Chaos & Conflict – the world’s forgotten wars

Devotees of cricket will be aware that Mark Waugh’s nickname is Afghanistan – the forgotten war in the late 1980s when he lived in the shadow of his more successful twin brother Steve. At the moment there are two major conflicts raging in the world – Ukraine vs Russia and Israel vs Hamas . . . or are there? The mainstream media spoon-feeds us information about a handful of wars, coups, territorial disputes and self-determination movements at any given time. We hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest. Beyond the two aforementioned wars there are several other conflicts ongoing where the high bodycount and widespread human misery really should yield attention but for various reasons stay below the radar. It’s impossible to cover off all of them in an easily-digested read but I feel minded to shine a light on a few of the most important overlooked conflicts around the world.

DR Congo
It’s a real head scratcher as to why this one doesn’t get more prominence. The civil war in DR Congo has resulted in six million deaths since 1996, with millions more injured, malnourished or displaced due to the conflict. It has the highest number of deaths of any conflict since World War II. Since gaining independence in 1960 DR Congo/Zaire has suffered from repressive regimes, coups and never ending conflict involving secessionist movements and militias that want to control the country’s mineral wealth. DR Congo is officially classified as the least developed country in the world by the UN.
Current fighting has yielded 600,000 refugees in neighbouring countries, 4.5 million internally displaced people, and two million children at risk of starvation. The starvation element flags up why we should always pay special attention to conflicts in the developing world. Life is so precarious that conflict interrupts food supply, water supply, adequate sanitation and basic medical care. Far more die from starvation, thirst and waterborne diseases than through fighting – something that will probably play out in Gaza in the next few weeks.
The Council for Foreign Relations (CoFR), an International Relations think tank, says of DR Congo, “Weak governance and the presence of various armed groups have subjected Congolese civilians to widespread rape and sexual violence, massive human rights violations, and extreme poverty. The African Union (AU), United Nations (UN), and neighbouring countries have struggled to address threats posed by rebel groups, promote development, and improve humanitarian conditions.”

DR Congo’s M23 militia group in the part of Africa rarely visited by western media

West Papua
Before gaining prominence with the Tribe series Bruce Parry made his TV debut in the BBC’s Extreme Lives series where he attempted to climb the highest mountain in West Papua, Puncak Mandala. He and his crew had to do this undercover from start to finish because you have to ask the Indonesian government’s permission to go to West Papua at all – out of the question if you’re from the foreign media. Parry’s insight into Western Papua showcased a spectacular country where pretty much all of the indigenous people were on edge, thanks to the colonial oppression and subjugation meted out to them in turn by the Netherlands and Indonesia.
West Papua is the Western half of the island that includes Papua New Guinea to the East. It has the misfortune of being at the boundary between Asiatic and Melanesian ethnic groups. Like many places that are occupied, it has been undergoing social engineering so that the population is now roughly 50% Indonesian and 50% Papuan. West Papuan leaders say that over 500,000 civilians have been killed in a genocide perpetrated by the Indonesian army to date.
As West Papua is so remote and very little reporting takes place it’s impossible to verify this figure independently. However, as Indonesia is believed to be responsible for 200,000 deaths in East Timor during its 1975 – 1999 occupation of that nearby territory, we know Indonesia has a reputation for being a particularly bloodthirsty and callous imperial overlord.
A spokesperson for the Free West Papua Campaign says, “Racism and discrimination are a daily reality and basic human rights including freedom of speech are outlawed. There are hundreds of West Papuan political prisoners serving lengthy terms for the ‘crime’ of peacefully expressing themselves.
The Indonesian Government have banned international media and human rights organisations from operating in West Papua, ensuring that news about what is happening rarely reaches the outside world.” Spread the word!

West Papuan Independence leader Benny Wemba in the Palace of Westminster for the launch of International Parliamentarians for West Papua

Myanmar
When I became an undergraduate way back in 1991, freedom for Burma, as it was known at the time, was a cause célèbre because Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband Michael Aris had strong links to the University of London. I learnt a lot about the repressive regime in Burma thanks to Student Union politics. At the time the notion of loosening the grip of the ruling military class seemed pretty distant as the international community was putting little or no pressure on the country. In the 30 years since Myanmar has gone through a process that many countries have – a brief flowering of freedom and democracy, only to see that revert back to a brutish and reactionary norm when military/security forces are ready and confident enough to take back control.
Myanmar was quite frankly a sham democracy before the 2021 military coup with Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for many years. Now the country has gone back to its default position of being a repressive pariah state, with the added twist of inter-religious and ethnic conflict. Tensions have existed between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Burma for more than 100 years but they really flared up in 2012 with violence and riots leading to hundreds dead and thousands internally displaced. A lack of resolution and further violent outbreaks in 2016/2017 mean that the UN estimates there are 725,000 Burmese muslims in neighbouring Bangladesh, indeed the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp is officially the largest in the world.
The military coup in 2021 prompted a strong response from the general public in Myanmar, with widespread street protests, this has provoked a brutal crackdown with an estimated 600 killed so far, including 100 in one day last March. In parallel with many countries involved in the Arab Spring, Myanmar took two steps forward and two steps back politically and economically. Myanmar’s currency, the kyat has fallen 30%, leading to spikes in fuel, food and raw materials inflation. Unsurprisingly the military junta now in charge has cut health, education and welfare spending and increased the defence budget.

The huge Cox’s Bazar refugee camp – vulnerable to fires and Covid 19 outbreaks

Central African Republic
CAR is a country recently made famous by Boris Becker’s appointment as its cultural attache in Europe, however Becker’s bankruptcy is the least of CAR’s worries, riven by long running religious and ethnic conflicts. Unfortunately CAR can lay claim to being the most war-torn country in the world. In 2022 5.6% of its population died (300,000), the highest mortality rate of any country, connected to the latest round of violence that’s been ongoing since 2013. CAR gained independence in 1960 and has suffered six coups since then. It marks a religious fault line between the Muslim and the Christian worlds in Africa and some of the violence has been religiously motivated.
This statement by CoFR gives a good summation of how violent and ungovernable CAR is, “In 2017, fighting intensified, forcing aid agencies to pull out and prompting MINUSCA, the UN peacekeeping mission, to boost its troop numbers. A peace agreement signed in June 2017 between the government and thirteen of the fourteen main armed factions had little effect, and ex-Seleka and anti-balaka militias, along with hundreds of other localised groups, operate openly and control much of CAR’s territory.”
It’s possible that the only country with more armed groups is Libya (estimated 1,600), another failed state that’s been at war with itself for 12 years now. CAR’s population is 5.5 million so it probably has one armed group per 25,000 people, making establishing a lasting and meaningful peace almost impossible. Another reason to be pessimistic about CAR’s fortunes is that the government has hired the Wagner Group to help restore order. Wagner is, as we know, a malign actor with all the scruples of a Bond villain. The UN hasn’t covered itself in glory either, it’s had to expel peacekeepers following allegations of sexual violence. CAR is another country that sees a mirage of progress only to fall back – in 2019 the UN implemented a peace deal that saw several armed groups stand down. This July, however, CAR’s President Touadera held a referendum that abolished term limits so he can run as many times as he likes – the vote was widely condemned by international observers as a farce.

UN peacekeepers trying and failing to contain a huge number of armed groups in CAR

Ethiopia
After the famine of the mid-1980s Ethiopia became the darling of the development community, it was the fastest growing country by GDP for several years in a row in the 2000s and 2010s. Growth rates consistently around 9% are enough to lift people out of poverty, and for a while it seemed Ethiopia was on a path to elevate itself well above its equatorial African neighbours. The country has always been an easy coalition of ethnic groups, dominated by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) up until the death of Tigrayan president Meles Zenawi in 2012. A spokesperson for the Centre for Strategic and International Politics sums up Ethopia’s recent political history thus, “When a short-lived democratic opening led to large gains by opposition parties in the 2005 elections, the door was firmly closed. Approximately 200 people were killed in the violence that followed, and opposition supporters were rounded up in their thousands, many of them ending up on trial for treason. The 2010 elections were a return to normality; Meles’s ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), won all but two seats in Ethiopia’s 547-seat lower house, polling more than 99 percent of the vote in the process.”
Such repression rarely leads to lasting peace and stability and it was no great surprise that many of Ethiopia’s marginalised but substantial ethnic groups the Somali, Oromo, and Amhara agitated for a larger say in the ruling of Ethiopia. Clashes between the TPLF and Ethiopia’s National Defence Force (ENDF) occurred throughout 2019 and 2020. To complicate matters, Etritrea, which fought a border war against Ethiopia at the turn of the millennium, has been supporting new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, who won the Nobel Peace Prize as recently as 2019.
While the intensity of fighting has died down somewhat, Ethiopia is still in a world of trouble as CoFR observes, “The outbreak of the conflict in Tigray triggered a refugee and displacement crisis that persists today. In 2021, Ethiopia reported 5.1 million internally displaced people in twelve months, the most people internally displaced in any country in any single year. Millions more have fled to Sudan as northern Ethiopia, especially Tigray, remains cut off from food, water, and medical aid.
Outside of Tigray, tensions continue to run high among other ethnic groups. In April 2021, the government declared a state of emergency in Amhara state after a series of violent attacks against ethnic Oromo residents. Oromia’s regional army allied itself with the Tigrayans in the civil war, whereas militants from Amhara and Afar (regions bordering Tigray) were accused of assisting federal troops, even attacking civilians they suspected to be Tigrayan or affiliated with the TPLF.”

The uneasy relationship between ethnic groups in Ethiopia broke down with TPLF forces marching on the capital Addis Ababa

Postscript
I picked five – I could have chosen 25. I mean in no way to ignore or trivialise other self-determination movements, territorial disputes or conflicts across the world. The campaigns for freedom in Western Sahara, Darfur, Kurdistan, Tibet, Balochistan, Kashmir, Somaliland, and Puntland all have their merits and should be given due weight. Conflict and repression in Yemen, all across the Sahel, in Afghanistan, between Armenia and Azerbaijan should not be swept under the carpet. The effects of autocratic governance in Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Uganda, Equatorial Guinea need to be understood. These are the political problems around the world that end up on our doorstep, the Iranian police officer who refused to beat peaceful protesters who won’t wear a hijab flees the country and boards a small boat bound for Dover. We far from having a free world, we’ll never have a perfect world. I call on readers not to despair, but to resolve to search out take the road less travelled when it comes to international relations, and to default to generosity for those affected.

Mid Bedfordshire – What happened?

So the dust has settled on a couple of by elections this week. Both produced terrible results for the Tories and one in particular, Mid Bedfordshire generated a lot of heat because it was an extremely rare event in Britain – a three way contest. Precisely because Mid Bedfordshire had a unique set of circumstances attached to it I’m not going to infer anything about policy, strategy or comms for future contests. Sorry if that disappoints anyone! During the course of this blog, however, I hope to make sense of the outcome.

We’ll never see the like again
Some by elections have a generic feel to them, others such as Batley & Spen a seat that often features a third party that isn’t the Lib Dems or the Greens, are idiosyncratic. Mid Bedfordshire was more than that, there will never be a by election remotely like it. For that you can blame Nadine Dorries – the campaign, which involved a lengthy phoney war, lasted four months due to her procrastination. That meant when I and the Sevenoaks Lib Dem team rocked up in Lower Stondon and Cranfield on the penultimate weekend all but the hardest to reach and most inattentive members of the public were struck with election fatigue. I laboured to slip a leaflet through a ground level letterbox only to have it shoved back onto the doormat seconds later.
Sometimes we complain about a short timeline leading up to election day but four weeks is clearly better than four months – if the election had happened in mid-July we probably would’ve won as our campaign and resource strategy is geared up for an intense short-term fight. In campaigning so hard, for so long, we outstayed our welcome for a certain swathe of voters. We don’t need to agonise over this too much as we’ll probably never see another four month campaign in our lifetimes.

Emma Holland-Lindsay, Alistair Strathern and Festus Akinbusoye fought a long hard campaign

I’m done with electoral calculus, opinion polling is in trouble
My surface impressions from driving extensively through the seat and doing some door knocking is that there were a roughly equal amount of Lib Dem and Labour posters and stakeboards up, and no Conservative ones. While we got a frosty reception on the doorstep – partly down to the election fatigue that had set in – I was picking up no enthusiasm for the Tories, not a single person said anything like, ‘In spite of everything, I’m sticking with them’.
It was quite something, therefore, to witness the twittersphere in the last week, lots of vitriol and ill will being spat in our direction by people who didn’t live in Mid Bedfordshire or near it, and hadn’t been involved in the campaign. One visit showed it was obvious the Conservatives weren’t going to win. The coup de grace was an apparent ex-Lib Dem ex pat member telling us how disappointed he was that we had the temerity to campaign from 12,000 miles away in New Zealand.
What was yanking the chain of all the keyboard warriors? A combination of opinion polls and electoral calculus predictions. Now I’m a very consistent person, I’d identify as a liberal left environmentalist since the age of 10, my friends would say I’m very stubborn. I’m also a Keynsian so sometimes I change my mind when the facts change. In the last few years I’ve become far more reluctant to shine a light on individual opinion polls, only referring to aggregated polling, and I’m totally done with electoral calculus predictions. There’s about 8 – 10 individuals or organisations doing electoral calculus predictions – some of them are thoroughly braindead and extrapolate out a uniform national swing. Some of them rely on individual modelling methodology that must remain secret, unlike the methods of the organisations that are official members of the British Polling Council, who must be open. If you have to be like the magic circle and not reveal your intellectual property then as far as I’m concerned it’s nothing better than guesswork, and in some cases amounts to nothing more than propaganda from people who are hugely biased.

Showing what a fool’s errand by election polling is: Even the New Statesman-affiliated Britain Predicts underestimated Labour, and overestimated Reform UK in Tamworth

The official polling organisations are struggling at the moment too. Earlier this year it was pointed out that Reform UK’s support is overstated in regular opinion polls because there is a high-engagement bias built into polling now it’s predominantly carried out online, not on the phone so much. Thus Reform UK has been polling in the 5% – 8%, far higher than actual election results. Let’s look at both Tamworth and Mid Beds. Tamworth was a hugely Eurosceptic constituency, voting 67% to leave in the EU referendum, but Reform UK polled only 5.4%. Mid Beds was above average on the Eurosceptic scale, voting 56% to leave, but Reform UK polled 3.7%. This would suggest that Reform UK’s real level is around 3 – 2.5% nationally. Why does this polling error matter? Lately the Conservative government has overestimated the importance of Reform UK and its new agenda – Net Stupid, War on the Motorist etc – and has shaped policy for what is a very small but vocal minority. These policies could have potentially long term damaging consequences for Britain, especially for our environment (such as axing HS2 Northern) so the General Election can’t come soon enough.

Falling short of the winning post
In this parliament the Lib Dems have won four parliamentary by elections all off the Tories and we have a net gain of 682 council seats won mostly, though not exclusively, off the Tories. We know what we’re doing in Tory heartlands and we’re pretty good at getting their voters to switch to us. We’ve won by elections in the past, we’ll win them in the future, it didn’t happen this time, why not? Apart from the campaign going on way too long, the character of Mid Beds probably worked against us. A few years ago I wrote a blog about the potential for a Liberal revival in the countryside, I pointed out that not all countryside is the same and broke it down into four types. Here they are:

• Big city rural hinterland
• Academic rural hinterland
• Remote rural hinterland
• Middle England

We do well in the first three, less well in Middle England, this is what I said about Middle England, “Not remote, not academic, not part of a big city commuter belt, these are the bits in the middle – Wiltshire, Dorset, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire. With no academic or championing of the geographically distanced angle Lib Dems have done the least well in these places. People often vote Conservative in Middle England as a social or behavioural norm even if it’s against their economic, professional or leisure pursuit interests. The recent success of Lincolnshire Lib Dems in the wolds – winning Gainsborough and Market Rasen – show it’s possible to win in heavily Brexity, socially Conservative places – but it’s harder work than in other parts of the countryside.”
It’s possible to pick up some voters in Middle England but compared to other parts of it’s a much harder job, as those that canvassed Mid Bedfordshire will have discovered. We shouldn’t be too downhearted, however, as this result has no bearing on our ability to win in target seats such as Eastbourne, Winchester, Cheltenham or St Ives that have a completely different character.

Oxfordshire County Council election results 2009 – 2021, shows we have an increasing grip on academic hinterland

What we achieved in the campaign
Election geography anoraks will have noted that the Mid Beds part of Central Bedfordshire council was a mix of independent and Conservative wards. The council itself is a Independent minority administration. This is not necessarily a good thing, often in Middle England areas people stand as independents as they are not a perfect fit for the Conservative party but can’t bring themselves to stand for the opposition parties either, often they are Conservative lite in nature. While a lot of people got their knickers in a twist because both Labour and the Lib Dems were campaigning hard in the same seat – going head to head is a novelty – in the end the two parties dovetailed within the seat – a natural sorting procedure that happens everywhere else in Britain. In the last week of the campaign Labour focused on the two towns – Flitwick and Ampthill – and the Lib Dems worked the villages, places like Woburn, Houghton Conquest, Shefford and Barton-le-Clay. It’s now pretty obvious as to where both parties should campaign in the future to break up the Indie/Tory duopoly within the council.

A map of Central Bedfordshire council wards within the seat of Mid Bedfordshire, courtesy of election geography expert Andrew Teale, author of the Andrew’s Previews book series

In the last week social media was full of ridiculous messages from Lib Dems or ex-Lib Dems members saying it was wrong of us to campaign hard. Either these people were lying about their affiliation or fundamentally don’t understand our party’s culture. We don’t have the Russian oligarch/Trades Union money, nationwide club/office network or extensive partisan media support that the two main parties have. If we don’t campaign we don’t win – it’s as simple as that.
When we win that’s on the basis of a mass of accumulated knowledge and experience derived from successful and unsuccessful national and local election campaigns. There are virtually no wins from pop up parties in British politics. The two possible exceptions – Respect winning in 2005 and 2012 – involved George Galloway who’d been an MP since 1987, and a load of ex-Labour campaign admin staff, not rookies. You have to earn your campaigning stripes.
We didn’t win this time, but no party has a 100% hit rate in elections they target, and the experience will feed into us Lib Dems bleeding the Tories dry in next year’s local and general elections. This is really something people on the progressive left should not have a problem with. It’s notable that in the week leading up to polling day both Ed Davey and Keir Starmer were tight lipped about the result and weren’t seen in Mid Beds, that’s because no one knew what was going to happen, apart from Rishi Sunak who probably knew he was going to suffer another heavy loss.
As they say in North Korea, “It’s a free and fair election, so expect surprises!” I hope Labour supporters enjoy their success, but Lib Dems supporters should not get too downhearted as it is not indicative of future outcomes in target seats. If there is a strategy positive, Mid Beds reminds us of what our limits are and that it’s sensible to remain focussed on our target seats. At the moment that’s a mix of leafy suburbs, spa towns, market towns, heritage towns, university towns, rugged and touristy countryside and affluent commuter belts. That’s enough to be getting on with for now.

My blog about countryside politics can be found here:

Field of dreams: A Liberal revival in the countryside

St Ives seafront including the Tate gallery – a key target unaffected by this week’s results

Black History Month – the strength of street knowledge

As a corporate mission statement goes, it’s safe to say Shut Skates has gone down an unorthodox route. Click on the ‘about’ tab on its website and it reads:

‘CRACK COCAINE AND DECADES OF NEGLECT HAVE TURNED THE STREETS OF NEW YORK INTO A WAR ZONE OF BURNT OUT BUILDINGS, HOMELESS LUNATICS, AND GRAFFITI RAVAGED SUBWAY CARS. NOT THE MOST LIKELY PLACE FOR ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT STEPS IN THE HISTORY OF SKATEBOARDING. BUT YET, MUCH LIKE THEIR FORERUNNERS FROM THE GHETTOS OF VENICE BEACH, THIS EXACT ENVIRONMENT WAS THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE FIRST 100% STREET SKATEBOARD COMPANY.’

If you find this message jarring and offensive, the founders of Shut Skates don’t care – Rodney Smith and Bruno Musso are multi millionaires thanks to selling their follow on company Zoo York to Billion $ streetwear giant Ecko in 2001.
Shut Skates was at the forefront of street skating both in terms of the act, and product design. Shut has never received proper recognition for a number of reasons – skateboarding itself has a problem recognising major achievements outside of California, science is sniffy about ‘user experience’ led design improvements, and of course the STEM world has had a problem recognising innovations from black people.

Bruno Musso and Rodney Smith – innovators in product design and street fashion

The skateboard of 2023 is a world away from the standard board set up of 1986 when Shut started. It’s evolved through hundreds of incremental changes mostly prompted by feedback from pro skaters who are unlikely to have the equivalent of GCSE Physics. Modern skateboards are lighter and near symmetrical, that makes tricks that involve flipping, spinning, turning with the board or getting high off the ground a lot easier.

It’s a New York thing
The guys at Shut took boards that were designed for pool and ramp skating – heavy and with the centre of gravity behind halfway – knew that they were wrong for rolling along the flat – and turned them into something else. They used hacksaws, they used planers, and went through a trial and error process to reshape boards until they worked for the process of popping the tail, rolling your front foot forwards to get elevation, then levelling it out in mid air (the root of all modern street tricks).
It’s important to note the context of Shut’s birth – 1970s and 1980s New York was characterised by economic difficulty but a cultural richness prompted by City Hall’s policy of ‘benign neglect’. Left to its own devices African-American street culture spawned a number of things in this time period – a dizzying number of music genres – funk, disco, rap, hip hop, house, techno, acid house, new jack swing, new experiences such as block parties and nightclubs – and a new form of street art – spray can graffiti.

1980s and 1990s New York – a rich African-American street culture that would spawn record labels such as Def Jam and streetwear labels such as Supreme

As a company Shut was in on the ground floor of skateboarding’s move from transitions – parks, pools and vertical ramps – to the streets. Shut launched during a modernist period for skateboarding with the most fashionable tricks changing dramatically from one year to the next. Street skating didn’t overtake ramp skating as the dominant form until 1989, so Shut was way ahead of the curve by being three years early. Aside from pushing product design to make street skating much easier, Shut had some of the finest street pioneers on its team. One of the first ‘user experience’ practitioners was Rodney Smith’s step-brother Chris ‘Dune’ Pastras. Pastras would go on to be a phenomenally successful pro in the 1990’s founding Stereo Skateboards with Hollywood actor Jason Lee. Stereo was a hipster retro jazz-influenced company long before the concept of hipster reached Hoxton. As the team grew they acquired Sean Sheffey, at his peak Sheffey was a world class skateboarder, a power pack, pushing the boundaries of how high, how fast and how long you could go jumping up, down and over street furniture.

Chris Pastras, Shut innovator, with TV and Film star Jason Lee, they are co-owners of Stereo Skateboards

Selling street culture to the masses
In 1993 Shut was put to bed – skateboarding is a fast-moving and transient industry like pop music, most of Shut’s best riders had been poached by the bigger California-based companies and a lack of recognition for East Coast labels led Rodney Smith to pastures new. He started Zoo York, a board and clothing company that ended up selling product to 40 countries and made the move a lot of successful skate/surf/snow labels make, from specialist retail to the high street. For a while in the 2000s Zoo York was on a level with Quiksilver, Billabong, Stussy, Vans and Element – it crossed over into the mainstream and you didn’t need to go to a pokey little shop down a side street to get hold of it.
Like many entrepreneurs that sell a brand then stay working for it, Rodney Smith eventually became bored with Zoo York. The Shut website elaborates, “This success, however, was double edged. The bigger Zoo York grew, the further away from the point it became. Soon, Rodney, Adam (Schatz – business partner), and Eli (Morgan – graphic designer) found themselves in charge of a successful fashion-streetwear clothing line and not the core New York City skateboard company they had set out to create. So, in 2006, with the twenty-year anniversary of SHUT Skates upon them, Rodney, Adam, and Eli decided to get back to their roots. They sold Zoo York to the clothing empire, Ecko Unlimited, found another dirty warehouse, and started SHUT back up. With a vengeance.”

Shut teamriders Coco Santiago (left) and Sean Sheffey (right)

Skateboarding has always been heavily stylised, the biggest name of the 1970s was Tony Alva, he was a lot more Hollywood than people realise – Clark Gable was his step dad. When skating took to the streets there was a sea change in the videos, the soundtrack changed from ‘80s indie and punk to ‘90s rap, it was happy to lean into black street culture and promote black pro’s without giving due weight to the black innovators behind the product. Skating thought it was post-racial there were plenty of Hispanic, Black and Asian professionals, hell there were even racial minority company owners. When it came to a roots narrative, however, it was most convenient to give credit to blonde haired, blue eyed surfer dudes like Jay Adams and Natas Kaupas of Los Angeles, not the East Coast crew of Smith, Sheffey and Pastras.
Every skater that masters the basic tricks on street – the ollie, the shove it, the kickflip, the heelflip, the impossible – owes a debt of gratitude to Shut, as much as they do to legends like Tony Hawk. All hail Shut!

A selection of Shut’s vintage boards, part of the evolution towards what is now the near symmetrical or ‘popsicle’ shape that has become standard

HS2: Where did it all go wrong?

Many of you will have seen a tweet by Rishi Sunak saying he took ‘long term decisions’ to boost Britain’s transport while travelling on a private jet (his normal mode of travel) and pandering to conspiracy theories about 15 minute cities this week. After Boris Johnson and Liz Truss most fair-minded observers didn’t think British politics could sink any lower. Correction: We hoped it couldn’t sink any lower, we were wrong. So private jet man has effectively sold the North of England down the river with his decision to axe HS2 North of Birmingham. It’s not the biggest surprise as HS2 has been steadily descoped in the past two years, but it’s still shocking that the biggest rail infrastructure project in the last 100 years has been canned (for now). Continental Europe has extensive high speed rail networks, why can’t we have the same? How did we get here?

Same old Tories, cancelling everything
If we look at the last 13 years the Conservative record in the built environment is pretty shocking. It cut the extensive and long term Building Schools for the Future scheme the moment it took office, only pre-existing contracts were honoured. A few years later the Coalition government came up with a new school building programme, far more modest in scope and with a budget per school much reduced – headteachers from these new schools, in the Priority Schools Building Programme, have contacted me and told me about all the short cuts taken. Rishi Sunak talks of making long term decisions, but his Government is incapable of anything that takes persistence and patience. It’s failed to tackle chronic repairs backlogs affecting schools, hospitals, prisons, council houses, you name it, pretty much everything in the public sector estate.
The path to Net Zero is a long one, increasingly it should not be problematic as the technology to decarbonise pretty much everything exists and the costs are coming down. Solar – prices down by 99.6% in 40 years, Wind – huge price drop and can be put out to sea, battery storage – massive price drop and using fewer raw materials, tidal stream – massive price drop, constant and predictable. Clean tech has a lot to boast about, but Sunak and other libertarian Tories aren’t listening, they’ve bought into the wackjob Net Stupid agenda instead. Don’t bother insulating homes to save lives and save money in the long term – it’s an effort.
In the context of not being able to stick to any long term public sector building programmes or environmental commitments it’s no surprise that this government would not be able to oversee a project that was originally supposed to be completed in 2035. This is the hallmark of populism – a complete failure to deliver, a lot of posturing and constant drama about things under your nose, with no capability to do anything strategic.

Visions of a future unresolved – Euston, Sheffield and Birmingham HS2 stations

We’re not used to new railways
The vast majority of Britain’s railway network was built in the 19th century with maybe a few bits built just before World War I, so the general public has got extremely used to the railway as a constant unchanging network, post Dr Beeching cuts. New stations and new track are a major novelty. To a great extent Network Rail is a victim of its own success. As we can see in the chart passenger numbers more than doubled from the point of privatisation in the mid-90s through to the immediate pre-pandemic level in 2019.

Rail passenger numbers more than doubled in the 25 years between 1995 and 2020, with virtually no new track added to the network

Throughout this time capacity has increased, that’s been achieved by putting on more services and increasing the number of carriages per train. In terms of physical infrastructure what changed was lengthening platforms and adding the odd chord here and there. Network Rail has avoided building substantial new track at all costs – it’s expansive and it’s unpopular. This gave off the impression that ever greater passenger numbers could be achieved with no new track forever.
The plans for HS2, EastWest rail and Northern Powerhouse Rail are an indicator that’s no longer possible and we have a railway that’s bursting at the seams. The general public has to accept that if we want a successful and reliable railway network in the future, where we’re not packed in like sardines on all commuter lines, new track has to be built.

HS2 Press coverage – mindless hostile drivel across the spectrum

A collective hatchet job by the written press
You’ll never get universal agreement on infrastructure schemes, but the opposition to HS2 across the print media was something to behold. It’s not surprising that the right wing press has been hostile to HS2, they know public transport users tend to be left wing, and heavy use car drivers tend to be right wing. Britain is one of the most car dependent countries in Europe – let’s keep it that way. Also Europe is keen on high speed rail – they’ll be ramming their wine and truffles down our throats next! A steady stream of articles in the Mail, Express and Telegraph have said we ought build branch lines instead, that HS2 is an EU plot or focussed on the increasing costs, never the benefits.
Perhaps the worst offender in the press, however, is The Guardian. The Guardian has run a number of hysterical hit-pieces about HS2 over the course of several years. Senior members of the Scott Trust must be thoroughly delighted that HS2’s Northern legs have been cancelled. The Guardian swallowed whole a misinformation campaign about the environmental impact of HS2. Often it seemed that they regurgitated press releases from anti-zealots with no investigation or questioning at all.
An excellent forensic thread on twitter by Phil Sturgeon explains why the claim that HS2 destroyed 108 ancient woodlands is total nonsense. It is pretty astounding if you think about it – a 140-mile railway going through 108 separate wooded areas and they all happen to be ancient, one every mile or so. It turns out HS2 will, in fact, reduce our ancient woodland cover by about 50 acres. For perspective there’s a field between my village and the posh village next door, Hartley, which is 64 acres.
Anyway, the higher ups at The Guardian must be dancing a jig, sabotaging HS2 is one of the only policy wins it’s enjoyed in 13 years. While its circulation isn’t the biggest, perhaps the hostility of The Guardian carried a lot of weight because press opposition to HS2 went across the spectrum and gave it a legitimacy it didn’t deserve.

Some experts such as Phil Sturgeon did an excellent job of debunking the misinformation surrounding HS2’s impact, unfortunately their voices weren’t heard

Lessons from HS1, lessons from Europe

Many people have, quite rightly, asked why HS2 has a cost per mile that far exceeds other high speed rail lines in Europe. Looking at France there are two major reasons. France is four times the size of England with roughly the same level of population. It’s pretty straightforward to route a high speed line between the major cities, outside of heading into the Massif Central. The population is sparse and the topography is easy to deal with, asset purchase costs are far lower.

Furthermore France is able to keep its costs down via a process of continuous construction. It’s had its nose to the high speed grindstone for 40 years, the acculumated knowledge and experience really helps. This is in stark contast to the UK’s chaotic stop – start politicised construction processes. One of the many startling revelations to emerge this week is that HS1 construction boss Rob Holden has never worked on HS2 and has never even been consulted, what little high speed rail project knowledge and experience we have has been left to wither on the vine.

It’s a fair question to ask if HS1 has lessons for HS2, compare and contrast – what you can pick up is that HS1 doesn’t have the gold-plated mitigation features HS2 has and is a bit more inclusive. By inclusive I mean that East Kent is covered by a station at Ashford and West Kent is covered off by Ebbsfleet. There is only 34 miles between the two stations and it takes 18 minutes travel time. It’s a fair question to ask if there would be value in having an extra station along the 140 mile London and Birmingham route on HS2? If so, surely some of the opposition in the Northern Home Counties would be far less, as they would feel included in the project.

One problem that exists in the UK is a large post-industrial landscape that we have to build over that doesn’t exist to the same extent in Continental Europe. This has jacked up costs significantly, the line between Birmingham and Manchester would have to feature extensive viaducts as the area is home to several former and current salt mines. We either accept that our industrial past complicates our infrastructure future or we sit on our hands forever more.

The benefits: communication breakdown
Delving into the history of HS2, the project was originally conceived during Labour’s 2005 – 2010 parliament, with work carried forward by the coalition government, which firmed up details about the route. Cross-party consensus over project existed for a long time, perhaps that was a drawback because it led to a lack of debate and a lack of communication of the fundamental rationale for the project.
The purpose of HS2 is create a new separate trackbed for a high capacity railway that in turn frees up capacity on other lines leading to improved freight and passenger services. There’s plenty of information on the HS2 website showing that, for example the line (if built in full), would greatly improve journey times between Newcastle and Birmingham.
There were some headline figures quoted from time to time – the line would have a daily capacity of 576,000 passengers, but because HS2’s cheerleaders were half-hearted and ineffective they let the narrative get hijacked. Over and over again the reductive statement that we’re spending £100Bn to go from Birmingham to London 20 minutes quicker was trotted out. Rarely was an effective counter-narrative offered. There’s still no estimate, however, of how many passengers would benefit from the improved services created by the freed up capacity.
I’ve got to hold my hand up at this point – I live just a few miles away from HS1, I benefit personally from its existence although I never use it – trains into London from my local station here in Kent run fast taking 30 minutes, before HS1 the fastest train was 40 minutes, the improvement is because HS1 has taken services off the Chatham main line freeing up capacity. The children of those who campaigned against HS1 in my local area now benefit from that swift service without a moment’s thought as to how it happened, I’m sure.

Taken from the HS2 website – the line built in full speeds up services leading to most major cities between London and Glasgow, Joe Public has no concept of this because it was never communicated properly

Covid – when the wind changed
Covid 19 has been a disaster for our economy and our society in general, and it’s been terrible for the rail industry in particular. The long march of increasing passenger numbers has been stopped in its tracks, all future confidence in widespread use of trains has shattered. All of a sudden people are writing off railways and talking of working from home, and many aspects of human interaction ported to Zoom or Teams meetings online. Acute cost pressures in the construction industry – labour shortages and materials shortages have jacked up the estimates for HS2, though the chronic mismanagement, wanting to slow the pace of construction has undermined the project too. This is what Sunak is referring to when saying that the ‘facts changed’ around HS2. On the basis that HS2 is supposed to be a very long term project and in 100 years time teleportation and jetpacks won’t be mainstream technologies, we can be confident that the existing forms of ground transport will still be used, and used extensively. I’m happy to concede that train travel will take a five year hit from Covid, but as passenger numbers are now crawling back to pre-pandemic levels despite cuts in services this will not be the paradigm shift that pundits have predicted.
Two things to note about internal Treasury calculations about HS2. Officials were alarmed that Sunak took control of cost:benefit analysis of the project while chancellor as he had no previous experience of transport analysis beforehand – this was probably obvious in the flawed methodology he employed. Furthermore Treasury officials are incredibly sniffy about any major projects that go from A to B where neither A or B is London. There’s a special set of calculations made for London, not merely on the basis that a lot of people use London transport but that a lot of rich and important people use it. Those using the improved Newcastle to Birmingham HS2 service matter less than those going from Kennington to Battersea Power Station on the new Northern Line extension. Not all British train passengers are created equal – suck it up whippet owners and pigeon fanciers!
Anyway, new cost:benefit analyses put the Northern legs of HS2 below a value of 1. These calculations, if you’re Northern or from the Midlands, could be said to be heavily biased and supporters of rail infrastructure in the future will have to produce numbers to support the reopening of the project, if rail passengers numbers recover in the way they have in the last 18 months then a new case can be made. This week it seems like we’ve seen the beginning of the end for HS2 Northern – maybe it’s only the end of the beginning if enough people are willing to fight for it.

Has Britain lost its mind?

I’m not a golf fan but seeing as the Ryder Cup finished yesterday it’s a good time to remember when the Cup became a rare footnote in social history. In 1975 the GB & Ireland team was going through a run of heavy defeats. The players and the press made much of the fact they were all given British-made shoes that fell apart at the seams within the first nine holes. The Americans felt so sorry for them, they gifted them their spares. That incident seemed to embody the shoddy workmanship and poor industrial relations that had bedevilled Britain for years – nothing worked and we knew it. Machinists were supposed to make a special effort to make shoes that would be on TV worn by our best pros in a prestigious tournament, but they didn’t care.
Fast forward to the summer of 2021. During the Bexley by election Reform UK was tentatively pushing a new post-Brexit agenda. Despite the fact that London has sweltered under several punishing heatwaves this century Reform UK really believes in a climate change denial agenda (Nigel Farage has always hated windmills and loved Russian gas) and wants to reverse our Net Zero strategy, they call it Net Stupid. While I didn’t doubt that would resonate with some I thought if it took as long for them to get this into the mainstream as it took Brexit they’d be too late – in 15 – 20 years we’ll be well advanced with Net Zero anyway. Hmmmmmm. Instead of Net Zero opposition being a background issue for 20 years it’s now become front and centre within two years. It had to be – the time frame to derail low carbon tech adoption is short.
If you’re a liberal, left environmentalist like me you’re probably a bit spooked right now at the haste of the government sea change this year – to be so overtly hostile to rail, renewables, insulation, road safety measures etc. The government said they were in favour of all of those things, even if it was just lip service, when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. We thought he was useless. Shambling and as populist as they come. We were wrong – it is possible to be even worse. Sunak plumbs new depths every week.

Boris Johnson – a habitual liar, a useless shambling utter utter fool. Somehow Sunak is even worse

Nothing works, Britain is broken
The charge sheet against this government is endless – record waiting lists in the NHS, NHS dentistry broken, a record number of adults on anti-depressants, crumbling schools and stuttering exam pass rates, years long backlog in the courts, bus cuts, train cuts, high speed rail project descoped, offshore wind auction bungled, three million using food banks, business investment flatlining, terrible trade figures, government debt out of control, longest period of wage stagnation since the agrarian revolution, seven councils have issued S114 notices that mean they’re on the verge of bankruptcy and several dozen more are likely to, people are struggling to pay their rent, their mortgage, their utility bills – millions have limited how much food and drink they buy, and how often they heat their house. Tory MPs are contemptuous enough to offer unwanted poverty cope advice – buy a pet for warmth, buy own label supermarket products. Gee, I guess I would if my local supermarkets didn’t suffer from chronic product shortages. Britain really is broken, nothing works.
What was the Government’s coping strategy when it couldn’t deliver any substantial economic or social outcomes? Under Boris Johnson it was a state of constant chaos and misinformation. What did this achieve? Instead of getting respect and validation the goals were:

• Generate outrage fatigue by doing so many offensive things for so long
• Push the envelope in terms what tolerance the public has for zero achievements
• Repeat the same lies over and over, so that the public fails to talk about lack of delivery in other areas
• Dominate the news agenda via leaks + speeches so the opposition agenda is crowded out
• Create confected outrage about harmless things like eating vegetables and riding a bike
• Be so cynical it turns people off politics until the general election

In the context of getting no further with delivery of anything that improves our everyday lives Sunak would appear to have evolved this strategy to:

• Make a big noise about solving problems you created yourself
• Be really insincere and pretend you’re committed to A LOT of things
• Say you’re against a load of government/opposition/local council policies that don’t exist
• Import a load of policies and advisors from America and Australia
• Tell the same lies as Boris Johnson, just with a less confrontational tone
• Be willing to flirt with wackjob conspiracy theories to confuse people and turn them off politics until the general election

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to share a car with Peter Kay against my will. These blatant lies reduce politics to a Punch & Judy show, we need to think hard about how to rise above it effectively

Reasons to be cheerful, reasons to be vigilant
This Government clearly doesn’t deserve to be re-elected and it’s a shot in the arm to the opposition parties that the Conservatives lost their aggregated poll lead in November 2021. Labour’s lead is not slight either, it averages between 10% and 20%. After a while a tone is set and it would be a major surprise if the Tories came roaring back at the ballot box – Sunak does not have the crossover appeal among the C1 and C2 social groups that Johnson had. One factor that people don’t consider because it would be self-defeating for the industry to admit it – but the partisan print media in the UK is sinking like a stone. Physical and digital sales of newspapers and current affairs magazines are slumping and it’s not being replaced by web traffic and social media engagement. The press is less powerful and less influential now than at any time in the last 100 years though you won’t hear that from journalists of course. Whether this is a healthy thing or not – the jury’s out. Would you prefer an old media landscape where 70% of the partisan press supported the Tories, or a world where fewer people read newspapers but got influenced by anonymous sources online, repeatedly? Francis Fukuyama has repeatedly critiqued the rise of social media and its effect on democracy, including opinion forming. He said that democracy faced an existential threat if you receive information from social media platforms that knows your wants and needs better than you know yourself. A modern day version of ‘TV rots your brain’ but no less serious. This was an early warning about the potential damage to critical thinking and opinion forming caused by AI.
It would appear that AI tech has landed into the UK political sphere. A recent investigation by online integrity expert Valent outlined how social media, driven in part by AI, had helped manufacture a powerful anti-ULEZ narrative in the lead up to the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by election this summer. It certainly was a head scratcher that people with electric cars voted Conservative as a protest because they thought they’d have to pay the ULEZ charge. This should alarm everybody on the progressive left – the parallels with Brexit and the methods used to manipulate voters are clear.
In response to this I call for two things. Anyone who in the last few years has declared themself as proudly ‘politically homeless’ needs to get off the fence. In their back room the Conservatives know what works across twitter, facebook, tiktok, instagram etc, even if they barely mention it. If you stay on the sidelines we’ll keep on getting bad results, so pick a side, do it now and get stuck in. Have grown up civilised, non-judgemental conversations with people in your social circle, join a party, donate, campaign, display posters and stakeboards. Then you can say you did everything you could regardless of the result. Or, hopefully, you can say you were part of history.

Rishi Sunak, has invented a war on motorists but doesn’t know how to pay for petrol. He’s leaving the country in ruins

The other thing I call for is positive clear messages from the opposition parties showing how they intend to be different and better than the Conservatives when in power. Saying ‘the finances are terrible because of the Tories so we can’t do anything’, isn’t selling people a dream and it won’t cut it. You’ll all need to offer something hopeful and positive because there is obviously massive room for improvement, compared to the brainrot and sustained mediocrity we have now.