What Do You Think Today?

[Avatar]

So...did Bravermann deliberately get herself sacked? Are we looking at the last days of Rishi Sunak? Will we have yet another Tory PM before the desperately needed elections?

Anyway, what I think today is I have neglected the Watch.

(Also I merged that other topic back into here.)

--A

[peter]

Braverman is sitting on a very narrow political fence Av.

She most likely did contrive to get herself sacked. By writing her article in the Times and submitting it without No 10's approval, she was effectively challenging Rishi Sunak's authority. Either he wouldn't sack her and be further weakened in his position by virtue of his timidity, or he would and then it would free her up to begin her challenge proper, which had to start at some point pretty soon anyway.

But she will be discovering a pretty harsh reality as we post. She sits either on the verge of going up towards a real leadership challenge with possibly the top prize of all within her grasp......or on the verge of political oblivion.

This is exactly what Boris Johnson faced when he left the Theresa May cabinet (he was, you may remember, foreign secretary, but walked out over her Brexit policy). Suddenly he was alone. The media may have been watching him, giving him a profile, but this means nothing in the corridors of Westminster. It's whether you can get MPs to come to your cause or not. This is where Braverman is, and I'm betting she's feeling pretty lonely right now. Few are coming out in true support of her (she doesn't have the 'Boris factor' about her), and if she doesn't get some traction pretty quickly, then she's toast.

But......

She has to be a pretty smart woman with smart people advising her. She had to know the risks and had to have a longer term strategy in mind. I would guess that she's going to make her play over the Rwanda policy. She's fixed herself both in Westminster and in the media eye, as the champion of it's being successful, and she knows that it isn't going to be. It's dead in the water (and she quite possibly always knew it was). She's going to galvanise the Tory right by blaming Sunak for its failure. She'll do her damndest to keep it in the media, keep it high profile in the public awareness (and a friendly media will aid her) and keep chipping away at Sunak's credibility via this. That's why he's making such a show of being forceful about it. He's not going to allow any courts to stop the planes taking off!, etc, etc.

Sunak is unlikely to fall before the next election, but it's not impossible. But whether Braverman is among the serious contenders for the crown, or whether she's on the way to political Coventry is anyone's guess.

[peter]

I want people to get their heads around this.

We have been lied to. Lied to and led astray by the very people who have been charged with looking after our interests, consistently and over a range of areas.

Let's start with David Cameron. He, via his policy of austerity (alongside the then Chancellor George Osborne) created the very conditions that allowed the anger expressed in the Brexit vote, to build up. Instead of taking the opportunities that low interest and inflation rates offered, to build up the infrastructure and economy post the 2008 crash, they chose rather to starve the country of resources via a policy of austerity. . This was a political choice. It didn't have to be this way. Too late we learned that you can't build a country by scrimping, and the resentment it caused amongst working people would find release in the 2016 referendum.

Cameron then, through his own complacency, allowed the anti-EU elements of his own party to pull him into a position where he had to grant them their referendum. Once again his complacent belief that he would never have to hold this referendum, and again when it transpired that he would, that he would never loose it, led us into the disastrous place we now find ourselves in. And what is his reward? Political oblivion? The shame and contempt of all around him, to go down in history as the man who broke Britain? No. Rather (after being mired in the Greensill scandal which by accounts, netted him over 3 million pounds) he's back in the cabinet, enjoying the plaudits of his peers and the media.

Boris Johnson, who lied and dissembled his way through the referendum campaign, building an edifice of half-truths and downright falsehoods in order to galvanise that anger that Cameron had created into his route to political power, via the wrecking of the country. The country was going to be overun by Turkish people. We were going to forge trade deals all over the world. We were going to take back control of our borders, our sovereignty, our laws, our money. And biggest of all, we were going to put 350 million a week into the NHS, to save it, to make it fit for purpose.

Lies, lies, lies. And is Boris Johnson languishing in a prison cell for his what amounts to treasonous deception of the British public? Is mention of him accompanied by fist shaking and curses? Is he burned in effigy and his name the cause of muttered profanities and expressions of disgust? No. Rather he builds a multimillion pound fortune on American speaking tours and publishing deals for books in which he will further dissemble in order to polish the turd of his historical legacy.

Farage. What about him? The spiv Arthur Daley character who's populist banter about "proper fucking lunches" and "Our Independence Day!" turned almost overnight into the shit of the reality that he had walked the british people into. The Russian money pouring into his campaign, the fuelling of hatred against 'the other', the accusations of "project fear" against people who were telling us the clear and obvious truth, when it was him and his cronies that were the ones engaging in the fear tactic..... Any price to pay for this? Only a comfortable couch on the GBNews set and a million and a half quid for two weeks work in the jungle. Not exactly the cell that the **** deserves to be in is it?

Where is the price to be paid in our society? At what point do we say enough is enough? It seems to be that the bigger the lie you are prepared to tell, the more our society is prepared to pay you for it! Surely at some point we have to get back to a place where politicians are held to account for what they say, they do, during elections and referendums etc? What is the point of any of it if you simply cannot believe a word of what they say? Kier Stamer, made a series of pledges in order to secure the Labour Party leadership. Has since reneged or broken every single one of them. What price to pay? Being hailed as the next most likely leader of the country. Rishi Sunak, telling us that the economy has turned the corner, we're all feeling richer, the country is on the way up. It hasn't! We aren't! It isn't! Lies, lies, lies. The investment into this country is at an all time low. Trade with our nearest and biggest partner is on it's arse and we're billions of pounds adrift in our economic performance as a direct result of the Brexit policy that he championed! An independent assessment of the amount of money that this government had lost via embezzlement or wastage put out recently, came up with the staggering figure of a hundred billion pounds. I'll repeat that. A hundred.....billion.....pounds. that's one million pounds a second going into a furnace for the next twenty seven hours! Money needed for the NHS, for children in poverty, for care-homes and cancer treatments, for building back our impoverished infrastructure, our broken down services. Wasted, squandered and frittered away, or worse, siphoned off into the pockets of crooks and friends of the very people we put into our highest offices of trust. And what are the consequences? Nothing! Not a word said about it in the media. Not a debate or so much as a squeak from our representatives or 'the King's Opposition' benches.

So this is where we are (and believe me - I could go on like this for another hour or two at least; the pandemic lies, the Jeremy Corbyn antisemitism lies, the Ukraine War lies.....the list goes on).

Tell me that something doesn't need to change here. Go on, I dare you. Tell me that something doesn't need to change.

[Avatar]

Really, the global problem is thinking that politicians change anything, when in reality, the only thing they care about is being in power.

--A

[peter]

There is an establishment order that will under no circumstances see its supremacy challenged. Look at the way the entire edifice of power structure in the UK came together - left, right and media, business, defence and monarchy/aristocracy - to ensure that Corbyn was brought to heel. The moment there was any real threat to the established order (the status quo of their supremacy, their wielding of the power, and the benefits they accrue therefrom) they banded together as quick as you like and contrived to strangle it at birth. This is the nation we live in - and it's probably no different anywhere else.

So yes Av, they care about being in power, but not in any abstract way, not in pursuit of ideology or with interest that reaches far beyond their own sphere (down, say, to those of the people they govern). It's about the use of that power to maintain an order that sees themselves sitting at the top. Rulers of the world, projectors of power. And most importantly, reapers of the rewards. Such ambitions know no bounds and accept no limits on the means by which that power is achieved, maintain and extended, even unto and including the very destruction of the world itself. We are already in the era of the 'forever war' (United States economic dependence on the military industrial complex ensures that) - one day the need for continual increase in projection of power (either by political/economic influence or by actual territorial conquest when that fails) will see one of those red buttons positioned somewhere around the world being pushed. Then it's game over.

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Terrible news in the UK about four lads going off for a weekend camping in Snowdonia, and crashing off a treacherous piece of road in atrocious weather conditions to finish up upside-down in a river in which all four perished.

Aged between 16 and 18, they were driving down a road upon which care would have been needed even by the most experienced and accomplished of drivers, and one cannot but speculate that at their age, it was unlikely that the driver was cognisant of the dangers they were facing. Boys being boys, I'm not being unfair to think that at least the possibility exists that they were travelling faster than would have been wise given the conditions.

But it doesn't matter now. The tragedy has occurred and nothing will change it. Maybe our governors will consider the wisdom of allowing young people, recently passed as safe to be in charge of a car, to travel together with no older driver present, in groups of this nature. At least (I'd think) legislation saying that a recently passed driver should carry no passengers until over the age of 20, or something like that, should be considered? This type of accident involving groups of youths happens far too often (and always boys). Time to adress the issue and do something about it.

In the meantime, spend a moment wishing the lads Godspeed. I don't believe their journey in the adventure of being is over, but that's just me. I know one thing that does loom large in my thinking as I reflect on this tragedy. There but for the grace of God went I!

[peter]

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was standing on the steps of Number 11 Downing Street holding his autumn statement and grinning like a dog with two dicks, knowing that shortly thereafter he would be pulling a fluffy rabbit from his budgetary top-hat in the form of a two percent cut in national insurance contributions.

Cue rapturous reports in this morning's papers - pictures of champagne corks bursting out of bottles on the front of the Sun - happy day's for all it would seem.

But hang on a minute......

What was the purpose of the national insurance payment in the first place? Unless I'm completely mistaken, it was to pay for the provision of the welfare state, the safety-net of services (including the NHS) that would be there for when things went tits-up in a person's life. Like if you lost your job, or if you got sick, or needed care when you got old.

So who exactly is going to pay for this tax giveaway that Jeremy Hunt has suddenly produced? Will it be the disabled people who have insultingly been told by chief secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott that they must "do their duty to the country" and work from home. Will it be paid for by the millions of people now denied a dentist on the NHS, the seven million people waiting for treatments at their local hospitals, the benefits claimants who will have their payments suspended because they are deemed by some faceless beurocrat who knows nothing about the circumstances that prevail in their lives, not to be "trying hard enough" to find work. (What would that work be; bent double for eight hours a day in the pissing down rain or the blazing sun, pulling crops out of the ground by hand for minimum wage or less if it's piece-work? Would those beurocrats be prepared to do it themselves? I think not.) Will it be payed for by old people lying in their own excrement because the services they rely on cannot be paid for and therefore shrivel away to non- existence?

Behind these champagne corks a'popping there is a human cost; a cost that has never been higher, a cost in services that have never been more desperately needed than now, with an aging population and a lifestyle precarious in its stability to a greater extent than has ever been experienced in our modern world before. Because that safety net that none of us thinks we will ever need until we do, is being shredded before our eyes, and our media is clapping Hunt on for doing it.

So to borrow from the greatest speech that Neil Kinnock ever gave once more, by all means crack open the bubbly this morning, get out the party hats and slap each other on the backs. But don't get old, don't get sick. Don't get out of work and don't get disabled. Because if you do, you'll suddenly - very suddenly - find yourself amongst the ones who are paying for Hunt's largesse.

So let's just call this out for exactly what it is. This is pork-barrel politics at its most naked. The Tories don't even bother to hide that this has nothing to do with the state of the economy and everything to do with being re-elected next year. There has been a desultory attempt to pretend that the economy is "turning the corner"; it's crap - it isn't and the Office for Budgetary Responsibility has said as much this morning. Growth is to be slower than expected (essentially flatlining), inflation rates higher for longer (2025 before the Bank of England target figure is reached.......yeah, as if!)

Hunt has simply returned to true tory form, like a dog returning to its vomit. Shrink the welfare state and make the most vulnerable in our society pay for it. As for me, I'd pay double that two percent if I could get the dental service, the optician service, the care and medical service that I know this country can deliver (because it used to) - and if you have any sense, so would you!

[peter]

It isn't very often that my local press actually runs a headline that is of any great interest to me, but this week they managed to pull off something quite spectacular.

The paper is actually divided into four or five regional editions, each of which ordinarily runs it's own front page story, but for once they all ran the same headline on their once weekly offering, which ran as follows;

"GIVE US OUR MONEY RISHI!"

The sub headline explained that Cornwall had been explicitly told by the Leave campaign (Boris Johnson himself actually, when he made his visit to Cornwall) that we would not loose money as a result of leaving the EU.

This mattered. Cornwall is one of the most impoverished regions in the whole of Europe. That sounds crazy, but it is so. I'm not joking, there are places down here that are almost third world in their level of deprivation. Our membership of the EU came with a one hundred million pound grant that had been awarded to the region, but had not at the point of our leaving the EU, been paid. As a result of our leaving this award was rescinded, but we expected it to be matched by one from Westminster as promised.

We now know that (as with so much of the Leave campaign promises) this was a lie. The total figure of our replacement grant from central government amounts to 43 million pounds, the paper tells us - 57 million pounds short of what we were guaranteed by the EU.

As I say, I rarely take much notice of the local press, but on this occasion I applaud them to the hilt. People should know the level to which they were deceived when they were sold the pup that is Brexit. They should have it pushed in their faces day in and day out until they become sufficiently incensed to demand that something be done about it. Those who perpetrated this deception upon the British people have gotten away with it far too lightly. They should be called to task each and every single day until some kind of reparations are made in the form of a change of policy going forward. The West Briton paper group is angry and so am I. We deserved better, both locally and nationally. Time to start demanding our dues.

[peter]

I deeply, deeply dislike Kier Stamer. Not as a person - I don't know him from Adam - but as a politician. I think he is mendacious, slippery, and cannot be trusted as far as you can throw him.

But the disarray that the Conservative Party is in, and the weakness that this is bringing to the governance of this country, is becoming deeply damaging and has to stop.

This morning, following the immigration figures for last year released yesterday and the lukewarm reception of Jeremy Hunt's autumn statement of Wednesday, the press report that Sunak is facing a concerted and building level of criticism that could easily lead to yet another leadership challenge, quite possibly even before the next election. This, were it successful, would mean we have had five changes of leadership in the last fourteen years. To put this in perspective, you would have to go back from the time that the Tories took office in 2010, to the premiership of Jim Calleghan in 1976 (that's 34 years) to equal this number of changes.

No country can sustain this level of political changes of direction, and be expected to thrive as a result.

The constant battle within the Tory Party between the different and opposing ends therein, is distracting the leadership, impeding the proper functioning of government, and simply not allowing our elected ministers to properly adress the most serious crisis our country finds itself in, certainly since the Second World War. This as I say, has to stop.

For this reason alone, I shall go against my deepest convictions that Stamer is an unfit candidate for Prime Minister of this country, and vote Labour in the next election. This I will do, not in any expectation of an improvement of the lot of ordinary working people in this country, but simply out of a desperation to see some stability introduced into the wreckage that is our current polity. We desperately need some continuity of governance, even of bad governance, if we are ever to see anything like a coherent plan emerge that could introduce some hope into our otherwise seemingly bleak future.

For God's sake, this must be got across to the people of this country. Unlike other commentators, I don't believe we are witnessing the end of the Conservative Party; it will not split into smaller groups of lesser influence. The MPs who make it up are too focused on power or the acquisition of it to allow this to happen (except for a t5iny rump that may desert the party for Reform or some other right wing grouping). But the party is imploding - of this there is no doubt. In opposition however, it is possible that they will regroup, reform and move back to the centre ground, the leaving of which has been so utterly disastrous for both the party and the country as a whole. It began with Margaret Thatcher, but I don't believe that even in her worst nightmare she could have seen the place to which it would lead.

The country is ruined for the near and middle future - of that there can be little doubt - but mayhap with a period of stable focused governance, and some blue-sky thinking about how to reorder our nation, something can be salvaged for the future beyond that. As I say, Stamer will not be the man to deliver that, but he might just steady the ship for long enough for someone else, Tory or Labour, to emerge with some positive vision of where they want to get to, and how to get there.

[peter]

Clues are emerging that we are possibly looking at an early spring election rather than the traditional autumn one that we are used to.

Reports sneaking out that the Treasury have been planning for a possible early budget (in February) have been seen as a clue that a possible May election might be on the cards. Bearing in mind that the government has to supply the Office for Budgetary Responsibility a minimum of 10 weeks notice prior to any fiscal event, in order to give it time to prepare its forecasts, if this is on the cards, they are going to have to act pretty quickly. By getting a pre-election tax cut out in February, it gives time for it to work through and for people to start feeling the benefits by May.

But why (the standard question would go) would the Tories go to the polls months earlier than they were forced to? It's absolutely standard practice for any party behind in the polls (and the Tories are at minimum 19 points behind, probably more) to dig in - assuming they have time to do so - in the Micawber like hope that "something will turn up". Well yes, that might be the received wisdom under normal circumstances - but these circumstances are anything but normal. Since when is it normal (as an example) for a party that won an eighty seat majority in the previous election, to be fighting for its life in the next? This is unheard of. Such a majority should have bought the Tories at minimum two, and arguably three, terms in office. Eighty seat majorities take huge swings in electoral behaviour to turn around and normally take over a decade to bring about. But here we are. Not five years past - not even four - and not only are Labour in with a shout, but are actually quids in to form the next government.

The answer is, of course, not that the Tories are hoping for the unlikely turn around of their fortunes that would put them back in with a chance, but that they are one hundred percent sure that things are going to get a whole lot worse! This is the action of a government, a party, that knows the game is up. John Crace in a recent Guardian column on Hunt's autumn statement, said that the Chancellor had, in his tax giveaway, simply been laying down a trap for his successor to be, Rachel Reeves. By reducing the tax intake, particularly via the national insurance contribution, he was reducing the money available to her to fund services by at least 20 billion - money that she would have to find unless she wanted to be seen as the Chancellor who oversaw a steep decline in services.....not exactly where a Labour Chancellor would want to be under any circumstances. Her arguments (so beloved by the Tory administrations since 2010) that she had inherited the mess that she now found herself in, would suddenly be found wanting by the very media that has soaked them up when coming from the mouths of Conservative ministers. But such is politics. Them, as Boris Johnson would have said, is the breaks.

I'm not sure that the Labour victory is anything like as assured as most people speculate it to be, but it has to be said that the Tories are not well positioned to win. The disarray I spoke of yesterday is palpable to all, and nothing much is going to hide it from the electorate between now and May. In fact it will likely get worse. We are in a situation where the potential Sunak challengers will want him to loose the election. This would get him out of the way and give them their shot at the prize. Also, should they win, they've got four plus years to get their act together for the next return to the polls. So nothing much is going to stop Sunak's opposition from within his own party from trying to put the skids under him. Their canvassing for the forthcoming election will be desultory at best. But politics is an unpredictable game, and the public are fickle and not prone to do as expected. Stamer has only to make one slip (and he very nearly did over the ceasefire) and he's gone. The current Labour truce at the top is fragile - Angela Rayner, his deputy leader barely bothers to conceal her contempt for him - and could break at any minute. Labour, despite being a million miles better than the tories at present, are still not a completely united opposition.

It's all to play for on all sides at the moment, none of which is helping to focus minds on getting us out of the mire we are in. All of which should be manna from heaven for the Liberal-Democrats, but with Ed Davies (Davie, Davey.....who knows?) at the helm they are just frankly nowhere to be seen. Had they been able to find a charismatic leader to front them, the world could really have been their oyster. Slavoj Zizek said the other day that we have no left wing party in the UK at present - not even centre left. Stamer's Labour he described as centre right, the Tories as right wing. He has the measure of it. The Liberal-Democrats could have taken up the mantle of centre left politics in this country and run with it. It 2as all theirs for the taking but they blew it. Seriously, if they cannot do better than this against this backdrop, then they might as well quit and go home. I shall tell them so in short order when a candidate comes knocking as well.

[peter]

It was reported that included amongst the Palestinian prisoners swapped in the recently negotiated deal between Israel and Hamas were "attempted murderers and other violent individuals" who were held by the Israelis.

Turns out that the attempted murderer was a 16 year old girl who had flown at an IDF soldier on patrol in Gaza on her way somewhere (I know she was en route to someplace when this incident occurred, and I believe that the report said school). She had apparently wielded a knife during the attack. The violent individuals included teenage boys who had been imprisoned for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.

I wondered what would prompt a 16 year old girl to perform such an attack: forgive me for saying that it doesn't seem very, considered shall we say, as far as planned terrorist attacks go. One can't know, perhaps it had been planned to the last detail around a table in one of those 'operational hubs' we have been hearing about, but it has rather the sound of a spontaneous action carried out by a young girl under severe duress for some reason or another.

What, I wondered, would cause a girl of this age to fly at a soldier in murderous rage. (Again, forgive me for saying that it doesn't sound as if it were a terribly dangerous affair as terrorist attacks go. Somehow the threat posed to a trained soldier in combat gear by a 16 year old girl with a knife doesn't seem terribly extreme if you get my drift. I mean a knife? What are we talking here; a 2 inch fruit knife or a foot long Crocodile Dundee style skinning blade?

Could the lass have been goaded by the soldiers with insulting remarks (such things do happen you know - even to women passing building sites {to use a stock image from our cultural memory} in our countries). Could she have lost a family member in one of the 'mowing the lawn' raids into Gaza carried out by IDF soldiers? Whatever, it seems to me that her reasons for making such a pointless attack are likely to have been pretty substantial.

Exactly how many people, women and children included, are being held in such imprisonment within Gaza, and for what reasons?

Gaza, from what I can gather, seems to be the forgotten outrage that is going on every day behind the headlines (until the recent attacks at least), lost in the mists of time in terms of the duration it has been going on, all but given up as a situation without solution, but a situation in which, every day in excess of 2 million people, kettled into an area unfit to contain a quater of that number in terms of amenities and services, must survive and go about in a parody of normal life. Seventy percent of the inhabitants are descended from the original individuals who were herded into this space as refugees following the 1948 war. They are born into the strip, will spend their lives there, and will die there, with nothing that we would recognise as amounting to the usual expectations that a human might have a right to, born into the world of the twenty-first century.

Yesterday I watched a fantastic YouTube video, hosted by Michael Walker of Novara Media, on an interview of Jewish intellectual and author Norman Finkelstein ("Norman Finkelstein blows Piers Morgan's mind" Novara Media, should pull it up). In the video Finkelstein gave a rationale for the Hamas attack on October 7 that even the normally certain of his position Morgan was unable to counter with any effective rejoinder. If you are in any doubt about how this action by Hamas should seen, even if you can not, nor could ever countenance the idea that there might, just might, be more behind it than just a simple act of horrible terror, spontaneously arrived on this Earth on that particular day, with no possibility of having a cause (explainable or not) behind it......then I genuinely urge you to watch this video. You will not emerge from it with your preconceptions intact. That is a promise.

[peter]

What on earth has Suella Braverman got to complain about?

She's in this morning's Telegraph whining that she had a deal with Rishi Sunak, that in return for her support for his leadership bid, he would introduce a number of policies designed to curb immigration, including increasing the minimum wage a prospective entrant had to be earning to 40,000 pounds and limiting the number of dependents they were allowed to bring with them. He, needless to say, has neither confirmed nor denied such a deal (reminiscent of the fabled agreement between Brown and Blair that caused so much friction between the pair all those years ago) but hasn't certainly done the things she claims he agreed to.

But as I ask, what has she got to complain about? Of course he agreed to meet her demands: he'd have agreed to run down The Mall wearing a mankini if it would have gotten him the premiership. This is just the nature of leadership bids. Equally, only an idiot would expect the successful leader to actually stick to the agreement. By the nature of what you are getting them to agree to, it will always be something that they wouldn't always necessarily do, and once the object of their desires is fulfilled, then by their very nature they won't feel any obligation to do what they have promised. They are politicians, after all.

Braverman herself as a brexiteer, had no regrets about all of the things that the Leave campaign had promised, none of which had been honoured; why on earth would she expect any "verbal agreement" made with her to be followed up on? It wasn't worth the paper it was written on and she of all people should have understood that. Her whingeing in the Telegraph isn't going to change anything and it isn't going to get her any closer to Number 10. So shut up Braverman. Shut up and go away!

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The tax burden on the British public is greater than it has been in any time post the second world war. For Jeremy Hunt to tell us he is engaging in the biggest tax giveaway in donkeys years may be technically true, but only in the context of simply looking at this budget alone. To put this in perspective, Hunt has taken around 90 billion in extra tax revenue in the period of his Chancellorship, and has now returned 20 billion of it. He is not a giveaway Chancellor, he's a tax grabbing one that has briefly let slip a few billion back to the punters in the hope that they will be fooled just long enough to vote his shockingly bad government in for another bite at the cherry. It's electoral bribery that the Tories, the media and the public all acknowledge is the case, but none seems unduly concerned about to the point of even bothering to hide it.

Is this how politics is supposed to be done? Is the country supposed to be plunged into another bout of austerity just so the Tories can get another term in office? Although in fairness there won't be another bout of austerity; not because of the goodness of the Conservative Party's heart, but because the various government departments that provide the services that could be cut, are already paired down to the bone. There is no meat on them left to cut. How this circle can be squared is anyone's guess - more borrowing on the quiet I suppose. That would be a leaf out of the Truss playbook, but done sufficiently quietly so as not to spook the nervous alertness of an already unquiet market.

But things ain't getting any better (despite any claims to the contrary that you will hear as the Tories go into electioneering mode). The truth is that servicing the humongous debt we have notched up during the pandemic and since, is squeezing the lemon of the economy dry. And this isn't changing anytime soon. Like an anxious teenager whose credit card is maxed out and who can't afford to service the debt, we are basically in the shit. The cost of borrowing isn't coming down and thus servicing debt is not either. On an individual basis we are about to discover this ourselves (the cost of servicing a mortgage deal renewed in the next 12 months will, outside London be on average 60 pounds a week, rising to 100 in the capital); on a national level it's going to mean that there is no money to play with for a long, long time.

Furnish yourself with these facts so when a cheesy grinning political hopeful comes simpering up to your door in the forthcoming weeks and months, you can slap them around their oily chops with them - the bastards!

[peter]

The UNHRC is threatening to blacklist the UK's EHRC following lobbying by LGBTQ+ that it was at odds with the ECHR, and a critical report from GANHRI suggested its A list status should be reduced to B.

So tells this morning's Telegraph anyway.

Glad to know that.

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In other stories, we learn that Rishi Sunak has our marbles firmly gripped in his steely hand, pulling the rug out from under the Greek premiere (who had had the temerity to suggest that the marbles in question might actually belong to him) by cancelling at rudely short notice, a scheduled meeting between the two leaders.

So as not to appear too rude, Sunak softened the insult by offering the fellow a meeting with deputy PM Oliver Dowden instead, to which the Greek PM replied exactly the same as you have just done, "Oliver fucking who?"

Nice to know that our PM can be just as petty as any nit-picking schoolkid in the playground, and that when the chips are down, any petty excuse to get out of a (probably to him) dull meeting with a nobody leader from a backwoods country is good enough. The long and respectful history between our two countries (marbles issue notwithstanding) is clearly not sufficiently important for him to be able to set aside any minor differences and take in good faith the Greek leader's perfectly fair position.

There is talk of some kind of loan arrangement seeing the Elgin marbles temporarily returned to the Greek capital, but it isn't exactly high on our PM's 'to-do' list, so it looks to me like this is one set of hostages that won't be returning home anytime soon. Stamer has suggested that he might be more receptive to some kind of arrangement of this kind, and has duly been pilloried by the right wing media for saying so. Apparently we have some kind of Act of Parliament that forbids us from returning any stolen property that may be housed in our national museums, an act which clearly didn't apply to that bloke who recently knicked scores of priceless artifacts from said British Museum and flogged them on ebay for twenty quid or so, before being pinched. Wisely was it said that if you don't pay your staff properly, then they inevitably finish up paying themselves.

Oh well, just another country with which it'll take years to mend our fences, at a time when cooperation and respectful relationships between nations is critical. Still that won't be bothering Sunak. California is after all, a long way from Athens.

-----0-----

What else? The Daily Express is complaining that the Bank of England governor is "talking Britain down." No boys - he's just telling the truth, as opposed to your man,who is spouting nonsense about the economy and growth etc being tickety boo, even in the face of absolute evidence to the contrary. Andy Burnham and Sadiq Kahn have told the covid enquiry that their being excluded from SAGE meetings made the pandemic situation much worse than it could have been (their local knowledge as it were, being denied to the scientists and ministers present)........

To be honest, Gaza conflict aside, there isn't much grabbing me this morning, so instead I'll tell you of a nice little thing I saw driving home the other day.

I happened to be following a hearse, complete with recently departed occupant in back, and we drove pretty slowly as you would expect into the periphery of the town where I live. We happened to pass a gang of road workers, not a breed noted for their sensitivity, and I was thereby somewhat moved to see them remove their helmets and stand, heads bowed, as the carriage passed them by.

I was touched by this simple tribute of respect between individuals and a person whom they hadn't known from Adam. This was an example of the best of humanity, and an example that our leaders in their elevated positions of power would do well to learn from. Simple acts of respect such as this are in short supply these days, or at least not nearly widely noticed enough as they should be. I too, need to learn this kind of humility.

[peter]

I don't know much about TV naturalist Chris Packham but he's reported on this morning's Daily Star as saying that he thinks that I'm a Celebrity hosts Ant McPharlan and Declan Donely are compromising their image by allowing animal abuse on the show.

I imagine that he's referring to the so called 'bush tucker trials' in which contestants are often made to eat live insects and withchety grubs in order to win meals for their co-contestents on the show.

Like Packham, I've always found this distasteful (if that isn't the wrong word,because I'm not being funny here): I don't like animal cruelty of any kind, and I don't limit this to only furry media friendly species at the expense of the ugly and creepy varieties. I particularly find the use of these bugs for so called humorous entertainment purposes unattractive, and wouldn't watch the show on the grounds of this objection, even were I a reality TV fan.

I remember a survival show featuring the ex soldier turned media tycoon Bear Grylls, in which he killed a large mammal with a stick or rock or something, under the guise of showing people how they would have to utilise such methods were they to find themselves caught out in the jungle or wherever. I don't think he should have been made a media star and given lucrative TV and book deals on the back of this stuff: I think he should have been prosecuted and sent to prison. I'm not going this far with Ant and Dec, but I too wish they would stop with the use of animals in show. It isn't fair on the bigger species and it isn't nice with the smallest ones. The eating of them live is simply gross and shame on the producers for countenancing it.

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

But then, I am a very sentimental type of person in my own way.

I recently saw a fantastic YouTube video featuring 4K footage taken by the rovers from the surface of Mars. The stunning vistas and barren scenery brought to mind a line from the Alan Moore graphic novel Watchmen in which Dr Manhatten ,the blue reconstituted hero of a nuclear reaction, musing on the value of life, (from the same venue) that sitting there, he can't see that the presence of a freeway or a MacDonald restaurant would improve things in any discernable way.

Anyways, the video explained that four different rovers (including a flying drone) had traversed the planetary surface, two of which remained functional. Each was isolated from the others by vast distances and basically functioned alone for a long as they could, until time or circumstances resulted in their ceasing to operate.

Perhaps the most successful of all the rovers was Opportunity, a vehicle that sent back data and images over a sustained period, providing scientists with study material of significant value and quality. This vehicle (as are the others) was powered by battery packs reliant upon solar panels to remain charged. Ultimately caught in a dust storm in which the panels were unable to perform their function due to diminished light, the vehicle slowly froze in the subzero temperatures, its complicated microcircuitry slowly failing. As it finally succumbed to the hostile terrain in which it had performed for so long it sent back a final, somehow very poignant, communication. "My batteries are low and it's getting dark."

Who knows - maybe one day we will be up there ourselves and will recover little Opportunity for posterity. In the meantime he will not be forgotten.

-----0-----

The latest royal freeloader to publish a book on our first family is currently reveling in the combined hatred of all the British media as a result of a particularly critical, some would say downright disrespectful presentation, of our monarchy. Omid Scobie (whose name bears a striking resemblance to a particularly nasty little parasite found normally in the sweaty netherreaches of the groin) has produced a book, Endgame, whose only merit seems to be that it is prepared to go lower, be more insulting and wallow in an even deeper mire, than those that have come before it.

Scabie - sorry Scobie - commits the unpardonable sin of criticising the national treasure that is Princess Kate (herself featured in proxy form as we learn how she 'snared' Prince William at university by appearing in a skimpy see-through outfit at a charity fashion event)....a sin that would see him burned in effigy in itself.....but then goes on to reveal that not one, but two royals questioned what colour the future baby Archie might be, on learning that Megan Markle (as was), was pregnant by her husband Prince Harry.

This is serious stuff. Apparently to ask this seemingly natural question is sufficient to get you labelled as a racist - and this is apparently not an appellation that a senior royal can afford to have. (It didn't seem to bother now deceased Prince Phillip too much, but perhaps that would serve no media purpose to point this out, so we'll let this go. ) I've even read that were it to turn out that King Charles was one of the 'guilty' parties, he would have to step down. (Thus does the book threaten to bring about the very situation that its title describes. ) The 'royal racist' appellation (complete with the inverted comas) is being used in a number of papers this morning, and the Mirror even reports that it knows the identity of said royal but (self-deprecating as they are) declines to reveal it. As absolute a guarantee that the name will be revealed at some point if ever there was one.

But does it really matter? As I say, this off the cuff remark is an almost natural reaction to a question that would pop into the heads of any one of us were a baby about to result from a marriage of a child of ours to someone of a different colour. It doesn't imply racist leanings in the slightest. We are human. We ask such things in a natural way of being interested, not out of deep-seated prejudice. And if the royal press machine is in any way functional at the moment (and one wonders about this, given some of their decisions of late) this is the tack they will be going about. Because this is coming out. With the name of the 'perpetrator' now public in other countries, known by the press in this country, it is inevitable it will leak. Either the Mirror will publish it or another way will be found to get it out. The constitutional crisis it will generate, and the resultant media feeding frenzy (with accompanying boost to profits) will too big a temptation to resist for a media that cares nothing of the consequences of what it prints, but only of the money it generates.

And what of Harry and Megan in all of this? The author of Endgame is on the front of the Mail this morning, looking as pleased as a dog with two dicks, but what is his relationship to the pair that started all of this in their Oprah interview in the first place. They had to know, had to even want, the name of the speaker to come out at some point. It was their joker to hold back for when it seemed that interest in them was waning (because interes5in them is the only thing that brings them in the bucks). If it's out now, via this Scabie clown, then this is not by accident. But what is the game? Does Harry really want to bring down the monarchy - because a royal abdication would inevitably do this. The position of the monarchy, with the old queen dead and the growing republican feeling in the country as it is, is not what it was. I have real doubts that it would survive a brutal transition that would have none of the seamless inevitability about it that Charles' succession had. I simply don't think that the people, popular as William and Kate are, would wear it. It's even possible that serious civil unrest could result in consequence. And I mean unrest on a scale that would put the recent anti-war campaigns on Gaza into the shade.

So this book thing, while having a frothy feel as a news story at the moment, could have serious repercussions. I hope it dribbles away like a long piss on a winters day, but it will inevitably levy a cost. We'll just have to wait and see how great that cost is.

[peter]

As I said yesterday, the press are desperate to get the names of the two 'royal racists' named in the Duchess of Sussex's letter to King Charles out there, and yesterday were aided and abetted by arch mega-mouth Piers Morgan who apparently named them on his evening show (wherever and whatever that might be).

Morgan, as with the rest of them (he is after all a newspaper man at heart), cannot abide the idea that there is a huge revenue generating issue out there to be whipped up, but is not being utilised purely on the basis that it might be terminally damaging to the monarchy. He and the rest of his ilk care nothing about the future of the monarchy and the destabilising effect that a Brexit style conversation about its future could have on British society (particularly in the face of all of our other current woes) going forward. Once the names are out there, the 'fun' can begin in terms of knocking them off their perch, which rest assured, there will be a huge number of people quite ready to do.

What Megan's role has been in all of this is this morning questioned on the front page of the Sun. It's a populist rag at best, but does have a large circulation and the readership, concentrated at the lower end of the demographic in terms of - well, just about everything really - will soak it up. Thus will Megan's contention of racism in the royal family be mirrored by a racism in the way that this story is presented and perceived. I said at the time of the Brexit referendum that we were essentially still a racist country; it was exhibited in microcosm during the last Conservative Party leadership election and is being so once again in this situation. Needless to say it is permanently on display in our attitudes towards immigrants and asylum seekers, fueled and fanned by the right wing media on an almost daily basis.

This story is building towards the great revelation of the names, at which point it will morph into crys from the offended liberal politically correct brigade for retribution and reform, for the pulling down of the offenders (aided and abetted of course, by the simply republican thinkers who will jump on the bandwagon, seeing it as the route to their own particular ends). Depending on whether the media can whip it up into a scandal (which they will do their level best to do), this thing as I said yesterday, could go anywhere, right up to the point of serious civil disorder or our pulling down our monarchy and establishing a Republic. Probably not, but hey, wouldn't want to let a good chance of catastrophising the situation to go to waste!

-----0-----

Jacob Rees-Mogg and his right wing rump of the Conservative Party are at it again (aided of course by their friends in the media), calling once more for the end of the triple lock on state pensions. This is the legal guarantee that pensions will rise every year by either two point five percent, or the rate of inflation, or at the rate of average earnings growth, whichever happens to be highest.

Rees-Mogg and Co claim that the country simply cannot afford this to continue, but what he is in effect saying is that they are prepared to see pensions to the poorest people in the country reduced, and those people slip further into penury, on the back of the country's finances. I'd bet you a pound to a penny that all of those people who would call for an end to the triple lock, would also call for an end to inheritance tax, a move that would benefit the most wealthy proportion of our society in the same degree as the first measure would damage the poorest. I don't suppose any of the commentary about this issue will make that observation though; far be it from actually exposing the thinking of these inherently self interested individuals though (Jacob Rees-Mogg and his ilk would not be effected in the slightest by an attack on the triple lock). Our media is not in that business.....not at all. Dress it up in 'concerns for the economy' and affordability; never consider or mention what the effect of driving elderly people who already have little to live on further into poverty will do!

[peter]

Sad to hear of the death of Pogues front man Shane MacGowan yesterday, but in fairness I don't suppose it can have been unexpected.

He was pictured a few days ago in his hospital bed, and he was clearly nearing the end at that point. He'd not exactly spared himself over the years, and I remember one account that said his starting base, upon which his drinking for the day would rest, was a bottle of vodka for breakfast.

But forgetting about that and considering his talent, I can only recall the two occasions where I saw him and his band performing live, and can readily attest to what memorable occasions they were.

True masters of their talent, the Pogues had that uncanny ability to make what they did sound sloppy and thrown together, but fantastic at the same time. This is the talent of say, brilliant jazz performers - and it is a looseness of style, of sound, that only comes when you have absolutely mastered, and progressed beyond, the tight, structured performance of your skills in the conventional way. When musicians of lesser skills play in this messy unstructured way, it sounds just that - messy. But true masters of their art, as the Pogues unquestionably were, play exactly the same mess - and it comes out brilliant.

And thinking about it, isn't all great art like that? That it is only when you have absolutely mastered the formal technique of your discipline, that you can go beyond into the spontaneity that from lesser performers would simply be a mess.

MacGowan could be a frustrating man to see live. One never knew whether he would be too drunk to perform at all (if I remember correctly, he never made the end of the second gig I attended) - but when you caught him on form, you found yourself in a rare place in which the world seemed truly a better place for its presence. The power of music (and only live music) to really transcend the human condition. That's what Shane MacGowan showed me, and I'll not forget him for it.

-----0-----

Well, the royal names are out there and it's interesting to see how the media is dealing with it.

The Telegraph is to my knowledge, the only paper that has actually printed them this morning - and they did it in a very circuitous way. They quoted Talk TV's Jeremy Vine, quoting the same channel's Piers Morgan, who quoted from the offending book in which the names were 'accidentally' published.

The Telegraph, who ran a fairly lengthy front page article on it, seemed to take the view that because the accusations were unsubstantiated (the original Megan accusations of the supposedly racist questioning of what the yet to be born Archie's skin colour might be), then there was no case for the royals to answer. By implication one might assume (though this was not stated) that were the accusations proven true, then there would be a case to answer.

Other papers are not naming the royals concerned, and are making much of not having done so. Pomposity and priggish righteousness abounds in this morning's coverage, and you can tell that behind it, they are all champing at the bit to actually be able to get their teeth into it and start upon the feeding frenzy. They just aren't sure a) of the legal position and b) how their readership will react. They totally don't want to support Megan and Harry - they blame her for the leak of the letter upon which all of this hangs - and they are very much on the side of the named royals......but damn it, they want those names out there so that they can begin commenting on the story! They just don't want to be seen to be, well, spreading the gossip, as it were. It's a terrible dilemma for them.

The named royals are carrying on their duties as if nothing is happening, but behind the scenes they must be worried. They have the media onside as yet, but that could easily change. The 'wokeratti' have not had their say as yet and they, in combination with an opportunistic republican sect that in truth couldn't care less about the racism thing, could yet prove troublesome. You'll notice by the way, that I'm not naming them either. I am aware that this is a public forum and that no matter even if no-one ever reads what you post, you still have to be careful what you say in print, and in public. This is just the world we live in. If you want to know the names, go read this morning's Telegraph front page.

But for the moment this thing is in the balance. It could fizzle into nothing, or blow into a full on shit storm. Let's wait and see.

-----0-----

That Matt Hancock cannot be very bright.

Our ex Minister of Health during the Covid pandemic was on the stand yesterday, in front of the covid public inquiry lawyers, and questions were being put to him about his claim at the time, that care homes were protected by a "ring of steel".

Earlier, this had been somewhat questioned by the then vaccines Minister Johnathan Van Tam, who said that the term 'ring' suggested a perfect continuous barrier, which it most certainly wasn't. Asked whether he agreed with Mr Van Tam, Hancock conceded rather meekly that he did.

This, I felt, was rather unfair to Hancock and I was suprised that he didn't put up a more robust defence. Here's how my response would have gone.

"Do you agree with Mr Van Tam's comment, Mr Hancock?"

"Yes, but only insofar as one recognises that it is impossible to completely seal off a place like a care home during such a situation. People have, after all, to go in and out of the premises. Deliveries have to be made. I made my comments in respect of the real world we live in, not some place in which the good would be sacrificed upon the alter of the perfect. My use of the expression was based upon the real world, not the perfect one Mr Van Tam seems to envisage."

C'mon Matt. Grow some balls man! I'm sure you did your best under very difficult circumstances, even though I absolutely disagree with what you did. Go out and defend yourself and don't let the Van Tam's and the Whitty's, the Valance's and the Fergusson's walk away scott free. That's what is going on here. The 'scientific saints' are being treated with kid gloves, being questioned as if honey were being poured on them, and you, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings are being set up to take the fall. You three are fair game. The state has had what it wanted out of you and now you are surplus to requirements. It needs scapegoats to account for its dire figures in terms of death rates (figures massaged by its own techniques to look that way during the pandemic, that are now coming back to haunt it,and have to be accounted for) and bad news Matt - you are it!

So get out there and do some damage; what are you - a man or a mouse!

[peter]

I want to outline just what is going on with the current covid enquiry. How it is being used to manipulate the history of the events of the pandemic, to make sure that the egregious wrong that was perpetrated on the people of this country is never acknowledged, that no redress is ever effected.

The state, the government, in its panicked response to reports from Italy about the health system being swamped, instigated a knee jerk, disproportionate set of policies that basically levelled the economy of the country and left us fighting for a future that will be generations away before it arrives. In order to gain public compliance for these policies - policies that involved levels of state interference in people's lives that they would in no circumstances normally tolerate - they used a combination of fear promulgation and massaging of the statistics, to create a fog of disinformation about what was happening out in the real world.

By classifying virtually all death as covid related, even when the involvement of the virus was of minimal contribution to the eventual demise of individuals, they created the very situation that they were warning of (with the intention of increasing public compliance thereby), but never considering that at some point, when the faux pandemic was over, that they would have to account for those very figures that they had manipulated upwards, to service their own ends at the time.

Suddenly, with the benefit of hindsight, they realised that those very massaged death figures made it look as though all of their pandemic policies had failed, and that they would be called upon to explain why. Those deaths, chronicled so assiduously on the BBC every night, suddenly came back to haunt them.

That they were panicked by scientific advisors who for their own part, were terrified that they would get it wrong and that tens of thousands of people, possibly hundreds, would die on their watch (as it were) is now, with hindsight a given. (These figures, chief amongst them Imperial college statistical modelling 'expert' Professer Neil Fergusson, in their fear of underestimating the risk produced elevated figures of possible death numbers that now look ridiculous in hindsight. Half a million in Fergusson's case.) The Swedish figures, despite what those trying to maintain a rapidly crumbling rearguard action would have it, demonstrates beyond question that had people been left to their own devices, with appropriate advice and ringfencing of the vulnerable (as numbers of highly qualified professionals in the field were actually calling for), the huge amount of the damage wrought by shutting down the economy and going into lockdown (not to mention the egregious excesses into people's private lives and the consequences thereof) could have been avoided.

But this is too politically destructive to ever be allowed to be acknowledged, it would be a stick of dynamite thrown into a keg of gunpowder for our state, our administration, to even countenance that the possibility that it got it wrong and destroyed our country, our economy, our liberties for nothing - and so what to do to prevent this?

It was always a given that once things had returned to normal there would be an enquiry - so what better idea to employ than to use that enquiry to bolster the position that the government and scientists took, that lockdown and restrictions were the only conceivable option, and that it is how they were administered, not whether they ever should have been in the first place, that would be considered. If you read the remit of the enquiry (and I have) you will see that it is absolutely limited to consideration of the policies followed in terms of their results. Whether they were effective, whether they should have been tighter, introduced sooner, this sort of thing. There is no remit to consider the consequences of the policies followed in comparison to that which we might now be experiencing had a different approach - say the Swedish one - been taken. This is absolutely off limits. To that end, not one of the epidemiologists, public health experts or medical professionals who were advocating different policies are being called.

In fact, as the days progress, we see a choreographed series of witnesses called, with questioning specifically designed to ultimately place the bulk of the blame for the so-called high death figures on three patsies, namely Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Dominic Cummings. These three already vilified figures are being set up to take the fall, and make it look like their actions, or their slowness to act, was responsible for the high numbers of deaths that the massaging of the figures had produced. The final report might or might not mention them by name, but as with that kid in Shindler's List who points to the dead kid on the ground (already shot by the Nazi concentration camp officer) as the guilty party of a theft or something, it will leave no doubt as to who will be to blame for the poor performance of the policies.

It's great actually. All of the evidence, the scientists and government officials, the civil servants etc, can point to those three as being responsible by virtue of their tardyness/prevarication/stupidity (strike out as appropriate) and the commentary can all be that the policies followed should have been introduced faster and harder, rather than not been introduced at all. It works a dream. No-one still in office gets blamed or has to give an accounting for what they did, the state gets off the hook for screwing up the country, and the only ones that swing are scmucks that no-one likes anyway.

Job's a good'un, I'd say!

If Johnson has any sense, he will use his opportunity on the stand to blow the whole bag of shit right open. He may be guilty of many things, but he isn't responsible for the disaster that was our handling of the pandemic. At worst his guilt stops at being too weak to put his foot down and say "No!" He should have made our government consider all options for dealing with a pandemic, including keeping the response as a medical rather than a public health one, or following the Swedish path. That he allowed himself to be browbeaten by his peers and the scientists who were panicking them was his worst mistake. He knows that the whole thing was a crock of shit - that's why he wasn't in the slightest worried about people partying away in Downing Street while the rest of us laboured under the restrictions. He knew that the risk was minimal unless you were old or vulnerable. Time for him to throw the stick of dynamite and blow the whole shit-show open.

[peter]

The Sunday Times leads today with a brutal account of atrocities witnessed by a man who apparently "played dead" to avoid being killed himself at the music festival attacked by Hamas terrorists on October 7, but what they seemingly fail to understand is that repetition of terrible stories like this still won't justify the ongoing crime of what is being done in Gaza.

Upwards of 15,000 people are now reported dead in the rubble of the strip, a good proportion of them women and children (6000+ of the latter) and the bulk of them entirely innocent of any connection with political terrorist organisation Hamas. The population of Gaza has been herded into the south of the territory, and now is being told in cursory manner that it must flee there as well because it too is going to be targeted. They know this. The bombs are already raining down on their heads as the warning leaflets drop out of the sky.

The Likud Party has rendered itself a terrorist organisation of equal barbarity to Hamas with its disproportionate and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, but is able to cover this fact by carrying its atrocities out under the camouflage of 'war' (when what is happening is anything other than that). Members of the audience in last week's Question Time (BBC 's, not Prime Minister's) demonstrated that the British public are simply not wearing the narrative they are being fed by our administration, that this can be summed up under the simple catch-all of "Israel defending herself ". They applauded loud and long the calling out of the wanton destruction of human life that the Likud/IDF response is wreaking, letting it be known in no uncertain terms that irrespective of the use of such stories that are being repeated overtimes to justify the onslaught, they are simply not going to stand for seeing the continuing massacre of the innocent inhabitants of Gaza, perpetrated under the cloak of eradication of Hamas.

The gamble of Netanyahu that he can get away with this is not paying off. He might have the administrations of the West on his side, (and there is evidence that even this is beginning to wear thin) but the people aren't buying it. He is a war criminal at least, as bad as any of the perpetrators of the atrocities commited on October 7 - worse by virtue of the calculated nature of his murderous spree, rather than its being carried out in a spontaneous outburst of rage following a lifetime of containment in the biggest open air prison in the world. And worse yet because of the political motivation that lies behind the continuance of his 'war'. Attempting to set off public opposition to his government at home by massacring the people of Gaza (even in response to the October 7 outrage) isn't going to work; not if the Israeli people are half the people I think them to be.

-----0-----

What is it today with everyone wanting to 'live their best life'?

A couple of days ago it was ex TV presenter Fiona Phillips who wanted to do this, despite her recently being diagnosed with early onset dementia: today it is aging dinosaur Cher who at 77 is apparently determined to do so.

What does this banal feel-good confection of words even mean? What do these people think - that the rest of us choose to live our worst lives? People, rich or poor, celebrity or nobody, just live their lives to the best of their capabilities. Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks. This is just how it is. I'm fully aware of the fact that maybe the writers of these columns are most probably not reflecting the truth of the inner states that their subjects are purporting to feel - no doubt Fiona Phillips really feels like shaking her fists at the sky and screaming to her own particular God "Why me!" (and more power to her if she does) - but why are they doing this? What is it that we should all turn a face of zen like acceptance to any or all of life's vicissitudes when they occur?

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light is more my take on it, and good on you if you do. Fuck everyone else's desire not to be bored by your troubles and sufferings (because that's what all of these crappy columns are about - that and proving how much better your rich celebrity is than you). Rather,
I say, shove it in their faces and make them suck it up. You'll feel a whole lot better if you do, and surely no-one can deny you that?

-----0-----

Finally, Truss Supports Telegraph's Independence......the headline that never was. Apparently Liz Truss is joining the furore about the broad sheet being subject to an ownership bid by some United Arab Emirates people or something. "Editorial independence!", goes up the cry from politicians who have spent half their lives trying to influence what the press says about them.

From my point of view, I couldn't care less if Walt fucking Disney is the new owner. It might as well for all the opinions that you get from the editorial teams to date. These clowns still think that Brexit was a good idea. Economy flatlining and investment at an all time low, rising inequality and standards of living falling at a faster rate than since records began. Oh yes guys - you certainly steered us well on that one! Well worth the cost of taking back control of our borders I'd say - except that immigration is three times higher now than it was before Brexit! Idiots the lot of them. Sell it to the Arabs I say. Perhaps they can make a better job of running it than these chumps!

[peter]

How the fuck can you 'legislate' a country to be safe? You'd just as easily legislate that the moon is made of green cheese, and wake up to find its true.

I mean, what kind of Micky Mouse political show are we running here that ideas like this can seriously be put forward and our government not be laughed out of the court?

Similarly, a few days ago there was an announcement that another 15 million pounds would be sent to Rwanda to pay the staff processing asylum claims in that country. This morning it's reported that UK lawyers will be sent there to assist with legal advice to the Rwandan state, the better to deal with legal challenges (this being absolutely made clear by the Rwandan government, is not in the shape of any form of return to colonial administration of its legal system).

This whole situation is getting ridiculous. It's become such a matter of pure obstinate pride for our washed up and failing government, that "Planes take off for Rwanda!" that they will go to any lengths, waste any amount of our public money, to see it happen. And the numbers that we are talking here are miniscule. It's reckoned that even if the flights do actually commence, at most a few hundred asylum seekers will ever reach that destination (in return for which we have agreed to accept some of Rwanda's most difficult problem inhabitants - vulnerable people and quite possibly criminal and seriously debilitated individuals - in equal numbers......and you don't hear much about that in the media do you). The cost of this nonsensical exercise in terms of money spent per relocated asylum seeker is astronomical - and all so that the government cannot be seen to have failed.

Dear God, when are we going to see that we cannot continue with this absolutely laughable spectacle of a government; it is seriously eroding our world standing (what standing? he laughs) and making us look ridiculous on the world stage. Idiots the lot of them, from the Prime Minister down!

-----0-----

Andrew Marr in his weekly podcast on the New Statesman channel, was telling how in the forthcoming months and years everything was going to be about growth. But, as he pointed out, on that score, things were not looking good.......not looking good at all!

The latest growth predictions for the UK economy as recently put out by the OECD, see the figures essentially flatlining over the next couple of years. This is a downward revision of earlier forecasts that were themselves pretty thin gruel at best. The bigger proportion of our economy now is going on debt servicing, and this for nations,as for individual households, is a pretty good indicator of which way, up or down, they are going.

If Labour do manage to secure a victory in the forthcoming election (looking ever more likely to be in May of next year), said Marr, then securing some significant improvement in the growth figures is going to be absolutely crucial to their being anything other than a single term government that is merely holding the baby while the Tories get the frogs out of their bonnet. This, he said, is going to mean that at some point they are going to have to think about the unthinkable....... About arranging our reentry into the single market.

There! I've said it!

Marr absolutely stressed that this was him musing on the situation, and that he was not reporting anything he had heard on the grapevine or some such. He might be telling the truth, but in his new post BBC capacity of political commentator with left wing preferences (and given the sheen of public trust that he still carries away from his BBC position) he is ideally placed to act as an outrider for such ideas, were the Labour leadership actually considering them. Thatcher, if you remember, used such ploys to shift the Overton window (that range of subjects that can safely be engaged by mainstream politicians without removing them to the fringes of the game, into the territory of extremists and swivel eyed loons) to introduce the idea of denationalisation of the utilities. It's possible that Labour are doing the same with rejoining the single market, and are using Marr as their opening conduit.

But as an idea it's clearly going to be necessary. Brexit has like it or not, fallen flat on its arse, and years down the line is bringing only damage to our current and future prospects, without any discernable advantage that can be named. The much vaunted trade deals have not materialised, we are not forging out into the world, bestriding it like a collosus - we are simply and quite noticeably suffering only the downsides of not being able to trade freely with our nearest neighbour. This must be fixed if growth and inward investment are ever going to be reestablished. Stamer knows this as does virtually everybody else - but no-one in our political system has the courage to say so.

So yes, political outrider or simply musing on his own time, Marr is absolutely correct. Stamer may or may not know it yet, but this is the direction that will be forced on him, like it or not.

(Ps. If he keeps on making fuck-ups like praising Margaret Thatcher and refusing to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, then he won't be making any such decisions at all, because he'll be out on his fucking ear!)

[Avatar]

How the fuck can you 'legislate' a country to be safe? You'd just as easily legislate that the moon is made of green cheese, and wake up to find its true.

I mean, what kind of Micky Mouse political show are we running here that ideas like this can seriously be put forward and our government not be laughed out of the court?

I mean, I'm laughing...

--A

[peter]

I just want to say a few words about how much damage David Cameron has actually done to this country.

He may seem like a suave old Etonian, a product of better background and upbringing than the fumbling Theresa May who replaced him as Prime Minister, born as it were to rule - but the unspoken damage that this buffoon has laid on the back of this nation is almost incalculable.

It falls into three areas, firstly as I've mentioned before, the responsibility hr bears for the disastrous decision to leave the European Union.

We all know that he promised the referendum, which in itself would be enough, but that he did so for no other reason than to draw votes away from UKIP in a general election campaign that he thought he was loosing, and not because he thought for a moment that it was the right thing for the country, compounds his guilt. That he did so in the complacent belief that the decision to leave was so ludicrously unlikely that the British people would never wear it, but also having laid the very groundwork for that decision to be taken by virtue of the anger his policy of austerity had generated in the nation, simply underlines his buffonery. Make no mistake: without Cameron there would have been no Brexit.

The second thing he did that has brought us to the pass we find ourselves in, was to lower the bar for qualification to stand as a Conservative Party MP, such that virtually anyone could put themselves forward for selection as a prospective candidate.

Now this in itself would not be a problem outside of the Conservative Party, in fact it's absolutely critical that anyone can put themselves forward for consideration as a standing candidate in a general election, but to stand as a Conservative gives a candidate a head start of considerable extent, such that their qualifications for running as almost taken as a given. (A candidate standing as an independent will have an uphill struggle to convince the constituents in his voting area of his appropriateness for the position, while to stand under the banner of a recognised political party will give one a boost in the following hierarchical order; Green, Liberal-Democrat, Labour and at the front Tory. Thus a Tory candidate has a proportionately higher probability of finishing up in a Ministerial position, or even occupying one of the high offices of state.) Edit; Numbers of people will never even consider the candidate themselves either, only ever voting on a party basis. This again adds to the chances of those candidates standing unde a recognised party banner.

Prior to Cameron, candidates were selected that were highly experienced either in business or elsewhere in 'the outside world '. I mean that they were not just individuals who were professional politicians if you like, from day one of their post educationary lives. What Cameron did was to alter this selection process to allow the denizens of Westminster, the special advisors and assistants that surround ministers within Westminster, to go straight into the selection process. This allowed the bar of entrance to the prospective candidate selection process to be lowered to the point where it brought about a noticeable reduction in the quality of the candidates, and hence the members, reaching the House. It is no coincidence that he himself had come to be an MP via the special advisor route, worming his way in by virtue of his background: he clearly intended that others might be able to follow him.

Lee Anderson, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman. Robert Jenrick. Matt Hancock, the bully Dominic Raab, Liz Truss, Therese Coffy, Gavin Williamson. None of these individuals would have had a look in in administrations prior to the Cameron changes to the candidate selection process. Certainly they are not all spads and the like, but the overall lowering of the standards let them shine in a selection process that previously would have seen them, if not out on the pavement, then certainly not achieving ministerial positions where their lack of talent could have damaging long term consequences.

It is because of Cameron that we not only have had the worst economic and social blow to our nation, certainly since the Second World War, and quite possibly in its history, but also that we have had beyond question the worst material for dealing with that crisis than we have ever seen. The quality of our leading politicians has been - well dire hardly covers it. Any business that found itself reliant upon the talent pool that we have had access to would be finished. A whole country? Well, look around you.

The third thing on the list of Cameron's disastrous decisions was his intervention in Libya. That, like Thatcher before him, and Tony Blair, he wanted a war under his belt is a given. It cements any leader's place in the history books to have played a role in prosecuting a war, and Cameron was no less subject to vanity in respect of his imagined legacy than any other politician.

Certainly there was an insurgency in Libya and most certainly the then leader of the country, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was a bad lot. But Cameron led the push for intervention in the North African state that all but guaranteed that the ruling regime would fall. He entered the fray with his no-fly zone that ultimately allowed Gaddafi to be toppled, but with absolutely no plans whatsoever as to what the future of this country should be. He totally didn't get the tribal and Islamic extremist nature of the opponents of the existing regime, and assumed that the country would simply find itself with a new polity ready formed to take the toppled leader's place. Wrong on all counts. The country descended from a harshly governed, but essentially functional entity into a failed state of warring factions, with no effective regional governance and the law of the gun prevailing.

Which is exactly where we find it today. With the biggest movement of people from sub-Saharan Africa in the history of mankind occurring as we speak and no effective buffer zone country in this region of the continent to stem the outflow.

Why is it do you think, that everybody and his mother who wants to leave Africa and head north heads straight for Libya. Because there's no effective border out of the bleeding (term used in both senses) country, that's why! Anybody and everybody just has to travel north to Libya, pile up on the dock wallet in hand, and wait in line for a ship/boat, whatever floating raft becomes available, to turn up. No-one is going to question where you are going, or why. No-one is going to check your visa, or that you're not a wanted criminal or maybe have no other plans other than to dissappear into the ether in whatever country you fetch up in - every day is Christmas day in Libya when it comes to getting out of the country. So here they all come, and an outflow equivalent to the cracking open of the Hoover dam on one side, becomes an influx of illegal immigrants the like of which Europe has never seen before on the other.

So again, round of applause for David Cameron. Nice one Dave; Brexit, the illegal immigration crisis, the dire condition of our polity. It's a pretty impressive record of destruction by any standards. I heard a guy saying that Boris Johnson had done more damage to this country than any other man in history the other day, but I believe that you eclipse him by a country mile. And your reward? Well, after a spell out milking the cash cow of the lobbying market (what? 2 or 3 million from Greensill prior to their bankruptcy - now there's a suprise) it's back into the cabinet for a stint as Foreign Secretary (Foreign Secretary! After what you've done already, to send you out to Israel!) and then what? Another tilt at the leadership? Surely never! Pig's might fly one might say, but this is Bat-Shit Britain where anything can happen.