FFS!

In the UK today video showing Prime Minister Boris Johnson lying to parliament has gathered 40 million views on Twitter. To add some context, that is 66 percent of the United Kingdom population.

Johnson is a known liar, prior to his political career he was sacked for making up quotes when he was a journalist and after moving into political life he was sacked for lying about an affair with a journalist. 

So the opposition parties have plenty to attack him with, quite apart from his appalling mistakes over Covid and Brexit during his short time in office. 

The good ole US of A seems to be having similar issues with their ex-President still peddling the lie the last election was rigged more conspiracy theories about ‘deep state’ than you can shake a stick at. It is truly crazy in the US right now, and I won’t even begin to articulate an opinion, aside from saying it really is...unbelievable.

I won’t make this long so won’t go into places like Turkey and Belarus, and, come to that, Russia and China in terms of political aggression and craziness. 

I just thought it was interesting today when Mrs Smith was bending my ear about the KMT and their latest attack on the administration by targeting our friend Uncle Chen. 

I have to admit to having a soft-spot for Uncle Chen and if anyone wanted to drill my teeth or pull them out, he’s the guy I’d trust to do it. For some reason the KMT seem to view him as a kind of devil who, most recently, had the utter temerity...to attend a dinner party, sing a few songs on request, and have a glass of wine. 

The hypocrisy is astounding, as this is just what these KMT people do as well. Let them deny they have never drunk a glass of wine or had fun with Karaoke.     

Apart from making up lies about the women at the event, the KMT seems to be saying our dear Uncle Chen should resign because “he sways when he sings.”

If that is the opposition’s best shot at someone who is clearly a national hero, they really need to think again….FFS!

Tinkerty Tonk... 

More slapstick politics from the KMT

 

Living in Europe for a few months and being outside of the Taiwan bubble, has made me realise, with an even sharper focus, that while the politics here can be just as ridiculous and absurd, it is at least based on real and important events. 

The picture above is two days old and of the British Prime Minister Johnson, aka Boris the Buffoon, visiting a hospital in the north of England to see how staff were coping with the coronavirus pandemic. 

The more acutely observant of you will notice he is not wearing a face mask despite the obvious fact everyone around him is, and every entrance to the hospital was festooned with notices to wear a mask at all times. 

Now I hear the KMT has dug out a bit of video which is nearly 18-months old accusing Uncle Chen of not wearing a mask at a dinner, this at a time when all the restaurants in Taiwan were open and there was no mandate to wear masks. Much less wear them while eating.

Britain’s Buffoon-in-Chief is rightly being roundly criticised for doing something so crass and stupid within the walls of a facility full of Covid patients at a time when in the UK there are nearly 40,000 new cases of Covid every day. A total of 9.4 million cases and a total of 142,000 deaths. 

The UK opposition are quite right to be attacking Johnson for doing something so blatantly idiotic and setting such an awful example. It is exactly what they should be doing. 

Sadly not so the KMT who have managed to make a hash of things yet again and attacked Chen for doing nothing wrong. They really need to start paying better attention. 

I also hear, the KMT has now changed tack after being caught out with the date on the video, which they didn’t notice, and are now frantically trying to to change tack by pointing out he was standing next to a woman. 

Why, you may rightly ask, is that an issue? Well to the KMT, it seems the very fact she was a woman points to the fact she could be an escort. Even in terms of the most incompetent attempt at a smear campaign this is just lamentable.

It’s pathetic, and doubly so if when caught out for blurting out something they had clearly not checked, they descend into lies and smears in a sad attempt to salvage something from the wreckage.

I get frustrated that the DPP does not fight back harder sometimes with some dirty tricks of their own. Although I do applaud them for not joining the race to the bottom and scraping the bottom of the political barrel. The KMT do not look before they leap and skate on thin ice when they throw caution to the wind. They are penny wise and pound foolish and we should all take what they say with a pinch of salt (this for students of English idiom.)   

Tinkerty Tonk... 

One-upmanship

 

It’s always amusing to see tired old political tricks being played out by someone with little imagination or original thought. 

The Taipei Mayor seems to be having a fine old time of running through his well-thumbed copy of 101 Gags To Play On Your Political Opponents. You can imagine that horrible little smirk he often wears crawling across his face when he finds one he thinks might work. 

Although the reality is he is bereft of ideas and is simply going through the motions of indulging in a ruse he thinks people won’t immediately see through. He is wrong. 

His latest idea of separating diners between smoking and non-smoking - sorry, between vaccinated and non-vaccinated - is such a classic case of one-upmanship as to be glaringly obvious to even the most intellectually challenged. 

The comparison is a fine one as just as smoke drifts around a restaurant, the virus will too if an infected person sneezes or coughs. One top of which an infected person might touch a door handle, use the toilet, touch a tray and the infection is passed on. It is clearly just a daft idea. 

What he is doing is just trying to go one-up on the Health Minister. His thought process would go something like this. “People need to think I am smarter than anyone else in the current administration if I want to become President. So I have to counter everything they do with an idea of my own that will impress people.” Hence this latest idiotic idea of his. 

One-upmanship is designed to fool people into thinking you are better than them or another person. It is a very tired and worn-out political game and needs to always be disregarded. 

The Taipei Mayor really needs to stop copying other people’s techniques and ideas and come up with good original thoughts and analysis of his own if he wants to be taken seriously in the political arena. 

Tinkerty Tonk...

《高人一等的情結》

看到缺乏想像力或原創思想的人玩陳舊的政治伎倆總是很有趣的。

台北市長翻閱著他那本書頁起毛的《101種把玩政治對手的噱頭》，似乎非常自得其樂。你可以想像，當他發現一個他認為可能有用的方法時，他經常掛在臉上那種恐怖的得意笑容就會出現。

儘管現實是他沒有想法，只是沉迷於詭計之中，但他認為人們不會立即看穿。 他錯了。

他最新的想法是將吸煙者和非吸煙者區分開來。。。抱歉，他要在餐廳裡區分接種疫苗和未接種疫苗者，就是一個典型的高人一等心態，這即使對智力稍弱的人也是顯而易見的。

這種比較很好，就像煙霧在餐廳內部飄蕩一樣，如果感染者打噴嚏或咳嗽，病毒也會傳播。感染者可能會接觸門把手、上廁所、接觸托盤，然後病毒就會傳播。這非常明顯只是一個愚蠢的想法。

他正在做的是試圖對衛福部長進行反擊。他的思考過程會是這樣的：如果我想成為總統，人們需要認為我比現任政府中的任何人都更聰明。所以我必須用我自己的想法來反擊他們所做的一切，這會給人們留下深刻印象。

因此，他這個最新的愚蠢想法出現了。

One-upmanship 旨在愚弄人們，讓人誤認為自己比他人更好。這是個陳腔爛調的政治遊戲，需要徹底被忽視。

台北市長要想在政治舞台上受到重視，真的需要停止複制陳腐的伎倆，並提出自己的好的原創想法和分析。

Tinkerty Tonk... 掰掰。

Black and White Elections

In the main, us voters usually have to decide on a range of issues come local or national elections. The economy, foreign policy, healthcare, education, taxation, crime, roads and transportation, immigration, climate change, nuclear and energy policy, in fact a whole range of issues which we weigh and balance in our minds before casting our precious vote. 

However, it seems Taiwan is heading the way of the United Kingdom, and the forthcoming local and national elections will become more about voters casting their ballot with a single issue dominating all the others. 

The last election in the UK, for example, was all about Brexit, nothing else mattered and pretty much the entire political discourse during the campaigns was about Brexit. It’s still a major topic, mainly because it has been such an utter disaster, but Boris Johnson fought the last election on the basis of Get Brexit Done… and he won, convincingly. 

From what I hear the opposition parties are saying, the forthcoming Taiwan local elections next year, and the national election in 2024 will be fought pretty much on the single issue of China. The fact is the current administration is doing such a good job there is little else to dispute.  

Like the ex-Kaohsiung Mayor, who promised to bring in Chinese money, the latest utterances by Eric Zhu after Xi Jinping rushed-to-gush at his gaining the KMT Chairmanship, demonstrates just how close the KMT will bring Taiwan towards China. His comment that he “will seek common ground and respect differences, increase mutual trust and integration, strengthen exchanges and cooperation, and allow the peaceful development of cross-strait relations to continue” is telling. 

I really don’t like “integration” and “strengthening exchanges and cooperation” which likely means a flood of tourists if the KMT gain power, at the very least. The KMT would, like the ex-Kaohsiung Mayor, promise untold riches by allowing China more access to businesses and investment here and encouraging floods of Chinese tourists to ruin our national parks.   

It would seem to me that Taiwan politics is polarizing around keeping the current status quo and full democracy, or gradually being absorbed by China and ending up like Hong Kong, or worse.

Reading between the lines of various KMT and TMD statements, their administrations would  play into China’s hands in return for favours and, more likely, the support China would give them to keep them in power. Most likely, these would be economic to begin with. 

So, just like the Brits voting for Brexit Boris, my fellow Taiwanese residents will face similar single issue ballots in the coming months. 

We have elsewhere discussed the issue of age when it comes to voting patterns. In the UK, older people tended to vote for Brexit because of a misguided and rosy view of England’s past colonial glories. Older people with safe pensions and houses long paid for and no real worries, other than occasionally moaning their doctor could not see them at the exact time they wanted. 

I see the same pattern in Taiwan and it’s worrying. It is why it is vital young people get out and vote, otherwise the older generation will be making decisions that will affect the young when the old ones are long dead. 

If I were on the DPP’s campaign management team I would be pushing a slogan of “A vote for the opposition is a vote to do away with democracy in Taiwan and become like Hong Kong.”

The coming elections are a stark choice for voters. If you don’t want democracy any longer, vote for the opposition. They will surely sell you into the hands of Xi’s China. 

Tinkerty Tonk…    

The uphill battle to critizise the Taiwan administration

 

I’m starting to feel even more sorry for the opposition parties in Taiwan. Every day they hurl criticism at the administration only to make themselves look petty and foolish.

Most of their brickbats serve only to highlight what an excellent job the President and her team are doing. By global standards, a world-beating performance during the entire Covid crisis and an economy that is only intact but doing well is amazing when you compare with what is happening elsewhere in the world. 

I lived through the entire Covid crisis in Taiwan and constantly had messages from friends in the UK about how awful things were there. The UK is a developed G7 country with a fully mature democracy and has three times the population of Taiwan, by contrast,  Taiwan is a young democracy and not even recognised by the United Nations.

The global list of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, Taiwan ranks 25th, the UK 37th and the US 15th. Make no mistake, Taiwan already plays alongside the big boys when it comes to economic performance when allowing for its size and population.

If you build on this thought and consider Taiwan has political pressures from abroad that would horrify the likes of the UK and the US, it holds its own amazingly well on the world stage. 

There is always room of criticism, but look at the UK where gas prices have just surged over 400 percent, the supermarket shelves are empty because of Brexit and Covid, hospitals are full, taxes are being raised, petrol is being rationed and a major topic in the press is whether there will be enough toys and food for the Christmas celebrations in a few months time. I weep for the country of my birth and the shocking state it finds itself in now...all the fault of the administration.

I hear the opposition in Taiwan saying “We should be like other countries.” Whatever the subject, albeit Covid, vaccinations or the economy...I think not. Other countries are largely getting it wrong for all sorts of reasons. Taiwan is a bastion of stability in a world slowly going mad and becoming more unstable. 

So feel some sympathy for the opposition parties when they rant and rave and stamp their feet. They really don’t have anything to criticize and must be hugely frustrated. 

It’s a little like telling Leonardo da Vinci he didn’t get the eyes quite right on The Mona Lisa.  

Tinkerty Tonk...

《批評台灣政府的苦戰》

我越來越為台灣的在野黨感到悲傷，他們每天都向政府提出批評，但卻只讓自己顯得小氣和愚蠢。

他們大多數的攻擊，其實都只突顯出台灣總統和她的團隊表現其實是很出色的。就全球標準來看，甚至與世界其他地方正在發生的情況相較，台灣對 Covid 病毒的控制，期間維持經濟運作甚至表現良好，令人驚艷。

過去兩年我住在台灣，疫情期間不斷收到來自英國親友的消息，告訴我那裡的一切有多糟糕。英國是 G7 發達國家，有完全成熟的民主，人口是台灣的三倍。相比之下，台灣是一個年輕的民主國家，甚至沒有得到聯合國的承認。

然而全球按購買力平價計算的人均GDP排行榜，台灣排名第25位，英國第37位，美國第15位。不必懷疑，在考慮大小和人口的情況下，台灣在經濟表現方面已經與一些世界大國並駕齊驅。

如果你以這個想法為出發點，並考慮到台灣面臨來自境外的政治壓力，那會讓英國和美國等國感到驚恐。然而台灣在世界舞台上的表現，卻是如此令人驚艷。

沒錯，凡事總有批評的空間。但看看英國，過去一年來油電價格飆升，超市架上因為脫歐和Covid空空如也，醫院人滿為患，加稅勢在必行，運送到加油站的汽油開始配給。至於媒體的主要話題之一，是幾個月後會不會有足夠的玩具和食物來慶祝聖誕節。

我出生的國家和其現在的處境令人震驚，我一想到就幾乎要掉眼淚了，這些都是政府的錯。

所以當我聽說台灣反對黨要求，“我們應該像其他國家一樣”時，不論他們指的是 Covid、疫苗或經濟，我認為他們不知道自己在說什麼。從各方面看來，其他國家在很大程度上都犯了錯誤，在這個正在慢慢變得瘋狂並越來越動盪的世界上，台灣是一個穩定的堡壘。

因此當反對黨抱怨、咆哮和跺腳時，請對他們表示同情，因為他們真的沒有什麼具體的批評，他們一定感覺到非常沮喪。

這有點像告訴達文西，他在畫《蒙娜麗莎》時，眼神畫得不太對。

Tinkerty Tonk...掰掰

Economics 101- 2

It is seldom edifying to listen to a politician when it comes to economics. I would argue that it is even less edifying to listen to a doctor, who almost by definition, has little or no knowledge of the subject. 

So when our Pants-up Doc began to hold forth about inflation my ears pricked up. Ah ha, I thought, here comes something stupid. 

I was not disappointed. 

Yet again his team of misfits led him towards a huge pile of shit which Doctor Daft stamped into by confidently stating that the government’s voucher scheme will cause problem inflation. 

What his merry band of Hobbits fail to understand is the idea of pumping money into the economy is to help reflate it. Yes, that’s right, reflate.

I can only imagine his microscopic knowledge of economics had him thinking.. Inflation BAD, as he remembers years back when high inflation was bad. To criticize the government now for stimulus measures aimed at reflation is the economic analysis of a poodle, and a dimwitted  poodle at that.    

As with the 2008 crisis and the US adding several zeros to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, effectively printing money, was aimed at heading off deflation. In other words what they needed to be doing was reflating. 

Yes, runaway inflation is bad when economies are hot, right now they are not...they need the stimulus of reflation because of the hit to growth caused by the pandemic. 

There was a famous quote at the time by a Fed official who said something like “the only way we can pump more money into the economy now is by flying over New York in a helicopter shovelling dollar bills out of the door.”

Did it lead to inflation? Yes but only enough for the economy to recover to something more normal. Has there been a problem with high inflation since, no.  

Any economy which is growing has an element of inflation. If you have a growing economy you will have a level of inflation. During difficult times when an economy is slowing or under pressure, there are the opposite forces of disinflation at work as the economy is strained, or in extreme cases shrinking, in which case you will get deflation.

Stimulating the Taiwan economy by the addition of funds via vouchers is aimed at boosting growth to the benefit of all. 

To scream THIS WILL CAUSE A INFLATION PROBLEM IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS from the sidelines does not only display an almost total lack of any understanding of economics of the current situation, but is dangerous scaremongering by someone who should be a responsible official. 

Here is a graph of Taiwan inflation which I hope will reassure anyone who thinks this sensible economic stimulus by the government will create an inflation issue in the coming months. It won’t. 

This kind of scaremongering by an elected official is absurd and irresponsible. 

 

Captain Obvious AKA Captain Kovid

We are all guilty of stating the obvious from time to time. For the British, by far the most common is, of course, weather related. “It’s a nice day” or “Nice to see a bit of sunshine for a change” is likely uttered millions of times when Solis makes a rare appearance in the sky over my soggy homeland. 

Likely more common is “More rain!” or “I can’t believe this weather!” or “Well the garden needs it!” which again would be uttered probably millions of times a day across the country. 

These are forgivable obvious statements as they are intended to simply begin a conversation with a friend, neighbour or stranger, like opening a door before entering a room.

Things start to get mildly irritating when stating the obvious goes a notch lower with “I see you have smashed in the front of your car!” or “You got home late last night!” or “Your cat is always shitting on my flowerbeds!”

These are statements of the obvious aimed at sometimes containing information the speaker wants to hint at ie. don’t slam your car doors when you come home late as it wakes us up, or maybe when someone may not realise that their cat is a serial defecator on a neighbour’s prize Chrysanthemums. 

The above is just part of conversation and forgivable to a degree. 

Stating the obvious really starts to get irritating when it descends to the level of speaking to someone like they are two years old and reaches the level of Grandma and said child with “Does you like your teddy bear then?” or “Oh, you like ice-cream, don’t you?” or “Is you tired then?” when said child has been gently sleeping for the past three hours.  

When this happens in the UK it is generally met with “No Shit Sherlock!” Which broadly translates to...Yes you are insulting me by telling me something that is mind-bogglingly obvious to anyone who is not two.  

Enter Captain Obvious AKA Captain Kovid with his latest  absurd utterances. During his latest press conference he excelled himself. “I think the infection of the EVA pilot may be due to going abroad,” the towering genius opined. 

In case he thought us too stupid to even understand that, he added “In fact, there are still about 600,000 new confirmed cases every day in the world, so infection in foreign countries is possible.” 

Oddly enough, with this piece of gold-plated statement of the obvious, he is actually admitting the current administration has done a fantastic job in keeping Covid from these shores. 

I also liked the fact his hard working department has taken the time to work out for us that 4 was 80 percent of 5. “We have calculated that in the past 7 days in Taipei City, there were 5 confirmed cases and 4 of unknown sources of infection, and the proportion of unknown sources of infection is 80 percent.”

Phew, it’s just as well his team of intellectuals were on hand to spend a few hours with their calculators working that out for us. Where would we be without these people to guide us through the intricacies of advanced mathematics. 

Small wonder Doctor Dimwit, his team of numbskulls and sad little party is lagging in the polls.

Tinkerty Tonk.

我們常犯的一個毛病就是不時陳述一些明顯的事實，直接點說，就是廢話。就英國人而言，最常見的當然是談論天氣。當太陽罕見地出現在我潮濕的故鄉上空時，「今天天氣很好！」或「難得看到一點陽光真好！」這類的句型，大概會出現幾百萬遍。

可能更常聽見的句型是「還在下雨！」 或「我簡直不敢相信這種鬼天氣！」或「好吧花園總是需要澆點水！」 不必懷疑，這種句型一天之內也會在全國被說出數百萬次。

這些是可以原諒的明顯陳述，因為說這些話只是為了與朋友、鄰居或陌生人開始對話，就跟進入房間之前得先開門一樣。

這個標準再降低一點時，事情就會開始變得有點惹人厭，例如「我看到你車子前面撞爛了！」 或者「你昨晚很晚才回家！」 或是「你的貓總是在我的花圃上拉屎！」 。這些明顯的陳述，有時包含了說話者想要暗示的訊息，那就是當你回家晚了，不要用力關車門，因為會把我們吵醒。或者暗示你跟自己的貓不熟，不知道它是總是在鄰居種了得獎菊花的花圃上連續排便。

不過以上也只是談話的一部分，在一定程度上還是可以原諒。

當說廢話的程度下降到把對方當成兩歲小孩時，那就開始令人火大了。就像老奶奶對小孩說，「你喜歡你的泰迪熊嗎？」 或者「哦，你喜歡冰淇淋，是嗎？」，或者「那你累了嗎？」，而她說這話時，那個孩子在過去的三個小時一直安安穩穩地在睡覺。

這種情況發生在英國時，通常會遇上「當然呢，福爾摩斯! 」(No Shit Sherlock!)這樣的反應。翻譯成白話就是：對，你正在告訴我一些對任何不是兩歲的人來說都是令人難以置信的廢話，那就是在侮辱我。

說到這裡， Captain Obvious，又名 Captain Kovid 最近的荒謬發言不得不提。在最近一次記者會上，他又超越自己了。「 長榮機師的感染我想是有可能因為到國外去，」這個自認智商高聳雲霄的天才如此發表了他的見解。

接著好像他擔心我們太愚蠢了以致無法理解，他補充說：「目前事實上全世界大概每天還是60萬確診案例新發生的，所以在外國感染是有可能。」

奇怪的是，通過這個顯而易見的鍍金廢話，他實際上是在承認現任政府在阻擋 Covid 於境外方面，做得非常出色。

我也喜歡他辛勤工作的幕僚，花時間為我們計算出4是5的80％這件事。Captain Obvious 說，「我們統計了一下臺北市在過去7天確診案例是5個，不明感染源是4個，算起來不明感染源佔比是80%。」

呼，他的知識份子團隊花幾個小時，用他們的計算機為我們解決這個問題也不錯。如果沒有這些人來指導我們了解複雜的高級數學題，我們恐怕會茫然失措。

也難怪這位才智黯淡的醫生和他那不聰明又可悲團隊，在民意調查中總是落後。

 Tinkerty Tonk。。。掰掰