What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

For whatever reasons - and trust me, they are opaque - common sense seems to have broken out in Westminster and it has been decided that Big Ben will not chime out at 11.00 pm on January 31 to'celebrate' our finally leaving the EU. The official reason given has been twofold - that parliament will not spring the apparent cost of half a million quid and sufficient money hasn't been raised in the slush fund set up for the purpose......but there are layers of ambiguity in this. Mark Francoise, commited brexiteer of the hardest kind, has said that the chiming has been blocked by authoritarian Westminster officials, others say that parliament cannot in law accept the money raised by the appeal fund (now to be donated instead to the wounded war veterans charity) and nowhere online can you find a clear explanation of why or how it is that this decision has been made. The whole thing must be of some embarrassment to the PM who backed both the ringing of the bell and the setting up of the fund by the group Stand Up 4 Brexit - another area where information about their origins and backers seems extraordinarily difficult to ascertain (no Wikipedia entry, no online results of pertinence resulting from searches).

But despite all of this fog, it seems to me pretty clear. The argument, beginning to gain public momentum, that this two-finger salute to both the EU and the near fifty percent of the voting population dissapointed by our leaving, was entirely inappropriate and earmarked to foster increased division of our people rather than diminish it, clearly began to hit home. This to the point where even our dullard of a PM finally got it, and so it has been pulled. Amidst a fog of conflicting reports and confusion as to quite how and why, designed specifically to spare the Prime Minister from his blushes, it will be quietly forgotten. But for those of us with eyes to see it will remain; a palpable example of the paucity of judgement possessed by the man now charged with navigating our country through likely its darkest and most treacherous period for half a century plus. God help us!

But still there will be celebrations, laser light shows and parties at 10 Downing Street; Farage holding a great big shindig on Westminster green outside the Houses of Parliament - where apparently he has organised for huge speakers to blast out the very chimes that would otherwise have come from the bells above the celebrants heads. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's all getting a bit V for Vendetta isn't it? There is a game coming out later in the year about a post brexit UK in which an authoritarian State has tightened control of the country to the point where it is a totalitarian dictatorship of Half-life 2 style brutality. Let's hope it isn't a case of art mirroring life and prescient of a future that we are fast laying up for our descendants.

[Avatar]

Well, wise decision on the whole I think, somewhat spoiled by the idea of the speakers doing the same thing, but nonetheless, that is far less...symbolic...I think.

--A

[peter]

Absolutely Av; the difference between a fake Rolex and a real one in terms of significance. The bells of Westminster chime for big celebratory events of national significance. This result of political manouvering and chicanery is so far from the type of event that should have been considered as an appropriate candidate that it beggars belief that anyone - especially our PM - could have thought it a good idea. I absolutely get the relief that the mass of the public and politicians might get that the process seems to have been brought to an end: it has been a bruising and divisive period that everyone in their right mind wants to be over. But it is of course illusory. Brexit is not over - it is simply beginning; on Friday we step over the threshold onto the front door mat, with no idea (in truth) of where we are going. Like a child that has in tantrum stamped it's foot and said "I'm leaving home!", we now stand bewildered and blinking, outside in the cold grey day, waiting for the realisation of the magnitude of the task ahead of us to sink in. So no - save the bells for when in fifty, one hundred years time we can know that we have not signed away the future prospects and prosperity of generations of our children to come.

[Avatar]

Surprised it was Johnson's idea, didn't he make a big speech about how you should all be united etc. recently?

--A

[peter]

Don't know that it was his actual idea - but he certainly supported it! He was the one who suggested the setting up of the fund - the fund now being claimed to be against parliamentary law for Westminster to accept.

[Avatar]

Swear they spend half their time just making more work and confusion for everybody.

--A

[peter]

Well, you gotta do something to justify the bucks!

[peter]

Ten out of ten to the Daily Star who captured the important of January 31 to our nation with the following op-ed on Saturday (or words to the effect....)

"There can be no denying the significance and magnitude of yesterday's event in the minds of the British people - the end of dry-January......."

Love it!

[peter]

Started a new job today doing - well, essentially what I was doing in my last one, but for the opposition shop a mile up the road. Less hours (contracted) but plenty of overtime and (I'm hoping) less stress because I'm not expected to run two mutually exclusive roles side by side as I was in the old place. A lot of the same customers came in, many of whom I've served repeatedly over the years, but very few seemed to cotton on that they knew me from before. And there was me thinking I was making a big impression with my wisdom and witty reparte; thus do we deceive ourselves as to our significance in this world. The truth is that we come forth like the flower but similarly continueth not! And we are soon forgotten. I would have it no other way!

[Sorus]

Good luck.

I'm terrible with facial recognition. That's an understatement. I'm always impressed when people in shops recognize me after a few visits. Especially in places like my super-busy regular market. They deal with hundreds of people every day. Am I weird enough to be unusually memorable, or do they remember everyone? Bonus points to people in busy cafes who remember not only the customer, but what they usually order.

The weird thing is that I used to have a really good memory (never for faces though), and while I wouldn't say I have a bad memory these days, it seems like everything blends together. Maybe part of that is being in one job too long. Things change, but at the same time, things don't change. Does that make sense? I feel like I've been at sea for the last 10+ years. Keeping the ship afloat, going in more or less the right direction, but without any landmarks.

[peter]

I think facial recognition has all to do with context Sorus. I've noticed that even if I see people I know well out of their normal place of encounter I can struggle to get my brain to fully accept it is actually them. That all at sea feeling you mentioned - I think we all get that one now and again. (Sigh!)

[Avatar]

My memory is fine, but most people I have to see multiple times before I can start recognising them. Suspect it's the aphantasia.

--A

[peter]

I think I have pretty much the same 'probem' Av; don't think it's so much to do with aphantasia though. My memory is ok (within the terms of my age) I'd guess - but I've always been slowish at remembering things until I've had a few repetitions to nail them down. Once secured in there however, things tend to stick pretty well.

[peter]

I have no idea what was behind the hiring of Andrew Sabisky as a spad by Number 10 Downing Street, but (and it must be noted that they have made no comment on the reason for the appointment or whether his obnoxious positions on a number of subjects were known to them or not) but I cannot believe that they were in ignorance of the things he had said and posted. Numbers of his views were echoed in posts he made on Dominic Cummings personal blog site and on related Twitter accounts and it is inconceivable that this material on open to all forums so close to home would not have been flagged up in any 'search' on the individual worthy of the name.

What inference can we draw from this? It's difficult to say really; assuming they knew, it would have been naive not to have expected that the 'truth would out' and the posts have been exposed - and so one must assume that this was forseen (Cummings' worst enemy could not I think accuse him of being naive or simply stupid enough not to have seen this coming). If this is so, why would he have allowed it? Again difficult to say, but to move to a more general consideration of the response to the story - and it has been a big response in the UK certainly - it should be noted that the subjects raised here are ones that should be dead in the water - should have been jettisoned as material for normal public debate long, long ago. The argument of difference of IQ based on racial type? The argument in favour of eugenic practices in steering the development of the population? The grading of men and women in terms of sporting ability? What are such subjects doing even being talked about in the general media today?

Well - that's the point isn't it. If the subjects are relegated to the place where they rightfully should be - to the sweat and leather smelling meetings of the lunatic far-right - then they are not out in the open as subjects being seen as fit for reasonable discourse. And there are those amongst us who want such subjects out in the open, who want joe-public talking about such things. Because sure as fate, once such subjects are out in the open, then other right-wing outriders like pundit Katy Hopkins, like the Mail's Richard Littlejohn, will be on board saying "Well hang on: let's think this out. Are these ideas so out on a limb after all?"

But I suspect that all this is a red-herring; I don't know, but somehow I have my doubts that this has all blown up as a result of researching ineptitude in the back office of Number 10. There is something of the put-up job about this. I've got a feeling that Andrew Sabisky has served exactly the role he was meant to serve - and I even doubt it has anything to do with eugenics or women's sports. Like a good magical illusion, I think we have been made to look in the direction away from where we should be focusing if we would see the trick that is really being worked. I just wish I could work out what it was!

[I'm Murrin]

It's pretty simple: Cummings is also something of a eugenicist. When he worked with Gove on education he was pretty keen on the idea that intelligence was down to genetics and they should tailor school around each person's genetic profile, which is a godawful idea. He hired Sabisky because he shares just a slightly more extreme version of his own views.

[peter]

Then he is a dangerous, dangerous man in the extreme. Woe on us that he has found the Prime Minister's ear!

[peter]

On 8th May the VE Day celebrations in the UK are to be marked by the biggest ever public broadcast across city centers and squares, featuring Churchill's victory speech of the day. Yes, this year is a special one, being 75 years since the event, but is it cynical of me to wonder if there is not a connection with the fact that the following month we will likely be bypassing the date on which we can request an extension to the transition period with the EU and will likely be very soon, once again entirely on our own as a result of what will no doubt be painted as European intransigence. At this point having a good injection of nationalistic pride administered to the people could be seen as no bad thing.

Irrespective of the truth or otherwise of this, am I the only one who finds there to be something........ Orwellian?....... about this. It sort of smacks of something that you would have seen in V for Vendetta, Pennyworth or other dystopian fictions of the near future if you will. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for remembering the sacrifices made by those brave men and women to buy us the freedom we now enjoy; all the more reason why we should watch with the greatest of care (and a healthy dose of suspicion) the actions and manipulations of those who would seek to have us go where they will.

[Avatar]

Well, as you point out, nationalistic fervour is pretty much always to the advantage of the politicians in charge.

--A

[peter]

Mark my words; what you are seeing in the press today marks the beginnings of the unravelling of the Northern Ireland Peace Process that will end up with blood on our streets and ultimately the reunification of the island of Ireland into a single national and political entity [the latter being perhaps no bad thing].

Chief EU negotiator Michele Barnier has reacted with surprise to the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland's statement that there will definitely be no checks or tariffs on goods passing between [mainland] Great Britain and Northern Ireland post the end of the transition period at the end of December this year. Brandon Lewis, the new Secretary [said Barnier], does not seem to understand the agreement that was struck between Johnson and the EU - the deal that no-one said could be done, but was because it turned out to be the same deal that the EU had previously offered to Theresa May years earlier, and that she had rejected as one that "no British Prime Minister would ever agree to" [with Johnson nodding his head sagely in the background].

In that agreement it was agreed that in order to prevent there having to be a hard boarder on the island of Ireland [a thing that would be seen as a fatal undermining of the hyper-fragile Good-Friday Agreement upon which the peace within the province rests] the necessary checks to ensure the non-porosity of the EU boarder to goods that do not meet its regulatory standards etc would be carried out away from the boarder itself, either at the point of departure from or entry into mainland Britain or within the province itself.

This condition, the maintenance of the integrity of the EU's external boarders was absolutely a contingency upon which any agreement was going to have to be based and Johnson knowing this, agreed to it. Brandon Lewis himself of course understands this fully as well, and also knows exactly what the UK agreed to in signing the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU. What is going on here is merely the obfuscation policy, the muddying of the waters if you like, that will be necessary to either introduce the checks as promised or see the EU introduce checks themselves between the North and South of Ireland, in the absence of this. [This latter option may be the better one in the PM's eyes since it naturally shifts 'blame' ostensibly toward the EU; that the EU are being forced to do this because the UK are not living up to their side of the agreement will of course be quietly forgotten in the UK media.]

But irrespective of which route is followed, the basic flaw in the Agreement is coming home to roost on one side or the other. If the checks are imposed as per the Agreement the Unionist side in NI are going to be pissed off; If they occur between NI and the South then it will be the Republicans who will be incensed. One way or the other the fat will hit the fire. The reality was that The Good-Friday Agreement was the only - the only - way of squaring the Northern Ireland circle ...... and it was as fragile as egg-shells at best. There is no way that it would suffer the bludgeoning that Johnsons Withdrawal Agreement gives it and hold together.

But of course by the time that the bullets start to fly Johnson will be dug in and will have concocted a story to shift the blame elsewhere than where it firmly belongs - fairly and squarely upon his unprincipled mendacious shoulders!

[Avatar]

Roddy Doyle on Brexit:

...And when they use words like 'frictionless' an' 'seamless' to describe the new border, you can tell for a fact tha' the border will be a solid wall with razor wire an' cunts with rifles.

--A