What Do You Think Today?

[Avatar]

Should I self censor insofar as making a pretence at interest, because this might be of key interest, even importance, to the person? Or should I be honest and just make it plain, the moment the subject arises, that it's not something that I understand or attach any importance to.

I mean, personally, I wouldn't make any pretence at interest. Indeed, I would not mention it at all unless the subject arose, and if it did, I would say only that I didn't attach any importance to a person's gender, but rather to the person themself.

Acknowledging their chosen path (using the preferred pronoun for example), is as far as it should be necessary to go for anybody. And is probably all any reasonable person desires of others anyway.

I mean, the reason we're in this state in the first place is people attaching too much importance to people's genders.

Fat people.

Well, I'm pretty skinny so...

--A

[peter]

Good advice Av, and I'll follow it. Trouble is that on the rare occasions I've had any dealings with people who don't identify in the traditional (to my generation) manner, they've seemed to want to make an issue of it.

On one occasion - a busy Saturday - in the shop, I was serving queues of people, not even really taking any notice of the individuals in front of me at any given time (just concentrating on the baskets of goods and getting the money into the tills), I happened to use the (to me) generic term 'mate' to the customer in front of me, only to receive a hostile "Do I look like a 'mate'?" rejoinder from the person. I looked up and saw that the individual was clearly a man who was either transitioning or presenting himself as a woman with deliberate intent.

I was tired and busy and frankly had no time or inclination to play games.

"Hey, just do me a favour and let me do my job," I said. "I've served 300 people in the last few hours, do you really think I'm taking notice of every single one of them?" I apologised if I'd offended him, and it passed off okay, but it left a sour taste in my mouth.

I've had similar instances, and it's rather skewed my opinion - not against trans people or whatever, but rather just against people who simply expect too much from clowns like me on the bottom rung of the societal ladder.

I remember the great tag line from the brilliant Kevin Smith film Clerks. And think that every till-wallah in the country should be able to wear a T-shirt with it on.

"Because we serve you, doesn't mean we like you. "



(Nb. Not actually true in my case. I do like the customers in the main - but it has its limits.I generally consider myself to be an automaton when behind a till, and try to limit my reactions accordingly. But this notwithstanding, if someone fucks with me they are going to get bitten.)

[Avatar]

Of course any ideology (for want of a better word) is going to produce its militant adherents. I also think that the "current" generation feels frustrated by the (from their perspective) pace of social change / acceptance etc. being unable to take into account (for example) how long it took for same-sex relationships, or inter-racial relationships, to become socially acceptable. (Since they largely came into awareness when these things had already happened.)

I blame the culture of instant gratification possibly spawned, and definitely exacerbated, by the internet.

(My favourite thing to whisper to tellers etc. in shops (usually when somebody else is making a fuss) is that the only problem with working in retail is the customers. )

--A

[peter]

If only that were true Av. Alas small shops are breeding grounds for resentment and petty backbiting, largely due to the necessity to create 'entertainment' or diversion from the tedium and repetition of the work. Big fish in small ponds, all chiefs and no Indians, petty grievances grown large, fuelled and magnified by whispering campaigns in the store and beastliness on social media. Just people being people I guess. And the customers of course.

-----0----

Just a quick return to the subject of the economy.

If the recession was, as I explained a post or two ago, only a 'technical' one, then it stands to reason that the growth that Jeremy Hunt is now hailing as his great success, is actually only technical growth as well. After all, the growth reported is only of the same magnitude as the shrinkage of the economy that was designated, following the two successive quaters it occurred over, as recession.

This is a point that Hunt of course chose not to draw attention to. He preferred to forget any obscure differences between technical and proper growth statistics when the figures were travelling in the direction that cast him in a better light. But actually the technical appellation he used remains true.

The economy is not growing now any more than it was shrinking in those two previous quaters. The economy is in fact simply flat-linining: hovering above and below a fixed line of static size, rather akin to temperature hovering around a fixed point when controlled by a thermostat. So in effect, this one of the Sunak five pledges (remember them: Sunak couldn't open his mouth for their spilling out a few months ago, but you don't hear so much about them now) is lying in ruins anyway.

The others aren't doing so well either.

The hospital waiting lists stick stubbornly around the 7 million mark (blame the doctors strike for that one - Sunak will) and the small boats numbers are creeping up again as the weather improves. Inflation is down but this has nothing to do with anything that the government has done and everything to do with falling international energy costs. And what Inflation remains is still at double what they want it to be, and don't look like going any place else very soon.

And lastly debt. Contrary to Sunak's claims UK debt is very far from falling. In fact it's higher than it's ever been, hovering around the 2.5 trillion mark, and rising every time a new measurement is made. As with all economic parameters, there are different ways of making the measurements, and Sunak has been able to use a different arguments to justify that debt is falling. But no economists can be found to agree and even the Office of Budgetary Responsibility who report directly to the government, say that debt is not forcast to fall until 2026 at the earliest.

But none of this will come into the Conservative election campaign. Sunak stood on the doors of Downing Street and promised to bring back honesty into government. He pledged with a straight face that he would lead a government based on integrity and straight dealing, and had no problems doing so. Because like Johnson before him, he is a bald faced liar, and liars never have any problems lying. The words trip off their tongues like children skipping in the park. They flow ever in the direction that sounds good, and whether they bear any resemblance to reality matters not. So with a combination of lying about the present and projecting fear about the future, Sunak will lead his party into the political abyss that awaits it, before decamping to California, never to think of us again.

I think I mentioned that the last YouGov poll had the Tories getting just 15 or so seats in the forthcoming election. Given that the company was founded by Nadhim Zahawi, I doubt you can trust it any more than Sunak himself, but even so, the prospects don't look promising. Hopefully they'll be reduced to the place where their donors will desert them, and suddenly they'll be looking at a Lib-dem style future of political decline. And not a moment too soon. The baleful influence of the Conservative Party has blighted this country for far too long. The clue is in the name. Conservative - to keep things as they are. In their efforts to protect the interests of a small elite, they have doomed the rest of us to declining standards for decades to come. Time to show them the door - permanently!

(And while this shit-show unfolds, the Home Office in its wisdom, is expanding the plan to include failed asylum seekers alongside the illegals to which it already applies. More electioneering gimmicky of course, but costing the country additional millions by the day. Like we had money to burn? People should be held to account for this type of wilful abuse of public money - the scheme has cost hundreds of millions already for what is an essentially electioneering strategy for the Conservative Party - completely against the rules both legally and morally. The abuse of the system like this should result in criminal prosecution for politicians who carry it out. They should not be exempt, but rather should always work in the knowledge that if they break the rules, they will pay for it with jail time.)

[peter]

I'll bet Rishi Sunak is wishing he'd never heard the name Rwanda as his wonderful deportation scam unravels around his ears, getting worse with every day that passes.

The Tory right and it's client media was near swooning with joy when it finally got its Safety of Rwanda Bill through the House the other day, but this was shortlived indeed. A couple of days ago the courts in Belfast threw the first spanner in the works with a ruling that deportations from the province could not go ahead on three counts of illegality to do so.

First, to carry out such deportations would be against the Good Friday Agreement. Secondly it would be against Sunak's own Windsor Framework. And thirdly it would contravene the European Convention on Human Rights.

The DUP immediately reacted with fury against Sunak. "We fucking told you so!", they screamed. "We even tried to put in an ammendment to the legislation in the House to try to close the loopholes and you stupid fucks stopped us from doing so!"

This effectively opens the door for every asylum seeker who wants to avoid deportation to head for Northern Ireland, where once arriving, they are beyond the reach of the law. Needless to say, the Northern Irish administration and public both, are not happy about this.

Neither are the government of the Republic. They have already threatened to return any asylum seekers who cross into the South across the open border, and the whole situation is beginning to make the latter look increasingly unviable. The open border is a key element of the Good Friday Agreement and as such is of paramount importance to both countries. The DUP are also, as a side issue, wild that a different law will apparently pertain in the province than to the rest of the UK. "It's the beginning of the border down the Irish Sea that will end in reunification," they cry.

Sunak for his part is bluffing it out. "Not listening," is his response. "Talk to the hand!" Which is okay for him of course because by the time it comes home to roost, he'll be long gone in California. The EU on the other hand will not be so sanguine. If the planes begin to take off as Sunak claims is his intention, then the process begins that will ultimately end in sanctions and tariffs being applied to the UK - just another nail for our coffin.

There will be much screaming in the right wing media about lefty lawyers (show me a barrister that ever voted Labour will anybody - those with political ambition excepted) but it's all piss and wind. The legislation is simply flawed. Fucking stupid in fact, and was/is never going to stand up to challenge in the courts. English, Irish or European. This is what happens when politicians within the House start voting on an ideological basis rather than with their fucking heads. They make a godawful fuck up of everything and we pay the bill as a country.

Spare us from these idiots. A troop of chimpanzees voting at random could throw up better legislation upon which to build workable law.

[peter]

Devon seems to be the place to go for bargains these days - and the shits, but more of that later.

I opened a Sky News story on my Google feed page (ie the first Google page that comes up automatically when I switch this thing in my hands on each day), and alongside the childishly simplified story of the recent meeting between Putin and Xi, were numbers of additional links.

"Exeter residents given unsold houses for next to nothing!" screamed one ad. "Garden Sheds in Devon being given away!" was the next. A little further down, "Unsold cruise ship berths nearly free in Devon."

I don't know why they do this stuff? I've on occasion, just out of curiosity clicked on these links and of course there is nothing of the kind there when you get there. Just a series of links to holiday companies, or shed sales sites, or estate agents or whatever. Not even any sales as such. On occasion you don't even fetch up on anything even related to the original ad.

I'm away that it's clickbait - but it gets ridiculous. Like opening box of chocolates to find dog food inside. I suppose that enough people are tempted, even though like me, they know its bullshit, to click on the links anyway, to make it worthwhile. They must after all, pay for these slots?

But it's still pretty ridiculous. Almost like succesfully voting for Labour in a general election and waking up in the morning to find the Tories still running the show. But at least that won't happen. Will it?

-----0-----

Well it was always bound to happen.

When the water companies were suddenly freed to unload untreated shit into our rivers and waterways instead of investing in adequate treatment facilities, sooner or later we were reminded that there is a cost - a public health cost - for doing so.

Now the residents of Brixham in Devon are paying that cost, doubled up over the toilet, puking into a bowl and shitting through the eye of a needle at the same time.

They don't have to worry though. It's rarely fatal and usually only lasts a couple of weeks to a month. Unfortunately there's no specific treatment for the protozoal disease that's been identified - namely cryptosporidiosis - a disease spread mainly via drinking water contaminated by (you guessed it) untreated human faeces .South West water, the company who owns and operates the water supply and waste treatment for the region, say that the possible source of the contamination, which they have belatedly identified in some of their water samples taken from the supply system, might be resultant from a faulty valve allowing the parasite (and presumably the shit in which it lives) to escape into the water network. It's a shame that 24 hours prior to this announcement a previous one from the company had assured people that the water was entirely safe to drink and that the then unknown cause of the outbreak was nothing to do with them. A case of "Nothing to see here Guv."

As I say, it was absolutely only a matter of time before there was a full scale public health incident, given the practices of our privatised water companies, who are way more interested in putting profits into the pockets of their shareholders than ploughing them back into infrastructure maintenance and upgrades - part of the remit they undertake to carry out as a commitment allowing them to hold this vital public utility. But the Conservative government has had no problem with giving them a free rein to do exactly as they please, to neglect their obligation and to milk the service as a cash cow for their shareholders rather than providing the service they have undertaken to. After all - they are the party of business aren't they. It's just a pity it was in this case, business of the brown kind (what my mother used to call euphemistically 'big business' when I was three years old).

It took a while for the inevitable to happen, but sure enough, here it is. The relaxation of sewage disposal laws following our exit from the EU can only have speeded up the occurrence, but rest assured, the Devon outbreak will not be the last. Only last week a report said that 10 million litres of raw sewage had been released into lake Windermere following a pumping station failure in a United Utilities site near the location. Lake Windermere is perhaps one of the top tourist destinations in the country, a Unesco world heritage site of great importance to the local economy.

Let's face it. These clowns have demonstrated beyond question that the running of our essential services is not a fit place for private enterprise to be involved in. The railways, the water companies these have both been tried and found wanting, and it's time to take them back into public ownership.

Any Labour leader worth his salt would know this (as Kier Stamer certainly does) and would have the courage to not only say so out loud, but to follow up by actually doing it, once in power.

Jeremy Corbyn would have done so. If Kier Stamer's "changed Labour" is incapable of doing so, then it has no right to sit under the proud historical banner of that political tradition. If, in the face of this public health crisis in the making (and now manifesting in Devon), Stamer's Labour is incapable of grasping this nettle and sorting it out, then it is unworthy of the name, unworthy of the trust of the nation and unworthy of their vote.

[peter]

I watched Kier Stamer stand in front of his selected audience, with a backdrop of his shadow cabinet and big Labour players yesterday, and give us a lachrymosal display of nothingness, the type of which we can expect in bucketfulls, should he win the next election.

He's come up with a new trick, except it isn't, in the form of his six 'first steps' to getting the country back on track.

The thing is that Tony Blair pulled the same trick, except his pledges were written on a piece of cardboard (Stamer's have moved with the times and are on a plastic card), and they even share a few of the exact same pledges. Old friends like dealing with the NHS backlog and sorting out the economy are in there, along with a few new ones like his green national evergy company. At least it's a step up from Ed Milliband and his carved in stone foolishness I suppose.

But as Stamer paced back and forth, jacket off and shirt sleeves rolled up (very workmanlike and ready to get on with the job, you understand), it soon became evident that he had nothing of real substance to say. Like Jeremy Hunt with his British Supertech Giant ideas, there was no suggestion as to how any of these things were actually going to be done. It was all puppy-dog begging, so heartfelt I felt like offering him a kleenex even through the television screen, and then came the inevitable stories of which he is so fond. The woman he spoke to who'd been waiting to have an ingrowing eyelid operated on for two years, the nurse who'd wept as she pleaded with him to win the election, and then his piece de resistance, some poor clown dying of cancer, who told us it was too late for him, but he hadn't given up hope for the rest of us - as long as we voted for Stamer in the next election.

It was mind wrenchingly awful stuff, without so much as a single commitment to do anything other than concentrate on these five or six broad areas. As a commentator noted, clearly as Stamer's lead in the polls increased, he felt less and less need to actually say anything that could come back to haunt him at a future point. His words were as empty as his eyes, behind the pleading manner that leaves one feeling in some odd way soiled, in need of washing one's hands, after the encounter.

This is a man who has no commitment to anything other than the attainment of power. He's Johnson in a clerical dog-collar. His lies are more measured, his manner infinitely less appealing, but he's cut from exactly the same cloth, and will be equally unpredictable in his actions when he finally achieves his goal of winning power. And he'll have a nasty authoritarian side to boot. Stamer was after all a public prosecutor. You don't get to do that job without developing a real sense that you know what is right and what is wrong, and that anyone who disagrees with you must be punished for their temerity. If you think our freedoms have been disappearing like water down a plughole under the Tories, just wait until Stamer takes the reins.

But the media have been soaking it up. And Stamer will win the day. I just hope that the end result will be much closer than the polls suggest, and the parliament is much more balanced in terms of power distribution than is predicted. It all rests on a few hundred thousand votes in key marginal seats, and there is many of those up for grabs. First passed the post doesn't help matters here, but it can throw up some odd results now and again, and a hung parliament is probably the best thing we can hope for in order to clip this nasty little man's wings.

I know I keep saying so, but I cannot believe where we have come to from those heady days when just for a moment it looked like we were going to have a leader who's interest lay with the people, and not the donor interests who's baleful influence has brought this country to its knees. That chap with terminal cancer may still have hope, but he's a better man than me. I for one, watching the Labour leader's performance, felt mine draining away with every passing moment. Nothing short of a complete political overhaul will begin to adress the problems we as a nation have made for ourselves. We have been the architects of our own demise at so many levels have missed and squandered our post war opportunities and spaffed our national wealth up the wall,never in any liklihood, to see it return. Nothing Stamer has to say is going to change this. He hasn't the courage to be an Attlee, ot the decency to be a Corbyn. He's a little man with no commitment to anything other than the attainment of power. When he gets it, it will bite him just as it will bite the rest of us as well.

-----0-----

Interesting to read in the Guardian that the cost of alcohol abuse to the nation is estimated in a new survey, to be around 27 billion pounds per annum.

That's twice the cost of smoking and is reflected in the cost of treatment, the social cost more broadly in terms of lost working hours and broken families etc, and the general impact on the economy.

It's a pointless sort of study however because nothing will come of it. There won't be any vilification of the alcohol industry, any pariah status heaped upon the shoulders of drinkers, any disproportionate tax levied on the products that spread such misery and ill. There is no incentive to deal in any way with the revelations of such studies and it isn't going to happen. End of.

-----0-----

Let's just finish on a high note and mention that Paul McCartney has become the UK's first music billionaire with a 50 million pounds boost to his wealth in just one year.

The Sunak's must be looking on in envy - they are only worth a miserable 650 million, but in fairness they saw a boost of 120 million to their wealth in the last year and they are still richer than the King (whose family have only had 1000 years to rob the peasantry in order to collect their wealth).
And the Sunak's in their turn, will be the envy of the lesser wealth holders, people who, like the boss of Tesco, have to rub along on their incomes each year, even if they are around the 10 million pounds mark: well, if you oversee a profit increase of100 percent in one year (even if it does result from profit gouging on the back of a period of big inflation) then you've got to expect some kind of return for it haven't you?

But it's all okay. Business is booming at the top end of our society and trickle down will absolutely ensure that it will benefit the people who aren't so lucky, aren't so successful as to get to the place where their incomes cannot be written on the back of an envelope because you'd run out of room for the zeros. That might be the 4.3 million children who live in poverty, or the similar number of adults who qualify as destitute by the definition of the Jacob Rowntree Foundation who monitor such things. Or the recipients of the 3.1 million food parcels distributed by the Trussell Trust last year, the fifteen or so million people who live in poverty in the UK. No doubt they in turn, will feel the benefit of this huge accumulation of wealth gathering above their heads, just waiting to shower down upon them.

You can absolutely understand why we didn't need a politician like Jeremy Corbyn leading our country:someone committed to dealing with wealth inequality, who might have done something to interrupt all of that wealth being carted upwards, from whence it will (at some point ...no doubt) cascade down. No, such an individual could only have upset the system and made things horrible. There was no place for him at all and we were silly ever to think there was.

[peter]

The Sunday Telegraph runs a headline Russia and China 'manipulating UK voters' with social media war.

The story tells us that bogus social media accounts are being set up in their thousands in order to falsely increase the profile of pro-Palestinian influencers on YouTube and other platforms online.

The account abounds with words such as 'hostile state involvement' and 'manipulation of public opinion' in respect of the Israel-Gaza conflict, with suggestions that disinformation is featuring amongst this sudden upsurge, but significantly no actual information is given on what this disinformation actually is.

As far as I can see, any action that brings to public awareness, the circumstances under which the Palestinians in both Israel and within the occupied territories have been living in these past 75 years, is a public service long overdue, and if it requires the manipulation of social media algorithms in order to achieve this, then so be it. I care not one jot for social media in the main, and am continually horrified by the stories I read - not to mention the evidence I see in the people I work and interact with - about the harm it can cause. Frankly, the manipulation of the nonsense to bring forth one of the longest standing scandals on the planet can only be to the good, and is a rare instance of its being used for beneficial purposes.

For too long we in the West have been lulled (or fooled) into believing that what is transpiring in that far distant place is nothing that need concern us, that our leaderships have the measure of where our support should lie and that there is no requirement on our part as the voting public, to get involved in their decisions. It has taken the evil of October 7th to shake us out of our complacency on the issue and make us stand up and take note. In the asking of how such a thing could ever happen, why, and what could be behind it, suddenly the whole beastly story unfolds before our eyes and the true injustice that we have allowed to go unremarked for so long, becomes plain for all to see.

If a bit of social media manipulation is required to achieve this upsurge in public awareness, then so be it. The 'malign actors' don't look so malign to me if they act to bring such inconvenient truths to our notice - truths that our administrations would far prefer not to have to confront.

-----0-----

Tucked away on the top corner of the page - the bit that tells us what's inside the paper - is a picture of a thick set woman with blonde hair, wearing a blue football shirt and holding up a trophy with a beefy arm. Her mouth is open in that manner of "Gwoarr!" that you always see tennis players, Andy Murray and the like, doing (when presumably they have made a decent shot), and her other fist is raised in an air-punch that I wouldn't want to be on the end of.

This formidable viking blonde is apparently called Emma Hayes and is captain of the Chelsea Women's football league side, who, we are told, have just scooped their fifth consecutive Super league trophy win, by beating the Manchester United Women's team 6-0. Unflattering her picture certainly is, if you regard it in the femininity stakes, but no doubt in football women's circles it hits all the notes.

The problem is that these circles are, despite what the BBC and our other media would like to pretend, pretty small. Despite the ongoing - some would say almost desperate - push to make women's football a big thing, it has failed at almost every level to break into the big-time of public attention.

You only have to look at the stands where these games are played to see the small scattering of supporters that attend the matches, and before long the miserable truth of the situation becomes embarrassingly apparent - women don't much like women's football. They just aren't interested in it. And neither frankly, are men. It's an illusion that our media are determined to maintain, that this modern extention of the beautiful game into the beautiful sex is something we are all interested in, are following avidly, despite the facts being clearly in opposition to this. It's like, "You will like women's football. You will see it on a par with mens!"

But alas, the public simply don't want it. There's no talk around pints of beer in the local pubs about women's football. People don't turn their papers around and comment on how their particular woman's football team are doing, about which players did well and who scored the blinder of a goal last night. They aren't bothered by it, no matter how much the BBC go on pretending that they are.

And it's not really surprising. Because the truth is that the best women's football team holding up the biggest trophy in the land would struggle to beat an average under 14's squad in any boys public school in the country. Nasty truth that flies in the face of our equality obsessed society, but there it is. I'm sorry if it's offensive to say it, but it's true nevertheless.

Which just goes to show, you can't manipulate the laws of human nature beyond a certain point, no matter how much you try. Women like certain things and men like other, different, things and there's an end to it. Why that should be such an offensive thing in some people's eyes (the thing itself, not just the saying of it) is beyond me. It is just the natural order of things. Women and men buy different magazines to read in our shop. They like different subjects in their leasure material. What's the problem? Why do I want to see a woman apeing a man on a football field or in a boxing ring when it simply doesn't interest me to do so. Or anyone else it seems. Because if it did, that thing paying lip-service to the Chelsea win on today's Telegraph wouldn't be tucked away on page 500 in two square inches of print - it'd be splashed in huge colour from one side of the front page to the other. And it isn't, so it isn't. And you can't argue with that.

[peter]

Near every paper in the country today features something on its front page regarding 'the greatest scandal ever in NHS history, the worst treatment disaster in history, the biggest ever miscarriage of justice in the history of our nations health service.

They refer not to the true biggest scandal of course, but to the equally devastating to those affected, case of the infected blood scandal. A scandal in which tens of thousands were given blood transfusions that rather than saving their lives, brought them to an untimely end, by virtue of the pathogens that were present therein. Aids, hepatitis, and a number of other life ending viruses, seem to have been failed to be detected, and as a result passed on to their unknowing victims, in the transfusions that were supposed to be saving their lives.

And the usual state of affairs has pertained as whenever the state, in the form of one of its arms, fucks up; they initially drag their heels in admitting their mistake, then they take decades in examining the evidence to establish that there is a case to be made. Then further years deciding that a scandal has indeed occurred for which they hold responsibility. And then further years dragging their heels over deciding what compensation should be paid and then making the payments. By which time, needless to say, many of those affected, and the family members of the same, are dead and gone and have no forwarding adress to which their payments may be sent.

This is a scandal, and a fucking huge one.

But it pales into insignificance when set against the other one - the unspoken one that no-one is as yet acknowledging, the elephant in the room scandal that is lurking in the background, with few people at the front edge of our society, our polity, our commentariat, ever having the courage to speak out about. Not if they want their careers to continue, not to be ridiculed, sidelined and ignored, or worse, have to take up positions on right wing online TV news outlets, where they can be regarded as the obligatory swivel eyed loons of the network, there to add a bit of fun, of spice, to the proceedings.

I'll tell you a quick story.

I was at work on Saturday. A guy came in - I know him through the shop - and was asking why I was in at that particular (unusual) time for me. I said that staff sickness was hitting us hard and I'd stepped in to help out and he said it was the same in his place. "It's everywhere you go," he said, "Everybody is sick."

He continued. "I'm sure it's these vaccines that were pushed into us that's part of it. I haven't felt right since I had them. Sort of off kilter - not as sharp as I used to be.

This is a young(ish) guy - mid thirties - who looks as fit as a butchers dog, but is expressing what I believe is a widely held suspicion that something isn't right about what was done in the name of public health during the pandemic. And I think huge numbers have exactly the same suspicion;they don't go on about it, they carry on living their lives and only bring it up in conversation when it happens to naturally arise, but it's there simmering in the background of our public consciousness. And more importantly to those in power, just waiting to find its true voice, the one who will bring it to the fore and bring it to full and public expression, unleashing a tidal wave of anger and demands for knowledge that will be impossible to ignore.

Because this is the true scandal of the century (or centuries, depending on how long this gene therapy pretending to be a vaccine remains in our genome, doing god knows what damage while it is there and before evolution winnows it out again). This and the whole pandemic thing. That monster of science run amok, of public manipulation and fear induced frenzy, of epic and unimaginable self inflicted societal damage whose effects will never be erased from our ongoing history as a species, choose how long we survive and whatever course we take as we move forward. And I mean it. Never! It'll be remembered, and one day acknowledged, for the epic disaster it was, the scandal to end all scandals, the acme of scandal archetypes, that against which all future scandals will be judged and found wanting.

But we're not there yet. We're still in the hiding it stage. And part of that is making sure that something else is in the fore, something else that can be proclaimed, named and shamed, as "The Biggest Scandal Ever" in the history of public health.

Infected blood scandal. A tragedy most certainly. And one for which compensation should be paid with immediate effect. But the biggest scandal ever? Nah. There isn't hardly room in ones comprehension to encompass that one - and certainly not enough money in the world to compensate its victims, which is each and every one of us from now until the end of time.

[peter]

The five years in the coming Langstaff report on the infected blood scandal merely confirms what we already knew about the State we live in - that it's rotten to the core. Neither at its center, nor further out in its institutions, does it ever acknowledge being wrong or making mistakes, and further, when the evidence of this becomes overwhelming, it simply buries it, covers it up and makes it dissapear, and leaves those affected hanging out to dry without a second thought.

The infected blood scandal is simply the latest manifestation of this tendency of our centralised state and institutions, to protect themselves at all costs against any accusations of being wrong, of wrongdoing, of being anything other than perfect and above board is all its dealings with we,the people.

Hillsborough, the post office, now the infected blood. It's always the same format. Keep it buried for as long as possible - a few parliaments minimum - have a "thorough investigation", then issue a damning report and have the PM of the day give a statement in which he speaks of his shock and disgust at the behaviour he has read about (far removed in time from himself you understand - nothing like that could happen now) and promises compensation at a commensurate level with all expediency. Job done. Brush hands. End of. Exactly the same format for dealing with all of them and on we go. A meaningless charade.

At what point are these ongoing scandals ever going to punch through to the people that we're living in a corrupt state, that functions on double dealing and dishonesty in its handling of its remit from top to bottom.

Here's a little tale from my past.

I used to organise ministry of agriculture tuberculosis testing of cattle for the veterinary practice I worked in. We were privately run and were contracted to do tests on a monthly basis as instructed by the ministry. It was important that testing was carried out within the two year time limit for every given farm, and if you overran by a single day, by the rules of the animal health scheme, the farm had to start from scratch with a double bout of testing a month apart, during which time neither stock nor products could be moved on or off the farm. This for a big farm, constituted a huge loss of income together with a significant cost incurred in terms of organising the tests (ie hiring extra manpower, setting up the handling facilities, moving stock to appropriate testing locations etc).

Thus was I horrified to receive a call from one of our biggest clients, telling me that he'd been informed by the ministry that he'd missed his deadline for testing, and would be subject to the above protocol in order to be placed back within the scheme, participation of which was a legal requirement in order to be able to sell milk and meat. We'd tested his farm not a month or so previously, as per the ministry schedule received months prior to that, and had no inkling that we'd run over time. Needless to say, the farmer was extremely pissed. I'd set up the test, he'd done it. It should have been a done deal. And now this.

I contacted the ministry about the problem and was told that we'd overrun the two year time limit between testing and there was no alternative but to start again. The law required it. This was a huge undertaking - the farmer had upwards of 500 cattle to test and was devastating. We'd probably be sued and eaten alive in the court. I told the ministry secretary I was speaking to that I was absolutely sure we'd done the test by the specified date on the schedule, but she assured me otherwise. I was mortified. It was only a few days overdue, I said, couldn't they make an exception given the severity of the trouble we'd - I'd - be in? She was adamant that no exception could be made. It couldn't be done.

I put the phone down and sat, stunned in my chair. It occurred to me that I might be able to find the original letter including the schedule for the months ahead (they came monthly about 6 months in advance - say June's schedule being sent out in January, in order to give lots of time to get the test organised and done within the time limit), but it was a slim chance. I was pretty good at keeping paperwork, even if it was not really necessary for work that had been done and dusted, so with no great expectations of success, I began to trawl through the big metal 'ministry files' (hundreds of them). As luck would have it, I found the original schedule for testing for the particular farm in question, and sure enough, I'd been correct in that the date we'd been given was indeed after the date on which we had performed the test. So we had done the test before the ministry provided date, and the mistake had been their's and not ours. A clerical error in which the typist had put the wrong date, a month over the two year time limit, on the schedule she'd sent out to us.

I phoned back the ministry receptionist, with the proof in my hand - the schedule with the wrong date upon it. Suddenly the situation was different. The mistake was their's and not mine. And suddenly, those completely inflexible rules became a bit more flexible. It was, after all, only a matter of days. Perhaps, after all, an exception might be made.

And so the crisis was resolved. But only because a hugely different standard of leeway was applied to the ministry than to us. I realised at that point that it wasn't so much a case of it's the law, as we are the law, and when it comes to breaking it,we do as we please and you do as we say.

I tell this story because it just highlights the same mentality as is writ large in Hillsborough, in the post office, in the infected blood scandal. This 'we are above the law and we are never wrong' attitude goes from the top of the state and its institutions, to the bottom. It shrinks and expands to fit the needs of the moment, whether it is dealing with a single farm and their meeting of their statutory testing requirements, or acknowledging the damage caused by the transfusion of infected blood into unsuspecting recipients on a hospital bed.

As I say. Rotten to the core.

But just to return to Sir Brian Langford's report, he says, "It will be astonishing to anyone who reads this report that these events could have happened in the UK." (He refers to files being shredded and paperwork lost or withheld from victims families etc.) Well - not really. Not to me anyway. He continues,

Standing back and viewing the response of the NHS and the government, and asking, was there a cover-up, the answer is, there has been...... Not in the sense of a handful of people plotting in an orchestrated conspiracy to mislead, but in a way that was more subtle, more pervasive, and more chilling in its implications.

This is the defining line of the report. What he is saying, in his roundabout way, is that this corruption is not circumscribed, not limited to a cabal of plotters, but is institutionalised, understood and operated, as an almost omerta within our state. 'Our way', understood as a defining principle within the halls of power, the institutions, down to the most insignificant secretary in a regional office in the arse end of nowhere. Do your thing and don't worry - we've got your back.

[peter]

There is a groundswell of public awareness building about what was done to us during the pandemic and people are angry. I'm certainly angry, and I won't stop talking about it until the end of my days.

Remember - this whole thing has occurred since the 2019 general election. The last time we went to the polls, we hadn't even left the EU proper. Boris Johnson had yet to bring in his duplicitous withdrawal agreement. We'd never heard of Covid-19, and the idea that we could be locked in our houses, the entire economy brought to a standstill, injected en masse with experimental gene therapies and prevented from seeing our families, being at their bedsides as they died, would have seemed preposterous.

This has all happened since the last election. Our world has been turned upside down, our economy brought to its knees. Our institutions stripped bare and our collective future prospects thrown onto a bonfire of societal insanity, fuelled by fear stoking propoganda and behavioral manipulation that has left us all reeling.

We have every right to be angry. Every right to question the very political system that could have allowed such a thing to happen. Every right to demand answers to the one big question. Why? Why did you do this. Why did you tear our lives up by the roots and upend every thing we held sacred: our freedoms to go about our daily business, to be with our loved ones, to pursue our daily lives in the time honoured manner, fought for by our forebears, of minimal interference from the state?

These are questions of huge significance that our polity seems unable, or unwilling to face up to. Sitting over the whole thing, supplementary to the above question, is the additional one, the one that our current covid enquiry remit is specifically designed, by deliberate intent, to avoid. Was it necessary? Where would we be now had these things not been done?

These are the questions I want answered. This is what I want every person in the country to be focused on as we enter the period leading into our next general election. Our government has some serious questions to answer, and as yet it seems that our media, our polity, our commentariat, has no stomach to ask them.

[peter]

Just a heads up guys.

The UK general election has just been announced and I'm setting up a designated thread over on the General Council thing. I'll be concentrating on this for the next 6 weeks or so and will likely only post here on things not election related. There'll probably be odds and sods, but don't worry if I'm absent for a few days at a time. Like Arnold Swartzenegger in theTerminator, I'll be back.

Come over and see me in the GC - I'll be glad of the company.

[peter]

Quick post.

Very significant development that Ireland, Norway and Spain have all come out with declarations recognising Palestinian statehood yesterday. Signs that other European countries might be ready to join them as well. This will be disconcerting news in Jerusalem indeed.

Perhaps the beginning of a shift in the thinking on the whole Israel-Palestine question at last.

[peter]

Typical backlash against the Conservative plan to safeguard the state pension from falling into the taxable income bracket by lifting the same threshold freezers that they themselves introduced at sometime in the past.

It amounts to absolutely nothing - less than 2 quid a week by 2030 at the best estimate, and this morning's i has it down at pence per week - literally - but hey, at least it's not going against the triple lock that guarantees that most pensioners won't fall into absolute destitution.

But even this has certain members of the commentariat up in arms.

"Why do you hate young people so much," Home Secretary James Cleverly was asked, referring to the announced policy of national service for youngsters as compared to the pension guarantees for the elderly.

Of course it has nothing to do with hating young people - it's just about votes dear, votes.

But nevertheless this commentator was angry that as he saw it, old people were getting an easy ride and the young were paying the price.

Well let's look at this. If you are working full time (say 40 hours) on minimum wage, you are earning 457.60 less tax. You'll take home something just under 400 pounds a week. This is minimum wage. The amount set as being the lowest that allows you to fully function in our society.

And old age pensioner in the UK gets 220 pounds a week statepension. It's second only to that paid in Albania (that other country of unbridled wealth on the European stage) in its stinginess. It's set at around 1.09 times that regarded as the break even income (the income one needs to break even in supporting oneself and not slip into the negative) and that only after 35 years minimum of payment of National Insurance contributions. The rest of Europe pays pensions at between the 1.5 and 2.0 times the break even income, but many pay considerably higher even than this. We are of course, richer by far than most of these countries, but let's not dwell on that.

But still, many out there feel that this is too much. The triple lock that keeps pensions always ahead (or equal to) inflation or average wage increases (or 2.5 percent if that's higher), is a source of anger to them. Bloody pensioners! Getting everything as usual! Yeah right, c***s - come and give it a try!

And let's remember - the reason why we have no pension pot as a nation to put towards our state pension burden is that we spent the money. Succesive governments, instead of doing what other countries have done and recognising the need to save and invest in sovereign wealth funds etc, used our NI contributions as though they were just part of the treasury income. No planning for future needs was seen as necessary.

Well fuck you if you think that I should suffer because of their lack of foresight. I'm all for stopping this fucking about with tax thresholds and the like and getting the figures paid up to an equitable level with the European average in terms of break even levels. We earned our pensions over 35 years of thankless work. Twenty percent of us didn't get to lie around in bed for most of the day claiming benefits. We grafted, and now we expect what we were promised. Cradle to grave remember. Cradle to fucking grave!

[Avatar]

It's second only to that paid in Albania (that other country of unbridled wealth on the European stage)...

The state pension here is the equivalent of 88 pounds...per month. Sadly, even the price / exchange rate difference does not come close to raising it to anywhere near actually equivalency.

It is technically above the "upper-bound" poverty line, (barely), but that is literally all that can be said about it.

--A

[peter]

That's like, effectively no state pension at all Av. Ouch!

Still, you are having your elections as I post (if I'm correct) - maybe the results are even in - so perhaps things might be about to change for the better?

On our side, our media seems to belatedly have discovered that Kier Stamer has been carrying out a purge on left. Slow fucking hand clap! Spokespeople from the left have been shrieking out about this for over a year as left wing candidates have been purged from candidate selection lists the length and bredth of the country. Length of service, loyalty to the party, all has meant nothing if you weren't from the Stamer wing of the party. The slightest left wing affiliation, with either groups within the party or with unions outside, and you were off the lists for selection.

Like Henry Ford's cars, you could be any colour of Labour member you wanted to be, as long as it was Stamer. If you weren't stamer, your name wouldn't make it onto the approved candidate list for the constituency party to choose from.

Now because of the Abbot affair, this is suddenly news. I bet Rishi Sunak could kiss Diane Abbot right on the lips! She's the best thing that's happened to him since he called this whole election thing in the first place. An unlikely allie as you'd ever find, but she's done more damage to Kier Stamer's election prospects than anything the Tories have said in their entire campaign.

Jeremy Corbyn isn't saying anything - he's got his own battles to fight with his new independent status and his campaign in Islington North - but I bet he's laughing up his sleeve fit to bust. Revenge is a dish best served cold and all that. All those outdoor romps with Diane Abbot as a pair of young MPs are paying off now. She's repaying the debt of his loyalty (in terms of giving her high office while he was leader) in droves. Hell - even the BBC have cottoned on. The BBC's Chris Mason has an article "Stamer left wing purge row is not dying down" on their news website.

And he's dead right - it isn't. Once the rest of the media cotton on and join the fray, Stamer's poll ratings will fall faster than Diane Abbot's kni.....

No. Leave it there. Enough to say it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

-----0------

Some tory clown has decamped to Labour, clearly aware that if he's to have a career in politics he needs to not be a Tory with immediate effect. He's a relatively young fellow and clearly doesn't want to spend the next fourteen years - well - not in politics - and so he's ditched his loyalty and honour on the anvil of expediency and switched sides. Not to the liberal democrats you understand - actually (supposedly) closer to the Tories on the political spectrum than Labour - but no, leapfrogging them entirely in terms of an ideological hop, to land fairly into the pond of a man who only a day or two ago was saying he considered himself a socialist. (Incidentally, I consider myself the equivalent of Apollo in terms of looks and intellect Sir Kier, but it don't make it so.) Still - one can sympathise with him. I mean, to leave the Tories and join the liberal democrats Now that would be ridiculous! There's only one oblivion worse than the one that the Tories are perhaps about to fall into - and that's the one that the liberal democrats occupy. Choose how far the Tories fall, it won't be that far.

And on this latter point - I'm moving more towards there being a hung parliament than the polls are predicting. I think Stamer is on the way to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and it's all starting to unravel for him. He's built his house on a bedrock of lies and deception that the media have until now chosen to ignore. He's been given a free run with virtually no curveballs to avoid, but now I think the establishment realise that maybe they've been too kind, gone too far. That they have created a situation that could see the end of the Tories, not just a nice little batton changing exercise, ready for the tories to get back into power after a period of self reflection and reorganisation. Time to even up the race a bit, they'll be thinking, and all the media coverage will be slanted to achieve this end. They know the result they want. A Labour win - just not too big a Labour win. A Tory loss - just not too big a Tory loss. Just a nice little swapping of T-shirts, a nice little baton exchange with no surprises. I don't think it'll work. I think they'll over play it and finish up with a hung parliament.

And maybe, just maybe, the resultant slubbered up government will be forced by some of the constituents thereof, to bring a vote on proportional representation. And this is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

[Avatar]

Still, you are having your elections as I post (if I'm correct) - maybe the results are even in - so perhaps things might be about to change for the better?

Well, they're certainly proving historic in one sense...for the first time since coming to power under Nelson Mandela 30 years ago, the ruling ANC have lost their majority. (Even with the count not completely done, this is already a foregone conclusion.) A surprise upset from the hastily formed splinter party of disgraced and corruption-accused ex-president Zuma (who is ineligible to run himself due to his recent prison sentence for contempt of court) has ripped enough of the vote away for them to have decisively lost overall control.

They are still the biggest party by a large margin, but will now be forced into a coalition (national) government (and some provincial governments) (with whom we do not know yet) with very fractious factions on all side. The chances of this producing a change for the better for the majority of South African's is unfortunately slim.

Ave Bossa nova, similis bossa seneca!

Ce la vie.

--A

[peter]

I think Av, that sometimes even if polities are themselves fighting against change, change is forced upon them by movement in the broader world. And change is always preceded by a period of turbulence, even when it comes for the better. (I remember the wonderful section from Hugo's Les Miserables, where the old revolutionary casts even 'the terror' in the light of inevitable birthing pains of a new era, to his reluctant confessor Monsignor Bienvenu.)

From an entirely outside (and uneducated in terms of background knowledge) perspective, it seems that S.A. is suddenly standing taller in the world than it has hitherto done.

And this is not merely due to its outstanding role in holding (at last) Israel to account for its operation as an ongoing archaic colonial state (and an apartheid one) in a world that has moved on, but for some reason (in the case of the Western powers) tolerates this in its (Israel's) case.

S.A. presents (in the wider world) as a country emerging in influence in the African continent, itself at last showing signs of finding itself, following centuries of colonial and postcolonial subjugation (and no small thanks to China, who's actions are of course at least in part, self motivated). And not a moment too soon. The axis of world power is shifting and new forces are emerging, and S.A. (like it or not) seems fated to be at the hub of these movements. With this emerging soft power, will come inevitable advantage for the people themselves, as they begin as a nation to reap some of the benefits that being at the forefront of this new geopolitical goldfield (to stretch a metaphor) will bring. Yes there will be the corruption that inevitably comes with such movements; human greed is never extinguished entirely, even if it rides in tandem, alongside progressive forces that carry it along on their tails. But the movement is inexorable and in the right direction, and almost in inevitable consequence, even if almost in defiance of the existing establishment, benefit will find its way downward. (After all, even the lumpen masses of the first world countries enjoy benefits that third world populaces would see as enormous luxury, but by no real desire of their successive generations of establishment fat cats for them to do so. )

So the world is moving Av and S.A. is (so it seems from the outside) at the cusp. And with movement will come change, and unless the laws by which such things are governed are entirely upended, that change will be for the better. Time will come when even the Soweto's have had their day.

-----0-----

Driven into a corner by the media attention it has been garnering, Stamer it seems has at last come to a decision on the future of Diane Abbot and decided that she can (if she chooses) stand as a candidate in her long held seat of North Hackney.

It was absolutely a case of the lesser of two evils, as the fallout from the scandalous treatment he has meeted out on Abbot was truly beginning to bite into his support. The issue was threatening derail his entire project and so he ponied up and swallowed the bitter medicine of allowing her to stand. But boy, will it have been a toad to swallow down! I'd love to have seen his face while he did it!

Stamer has clearly decided that it is better to accept the criticisms of the right wing media (that nothing has changed) and failure to be able to present the excision of Abbot as the final cut with the Corbyn era, than to take the damage that barring her from standing would inevitably bring. Even Afro-Carribean people who didn't like Abbot would have viewed her barring askance: it would have a taint of racism about it, a slur on a loyal black Labour MP and the first black female MP in the House to boot. Not a good look for Stamer and one that would cost him at the ballot box, irrespective of the motives behind his actions.

He'll be hoping to have put this to bed, but somehow I think it has further to run. Abbot standing as a Labour candidate in absolute disagreement with all their stated policies can only attract attention, choose how hard he tries to stop it. He can't bar her again, remove the whip yet again - that horse got away from him - so he's just going to have to stand there and suck it up while she pours scorn on him daily (and why would she not?) and the right wing press has a field day. Serves the fucker right. Kuensburgh says on the BBC website that Stamer has had his first stumble of the campaign. I think he's fallen flat on his face in a great, wet cow-turd.

-----0-----

In a low key, but absolutely significant shift in policy in respect of their participation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, both the USA and Germany have accepted for the first time, the limited use of Nato supplied armaments to make strikes into Russia proper.

Certainly the use of such ordnance is being limited to a strip of territory just over the Russian border, but this will nevertheless be seen in Russia, as a direct escalation by Nato, of attack into sovereign Russian territory. As such, they will view reciprocal strikes into Nato sovereign territory as fair game, and thus, inch by inch, the war escalates and the West and Russia are drawn further into inevitable full scale conflict.

For Zelensky, even this is not enough. He's out there saying that American equivocation is costing Ukrainian lives,and urging Biden to cease his constant worrying about nuclear war and commit to full on attack. Zelensky knows that without full Western participation (and that probably means boots on the ground as well) this war is lost, and is pushing all out for the restraints on him to be lifted.

The West has caught hold of a tiger by the tail here. The Russian bear is awake and it isn't going back to sleep anytime soon. What seemed like a good ploy at the time - surrounding Russia and all, fomenting coups in Ukraine and all - don't suddenly look so good. And what are you going to do? Let Zelensky (who's becoming a fucking nuisance) go hang, let the Russians win (with the inevitable loss of face and influence that that brings)? Or pitch in for the big one. Give Zelensky his head and devil take the consequences? Hobson's choice I'd say. Fuck Ukraine and fuck Zelensky and fuck Europe. Time to get the fuck out of Dodge! Now - what are that China up to?

[peter]

"Roll up, Roll up, Roll up! Get yer Pork aht'a the barrel 'ere!"

And so it begins. We've had the threats, the warnings of dangers we face if we have the temerity to vote in a Labour government. Now come the bribes and overt sweeteners.

30 towns, all Conservative voting but only just so, six Labour also on the borderline, all offered 20 million quid a piece if the Tories are voted back into power.

The liberal democrats have gone one stage further. A dozen football matches (I kid you not) guaranteed to be on freeview channels (as opposed to being locked away behind paywalls) as used to be the case; ones at the top flight levels of the game.

The Labour Party hasn't come up with a similar one as yet - it's too busy dealing with the fallout from the Diane Abbot affair which still dominates any election coverage directed in its direction.

On the latter, we learn in the Sunday Times, that Labour is now offering peerages to a number of more left leaning MPs (Abbot included) if they step down at the next election. I'm not sure that this will include suddenly dropped selection candidate Faiza Shaheen, who has been working tirelessly for four years to consolidate her place as candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green against Conservative, Ian Duncan Smith.

Certainly on the left of the party, Shaheen was one of only 6 Labour candidates who increased their vote share in 2019, she is the unanimously selected candidate in her constituency and has been previously praised by Stamer as 'the ideal candidate', yet out of the blue she learned on Friday that she was to be replaced by a parachuted in candidate - a Stamer allie - because of a trifling misdemeanor. She had liked two tweets on twitter, one which had said that arms sales to Israel should be halted and the other, I forget exactly, but of similar innocuous nature. She appeared on BBC News night, clearly distressed and shell-shocked that her hard work over four years should so suddenly be torn away from her and her political career over before it started.

But such is Stamer's Labour Party. It seems fairly sure that should it be elected, we can expect the same short shrift as a nation, as he has been dealing out to his own membership behind the scenes over the period since his election. Where he can't simply grind out underfoot, he buys out with corruption and baubles.

All good stuff for the media of course, to bring him down a peg or two. That easy ride he's been handed is suddenly being replaced by a harder, more uncomfortable one, as the legacy media realises that they may have overcooked the goose. That in allowing Stamer to rise too high they may have created their own version of a frankenstein, and actually destroyed the Conservative Party to boot.

But never mind chaps, it's Farage to the rescue. He's on the front of this morning's Sunday Times saying that he wants no less than to take over the Conservative Party much as Donald Trump took over the Republican. Did he envisage a merger with Reform, he was asked. No - a take over, he replied.

And believe it or not he might actually do it. The right wing 'names' of the party want him in - Braverman, Patel, Baker, Rees-Mogg - and the membership would lap it up. If the Tories do badly enough in the forthcoming election, then mark my words, he's in.

But that's it. Oddly enough, Sunak's attempts at bribery are not going down well. Polls are dropping even further against the Tories, despite Stamer's travails. He's desperately trying to move on (Stamer that is) but the press have got him by the short and curlies. This will persist in the Sunday political slots today for sure.......

Now. What else?

Mmm......not much it seems.

Have a good Sunday.

[peter]

I haven't seen the film Civil War yet, but if I have it correctly, it depicts a USA of the near future in which a demagogue President has won a (second?) term of office in the Whitehouse, and as a result of his inflammatory rhetoric and ill judged policies, brings about a fracture between the already deeply estranged two halves, which make up America today. The resulting civil war forms the central theme of the story.

Hyper-realistic in its presentation, the film is by accounts a sobering presentation of a possible future that may or may not come about. I don't know how closely the central character of the President is modelled on Donald Trump, but the implications are that it is pretty closely.

I remember when Trump won his first term, watching the stunned and tearful reaction of the residents of New York, who acted as though their world had come to an end. Throughout his presidency, the bitterness and division tearing at the guts of American society seemed to be getting worse and worse (it was evident here in these very pages of the Watch as the Tank degenerated from a debating chamber into a vicious daily slanging match), both sides from what I could see, equally to blame.

It was clear to an outsider that some preexisting animosities between the eastern-north and central-south of the country, were being abraded, worked at deliberately or otherwise, to be inflamming tensions that had been historically dormant for many a year.

North South tensions are not uncommon in countries - we have them here in the UK - but these seemed to be of a different order, and rapidly reaching an almost dangerous pitch.

They culminated at the defeat of Trump in the 2020 election. The world held its breath as the scenes unfolded on the steps of the Capital Building, fearful that a spark was being put to the powder-keg of passion that American politics had become. Thankfully the emotion seemed to dissipate and leach away. Calm was restored and the recriminations began, but many in the outside world could not but be aware of how seemingly close the situation had come to a total collapse of order.

Again, the world had watched on bemused as against all odds (one would have thought) Trump seemed to be resurrecting his political career and forging another strike for the top job. Surely it shouldn't be possible (we thought) for a man that near about incited a public uprising (because he did, didn't he - the evidence is pretty hard to deny) to re-emerge as a front runner for the presidency?

But that is exactly what he was doing. Up to his usual tricks, he was using platforms up and down the country (not least the ones3he was obliged to stand on in courts of law) to whip up popular support, to rally people to his cause once again.

The liberal establishment reacted with typical arrogance and horror at the idea of the plebiscite raised populist getting his hands yet again on the reins of power, and moved into overdrive to present him as the reincarnation of Atilla the Hun with a dash of Adolf thrown in. On both sides of the Atlantic, a second term of Trump is universally presented as sitting somewhere between having red-hot needles inserted into one's eyeballs and cancer of the testicles in terms of its desirability. We are left in no doubt as to the lumpen nature of the red-necked support that lies behind the man - brutal and slow-witted in its thinking and to be considered on a par with something that one gathers on the sole of ones shoe following a canine accident on the sidewalk. In other words 'populist'. Forget that the word is derived from popular. Like Eastenders or fast food - if its popular it must be bad.

And this lip curling superiority has had as much input into the decline between the two halves of American society as the bull-necked belligerence of the piggy eyed proletariat. The intellectual span, the educational divide,the condescending belief that 'we know best what's best for you' - this is in there amongst the racism and the finger jabbing and foam flecked rants, all doing its work and bringing about who knows what ultimate conflagration.

And so, when Trump was found guilty the other day, I winced. Was this going to be the spark that would light up the sky, get 300 million guns being pulled from under beds and behind cupboard doors and into the light?

Don't know. I remarked that maybe I'd been watching too many bad YouTube vids, that maybe my perceptions were clouded by crap in my eyes - but reading the front page of this morning's Times, it seems I'm not alone. Because there on the left hand side, in reference to an inside article, runs the headline "With the Trump verdict, the US is lurching closer to civil war."

Let's hope not - not least because whatever happens on that side of the Atlantic is never far behind happening here. And we're (sorry to say it, but it's true) a rougher bunch than the Americans. Any civil disorder in this country is likely to put that occurring Stateside into the shade. And ain't that a fact.

-----0-----

Scientists are trialing a new contraceptive gel for men that they rub onto their shoulders once a day so that hormones which reduce sperm counts can be absorbed.

I've only got this to say - and add it in as my contribution to your focus group studies if you like. Fuck off! You rub it into your shoulders if you want to, but it'll be a cold day in Hell before I rub it into mine!