What Do You Think Today?

Post by **peter** » Fri Jan 10, 2025 7:57 am

Little story that isn't making the front pages today but is illuminating in itself.

Word is that former Prime Minister Liz Truss has taken out a 'cease and desist' order against PM Stamer to stop him from referring to her as the person who "broke the UK economy". She says that he effectively ruined her campaign for reelection to her South West Norfolk constituency in the 2024 general election with the "false and defamatory" claim.

And in fairness she has a point. I don't think anyone can argue that her mini-budget played its part in the market turmoil that followed hard on its heels - but ruining the UK economy? No - the UK economy was ruined long before Truss came along. The idea of borrowing huge quantities of dosh simply to give away as tax breaks to the rich (which was what seemingly spooked the markets) certainly caused a spike in gilt yields, but the upward trends had been in motion long before she came to office and have continued since she left. These are just basically a visible expression of the declining trust in the overall health of the UK economy by the markets.

Rachel Reeves is getting away with overseeing a higher gilt yield than Truss 'caused', not because she is more trusted or better, but rather because she started from a higher starting point and her increase has been more slowly gathering pace than Truss's budget caused spike. But the realisation of the clout that her (Reeves) budget is going to give to business come April is slowly getting through, and the steam is building. Mortgage prices will go back up (signs of this already), the Bank of England rate cuts forecast for the year will have to be put on hold and any growth that Reeves hoped to generate will fizzle away as fast as her 9.9 billion pounds of headroom for day-to-day spending has just done. In short, she's in slow-burn Truss territory already and is today being roasted in the media for running of to Beijing to chat with her Chinese equivalent when she should be at home sorting out the dogs breakfast she has made of things since she took office.

I'll bet Stamer is looking at her while she's away and wishing he could do a 'Truss with Kwarteng' on her (call her back and sack her sorry arse), but of course he can't. His own position is barely more credible than hers is,and he's got to show a public face of cod confidence in her or when she goes down, he'll likely follow suit shortly thereafter.

UK politics is a rough and unpredictable game at the moment with all the certainties of former times lying in the dust. Interesting times and not in any good sense.

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Another thing to keep an eye on is what is going on in Poland between the President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Duda has demanded that his rival Tusk shield Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu from arrest, if he visits Poland for the 80th anniversary celebrations of the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp.

This offers a supreme opportunity for Tusk to demonstrate that he cannot support what Netenyahu is overseeing in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and would be a serious embarrassment both at home and abroad to the latter were he precluded from attending.

Not sure how this will pan out, but I remember Tusk from the Brexit discussions re our withdrawal (when he held the office of President of the European Council), and he always struck me as a fairly principled sort of a man. I have a suspicion that he might dig his heels in and insist that Poland as a signatory to the Rome Statute, must adhere to the law and act on the ICC's issuance of the arrest warrant against Netenyahu. Given Polish history and its intimate understanding of the places that man's inhumanity to man can take us, I think he will find it difficult not to.

Keep your eyes on this one.

Post by **peter** » Sun Jan 12, 2025 5:27 am

I've just started watching the new Sky Atlantic series Lockerbie and almost immediately it became obvious that very little has changed since that terrible day when Pan Am flight 103 fell from the sky over the small town in Scotland.

Just as today, the government of the day (that of Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher) was absolutely incapable of being straight with the people about what had happened.

Warnings had been recieved and even the means by which an attack would be carried out discovered, even to the point where government workers had been advised not to fly, but no such advice had been forwarded to the public. As a result flight 193 had over 100 empty seats (thank goodness) that would have been carrying diplomatic/state workers home from the USA for Christmas, but who's occupiers had elected not to fly.

When challenged over this the transport Minister of the day prevaricated and dissembled, unable to admit the truth, and Thatcher herself refused to initiate a public inquiry into the tragedy despite having done so in a number of cases involving much lower loss of life of UK citizens.

Why is it that successive UK politicians (and I'm sure that the same is true in the US) seem hardwired to their deepest core not to be straight with their public?

Look at the situation regarding Brexit, just as a case in point. Everyone and his mother knows it was a bad idea. The figures prove it. Trade between the UK and Europe down by fifteen percent and the loss of European workers coming into the country to work in UK businesses is hitting almost every sector and (contrary to what was claimed at the time of the referendum) actually causing increased numbers of immigrants coming into the country, as people coming from farther afield to make up the shortfall bring their families with them (where short distance economic migrants from Europe tended to come alone).

Yet politician after politician who supported Remain in the referendum, now claims that they were mistaken and that Brexit was a good idea. Lizz Truss was an arch remainer, as was Kier Stamer. But both now say that they have changed their minds and that Brexit was a good idea and the right thing to do.

Everyone knows this is bullshit. It was a mistake and we are paying the price of it. But why can't our politicians say this. Just acknowledge that we made a mistake, but it is done and we now have to make the best of it. How hard would it be? I'd have ten times more respect for a politician who had the honesty to say it like it is, but it seems that we prefer to be lied to, to be spun a line almost for the sake of it, even when the truth is so much simpler and would carry no real political cost.

I'm not even going to go into the other examples of political/governmental/state mendacity (over Southport, covid, Russia-Ukraine, Israel, Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit, the grooming gangs, the post-office, the waspi women, cases large and small that (if you had a mind) you could find documented in these pages over near ten years of continuous accounting) I haven't got all day. But I've come realise that our system is no better, no more honest or reputable than any of the others that our propoganda sells to us as the bogeyman personified - just an alternative set of grifters who've reached paydirt in their own countries and are milking it and, like every other horder of money, power, influence or whatever it is these people crave, enough is never enough.

I remember the words of a song by the brilliant band New Model Army, that in reply to the question what do you you want, replied, "All I wanted in the end was world domination and a whole lot of money to spend. Everything I touch, everything I see, fame and fortune - immortality. Well that's not much to ask, not much to ask, just the same as everybody else."

And maybe that just sums it up. More. More of everything, money, power....stuff. Until there's nothing left and all you can do is start eyeing up God, just in case there's a chance..... So perhaps it's just there, in each and every one of us, and choose which one of us made it, we'd finish up just the same. Twisting and squirming and taking the grift. And then denying it when the time came around to fess up.

The story of life.

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The Express tells us that AI will soon be able to match the strongest sperm to the best eggs in order to increase the survival chances of the resulting embryo and spare the heartache of countless women undergoing ivf treatment.

All sounds a bit 'third reich' to me, but I'm not sure that the Express would have cottoned on to this (or would care much if it did), and anyways, I have my doubts about the whole ivf thing anyway.

There are many arguments why the aiding in the ability to sustain a pregnancy in a woman who would naturally be unable to do so might not be a good idea (the genetic basis often behind such conditions, and the advisability of artificially supporting the spread of those genes to name but one), but I'm struck more by the idea of the heartache.

Can you have heartache for something you don't have? I mean, if you loose a child or a baby that you have given birth to, God the pain must be unbearable. But is this comparable to simply not being able to have that child in the first place?

I suppose one of the arguments would be that a woman is "naturally disposed to have a child." ie It's in her make up to want a child, and she'll suffer if she cannot.

I don't know, but this seems a bit.....presumptuous.....to me. It sounds like a man talking rather than a woman. I feel that the same person who says this would also feel that women are naturally happier looking at pictures of kittens than talking about politics. Women have choice, they have agency in their decisions: they are no more slaves to their hormones and drives than men are, so we can (I think) scotch that idea. Many women, after all, simply choose not to succumb to this apparently all consuming instinct.

So we are back to the idea of suffering heartache for the denial of a want. Presumably by heartache we are meaning distress here? Well - children often get distressed if they are denied a want: I've seen it often enough standing in front of the sweet counter in the shop. But adult women? I'd doubt it somehow. Women tend to be more pragmatic than men, if anything, about facing up to the realities of life (in my humble experience). The concept of 'man flu' itself plays on this; that women simply put up with what men make a fuss about.

I don't know, but I think that there's far more going on with this - things like feelings of failure to be able to meet up to societal expectations, failure to feel 'like a proper woman' and other things - that better explain this distress. And that we as a society are responsible for putting those pressures on women. It's simply too simple to put it down to heartache as a result of not having a baby to nurse.

Dare I say, but that Sunday Express article has, "I was written by a man, for men to read," written all over it. It's an oddly worded piece with all kinds of presumptions in it, and I don't believe a women's pen was ever anywhere near it - or at least not one who did not completely understand exactly what was expected of her by her male boss - despite its being attributed to the female health editor.

Post by **peter** » Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:46 am

As we near the day in which the criminal Joe Biden will step down as POTUS and the criminal Donald Trump will step up to replace him, perhaps now is the time to reflect on the old man's legacy, the manner in which the history books will remember him.

The BBC 'long article' on this subject noted he'd be seen as an "interregnum" president - a bridge between the two Trump terms of office. Failure to win the validation of the American people (a second term in office) puts him in a minority of recent presidents, but can hardly be blamed on him. He, after all, was not responsible for his own cognitive decline, but his handling of that decline, which must have come on slowly, was nevertheless disastrous. He could, after all, have declined to run for a second term, given time for a good clear round of primaries in which a quality candidate might have emerged and the disaster that was Camilla Harris averted.

But as ever, hubris and greed for more prevented him from acknowledgement of his clear incapability of completing a second term in office, and the die was cast for a second Trump term instead.

I called him a criminal at the top of this piece and criminal he is.

He has supported both verbally and materially the worst crime occurring in our age, the brutal savaging of the innocent people of Gaza, in collective punishment for the atrocious attack of October 7th by Hamas on Israel. He warned Israel not to overreact in its response - this is true - but then supplied the country with the very arms and technical support without which they could not have overseen what the world recognises now as being as close to a policy of genocide as makes no difference. Let's be clear. Biden is as responsible for what has happened in Gaza as Benjamin Netenyahu.

This of itself makes him a suitable candidate for a long spell in prison (certainly longer than the few remaining years left to him), but he has form from earlier stages in his career that would equally well earn him the title. The financial dealings of the soon to be ex president are opaque in the extreme: the irregularities do not begin to begin with his son Hunter's shady dealings in Ukraine (for which his father kindly gave him blanket immunity from prosecution for any acts commited between 2014 and 2024) but extend back into his own activities during his long political career, and involve potentially billions of dollars of illegally earned money. Not just for Hunter's benefit was the blanket immunity from prosecution given out.

But we are so used to criminality at the top end of our democracies now that it barely interests us. So as one steps aside and another takes his place, we will most likely barely notice the difference. Oh certainly there'll be a difference in style - Trump will enjoy being shocking in the manner of the Alan Sugar-like TV presenter that he us - but behind the scenes it'll be business as usual. Biden made sure that the wealthiest elite of the country were looked after, and Trump will do exactly the same. The Biden economy of the USA doesn't look too bad, until you realise that its distribution is all skewed towards the top. The huge bulk of the people are still getting poorer and poorer, their living standards falling and the legacy they can leave to their children getting worse and worse in terms of their future expectations. Three quarters of the people exist in a state of decline: an eighth remain in a stable condition and the top eighth have never had it so good. Expect more of the same from the Trump administration.

Because in America the uni-party rules too. Sham elections to deliver sham presidents - Punch and Judy shows for the public. A cognitively impaired geriatric replaced by a TV showman of little brain and less respectability. Frankly it wouldn't have mattered a damn who won the presidential election, because neither would have run the country in any real sense. The donors and lobbyists and power-broking goes on way behind the scenes where the big battles are fought and the ultimate decisions are made. Behind closed doors in wood paneled rooms with opulent interiors, men who you and I never hear of make telephone calls, arrange meetings upon which the fates of millions hang. What care they for presidents: they'll be there long after the current sock-puppets are forgotten.

Post by **peter** » Tue Jan 14, 2025 7:19 am

If I was a gambling man studying the form on the chances of Chancellor Rachel Reeves retaining her job until next election, I'd be in a state of confusion this morning.

If you read the Telegraph, the chances fell sharply when according to their report, PM Stamer refused three times to confirm that she would still be in place, in questions following his AI talk in London yesterday. According to the paper a spokesman for him was later forced to clarify that she would remain in post.

The Mail has him being "forced to throw a protective arm around her", instead placing all of the weight on the Downing Street statement (ie the spokesman referred to above) that she would remain and not mentioning Stamer's failure to confirm this earlier.

The Guardian begins their summary of the affair with the opening line, "Rachel Reeves will remain Chancellor until the next general election, Kier Stamer has insisted....".

Altogether a pretty unclear mess of reportage, but the one thing that canbe drawn from it is that beyond doubt, the Chancellor is in trouble. And looking at the economy, the reason is obvious. Growth is flatlining, government borrowing costs continue to rise by the day, and the pound plunging in value against the dollar to a fourteen month low. Add to this rising energy costs and trade and investment grubbing along the dirt like bottom feeders in a polluted river, and the picture of failure is pretty stark.

I don't think Reeves has a cat in hell's chance of surviving - talk of who should replace her is already going on within Labour ranks - and to be honest, I don't think Stamer will be long behind her either. It's a hugely different state of affairs from the normal expectations for a government who have serious just taken office. Literally 6 months in they are reading in the media like a government that has been in situ for three terms and has literally run into the ground. They are in total disarray over the economy, and by the day being forced to backtrack over the decision not to hold a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal. And this a government supported by a huge majority in the Commons (no matter how thin a voting base that majority rests on). Stamer and Co have become sitting ducks, a turkey shoot for their political opponents to take pot shots at over everything they touch. Reverse King Midas's.

One interesting thing that economist Richard Murphy has been stressing in his recent YouTube postings is the responsibility that the Bank of England has in causing the current increase in the cost of government borrowing. I'm not sure on the exact mechanics of it or why they should be doing it, but apparently they have been selling off government bonds (a thing they do on an intermittent basis), and every time they do so the cost of government borrowing goes up.

Essentially what is (according to Murphy) going on, is that the Bank of England is selling back into the private sector the government bonds it bought during the 2008 financial crash and the later covid crisis, without justification (again, according to Murphy) other than that it is in their own interests as bankers, to do so. The reason for this is that doing so somehow helps the rate of interest remain above the rate of inflation, and this net positive value is where bankers earn their money. And as the Bank of England is run by bankers for the benefit of bankers, then (to them) this makes sense. (Nb Reeves is herself a bankers, having been a BofE employee earlier in her career prior to entering politics.) By setting its base interest rate and then maintaining it by pushing bonds out into a private sector that doesn't want them (and reducing the money the markets have for doing other stuff) they push down the value of the bonds and simultaneously push up the cost of government borrowing (because if I have it right, the lower the value the bond the bigger the implied risk in buying it and the bigger the return the government has to pay to the holder of that bond).

Net effects of this are that interest rates are kept high and a downward pressure is exerted on growth (since government spends all of its money servicing debt, and doesn't have as much left to invest). In other words exactly the opposite of what the Chancellor wants.....since her entire economic policy rests upon the creation of growth.

And according to Murphy, Reeves has the authority to tell her former employer to simply stop selling these bonds. But of course she won't do this. Because once a banker, always a banker. Raised as she is in the neoliberal belief that the markets always know best and mustn't be interfered with, Reeves is not going to do anything to stop the Bank of England doing what it does, even to the point of its destroying her policy for the economy of the country or indeed her own political career. After all, when her political days are over, where do you think she'll be headed to earn the real paydirt of her working career? It's not rocket science is it.

Post by **peter** » Wed Jan 15, 2025 8:16 am

Labour's anti-corruption minister has been forced to resign over....err......corruption.

Tulip Siddiq, ex Economic Secretary to the Treasury who's responsibility was to oversee good practice within the department, has been under pressure for some while as a result of her connections to her aunt, the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, as a result of which she has become embroiled in investigations in that country into the siphoning off of state funds to the tune of nearly 4 billion pounds intended for future infrastructure projects. Tulip Siddiq, it is claimed, has been the beneficiary of some of this money in the form of properties which she "inadvertently' failed to declare on the members register of interests in the House of Commons.

It's an embarrassment for Stamer which the right wing media are making full capital from, but relatively small scale when set against the ongoing problems of the economy and the grooming gangs scandal. Still - given his tanking popularity and the meteoric descent of Labour's polling as the best party to be running the country since the election (and let's face it - it's all their own doing) he really doesn't need it.

But the corruption thing is just absolutely par for expectations. We really have reached a point where, from Boris Johnson onwards, we actually expect our politicians to be corrupt to greater or lesser extent, and the straight and above board ones to be the exceptions to the rule. We used as a nation, to look outward at other, normally south European countries like Spain or Greece, or eastern ones like Ukraine, with a sort of amused contempt; it was a given that to do anything in these countries a 'bung' would be required, ot that a policeman would be open to forgetting a speeding offence if a note was slipped across in a driving licence. Now it seems we (the policeman thing aside) just accept that our politicians are on the make. And they are. The idea of public service is one that would cause hoots of laughter in the House of Commons bars, where even if one isn't in direct acceptance of the grift itself, it's well understood that on leaving politics, the help one has given to interests outside in the real world will pay back dividends at a later point.

(Shrug) It's a dog bites man story. What are you going to do? It is what it is.

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Here's a few facts for you to think about, unrelated, but just so we understand where we are - our position in the world as it were.

A research student of the university professor John Mearsheimer - a noted geopolitical expert of world renown - tasked with establishing the number of verifiable occasions when governments of third party countries have been overthrown with covert involvement of the USA security services, since the end of WW2, came up with the figure of 96. These are cases where the information can be verified in the public records.

The Americans have over 600 military bases spread around the world, ready to step up and do the bidding of the US government at any time. They top the list in numerical and quantitative terms by a country mile. Second in terms of numbers of bases (military and adjuncts thereof) are the British, who maintain capabilities in many of the countries of former empire, or in odd little islands and whatnot in far-flung regions of the world.

China has about half a dozen and has been involved in only one brief war since 1945, that which occurred with Vietnam when they invaded Cambodia, and which lasted only a few months. America, conversely, has been involved in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Balkans conflict, the Afghanistan War, the Second Gulf War. Then we have the smaller stuff in which they have been involved; the Yemen War, The Somali conflict, the Syrian civil war, the Israeli-Hamas war (and incidentally, the BBC are reporting today on over 90 verified occasions when Israel has bombed within the designated safe zones which it had told Palestinian civilians to remove to)......

Do I need to go on. Draw your own conclusions from this.

Post by **peter** » Thu Jan 16, 2025 7:56 am

Earlier this month the CES 2025 annual trade show took place in Nevada, Los Vegas and following the three day event attended by 140,000 people, my YouTube algorithm threw up a load of vids about the "10 Best" jaw-dropping products that had been showcased at the event.

Tuning in out of curiosity, I was treated to a fifteen minutes extravaganza of screens that would display 3-D contoured surfaces, mould to any shape, robots that would serve up drinks and snacks from your fridge at request, gaming stations that looked like something out of an Apollo launch capsule, and a host of other more technical stuff (friges and toasters that could talk to each other - "about what?" I thought) of which I had little interest and no inclination to engage with.

This stuff was coming, like it or not, we were told, but watching the video getting further and further away from anything that I would or could have any part in, I realised that if I am lucky enough to survive for but a few years more, I'm going to be ever more disenfranchised at a faster and faster rate, from the society I live in. I'm not interested in it, and conversely it isn't interested in me.

Almost simultaneously to this show (though not related to it, I think), beleaguered Prime Minister Kier Stamer gave a talk in London in which he promised to turbocharge the UK into the new AI based world, by driving AI technical change through every government office and public sector department in the country, streamlining and making more efficient everything he touched, like a fairy godmother with a sparkly wand. The risks and downsides of this venture, the possibility for misuse of data or the carnage (ala the post office scandal) that improperly perfected systems introduced too early could cause, he wasn't interested in. That the elderly - that's my lot - would struggle to adapt to such new innovations, either because they couldn't grasp the operation of such systems or simply did not have access to the tech required for their adoption (I don't have a smartphone as an example), again, he chose not to comment on.

Earlier that day, I'd attempted to reorder a regular prescription I take. I am no longer able to phone my doctor's surgery and simply request it. I have to log into an app, either for the surgery website or an NHS one which can link to my details. I tried my surgery first. It wouldn't let me on without a password which needless to say I'd forgotten. Okay they'd send me a text to the mobile I don't have. Using my wife's phone, I got a code that timed out before I could get back to the doctors site to plug it in. We had more luck with the NHS site because, by chance, I seemed to have found an old piece of paper with a still operable password on it. But the problem was that this site didn't give me a notification that my request had been approved, so with only five days of medication left, I had no idea whether it would be delivered to the pharmacist of my choice or not.

To make matters worse, fifteen minutes later, I received a call to my wife's phone from the surgery, but due to my unfamiliarity with the device I cut it off. I tried to call back on the mobile and was put onto a waiting system that on a Monday morning could hold you for half an hour. Not wanting to waste her call minutes, I went to my landline and waited twenty minutes until I was answered. The receptionist had no idea who'd called me, even telling me I hadn't been called. I had, I informed her; I'd done a callback on the mobile and had gotten to her workplace. She dissapeared briefly and then grudgingly acknowledge I had been called, but it wasn't anything to do with my prescription. In all, a procedure that I could previously have done with a two minute call took a good hour of stressful malarkey.

Was this the smooth AI that Kier Stamer was talking about? The idea of dealing with anything more complicated than ordering a prescription using such services fills me with horror. And I can absolutely see where this is going. We will become a two-tier society. There will be those who have the aptitude and money to engage with this new introduction of AI and tech (as showcased at the Las Vegas event), and those who through poverty or inability (age related cognitive decline or simply by not being smart enough) will be left behind. The half of society enjoying the new high tech world they are living in will forge ahead, with little thought to spare for those being left behind. As time progresses, this division will become more stark - it will positively reinforce itself getting ever greater with each new advancement - and the two-tier society will become ever more apparent. A high tech glossy society will daily rub shoulders with a grubby one of left-behinds: a disenfranchised outcast part of the population that require no thought by Kier Stamer and his ilk to be given to them.

The world he was describing in his pathetic attempt to reinvigorate his failing premiership wa not, is not, and is never going to be intended for the likes of me. And do you know what. That's fine by me. As far as I can see, I'd rather move to Papua New Guinea and live with a tribe of forest dwellers than have anything to do with this AI and tech orientated dystopia. I have no more interest in anything that Kier Stamer and Wes Streeting have to say to each other than what my fucking fridge has to say to my toaster. And that's a fact.

Post by **peter** » Fri Jan 17, 2025 7:16 am

Naturally I have been following the developments in Qatar with interest in the hopes that something of a deal may be struck between Israel and Hamas which would alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

I've not posted on this because, frankly, we'd been down this road so many times only for it turn out to be a dead end that I saw no likelihood of it being any different this time.

Netenyahu had so little reason for wanting a ceasefire and the Biden administration so little history of being able to summon the teeth to pressure him into negotiating one, that I was skeptical that despite the hype, one would emerge. I still am.

The situation as I post is that the deal is being announced as having been agreed by Netenyahu's office, and will probably be voted on for ratification in the Israeli parliament today. Smotrich and Ben Gvir, the two hardline right wing ministers both opposed to the deal, have both said they will resign from the cabinet, but will not join the opposition in order to force the government from office.

Delays have been blamed on Hamas by Netenyahu's office, who've accused them of trying to add additional names to the list of Palestinian captives already agreed for release by Israel, at the last minute. I happened to be listening to the Novara Media live broadcast that was ongoing as the final i's were being dotted and t's crossed, and the sticking point from on the spot announcements seemed rather to be Israeli disagreement with a full troop withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor, the 100 meter wide strip of land that separates Gaza from Egypt along its southern border. The opening of this border would have three very significant consequences. It would allow the possibility for the smuggling of arms into Gaza and this of course is what the Israeli negotiators would claim is unacceptable and their reason for resisting this condition. Secondly, it would allow for the food and medical aid piled up at the Gazan border to immediately be shipped into the Strip where it is so desperately needed. This in itself flies in the face of the Israeli desire to force the inhabitants of Gaza out to pastures new, the suffering being caused by starvation and lack of medical care being a significant tool in the armory of tactics being used to ethnically cleanse the Strip. And the final consequence - and this might be the real consequence of a withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor that Israel most fears - is that it would allow for the passage of Western journalists into Gaza for the first time since the conflict began, to see exactly what has been going on for themselves. It might be fear of pictures of the truth of what the Israeli's have been doing in Gaza reaching the wider world, that is behind their last minute concerns about quitting the Philadelphi Corridor.

But this notwithstanding, it looks as if the deal might go through - at least as far as the first stage.

A bit of back story for context, the negotiated deal is a three stage affair, the first of which involves 30 Israeli hostages being exchanged for a much larger number of Palestinians held in Israeli detention, and a cessation of hostilities beginning as of this Sunday. Israeli troops will withdraw to depopulated areas in the east, and Gazan people will be allowed to return (on foot only by accounts) to their former homes in the north.

Negotiations for the second stage will begin on day 16 of the ceasefire and will involve the further release of the remaining hostages and a full Israeli troop withdrawal. It must also see a return to a 'sustainable calm' to the situation (whatever that might be). The terms of phase two must be completed by day 42 of the ceasefire in order for it to proceed.

The final stage would see any hostage bodies returned to Israel and would also include details on the years long process for the rebuilding of Gaza, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The first question is will it get off the ground at all?

There's a good chance that it will, I'd think - not least because Donald Trump wants it to. He sent one of his team over to Israel in the days before the settlement, and this guy (who's name I forget) by accounts pulled no punches. He insisted on coming, despite the plaintive complaints from the Israeli side,"But it's the Sabbath!", and apparently told his hosts that like it or not, a deal was going to be done. (A very different approach from that of the Biden team who, when told to jump, asked, "How high?")

But then we get into tricky ground. The first stage gets going. Netenyahu gets the kudos of getting some hostages back, and also gets a 42 day break to get his ducks in a row. But what then? Trump will be in the Whitehouse by then: he too, will have satisfied his demands that, "The hostages had better be released by the time I get to office or all hell will be unleashed!" (okay, it won't be all the hostages, but 30 will do). So what will Netenyahu do at this point?

He needs this war to continue, remember. He really needs this war to continue. It's all that's keeping him out of jail. Will he just fabricate a reason to get the fighting and bombing back up and running so that things are effectively back to square one? Will he genuinely attempt to get phase 2 up and running? Grave doubts must exist about his sincerity in all this, and certainly Trump, while demanding to be 'the big man' as usual ("Hey - who's the fucking POTUS here? It's MAGA, you know, not MIGA!") will certainly be no friend to the Palestinians, even if Netenyahu does start bombing them in Gaza again. His instruction will most likely be, do what you have to to get it done - but do it quickly.

And as for the Gazans, they are to be allowed to return to their homes. What homes? It's rubble. 70 percent of the north doesn't exist any more. There's no houses, no tower blocks, no hospitals, no water or sewage or electricity infrastructure. It's gone. They have no homes to return to and will not for years to come. And what's this return on foot business. The Israeli claim is that if they are allowed to take vehicles into the north they will smuggle weaponry up to the Hamas soldiers, and this might be true: but in respect of forcing the inhabitants of Northern Gaza to decide to relocate to a different country as refugees, what could be more effective than a demoralising walk through the blasted landscape of your former homeland, with nothing left but the broken shells of the buildings you once inhabited to look at? It's telling you, "You have nothing left, nothing to stay for. Go away somewhere else." And they will. Because what choice do they have?

So much hangs on what happens today, in the days ahead, and in particular how the negotiations go in respect of getting phase 2 up and running. I don't personally see the Israeli's agreeing to leave Gaza, or the Philadelphi Corridor, and certainly not to the opening of the border at Rafa for the passage of food, medicines and Western journalists. The odds must (sad to say) be at least fifty-fifty on the ceasefire breaking down (the Israeli's are still bombing for all they are worth right up to the point of getting stage 1 ratified), and the resumption of hostilities.

But in a situation as terrible as this, anything that grants a bit of relief, a bit of hope to the Palestinians, anything that gets a hostage back into the arms of their family in Israel, or sees a prisoner walk free from an Israeli detention center where God alone knows what horrors are ongoing - well anything that helps towards this must be celebrated.

Post by **peter** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 4:37 am

The general consensus seems to be that Trump almost certainly is behind Netenyahu's change of plan to accept the deal that he had essentially rejected 3 times previously over the preceeding 6 months s, but that he cannot be trusted as far as you can throw an elephant by the tail to honour the agreement into its second phase. Trump on the other hand was apparently determined not to step into the Whitehouse with a Gaza crisis in full fling from the first moments of his second presidency beginning.

A major question is whether Netenyahu has sucked up a humiliating climb down over Gaza in order to secure a bigger prize in form of a war with Iran. Such a venture would rely on his not being tied down in the former, and perhaps this is in his thinking and possibly even in a verbal agreement with Trump that should the two countries go to war, the USA will have Israeli's back (which it goes without saying it would, but it's nice to hear it from the unpredictable Trump's mouth anyway, no doubt).

Because this agreement is a climb down for Netenyahu; neither od his principle aims are begun to be met; the hostages remain hostage and Hamas is by Blinken's own admission virtually as well manned as it was on day one of the conflict. In fact, although it isn't being made terribly big news of, Hamas has apparently in recent days been scoring some pretty reasonable successes in the north in terms of inflicting casualties on Israel. But all this aside, and returning to the ceasefire deal itself, the chances of it making it into its second phase seem on the face of it pretty slim. Once Netenyahu has secured his 30 hostages of stage one, he has little incentive to proceed with stage two, and the expectation must be that he will manufacture a reason for the resumption of hostilities (the Iran plan being a red-herring) under the pretext of Hamas having broken the terms of the agreement.

Now, let's have a look at the papers.

Kier Stamer seems to have confirmed that we are in for another bout of austerity as he said in passing in an interview with the Financial Times that he would be ruthless with cuts, if this was what was required in order to stick with his Chancellor's fiscal rules.

He was mainly talking about his relationship with Trump and his hopes for the coming days as the new American administration takes shape. He brushed aside his spat with Elon Musk as being "noises off" that he could ignore. He's hoping a trade deal of sorts can be done, doesn't see his recent talks with the EU as being a no-no for a deal with Trump. He feels that both can be accommodated simultaneously.

(Note; Chancellor Reeves is pretty much on the back foot at the moment, having created a situation where either tax increases or austerity are unavoidable if the fiscal rules she has bound herself in are to be kept. Stamer will certainly be ruthless - but it might be with her rather than with the cutsor taxes. The fiscal rules can after all, be broken.....but only by installing a new Chancellor. He's not likely to do this immediately because he's invested a lot in her both during the election and subsequently, but he has his limits. She's not proving to be up to the job, and will have to go - but only when a sufficient amount of time has passed to make her sacking or moving sideways respectable. Expect a mix of tax rises and service cuts, either in the spring budget or possibly in an earlier statement if the cost of government borrowing continues to rise. Any such combination will lean towards austerity, but tax rises will have to be in there as well or all credibility as a Labour government will effectively be lost.)

The Saturday Times runs with "Labour's tax plans trigger exodus of millionaires." Good riddance to them then. Having enjoyed the good times when they were here (for the rich that is - there's been no good times for the rest of us), if they aren't prepared to stump up when the harder times come, then they are no use to us.

The Telegraph runs with the holding back of Kier Stamer's intention of handing back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius until the incoming Trump administration has had a chance to look at it. "It's right that they have a chance to look at it, and we look forward to those conversations," said Stamer on the subject. The concerns surround the potential effects on security re China's influence in the region, and while Trump is making large on his relationship with Xi and the potential for future cooperation between China and the USA, there is still a pervading belief that she poses a significant security risk to America that must be dealt with. Interestingly, the UK's ambassador to Washington, a certain Peter Mandleson of the Tony Blair administration fame, has significantly changed his tune on China since his appointment. Where previously he believed we should build stronger economic ties with Beijing and that Trump was a "bully" in his approach to the country, he now regards them as "directly challenging our governments and Western values." Now there's a thing; a Stamer flunkie changing his coat.

Finally a nasty little piece in the Telegraph recounting that courts and police are recording ethnicity less and less as time goes on, for fear of being labelled racist. The underlying implication of the piece is that crimes of violence and theft are being perpetrated more by the ethnic minority groupings of our multicultural society, and that this failure of the services to record this data is in fact an "institutional cover-up". This is journalism at its most iniquetous, seeding ideas of racism and intercultural hatred into the population: leaving them to fester to be worked upon later by Nigel Farage and his right wing ilk, prior to the next election.

On the latter, a recent poll had Reform UK leading the Tories as the preferred opposition to Labour for the first time, showing if nothing else that Farage's star is rising. No doubt the movers and of the Telegraph will be happy to give him a shunt towards the top job because heaven forbid that a black woman should secure it. (Not, incidentally, that this one will. Badenoch is hopelessly out of her depth, even against as easy a target as the hapless Kier Stamer, and will be replaced long before the next election.)

Post by **peter** » Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:11 am

If Netenyahu's public adress - his first since accepting the ceasefire agreement with Hamas on (what?) Thursday - was anything to go by, the chances of the agreement progressing to phase two are zero.

Designed to cater to his domestic audience certainly, and most significantly his far right coalition partners Smotrich and Ben Gvir, he immediately made clear that if their was the slightest deviation from the planned protocol of getting the second phase up and running on day 42,then he'd be back into the war with renewed ferocity and with a guarantee that American weaponry and support would be provided in even greater degree than it has been already.

He made no mention that his office was, as he spoke, issuing threats that even the first phase might not proceed because Hamas had not provided the names of the 3 hostages earmarked for release at 6.30 UK time this morning (just over an hour and a half away as I post), despite having given a list of the 33 names of the hostages designated for staggered release over the 42 day first phase period. It seemed a rather nitpicking complaint - a bit like refusing to accept hostage release from an airplane siege because the hostage takers wouldn't tell you who they were going to send down the steps - and I wondered if it was simply an Israeli delaying tactic or ruse to not go ahead with the planned agreement.

Even the BBC reporter accepted (following Netenyahu's address) that the tone was belligerent and unhelpful. Netenyahu was, he said, the past master at saying different things to different people (another way of saying that you can't trust him as far as you can throw him), but given what else he had to say, I think he was for a change simply telling us pretty much the truth. He said, quite categorically that Israeli troops would be remaining in Gaza (a stipulation of phase two being that they must quit the Strip) and that neither would they be vacating the Philadelphi Corridor (an absolute demand of Hamas being that they take control of their own southern border with Egypt).

If he means what he says - and I'd guess that he does - then there is no chance of phase two of the arrangement ever happening and a return to violence is all but guaranteed. Which makes today's exercise little more than a straight prisoner exchange (where one Israeli life is rated as equivalent in value to thirty plus Palestinian ones - about par for the course of this conflict, if not an over valuation of the latter) and the remaining 41 days of the ceasefire just a respite for regrouping and reorganising purposes prior to re-commencement of hostilities.

But this is where things stand as I speak, with no real way of gaging the Israeli PM's intentions from his words and no clear picture of what will happen. I'd guess we'll see pictures of the hostage release going ahead in an hour or two's time and more in the days ahead. Will Smotrich and Ben Gvir bring down the Netenyahu government as they have threatened to do? Bibi Netenyahu must be praying not, because if they do he'll need to get out of Israel pretty quickly or face jail time in the days ahead. This deal is intensely unpopular with large chunks of both the Israeli government and the public. Many believe he should have held out for full hostage release (130 or so being left behind as it were) and that the 'gains' made in the clearance of Gaza should not be handed back by either quitting the occupied territory or allowing the displaced Palestinians to return to their destroyed homes. That he has capitulated is seen as weakness on Netenyahu's part, and the hardline elements of both population and government do not forgive this. But Netenyahu had little choice following his visit from Trump's envoy last Saturday gone, and he's essentially making the best of a bad job.

Moving on.....

-----0-----

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is reported in the Observer as calling for ministers to rally against the "march of the far-right" as Trump prepares to step up for his second term as President of the United States of America.

The most strident warning given to date by a politician, Khan refers to a "resurgent fascism", that he says will need to be addressed with stricter rules on the posting of online content to prevent its spread.

Trump isn't helping by having invited a number of hardline right politicians and commentators to his inauguration, to which as a snub for his support for Camilla Harris in the election, Kier Stamer is excluded. In fact, warnings are, that Stamer is going to have to suck a lot of eggs if he's to get an invitation to the Trump Whitehouse any time soon at all.

Now I'm as cognisant of the rise of the far-right as anyone. But I believe that they are not actually that popular in and of themselves, but are simply enjoying an unearned popularity on the back of public disenchantment and feelings of disenfranchisement. And also on the back of the complete absence of any true social democratic alternative. The neoliberal establishment that has completely coopted the centre ground in European politics, squashing out almost anything that resembles any real representation of center-left political thinking, has just left an empty space for the far-right to step into. Ever the smart ones when it comes to the spouting of populist rhetoric in order to win over the crowd, the likes of Farage and Marine Le Penn, Hungary's Orban and Germany's Alice Weidel have simply stepped up to the plate with simplistic diatribes against anybody they can 'other', in order to shift blame and tune in on the zeitgeist of the crowd.

But why is it that little pedagogues like Khan always have to talk in terms of authoritarian tightening of laws in order to make their point? And why is it that anyone who finds any fault with the so called progressive liberal democracy agenda and the place to which it has led us, has to be labelled as 'far-right'?

I'm certainly not far right (as anyone who saw my supporting posts for Jeremy Corbyn would know), but I'm horrified at what the Labour Party has become. It is now a paid up member of the neoliberal believers fan-club and as far removed from its inception as a workers representative party as an illegal rave is from a McDonald's birthday party for a three year old. And this stifling of left of centre political representation in favour of uni-party shams all following the neoliberal agenda is rife across the whole of Europe. The West has been totally usurped by it, to the point where they have opened the door to the rise of the far-right, and would now seek to use authoritarian laws against the whole population in order to close it again. In crushing out the left, they have left the people nowhere to go except to the right. If you don't agree with the ever widening wealth gap, of services getting worse and worse so that tax breaks can be given in ever more egregious fashion to those already wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, of your culture being swamped and displaced by the enforcement of a multiculturalism that you simply don't want or understand......, then you must be far-right.

Well I don't agree and I'm not. So either I'm atypical in some odd way, or things are not as simple as Khan and his neoliberal establishment colleagues would have us believe. I suspect the latter, but hey, I've been wrong many times.

Post by **peter** » Mon Jan 20, 2025 8:56 am

Everything you need to know about the Gaza ceasefire is illustrated by the fact that the Israelis continued to mount their citizen killing air-strikes up to and including the last minutes at which three names had not been provided, of the hostages scheduled for release that day.

Whatever the reason that the release of these names had been held up (Hamas said it was some kind of technical failure), 13 Palestinian families will never look on that day as one of joy because their family members lie dead under the rubble of yet another attack. Surely - surely - if the Israelis had any real desire or intention that this should be anything other than just the most temporary of respites, they could have seen it incumbent upon themselves to show good faith and call a halt to the bombing?

That this is just a temporary halt to hostilities was made absolutely clear by Prime Minister Netenyahu in his address of the previous evening. What is not being reported is that an almost parallel agreement to end hostilities was signed on January 17th 2009 when the brutal killing spree that was Operation Cast Lead was brought to an end. It was brought about because on that occasion, days later President-elect Barack Obama was due to be inaugerated, and had let it be known (in equally non uncertain terms as the recent envoy from Trump's office did to Netenyahu) that no way was he having his inauguration overshadowed by a bloodbath in Gaza.

On that occasion, as on this the Israelis immediately put down their weapons and signed an agreement (giving the lie to the claims that Netenyahu is a law unto himself and that the Americans have no control over him). As with this agreement it contained promises about the ending of hostilities, rebuilding Gaza and the easing of sanctions. They never happened. The same promises were given as the end of Operation Protective Edge. Again they were forgotten. In fact at one point an Israeli minister answering remonstrations that the agreements had contained such promises actually said, "Don't worry. The day after the ceasefire begins no-one will remember what is written in this agreement."

Promises to rebuild Gaza, ease the restrictions on aid and supplies into the Strip and cease aggressive military actions against it have been made multiple times over the years and they have never been honoured. At what point are we supposed to believe they will be honoured on this occasion? Do our medias have such short memories that they simply do not remember this - or does it simply not suit them to do so?

(Thanks to Norman Finklestein for this information; a voice of truth and clarity in the otherwise fog of spin and disinformation that surrounds this whole situation.)

Post by **peter** » Tue Jan 21, 2025 7:48 am

It was something to see, Joe Biden and Camilla Harris sitting stony faced and immobile as Donald Trump recieved his claps and ovations during his inauguration speech yesterday from the Capitol Building rotunda.

He'll certainly have ruffled a few feathers not so much with all of the MAGA rhetoric and boasting which we had come to expect from this bladder of hot orange gas long ago. But rather for his 'anti woke' iterations on returning to the "biological truth" of two genders, his ending of mandated diversity targets in public service appointments and departments, and his reinstatement with back pay of all servicing military personnel who were dismissed for refusing to take the covid vaccination during the pandemic hysteria.

These things run counter to the Liberal establishment zeitgeist and will have the woke commentariat wringing their hands and spitting insults through their clenched teeth for weeks to come.

But it isn't before time on any of the three counts mentioned in my opinion.

The logical problems it creates for a state to have to cope with people swapping their birth assigned gender for anything other than most critical of reasons is too much to ask of it. Sure, have a sex change, pursue life as you see fit - but allow that you will be officially recognised as being the gender you were assigned on the documentation of your birth certificate and live with it. Don't force yourself into changing rooms where people might be discomfited by your presence, don't force others into altering the pronouns they are choosing to use about this or that person, and accept that life choices we make are not something that we can force others to accommodate to, wish it however much we would like. We are what we are. Others must be allowed to be what they are as well.

On the mandated diversity targets, no-one is helped by people being put into roles that they are not best suited for simply in order to satisfy the dictates of targets. The organisations forced to adopt such targets have to overlook more qualified individuals (quite unfairly) to appoint those with less merit to occupy the positions in question. The cumulative effect is negative in such organisations and the recipients of their services suffer thereby. All individuals of any minority group appointed live in the uncertainty of whether they truly deserve their appointment (whether this be the case or not), or whether they are there by virtue of box ticking on some target. and are undoubtedly looked at by their coworkers (again quite unfairly) with the same thoughts in mind. Everyone has the right to occupy their position knowing that they have won it in fair competition with their coworkers, and have a full right on merit alone to be sitting in it.

Lastly on the vaccine reinstatement issue, it never should have been the case that a medical intervention should ever have been forced upon any adult unwilling to accept it, their job notwithstanding. If an individual in the services (where the age/health of workers did not place them in any high risk categories anyway) elected not to accept the vaccination, then they should have been reassigned in a placement where it would not have been problematic or placed on paid furlough until such time as it was deemed that they could once again take up service. The carrying out of professions within the public service sphere should not place an individual in such a position as to see the loss of their most basic human right of being of being master of what is done to their own body. To expect this is to expect too much. In cases where it was deemed an absolute necessity, the decision of an individual should have been accepted and if they did not consent to the procedure, then they should have exited the service with full compensation for loss of earnings.

On these points Trump and I seem to be in full agreement (which will no doubt be a relief to him) - it remains to be seen if we will be in accord on very much else. On the business of deportation of the millions of undocumented migrants in the USA, I'm thinking that he hasn't thought it through. These workers form an integral part of the American economy and are largely employed doing the type of work that doesn't easily lend itself to regular categorisation. They are the gardeners, the handymen, the occasional and intermittent labourers on building sites and in public venues. They even at the higher end, provide professional services such as out of school tutoring and accountancy services. Their removal will cause both a financial hit to the economy and a societal one as their services are removed. Suddenly the wealthy, finding themselves unable to secure a gardener or a plumber, might not be so happy with the legislation. And as to the applications for entry to the US having to be carried out on the Mexican side of the border, let's see what the Mexican government has to say about that.

But all in all it was a fun speech to watch. The idea of a Trumpian balm of "sunlight spreading around the world''......yes, well - you couldn't help but smile at that.

Anyway, these are my thoughts off the top of my head. I'm off to see what the papers have to say.

Post by **peter** » Wed Jan 22, 2025 9:07 am

Today's post scrubbed due to cowardice.

Fear of asking questions that might be deemed as being critical of the state, of the government and of the media, in the fog of uncertainty surrounding the case of Axel Rudakubana. Questions that might be difficult for them to answer. Questions that in our new atmosphere of self-censorship and necessary care as to what you post online, made me afraid to ask what in other times, I'd have done so without a second thought.

How has this been done? How have I been brought to the place of being a paranoid jellyfish? It's been brought about, salami slicing style, bit by bit. If recent statements by Kier Stamer give any clue to the direction of travel, it's going to get worse. If I was a younger man, had no responsibilities to family or any other such considerations, I'd probably take a different perspective. I'd probably 'publish and be damned'. I wish it were so. But I'm not and it isn't.

I never thought the day would come where such a state of affairs would pertain. But Kier Stamer's comments about 'a new breed of terrorist', beavering away in bedrooms up and down the country, can be taken in a number of different ways. Certainly it can apply to people like Rudakubana (though he wasn't a terrorist) - but can it apply to people like me as well? Stamer has said we need a new definition of terrorism, of what a terrorist is. What does he mean? Does he refer not just to those who plot, secreted away from the eyes of their families and friends, acts of violence and mayhem? Does he include those who question the authority of the state, who ask the difficult questions that they'd prefer not to have to answer? I don't know, but it seems to me increasingly like they might (and there are quite possibly people sitting in jail cells right now who can attest to it).

So perhaps in scrubbing my post I'm being a paranoid jellyfish - but perhaps I'm not. Either way I'm not taking any chances, but it begs the question as to whether it's still worth while engaging in the kind of activity I do here.

There are times in this world where the clever money is to take a leaf out of the book of Brer Fox when he hid away from his pursuers in the briar patch, and to lie low and say 'nuffin'!

Post by **peter** » Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:58 am

First point.

Kier Stamer, before he gets onto technology companies about the ease with which grossly disturbing images can be accessed on their sites (as apparently child killer Axel Rudakubana was wont to spend his time doing), should give consideration to the main news outlets of Sky and BBC News, who routinely show gratuitously included cctv footage to accompany virtually every story they are covering. People do not need to see the imagery of murderers just about to shoot their victims, or hoodied monsters on their way to commit the horrors they are finally convicted of, often only cut short moments before the actual crime is commited.

Both stations news output has become little more than any other video footage show on cheap TV, relying on such content to boost viewing figures and very much at the cost of providing reasoned and balanced coverage read out by presenters who remain emotionally uninvolved in the delivery of the content as they do so. (Enough please of the Clive Myrie's and Fiona Bruce's using their tone of voice and cocked eyebrows to indicate their views, be it scepticism or distaste, about the statements they are making or the people they are speaking about.)

Is it any wonder that people go to these social media sites to view unexpurgated versions of what the news channels have teased them with, becoming drawn slowly into viewing ever more graphic content. People have first a morbid curiosity, then a beastly excitement, brought on by such material. It is the same thing that drew crowds in their thousands out to see people hung, drawn and quartered in medieval times, that had Henry VIII kill a man by slowly rising temperature in a cauldron of water (just to see it done - a sight that repelled even that gross monster, who said later, "It was no way for a man to die"). It is a base thing that should be curbed and certainly not nursed to maturity by either the social media platforms or the mainstream news outlets.

-----0-----

So Prince Harry has settled his dispute with The Sun newspaper, who have apologised for gross intrusion into his private affairs and causing him distress and embarrassment in so doing (and using covert and possibly illegal methods to do so).

Would that be the time they showed him dressed in full nazi regalia at a fancy dress party - ot the time he was shown naked in a Las Vegas hotel bedroom playing strip-poker with a number of 'friends' with only his hands over his privates to preserve his dignity? Ahh. Youthful indiscretions eh?

Still, the settlement comes with a shit-ton of money, needless to say, and the media were quick to point out that Harry had held out before settling far longer than many other people, who'd already been paid off at earlier points in time. He was, they pointed out, determined to have his day in court.....except when the payment offer became large enough to override this they failed to say. His lawyer gave a pompous speech about how he'd done it for the people, and the odious Tom Watson (also paid out and now Lord Watson in grateful recognition for the part he played in destroying Jeremy Corbyn) called him a hero and a predator of the giant media corporations.

Because it was never about the money you see. No - it was never about the money.

-----0-----

Much has been made of Elon Musk's ill-advisedly using an easily interpreted as far-right gesture at Donald Trump's inauguration, and critics of the orange fuckwit will warn us of fascism on the march once more. I agree with Professor Norman Finklestein however that fascism is a phenomenon that arises in opposition to the left rather than as a movement of itself. Donald Trump has no need of fascism: there is no left to speak of in America (or anywhere else in the Western world come to that). He has control of the political system, the judicial system and the departments of state. He simply doesn't need tyrany to further his power or financial empire - rather it would serve to hinder him, to get in his way.

No. We have plenty of things to fear from Trump - he will do damage aplenty in his time in office. But fascism is not one if them. And as for Musk. Silly boy. Silly boy.

James O'brien, commenting on the Musk 'salute', said that in Germany such gestures were illegal, and if you didn't believe him, he suggested you went there and tried it out. He also suggested that it was universally recognised in this country and would attract censure if you were to use it. Again, he suggested that you try it out at work.

I put it to you that he totally overestimates the general knowledge of the average person in this country (skewed as his impression is, by the London based 'liberal intelligensia' crowd he rarely steps away from). In my workplace, no-one would even recognise the gesture, let alone be offended by it. I had a fellow ask me the other day (because I'd mentioned the conflict in Israel) if "Israeli's are Iranians?" This morning's 'i' runs a sub heading referring to an internal piece, "I've got a gen Z boss: I'm 62 and she's 25 and her general knowledge is dire."

This absolutely sums up the situation for the general state of affairs in this country. The bulk of people know nothing of history and understand very little about the system of governance they exist under. They are as children in the hands of their political masters and the media that they consume. O'brien has so little contact with these people he barely understands that they exist. And when I say they are like children, perhaps it's for the best. The future that is planned for them is not one that they could find any comfort in, and for them to understand it would only distress them.

That this sounds ridiculous, I'm aware - but you think on it, think on everything that is going on and tell me that it isn't true.

Because let's look at two possible futures, one in which the fruits of advancing technologies and increased wealth are enjoyed by a small section of society, while the bulk of people see their life chances dwindling, their health services shrinking, and the effects of increasing poverty and neglect becoming ever more apparent in the increasingly hard struggles for survival they experience on a daily basis. Or another version in which the fruits of advancement are shared equally, the lot of people as a whole improves and their longevity, quality of life, and opportunities for improvement are shared in equally by all levels of society, rich and poor alike.

Now tell me which version you think we are headed towards.

-----0-----

Lastly, can't help but agree with President Trump that the war in Ukraine is "ridiculous", but I'm not sure that threatening Russia with sanctions is the wisest move in getting the talks on ending it moving. It's probably more for domestic consumption than anything else, and I dare say that Putin recognises this - but still....

And finally, well done to the Express for drawing attention to the return of Isis to the streets of Damascus, where the customary flags of the group are ever more apparent on open display. Rumours of beheadings and other atrocities abound, but needless to say we haven't been hearing much of this on mainstream media. Not, you see, in keeping with the narrative that ousting Assad in favour of HTS was a good thing to have promoted.

Post by **peter** » Fri Jan 24, 2025 7:44 am

The Telegraph writer Allison Pearson, emboldened by the public support and police decision not to charge her for incitement of racial hatred in historic posts on social media, has returned to type in an article on the papers front page that should (in my opinion) see her in the dock for the same. I'll quote a couple of bits from it.

It concerns the sentencing yesterday of Axel Rudakubana, to 53 years in prison for the brutal slaying of 3 small girls at a dance class in Southport.

Elsie Dot, Alice and Bebe.....were killed in the most savage of manners (this wasn't an English murder - it was a Hutu's and Tutsi style massacre)....

What is this wording designed to do if not to emphasise the difference between 'us and them': to make sure we understand that they are a lesser kind of people, more barbaric and primitive.

The reference is of course, pointing towards Rudakubana's parents who fled their native Rwanda following the genocide of the Tutsi people by Hutu militias in 1994.

I mean, what exactly is an "English murder"? One in which a successful vamp of a woman is killed at a village fete with a slice of poisoned cake and the killer exposed by a grey haired old woman who does a bit of amateur sleuthing on the side?

Here's another one. Rudakubana had made a scene in court about feeling ill and had had to be removed from the dock and taken out of the courtroom. He'd returned for the sentencing, but

pulled the same childish stunt a second time and missed the sentence being passed. It drained some of the drama from the occasion.

Drama from the occasion? What do you think this is woman? A tv show put on for your entertainment? You fool. You insensitive clown. You are a disgrace to your profession.

And what exactly are the Telegraph playing at? This was a very important thing. The passing of sentence on a man whose actions had nearly brought about a civil conflict the like of which this country hasn't seen in many generations of living memory. The country teetering on the brink of quite literally uprising. And instead of running a proper restrained and factual article on the proceedings, the Telegraph elect to put up an opinion piece brimming over with the type of emotive and inflammatory commentary, designed for no more than the purpose of throwing red meat to their already xenophobic and borderline white supremacist readership. What are they playing at?

The fallout from Rudakubana's terrible killing spree is still reverberating around this country. People are in jail - some sent for what they posted online, who may in fairness by now have been released - and the anger at how this crime and the subsequent events were handled is still running high. How information was released, why it was held back and only given to the public in fits and starts. When is a terrorist a terrorist - and when is one not. Kier Stamer surely cracked down with the full force of the law on the mobs who ran amok following the murders, but it didn't stop there and people haven't forgotten it. Are the Telegraph trying to stir up that hornets nest again, using their most emotive and rabid of commentators to do so? It's a dangerous game to be playing and little sympathy that I have for Stamer, I don't want to see him pitted against the public again in a hurry, in the way that occurred in the violence post Southport.

-----0-----

The last 12 months have brought us two very good television series that pertain to possible miscarriages of justice, but handled in very different ways.

In Mr Bates vs The PostOffice it was easy. An open and shut case (in terms of the tv program) of a villainous cabal set against a group of innocent individuals, with no doubt as to who the bad guys were.

In Lockerbie: a search for truth, things are by no means as clear cut. What are we supposed to take away from it?

Here's the problem. The series follows the search for truth by one of the parents of a young girl killed when flight 301 fell from the sky. At first Dr Jim Swire is satisfied with the Crown's assertion that the responsible party is a Libyan citizen called Baset al-Megrahi, but as he attends the court hearing (held in The Netherlands, but under Scottish law) he begins to have doubts. These rise to a crescendo and the realisation hits him that al-Megrahi is being framed, by state tampering with evidence upon which his conviction will ultimately rest.

Swire is convinced (following the guilty verdict) that al-Megrahi is the innocent victim of CIA/MI6 (or other British or American state security bodies), carried out for political motives that are more to do with securing Libyan oil reserves than finding the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing.

As viewers we are first led down the path of al-Megrahi being the innocent victim of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, but then doubt is placed suddenly back into our minds. Jim's longstanding journalist friend suddenly seems to have a change of heart over al-Megrahi's innocence, saying to Jim, "Just because there might have been a conspiracy to fabricate a case against al-Megrahi to ensure a conviction, doesn't mean that he isn't guilty."

The finger of guilt had been pointing towards the Iranian state (in revenge for the downing by America, of one of its civil aircraft some years earlier), Palestinian terrorist organisations, or possibly Syrian operators, but suddenly this is overturned by evidence that seems to incontrovertibly throw it back into the Libyan court, with implications for al-Megrahi's involvement.

Or could it have been all of them, Libya and al-Megrahi included. "What you are failing to get," says Jim's reporter friend, "is just how much they hate us."

Jim Swire is unconvinced:he's met al-Megrahi and his family, been treated warmly as a friend and has had promises from them of his innocence. The series ends with Jim moving away and to an extent putting it all behind him. A written postscript seems to seal the deal on Libya and al-Megrahi having been responsible - the Libyan state seemed to have admitted as much, but then a final line of writing tells that al-Megrahi's family fight to this day to clear his name.

And so we are left. Libya or someone else? al-Megrahi innocent or guilty? No tidy ending like for the Post Office series: just a load of unanswered questions that will most probably remain unanswered for many a year to come, if not forever.

But this I think misses the point. It really doesn't matter who carried out the Lockerbie bombing - be it Iran or Libya, Syria or the PLO. They all hate us equally for what we have done to them. The al-Megrahi element is just added human drama (in terms of the series, though clearly and absolutely not for him). No - what is really significant here is the preparedness of the British and American states to fabricate a case against a man who they may well have believed to be guilty, but didn't believe that the available evidence would be sufficient to convict him.

And if this is indeed the case (and from the series it would seem that there's pretty strong evidence it was), then on what other occasions have they done the same thing? And is this the way we really want our state's operating in? Fabricating guilt when they've a mind to? Isn't the whole principle, the whole basis of trial by jury undermined by this? That a man has to be proven guilty - that belief or knowledge on its own can not be enough, because even knowledge can be wrong - in order to be judged as so? And shouldn't the state, above all other bodies, be the upholders of this. Because the moment it isn't then you are into Soviet territory, into the depradations of despotism and the twisting and usurpation of the Law to serve the ends of the state rather than justice?

Isn't this what, in an undeclared manner, and subtly pushed into the background, what we are supposed to take away from this. And to meditate on it and think about what it means in the context of the place we live in?

(Nb. The UK state has extended the period under which its papers relating to the Lockerbie bombing remain unavailable to the public on two occasions already. There is no evidence that this will be lifted and the documents made available any time soon. This is something difficult to explain in the context of a situation where there is nothing to hide, nothing that perhaps, it's felt, that the British public are best not made aware of.)

Post by **peter** » Sat Jan 25, 2025 5:23 am

Rachel Reeves, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, is telling us from Davos that people should take a leaf out of Donald Trump's positivity and be shouting from the rooftops (her words) how our best days are ahead of us and about our strengths. We're to apologetic about Britain and its potential it seems.

That's presumably why the cost of government borrowing has risen to a point where most economists believe that the UK economy is unsustainable and that investors cannot be found who'll risk their hard earned on a punt on our future for love nor money.

But Reeves' account, like so much of what has been spun about this and that aspect of the West's reality of late, is a false narrative. And like those other things - the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, the Western hegemony on power and the way we have behaved in the world - it is built on sand, and is coming head to head with the true reality, and is coming off worse.

Because, like the war in Ukraine as an example, when false realities spun out of propoganda, hit facts on the ground, it is the facts on the ground that win out every time. The "Russia is beaten and on the back foot" tale was always a chicken that wouldn't fight (sure - Russia is always slow to get into the saddle, but when it does it "rides like hell" (as one commentator put it)). Now we see the truth that was never in doubt; that when a small country like Ukraine goes up against a behemoth like Russia, there is really only one end result. There are exceptions sure - but this wasn't going to be one of them and our spinning machine was playing us false to suggest otherwise. Now the facts on the ground - a daily advance of Russia into Ukrainian territory, Zelensky reduced to ruling by dictate and the Ukrainian people sitting under a tyrany certainly as bad as anything Putin could levy upon them - are out in the open and the make believe reality falls apart.

Take Gaza. Israel has the right to defend itself. The IDF is the "most moral army on the face of the earth". Every care is being taken only to hit Hamas targets and spare civilian casualties. There is no ethnic cleansing. There is no genocide. Now this contrived reality is coming up against the facts on the ground; the facts of death and destruction that see God alone knows how many Gazan men, women and children dead on the ground or lying under the rubble of their destroyed homes. The forlorn columns of people who walk shell-shocked back into the wasteland of almost moon-like terrain that used to be a vibrant community and bustling landscape. The fantasy reality coming up against the facts on the ground. Israel the beneficent vs Israel the throwback, the last colonial bastion that America would have to create if it did not already exist. The narrative is dead and the reality lies exposed on the ground in Gaza.

And the fantasy realities run not just at the local, the parochial levels, but pertain to the grander narratives as well. The West (good) vs The East (bad). Us free, them not. Our way or the highway. Have power - will travel. Your government is working for You! All over the place the facts on the ground are giving the lie to the fantasy realities, the false narratives. Your administration would never do you any harm - that kind of stuff only happens in other places, under other systems. We run open and honest societies where the interests of the people come first! Fantasy realities, crumbling narratives, facts on the ground.

Head to head collisions with reality and seeing what stands when the dust settles. That's what I'm talking.

-----0-----

Watching Donald Trump signing his executive orders the other day, in front of a doting audience of clapping fans, it was almost like a scene from a WWF Wrestling extravaganza, complete with glitter, ticker tape and cheerleader girls.

What suprised me most (other than the whole thing itself) was the fact of how suprised Trump himself seemed, with what was before his eyes.
"Ohh, this is a big one!" he hammed to the audience, "Leaving the WHO." Like a thing as significant as that should be done without so much as a debate or a vote, simply by pulling a rabbit from a hat.

Next it was the assassination of JFK, and the release of all the (unshredded) documents pertaining to it - the ones held in secret under the official secrets act equivalent. A right crowd pleaser that (good entertainment value with nothing to loose, since everything significant pertaining to the state's involvement will have long dissapeared from them). Similarly the promise to release everything that the state knows about UFO's. Great theatre with no risk (since it is nothing). And you believe that the state is suddenly going to release all of this stuff, even if there was something to see? Just because Trump says so (even if he really meant it and just wasn't treating it like a blown up version of his television show, The Apprentice.

It was what it was. Politics as theatre, as entertainment. Like Caligula marrying his horse or standing up to make a show of turning his thumb up or down. And entertainment in the true sense: in that it was show, fabrication for the masses without any meaning or validity or bearing on what would actually happen, what would really effect their lives going forward.

And the laughable thing is that some of our politicians are today calling for the same thing here. It's being painted as 'Trump being transparent'. Performing the business of governance in front of people (as opposed to simply performing, which in reality is all it is). They know that such shows are bullshit, but if they distract the people away from what will really be being done (and that is that Trump and his milieu will be enriching themselves as fast as they can), then so much the better for them. If people are so infantilised as to only be able to respond to politics at the level of entertainment....then so be it - give them politics as a circus. What difference does it make as long as we still get to fill our boots and the people remain quiet.

Be clear; the ones calling for the adoption of this type of nonsense for our political system, are not doing so in order that politics might be made more accessible to the average Joe; they are doing so because they really see the advantages to themselves if such a charade is put on and the public can be got to swallow it.

I'd be amazed that the American public can be gotten to soak up this bullshit (and not least some people on this very site who I'd have thought more discerning), except that for some reason I'm not. But somehow I can't see Kier Stamer pulling it off. That'd take a Farage (though I'm guessing that he'd be a bit more subtle than Trump). Who knows. We might yet get a chance to find out.

Post by **peter** » Sun Jan 26, 2025 6:17 am

There's a flurry of media attention this morning on the case of 78 year old pensioner Gaie Delap who is being returned to prison following her release to serve her sentence in confinement within her own home, because the authorities cannot find a wrist tag to fit her in order to be able to monitor her whereabouts. She can't be fitted with an ankle tag for medical reasons and wrist tags are apparently not standard and in limited supply.

Delap, who received a 20 month prison sentence for involvement in a protest that blocked the M25 (a busy road leading into London), will it is estimated, serve a further 20 days in prison by virtue of the failure to fit the electronic device necessary for her to continue her sentence at home.

While this is what is exciting the media this morning, I'm far more concerned by the fact that the woman received this sentence at all.

Protesting against climate change? 20 months in jail at 78 years old? C'mon! Is this justice? There is no details available that she, for example, put anybodies life at risk, damaged any vehicles or behaved violently. She was protesting about a situation that the very state itself recognises as being one of the most critical issues we face, one that could see us we're told, dissapear from the face of the earth, conceivably with all other life on the planet with us. And (thanks to Suella Braverman's change in the laws) an elderly woman is jailed for protesting to bring it home to us.

Protesting is a right and by its nature people will be inconvenienced by it. If they weren't, no-one would take any notice of it. Sure, punish her with community service, a fine if she can afford it - perhaps it's right that such actions are discouraged. But 20 months in jail for a 78 year old woman? I had not realised we had fallen so far.

-----0-----

Rachel Reeves has staked her entire political future on growth and will do anything - anything - to get it.

Remember prior to the election, Labour was going to be the builders of the 'green new deal' (or whatever they were going to call it). How 28 billion was going to be put into the green economy to push us to the forefront of the world in leading the fight against climate change?

All gone. Reeves has made it clear that anything and everything will be sacrificed on the alter of growth (and remember, growth cares nothing about who grows, about how it grows, or what damage it brings about as it happens; there is no equity built into growth). To this effect new runways will be built at each of the three London airports - and that despite Labour's opposing them while in opposition, when the Tories proposed the same.

Has this woman no shame? Her career is in free-fall and rightly so, and it's beginning to look like she might take Kier Stamer with her as Kwarteng did Truss. He's seriousely threatening to become as bad a prime minister as Truss (and I use lower case letters deliberately; I'll no longer give him the distinction of capitalisation), and that's going some.

Oh how I look forward to the fall of this excuse for a politician. He was traitor to the one true hope that the working people of this country had of getting back some measure of representation, and I'll never forgive him for it. I'd accept this if he proved to me that he had the right of it, even if he could simply demonstrate that his intentions were well meaning for the people as a whole - but he has noe of it. Like Johnson before him, his lust for power was where it began and ended, and forgive me for reminding you, but I said so at the time. Beyond that desire there was nothing. No ideas, no inspiration, no vision. A robot designed to get power by any means and hold it. An authoritarian pedant looking at the world through dead-fish eyes, who's only pleasure is telling us how he isn't afraid to be ruthless (this time it's about reintroducing austerity, as told to the Sun in a recent interview). The "Chief Prosecutor" turned dictator. He'll be introducing those Big Brother style posters next, with images of his face staring out at us. 'Kier Stamer is Watching You'.

No doubt sooner or later his extended terrorist definition will broaden sufficiently to include those who have had the temerity to insult or write contemptuously about him, and at that point no-one will be safe. Let's hope his ignominious fall comes quickly, before this comes about. But alas, this seems to be the direction of travel these days, and I have little doubt that once this creep is gone another, with equally goggle-eyed half-mad countenance will replace him. Wes Streeting is half way there already and Labour has another 4 years to run.

How much do we need Corbyn now. Or Becky Long-Bailey. Or the reasonable John McDonnell. C'mon guys - you're out there. Step up to the plate won't you and save this nation. We don't need a Farage or the far right (although the working class has always remained wedded to this extreme in a small section of its whole). We need the left - the true left of Atlee and Wilson and giants like Keynes - to get its act together. Do you remember how a couple of posts back, I asked which of two futures you saw coming about. This is all we need to get the good one.

Post by **peter** » Mon Jan 27, 2025 7:35 am

Remarkably little coverage today of US President Donald Trump's amazing comments made during a flight on his presidential plane Air Force One.

Speaking to journalists, he said that he wanted Jordan and Egypt to take Palestinian refugees, up to 1.5 million of them, permanently or temporarily, because "Gaza is a demolition site." He wanted he said, to "clean out that whole thing." He felt it would be better for the Palestinian people to be living in peace in newly constructed housing, somewhere other than in Gaza.

Taken in conjunction with earlier comments he'd made a few days ago, that Gaza represented effectively prime real estate - "it has beaches, sun all the time," etc - it's difficult to come to any conclusion other than that what he is suggesting is the (basically) ethnic cleansing of the people of the strip from their own historic homelands.

Needless to say his comments were greeted with joyous approval by the far-right in Israel (and that's in the Israeli government, of which they form a significant part), but less so by the countries that he suggested recieve the displaced people. Both Egypt and Jordan were adamant that the Palestinian people should remain in Gaza, even while reconstruction is carried out. (What reconstruction, you ask? It'll never be carried out while Israel has its way, not unless it's for Donald Trump's beachside condominiums).

But I'm absolutely staggered by the insouciance of the British media in their reception of these egregiously - how do you even describe them - ill-judged comments. I mean, this is the most powerful man in the world effectively suggesting the ethnic cleansing of a people (albeit dressing it up in the commentary of it's being "better for them") from their homeland.......and no-one seems to give a shit about it! It's like, "Oh, it's just Trump being Trump: you know - a disruptor and all."

No it fucking isn't! These people have been bombed and shot and murdered by every conceivable means possible for the last fifteen months, to the tune where 47,000 lie dead and now the President of America says they should be shipped out of their homeland. Their homes have been laid waste,their children and women operated on with no anaesthetic, their babies killed in their incubators, and Trump thinks it's okay to just make casual toss-aside comments on throwing them off the land that they have called home for millenia? And this in the week where we remember the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz?

Fuck me, am I the only one who gets this?

I can't continue to post - it's just too much!

Post by **peter** » Tue Jan 28, 2025 3:12 am

First the rank hypocrisy of it.

To be sat there listening to the BBC coverage of the Auschwitz liberation anniversary service, being told in grave tones how "the world must never tolerate such horrors to happen again," when the same thing is being ignored by the same media in Gaza and the West Bank as they speak (if not in method then intent). And that it should be being carried out by the Israeli's of all people.

Told, we were, how voices raised in warning should "never ignored again" - all the while, while holocaust survivors like Stephen Kapos who have spoken out against the atrocities being commited against the Palestinian people in the last 15 months, have been ignored, given no platform or opportunity to speak, on that very same channel over the period.

Then there was the outright stupidity of it. How James O'brien could seriously ask, "How can it be that a civilised nation of ordinary people, can be got to a place where they will not only tolerate, but rejoice and be complicit in such a thing as the Holocaust?"

When he himself has spent the last decade plus commenting upon the spume and propoganda of the right wing media, of people like Farage, demonising and 'othering' the immigrant community, pointing the spurious finger of blame for all that is wrong, against people who have been massive net positive in our society. How can he ask that when he's seen before his own eyes how politicians are happy to jump on that bandwagon if it brings them a single extra vote, let alone gives them the possibility of attainment of power that would otherwise be denied them.

And having witnessed the power that the state has to not just influence, but actually dictate people's behaviour. How when they are told to stay at home and not see their families, they do so without question. How when told not to go and be with their dying loved ones in hospital, they acquiesce on the strength of their natural inclination to believe and be influenced by what they are told by their leaders, by those in authority.

And does O'brien have no knowledge of the history of the state and media in 1930's Germany? Can he be oblivious to the role that these two played in bringing about the necessary changes in mindset of the people. How one people or group can be dehumanised in the eyes of another by such continuous output over years,decades. Jesus - has he not seen the same thing done to the Palestinians by the Israeli state, where politicians have spoken of that people as "animals" and "sub-human". Hasn't he seen the same disgusting phrases used in postings by the IDF, evidencing how the Palestinians have been dehumanised by exactly the same process as the Jews were in pre-war Germany? Surely he cannot be so blind?

I don't know - I seem to be at a loss in all of this, the hypocrisy of it, the willful blindness and stupidity that I cannot, cannot, believe is genuine.

And meanwhile all the evidence around me tells me that we have learned absolutely nothing from the death and destruction of the Holocaust. That we are as blind as a species, as prone to evil and horror and brutality, as ever we were when the gates of that terrible place opened to the world on Jan 27th of 1945.

-----0-----

And it was impossible for the BBC to report on the Auschwitz liberation anniversary without getting in a swipe at the Russians.

They showed a sombre President Zelensky sitting at the service and noted that while he had been invited to the death camp, President Putin had not (the fact that it was the Russians who liberated Auschwitz on that day, notwithstanding).

Their (later in the program) report on how the Russians were marking the occasion had their 'on the spot' Russian correspondent Steve Rosenberg noting that in Russia, emphasis had been moving from the Jewish Holocaust to the totality of Russian deaths as caused by the war against the Nazi regime.

Which given that Russia lost upwards of 20 million people in the war, doesn't I have to say, seem unreasonable in the circumstances. To me at least.

It should be remembered, as in the post war congratulations of the West to itself on the defeat of the Nazis wasoften forgotten, that it was effectively Russia that won the war against Hitler. Not England (as we all believed when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties). Not America, as gradually over time the narrative began to change into. But Russia. On the frozen steps of the central European Plain, in the ferocious battles in Poland and Germany. Russia who spent the lives of their youth in their hundreds of thousands and millions, and in the camps themselves. And who by doing so paid in lives for the victories that our historians would later claim. Yes, of course we were there. But no-one should be in any doubt that without the Russians it would likely never have happened, and that they have paid for the right to remember those that were lost in any way they see fit.

Post by **peter** » Wed Jan 29, 2025 7:39 am

First headline I come to today (in The Guardian) is that (Rachel) "Reeves pledges to create 'Europe's Silicon Valley' in push for growth."

Sorry Rachel. That one's been tried before (both the line and the endeavour). If you remember former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was banging on that he was going to do exactly the same thing (even used the same description) until he realised that to do so he'd need to spend humongous amounts of money. And that a our current investment in the area was already only a fraction of what other countries were putting into the area (countries with intent to do exactly the same). And the overriding problem that the UK fas no fucking money to do it.

Oh boy. And we're apparently going to be treated to an account of how she (Reeves) is going to build these runways that Labour voted against while in opposition, because now things have changed you see - technology has moved on and aircraft fuel is getting much cleaner and the idea of electric planes is brewing around and there's this plan to grow pigs with wings....

Exactly how much of this bullshit are we supposed to take before we demand another general election to get shot of this crew that has nothing to offer us, neither ideas nor incentives, to carry us out of the shit we are in.

Remember it was all a great plan: that during the election it was that Kier Stamer (and his ventriloquist dummy Reeves) had all sorts of things up their sleeves, but they just weren't telling us? Well they didn't. And they haven't. And they haven't got a clue. They're as naked as the king out in his new clothes. How long are we going to play the crowd "Oohing and Ahhing" at their nonsense before a kid is going to be found who'll shout from the back, "But the Chancellor is in the altogether! She's got nothing (on)!"?

----0----

In the Times, we've got the old, "Cutting through red-tape" chestnut.

Kier Stamer, speaking in that paper, tells us that the Tories, for all their talking a good talk, didn't walk the walk. "Thickets of red-tape," have spread throughout the British economy like "Japanese knotweed." He's the man, he tells us, to strip to his vest and sythe into it with a machete of deregulation and lifting of obstructions to investment.

Fine words Kier, but forgive us for stifling a yawn and switching off. We've seen this film before you see. Damn it, Brexit was sold on that poster. Everyone and his mother has tried that one when they have nothing else to say. The dogeared playbook is so worn away by repetition that it's barely legible, but that doesn't matter because we know the words already. We can recite them with you.

-----0-----

Few will mourn the downfall of the irritating fuck from the Co Compare adverts, the twirling mustachioed opera singer with the annoying one line act at the end of every commercial the company makes.

Welsh actor and opera singer Wynne Evans has shot his career out of the sky as surely as a red grouse flying over Gunnerside on the Glorious 12th, by making crude comments about one of his female dancing partners on the BBC television show Strictly Come Dancing. And to do it in fucking earshot of his co-performers. He must have the intelligence of a potato in a west country farmers market. And given that he'd already had a near miss by putting his hand on his dance partners waist and had her remove it - all in front of the cameras (an embarrassing little display that the producers tried to pass off as 'an in-house joke').

I mean the fuck! The stupid fuck! A talentless prick like that should never have gotten to read 'celebrity status' like that in the first place. If he was any good as an opera singer he'd be singing opera and not doing insurance commercials. That the commercials could be reason to propell him to celebrity stardom to the point of getting onto the BBC's flagship program tells us a lot about the level of culture in this country already(although the problems it's had of late could explain why he was there: perhaps no-one with any eye to their future career wants to be on the show anymore). But that having hit paydirt, the stupid fuck goes and spaffs it away by making grossly offensive comments about a costar in earshot of others (not that he should be doing so in private either you understand)...... Well, he deserves everything he gets as far as I'm concerned.

Let it end for him. I hope he's made enough money to sit out the rest of his life in comfort and ruminate on his own stupidity and what could have been had he simply been respectful enough in his behaviour while enjoying a privilege that his modest talents didn't deserve anyway. But that's it. He had a chance and he blew it. Famous for fifteen and now contemptible in perpetuity for posterity. Dissapear back now to the obscurity it'd have been better that you never were lifted up from, and take comfort that you at least did make it. You haven't done anything that should result in your suffering for the rest of your life because of it - being a fool is not a crime - but anonymity is no bad thing in this world so learn to live with it and let your story be a lesson to others. Those who can't serve as an example must serve as a warning.

Post by **peter** » Thu Jan 30, 2025 6:44 am

True to form, Chancellor Reeves' speech yesterday was full of cod enthusiasm (which she hasn't the disembling skills of Boris Johnson to pull off) about the bright future of the UK as a potential for everyone and his mother to invest in, to bet their shirt on, but piss poor on the detail as to how this miraculous turnaround was going to be achieved.

In a line that absolutely sums up her misunderstanding of how to get people to believe in her, she said that developers should be free to stop worrying about "bats and newts", as if appearing to be indifferent to the fate of the ecosystem (or indeed the entire survival of the planet) somehow made her look tough in their eyes and that this was all it would take.

In truth I think that the only turnaround she is really interested in is in her own fortunes. And I think we all know it.

-----0-----

The 'i' tells us this morning that the gender pay gap starts at 6 years old. It's crap of course. At every level.

It's been illegal in the UK for many years to pay people different rates for the same job based on their gender, and always without exception when you look into cases, you find there is an underlying cause for the apparent disparity - difference in the jobs being done or difference in the hours worked etc.

You can manufacture differences by defining a gender pay gap as say the difference in cumulative pay recieved by women in certain defined roles as compared to men. Yes, cumulatively men are paid more as dustbin collectors than women - there are more of them, but individually they always recieve the same rate for the same job.

In the case of things like news readers and the like, these people negotiate their salaries individually and if the disparity appears on an individual basis here then it is down to the the negotiating skills of the individual rather than gender bias in the allocation of payment. If a female employee on the trading floor of the City is better at generating profit than any of her male counterparts, rest assured she will be poached by another company for a higher salary/bonus package if her own company doesn't pay her in line with her superior skills. In sports, a differential probably does exist, but that's by virtue of the public draw an individual or team can muster. People simply want to see men playing football more than women at present and are prepared to pay more to do so. Similarly tennis players.

So in short, unless you can back up this putative gender pay gap with facts that can't be demonstrated to be disingenuous, I'll stick with my belief that it's all nonsense. To what end other than to add unnecessary weight to the argument that women have had a shit deal from men for millenia (they have and continue to do so) I don't know. But if you truly want the situation to change, for women to get the respect and equality that is their absolute right, then start telling the boys at age six a different story, start getting them to understand the different but absolutely complementary value of our roles in society (roles that go right back into our biology and cannot be argued against no matter how much your ideology would make you want to do so). And stop with the fabrication of causes for division that don't stack up and actually act to slow down the process of righting the historic wrongs that women have suffered at the hands of men.

-----0-----

And what is this obsession with "turning things around" anyway? Is it just an ongoing recognition that pretty much everything is just going to shit?

Mu own turnaround story is as follows. My previous 7-11 shop owners had fallen out with the manager and she'd left the job. They replaced her with a little fellow who had previously managed a shop in a nearby town, prior to my own employers having recently acquired it.

This new manager duly arrived and was a short, very enthusiastic, but not terribly bright chap, who in fairness for all his failings I liked. We spoke of the previous shop he'd been in and he turned to me with pride in his voice. "Yes, I used to manage that shop before your company bought it you know. I turned it around," he said, his eyes shining, "twice!"

-----0-----

And we end with the Star who have a picture of the newly appointed (subject to Trump's approval I think) UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandleson, alongside the headline, "Creepy McCreepface"

This play on the name chosen for the British Antarctic exploration vessel by the UK public (Boaty McBoatface if you didn't remember) is in reference to Mandleson's about face in respect of his views of Donald Trump.

Some years ago he referred to Trump as a "danger to the world, little short of a white nationalist and racist." Now he eschews this former verdict, excusing it as a product of the fraught atmosphere of Brexit at the time, and opts for a slightly more moderate opinion. "I think the president is a nice person - a fair minded person," is his new opinion.

As the Star says, "And the award for boot-licker of the year goes to...."

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