The Next Obsession

So, “the heat wave”, lasting all of two days, came and went, and life continued as it had before. In fact, here, in North Staffordshire, there were no new records set, and for most of us, it was simply an opportunity to enjoy a rare bit of good weather. That the media went over board with their forebodings of doom, and instructions for us all to stay in doors like good drones, was to be expected, after they have found themselves struggling to drain any more out of the cornucopia that COVID has been for them over the last two years.

For the news media, extravagant misuse of superlatives, and gross exaggeration are the standard operating procedure. As with most aspects of Modern Life, Dave Gorman has an episode in which he looks at it (Series 2, Episode 7).

They have to describe everything in these overblown, superlative terms, to sensationalise all aspects of life. They are facilitated by having an endless reservoir of “experts” who will appear to legitimise the nonsense they spout, and which increasingly undermines the rational science, and the important questions that need to be addressed. We all remember the claims that 45 million would die worldwide from COVID, that 500,000 might die, in the first year, in Britain, that, already, deaths were so high that mass burials and cremations would be required, and so on, none of which was actually true.

Now we have had the same thing with the supposed killer heat wave! As one chap on the underground put it, the temperatures were generally only around 35 degrees, which is not much different than on a normal good Summer's day, in any other year, and less than the kinds of temperature people pay good money to be able to enjoy when they go abroad. In short, stop moaning and enjoy your good fortune of getting the benefit of some decent Summer weather, at least for a couple of days.

The news media always do this. If there is an inch or two of snow, then its presented as if its a couple of feet, a bit of rain and its presented as if its cataclysmic flooding, which, often, even the pictures expose as being far from the truth. All of that gross distortion actually detracts from when such actual conditions do exist, and cause significant problems. People simply treat the reports as like the boy who cried wolf. I've stopped even bothering to watch weather forecasts. My wife does sometimes ask me to check the weather on line to decide on pegging out the washing, but on numerous occasions it has said that there should be clear skies and sunshine, whereas a simple look out of the window shows it be the same normal miserable grey skies, and sometimes even raining!

The way that these issues are dealt with actually avoids the more important questions, about the inadequate nature of housing in Britain, as well as working conditions, infrastructure and so on, all of which exist 365 days of the year, almost all totally unrelated to headline making conditions on one or two days of the year. 

The fact that the news media have had to resort to the question of whether the temperature gauge might, at some location in the country, exceed the previous record temperature, recorded at some other location in the country, by half a degree, on one day, illustrates the extent to which they are scraping the barrel.

That is a bit like the glacial pace at which new record times for the 100m. sprint are achieved. In that case, the fractions of a second reduction in the record time is a consequence of very slow improvements in the fitness of athletes, better kit, and also marginal differences in conditions in one track as against another. They are not the consequence of revolutionary changes in basic human anatomy that would let a runner match the pace of greyhound or a cheetah, for example. The same with half a degree or so change in a record temperature, on one day, in one place, with all sorts of variations from where the previous record was made.

Differences of that minor extent can be the result of any number of variations.  For example, temperatures taken in places where there is a lot of concrete, and where sunlight is reflected and trapped will be much higher than elsewhere.  In towns and cities where more building has taken place, with roads, buildings and so on also acting to soak up the heat, like a storage radiator, temperatures will undoubtedly be recorded as higher than in previous year's irrespective of any more general change in temperatures, for example. When there is a change of more like 5 degrees, and its widespread across the country, and its happening for many days, and every year, come back and tell me.

Because, here in Stoke, I checked the readings provided by the BBC, from the official recording up at Keele University, and it was not exceptional. On Monday, at 12 p.m. it was 29 degrees, Tuesday 36 degrees at two o'clock. But, on my thermometer in the house it never went above 29.  We enjoyed our morning walk on Monday and Tuesday, as usual, for an hour. Tuesday morning was warmer than Monday, but not as warm as when I have been walking and cycling in France and Spain, in other years, and so, nothing to write a drama about.

Yet, I heard one "expert", on the TV, talking about it meaning that houses were now going to be overheating, which would require large sums spent to make them able to deal with it. Really? For 300 days of the year, in Britain, we get miserable, grey, depressing weather, often a combination of cold, damp and wind. For another 50 days, we get even worse weather, in which its particularly cold and wet, and including sometimes snow. For 15 days, we get, if we are lucky, something that most people might recognise as Summer weather, and, if we are particularly lucky, within that, maybe 4 or 5 days, in which we get particularly good weather, of the type seen over the last couple of days. So, are we really expected to believe that we are going to have to restructure our houses to cope with the fact that they might get overheated, on one or two days, every few years? Give me a break.

In 1976, in the actual heatwave we had that year that went on for weeks, I was living in a small, upstairs flat.  To call down, after work, some nights, we would fill a cold bath and soak in it.  If you are an old person, a family with several kids, or suffering some illness, being stuck in a similar flat is going to be pretty abysmal.  But, to be honest its pretty abysmal whatever the weather, and whether the temperature is 38 degrees or 40 degrees really is not going to make any difference to that, or even be distinguishable, other than on a thermometer!  The issue, here, is not that the temperature was half a degree or a degree hotter than in some past year, but that Britain's housing stock is poor, and for some appalling.

Britain has the smallest properties anywhere in Europe, and over the years not enough has been done to ensure adequate insulation and so on.  The question of whether the temperature is marginally higher or marginally lower, and so on, is irrelevant.  What is relevant is that the property is not adequate full stop!  That's not true for all property clearly, and for many people even that is not a life and death issue.  After all, I survived the heat wave of 1976, but the media fanfare over record temperatures and so on distracts from the real questions.

Then, reminiscent of Dave Gorman's account, the media run stories about occurrences that are presented as being entirely novel, but aren't. For example, the items about roads and runways “melting”. In fact, a simple Google search on the topic will show that the same stories have been run in pretty much every other Summer! The same with train tracks buckling. That eventuality was known about back in the 19th century, which is why tracks were laid with gaps in them to allow for expansion.

The same is true with grass and woodland fires.  The media do the same thing, here, that they did with COVID.  With COVID they conflated deaths of people with COVID with deaths of people from COVID, even though the two things are totally different.  If you die from being hit by a bus that can hardly be described as in any way due to having COVID, and yet, if you had had a positive COVID test in the 28 days prior to dying, you would go down in the statistics as having died with COVID!  In fact, as I have set out before, looking at the ONS data released under a Freedom of Information Request, only about 10% of the deaths of people with COVID were deaths of people from COVID.  But, when the media present th figures, they present it as though the latter is the former.

With fires, they directly connect them with record temperatures, turning correlation into causation.  The actual correlation, of course, is not record temperatures, but simply hot and dry weather per se.  Moreover, the actual cause of such fires is invariably not the hot and dry weather itself, but the actions of human beings who by accident or design cause the fires, which simply take hold due to the more favourable conditions.  When I was a kid in the 1960's, there were grass fires every Summer.  Between Goldenhill and Newchapel, and between Goldenhill and Talke, there were lots of uncultivated fields, where the grass was long, and each Summer, someone would set it on fire.  But, also farmers having harvested cereal crops would burn the stubble, and sometimes that would get out of hand.

The majority of these fires are caused by people either deliberately lighting them, throwing away cigarette stubs, or throwing away bottles that get broke and act as magnifying lenses.  But for that to cause fires, it does not require record temperatures, it only requires normal, good, sunny, dry Summer Weather.  The same with garden fires.  Many are caused by people burning garden waste that gets out of hand, or nowadays, people who go for "natural" gardens, i.e. they don't maintain them, and whose bar-b-q's, or fire pits then become the source of the fire, as it spreads amongst the tinder they have provided.

All of this nonsense, is, of course, just a continuation of the moral panic and hysteria created by the media over COVID, and used to insist on the introduction of the idiotic lockdowns that actually did real damage to the economy, and, thereby, to people, on a scale that COVID was never going to do. The media, even now are trying to strain further stories out of COVID, talking mindlessly about rising infections as though that has any relevance whatsoever in conditions where people have the option of vaccination, and where anyone with sense has done so. Yes, as with my son's partner the other week, even after being jabbed, it doesn't prevent infection, any more than a flu jab stops you being infected with flu, but what it does do is stop you being seriously ill. As she said, she has had worse colds.

Yet, the mindless trotting out of infection numbers is being used to try to suggest that its still an issue. Of course, if you haven't been jabbed, it might be, though for the vast majority, not even then. But, the simple answer to that is – get jabbed, or don't complain.

What all of the lockdowns did, as with the COVID zero policy in China, which has absolutely no logical basis in terms of dealing with COVID, is to physically reduce economic activity, and thereby, to resist the inevitable pressure for wages and interest rates to rise, which would cause asset prices to crash. China and its zero-COVID policy are the most obvious manifestation of that, as the Communist Party seeks to hold back the Chinese economy from overheating, and, thereby, causing its serial asset price bubbles, most visibly in its property market, bursting. As COVID disappears as an option for that, they have sought other potential moral panics to fulfil that function from Monkey-Pox, to Polio, and killer heatwaves are simply another goody in that picnic basket.

Of course, they are not alone in looking for such catastrophes. The catastrophists themselves have never been slow to latch on to the next obsession, as also the basis for the next recession. In 2020, Michael Roberts, who has been predicting that the next recession is imminent, for the last ten years, was keen to seize on the claims that COVID was going to be such a catastrophe, and would, indeed, require the kinds of economic lockdown that would lead to a recession. He was also keen to argue that it was not outlandish to connect the two, because COVID, itself, was somehow, along with similar problems, itself the result of capitalism. That seems an odd claim given that centuries before capitalism, plagues were decimating human populations, not to mention famines, and other natural disasters, all of which capitalism, in its development of the productive forces and science, has done an incredible amount to bring to an end!

The catastrophists follow in the footsteps of those like Sismondi, who saw the contradictions in capitalism, contradictions which could indeed lead to crises, in a way that those like Ricardo were blind to, and whose response to it, was to want to hold back that capitalist development. By contrast, as Marx comments, Ricardo, despite failing to see the potential for those crises, was progressive compared to Sismondi.

“To assert, as sentimental opponents of Ricardo’s did, that production as such is not the object, is to forget that production for its own sake means nothing but the development of human productive forces, in other words the development of the richness of human nature as an end in itself. To oppose the welfare of the individual to this end, as Sismondi does, is to assert that the development of the species must be arrested in order to safeguard the welfare of the individual, so that, for instance, no war may be waged in which at all events some individuals perish. Sismondi is only right as against the economists who conceal or deny this contradiction.)”

(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9)

And, so, as Lenin also sets out, the petty-bourgeois socialists, like Sismondi, and all those catastrophists who have come after him, and who are characterised not by the ideas of socialism, but only by their reactionary ideas of anti-capitalism, are themselves reactionary even compared to the liberal bourgeoisie. Speaking of the petty-bourgeois Narodniks, Lenin argues that they are reactionary compared to the Russian liberal bourgeoisie (enlighteners), and that the Russian Marxists (disciples) have more in common with them than with the Narodniks.

“The enlightener believes in the present course of social development, because he fails to observe its inherent contradictions. The Narodnik fears the present course of social development, because he is already aware of these contradictions. The “disciple” believes in the present course of social development, because he sees the only earnest of a better future in the full development of these contradictions. The first and last trends therefore strive to support, accelerate, facilitate development along the present path, to remove all obstacles which hamper this development and retard it. Narodism, on the contrary, strives to retard and halt this development, is afraid of abolishing certain obstacles to the development of capitalism. The first and last trends are distinguished by what may be called historical optimism: the farther and the quicker things go as they are, the better it will be. Narodism, on the contrary, naturally tends to historical pessimism: the farther things go as they are, the worse it will be.”

(The Heritage We Renounce)

The media are obsessed with potential catastrophes and turning the mundane into the extraordinary, because it is their bread and butter. The catastrophists, however, by their very reactionary pessimistic outlook, see the potential for crisis and catastrophe at every opportunity, because they see in it the only means of justifying their own ideas, The Marxist, however, does not swoon in the face of cataclysmic predictions, but thinks about them, and assesses them with a calm head, separating the real from the surreal, and, all the time, looking for the progressive element within it, as the means by which society moves forward, on the basis of revolutionary optimism.