What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Actually, it's not The End (and I'm sorry, but you're going to have to go back and slog your way through the last post in order to get this) because it's odd the way that the political spectrum in the West has been distorted, forced around like the beam of particles in the Large Hadron Collider, into a circle.

From the usual perspective of a straight line from left, through the central ground, all the way across to the far right, we see instead now a circular form with the establishment left and right almost indistinguishable from each other at the top, stretching around on each side to join once more in the non-establishment far left and right, fused together in the form of a populist conjunction at the bottom.

At the top you have the Sunak/Stamer establishment polity, barely distinguishable from each other, but maintaining the illusion that who you vote for makes a difference by sitting in supposedly different parties, and at the bottom of the circle, the hard left and right populism of Corbyn and say Oliver or (perhaps better) Farage, forming an alliance of convenience underpinned by their shared belief that only they represent the real interests of the people, as opposed to the vested interests of the establishment parties ranged above them in the political mainstream. Left vs Right, Establishment vs Populist. The whole bent into a circular path under extreme tension by the unresistable forces of shifting political/societal currents, controlled or otherwise, that pertain both between and within nations, as they shift to accommodate to prevailing events. The liberal democracy cum establishment position vs the forces of populism that are sweeping the world as people at last get that their polities, while professing to serve their interests, have all the time rather been looking after their own.

It's an interesting dynamic and a new perspective on an old story.

[peter]

WTF was all that bullshit about? Let's have a look at the news.



Ex Post Office chief Paula Vennells has jumped before she was pushed and voluntarily handed back her own CBE.

It's hardly surprising given the pressure that the current moral outrage over the Horizon scandal is causing in the media (better late than never), and similarly, as a result of the drama, people really seem to be taking on board the full extent (and seriousness) of what has happened.

I think that it's largely driven by sympathy for those poor individuals affected by the horrendous treatment that has been meted out to them, but I don't think people have yet cottoned on to the even bigger story behind the terrible miscarriage of justice - namely what it tells us about our relationship as a people with the state in which we live. There is grounds for thinking very seriously about just what this relationship is, how we are perceived by the state machine that we have created to live within, whether its perception of us (and the treatment of us it dispenses thereby) is the one of servility and service it should be, or whether the servant has in some way morphed into the master, has developed views of its own importance and the rights it has to hold sway over us that are not either right in a functional democracy, or conducive to our overall wellbeing as a nation. And whether perhaps we need a rethink about our relationship with said state.

At some point maybe some of our more perceptive journalists or commentators might start asking these difficult questions - its possible I suppose - but its more likely that they will simply just report the specific story as it unfolds, and engage in the necessary noises of sympathy that it demands, rather than taking the bigger and more difficult step into the dark area that such considerations lead into.

But on the story of Vennells, spare a thought for her. She's human and was no doubt doing what she had been led to believe her job was. The adage, to a person with a hammer every problem looks like a nail applies to her. I don't doubt that she believed in the infallibility of the Horizon system and the guilt of the sub-postmasters for a minute. It was misguided and a monkey using half its brain could have seen that something was adrift. But she clearly wasn't that monkey, and her upbringing in the service of the state she had risen through didn't fashion her to be it. Now, no doubt, the scales have fallen from her eyes and I have no doubt that she is suddenly a very frightened woman.

I doubt that she is the cruel monster she has been portrayed as. This is the power of writing to distort a single feature into a defining characteristic, at the expense of the other human elements that would lessen the dramatic impact. Let's be careful we don't commit further injustice here, throwing good money after bad.

-----0-----

The 2024 term has started with bang in Westminster. Sunak has received warning of a revolt by up to 30 right wing MPs this week, when voting is carried out over the PM's redrawn Rwanda policy, following that hiccup at the end of last year. (Something about Rwanda itself saying that it wouldn't accept any refugees unless there was clarity that no international laws were being broken in doing so, iirc.) The safety of Rwanda bill is due for its third reading early next week (it scraped through last time because the rebels decided that they still had time to force ammendments onto the bill to give it more teeth), but there are many Conservative MPs who simply don't believe it will work the oracle.

MPs are desperate to see planes taking off for Rwanda before the next election, and the Sunak bill is supposed to make this happen. But many of the MPs on the right of the party think that it should include measures preventing European judges from stopping the flights from taking off, and have tabled ammendments to this effect. Sunak believes that his bill goes as far as it is possible to go, and is resisting the inclusion of the ammendments.

While the rebels cannot muster enough support to get the ammendments included by force of a vote, they can refuse to back the bill in the House, which in combination with Labour who will vote against it, would scupper its passage. Not a good look for Sunak who has hung his authority very much upon getting this bill through.

Would its failure bring him down as PM, I doubt it. But it would make his life bloody difficult anyway. And as for planes taking off for Rwanda in the spring - not a bloody hope. Sunak is really a very bad politician. To hang your premiership on a promise you can't win (ie getting flights off before the election) is just bloody stupid. There's no other word for it.

-----0-----

(Quick flip-back to the earlier story; looks like Lib-Dem leader Ed Davey is coming under pressure to return his knighthood as well (he was minister for postal affairs at the time of many of the wrongful convictions it seems) - and more interestingly yet, it looks like Kier Stamer may have been Director of Public Prosecutions when some of the charges were brought by his office (as opposed to the Post Office who normally brought prosecutions under their own right). This is getting interesting!)

-----0-----

In the bottom right hand corner of the front page of the Telegraph - the spot normally reserved for any football news (in which I doubt many Telegraph readers have much interest) is a tiny segment saying that analysts predict that the government will have to indulge in a huge splurge of borrowing from the financial markets this year, prior to the election and completely against the government aim to reduce said borrowing.

No doubt the planned pre-election tax giveaways will still take place, but the Telegraph article doesn't mention this. So effectively the Sunak government is doing exactly what the Truss one did (which nearly destroyed the world economy when the markets panicked in response to the announcement), just much more subtly.

No wonder the Telegraph is keeping that one right down at the bottom of the page. The last debacle is just about disappearing into the distance through the rear view mirror: it wouldn't do to pull it back into the public's attention field once again now would it?

[Avatar]

It's hardly surprising given the pressure that the current moral outrage over the Horizon scandal is causing in the media (better late than never), and similarly, as a result of the drama, people really seem to be taking on board the full extent (and seriousness) of what has happened.

I was gonna say...only been like 9 years or something, what?

--A

[peter]

Gosh - much longer than that Av. Closer to 25! The bulk of convictions occurred between 1999 and 2015. Over 900 of them, all questionable and all soon to be overturned by government statute.

Interesting to read that artisan brewery Brewdog is abandoning its commitment to paying its workforce the (voluntary) 'real living wage' and reducing its payment of front line staff to the national minimum wage which is calculated at a lower rate.

The owners say that this is following a bad year in which the business showed an operating loss of 24 million pounds. The payment of the slightly higher rate of pay has been a cornerstone of the brand's ethical policy over the years, and workers are not happy about the signal it sends out.

But the reality is that this minor shift in cost reduction isn't going to put the firm back on the path to profitability. The problem is that the product is simply too highly priced in a market where the public is drawing in its horns in the face of shrinking incomes and rising costs. The beers it produces retail at significantly higher prices than comparable products, trading on the brand's trendy fashionable status in the image conscious young drinkers of the middle income bracket. But this group is loosing its disposable income faster than just about any other, as rising mortgage and rent costs hit them hard - not to mention rising costs in just about everything else as well. In the face of this they are looking for cheaper options where they can in many of the little luxury purchases they make, and the beer brand's they purchase are top of this list. Suddenly being cool is more expensive and uncomfortable than being solvent.

If Brewdog want to make themselves profitable again, then they must somehow work to bring down their product cost on the shelves. The small savings to be made on the wages cut will help, but will only be part of the necessary changes that will need to be made. I have some understanding of this because I work in retail. I actually see that the product is not moving off the shelf at a rate comparable with its competitors, and I regularly have to reduce the unsold product just to shift it before it hits its sell-by date. This results in our stocking less of the product, by virtue of our not being able to shift it. The lesson is an easy one. Find a way to reduce this higher cost on the shelf or go under. All of the ethical imagery in the world isn't worth a weak fart if people are strapped for cash. They'll always vote with their wallets and purses.

As for the workers. Get real and take the small hit the reduction will bring. It might be galling, but if you don't you might find that your next job (which will surely come when your current employer hits the wall) will be far less pleasant. You might even finish up working in retail, God help you.

-----0-----

Similar area on my next bit really. I recently drove through my home town center with Mrs P, and couldn't help notice the dire state of what was once a thriving market town.

Shop fronts were boarded up even in the main street proper and amongst the shops that were still open, there seemed to be an unhealthy level of phone and e-cigarrette shops, with far too many charity shops taken on short leases for comfort.

It was not, on the whole, a scene to convince one of the health and vitality of the town, as it girded itself up to face the forthcoming half decade.

As we drove further out, the more outlying shops became even more desolate in appearance. Closure signs and white windows:charity and low grade quick turnover shops, and surrounding it all a degree of decay and dilapidation that the bad weather we had been experiencing had brought out in visible relief for all to see.

In contrast, I thought of a YouTube video I had recently watched, of a guy visiting a small town of almost equal status to my own, on the German-Belgian border. It had been clean and vibrant, the shops varied and well stocked, even on the outlying fringes that the guy was walking through as he filmed. In truth, the whole scene had been totally different - the comparison between the two equivalent towns - and I thought ruefully on the assurances we are constantly given by our government, that "Thing's are just as bad elsewhere - it's not just us, you know!" What I was seeing just didn't seem to be backing this up.

A day or so later, on my local news channel I saw a report on this very subject: the long and drawn out demise of our town centers and high streets. The reporter went through pretty much the same things I have just said in relation to my own town, and then the studio based commentator tried to put an upswing on the dreary picture they had painted by wheeling on a woman from Torpoint (I think it was) town council, who was leading some kind of regeneration scheme aimed at bringing in inward investment and new startup businesses. She was, she said, really exited about the prospect of getting the local business community to "work together" in encouraging new shops to open. Shops that reflected local produce and local skills as opposed to the generic town high streets that could be found up and down the length and breath of the country.

What world are you living in Mrs, I thought to myself. Get your mind around these basic facts. With shop rents and business rates at an all time high, with wage and energy costs going through the roof, and with disposal incomes in the general public falling faster than a ta.... (censored similie; to non pc for here)....the only way a shop in these locations could hope to turn a profit is by selling items of high value way beyond the town's demographic to afford. Your ideas of small traders selling artisan products making a go of these sites is for the birds. It's cloud cuckoo land stuff. If you want to regenerate the high streets you either have to reduce rents and rates on the premises, ot you have to reshape town centers into places where people live as well as shops operate. Put people back into the town's as inhabitants rather than visitors, create cafe cultures and the need for services within those centers, and maybe you will pull it off. Otherwise, just accept that the high street is a thing of the past and move on. If the people want to shop online and bugger the local shops, then let them. They will pay the price of not finding the shops there when they eventually do step away from their laptops and our of their front doors. There's no rules to say that town councils have to buck this trend.

-----0-----

Quick final observation.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the International Court of Justice was still off enjoying an extended New Year break for all the coverage it has received on today's front pages, but in actual fact, things of momentous importance are going on there.

Because yesterday in the Haigh, South Africa began its presentation of evidence in its case alleging genocidal intent by the Israeli government in the prosecution of its war against Hamas.

And overwhelming it was.

Anybody listening could have been left in no doubt that Israel has very serious questions to answer about its conduct, and the complete ignoring of this incredibly important development by the Western media tells you everything you need to know about our ignoble role in the affair.

Beyond even our failure to condemn the disproportionate Israeli response to the October 7 attack, we have actively aided and abetted the slaughter by supplying the arms with which it has been carried out. In the event of a guilty judgment by the International Court, this will put both the USA and ourselves in a very uncomfortable place as the eyes of the world swivel away from Israel and towards our involvement.

No wonder our compliant media has stayed absolutely clear of this explosive development. I'd even go so far as to suggest that the US/UK raids into Yemen last night which totally dominate today's front pages, were specifically staged for the purpose of distraction of attention away from the proceedings in the Haigh.

Call me a conspiracy buff, but I'm betting that I'm not the only one to be found this morning, who regards the total absence of the Court proceedings from our media, and the sudden outbreak of hostilities on a different front, with a cynical eye.

[Avatar]

Well, I must say that I did find our case rather compelling, although I was surprised that it was us who brought it.

Of course, it is an election year and the ruling party has slipped significantly, although nowhere near decisively, in the poll estimates, so boosting the image etc. can only be a good thing.

In addition of course to our traditional ties with Palestine, and our (now ascendant) traditional animosity with Israel, as a direct result of it's earlier good relations with the Apartheid government of yore. (Thanks for the nuclear bomb Israel, you definitely non-rogue nuclear state you. Hope you liked the gold. ) (And to be fair, the support and aid of the then PLO in our own fight against Apartheid.)

Honestly, I don't see a defence that will prevent at least the imposition of provisional measures. An actual verdict however will take years, but I'm sure that the provisional measures that Israel will fail to take will be a great comfort.

Still, cynicism aside, the moral victory and the probable resultant pressure may yet do some good somewhere along the line, and in principle I cannot but applaud it.

(Ah, with regards to Horizon, I must have been counting from the later of those dates. )

--A

[peter]

Alas Av, I'd like to agree on the provisional measures but despite the (more than) compelling nature of the S.A. case, I'm afraid you aren't taking into account the politics.

Of the five permanent members of the 15 man committee (or should it be jury?), the USA and UK are definitely thumbs down. The French are questionable and could go either way, but the Russians (despite their strong words earlier in favour of a ceasefire when it was voted on at the UN) are dodgy. They are themselves under question for possible genocidal acts in Ukraine and is this a can of worms they really want to open up? China also has reason to tread very carefully in respect of genocide questions. The Uigar question is sufficiently close to home for them such that they won't be up for anything but the hardest of interpretations of what constitutes a genocidal intent.

I don't know what the relationship is in respect of the five permanent member states and the rest (re vetos and the like) but rest assured, the USA are not going to see this go against Israel if it can be avoided and they can exact pretty strong leverage.

But in fairness, I did see a former lawyer who has successfully achieved provisional measures in the case of Bosnia, and he felt the South African case was stronger than his was. He felt it would go their way. In any kind of just world it would be a done deal, but I'm thinking we'll have to wait and see.

Back home though, just how stupid do the BBC think we are?

Twice I've heard Jeremy Corbyn's name slipped into news reports, oh so casually, in the last two days.

Firstly it was noted in passing that Jeremy Corbyn was present at the Hague, as if his presence there was sufficient to tell us that we didn't want to be taking very much notice of anything that came out of there, and today, when reporting the US/UK attacks on the Yemen last night, it was said that Jeremy Corbyn had condemned them. The reporter all but finished by saying, "which means they must have been necessary," but he refrained from doing so.

At what point did Corbyn become the red flag waving sign warning us to stay away? Corbyn was fighting the Palestinian cause before most of these clammy establishment mouthpieces were born! In my case, I'd give more credence to one sentence he uttered than most government spokespeople spew out in a lifetime.

(Oh, and on why South Africa. Yes Av - you have it with the apharteid thing. Israel has been accused of being an effective apharteid state by more than one highly respected international body, Amenesy International included. It is entirely appropriate for South Africa to lead the fight outside Palestinian itself, in support of a despicable injustice sitting on the heads of another people - indeed the very same injustice that they themselves were subjected to for so many a year.)

[peter]

Israel yesterday presented its defence against the South African charges of its acting with genocidal intent, and although I have not (yet) had a chance to view any of the footage, from the reports I've read it doesn't sound as if it had anything like the persuasive quality of the previous day's South African presentation.

But, but, but......

Does it actually have to?

It's important to stress that the purpose of this hearing is to demonstrate genocidal intent. Not to establish whether or not war crimes have been committed. Not to establish the intent to carry out ethnic cleansing or collective punishment. These latter things can quite possibly be the case without the involvement of any genocidal intent being involved, and it is upon this distinction that I believe that the accusation will fail (the political side of things that I mention above notwithstanding).

Germany has already expressed its doubts about the accusations, throwing its voice in behind that of the USA and UK, and its not a stretch too far to believe that many of the other 15 member panel will be persuaded to follow them in questioning the South African assessment.

Genocidal intent is notoriously difficult to prove (I read), and no decision as to Israeli guilt would ever be taken lightly. The case for an agreement with the accusation would have to be beyond watertight, almost moving into the realms of impossible to prove one hundred percent certainty. And the effects of a guilty verdict by the panel of judges (insofar as an order of provisional measures can be taken assuch) would be seismic. Of course this should not sway the decision of the Court, but it would be nieve to believe that it won't. Such a decision would effectively shatter Israel's international reputation and place under question the whole of their policy towards the Palestinian question for the past decades. Britain and America would stand in the dock of international opinion as having been complicit in the prosecution of genocidal activity, by virtue of having supplied the armaments via which said activity was carried out, and refusal on the part of Israel to comply with an order to immediately desist in any further activity in Gaza would presumably bring its own subsequent consequences (sanctions and penalties imposed by the UN etc).

But it is clear that the US and UK are to a large extent already isolated in their position of support of Israel, and the temptation of sending these two (and the West more generally) a message from the global South ("Your time of running things is over," style of thing) will be high. So make no mistake, the judges that sit on the 15 member panel won't be making their personal decisions in isolation. Entire polities of their various countries will be sitting on their shoulders as they do so (even in respect of the short provisional measures decision, let alone the longer full judgement which is likely to take years).

What the message will be if the Court does not approve the implementation of provisional measures is not difficult to imagine. Israel will feel vindicated and will pursue with renewed vigour its possible long-term intent of clearing Gaza of Palestinians. What effect this will have in the wider theatre of the region is anyone's guess. Further ratcheting up and widening of the conflict into a full scale regional war? The drawing in of the USA and Uk (if we are not already drawn in) to the hostilities proper? Spreading of the conflict to join or even precipitate further outbreaks at other flashpoints around the globe? Unnecessarily pessimistic perhaps, but as I say, anyone's guess.

-----0-----

To read the lachrymosal reports of the Queen's final hours in the papers today (drawn from some forthcoming biography of King Charles I believe) is to witness the full bathetic effect of our media when it strays into the mawkish.

It makes the whole business of dying (as orchestrated in the upper echelons of our society) so 'chocolate box' in its unfolding that one could almost look forward to the damn affair.

The Queen 'slips away' oblivious to the event in her sleep (in other words I suppose, she was 'coshed into insensibility' with drugs that will no doubt be denied to the rest of us when the beastly time comes). Charles "gathers mushrooms" somewhere in the quiet grounds of the Balmoral estate, in order to "clear his head" (shouldn't take too long). He then drives calmly back to the House, but pulls over calmly to the side of the road as a call comes in (yeah, right - no law busting speaking into a phone while driving for him). He calmly takes the call, realising that he is king when it comes in as adressed to 'His Majesty', then calmly continues his drive back to the awaiting reception (long awaited in his case).

Good God. Does some cheesy royal commentator angling for a knighthood really think we need this kind of sanitised nonsense in order to retain our respect for the monarchy? Death is an ugly business. It isn't a nice ordered affair where things go according to plan (except, perhaps if you're a royal, then maybe it really can be smoothed over in a way that the rest of us could only dream of). It's a chaotic dance of pain and suffering (very often at least - and one that the doctors seem less and less inclined to spare us; a report not so long ago recounted that a large proportion of those approaching death do so without the pain medication that would make their passage smoother and less traumatic). If anything, the kind of fantasy spinning that is apparently in this book just serves to emphasise the divisionbetween us and our ruling family. I really don't know which is worse: if this sickly confection is true or if it isn't. But either way I'm sure that our King doesn't need it and neither do we.

-----0-----

The 'i' tells us this morning that David Cameron played a key role in planning the attacks on the Houthi strongholds in Yemen the other night.

This alone should cause us to shudder in our sleep: it was Cameron who virtually single handedly caused the European migrant crisis by instigation of the unnecessary war which toppled the Gaddafi regime (yes, beastly I know - but preferable to the chaos that has prevailed ever since), thereby opening the coastal ports of Libya to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants wanting to make the crossing into Europe.

This is a man whose judgment is not just deficient, it's non-existent.

He brought about our leaving the EU, thereby in a single stroke putting us back decades in terms of economic prospects for the future (if we still have any economic prospects for the future that is) and lowered the bar for standing as an MP for the Conservative Party to the point where we now have government ministers of the execrable quality of Grant Schapps making decisions about the security and defence of the country.

The world is on the verge of a fucking third world war fer Christ's sake, and we have David Cameron and Grant frikkin' Schapps as the only thing standing between us and oblivion! God - fucking - help - us!

[Avatar]

Personally, I've always found mushrooms sovereign (haha) for clearing the head. Not so much their gathering of course, but surely he wouldn't be wasting them either...

--A

[peter]

I've had a few Psilocybin based head-clearing moments myself Av (which probably explains a fair bit in its own way I guess ).

Ahh.... Sunday, bloody Sunday. Let's have a look.

Voting in the Taiwan elections has taken place and the Chinese won't be happy with the result.

The ruling DPP party has won a stonking majority despite a pretty balanced poll in the days prior to the election, which means a continuation of the policy of distancing the country from its covetous neighbour,but with a twist.

The leadership will pass to the former deputy president, William Lai Ching-te, who the Chinese had absolutely not wanted to win. William Lai is a more firebrand version of his predecessor and has chosen as his running mate, and now deputy Hsiao Bi-khim, a lady who has been equally critical of her Chinese neighbours in years gone by (even worse, she has an American mother).

It remains to be seen if William Lai will be a bit more conciliatory in his approach now he has won the leadership, but no-one is holding their breath. Expect some show of displeasure in the days to come (military exercises on the Taiwanese coast or some such) as President Xi sends out a warning message to his recalcitrant small neighbour. He will no doubt push his invasion plans into fast mode (if American security service intel is correct) and that in itself brings the potential for confrontation with America to a higher level.

Would the US go to war over Taiwan, both Biden and Trump are playing their cards close to their chests on that one. Can't see it myself, but hey, strange times!

-----0-----

There's a certain amount of blowback on the government decision to join forces with the American raid on the Houthi strongholds in Yemen, with numbers of politicians pissed that parliament was not recalled for a vote on the action.

Foreign Secretary David Cameron is in today's press saying that there was no choice but to do this, but the truth is that there is always a choice. The choice here was to attempt to dial down the tensions of the region by attempting to initiate dialogue with all parties involved, or to ramp up tensions with action of this kind.

Significant perhaps that we are perfectly happy to watch the people of Gaza blown to smithereens with no call to try to stop the activities of Israel, but when Western economic interests are threatened by an interruption to trade, then action must be taken. There was of course no question in our minds about the desirability of interruption of trade when we starved the population of Yemen of food and medication with our own blockade of the country prior to the cessation of hostilities, but that of course, was a different matter.

But back home, parliament had a right to be consulted on this, and it is to Kier Stamer's shame that he went along with it like a little lap-dog rather than stick to the democratic principles of consulting the House on actions of such grave import.

Germany has fallen into line with the US/UK action, but France, Italy and Spain are less happy. We of course were never not going to comply with the American decision to carry out the attacks. One commentator recently said that we are now effectively just another State of America, insofar as we make no autonomous decisions for ourselves on foreign policy, but simply go wherever we are told by America.

If it were me, I'd be at least leveraging a trade deal (on favourable terms) out of the yanks in return for our compliance - but our piss-pot political leadership can't even rise to that. Biden, the fuckwit, has never shown the slightest inclination to support us in our economic travails - why should we support him now?

Time to cut ourselves loose from this ailing hegemonic troublemaker of a nation and rejoin the ranks of the rest of the world in looking forward. When are our leaders going to get it. America is on the way down. We need to be looking elsewhere for our future interests.

[Savor Dam]

Dealt with some ill-informed folk who wanted to equate:

• the easy-out of rehoming elsewhere Gazan peoples whose assets are now negligible

• providing a new base for the Taiwanese and their industries (especially semiconductor production / innovation)

One problem: Taiwan (or, more accurately, Formosa) is about 10 times the land area of Gaza. While the Gazan people were overcrowded to begin with and might benefit from the extra space, Gaza isn't enough space to relocate domestic Taiwan, much less the commerce aspects too.

The alignment with Israeli technology industries was intriguing, but it really didn't work...not to mention none of the populations involved would be amenable to such a realpolitik maneuver.

[peter]

Mmm.......okaaay.......

In a world as batshit crazy as the one we live in, hell, I'll listen to anything.



(And just what part of Arkensaw or the Appalachias did these people come from SD? )

[Savor Dam]

These were neither ignorant nor insensitive people, peter. I doubt they believed in the position they were advocating; this was a hypothetical based on "disperse the Gazans to get them out of the Israeli cross-hairs" (admittedly, quite tone-deaf to both the Palestinian and Jewish diasporas) combined with "shelter the global tech industry from losing Taiwan's semiconductor industry."

On that basis, it made limited economic sense, but was entirely a non-starter from any practical aspect.

[peter]

Doesn't look like anyone's going to be living in Gaza for some time to come either ways SD. Place is all but uninhabitable now.



A few weeks ago a family member came to our house and said that she was having problems getting medication she was being prescribed (on a regular basis as part of her ongoing treatment) at our local pharmacies.

I'd heard about shortages of certain medications on an irregular basis in the media since we left the EU, but this was the first time anyone I knew had personally been affected.

But a report in yesterday's Guardian has brought into focus just how severe the problems are. We are now in a situation where hundreds of vital medications for the treatment of cancers, diabetic conditions, psychoses and hormonal therapies are on the list of products in short supply to the point where lives are being put at risk. Data shows that the length of the list is growing by the day and now stands at double that which it was two years ago.

Much of this has to do with drug prices increasing to the point where they no longer fall within the strict purchasing limits of the NHS budget. The increased cost of importation brought about by our no longer being members of the EU has pushed the branded products off the purchasing lists, leaving only the generic products still within the scope of NHS purchasing. The production levels of the cheaper generic products are however not sufficient to satisfy the needs of the NHS and where it was previously possible to fall back on more expensive branded products to make up the shortfall, this is now no longer allowed. Hence we are reduced to a situation where too many pharmacies are chasing too small a supply of product.

And this was exactly what we were warned would happen by the remain lobby, when deciding whether to leave the EU, or remain in membership. But you will remember that such warnings were dubbed as "project fear". This we were told by the Leave campaign, would never happen. It was the use of nightmare scenarios by the Remain campaign to frighten people away from voting to leave.

I await to hear the response from Farage in respect of what we now know was not project fear, but was just a simple logical prediction based upon no more than an understanding of how our systems of procurement work. I'm not expecting one any time soon to be honest, but I promise you this. The first time Richard Tice, or whoever happens to be leading the Reform Party (ie the Brexit Party as was) at the time of the next election, puts themselves up for answering questions, my question will be what they have to say in response to this. And that if they were so unable to use the simple reasoning that led to the now demonstrably correct assumption of what would happen to our drug procurement system upon leaving the EU, why now should we trust their reasoning on anything else?

But perhaps I ought to be careful here. Because although Reform could never win an election, they do have a very real prospect of ensuring that the Tories do not win another one either. They are scooping up dissatisfied Tory voters in their millions (they sit at around ten percent in the polls) and in so doing are splitting the Tory vote in numerous key marginals without which a Conservative victory cannot be achieved. In fact the situation is extremely bad for the Tories indeed. In a recent poll carried out by YouGov - the largest of it's kind yet carried out - the Tories are set to be decimated in the next election, and this is in no small part down to this very splitting effect. It was estimated by the pollsters that the entire red-wall tranche of seats that Boris Johnson won in the North of England would be lost because of it. Stripped down to its core support in the South, the advantage that won Johnson his huge majority is gone, and a combination of dissatisfaction with the Tories generally, Sunak in particular, and the obvious train-wreck of the UK economy (and immigration policy) they have brought about.......well, the job of defeating the Tories is effectively done.

And it isn't that Kier Stamer has had anything to do with it. The poll shows that he is as unpopular as ever. People don't like him - but they don't like the Tories even more. They just want them out and will take Stamer as the price to pay for that.

But we are entering into dangerous waters.

I've observed before that what makes the Tories winners - the thing that has made them the party of government for much of the post war period since WW2 - is their inbuilt belief that they have the right to rule, but more importantly their preparedness to do anything - anything - to ensure that they do. And if this means going to war, or working to create the circumstances where we have no choice but to go to war - then I believe that they would quite possibly be prepared to do it, in order to reverse the fortunes that this poll predicts for them. And remember they have seen the benefits of a war in reversing their electoral chances before. Had it not been for the wave of patriotism, of support for the ruling party that the Falklands War brought about, it is highly probable that Margaret Thatcher would have lost the election in 1983. Is it then a coincidence that we find ourselves in the thick of a renewed possibility of conflict? How much will decisions we make over the coming months be influenced by an eye kept on the polls? There is small reason why we, a two-bit nation of little prosperity and even less international importance should be the 'tip of the spear' in two major regions of conflict in the world. Yet here we are, spearheading the support for Ukraine Iin Europe (and recognised by Zelensky in an article in last week's Sunday Times as such) and standing alongside America in mounting retaliatory strikes against the Houthi strongholds in Yemen. We do this of course, as a way of keeping ourselves on the top-table, of punching (as it were) above our weight. But it's pretty good positioning from the point of going into an election when you are trailing in the polls as well. Make no mistake: if we can fight a war from a distance, with bombs and drones rather than boots on the ground, and this will win the Tories a further term in office, then it's a done deal. We'll go to war.

-----0-----

Incidentally, it's worth noting as well, the Americans have no real interest in protecting Red Sea trade routes. Their economy isn't dependent upon these routes, they don't recieve either goods or energy products via them, nor do their exports take this route.

The reason they are there, leading the world's response to the threat to Red Sea traffic is exactly that - to be seen to be leading the world's response. Because to be seen not to be leading the world's response is an admission that they no longer lead the hegemony of the Western dominance of the World. It would be a tacit admission that the days of American dominance are over. And who else would step into the place to lead the response: why China of course. They are currently keeping their heads down, because the Americans are doing their work for them. It's Chinese interests that are most threatened by disruption of Red Sea trade (and the EU 's). It's their route for exporting their goods to Europe and they should by rights be the ones defending it.

So why aren't they.

Well, firstly their shipping is not nearly as much at risk as that of nations that have connections with, or are actively supporting Israel. And secondly, why do it (and incur all of the cost and political trouble both at home and abroad, that it will bring, when another country is prepared to do it for you.

And can you really see America standing by and letting China step into its role as 'policeman of the world'? Yeah right. Like that's going to happen!

So, as with all things, its wheels within wheels. The game is international geopolitics and the game, my friends, is afoot!

[peter]

60 Tory MPs voted against Rishi Sunak's Rwanda Bill going through without ammendments and 3 ministers (including the two deputy party leaders) resigned.

Okay, it isn't exactly game changing stuff, but it isn't helpful either. Tonight is the vote to pass the legislation or kick it out, and while ir will most likely get through a lot of MPs won't be happy about it. They feel that the legislation is simply too weak in its existing form to achieve its goal of getting planes to Rwanda into the air, and it allows far to much scope for individual asylum seekers destined for deportation to halt the take-off's with their own personal claims of appeal to the courts. Sunak has bet, if not his premiership then certainly his authority as leader, on the legislation being tough enough to get the planes flying. The rebels wanting the legislation beefed up tend to be on the right of the, particularly those tory holding seats in the North of England, where the bite of immigration (and the resentment of it caused thereby) is much greater than in the South. These MPs see the getting of the planes into the air as an existential matter to their chances of reelection come the forthcoming general election.

Sunak argues however that the legislation as it stands is as tough as it can be without breaking international law, and thereby causing Rwanda to pull out of the agreement anyway. The party was 'whipped' to support the unammended legislation, but as I say, some 60 declined to do so.

Included amongst the ministerial resignees is the notorious '30p Lee' - the softly spoken MP for Shit-hole on Arsechester - whose advice to any migrants who were not happy with the treatment they were receiving here was to "Fuck off back to France." Sunak will no doubt be feeling his loss keenly. (It begs the question as to how a fool like this ever got elected as an MP in the first place, let alone rose to the position of deputy leader.)

As I say, we're not looking at game changing stuff, but the nails keep going in on the Sunak prime ministerial coffin, and only a miracle will keep him in situ for any length of time post the next election (win or loose) - and that would be assuming he even wanted to stay, which he doesn't. But as for planes actually getting into the air Rwanda bound - not a chance in hell. And if they did, the deterrent effect and the impact on illegal Channel crossing would be negligible anyway, so in reality the whole thing is just a crock of nonsense diversion which is costing us millions. Much ado about nothing!

-----0-----

There's a fuss in the media about a high court case in which a Muslim student is taking her school to court for banning prayer sessions from taking place in the school playground, where apparently large numbers of students have been kneeling on their blazers (prayer mats being forbidden in the school) on the dirty wet ground. This argue the students legal representation, amounts to an attack on freedom of religion and on the face of it, I have to say, I tend to agree.

The whole situation seems to have got a bit ugly, with online threats against the school and even physical attacks. I'm not sure if the kids are being prevented from prayer point blank, or if the ban only applies to them doing so openly in the playground in front of non-Muslim pupils, and this seems to me to be a key point. Given that the student's lawyers are pressing for a compromise position where students are allowed to pray on specific days where the Muslim calendar obliges it, then I'm guessing that the ban as it stands is on all prayer, rather than just public display in the playground. This, if it is the case, seems excessive to me, and I can absolutely see why this would be fought against.

But this school it seems, has form. The school is noted in the Telegraph as having "Britain's stricest head teacher", and while it certainly seems to be working on the academic front - it also has some of the country's top achievements in terms of grades obtained by its students - there is certainly a cost being levied in terms of freedom. As examples of the regime followed, students are banned from speaking to each other in the corridors and mobile phones are not allowed on the premises. (I completely agree with the latter stipulation - I can think of little more damaging to study in class than the constant surreptitious checking of a mobile phone - but the former seems outrageous to me.)

And one more thing. Suella Braverman supports the school position on banning prayer and this automatically makes it by necessity wrong.

Case closed m'Lud!

-----0-----

Can I just make a point to our media right across the board.

We know that the Israeli action in Gaza started as a result of the Hamas inspired raid into Israel which killed 1200 people and led to the taking of 200 hostages.

We know it.

There is no need to keep repeating it over and over again, every time a new horror or outrage is being perpetrated upon the civilian population of Gaza, as though this in some way mitigates or justifies what is being done there. It doesn't.

And as for the defence of "Israel has the right to defend itself" - surely you can all see that this has gone far beyond 'Israel defending itself '?

It's like if a few youths from my town went out to the neighboring city and did some atrocious things, and then the city mobilised and came to my town and levelled the entire town - obliterated it from the map - on the grounds of defending itself. It would be a ludicrous argument to suggest that this was a proportionate response and constituted a 'defence'. It is so in the case of Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

However the October 7 attack was dealt with, it should not have been dealt with like this.

[peter]

Make no mistake, Rishi Sunak didn't get his Safety of Rwanda Bill through last night because his MPs liked it. It passed with only 11 Tory backbenchers voting against it because his MPs are afraid of bringing him down with only months to go before an election.

Now it's going to the Lords where they are going to pull it to pieces.

But it isn't going to work and Sunak knows it. Even if it did pass into law, if planes did actually take of to the now legislated 'safe' country (from which we recently accepted fleeing refugees on the basis of their safety being compromised), it still wouldn't stop the boats from setting off on the dangerous crossing of the Channel, because such a miniscule number of actual illegals would ever be sent there. The chances of it being any given individual who gets shoved on a plane is hundreds to one against, and for people who have braved fleeing persecution in their home lands, made the arduous and uncertain crossing from the middle east or Africa and then sat in the hell-holes of the French refugee camps for months, the perceived risks of the hugely risky crossing are worth it, never mind the piddling chance that they may get sent to Rwanda.

But Sunak needs this to work for the satisfaction of all those Northern red-wall voters - the ones whose lives and societies have been far more impacted by immigration than those of people living in the South (where immigration policies have been far more sensitively implemented).

And Kier Stamer knows that the issue is Sunak's weak spot, as evidenced by his focused attack on Sunak on the very subject over the dispatch box yesterday. Six times he hammered home, ridiculed, laid bare, and poured contempt on the PM, and six times Sunak was forced to repeat the same meaningless statistics, the same poor rhetoric about "Labour has no plan!". It was painful stuff and Sunak will be pleased to have won the vote, albeit not for the reasons he'd actually want (ie because his party actually supported the legislation), but to at least kick it into the longish grass for a few weeks or months.

But it'll be back to haunt him, and my bet is that the Rwanda policy will take flight for that great and fabled graveyard of policies that never made it (think poll tax, ID cards and the like) before any flights take off for the actual country itself.

-----0-----

A picture of three aged celebrity women, frolicking in the playground for the super-rich Mustique, told us all we need to know about the decadent and pampered lives of the upper echelons of UK society, cushioned away as they are, from the hardship and poverty under which huge swathes of our society labour.

Occupying center stage on the front of the Telegraph, we saw the recently turned 50 ex super-model Kate Moss (bedecked in Midsummer Nights Dream style holly and flowers headdress and necklace) flanked by actress Sadie Frost and nutritionist Rosemary Fergusson, the whole dressed in flimsy semi-revealing attire in what is, one imagines, the closest thing to 'saucy pictures' that the bulk of the readership of that particular paper ever encounter.

Looking a bit ring-rusty I'm afraid it must be said (the 'glory having departed (as it were) from the House of Israel ') the trio were said to be enjoying a 'spiritual retreat' on the island, before jetting back to France for a party being held at the Paris Ritz.

Nice work if you can get it, I suppose, but what, I wondered was the point of publishing the faintly ridiculous photo at all?

Was the paper actively trying to make fools of these women? Trying to show them for the inconsequential fluff that the image conveyed them as being? People so insensitive to the hardships of others within their own society, and so caught up in the ersatz spirituality of the nonsense they were continually imbibing, that they completely failed to recognise just how - well - silly they looked? Is this really what makes these people tick, what floats their boats? Or is it just a silly game that extreme wealth allows you to play for a few days, before getting back to the mundane reality of the day to day grind that probably comprises the existence of even the most wealthy and superfluous members of our society? And can they really have been uncognisant of the insensitivity of the image? The superfluous vapidity that it projected? I don't believe that the Telegraph editor will have been for a minute.

Or perhaps I've got it all wrong. Perhaps this really is what the super-rich in our society do to regain their mojo. Perhaps they really all are on a beach in Mustique in their spare time, sitting around the campfire and holding up their Dunhill lighters to the stars. Chanting "Om Mani Padme Om" as hot stones are placed on to their carefully oiled backs? Perhaps the Telegraph didn't publish the picture as a piss-take, perhaps they see it as the real deal - a deal that no doubt, would be entirely lost when contemplated by a brute instrument as sluggish and incomprehending as my plebeian mind.

It's a quandary that I'll never know the answer to, but for all my smug superciliousness when recounting the tale, I don't for a minute loose sight of the essential harmlessness of it. They are not to be blamed for capitalising on the whims of a society that pays such exorbitant wealth into the hands of such inconsequential individuals. Who, after all, in their position would not? Just perhaps some of us would have perhaps more humility - dare I say it, more taste in the manner in which we displayed our good fortune.

[peter]

Chancellor Hunt "hints to the BBC" that he'd like to cut taxes in his early spring budget.

He gave an interview, during which he was (if the account given on their website is to be believed) asked no questions - certainly none were reported - and in which he simply got to say what he wanted to, rather than being grilled on his intentions.

Hence he was able to say with a straight face that, "Countries with lower tax are more dynamic" and have "faster growing economies".

This from the bloke who has overseen the biggest tax increases on the public since the year frikkin dot, and put us under just about the highest taxation burden we have laboured under since the Second World War. And has had to do so for no other reason than the disastrous (too small a word for the gut-churningly incompetence of our recent governments - remember Liz Truss!) mismanagement of the economy of successive Tory administrations since the financial crash.

And now he thinks that countries who tax their people less have more dynamic and faster growing economies.

And this has nothing to do with the fact that there is an election coming round the corner and he wants to put his greasy Tory elbow behind his party's fat complacent arse to try to give them a shunt over the line into a further period in office. Never mind that the country's public services are stripped down to the bone, that cash raised in taxation provides the vital transfusions of lifeblood that is just about - and only just about - keeping them alive. No - fuck public services when there is an election to think about.

And who benefits most from said tax cuts? Why, the wealthiest people in the country of course. Because if you're earning 20 grand a year that 1p in the pound is worth about one pound fifty per week (give or take) but for someone on a million a year its worth thereabouts 190 quid. And trust me, for people at the bottom end of the income scale, the public services are worth far more than that one pound fifty; they'd happily continue to pay it to maintain the services (and God forbid even improve them to include stuff like universal free dental care - ie the stuff that Conservative governments don't think is important).

And as for Hunt: rumours had it that he could actually loose his seat in the forthcoming election. Here's hoping. Here's fucking hoping!

-----0-----

If I have it right, something of the order of 650 billion pounds of money was shifted from the treasury coffers during the pandemic, and straight into the pockets of the wealthiest people in our society. It was the hugest period of governmental largesse that the country has ever experienced, and the top ten percent of the income brackets were by far the biggest recipients of that gift. Where the general effect of the pandemic was a reduction in our collective wealth, this did not extend to the already wealthiest, who saw their assets rise in value across the whole period.

But let's leave that aside for a minute and consider a question about economics that I recently saw explained by the excellent Gary Stevenson (see his channel GarysEconomics on YouTube), namely, how is it possible that every member of a society can see their individual lot improving, but the collective lot of the whole society can be decreasing at the same time? Is this even possible, since logic would seem to tell us otherwise?

Well here's how it works (and thanks again to Gary for this).

If you look at a graph of wealth Vs time, with wealth on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal, for every individual member the line slopes upwards (unless you are one of those unfortunate people who for reasons of bad luck or whatever, does not get generally wealthier as they get older, eg by getting a higher wage, or buying a property and seeing it increase in value, or accumulating savings or whatever).

But if you break this line into four separate lines, each representative of one of the four or so generations that exist in a collective society at any one time, you will see that in our case, for each successive generation, their line is set lower down the graph as a whole than the generation above it. In other words, the starting point for each generation is lower than the one preceding it. And the lines of each generation never catch up with the generations above them, so the four lines remaining separate, the one above the other with the oldest at the top, the second lying below it and the third and fourth lying below that.

If you now think of the point on these lines (ie one on each line) that represents the same age on each line (say forty years old or whatever) and join these points with a line that runs from the top generation line to the bottom generation line, you see that the cross generational line produced is downward sloping. ie, although each member of the society taken individually is experiencing increased wealth as they go through life, the collective wealth of the society as a whole is falling. So at any given age, each generation is that bit poorer than the preceding one was at the same age.

So where is this wealth going? Wealth can't just disappear from a society....it has to go somewhere? And of course, it does.

Because if you plot a line of the wealth of the top percentile of wealth holders on that wealth Vs time graph, it sits above the four generational lines below it, and rises exponentially. So that missing wealth that represents the falling wealth of each successive generation is being syphoned upwards into the pockets of a few very affluent members of society, and in whose pockets it stays, horded away from the mass of the people.

Now okay. All of this seems a lot of hard work to get your head around, and I'm sorry about this. If I was anything other than a complete dunce I'd be able to upload a copy of this graph for you to see for yourself.

But if any of this is of any interest to you, try and take the trouble to draw up this simple graphic as I have explained it. It should work if I've done my job properly, and if it does, then I promise, suddenly a lot of what is happening in our society will become clear.

Gary Stevenson calls it 'The illusion of improvement' (you can check out his vid on YouTube and save yourself the bother of doing the drawing) and it's really important. It's really important because we all - you, I, all of us - live under its illusion every day, and we don't even know it.

[peter]

The ongoing covid enquiry has not proven much use thus far in scrutinising our response to the faux pandemic, other than demonstrating that it was pretty useful exercise in gauging just what you could get away with as a government, in terms of the imposition of sudden restrictive laws and curfews on people otherwise used to pretty much universal freedom of movement. As an exercise in control of the people - real and immediate control, not just behind the scenes jiggery-pokery - and an investigation into overt propoganda and psy-ops carried out at a population level, it was unparalleled in human history and there will be beyond doubt whole government departments privately dedicated to examination of where and in what circumstances it was most successful.

But in terms of the public inquiry into the response and how it was carried out, very little has been achieved.

We have learned that Ministers and their advisors are shall we say, less than polite about each other when communicating behind each other's backs. And we have learned that respect of the abilities of the various individuals who do make it to the top levels of our various government departments are not universally high. But there is one thing that we have absolutely learned in that is of key and immediate importance, and must be adressed immediately with the highest exigency.

All of which means that it will most likely not be even thought about by the lazy bastards who run this country.

I refer of course to the use of the WhatsApp service in the decision making process by which the country is governed.

And I'm not talking about its just being used as a behind the scenes means of our leaders and administrators talking to each other: I'm talking about actual and highly relevant discussions being carried out, discussions that lead to seismic decisions being made, on a platform from whence at a later point, all records of those conversations can be erased.

Because the one thing that absolutely has come out of the inquiry, is that our leaders cannot be trusted not to interfere with the holding of those records of conversations, such that they may be held to account for them at a later date.

Because today it is revealed that ex SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is the third leader, following Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak before her, that felt no need to keep her WhatsApp messages intact and available. And it isn't just them. Other lower ranking civil servants and advisors have been suddenly unable to access the vital information that the inquiry needs in order to be able to perform its task. It has been hampered from the get-go by phones that suddenly cannot be opened, or have gone missing, or have been replaced, or from which the records have mysteriously disappeared.

And this, perhaps seemingly unimportant detail, is in fact highly damaging to a democracy. Because proper accountability is absolutely central to any functional democracy. And without it, there is no defence against incompetence, negligence and even downright criminality, and we are absolutely at the mercy of those who walk the corridors of power above us.

Why do I seem to be the only one who gets this?

-----0-----

Apparently the kids of today have no inclination to "Join the Army, travel the world and kill people".

More power to their elbows I say.

Both the Royal Navy and the British Army have reported significant recruitment problems in the last few days. The Navy has reportedly not sufficient personnel to send out its available warships to the Red Sea or Persian Gulf, should they be needed, and today the Times reports that if current trends continue, then within a few short years we will have less than 60,000 soldiers protecting our interests at home and abroad. That's less than a single American special force unit.

Capita, the company responsible for the outsourced recruitment of forces personnel is coming in for some flack, but in fairness the prospects for any would be recruit are not exactly enticing. You earn little more than minimum wage for putting your life up for grabs, the international relations situation is more fraught with risk than it has been for years (a German official said that we could expect to be at war with Russia within five years and a top Nato spokesperson was not much more optimistic) and it's generally not quite what the youngsters of today are up for - adherence to strict discipline and the taking of orders from those above them etc.

And to be fair, the 'boots on the ground' warfare seems pretty much to be a thing of the past. Important I'd think, to be able to ensure that your country's food and fuel needs are met, so I suppose a functional naval force is required for that, but in terms of land attacks, most seem to be done from the air these days and so I suppose actual soldiery is needed far less than it was before warfare became such a tech based affair.

But I suppose I'm still a bit old-school really. I absolutely get why kids don't want to go and fight in other people's wars at the instructions of people who care nothing for them and have no concern for their particular interests, but still, I suppose there's a bit of me that likes knowing that we have an army that can defend us, a navy that can protect our shores. It's psychological I'm aware - a comfort-blanket from my childhood when we all knew that our military had saved us from the horror of nazism - but still, a small part of me thinks it probably is necessary.

As for recruitment, in my more rabid moments I think I'd have no problem with a two year national service conscription, but on reflection I reconsider. I'm bloody sure I wouldn't have wanted to serve by obligation rather than choice, and I'm damn sure today's youth wouldn't want to either. And do conscripts make good soldiery? I have my doubts. And something tells me that the army itself would not want loads of low grade recruits clogging up its ranks and forcing them to act as wet-nurses for a pampered and callow cohort of young people. What they need are smaller numbers of more suitable material I'm guessing.

But the way things are going it might be that we have no choice but to take the more authoritarian route of forced conscription. The pax Americana of recent times looks to be ending as the American hegemony of world affairs comes to an end, and all sides start casting suspicious glances around, wondering who will break first, who will make the first move. Like it or not, our need for soldiers is not over by a long way, and bodies are going to be needed. I wouldn't want to be one of those who are unable to 'skip the draft' this time around but hell, I wouldn't want to be young in this world point blank.

And that's a shame when you think about it, isn't it?

[peter]

It is and has been over a long period, the job of the Conservative Party to make the rich richer and the rest of us pay for it.

And my golly has it worked!

Look at the increasing wealth held by the top 10 percent of country over the last 3 decades and you'll see it's been Christmas day every day for some members of our society.

And never has the increasing division between the haves and have-nots increased faster than over the past 3or 4 years. Money has absolutely surged upwards in a never-ending geezer of green, and no-one has said anything about it. The Conservatives have successfully stayed in power by driving a wedge between the middle and working classes of this country, and have convinced the former that it is with them that their best interests lie in securing their future.

In the pandemic some 600 billions of our money went straight from the coffers of the treasury into the pockets of the wealthiest in our society, to be transferred into assets in a manner which which held up property values in a way that was not expected at the time.

But the Tories have miscalculated and made a big mistake. This huge injection of money injected into the economy is still out there, and simply spiraling upwards as it circulates. And there is no other way to get it back into the government coffers without using the means of taxation. But that of course, is the one thing that the Tories are not disposed to do. The idea that the use of progressive taxation should be used to pull back in money from the society's upper levels back into the Exchequer is anathema to them, never mind the actual individuals who support (and pay for) their cause.

It's a real problem. How do you continue in your raison detra of making the rich richer, and also getting money back into the treasury when you have already reduced the lot of the working classes to the point where there is no juice left to squeeze out, and you have degraded public services, cutting them to the bone until there is no meat left to cut. And here's where the rub comes. Because the only place left, the only repository of wealth left to scavenge in order to satisfy the insatiable demand of your voracious backers for wealth, is the property assets of the middle class.

And this is exactly what they are going for.

People haven't cottoned on yet, but the continual climb of property values (which makes everyone luxuriate in the idea that they are getting wealthier) is no accidental thing. Money spirals upwards, the rich want to invest that money into assets, they buy property and push up the prices in so doing. This in turn makes it successively harder for each generation to buy property than the one that preceeds it, and property assets, over time, move ever upwards into a smaller and smaller section of society.

This is a direct attack on the middle class of the country, where we are now seeing a situation where young people, excepting those from the wealthiest of backgrounds, simply cannot get a footing onto the property ladder. The children of the rich can and do, because their parents are able to furnish them with deposits beyond the means of ordinary income households. More properties are also being bought outright, with no mortgage assistance, than at any other time since the end of the second world war. This is coming directly from that pandemic handout.

But this is a situation that can only serve to ultimately bite the Conservatives in the arse. People will get wise to the fact that while they seem to be enjoying a temporary boost in wealth as a result of increasing property values, it is their kids and grandkids that are paying the price for it. The vague promises that "It'll be okay - the kids'll sort it out. They'll just have to 'cutback on coffes'..." are going to start ringing hollow. It isn't going to be alright. They won't be able to "sort it out". They are going down while the money stored in your property is going up - literally!

This will ultimately be the wedge issue that will bring the Tories down. Suddenly the realisation that the Conservative Party are no longer the party of the middle class. Stamer will come in as a Tory-lite PM, but the reality of the job will soon set in. Like it or not, some of that money handed out in the pandemic is going to have to be brought back in and the only way to do it will be through progressive taxation.

The inequality gap and the solving of it is one of the fundamental problems besetting our nation and until it is resolved we are going nowhere. Wealth, like it or not, has to be recovered from the stashes of the top tier of the society and returned to the pockets of those lower down the pecking order. This is how economies are stimulated - by putting money into people's pockets. If the people are skint, all of the fat cats in the world aren't going to get the country out of the hole it the Tories have dropped it into.

-----0-----

Benjamin Netanyahu makes no secret of his intention that Israel should rule "from the river to the sea", but the UK Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis is more concerned about the misuse of the term genocide. (See today's Telegraph front page, "False 'Genocide Claims Demonise Israel, Says Chief Rabbi.)

I agree that what Israel is doing is not genocidal in intent - but it doesn't have to be to be absolutely wrong by any standards of the word. The wanton destruction of an entire region, the killing of nearly twenty five thousand people of whom a significant proportion are women and children, the driving of an entire population into a confined space and then continuing to bomb them, this might not be genocidal in intent, but it sure as hell goes beyond the merely "defensive", the "right of Israel to protect its people."

If Mirvis cannot see this, if his mind is so occupied with semantics that he cannot bring himself as a man of God to see the horrendous suffering being laid bare before his eyes, then I think he does his people a disservice. I don't believe that the majority of Jews outside of Israel will be for the moment blind as to what is going on, irrespective of whatever name you choose to call it. And I suspect that the huge majority of them will be no more happy about it than the rest of us.

[peter]

Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer is in today's Telegraph complaining of bias in the BBC coverage of news, particularly in relation to its coverage of the Gaza conflict over the past weeks since the October 7 attacks.

Well personally I struggle to see how their reporting could have been any different.

The world is no longer the place where such things as the Israeli onslaught on Gaza can be conducted beyond the gaze of the public. Mobile phone footage and the instantaneous broadcasting of 'on the spot journalism' mean that what is happening can be recorded in real time from all but the worlds most out-of-the-way regions, and even the BBC would struggle to get away with not reporting a carnage that is being broadcast to the rest of the world as it happens.

And bias? Well perhaps: but does all bias have to be bad? There was no complaints as I recall, about the BBC bias against Jeremy Corbyn (a truly bad bias to be sure) but what about the bias of reporting the beating of women by police following the brutal murder of Sarah Everard by policeman Wayne Cousins? Bias wrong here is it?

Besides, to report death of 25,000 people, to report the abandoning of babies to die in wrecked hospital maternity units, to report the unprovoked shooting of escaped Israeli hostages waving white flags as they approach what they assume will be freedom and safety - is the reportage of these things bias? Or is what Culture Secretary actually wants more like censorship? Take the government line on everything or shut the fuck up. Twist and distort your reportage to make the black events of collective punishment and wholesale slaughter look like the white beneficence of "defending our people" and protecting liberal democracy.

And if you don't, then face punishment in the form of scrutiny by Ofcom and the beyond questionably 'unbiased' reports it will produce.

My God, if the BBC was any more supportive of the State and establishment its reporters would be lying in puddles to keep the feet of ministers dry as they walk up the steps of Westminster. The state news service is already all but useless for getting actual information about what is really happening out in the world. All you get is the sanitised version that paints our actions in the best light possible while ignoring the injustices commited daily beyond these shores in our names. For God's sake, let's try not to make things any worse!

[peter]

Let's look at it.

Israel and Hamas are going at it hammer and tongs in Gaza. There is sporadic outbursts of violence in the West Bank. Pakistan and Iran are exchanging ordnance between themselves. American air bases are being attacked in Iraq. The Houthi forces of the Yemen are targeting ships in the Red Sea and a combined operation between the USA and UK are attacking Houthi strongholds in that country. Israel and Hezbollah are exchanging missile attacks across the Israeli-Lebanese border. Missile attacks from God knows where into Syria and assassinations and car bombings of political leaders occuring with regularity in various countries.

Forgive me for saying, but this looks like a pretty widely extended set of circumstances across the Middle-East, and okay, these might all be pretty region specific affairs, but I'd think you'd need to be pretty blind to the realities of the situation not to concede that there is a risk - a high risk - of all of these small time affairs (Gaza excepted) combining into one great big regional bust-up of epic proportions.

And of course, we have to be balls deep in it as usual, clicking alongside the Americans like a poodle on linoleum whose nails are in need of a trim.

And if this does all kick off, then it's a given that the Russia-Ukraine situation will get drawn into the whole affair, and then it gets even bigger with an end result that is anybody's guess.

And China sits back and watches on the basis that if your rivals are busy screwing themselves then hey, the clever money is just to let them get on with it. Cos it seems to me that if this whole thing goes pear-shaped, then looking on from the sidelines might be exactly the place where you want to be, where the greatest benefit might be found?

I don't know. I'm not a clever guy like the ones that run our show no doubt are, but it seems to me that our foreign policy guys might not be playing with a full deck.

Just how many wars can we finance/prosecute/support simultaneously before the plate-spinning act starts to wobble and the plates come crashing down?