander into town. Parts of it were nice, mostly those parts you could only look at through heavy iron railings unless you were a student at the university. We wandered across a sheep field which some daft sod had put in the middle of the city, then down by the river where I watched people playing on boats that were in dire need of an outboard motor. If this was in Thailand they’d have mounted an old V8 truck engine on propeller shaft and they’d get where they were going quicker than the current arrangement which requires a long pole and a hipster telling lies about what they’re sailing past.

Cambridge is probably nice in the summer but it didn’t do a whole lot for me. It seemed to do a lot for China though, as a third of its population was there taking photos. The good news is I’ve found a bluegrass jam session and bought a second-hand guitar so I could join in. I went along last night and had a great time. There were two or three professional fiddle players there, and I got them to play Soldier’s Joy, an old civil war tune which you can hear a superb rendition of between 6:14 and 8:49 here:

Our jam sessions in France often lacked a fiddle, and it’s not quit the same without one. It appears the banjo is the rare instrument in Cambridge bluegrass circles, whereas we had plenty of them in France. Good job I brought mine with me, then. All I need to now is learn to play it properly. Sadly, this group only meets once a month so I might have to look for another one.

The one thing I am really missing about France is the food. Boy, the food in Cambridge is bad, bordering on inedible. In the early afternoon on Saturday we got hungry so found a pub and asked them if they served food. They said they didn’t, but the barman recommended a place on the edge of the city centre where he said the food was excellent, especially the burger. We went there and ordered the burger. It was tasteless and came on a plate beside a huge, wrinkled lettuce leaf which looked as if it came off a rhubarb plant. Whoever was masquerading as a chef that day had put on top of it large dollops of thousand island dressing, coleslaw, and ratatouille all in a row. What effect he was going for, and what national cuisine he’d drawn his inspiration from, I have no idea. The chips, which were extra, had been fried in oil which should have been chucked out a month ago. The next day we tried another pub. I ordered a piece of chicken which the chef had tried to make taste of something by piling bacon and barbecue sauce on top of it until its thickness was doubled. My companion ordered a pie the size and shape of a half-brick and about as edible.

Now I know what everyone’s going to do. They’re going to list all the amazing places one can eat in the United Kingdom and how with a little effort involving a week of research and driving to Dundee, I can get a perfectly good meal provided I don’t mind booking in advance and paying through the nose. So let me say yes, I know you can get good food in Britain. The problem is you have to know where to go. You can’t just wander through any random city, spot a joint, and go in and expect something edible. But in France I did just that for 6 years, including in Paris. I’d just walk into the first place I stumbled across and 99 times out of 100 it would range from good to superb. I never looked up anywhere and ignored recommendations, and I frequently ate in the tourist spots in Annecy. It seems in Britain I’m going to have to maintain a list of recommended eating spots and avoid anywhere else. As soon as I’ve got my own flat sorted out – a plan which has hit a small hiccup – I’ll start cooking for myself again.

It’s not all culinary doom and gloom, though. We have a canteen at work which, while not of the same standard as that of an oil major in Paris, isn’t bad at all and is absolutely free. They even have puddings with custard. It’s like being back in school and I’m there every lunchtime.

Share

50 Spent

Posted on by

Via William of Ockham, a tale of middle-age dating woe from that well-known city of love and romance: Paris Brisbane.

Brisbane mother Lorrae Carr says she has a good reason to lie about her age on dating apps.

The 51-year-old, who works in recruitment, says meeting a worthy match on Tinder when you are over 50 was like “finding a unicorn”.

There’s a lot going on here. Firstly her parents appear to have called her lorry car. Secondly, there’s the rather startling contention that a “good reason” for lying is advancing one’s personal interests. Thirdly, this woman works in recruitment: presumably she’s happy with people lying on their CVs if it lands them a better job. Finally, I suspect she is meeting plenty of worthy matches, but she is deluded as to her own attractiveness as a partner.

“The reason is once a woman hits 50 she becomes invisible,

50? Try 35.

I have done an experiment on this to prove it,” Ms Carr said.

“I posted identical photos and profiles, just changed my age by two years and got about five times the amount of responses as my younger self.

Woman discovers people use round numbers when setting age filters on dating apps.

“For a long time now I put myself as 49 not 51, because men don’t just search in that category and if they do they are in their 60s.

They don’t search in that category because they don’t want women of that age. This isn’t hard.

“I kind of felt guilty about it, it is not because I want to be dishonest I just want to find someone my own age.”

Most men want Taylor Swift; most men are realistic.

Ms Carr believes the 50th birthday milestone is a mental barrier for men,

In the same way 60 is a mental barrier for her?

and says she fesses up to her real age after meeting her dates in person.

The fact she’s got enough experience of this to write a newspaper article suggests this approach hasn’t delivered the results she’d hoped for. Who would have guessed?

She is not alone, data published by the The Australian Seniors Insurance Agency this month found four in five Queenslanders over 50 lie about their age on dating apps.

Are we sure they’re not just innumerate?

Clinical psychologist Matthew Worthington said while it was not healthy to lie about your age, it wasn’t uncommon.

Most people are terrified of being alone and fear rejection, that is why they lie,” he said.

I’m sure this is true, but it doesn’t describe the woman in question. She’s not in fear of being alone, she’s complaining the men she wants aren’t interested in someone of her age. What’s wrong with a bloke who’s 60? She’s hardly a spring chicken, is she?

He said the more people felt disconnected, the more likely they were to turn to online dating apps to feel validated.

Ah yes, serial online dating as an alternative to addressing psychological problems. Hi [name redacted]!

Ms Carr, who is the mother of two teenage boys,

Yeah, she sounds like quite the catch.

said in her experience, about a quarter of men her age used online dating apps to find casual sexual partners

What did she think Tinder was for, marriage proposals?

and many others to find partners 10-15 years younger than them.

Well, yes. Grandma could have told you this without switching on a computer.

“The biggest challenge is just trying to find quality people, there is not a shortage of men but there is a severe shortage of quality men – it is like finding a unicorn,” she said.

Yes, because quality men aren’t hanging around on dating sites, or if they are they quickly get snapped up by pretty young women who may or may not be from a place where they like sheep and mix their vowels up. Like many women featured in articles I’ve covered on this blog, this one seems to have an inflated view of her own value in the dating market.

“I think the older you get the more baggage people have.

Like two teenage sons and no mention of their father? Yeah, I bet men are just queuing up to get involved in that.

“There are also lots of married people using it and people who claim they are in open relationships.

I know Brisbane is backward, but do its residents really need a newspaper article to tell them this? What will they run tomorrow, a feature on how shopping is sometimes done online?

“Then there are people who are still in love with their former wives or girlfriends. People get on to Tinder after a few months of being separated and then find they are not ready.”

Is that what they told you? Heh.

Ms Carr said she had tried a host of online dating apps and websites, but was yet to meet her Mr Right.

Here’s my advice: 1) be honest 2) be realistic 3) don’t be a nut. Can you manage that?

“The last time I was in love was 10 years ago,” she said.

How is the ex-hubby doing?

“I have had a tonne of experience with online dating but have not had much luck, I am slightly jaded but still hopeful.”

So lying about your age didn’t work? Hmmm. Maybe you could try saying you’re from the Philippines?

Share

Whine and Punishment

Posted on by

I couldn’t get my phone to connect to my car on the drive home this evening, so I was forced to listen to Radio 4 where I heard this:

It’s basically a female MP complaining how terrible her life became when she discovered her boyfriend – not husband – was a dick. Or at least, that’s what she says: we don’t get his side of the story. I’m not sure if I heard the whole thing, but she didn’t mention violence, just “abuse” which included him not speaking to her, hiding his salary, and refusing to help pay for a new sofa. MPs no longer have the brains or ability to manage anything difficult such as get Britain out of the EU or work within a budget, so instead they use the commons as a stage on which to dramatise their personal lives. There is absolutely no purpose to this woman reading out details of her bad relationships other than to seek attention, which seems to be the primary motivation of a lot of politicians these days.

Followed her speech, Radio 4 shared this story:

Scotland has become the first country in the UK to make it a criminal offence for parents to smack their children.

The ban on all physical punishment was backed overwhelmingly by 84 votes to 29 by the Scottish Parliament on Thursday afternoon.

The move will give children in Scotland the same protection from assault as adults when it comes into force.

Parents and carers are currently allowed to use “reasonable” physical force to discipline their children.

The smacking ban bill was introduced by Scottish Greens MSP John Finnie, a former police officer, who won the support of the SNP, Labour and Lib Dems as well as his own party and many children’s charities.

The irony is that a child raised with no discipline will become just the sort of narcissistic, manipulative adult the MP in the video claims made her life miserable. It’s one hell of a world these idiots are building for themselves, isn’t it?

Share

Weather Girls

Posted on by

I’ve written before about the racket which is wealthy, middle class white people living on the taxpayer dime in expensive western cities demanding Africans change their ways. Today I stumbled across this rubbish from the World Economic Forum:

With the 2030 deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals approaching, the fight against climate change intensifies each year, with governments pumping resources into achieving them.

In the film Pacific Rim, the world’s governments pooled their resources in order to counter the threat of monsters emerging from the Earth’s core by building enormous robots to punch them in the face. That plan seems half-sane compared to what our current rulers are attempting.

One of the most critical SDGs is SDG 5, achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, because…

…it’s the only one offering a career for a dimwit with a Gender Studies degree?

…it will have positive cascading effects on the achievement of the other SDGs, including quality education, poverty alleviation, clean energy, reduced inequalities, good health and wellbeing, zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, decent work and economic growth and most importantly, climate action.

Apparently if we let women out of the dungeons they currently languish in, pretty much every problem facing mankind will be solved. Oddly, this doesn’t quite mesh with the fact that American women are about as liberated as it’s possible to be while America is held up as being a despairing pit of inequality and the world’s biggest polluter. So maybe we should hold off unlocking the manacles until we’ve figured out what the relationship is?

We are already seeing some of the devastating effects of climate change, with increasing floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

As they say in Wikipedia, citation needed.

Women are the most vulnerable in these situations, facing the maximum risk due to their socio-economic status.

I think they’re talking about women in Florida whose husbands own yachts.

With 70% living in poverty, women are disproportionately affected by extreme weather events, loss of agricultural productivity, destruction of life and property and so on, all of which stem from the climate crisis.

Unless these women are living alone – not a feature of those trapped in grinding poverty – then it’s hard to see how losing a house is worse for a woman than a man, unless he just schleps off down the pub and lives there until she’s rebuilt it. And destruction of life? Does that not really affect men, then?

Women also have the knowledge and understanding of what is needed to adapt to changing environmental circumstances in order to determine practical solutions.

They do? Then why the need to do anything?

But women remain a largely untapped resource due to existing biases, including restricted land rights, lack of access to training, technology and financial resources, and limited access to political decision making due to under representation.

Is she describing medieval Europe here?

For practical and effective climate change mitigation, we must unleash the knowledge and capability of women.

Yeah, I’m not sure what’s holding them back in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, German, France, the Netherlands, Norway…(cont’d page 94).

To find sustainable solutions, it is critical to recognize the important contributions of women as decision makers, caretakers, stakeholders, experts and educators across all sectors.

A minute ago women were an untapped reserve thanks to the patriarchy standing on their necks. Now we must recognise their important contributions to world affairs. Which is it?

Greta Thunberg, Christina Figueres and Franny Armstrong, to name a few, are already leading the way in not only climate change advocacy but also in crafting sustainable, long-term solutions.

I don’t know who the latter two are, but Greta Thunberg’s solution is about as sustainable as her act of looking twelve.

According to McKinsey, in a “full potential” scenario in which women play an identical role in labour markets to men, as much as $28 trillion, or 26%, could be added to global annual GDP by 2025.

Has anyone asked women if they want to play an identical role as men in the labour market which, in case the geniuses at McKinsey have forgotten, includes working in sewer pipes and hanging off power lines?

This is more than enough to bridge the climate finance gap needed to fund the battle against climate change, which stands at €530 billion ($585 billion) per year by 2020 and €810 billion ($894 billion) by 2030.

So women are to be put to work in their millions in order to pay for the costs of climate change legislation. Apparently this is good news for women.

Just increasing the participation of women in the labour force will sufficiently increase the world’s GDP for financing sustainable development.

At the expense of the birth rate, which will leave that word “sustainable” looking rather forlorn.

One of the most potent tools for increasing the effectiveness of women in climate change mitigation is renewable energy, which can help transform the lives of women by improving their health, providing them with better livelihood prospects, improving their education opportunities and more.

Increasing the cost of energy improves the lives of the world’s poorest, apparently.

In fact, it offers women many entrepreneurial avenues for further deployment of renewable energy, which in turn mitigates carbon emissions.

So it’s not the structure of the host society which is preventing women becoming good little worker bees, but a lack of electricity?

And rural women will be the primary beneficiaries. Looking at examples such as Solar Sister in Africa, renewable energy increases women’s relevance in society, shields them from harmful health effects of indoor pollution (through burning of biomass)…

One of the biggest problems in Africa is the lack of reliable electricity coupled with the fact it gets dark around 7pm, after which there isn’t a whole lot to do but get busy making more kids. What is desperately needed to improve the lives of African women is cheap, reliable power 24/7 from a traditional grid. Solar power isn’t going to do anything to help without a storage system that has yet to be invented, and this nonsense is going to prevent a proper power station being built.

…and makes them agents of climate change mitigation through their involvement in renewable energy deployment.

I’m not sure being handed shiny trinkets is historically very empowering for natives, even if they come in the form of solar panels.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2013 found “a nation’s competitiveness in the long term depends significantly on whether and how it educates and utilizes its women” and whether they have “the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities as men.”

Which explains why the Soviet Union outperformed Japan.

Women bring more empathy and inclusiveness in their advocacy and problem-solving, which enhances their efficacy as sustainability leaders.

If women are naturally better at problem solving, why does it need supranational organisations to promote them? Surely the results would speak for themselves. I mean, no organisation ever got set up to persuade people that women are pretty good at raising kids, did it?

Whether it’s tribal women in Udaipur, Rajasthan, becoming green entrepreneurs, or Barefoot College in Rajasthan creating female solar engineers, or women-led self-help groups in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, mobilizing funds for water and sanitation (important components of sustainability), there are examples of women everywhere leading the way to a sustainable future.

All under the watchful eye of well-paid white folk living as expats in Geneva. Kerr-ching!

Share

Vive la difference!

Posted on by

I’ve written before about my frustration with presentations and meetings in French companies (or at least, French oil companies). I’m rather pleased to say that my experience in my new outfit has been rather different.

That’s not to say everything got off to a great start: halfway through my third day I was hauled into a small meeting room by my boss and the HR lady who both had serious looks on their faces. I won’t go into details, but I was rather relieved to find 1) I’d done nothing wrong and 2) it had nothing to do with my blog. But other than perhaps the first six months in Lagos, when I had a superb French boss, this is possibly the first job I’ve had in a long time where I’m not treated like someone who’s arrived fresh from the field of a fuckwit farm. The method of distributing work seems to run along the lines of, “You see that job there? Get on with it.” Whereas I’m more used to being told what bullet points to add to a slide and how to make what I’ve written sound more stupid.

Now it might not just be the switch from France to England that explains this; after all, my new boss is French. It is probably as much down to my moving from an oil company – which has the efficiency of a Soviet toaster factory but the income of a warehouse of oligarchs – to a firm on the cutting edge of technology with demanding customers. Whatever the reason, when we have meetings the chairman cuts in if people start drifting off topic or the discussion goes on too long, and five minutes before the end everyone is told to wrap it up because the meeting will end on time. If there’s something on a screen, it’s a handful of slides. Often it’s just half a page.

It’s nice not to feel completely useless for a change. Alas, such utilisation leaves me with little time to blog. This must be what psychologists mean when they say people are conflicted.

Share

Court and Rolled

Posted on by

I’ve often written about the parallels between Brexit and Trump’s election, and another has revealed itself over the past few days.

I haven’t followed the story too closely, but it appears the American Establishment is going into meltdown over a phone call Trump made to the Ukrainian president. Their Russian collusion narrative having failed, they’ve effortlessly switched to trying to impeach Trump over this phone call to Ukraine. In many respects, this is hardly news: the insane wing of the Democrats – which is most of them – have been banging on about impeaching Trump for months. They have no idea what for, and nor do they care; they just want to force him from office. The only newsworthy bit about this story is that Nancy Pelosi has finally been browbeaten into getting on board with it.

When it comes to Trump, the American ruling classes threw out the rule book a long time ago. The joint intelligence community and Democrat attempt to prevent him being elected and then unseat him after the event would have resulted in lengthy prison sentences or executions in pretty much every other country at any point in their history. They lied through their teeth about the Russia collusion and activist judges are ensuring every move he makes gets blocked. They don’t care about the law, nor who sees it. All they care about is removing Trump from office and they’re prepared to bring the whole house down on themselves to do it. In many respects, the rule of law no longer applies in Russia.

On our side of the Atlantic, our political classes are doing much the same thing. The other night the supreme court judges upended the British constitution to declare Boris Johnson’s proroguing parliament was illegal because they couldn’t think of a reason why he did it. If we cut through all the bullshit, a handful of judges – who are very much members of the ruling classes and share their interests – decided to kill off another attempt to deliver the Brexit which was decided via referendum in June 2016. So Britain now has a politicised supreme court like in the US, one which considers itself above the monarch. The ruling classes aren’t even pretending any more. They might as well come out and say Brexit isn’t happening because they don’t want it to. It would at least be more honest, and they might avoid adding a string of appalling precedents to the one they’ve already set by refusing to enact the result of a free vote. As with the US, Britain is no longer a country of laws. It is ruling class free-for-all.

With each passing month, the barriers between peace and violence get torn down one by one. There is only one place at the end of this road, and that is the sort of political violence you see in failed states with politicians, judges, policemen, and journalists all fair game. I don’t think it will happen soon, though. Instead, we’ll enter into decades of being ordered around at the whim of the ruling classes, who take ever more brazen liberties while tightening the noose around our own. And then a generation will arrive who won’t stand for it, and the blood will start flowing.

It won’t be Nancy Pelosi or Brenda Hale who pay the price of their contempt for the people and the law, nor even AOC or Gina Miller. It’ll be their grandchildren, assuming they have any, who will inherit their privileges but not their protections. Those clowns hanging onto the words of Greta Thunberg are right to be worried about their children’s futures, but not for the reasons they think.

Share

Stakhanovite

Posted on by

So my new job is keeping me fairly busy: I am in the process of writing a scope of work for a metals dissolving plant. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what one of those was until about the time I started writing it, but I’m a quick learner and it turns out it’s something to do with dissolving metal.

Unfortunately, this sudden demand I do some work is having a detrimental impact on my blogging. It’s not that I don’t have time to write posts at home, it’s that I don’t have time to surf the internet all day finding things to write about. Tomorrow I’m going up to Billingham for a couple of days, and Wednesday evening I expect I’ll be in the hotel without a whole lot to do, so maybe I can knock out a post then. The other problem is I have to dedicate a few hours a week to my dissertation. I’ve just spent all weekend working on it, thus missing the Battle of Britain re-enactment at Duxford just a few miles away. I’m managing to watch the important games of the rugby world cup, though.

So, if I’m not posting as regularly as I was, you’ll know why. Sorry about that, but there’s not a whole lot I can do. Apparently organisations outside the oil industry expect their employees to produce something occasionally. Who knew?

Share

Tyranny of Losers

Posted on by

As you know, I’m living in the UK with a French car, a BMW. My plan was to go back to Annecy at some point in the autumn and sell it quickly on one of the auction sites. The trouble is, the service light came on. Apparently it needed an oil change and nobody is going to buy a car with a service light on, or at least they’re not going to pay full market value for it. So I called the BMW dealership closest to me and asked if I could book it in (yes, I know the main dealers are expensive and honest Hank down the road can turn the service light off, etc.) They took down the VIN number and told me there was a safety recall on an engine component, and they might need the vehicle for a few days. I said I’d had the car in the main dealer in France a few months back and they’d not said anything, even though this recall is a couple of years old. So I said skip the faulty component, just change the oil. Ah, but this is Britain:

“We can’t do that, we are not allowed to release the car with a safety malfunction”. 

Not allowed by whom? Is there a law saying a garage cannot change the oil in a car with some alleged problem in part of the engine? No, it’s probably some policy imposed by BMW, or even the dealership, being presented as if they are words handed down by God himself. You see a lot of this in Britain, appeals to mysterious higher powers who have delegated their formidable authority to the person you’re dealing with. There’s nothing a British jobsworth likes more than pompously telling you something mundane is illegal, truth be damned.

I decided to take the car in anyway. I asked at the counter why the French BMW concession hadn’t told me about this recall. “Well, it was just a UK-wide recall,” I was told. “Then why does it affect my French car?” I asked. She had no answer for that. When the work was done I asked the same question to another clerk. He replied that “There were a lot of recalls, maybe they were too busy and so decided not to mention it?” Which seems odd for a problem which, according to these jobsworths, was so severe they simply couldn’t just change the oil and let me be on my merry way.

For some reason, I don’t think my experience with BMW was too far removed from this video, which shows a couple of thugs employed by the local government in Grimsby fining a pensioner for having a dog in a graveyard:

British people, in the main, like to follow the rules and cooperate with authority. The downside of this is that certain people, when given a smidgen of temporary authority, gleefully wield it against ordinary folk, and especially those who have little choice but to cooperate. You can be damned sure the fat fool in the video would stay well clear of a couple of chavs with a pitbull; they’d have slapped him silly and posted the video on Snapchat. You see this authoritarian, bullying attitude everywhere in Britain, especially at airports and anywhere else where jumped-up little wannabe Hitlers can cite a Blair-era law to justify their actions. I remember years ago being on a rubbish dump outside Worcester with the bloke who ran the place lecturing us on how interfering with a washing machine we found lying there was “breaking the law”. You can only imagine what these people would be like if given real power.

None of this happens in France. For a start, the local government wouldn’t hire thugs to harass pensioners for walking their dogs. Secondly, no Frenchman would take the job because they’d find the local bar wouldn’t serve them any more. Thirdly, the public wouldn’t cooperate. There’s no way you’d get a hundred euros out of Frenchwoman the way these two shook down the old lady in Grimsby for £100. They’d risk arrest and imprisonment before they’d cough up on the spot like that. One of the things I like about the French is their disdain for authority, particularly that wielded by the government. I’ve written before about the very different relationship the French police take towards the citizenry in comparison to their British counterparts (the gilets jaunes in big cities notwithstanding).

That’s not to say the French fonctionnaires aren’t the most frustrating people on the planet; a trip to the local prefecture would disabuse you of that notion within minutes. But their contempt for you is one of utter indifference: they don’t hate you, they simply don’t care. But in the UK the bureaucrats and petty officials take delight in lording it over people, as if they’re trying to make up for a lifetime of being a complete loser in every field.

There’s also no room for nuance. I expect the reason the recall never happened in France is because the Frenchmen who owned the dealerships realised they were going to have a load of irate BMW owners on their hands, demanding compensation and free courtesy cars. So they probably negotiated and persuaded BMW that maybe the issue wasn’t that bad after all. Whereas in Britain BMW would have called the UK dealerships who immediately accepted whatever they were told and decided they’d refuse to perform routine services on customers’ vehicles unless they agreed to surrender them for several days during which they’d have to hire a car at their own expense (as I did).

The French approach to things can drive you insane at times, but there are times when I grudgingly admire their intransigence. And few things make me feel more ashamed of my country than the combination of authoritarian bullying by British jobsworths and its craven acceptance by ordinary people.

Share