What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Figures from the Jacob Rowntree Foundation show that around thirty percent of adults live in poverty (as defined by having an income less than 60 percent of the median) in the UK, and a quater of all children live in absolute - not relative - poverty..

Our government is spending 500 million pounds to send 300 people to Rwanda - a cost of something like 1.2 million pounds per person - in a publicity exercise supposedly meant as a "deterrent" to illegal immigrants intending to make the crossing in a small boat across the Channel. The chances of any given individual being actually sent to Rwanda (given the numbers awaiting crossing against the number actually intended to be sent) are hundreds to one against, thus rendering the deterrent effect virtually non-existent.

The illegals coming to our shores are placed in hotels and other accommodation, disallowed from being able to work while their asylum applications are processed, never mind that the majority of those applications will ultimately be successful. The daily cost of keeping these individuals in such accommodation, inactive and unproductive, is around 7 millions of pounds per day. Many them have skills of which we are desperately short, having driven the equivalent European workers away as a result of exiting the EU.

The illegals (and legals) come in the main from countries that we ourselves have destabilised as a result of involvement in one way or another, with wars in their countries (think Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan etc). They come illegally, often because they cannot stay with safety in these countries, but we have closed all of the legal means of entry into the UK, via application from their own or third countries. They are placed in said hotels etc and prevented from entering the workforce while their applications are processed, by which means if allowed they could not only support themselves at no cost to the country, but actually at the same time provide both valuable tax receipts to the Exchequer, and vital input to the labour force.

They are prevented from doing this not because it does not make sense, not because it would encourage more immigrants to come here (because most applications will be successful anyway), but because it is politically expedient for the government to have them there, to be able to point to as a source of our problems, as a group to 'other' in statements in the media and from podiums, as a smoke and mirrors distraction from the mess that they have themselves created of our country.

And while this 1.2 million is spent on sending 300 to Rwanda, while 8 million pounds a day (by the Home Office's figures themselves) is spent unnecessarily housing these immigrants, keeping them from active employment, while a quater of our children live in conditions of absolute poverty (and us being amongst the richest countries in the world), we have a Minster for 'Waste' (and Common Sense) who claims thousands of pounds for payment of rent (some estimates run to nearly 200,000 pounds in recent years) for a property to live in, within half a mile of Parliament, while her husband owns a property which he rents out, also within half a mile of Parliament. They do this quite openly because, they say, if they didn't they wouldn't be able to claim payment of their mortgage costs as expenses (as they previously could prior to the expenses scandal of some years ago). By renting out their own property they can themselves rent out one to live in, for which they can claim back the full rental costs on expenses (and simultaneously enjoy the rental income from their own home being rented out). And this is the Minister for Waste (as she is popularly called in the media).

And so it all goes around. The nonsense, the grubbing around for a bit more, the injustice of wealth distribution, the hypocrisy and bullshit. And this all stems from a woman coming into the shop last night, who in her unthinking acceptance of everything she hears on the television, reads in the papers, thought it was a good idea to make a disparaging comment to me on "those people coming over here in the boats!" Suffice to say that it was pretty much the last thing she got to say for the rest of her visit.



-----0-----

Upwards of 100 people killed in a murderous attack on a concert venue in Moscow, and within minutes of beginning their reports, both Sky and the BBC News channels began playing it for all the propoganda/anti Russian twists they could muster.

First it had to be established that it was IS that had done it. There had been, we were told, a claim from the group of responsibility, so a large section of the report was then spent explaining why this might be true. Because it couldn't be the Ukrainians could it? We were on their side, so it simply couldn't be them (ran the unspoken refrain). No it had to be some Islamist splinter group of IS. Forget that this thing happened in Russia, not here, and frankly it was up to them to investigate what the likely source of the attack was.

And then it was the failure of the Russian security services in preventing the outrage. Because we warned them. Weeks ago, we told them it was coming (well - at least the Americans did).

For God's sake, can these people not just play it straight for once! 112 People are dead! Just report what happened, send our thoughts to the bereaved families - people just like you, like me, like us - and let it go at that. Give up with the manipulation, the point scoring, the playing the political game stuff, just for one minute. It seriously makes you want to stop watching the legacy media altogether. At least with the non-legacy stuff they aren't even pretending to be non-biased. By listening to that, on both sides, at least you can come to a decision on who you agree with, on who you believe is closest to the actual facts of any story. The mainstream media is all but useless for anything but the brute headlines on anything. The analysis is completely distorted towards whatever agenda their political/ownership/power brokers behind the scenes are pushing, whatever narrative they want the public following. And the results of this was exemplified exactly last night by the woman I spoke of above. She deserves, we deserve, better.

-----0-----

I normally like to finish up with something funny if I can, especially on a Sunday, but it isn't always possible. Today's going to be one of those days where nothing is jumping out at me, so instead I'll round off with a short political joke. Rishi Sunak.

That's it.

[peter]

Of course it is impossible for our printed press, so spiteful and contumely under normal circumstances - the worst offenders in spreading conspiracy nonsense about the royals when given so much as a sniff of scandal to root about in (like a dog rolling in shit) - not to become lachrymosal to the point of nausea inducement when shifting to the other end of the dial.

And to demonstrate that it's not just the 'red-tops', I cite the account in the Times (iirc - might have been the Telegraph) the other day, where the reporter gushed how "some had sat numbed in their chairs as Kate had given her adress, others fled in tears to the kitchen", and how a friend of hers had "pulled to the side of the road, overcome and unable to continue her drive."

And these people don't know the Princess of Wales from Adam. How do they react when someone they actually know gets sick; retire to bed under sedation for a week?

Today's Sun, not to be outdone in the sickly sugaring game tells us that, "Debs would be so proud Kate." 'Debs', you may have forgotten, was a young celebrity who probably most people had never heard of, until she developed bowel cancer or something similar, and then (because she was a pretty girl, rather than an unattractive one who nobody would have been interested in) we were treated to a regular diet of her, dancing, going for chemo, taking her last 'dream' plane ride, doing backwards flips and generally having more fun, apparently, than most of us manage in our dull normal lives on our best days (never mind when were dying) - until finally we saw her, in wheelchair and fluffy pink bed gown, skeletal and emaciated, but still managing to smile, before she eventually died. We were, thankfully, spared that final scene of her life - but only just.

And so here was the message. This is how death is supposed to be approached. Bravely and with fortitude. Smiling and full of joy!

Well fuck that! I'm more of the 'Rage, rage, against the dying of the light' style of approach. Death isn't fun and I don't see why people should be expected to pretend that it is. Sure, you don't want to make everyone around you feel like shit, but neither is there any reason why you should put on a show for them either. If they can't stand to be around your misery, your pain and suffering, and to hear about it - because complaining can actually make you feel better as well - then they have a choice. They know where the door is and they can choose to go through it or not. Which is a fuck lot more of a choice than you have.

And besides (to return to the Princess of Wales) - the woman is not in any way comparable to 'Debs'. (And I say this with nothing but compassion for the hapless celebrity, who was no doubt doing exactly what was best (financially) for her in the circumstances; as a professional who lived and worked under the spotlight as a matter of simple employment during life, and why should death be treated any differently at the end - just a shilling to be made. She probably got more of the fame she had been working for all her professional life, in those last few months than at all other times put together as a 'Corrie' actress or whatever.) The Princess is certainly poorly, but a long way from being beyond successful treatment. Why are the Sun talking as though it were otherwise? Is the story "Princess gets poorly, but is successfully treated and gets well again" not enough for them, that they have to push the sad end of the other girl into the public minds, with a sentimental "She would be proud." How do they know anyway? She might say, keep away from the vampires and don't give them shit! Because they'll never be happy. Despite Katherine's plea for privacy they'll be sniffing around, lying behind bushes, going through bins and attempting to bribe Palace staff. Grubbing around for a titbit, a snatch of gossip, a shadowy picture shot through a window, to satisfy the public pruriance and keep the circulation figures up.

(Sigh.) They hounded William's mother just about to the grave, and never satisfied (except for a moment's contriteness), on they go again. But I think that this time the people will want things differently (perhaps). I think they will take the Princess's wishes to heart, and demand that she be left to get well at her own pace. Or so they should, anyway.

-----0-----

Why do 'hackers' always wear parka jackets with the hoods pulled over their faces, even when inside sitting at their laptops hacking away? Or so it would seem to the press anyway.

This morning it's the Chinese hackers who are at it again (hood's up). Makes a change from the Russians I suppose, but they have apparently been snooping on our MPs, following their cars around and reading their emails. Personally I think it's bollocks. Just another thing to feed into the public consciousness, to stop them from actually taking notice of how badly things are fucked up. Keep them afraid - that's the mantra. Safe Conservatives. Labour Commies. That works. Bad Chinese. Fu Manchu, grey uniforms and the little red book.

Besides, I doubt our MPs have got very much worth seeing on their laptops. Bit of tractor porn perhaps. The odd invitation to Israel or other jolly to have at the taxpayers expense. List of claimable items to submit to the pursers office; lighting for stables, paint for garden shed, dredging duck-pond, two hours at Liz's House of Correction (now that's what I call a Truss!). You know the stuff. If the Chinese hoodie hackers want to spend their time looking through this ineffectual bunch of wasters back passages, then good luck to them. They certainly won't find anything of significance there. Certainly none of the decisions that count in this country are ever allowed to get anywhere near that lot.



-----0-----

Ahh - that explains everything!

The wild conspiracy theories surrounding the Princess of Wales recent absence from public life is down to the Russians, Chinese and Iranians.

So tells the Telegraph this morning, in a front page article that will no doubt be sucked up like a piece of spaghetti in an Italian's cake-hole, by the Conservative Party faithful who still believe in the integrity of our government and the client media it uses to disseminate its agenda.

It's exactly what we should expect, according to the taskforce launched by the government last year - the laughably titled Defending Democracy Taskforce - chaired by Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat. It's all part of a scheme to undermine our democracy by our enemies, we are told - enemies that will use every trick in the book to undermine our social fabric and democratic principles.

I could save them a lot of time and effort by explaining to them that our government are doing a far better job of that without any help from them, than all of the disinformation bullshit that they could post on X and Facebook would achieve in a thousand years. Our social cohesion is ripped to ribbons already by the years of chaos of Brexit, followed by pandemic, followed by wars - the huge disparity, growing ever larger by the day, of wealth inequality and living standards, seemingly fostered by our government as a matter of political intent. What need have we of the Russians to destroy our way of life when we have the Conservative Party and their second rate administrations to do it for us. As for our rating as a functional democracy - don't even get me started on that!

Still, I suppose saying so will put me on one of Michael Gove's lists somewhere, but that won't matter either. You don't need my 'wisdom and perception' to see the truth of this for yourself. Simply open your eyes: the evidence is there to see in every direction you look.

[peter]

I think that the decision to deny Shamima Begum the opportunity to have her appeal heard (against having her UK citizenship stripped from her) at the Supreme Court is questionable at best.

Earlier this year, three judges denied her appeal to have her citizenship reinstated, prompting her application to have her appeal heard at the Supreme Court. The job of the judge who has made the decision to disallow her further appeal said that it was not for her to decide if Miss Begum had been treated unfairly or otherwise, but rather to judge on the legality of the Court of Appeal's decision or otherwise. She deemed that the judgment of the Appeal Court had been a legal one, and hence denied further appeal.

Far enough, but let's look at the original decision.

Begum was 15 years old - a minor - when she was groomed online by ISIS, and made her ill-advised trip to Syria to ultimately be wed to an extremist fighter within said group. She was born in the UK of Bangladeshi heritage and travelled with two other girls of similar age, of whose fate we hear little. Presumably they remain in the camps in the region, into which most of the ISIS members have dissolved following the military defeat of the grouping. The argument put forward against her having her UK citizenship stripped is that she was trafficked as a minor, and should thus be seen more as victim than perpetrator.

I think it goes deeper than this. Shamima Begum is a born British citizen. Is our citizenship to be so thinly considered as to be something that can be taken or given simply at the gift of the Courts? If Begum has committed wrong, let her be put to trial and found to have done so. If she was, as a minor, not responsible for her actions, then let it be established. We hear endlessly about how we value our children above all things, but our actions seem to give the lie to this. But right or wrong, Begum as a British citizen has a right to be here. Her British birth can not be denied her, the citizenship of the parents who gave birth to her also. Because she made a misguided judgement of which, at 15, she may or may not be be held responsible, does not give anyone, Judge or otherwise, the right to deny her this.

As an aside, Begum, as a person who has been radicalised by extremism, and subsequently eschewed it, should surely be an exemplar to be vaunted by the British state, not rejected by it. Is she not a perfect example of what the Prevent Programme would see as a 'result', a goal scored by Western values over extreme Islamist ideology? Could not her experience be utilised by Mr Gove and his crusade against extremism, put to work as a 'repentant sinner', reformed and grateful to her home country, for its benevolent understanding and moral superiority?

Mmmm..... Okay. Need to think about that!

-----0-----

Fucking Hell, our democracy is under threat everywhere you look.

Chinese, Russians, Iranians - they're all having a pop at it. People marching against the slaughter in Gaza, anyone who's appalled by the pictures of dead and maimed children on our screens each night - they're after it too. Now Michael Gove has identified another threat to it, stalking the corridors of Whitehall. The bullying and harassment of civil servant workers in the central machinery of state, who are self-censoring as a response to fear of reprisals if they say anything that could cause raised eyebrows amongst the 'woke' liberal mainstream. This is apparently eroding out social cohesion and restraining our freedom to the point of threatening (you guessed it) democracy.

Still, it's okay. Gove is on the job and intends to get his root out - sorry, get it rooted out - by addressing some "fundamental gaps in our system".

Funny how all of these threats to our system are appearing now, just when the Conservative Party are doing so poorly in the polls. Not that the Conservatives are playing on their reputation for being the 'Law and Order' party or anything. Why on earth the Conservative Party should have any kind of reputation as the party for protection of the UK against enemy threats (even if they were real ones, which is highly debatable) beats me. They wanted to capitulate with the Nazis in World War 2,and it was only Labour's support of Churchill that prevented them from doing so. But for some reason this is the case, and clearly the client media have decided that a full throated campaign of fear-mongering about the safety of our nation from outside (and inside) threat is needed, in order to at least bolster the Conservative cause. The Party itself seems incapable of doing it by argument and example - the results of 14 years of Conservative government are hardly conducive of that - and so some additional psychological manipulation is needed to help them along.

Prepare for a broadside of reminders about lefty communist leanings in the Labour Party (bring up references to Stamer's association with Corbyn as often as possible), emphasise that they cannot be trusted with the defence of the country, the rooting out of Islamist ideology from our schools, our institutions, holding the fort against the woke ideology destroying our system; a concerted effort to promote this, alongside the generation of fear on multiple fronts should do the trick. That'll bring back a few million votes and a few dozen seats, and maybe then, the results will not be so bad. OK, Stamer is going to win, but that's OK. As long as the Conservative Party survives it can regroup and come back in five. No harm done and a good opportunity to pass the buck to Labour for screwing things up, when the much predicted sunlit uplands of post Brexit UK do not emerge.

Plan's a good'un: stick to it and all will be well.

[peter]

In a day or two's time, the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race will take place down a stretch of the Thames between Putney and Mortlake, but this year's event will not end with the traditional chucking of the rowers into the water because there's too much shit in it.

Environmental watchdogs have warned against the usual practice of toffs dousing their fellow competitors in a rowdy ceremony of exuberance and mayhem, because there is so high levels of e-coli bacteria in the water that ir represents a health hazard should any water be accidentally ingested.

But the regulators whose responsibility it is to see that the privatised water companies live up to their statutory requirements in terms of sewage treatment and disposal, rather than calling out said water companies, instead put the problem down to the high rainfall we have seen in recent months. There has been literally millions of hours worth of sewage spills in the last twelve months - nearly double that of previous years - but rather than call out the companies for lack of investment into the infrastructure, excuses are made about the weather conditions and economic factors that let them off the hook.

Never mind the fact that as was pointed out in the House of Lords the other day that the amount of money paid out in dividends in recent years almost exactly balances the shortfalls in infrastructure investment, excuses are made and the ongoing fouling of our rivers and waterways is tolerated with barely a shrug of interest by our parliamentarians. Labour, from what this morning's 'i' newspaper tells us, will be no better than the Tories in getting to grips with this nationwide problem.

Literally thousands of sewage spills every month are punished with slap-on-the-wrist fines that the privatised companies barely notice. The profits that are made are shared between the shareholders and the foreign ownerships of the companies, and month on month the situation is not only tolerated, but allowed to worsten.

So much for privatisation of the previously owned state utility injecting efficiency and good practice into the operation of this essential service. Yet another example of the abject failure of the Thatcherite experiment in privatisation, that stole our publicly owned utilities and turned them into the money rinsing exercises that we see today. Any Labour government worth its salt would not be facilitating this ongoing scam, this national disgrace, but would be instigating a program of renationalisation on day one of its administration.

-----0-----

The Tories have said in recent days that should they be re-elected, they will guarantee the so called 'triple lock' on state pensions, whereby they rise by the rate of inflation, or the average wage rise equivalent, or two percent, which ever of these being highest.

And so they bloody well should! This should not be an electoral carrot, dangled before the electorate, to be dished out as a prize for voting correctly. It should be written into law that this is an obligation that successive administrations do not get to wriggle out of. Let's be clear. We pensioners have paid for this payment. With our taxes, taken without option to avoid (for most of us), for all of our working lives. From day one until even the point where we are beyond retirement age, should we continue to work.

From cradle to grave, as the mantra went. This was the justification given for taking our hard earned money - money taken in a tax that was never intended to be anything other than a minimal payment at the point of its inception. Never, were the people of the day assured, would it go above ten percent at maximum. How nieve we were!

But fair do's. Take your twenty percent - make it twenty five - but honour your pledge to return it in the form of services, of which one is the provision of income for a period of retirement following a lifetime's work. As the French said on introduction of the first old age pension paid anywhere in the world; "So the people can enjoy for the last days of their lives, what the aristocracy have enjoyed for every day of theirs."

And in fairness most countries of Europe have taken it on board and operate it on a fair and commensurate basis, paying sums that approximate to the average break-even cost of living, plus about half as much again. This is the mark around which the bulk of European countries pay their state pensions. Some go a good deal higher with payments around double that of the break-even cost of living figure, Spain, Luxembourg and Denmark being examples. Many of the what are considered poorer countries still manage to pay pensions at around this one and a half living cost threshold, but not the UK.

No. Despite being the fifth wealthiest country in the world (or thereabouts) we elect to pay state pensions at bare subsistence level. We hover at around the 109 percent of break-even cost, down with countries like Albania and Montenegro. And for having the temerity to even expect that much, we are told that if it is to be maintained, we must expect have to work longer in order to get it. Already there is talk of the retirement age being pushed back to 68, sometime around 2035 or 40. What don't these fuckwits get? Because we are living longer (so they tell us anyway), doesn't mean we are still young at later ages. We're simply old for longer, with all the aches and pains and limitations that always came with age, that always will.

But trust me, these guys are not going to let this go. There's a belief in the upper levels of our society that we have all had it too good. They look at countries in the world where no welfare state pertains and they consider it good. At what point is it, they ask, the role of government to oversee the running of people's lives for them, paying for their treatment when they are ill, paying them to do nothing when they get old. It's up to people to do this stuff for themselves, and if they work hard enough and save, so they will be able to do. This is how the argument goes, and it lies exactly behind the Tories much vaunted desire for "low taxation!"

But that's the point isn't it? It hasn't been low. You've taken the money and now you want to get out paying the bill. Well too bad is what I say. Pony up what you owe -and that means a state pension that allows you to live and do a bit more besides. This is not too much to ask, but I think that the time for asking is getting short. Time I'd say, to start demanding.

Here's a plan for the Liberal-Democrat Party. If you really want to win power, give an immediate guarantee of the introduction of a twelve hundred pounds a month state pension payment from day one of your taking office. That's an increase of about four hundred pounds a month. Give an additional guarantee that from this day forth, the state pension will be paid at one and a half times the break-even cost of living. This increase will be funded by the introduction of a wealth tax that brings taxation of unearned income up to the same levels as that of earned income, that introduces a progressive tax system on incomes as they extend beyond the normal and into the higher realms, and ends the non-dom tax status exemption clause.

Do this and I'll guarantee, by this time next year, you'll be sitting in Downing Street.

[peter]

On the BBC News last night, it was reported that the leadership of the Post Office and the legal team representing them as, knew as far back as 2017 that the cash discrepancies for which the sub postmasters were being accused of having stolen, could indeed have been attributable to faults within the Horizon system, yet they persevered with the accusations, lied to the Courts, and consequently saw any number of innocent people ruined and no small number of them sent to prison.

It seems to me that any justice delivered in consequence of this new knowledge, will have to include custodial sentences laid upon anyone who was aware of this fact, and did nothing to make it known, from the Post Office chairperson of the day down to the lowliest clerk in the legal offices dealing with the case (and the Fujitsu employees included). Such injustice as has been perpetrated here cannot be allowed to go unpunished, if our justice system is to retain any shred of credibility.

What, I ask, can have possessed them, to allow such injustice to proceed without immediately making known their knowledge that could have vindicated the accused. Surely someone who knew would have come forward?

------0000------

Similarly, on the same broadcast, it was reported that the shareholders of Thames Water have declined to stump up the half billion quid necessary in order to bring the water infrastructure in London and the surrounding area up to speed (on which the sanitation needs of 16 million people depend) unless the bill payers are levied with a forty percent increase in charges applied incrementally over so many years, so they may recoup their expenditure.

These are the people who have enjoyed dividend payouts from their shared ownership of the company, while the investment in infrastructure necessary to meet future needs (part of the legal requirements falling to the ownership of the privatised national commodity) has been completely neglected.

The company director said that bills would have to go up, like it or not, but the public should be reassured that there was no danger of the service being disrupted or failing in any way, to meet the needs of the populace.

Damn right fellow! This is the drinking water and sewage disposal of 16 million people we are talking about here - not emptying the bucket of the chemical toilet you take on your frikkin' camping trip to Cornwall!

And I'll tell you how it should go. The entire company should be taken back into public ownership without compensatory payment or anything other than the most minimal of payment for the shares so requisitioned, and the dividend payments from company profits made in lieu of carrying out statutory maintenance upgrading should be recovered from all parties to whom they were made without exception. This should go as far as recovery of monies resting in offshore accounts in tax havens abroad. It's absolutely time all this nonsense was stopped, and people were made to understand that you cannot fleece the people of this country with impunity, for that, no less, is what has been done. The sooner one of our parliamentarians has the courage to stand up in the Commons and say words to these effects, the sooner we can begin the process of recovery as a country.

(What must absolutely not be done, is what is being reportedly suggested, that the company should be taken into temporary public ownership while the problem is fixed, before being re-floated in new and robust condition. Basically, just dumped into the government's hands to fix it at public expense, and then put out as a new shiny cash cow for the private sector to milk dry once again. Fuck that for a game of coconuts!)

-----000-----

Anyone in favour of introducing legislation to allow for 'assisted dying' (the gentle euphemism applied to the actuality of murdering or furthering the cause of self-murder in chronically sick people) should look to the situation as it has developed in Canada, since the same was introduced some ten years ago.

First put forward as an option only to be fallen back on where all hope had been lost in the case of terminally ill patients in severe pain, before very long the parameters for inclusion had been broadened to include those with chronic problems with no liklihood of improvement. Now, as we speak, .legislation is waiting in the wings for a yet further extension of the availability of the service, to those suffering from mental conditions who are unlikely to see any significant improvement in the near future.

Gradually the service has become the fallback option for those who qualify in medical terms, but elect to take it for completely different reasons, such as societal problems such as homelessness, or 'not wanting to be a burden'.

One doctor, speaking in Scotland (where the bill allowing it to be practiced is about to be put before the parliament) spoke of the risk of the option once offered, developing into an offer, and then moving into an expectation. This is exactly what has happened in Canada. One individual who had applied for state assistance in the cost of having a stair-lift fitted, recieved a letter asking if she had ever considered the option. On a more serious note, there is a very real danger that assisted dying becomes an option that is simply easier (and cheaper) for both the individual and the state, in comparison to waiting for the available service to meet a need that would otherwise be possible to achieve, were the funds and services available to do so. By the ever broadening of the categories that qualify for the service, it is inevitable that people who could otherwise be brought to a place where continued life was tolerable, will by virtue of being worn down with waiting, select this terminal alternative.

But that's (perhaps) okay. Maybe that remains their choice. But again, how long before people begin to feel pressured. And once the legislation is passed to include those with mental illness as well, then it becomes open season.

This is my argument against the idea of assisted dying. It sounds fine in principle, but in practice it opens up a whole raft of situations that mere legislation alone can neither predict nor cover. And once it is allowed for one group, then it becomes almost inevitable that arguments -persuasive arguments - will be mounted to bring about its extension into others. And all overseen by the state, which I think we can safety assume, is the very last organ that can be trusted to administer such a procedure, without letting either self-interested motivation or manipulative psychology creep in.

And all of which ignores the argument that palliative care at its best should be more than capable of putting people into a situation where such an option becomes completely unnecessary anyway. And if it currently isn't, then all efforts should be put into making it so with as little delay as possible.

[peter]

I think that there is a very real possibility that we are being softened up in preparation for our leaderships to take us into war on a much greater scale.

Certainly there is some element of politicking in the commentary that keeps appearing every week or two, each time from a different source (yesterday it was Polish PM Donald Tusk, saying, "War is a real threat and Europe is not ready.') and these guys often have vested interest in seeking to get their countries pumping money into the arms industry....they're on the payroll, so to speak, or have big investment in the industry, but this time there might actually be some intent behind their words.

The liberal West is painfully aware that it is loosing its hegemonic dominance of the world and it don't much like it. We hear on a continuous basis, are fed a daily diet of how Russia has imperialist intentions, that Vladimir Putin's long term plan is a westward expansion, that he will keep moving his forces into new countries - firstly those of the ex Soviet block - in order to reestablish the Russian preeminence of his youth, but where in fact, is the evidence of this?

Is it not Nato and the West that has sought rather eastward expansion, seen in three tranches of movement bringing new countries under its umbrella, specifically in 1999, 2004 and 2009, of nations previously under Soviet influence. (For a really vivid representation of this, look at the moving graphic on the "History of Nato" Wikipedia page, and tell me that if you were Russian, you would not be worried by what you see.)

In 2008, when Nato made clear its intention to bring Ukraine into Nato, Putin made unequivocally clear that this was a move too far. He said in no uncertain terms that such a move would bring about the end of Ukraine. But we kept on pushing despite this warning.

And here we are.

Faced with a situation where the only victory that can be won in Ukraine would be a pyrrhic one, with the country at best turned into an unlivable wasteland and at worst with the current conflict acting as the overture to a grand opera of war unleashed on a truly biblical scale. A war from which none of us can escape, walk away, but rather one in which everything we know, everyone we love, dissapears in a wave of heat and light the like of which the world has not seen since the impact that wiped away the dinosaurs.

And there are people amongst those who lead us who believe that we should be prepared to take this path. That playing this dance of death is a good idea.

Let's look at this.

We give Ukraine, say, a ton more money. Most goes on keeping Zelensky in power, but let that go, we also keep throwing arms and equipment into the fray. This becomes a drain as the years go by; we cannot 'beat' Russia without boots on the ground and the Ukrainians simply don't have enough. So either we are stuck in a forever war, a stalemate that soaks up money and resources at a time of unprecedented need within our own countries (not exactly a good sell to the people), or we commit boots to the ground. And then it's time for the big show to begin. We perhaps wait for regime change in Moscow, but the bod who replaces Putin is no better, and likely worse. We don't have the forces or armaments production capacity to take on Russia as things stand, so these guys who want to take this road are pushing for us to step up a gear. These guys know that either we take the plunge and dive in, or we resign ourselves to forever war, so they soften us up for the former. They believe that a war against Russia is winnable - even a nuclear war - and they're willing to take a punt on it. They'd rather take this road than search for a negotiated settlement, because that would mean a secession of territory to the Russians. And they're prepared to gamble your house, your loved ones, the very future of our world on it.

As The Stranglers once sung, "That sort of responsibility you draw straws for, if you're mad enough!"

Do posterity a favour and don't vote for anyone - anyone - who's first pledge is not to stop this foolishness right away.

-----0-----

Here's an interesting little question; should schools engage in teaching/discussing current affairs, or should they confine themselves to safer, more resolved areas of history (if you consider current affairs history in the making) and geography that don't approach the contentious issues of the day too closely.

There's a report on the front page of today's Guardian, saying that, "Schools risk fueling hate by avoiding (my italics) talk of Gaza war."

Leaving aside the suggestion that what is going on in Gaza is a "war", it seems that Dame Sarah Khan - head of an NGO working to counter extremism, who recently said that harassment and threats used in order to shut down debate on difficult issues was threatening social cohesion in the UK - has said that teachers risk "fueling further anger, hate and polarisation," by avoiding debate on the wretched situation in the Strip.

I can see why teachers might want to avoid such a topic. They may well have students actively affected by what is happening in Gaza, perhaps students whose parents attend the peace protests in London, perhaps even Jews and Palestinian children mixed in the same class. They could find themselves in deep waters indeed, not only with the school governors but also with parents who believe they are trying to influence their children, if they become embroiled in such tricky subjects as the trans debate or indeed, as here, the Jewish-Palestinian question.

I understand that it's good to get kids using their critical faculties, but stirring up the deep divisions that such subjects already provoke outside the school, within the gates, seems an ask too far to me. And I can't see how avoiding the topics is likely to fuel further anger, hate and polarisation, more than engaging in these difficult topics.

Let's put it like this. You are not encouraged to, "talk about politics," at work and other places in order to lessen strife: on the contrary, you are told, "Don't talk about politics and religion,". Seems sensible to me and I'm thinking that schools should follow the same advice. Teach kids the history and geography they need for an understanding of the subjects: let their parents or the media impart the information about what is going down in the world. The kids will get bias and discord enough from the latter on that score, without the teachers adding a further layer within the schoolroom.

[peter]

The Tories will not be reassured by a new 'super-poll' result, based on a 15,000 person sample size, that predicts that they may suffer the worst defeat in their 300 year history in the forthcoming general election.

The poll reckons that the dominant political party in this country since, well, forever, may come out with fewer than 100 seats after they go to the country - a stinging rebuke for the carnage that 14 straight years of their governance has wrought. Seats as nominally safe as the PM's own look to be teetering on the brink, and many of the government ministers will not survive the encounter with the public, if the regional analysis is anything like correct. Every red-wall seat won by Boris Johnson will fall (I bet he is loving watching Sunak's fall from grace, by the way) and it remains a very real possibility that the party will simply blow itself apart into the two or three very different factions that are currently cobbled together into this uneasy whole.

This poll, reported in this morning's Sunday Times, is being used by ex Brexit Secretary Lord Frost (the piggy eyed little shit) to urge the party to "change course" and "adopt a genuinely Conservative approach", before disaster strikes. What he means is throw Sunak out on his arse ASAP, and get a 'real Conservative' in behind the wheel. I imagine he means someone like Nigel Farage - ie white, right and male, down to the balls-deep in totty and proper fucking lunches. In other words, a real Telegraph reader's type of tory.

Hmff. Too little, too late I'd reckon. Even the Faragemeister himself could not overcome the mountain of woes the party leaves behind this time. Everywhere you look is devastation. It's like an economic war-zone, blasted to rubble. Thousands of hospitality businesses going to the wall, inward investment an absolute chimpanzee-painting, trade with European countries falling away by the day and zero trade deals achieved with anywhere. Anybody with any sense and the capability of doing so is getting the fuck out of Dodge on the first bus out of town.

Strangely, the Sunday Times says that if the Labour landslide is as big as the poll suggests it will be, it almost guarantees the party a decade in power at minimum. No party with that large a majority, it tells us, has ever lost power in less than two or three terms of office. It seems oblivious to the fact that the Tories currently have a huge majority: they themselves, have just proved that the rule no longer applies. Everything in UK politics is so topsy turvy that all the usual certainties are gone. The electorate is floundering, at sea like a drowning man, grabbing at whatever bit of flotsam is passing by in an attempt to save itself. It's fragmenting in uncertainty with only one fixed point upon which it is sure - it doesn't want any more of the Tories. This makes for a turbulent - and potentially dangerous - situation. It is in circumstances like this that extremism of the political kind flourishes. Beware the Braverman's, the Jenrick's, the Farage's and the Patel's. They are waiting out there and their vision of what this country should be ain't something we are used to, or if we have any sense, should want. If you have to inspire people by getting them to hate each other, then you won't be on my Christmas list at any time soon, and I pray God that you won't be on anyone else's either.

-----0-----

The Sunday Telegraph tells us across the top of its front page, that "Boho-chic is back again!"

I'm not exactly sure what that is - a sort of posh nod to the hippy era I'd think - but I can tell them that in my neck of the woods it isn't. It really isn't. Not unless it includes gopnik slavs drinking in groups round the back of Tesco's listening to hardbass music at high volume, not unless it includes obese girls fuelling their misery with thousands of calories of chocolate every night, not unless it includes kids whose biggest aspiration in life is to be old enough to purchase those colourful vaping pens legally. Because these seem to be the fashions that I encounter in my weekly sojourn into the world of cheap retail. This is the pervading spirit that I see, not some London-centric shallow trend that will pay lip-service to all of the issues, to pick them up and drop them as quickly as the central elite, the 'beautiful people' of the capital, will do with their overpriced 'trendy clobbah', their throwaway issues of the day.

Boho-chic they say. It isn't real guys, it isn't real. Real life is hard, and brutal, and unforgiving. Real life has veins in its tits, it has broken dreams in its foundations, it has the dull, cold stare of no hope.

Mmmm. I think that I may have been doing this for too long.

[peter]

In a bizarre twist of logic, the government aims to criminalise rough sleeping in the UK by putting onto statute a bill in which persistent "nuisance" rough sleepers can be fined up to 2,500 pounds or sent to jail.

Put forward by ex Home Secretary Suella Braverman last year (which in itself explains much) the bill seems to blindly ignore the fact that these people are homeless. They have no home's to be in and therfore no option but to be sleeping rough. Many are mentally ill individuals who have simply fallen through the cracks in the system. In addition, they have no money to speak of, and so a fine can do no more than exacerbate the dire straights they already find themselves in. This is an irrelevance anyway: if a man is drowning, it matters little if the water he is in becomes suddenly deeper.

Any magistrate in the country faced with such an individual will know this - the presence of the individual before them makes a mockery of their job as individuals of judgement - and will act accordingly. The legislation, contained in the Criminal Justice Bill going through Parliament simply makes our legislators look foolish and they know it. Large numbers Conservative MPs have said that they will vote against the measures, to the point where if voted on, it could result in a humiliating defeat for the government. This could only add to the woes of embattled Rishi Sunak, who's position is looking increasingly uncertain by the day.

Currently paused so that the government can negotiate with the rebels, they are however holding their position that the bill must pass through the House. Critics argue that the legislation is so loose that the word "nuisance" could apply to just about anything - sleeping in a doorway, smelling offensive, obstructing the pavement - and have put forward a series of amendments in an attempt to tighten it up. That such legislation is considered necessary at all is a measure of the innate lack of humanity that pervades our governance, that individuals should be punished for that over which they have no control, but are simply the result of succumbing to life's vicissitudes. This is foolishness in the extreme. That it is arguably a measure of the government's own failure, that such social deprivation exists at all, will not be lost on them. By attempting to shift the blame onto the sufferers of the situation for their own condition, they attempt to absolve themselves of their role in allowing such circumstances to develop. What next - criminalisation of the sick, the elderly? ("The accused was found wandering the streets in possession of too many years of existence under his belt M'lud.") The whole thing is arrant nonsense, and even the government's own MPs know it.

I hope the Sunak administration try to push it through and it is thrown back in their face. They are caught in a trap of their own making, neither being able to drop the nonsense by virtue of looking weak and enfeebled if they do, and looking out of control and lacking in authority if they don't and subsequently loose the vote. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch. It must have looked right clever when the vicious Braverman put it forward - just what the Telegraph readership wanted to see - but it don't look so clever now. It's a salutary reminder to those in power that the drawing up of legislation is a serious business, not a toy to be co-opted for political optics. Our legislative assembly get this, even if our executive doesn't. Bloody idiots, the lot of them.

-----0-----

A sort of hazy picture of what actually happened in the Moscow attack that left just shy of 150 people dead is emerging, and it isn't one that you are going to hear on the legacy media.

I was interested to see former UK diplomat Alastair Crooke (30 years experience with MI6 and the diplomatic service) speaking on the topic the other day. His first observation was regarding the speed with which the assessment that this was an Islamist engendered attack was put out on Western media, together with the assurance that there was no Ukrainian involvement. He was clear that nothing could be said in regards to speculation that the latter were involved, or indeed even MI6 or the CIA, but he noted that the actions of the terrorists did not in his opinion, fit with the modus operandi of his experience, gained with working with the mujahadeen for a number of years in Afghanistan. This, he observed, tended to involve jihadists ready to sacrifice themselves in acts that would ultimately end in their own deaths, or martyrdom, as they would see it. Consequently, they would enter a venue, start killing, and continue to do so until they in turn, were killed.

This however was not the pattern that was followed. They clearly operated on the basis of a plan that involved escape, since following the period in which they perpetrated their inhuman slaughter, they then attempted to escape via a pre-planned route that involved heading down towards the Ukrainian border. That they used an easily identifiable car both to travel to the concert venue, and then to flee the scene in their escape, again said Crooke, did not fit the jihadist pattern.

The suggestion that this so-called Isis-K was the perpetrator, apparently following a statement released to that effect, was again, to misunderstand the nature of what this so called splinter group actually was. Essentially a creation of Western intelligence, Isis-K is, Crooke told us, effectively a "corridor of traffic" that operates between Turkey and the Middle-East, if not sponsored by the Saudi government, then certainly not hindered by it, directed at destabilising Iran. Combatants trained in Turkey, he said, would operate in Islamist interest wherever, particularly of Sunni variety, and against Shia, which of course, Iran remains the bastion of power in the region.

Another commentator noted that such fighters had found their way into all sorts of places: in Syria, this chap said (whose name I didn't get alas) they had actually worked alongside the USA in attempting to overthrow the Assad regime, but had been thwarted when the Russians had pitched in on Assad's side, and scotched their chance at taking control of that country. Hence their very great anger against Putin and Russia, which quite possibly gives a background behind the recent attack. Also, he noted, such fighters were to be found within the Ukrainian forces, fighting the Russians, in Chechnya and other places, and it was entirely conceivable that the attack had been planned by one such group, acting independently, but with conceivably a bit more knowledge of what was planned by our guys, than we should be comfortable with. It is striking that this warning had reportedly been given out by the Americans in the days before the attack, indicative of at least some degree of intelligence about the situation. Some rather suggestive comments have also been made, one by ex US politician Victoria Newland, another (more questionable by far) by a Ukrainian government minister, who effectively said, the morning after the attack, "Are you happy waking up in Moscow this morning? Perhaps we should visit you more often." Such comments are stupid and unhelpful, but I don't think they add anything to our understanding of what actually happened on that awful day in Moscow.

But I don't know about this kind of speculation; I somehow don't see either MI6, the CIA or indeed the Ukrainian government actually being involved in this kind of thing (not impossible, but unlikely I'd think.) But keeping quiet while some other unrelated group planned such a thing? Not beyond the realms of credibility - the enemy of my enemy, and all that kind of thing. And as I said, these Islamic radicals are already fighting against the Russians on the Ukrainian front lines; is it impossible to believe that a rogue troop has perpetrated this action and attempted to get back across the border to its fighting position on the Ukrainian front?

I think the whole thing is pretty muddy, and the shrill cries of our media (and the US government) that, "This was the work of Islamist extremists: definitely no Ukrainian involvement here!", while true, barely scratches the surface on what is a complex and convoluted picture. As Crooke said, it's impossible to say who knew what, and when - but it's a fair bet that someone somewhere in our collective security services will not have been one hundred percent suprised by the terrible events of that day.

[peter]

I listened yesterday, to Labour Shadow Foreign David Lammy hosting his slot on LBC's morning show.

His subject of the morning concerned a report in yesterday's press that some 250 lives (estimated) were being lost per year as a result of waiting times for beds in hospitals, following decisions that patients should be admitted onto wards.

He spoke to a caller who complained that, having suffered a stroke at home one morning and been taken to hospital by his wife, he had been quickly seen and diagnosed, but then informed that the hospital he had attended did not have a major stroke unit and that he would need transfer by ambulance to another hospital some forty minutes drive away that did. The need for this transfer was to enable him to have a MR scan which the hospital he was currently in could not do. Unfortunately, he was told, the ambulance waiting time was upwards of an hour at that time.

It transpired that he only waited three quarters of an hour, made the necessary journey and recieved his scan, some three hours following his initial diagnosis. The recommended time for which a scan should be carried out under these circumstances was one hour. He had in the following 12 months made a near full recovery, and praising his aftercare he said that his only remaining problem was the need to use a stick when walking, which he did with a slight limp.

As he recounted his experience Lammy (who is one of the Labour front bench who endorses Kier Stamer's plan to continue with the ongoing privatisation of the Health Service) spoke sympathetic words of understanding.

To me, listening, it sounded as though the man, far from having experienced a health service in decline, had experienced one working at all but peak efficiency. Twelve months following a serious stroke, here he was, all but fully recovered and not much the worse for his episode. Certainly the wait for his scan was longer than the recommended time under ideal circumstances, but what would he do, sacrifice the good on the alter of the perfect?

Did he consider that in other countries less blessed by a state health service such as ours, he would probably have had, unless fortunate enough to be rich enough to pay through the nose for it, no treatment beyond his initial diagnosis whatsoever? It didn't seem to occur to him that he was a walking advertisement for the success of the NHS, not the searing indictment of it that he seemed to think he was. His condition would not have been materially altered had his scan been carried out within the recommended hour (though I concede there are cases where it might have been), but all things considered, the worst consequence of his wait was frankly, the wait itself. But the way he presented it, and the reception it got from Lammy, made it sound as though he had been hard done by indeed.

This is just one example of the continuous and ongoing barrage of negativity we are showered with, amongst which you have to work really hard to ever find anything to the good at all. That millions of people are successfully treated for situations serious and trivial every week, month in month out, is never the once mentioned. Because people have to wait an hour more than they should, they complain, never the once thinking that if they lived in say America, their house would be gone by the end of it. Or they would be dead in their front room, lying untreated for someone to discover at a later point.

The man's story told us only one thing - that we have a health service that is fully functional and without any systemic failure: that its only shortfall exists in the level of funding allowed for its functioning. Put this right, and it will once again be the envy of the world as it always was, and frankly still is in many parts of the world where they'd give their right arm to enjoy such a service.

But this would not serve the agenda of those who would see it dismantled, and so the drip, drip, drip of constant criticism and adverse media coverage continues. They did it with the Post Office. They did it with the public utilities. And now their eyes are on the big prize, the NHS. Never has such a pot of gold presented itself before, as that which is available if private interest can get its hands on the NHS budget. Or better still, go straight to the source and get between the public and their own savings/assets by virtue of full privatisation. Slowly they will bring about the circumstances where the public, in defiance of their own interest, will be led, like lambs to the slaughter, and will start to call for fundamental changes in health provision. Then the El Dorado truly opens up, and Lammy and his multimillion pound cohort will be ready to dive into the pile.

Only when it is way too late, will the fools like this man with his whining story, realise how lucky they were, how much they have lost.

[peter]

Incidentally, amongst that post above was a really significant point that I heard made, oddly enough in respect of Donald Trump, the other day - a point that applies to many things in the media landscape that we daily immerse ourselves in. This being, that you have to work really hard - really hard - to be able to wade through the wall of negative coverage that is presented in respect of many things and people, in order to be in a position to see the good that exists there as well.

Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, the NHS, Russell Brand (who incidentally made the point himself) - all things that unless you apply skeptical thinking, unless you do the necessary work, you are just going to soak up the negative fodder that you are fed on them.

The media exerts a ferociously powerful influence on how we see the world, and for the majority of people it frankly 'just is'.

What I mean by that is that they read and soak up their daily content, their daily portion of the news,of what is going on in the world around them, and they rarely give any thought to the forces behind what is being proffered up. What are their interests: what purpose does this slant,on this particular piece of news, serve? These are the questions that should be applied to everything that is presented to us. We should never just take our news from one source, but should dip into each available medium - printed, visual, legacy and alternative - and balance the input from all of these sources. And as I say, this takes work. More work than most people have time for.

And alas, the puppet-masters behind the scenes know this, and it's what makes getting the real truth of what is going on out there so difficult.

Let's give an example.

The truth is that it is not part of the Conservative ideology that it is the role of government to look after the interests of the people. It is (in their ideology) the role of government to maximise the circumstances under which business can flourish. It's up to individuals, within this societal arena, to strive to do the best they can, for themselves and their families. In this ideology, there is no room for sympathy for those who are unable to meet the challenges that this system presents. These are the failures who must be ignored, allowed to fall by the wayside, if they are not to become a drag, a drain, on the advancement of the elements of society that can survive and cope in this combative arena.

This is not the society in which the government provides for people's health, their old age, their housing and nutritional needs. This is the society in which business and the people themselves provide for these needs. It's the society where the government's role is restricted to laying the ground for business to be able to do this. And Devil take the hindermost.

Now this is not a truth that you are ever going to perceive by watching the legacy media. The presentation of the Conservative Party will always be on a benign par with the Labour Party, in terms of its social conscience. Okay - maybe a bit more self-orientated, a bit more strict in terms of making people 'stand on their own two feet', bear responsibility for their own lives, but not viciously so. Because they absolutely understand, that if people really understood the ideology that underpins Conservative thinking - I mean really understood it in terms of its red in tooth and claw nature - they'd never vote Conservative again. The truth is that if people were presented with the bald unvarnished facts the vast majority would be repelled by them, and we'd never have another Conservative government again. And that would never do, so this alternative image is constructed for them to hide within, a sheepskin mantle through which the wolf that lies within is rarely glimpsed. Only the Suella Braverman's and Priti Patel's are not clever enough to realise this (probably because of their foreign heritage) and alow the wolf full visibility. They are soon pushed out to the right-wing edges of the party, and then spat out if they become an electoral liability, but rest assured, their vision is the true Conservative one that rests inside all tories. It's just that most realise that it is an unpalatable one if presented in its raw form, and so it is hidden in its softer exterior, and presented as such to the exterior world by a compliant client media.

And as I say, it is only by work that you will ferret out this truth.

[peter]

It's absolutely clear that Israel has no intention of allowing humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza to proceed as they have been instructed to do by the UN and ICJ.

The deliberate targeting of an aid convoy, clearly marked, that left 7 aid workers dead on the ground shows this (not to mention the hundreds of aid lorries held at the Rafa border crossing - American included) demonstrates this. This policy of restriction of supplies actually crossing and then attacking those that do manage it, will ensure that the deliberate policy of starvation of the population has its effect.

America is of course, loudest in its condemnation of this latest atrocity, which has naturally caused charities and aid agencies to reconsider the wisdom of having their workers in the area (all to the further effectiveness of the Israeli plan), but let's just look at this.

There have been what, 6 votes on a ceasefire in the UN to date. The UK and US vetoed the first 4. The US proposed 5th one was so tepid that it wasn't really a call for a ceasefire at all, just a temporary halt to fighting, which the Russians and Chinese rejected in contempt. And the last, which the US decided because of the international optics that they'd better allow through by abstaining rather than vetoing, but immediately made toothless once it had passed, by stating that it was non-binding, and thereby released Israel from any constraints of having to actually adhere to it.

This hypocrisy allowed Netanyahu to put on a show of calling his delegates back from the USA, building on his prestige at home, by looking like the stalwart leader standing alone against the Goliath of world opinion. It allowed Biden to look like he was standing up for humanity to prevail in the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza. But it simultaneously sent a clear signal to the Israeli government that it was business as usual. Words are cheap when the bombs and armaments keep flowing. The Secretary of State for Defence was visibly wriggling not to say under questioning, that the US would halt arms being sent to Israel if it were shown that they were using them in an indiscriminate manner - a crime to both do and to facilitate by the supply of arms (ie putting both Israel and the US in the dock together).

But the situation is hotting up, both in respect of the Gazan conflict and the Ukrainian, and in effect the two situations are getting more intertwined by the day.

The policy of spreading the net of the conflicts, in order to keep the Western world onside, is being used by both Netanyahu and Zelensky with certainly the hawkish elements within the American administration's blessing in both cases. In Middle East, this includes a steady if unreported exchange of fire between the north of Israel and the Hezbollah bases in Lebanon. The recent drone attacks beyond Israel that have killed Hamas leaders and latterly a high ranking official in the Iranian Guard in his headquarters in Damascus, all serve to threaten to escalate the conflict into a broader regional affair, which in turn keeps the Western minds focused on maintaining their support of Israel. There are those within the Biden administration who believe that a hot war with Iran is long overdue and who have no fear of the consequences of a broader Middle Eastern war should it facilitate this end.

Similarly there has, over the last few months, been an ever increasing use of drone and missile sorties into Russia proper, that while always being dressed up as having been directed against this arms producing facility or that war purposed infrastructure, have in fact been little more than terrorist attacks against civilian locations. They have resulted in civilian casualties as well, but limited attention has of course been payed by the Western media to this fact. This essentially terrorist campaign of reaching into Russia proper (and ex UK diplomat Alastair Crooke called it out as such in a recent interview - again unreported) has to date resulted in little change in the Russian tactics of slow steady advance towards the Dnipre River, but there are signs that this is changing.

Serious missile attacks on Ukrainian power generation infrastructure are designed to halt weapons manufacture within the country itself, adding to the already acute shortage of weaponry and armaments that the Ukrainian continuance is reliant upon. The latest atrocity in Moscow, which the authorities are adamant involved UK/US/Ukrainian facilitation (you can take this with a pinch of salt - perhaps) will only galvanise the Russians to step up this broader use of missiles and drones to paralyse Ukraine and bring about the total collapse of its war effort. This could happen as early as this summer, and it remains to be seen what the Western response to this would be. President Macron's and Prime Minister Tusk's comments notwithstanding, the West is not in a position to field a ground force against Russia, nor can its economy be reorganised onto a war footing overnight. There is neither the money, nor frankly the will, to engage in an all out continental conflict with Russia, and thank God for that at least.

It is our own foolishness and mismanagement of the post Soviet era that has brought this about, and we need some clear thinking diplomacy and realpolitik to draw us back from the abyss. America was fast enough to pull the rug from under us in the Suez crisis, and now is time for us to say, "Hold on. We are not going to destroy Europe on the back of your desire to hold onto world hegemony." Putin is not Hitler and this is not appeasement. It's a practical understanding of where we are and our role in bringing it about, and a suggestion of a reasonable compromise to all parties in order to bring the situation back under control. Time to negotiate, cede the necessary territory to end this dispute, and draw back the horns of Nato. We can create a world where meaningful cooperation can bring benefits for all, with just a little will and a bit less bellicosity. And this includes China as well. Neither Russia nor China stand to gain from a world thrust back into the horrors of the twentieth century, despite what our leaders and the media would have us believe. Only the West, under the hegemonic influence of America seeks to stifle the growth of a multi-polar world. Time to cut this disastrous thinking out of our minds and get some leaders into power who understand that it isn't war that will further our best interests. Not this time. Not now. Hopefully not ever.

[peter]

Terrible report on the front of the Guardian this morning, in which a Canadian doctor working in Gaza gives an account of two Palestinian girls, 7 or 8 years old, stretchered into the hospital with gunshot wounds to the head, recieved as a result of deliberate sniper fire from IDF soldiers.

The girls, she says, lie paralysed in an all but vegetative state, with minimal chance of recovery.

And these are by no means the first such children brought in with this type of injury.

One assumes that the Canadian doctor is telling the truth, which would imply that someone out there is deliberately sitting in a concealed position, taking aim at these children. It's the sort of thing that even in video games, the makers shy away from. I suppose that it could be some cruel Palestinian ploy to attempt to turn the tide of international opinion yet further against Israel - no doubt this is what Israel would claim if called to comment - but it would seem a particularly barbaric tactic, and in the face of the clear atrocities that we have already witnessed, dealt out by indisputably Israeli hands, would seem (by Ockham's razor, if nothing else) to be a stretch too far.

Either way, if nothing else, it shows that this conflict has been allowed to go too far. Surely now it must be brought to an end, by force if not by agreement. You cannot allow this type of thing in the modern world, not by any standards of acceptability.

[peter]

Why the fuck do these idiots like Defence Secretary Grant Schapps keep telling us that we must accept that we are now in a "pre-war world", and start behaving accordingly?

Who does the prick think he is - Winston fucking Churchill?

The world is only in a pre-war state because assholes like him insist on behaving like it is; doing stuff that deliberately aims to put it into a pre-war state. Everybody and his mother knows that Schapps is in the pockets of the generals, the army hawks whose very societal positions depend upon hawking up the threat in order to big up the attention paid to them and more importantly, the defence budgets upon which their services are built. Not to forget of course that many of them will do straight from their military roles into positions in the euphemistically called 'defence industry' (really the offence industry), with a good chance that Schapps himself will join them. Never hurts to lay down a bit of security for the future at a more personal level does it eh, Grant?

These guys talk like war with Russia, with China, with Iran, is a foregone certainty - like we have no agency in deciding whether we want to play ball with this or not. 30 million Russians died in the Second World War. Why the fuck are they going to want a repeat of that. They've been invaded 5 or so times in the last couple of centuries; no wonder they don't like Nato coming right up to their doorstep waving nuclear missiles in their faces like a bully with a big stick. At what point would America stand for Russian nuclear missiles being situated just across the border in Mexico without throwing its toys out of the pram? Russia doesn't want War and it doesn't want to march across Europe - Eastern or otherwise. This is just alarmist bullshit.

As for China - why the fuck would China want to go to war with the West. The West is being whopped hands down by China without its going to war with us. They stand to be the biggest economy in the world in a few years time - if they aren't already. They are exerting influence on the non Western world at far higher degree than the West, who are seemingly still on the starting blocks while China is halfway round the track. Increasingly this is where the economic action of the world is,and China is balls deep in it already. Why the fuck would it want to screw that up, to suddenly throw men and resources into a conflict that could only set its advancement back by decades. The West will be sinified without any need for war and bloodshed, and maybe that's just it. Maybe that's what gets our Western elite's goat so much.

Well here's the truth Grant and the rest of you - you boys who would rather see the world go up in smoke than see the little nests which you have laid up for yourselves queered in any way. You've done so little for the people that you were supposed to be working for, you've pissed all over their interests in support of your own for so long, that it no longer matters to them. They no longer care whether it's you with your mealy-mouthed warnings or Xi with his sharp suits and suitcase full of cheap goods that runs over them. This is your fucking war that you want us to be 'pre' to, so do us all a favour. Stop jabbing at Russia with a stick; pushing and pushing until that war becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either that or Fuck Off and Fight it Yourself!

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The world is only in a pre-war state because assholes like him insist on behaving like it is..

Pretty much agree with that.

--A

[peter]

Pretty feisty post rereading it Av. (Have to say that I agree with myself though! )

Here's a question. Do governments in functional democracies answer to their people, or do the people answer to their governments?

Answer seems pretty straightforward to me - that governments answer to the people.

Which being so, what exactly the fuck, are the UK and USA playing about, in their responses to the question of whether Israel has broken international law, in the course of its assault on Gaza?

In the UK, the government is refusing to release the advice it has been given into this question, into the public domain. By not doing so, it makes it impossible for us, the public, to know if, by extension, our continuing to supply arms to Israel, constitutes a possible infringement of international humanitarian law in itself. Granted, our arms supplies to Israel are as nothing compared to those of the USA (70 percent of Israel's weaponry needs) and Germany (20 percent). But it's more a case of the signal that such a withdrawal would send. It would let Israel know that we for one, would not continue to countenance its behaving as though it is not constrained by the same international laws as the rest of us.

But back on point, at what point does our government have the right to withhold such advice, pertinent to the public interest (in both senses of the word) as it is? This not information of a security related nature. No state security implications rest upon its remaining secret. The withholding can only be assumed to be because it contains information that the government would find embarrassing - and more to the point difficult to explain in terms of its continuance of arms supply to Israel. But like a school child who refuses to hand over its report, it rather incites suspicion as to its own rectitude, moral uprightness, by its refusal to release the said advice. What else are we to believe, other than that it is continuing to supply Israel, even in defiance of the advice that it has received, and by virtue of this, failing in its bounden duty to protect both the interests and good name of the people it is elected to represent.

And the USA, on the same point. (And given the absolute dependence of Israel upon the constant supply of arms it receives from the US, far more pertinent in its case.)

On questioning as to whether the USA would cease its arms sales to Israel, were proof to emerge that the latter had broken international humanitarian law in its prosecution of the 'war' against Hamas, the government spokesman whose name I forget, responded thus. "As yet, we have failed to establish that any international law has been broken." Asked the same question again, once more the spokesman refused to answer whether arms supplies would indeed cease, were such proof obtained, but rather persisted in his evasions of the question (being put incidentally, by one of his own congressmen).

Again we have this failure of government to recognise its obligation to answer to the people. In this case, we see that the US government clearly does not want to commit to stopping arms sales to Israel, even if it is demonstrated that it is acting in a legally inhumanitarian way with those arms. And this in itself, puts the American government itself at odds with the very principles of rule of law and international order that it has been itself advocating since the end of the Second World War. And this is a big shift that the people have a right to have a say on.

These are not small things. They strike at the very heart of the democracies we assume ourselves to be living in. We slowly, by such actions, transform ourselves from the supposed 'Good Guys' into something other. A trajectory that inexorably leads to our becoming pariah states on the world stage, our good reputation in tatters and our cachet worth nothing. And we the public, it seems, have no say.

When your administrations turn rogue before your very eyes, you have a responsibility to turn them out. Both we in the UK and you in America have elections this year. Do not waste your opportunity to make your vote count. Study the words of the various competitors for your vote very carefully, and decide which amongst them understands that should they be elected to power, it is as servant that they are so, not (as those we have in power at present, clearly believe) as master.

[peter]

There is (following on) however a problem with international law.

Drawn up as it was,in the days following the end of WW2, it has a tendency to reflect the interests of the colonial powers that drew it up. And it's loose. Loose enough to allow those more powerful nations who'd occasionally want to put the boot into smaller, weaker countries, to do so. So on these grounds, on this loseness, it might be difficult to establish, with absolute legal clarity, that Israel has broken the law. In moral terms, there can be no doubt, but this is not the point. We are talking about the law - the Law. And Israel is a passed master at skating around the edges of the law, using its ambiguities in order to justify actions that clearly breach the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. Decades of occupation and settlement building has demonstrated this.

But in the current case, collective punishment, withholding of food and water to an entire population, thirty thousand people dead and tens of thousands more injured, aid workers shot and humanitarian agencies targeted, wanton use of indiscriminate bombing, journalists refused access, journalists killed, civilians taken prisoner and stripped and beaten, children shot by sniper fire, aid prevented from reaching the desperate and starving, use of white phosphorus, Israel's own hostages shot (clad in their underwear and walking towards the IDF soldiers who killed them waving a white flag), water and essential infrastructure points destroyed, hospitals bombed......

The list goes on.

The suggestion that amongst this long list, there is not one instance of international humanitarian law having been provably broken, is frankly just ridiculous. And if it is true, then we must conclude that international law is a fiction, that it can not in real terms, be considered to exist. And further, that it is a fiction that is used - can only be used - by the country's that already hold all of the power, to establish a cod-legitimacy on whatever injustices (moral - because under such circumstances there can be no legal) they choose to commit.

And the world becomes a much darker place thereby.

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Here's a question. Do governments in functional democracies answer to their people, or do the people answer to their governments?

Answer seems pretty straightforward to me - that governments answer to the people.

I don't know where you got that ridiculous idea from.

As I have frequently argued before, governments do exactly what they want...if you don't like it, you have the option to choose some other bunch of people every few years in the vain hope that they will do something you like. That is the sole amount of power "the people" have. (Without revolution anyway, and all that achieves is giving some other bunch of people the chance to do what they want. )

If your hope is unrealised, you can then go through the whole process again. Ad infinitum.

[PS: I've lived through a (peaceful) regime change...new pictures on the money, new names for holidays and streets and towns, new faces in parliament and on the ballot. Same old self-serving politicians and capitalists.]

[PPS: Except in this case because the people now in charge were so deprived when they weren't in charge, they're been extra greedy when it comes to self-serving in order to make up for lost time.]

--A

[peter]

And here's me thinking I was the only cynic on the Watch Av!

Forgive my obtuseness, but are you going so far back as the transition from white rule to some kind of nominal democracy in S.A. when you refer to regime change? I hadn't marked you as old enough to have been around for that momentous transition. In fairness my recollection of the dates of these significant changes in the South African political makeup are hazy in the extreme. Also, didn't you move to S.A. from the UK following a childhood spent here in the UK. Just vague memories I have, hanging around in my mind. I just wonder if the regime change you refer to is one of the post-Mandela period that I have missed? (Sorry Av - that sounds pretentious; like nothing that happens outside the UK is of import. I don't mean it like that - just that I have a hard enough time keeping abreast of the game in my own country, let alone anywhere else!)

At home, not much of interest in the press today.

I'm interested to read that Google are considering instituting a paywall behind which it will operate a 'premium service' utilising its developing AI capabilities.

Not sure how this will work - every machine I have used seems to use Google as the default (I'm taking Windows and Android here) with no alternative search engines even offered. I've not been massively impressed with the Google service, particularly in terms of the..?.....impartiality, shall I say.....of the results it churns out. I've asked some, perhaps difficult questions of it at times (difficult in terms of honesty in presentation of results that would support the official narratives we are encouraged to believe) and the service has seemed peculiarly adapt at seeming to be able to 'wilfully misunderstand' exactly what data it is that I was trying to find. It has (just on occasion) had the uncanny sense of their being a 'human hand' behind the results that searches are generating. It's rare, but it's happened (to me at least). During the pandemic was one instance where reliable data pertaining to specific areas or questions, seemed to be studiously avoided being given - almost as I say, as though someone didn't want the information to be available. (Later on, such data has been given out, and often it wouldn't have supported the official narrative - indeed still didn't, but with much less impact after the event - had it been publicly available at the time (as it most certainly was privately).)

But anyway, I wonder if there are other search facilities that one can use other than Google. It seems to me that hiding optimal results on searches behind a paywall is the ultimate in anti-democratic innovations that could be introduced into the service (and as exactly far from the ethos that Tim Berners-Lee demonstrated when he gave his world-changing technology of the WWW away for free, back in those halcyon days when it all started, as it is possible to be).

To completely dominate a field to the detriment and demise of all competitors, and then once you have cleared the field, to capitalise by price hiking made possible by your self-created monopoly, is a trick as old as the hills; why would we be suprised to see Google using it? They display a traditional corporate mentality behind closed doors, despite the 'sandals and tie-dye' image they try to foster out front, and this will be no different. But it will surely fail, if the internet is anything like remaining what it was originally purported to be. The nature of the beast, was always that it would defy such attempts at central monopolised control. The very 'internet nature' of the Web was such that it was inherently ungovernable, unless destroyed in toto. That the moment one such attempt to exercise overall control was implemented, alternative free (in all senses of the word) services would spring into being.

Fair play, but where, I ask, are such services? We've been coached away from the 'dark web' (Oooohhh - shivers up the backbone and all that) by images of its being a place of criminality and degradation. A swirling cesspool of debauchery and uncontrolled vice - but is this just part of the myth used to prevent people from going to the place where they would be beyond the reach of the Google's and their controls and paywalls? Is this the place where the internet functions as a free and democratic entity as it was meant to do, beyond the reach of corporate greed and controlling interest? Are there search facilities out there that rival Google in their functionality, but without the state-corporate intertwinement that seems to be poisoning those early idealistic aims, the aims of Berners-Lee and his cohort? Maybe the 'Wild West' of the dark web is an illusion. Maybe it's like suddenly emerging from the Matrix, and finding that there are people out there - groups and gatherings - that function within an online world beyond that which the majority of us understand, beyond the online world that we have come to accept as normal (though God knows, it seems crazy and misguided enough to me to make me question its societal value, even as it stands).

And let's face it: the world of Microsoft and Google, of Facebook and X, is hardly one they should be boasting about. I mean, how much worse could this dark web be? Unless it's a place where Hostel like activities - you know, that torture-porn film franchise - exist behind a paywall, then it could hardly be much worse, could it? But forget that kind of bollocks - what I want is a service that a) gives me full access to its search results without my having to spring for it (I'm actually already doing this by allowing my data to be harvested - all those agreements you click without actually reading any of them) and b) doesn't try to manipulate me into thinking this or that, voting for him or her, thinking I 'must have' this shit commodity or that dull item, in order to be socially acceptable. I want a place where free thinkers communicate beyond the algorithms of corporate America, a place where you can exist beyond the herd mentality of this fashion or that trend.

Not much to ask you'd think, but hey, perhaps it's not as far away as we might think.

(Edit: Another question raised by the paywall issue, is that wouldn't such a wall interfere with the value of the data harvesting activity of the Google search engine - the commodity that Google actually sells for the cold hard cash it generates? False skewing of the data would be very easy to introduce via such selection, and would massively impact the predictive value of the results obtained. This would seem to be totally against their own interests in my opinion. Surely they'd be fishing for minnows in terms of monetary return, and risking their golden goose of data harvesting income stream at the same time? Just a thought. )

[Avatar]

Forgive my obtuseness, but are you going so far back as the transition from white rule to some kind of nominal democracy in S.A. when you refer to regime change? I hadn't marked you as old enough to have been around for that momentous transition. In fairness my recollection of the dates of these significant changes in the South African political makeup are hazy in the extreme. Also, didn't you move to S.A. from the UK following a childhood spent here in the UK. Just vague memories I have, hanging around in my mind. I just wonder if the regime change you refer to is one of the post-Mandela period that I have missed? (Sorry Av - that sounds pretentious; like nothing that happens outside the UK is of import. I don't mean it like that - just that I have a hard enough time keeping abreast of the game in my own country, let alone anywhere else!)

LOL, yes, I'm referring to the transition to a just and inclusive democratic rule, which came into effect after the elections of 1994.

In 1990, the ANC was unbanned and Mandela released, in 1992 a referendum was held in which white South African's voted (by a greater than 2/3rds majority) to end apartheid and continue the negotiated settlement of a transition, and in '94 Mandela was elected by a re-enfranchised population.

For what it's worth I marked my 47th birthday just the other day. (Monday past in fact.) And no, I was born in SA, although I have a lot of family in the UK, my maternal grandfather having been an Irish Catholic from Dublin by way of Liverpool. (Previous mentions of my own stints living there post-university probably resulted in that misapprehension. )

--A

[Avatar]

As for the rest of your post...suffice it to say...it's complicated.

1) Google paywall premium thing: This is not really to affect the quality of the search results you receive, but more to make use of their "AI Assistant" for your search, your emails, your calendar etc. (Bing already offers this kind of thing, but I'm not sure if it's to everybody or just to people with Microsoft accounts etc. or something. Twitter (X) has its own version if you pay for a premium account too.)

2) Quality of search results: Well, there are 2 issues at play here:

2a) One is advertising, (advertisers bid to have their ad shown when specific keywords are searched for and the winning bids have their ads displayed.) Last I checked, Google's annual revenue from this across all platforms, (youtube, display etc.) was in the region of US$190 billion per year. (They do actually have rules and procedures to try and make sure that the ads you see are relevant to what you are looking for, but advertisers try to circumvent this as much as possible, and at the end of the day, the ad that shows is the one that bid the most for that ad position.)

2b) The other is the opposite of advertising, so called "search engine optimisation." This is the practice of trying to make sure your site ranks "organically" (without paying for an ad) in search results. In order to choose which sites to display, Google looks at a range of "signals" from the site, primary among them still being (unfortunately), the number of other sites that link to your site. (This calls back to the original intention of Google and a system called PageRank (named after one of the founders). The problem being that humans, being human, did everything they could for the last 25 years to manipulate that system in order to benefit their own site. This generated so much mess on the internet that it has had a cumulative negative effect on results. (I mean, there are other factors, but people underestimate the extent to which this has affected things.)

3) Other search things: Well sure. There are plenty of other search engines, commercial, mainstream and otherwise. The default one for people who are worried / upset about Google tracking them and stealing their browsing habits data or whatever is probably duckduckgo.com, there are others. Their main drawback is they do not have the technological capabilities or compute power of something like Google. There's a reason Google became world dominant in search...they were just the best at it.

4) Dark web...uh...yes and no. It does resemble those halcyon days somewhat, but a) humans are cruel, malicious, depraved, stupid, credulous, self serving in perhaps greater measure than they are kind, empathic, generous, wise, virtuous and selfless. Can you go and find instructions on how to make a car bomb? Sure. Will it work? Or will it bow you up while you're making it? Who knows. There is not even the dubious oversight of public scrutiny involved, so all problems of disinformation etc. that the normal web has are magnified many-fold. Not to mention that it is perhaps more technocratic than democratic...it's hard to navigate, hard to find things, almost impossible to verify the accuracy, validity or trustworthiness of anything you do find, etc. I suspect it's less a new frontier of the internet than the last desperate refuge of people who can't find either safety or acceptance or audiences or something even on the "clearnet." Is it an invaluable place for people who are whistleblowers, opposing oppressive regimes, trying to expose corrupt / whatever practices? Yes absolutely. Also however for people in search of, or purveying, the illegal, immoral, dangerous.

5) Data harvesting stuff: Uh, Google doesn't actually sell your data. What they do is allow advertisers to show you their products / services / whatever based on what the think about your interests, location, etc. etc. as implied by your activity and so forth. Really what this big push toward data privacy for search engines means is that instead of seeing ads for things that might be relevant to you, you will instead just see random ads that may or may not have little to no relevance to your needs or interests. All the paywall is going to do is separate that data into "this is data from people who pay vs people who don't." You won't actually have to pay to use Google search etc. etc.

Goodness, that was a wall of text. I don't know why I do this to either of us.

--A