This week I turned on the TV to see what I thought was a new Roland Emmerich movie, but instead it turned out that Los Angeles was on fire. Now huge swathes of it look like that other Los Angeles movie with Snake Pliskin except now I think about it there's a scene in that one where Kurt Russel goes surfing with Peter Fonda and the water would probably have helped a lot here and at the very least a fictional character wouldn't have been able to make the situation worse, unlike the mayor or the governor.

What didn't help was hiring a fire chief based on their pronouns rather than firefighting or management expertise. There's an ominous NPR article from 2 years ago which accuses the fire service of being "mostly white" and excitedly discussing a new program to replace the culture and management.

The last 2 years also saw the city cut the firefighting budget by $20m, laid off all the firefighters that didn't participate in the covid jab, they spent lots of money painting fire hydrants in diverse rainbow colours, diverted water away from the city as part of an environmental scheme, opted to sell too much what remaining water was left to the highest agricultural bidder, whilst at the same time opting to not build more water retention infrastructure like pipes due to 'environmental' concerns. Then you compound it with changes to insurance regulations that caused companies to simply quit the state leaving tens of thousands of people uninsured against fires. And it would maybe be ok if there was enough equipment left to deal with it except they sent hardware and money to Ukraine and then investigated swapping over to electric fire trucks. Oh, and also the water pumps that keep the hydrants' pressure topped up were also turned off because some idiot in charge thought they should cut the electricity to prevent electrical fires from breaking out.

Maybe at this point I should lighten the mood here with a joke I heard down the pub? Q: What's the most common type of tree in Los Angeles. A: Ash

It's almost as if things would have been ok if they had promoted people based on competence and experience rather than DEI which turns out to be an anagram of "die" which lots of people now are, dead. It's only now with over $100bn in damages that even the Hollywood stars are left thinking that the city should have spent more time focussing on how to fight fires and less time trying to fight "toxic masculinity" - it wouldn't be surprising if someone on a 6 figure salary at city hall accused the fire itself of being racist or saying it would never have happened if Kamala was in charge of the country. I say "Hollywood" but perhaps they'll change that sign to say "Firewood" with any luck it's probably old enough that it has asbestos in it so it'll be ok. I am also waiting for the 2nd genuinely hilarious part of the story to come out where the red carpet brigade in beverly hills discover that it will takes years and years to even begin to rebuild their houses due to the Kafka-esque bureaucracy and permitting system in California. They all voted for it mind, and that's before you even begin to get to the part where you attempt to hire a building contractor and discover that there's a years' long back-log and that those firms also can't easily hire additional people because they have to comply with strict gender and and diversity laws when it comes to employing people.

I've quite often said that things always have to get a lot worse before they start to get better but this may well be the inflection point where California decides to head back in the other direction. Until last week there was talk about Governor Newsom running for the president in 4 years time, but this morning I actually read an article suggesting that the state could flip back to republican because people have finally had enough of this rubbish now that it impacts them personally. It reminds me of an interaction I saw online where someone said 'if you abolish taxes there won't be money for the government to spend' and a few people had replied "Yes, that's the whole point"