Cummings and Goings.

If any nation should ever 'wake up' to find itself shackled and ostensibly governed by one individual it would be a reasonably fair assessment to say that said country is 'in deep trouble.' If the individual just so happens to be unelected, then likely the country is in far 'deeper trouble!' But then, just maybe, the country finds itself somewhere betwixt the two? Could it, at the very last moment, opt to turn away?

Given that the nation in question happens to be the UK, then we should all sit up and pay far closer attention to what is being enacted, presented to us as being upon our behalf. "Get Brexit done!" or some such bellicose response is what we have come to expect. I think that Home Secretary, Priti 'but ugly to the bone" Patel, said something to the effects of 'enacting the wishes of the referendum.' She went on to specify that there are 8 million people who are currently "economically inactive" living in the UK.' I'm guessing that if the Patel family currently has any 'students,' 'pensioners,' 'individuals somehow involved in caring for a sick relative, or another'- Priti's family does not stoop to such valueless work- or disabled, Priti will be looking to bend, or otherwise circumvent, 'her' rules to justify such wanton idleness. Home Secretary, Priti acts with the pseudo-autonomy of someone who does not pay much heed to any of her special advisors- those whom Cummings has not imposed. She also acts with the vindictiveness of a spoils battle-field victor, over an oppressed vanquished.

At the behest of current government the Department of Work and Pensions (Patel, May 2015- July 2016) is these days often to be found effectively bullying the long term disabled back to work- numbered amongst Priti's 'economically idle'- but even this is unlikely to be enough to fully satiate the Home Secretary. If all of those targeted by her words are either deported or else prevented from entering the country, then the only statistic likely to go down is that relating to the UK's population of 'long-term disabled.' More fatalities for the 'covert coup?'

Priti Patel is something of a monster, as I have before made clear, but then she is not the 'unelected-self-appointed-mastermind' behind the UK's current socioeconomic slide, merely another hate-fuelled member of the current Conservative cabinet. The unelected character in question is, of course, Dominic Cummings. Priti is simply someone who appears to think that, one side can only ever believe itself to be victorious if the other believes itself to be thoroughly downtrodden.

At the time of the referendum dark-master Cummings was a 'relative' unknown. He'd worked for Gove, during the man's time as Education Secretary, and before that for the 'save the pound' campaign, before that he was in Russia. There was the briefest of visible spats, at the time of the referendum, when Gove took a figurative knife to Johnson's back, when Gove also said something (at the time seemingly unrelated) about the electorate being "tired of experts." At the time of this utterance the thinking part of the nation took one mighty step back and thought, "Well, not really. Definitely not under these circumstances!" But then Murdoch, Paul Dacre, the Barclay twins and the other MSM bigwigs, had already poisoned the minds of the 'mentally inactive.' Gove was paraphrasing Cummings, of course, who had already set his sights upon 'tools' such as eugenics. In the distraction the ever-poisonous Cummings duly slinked from one camp to another, as befitted his ambitions, and the weight of political might shifted further.

Today, it matters not that Sabisky- surely a scapegoat for the cabinet's eugenicists- has now quit Cummings's think tank, the seed of 'scientific racism' has been sown. The nation's hate media will be looking to nurture and to feed off this, as and when. Cummings terms his current and tiny cabal 'superforecasters' but, just like so many who seek to position themselves amongst the hyper-capitalists, he has sought to cherry-pick his 'truths.'

The concept of superforecasting is already employed by certain aid agencies, in their never-ending battle to deal with the globe's various and proliferating humanitarian crises. One can see that, 'contradictorily,' or else at the whim of some malevolent greater being, much of the work of these agencies is either brought about as a direct, or indirect, consequence of the actions of those who would set their global plans above ones that might far better suit the rest of us.

'Superforecasting' is the brainchild of one Philip Tetlock, a political science professor (oxymoron?), and it consequently kicked off with the 'Good Judgement Project,' back in 2011. In the context of dealing with the globe's multifarious crises who, amongst the more sane inhabitants, wouldn't wish to see our various aid agencies working to the optimum? Who amongst the more sane, and the more honest and reasoning wouldn't wish such a thing?

In a nutshell, and without recourse to elaborating upon the sort of criteria that anyway evades the majority of us, superforecasting may only dream to flirt with above-average returns where it it is able to feast upon all available data. As Cummings makes abundantly clear, in his oration from on high (blog), superforecasters are a breed apart, able to think outside of cliched boxes and, in this detail, he is generally considered to be correct but, in the wider scheme of things, he is also wholly incorrect. Because, as do most of those ranged out on the rightward lip of society, he has also sought to conjure his contentions through slight of hand. He has seriously skewed the field and, in doing so, he has sacrificed that which he purports to hold dear. Henceforth, it matters not that he and his unholy cabal may, or may not, be above average IQ, the data-input process has been corrupted, thus any derived 'conclusions,' reliant upon a method that is precarious at its best, are likely to be invalid.

That is to write that, if one already has a goal to which 'forecasts' are being tailored, then any 'resultant outcomes' must necessarily come into question.

Cummings presents as not much embracing of the heat of the spotlight. Even with the UK fast approaching critical on several fronts, Johnson's slavish adherence to Cummings's ideology should elicit nothing so much as worried concern from (even) Johnson's least-engaged supporters. The divided state of the nation is likely already to have the rest of us 'up in arms!' But, let's here stick with the slippery subject of 'Cummings.'

He seems to shun constructive dialogue, communicating at his most effective, and then rarely, using (oft shouted) short slogans. Judging by the elusive nature of the man, we could conject that even these are not always the clearest forms of communication. Perhaps this is the nature of the more right-wing think-tank, the financial freedoms to so often fall short, or upon more the stony ground? "We need PJ Masks on the job. They're your guys," "The night time is the right time, to fight crime. I can't think of a rhyme," or an answer, presumably? Maybe we should count our blessings, that Cummings's more coherent utterances- not necessarily, constructive ones- are few and far between? Even here he seems to prefer to employ the services of others. 'Get Brexit Done!' was perhaps Cummings's key infamous slogan, yet it is far more likely to be heard upon the tongues of his most empty vessels. It lends itself well to the angry, short exchanges that today so often substitute for differing opinion. But, as has so often been pointed out, 'how can one possibly reason someone away from an opinion that they didn't first reason themselves towards?'

The untucked shirt, the baggy hoodie, we could simply judge the man to be an untidy figure, dishevelled perhaps, busy maybe? More likely, it is a pseudo-antiestablishment statement. This would, obviously, be dishonest, yet it so perfectly befits the movement he seeks to embed. So, maybe instead his untidiness is a disguise? I doubt it's a chicken and egg scenario; Boris has been at this game far longer than Cummings has been in the mix. Despite having an uncle who was Lord Chief Justice of Appeal, it would appear that much of his 'old establishment' credential was acquired through his marriage to Mary Wakefield. The right of 'appeal' is anyway now almost the sole preserve of the monied classes. His Russian background (1994-1997) remains currently quite vague.

He lived in Mosco, shared a flat with Sunday Telegraph reporter, Liam Halligan (author of 'Clean Brexit') Rumour has it that, whilst there, he also forged relationships with characters now riding high in the Putin regime, figures such as Vladislav Surkov, creator of 'post truth politics,' the era of 'relative truthism.'

Cummings then wants to present as an antiestablishment figure, rather than a key figure involved with the forging of a new establishment that is even more impenetrable than is the current one. Other than his buffoon master it would seem then that far more of his privilege comes from his allegedly Boris-groped wife, Mary Wakefield. Cummings contradictorily projects his rebel image from the £2 million town house that he shares with his Mary, that is when he isn't perhaps visiting her family castle in Northumberland. We might wonder if he tucks his shirt in during these visits? We might wonder also quite how antiestablishment is his father-in-law, baronet Sir Edward Humphry Tyrrel Wakefield. How antiestablishment, do we suppose, is the after-dinner talk?

When Mary is not seated at the banqueting table at Chillingham Castle, perhaps tucking into a succulent veal steak from the CAP-funded estate herd, Mary finds time to to co-edit The Spectator. The paper- yet another of the Barclay brothers playthings- much as do the majority of the UK's MSM publications, sits solidly behind the Conservative Party. Johnson's journalistic leg-ups have seen him slip and slide betwixt Spectator and Telegraph, as best suited their shared aims. For such an antiestablishment figure, Cummings's ties to the Barclay Empire, that and the castle estate, would hardly seem his most beneficial of credentials. Will he, do we suppose, soon be commissioning his superforcasting think-tank  upon the sustainability of such outrageous privilege, under the reign of his new antiestablishment UK?  

Dominic Cummings studied Ancient and Modern History, at Exeter College, Cambridge. Not economics?

Cummings, of course, has no real interests in superforcasting, much like his interchangeable master, he expects to stand far more successfully upon highly-selectively gleaned post-truths. As do so many who thirst after power, he is not so much interested in antiestablishment happenings as he is in personalising the establishment.