All power to Sky News last night for the absolutely unflinching report they gave from inside the hospital in Gaza's second city Khan Younis, showing hundreds of people milling around in confused desperation as the injured and dying lay packed and uncovered on the hard floor beneath them.
It was chaos - a true hell on earth, and I defy anyone watching those scenes to be anything other than despairing that the elected government of Israel could be behind them and that our own governments should be standing in support of them. Innocent children, wide-eyed and numb, lying injured and abandoned, neither parents nor carers to be seen, lying untreated and unseen amongst the milling throng of terrified people swirling around them.
At last some genuine reporting of the carnage that is being levelled on the innocents of Gaza, in pursuit it is claimed, of the destruction of Hamas by the Israeli state.
How long will the world accept this? How long will it be before we say enough is enough? The events of October 7 were a tragedy; this we know. But had it been ten times worse, it still would not justify what Netanyahu has done to the Innocent occupants of Gaza in revenge. At last Joe Biden seems to be getting this. Perhaps our weak and vacillating leadership will follow. This ethnic cleansing exercise - for it can now be described as no less - must end.
-------0------
Today it will be the turn of Boris Johnson to stand before the covid public inquiry lawyers, answering questions on his role in the affair and presumably trying to refute the accusations of incompetence that have already been made against him.
This morning's Telegraph reports that he believes the inquiry should be looking at the broader issues of lockdown, such as the effect on the economy and on the education of the nation's children (he hasn't seemed to mention the possibly most important thing, the collateral deaths that will result from failure to diagnose and treat the conditions of seventy million people during the whole period while the NHS was effectively closed to all other operations than servicing the pandemic), but Johnson is pragmatic enough to understand that unless he is specifically questioned about these things, he is unlikely to be able to express his opinion on them.
I continue to point out that none of the experts that stood up against the policies being followed are to be called; it seems that their expertise, so esteemed by the academic institutions in which they hold positions of eminence, is surplus to requirements for this inquiry, since what they might say could be uncomfortable for those in power to hear and embarrassing in the extreme.
Interestingly, this morning's Guardian seems in a small side-headline referring to an article inside, to acknowledge what I posted about above - that this inquiry is essentially a kangaroo court in which the fall-guys are already decided upon. The headline runs, "Marina Hyde (the name of the author of the piece): The covid inquiry, otherwise known as a few bad men." It's unlikely that Marina Hyde or indeed the Guardian has any problems with this scapegoating. They still believe that the pandemic was the greatest threat to mankind since whatever (either that, or they elect to maintain the pretence that they do, as do most people who were staunch lockdown supporters), and so will naturally be searching around for reasons that the lockdown policy so palpably failed to keep down the death rate (which it cannot but help to have done, since the death figures are a confected metric anyway, simply the effect of a cumulative total of the policy of labelling any death, no matter how obliquely related, as a covid death, a practice in turn being used as a means of maintaining the fiction that covid was a serious threat to people). The official narrative needs these scapegoats and the Guardian are duly onside to provide, to aportion blame for the 'failure' of the policies that they so vociferously called for.
Oh how do the coils of the covid inquiry twist and turn, snakelike, in order to ensure that the direction of travel is exactly that which will support the decisions that were made (with a salting of criticism for neither being stringent enough, nor early enough in their application, just for the show of appearances, to make it look like the inquiry has done its job and isn't a mere whitewashing stitch-up job).
It's so predictable it's dull.
What Do You Think Today?
Moderators: Orlion, balon!, aliantha
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peter
- The Gap Into Spam
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What Do You Think Today?
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
This business over the immigration bill is not simple - there is detail in there that leaves the head swimming in ones attempts to hold it all in mind at one time - but it isn't the 'Schleswig-Holstein Question' either.
Essentially (and let's see if putting it down in writing makes the thing any clearer) the government has made one of its flagship policies the deportation of illegal immigrants (and in particular the 'boat people' being smuggled across the English Channel by smugglers operating from who knows where) to Rwanda, with which it has drawn up first agreements, and now a treaty, in order to organise the procedure.
Multiple visits by three Home Secretary's have got us to the point where (perhaps) the planes are almost ready to take off, but there are still problems, not least of which is that the UK Supreme Court has said that, given the uncertain nature of Rwanda as a safe destination for illegals to be shipped off to, the policy is in contravention of our international agreements on multple fronts, and therefore illegal. Prior to this recent judgement, planes had been ready to take off to Rwanda (some time last year if I recollect correctly) but had been thwarted from doing so by rulings made in the European Court, which we, as signatories of the European Convention on Human Rights, are bound by. The case against these flights from proceeding had been brought by UK based human rights lawyers acting for the deportees
In an attempt to rescue this flagship policy, the government has negotiated a treaty with Rwanda that guarantees certain safeties for any migrants sent there, such as a guarantee that under no circumstances will they be returned to their original countries of origin (where they may face dangerous consequences for their actions) or indeed any other third country, with the exception of being returned to the UK under very specific circumstances (eg if they commit crimes etc). The government has also prepared legislation to put through the House, essentialy legislating that Rwanda is a safe country and fit for illegal immigrants caught entering this country to be deported to.
To date, Rwanda has been paid in excess of 140 million pounds in preparation for providing this service, but not one illegal migrant has been sent to the country. It had initially been claimed that thousands of migrants would be shipped out by this agreement, but as time and circumstances have changed, this figure has gradually been whittled down until it stands at a paltry hundred or so, which by any standard seems a small advantage to be gained at such a staggering cost. The Sunak government still however insists that the policy is necessary and worthwhile, in order to deter illegal migrants from attempting to make the crossing into the UK. In fact it has become a matter of pride for the government that the policy be implemented - a matter made yet more complicated insofar as it has become a symbolic fight in respect of our being able to exercise sovereignty over our own laws and actions, since leaving the EU. It was an insult to the government that had brought about Brexit, to fail the first major test of the same, and to find ourselves bound still by laws originating outside of our own nation.
This has struck home on the right side of the Conservative Party more than anywhere, being of course the side of the Party that championed the Brexit cause to the hilt. They are enraged to find that we are still bound by European law, the fact that this binding stems not from our membership of the EU (which of course, we are not) but of our being signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights notwithstanding. This has called for a significant wing of the Party right, including the last and recently departed Home Secretary Suella Braverman, to call for our leaving of the above convention, if it is by membership of this that our plans to get planes off the ground to Rwanda, are thwarted. This would be an extreme step indeed - only Russia and I think Belarus are not signatories to the Convention - and would reduce our international standing by orders of ten were we to take it. For this reason, the centre and left of the parliamentary party are dead set against it, and thereby hangs the potential split that threatens to cleave the Conservative Party in twain. It really is this big a deal. Immigration was one of the driving forces behind Brexit and the right wing of the party are determined that we will take back control of our borders at any cost. Poor Rishi Sunak finds himself straddling a divide between the two sides of the parliamentary party that threatens to tear the whole show asunder.
The Safety of Rwanda (Immigration and Asylum) Bill is his answer to this dilemma (ie the Bill declaring Rwanda safe), but for those on the right of the party it simply ain't cutting it. Led by Braverman, and now Robert Jenrick who last night resigned as immigration minister in anger about the government shortcomings re their immigration policies, the right of the party is up in arms, claiming that the Bill doesn't go near enough to standing a chance of getting the flights off the ground to satisfy them. On the basis of this Bill, they say, the Rwanda flights will never take off.
Sunak has responded that he has gone absolutely as far as he is able in the Bill, and that it would be pointless to push it any further, because Rwanda themselves have said that they will not accept any migrants from the UK if it in any way sets them at odds with international law. To legislate that the UK courts should ignore any rulings from the European Court on the issue (as the rebel right of the parliamentary party want him to do) would put us outside international law, and Rwanda as well if they accepted deportees under these circumstances. To this end, the Braverman led rebels are demanding that we leave the European Convention and the European Court system, and go it alone. This would pretty much reduce us to pariah status in Europe, and is a situation that the more moderate part of the parliamentary party, Sunak included, won't countenance, even if it means getting the flights off the ground. The two sticking points for the rebels seem to be that Sunak will not agree that leaving the European Convention should be part of the government policy on this issue, and that the legislation still allows potential deportees to oppose the decision to ship them to Rwanda, and then to appeal verdicts that go against them in this process. This route in law of slowing down the process, or indeed stopping it altogether, renders the whole Rwanda policy toothless, say the party right, and thus Sunak and the government are simply not going anywhere near far enough to bring the policy about and to make it effective.
There is talk in the media this morning that the discontent in the party might even go so far as seeing a confidence vote brought against Sunak (which you will remember, demands that fifteen percent of sitting conservative MPs submit letters of no confidence to the 1922 Committee). There is little doubt that he would win such a vote, as few Tory MPs are going to want to engage in a leadership competition so near to an election, but still it's a sign that the writing is on the wall for Sunak. Thatcher, May and Johnson have all survived confidence votes before him, but have still been gone shortly thereafter. No, win or lose a confidence vote, Sunak is effectively dead in the water.
And the Tory party? I don't personally believe that it will split, but anything is possible. They'll lose the next election (most likely), chuck out Sunak (either way) and carry on. But the odd thing is that the Rwanda policy, for all that it has become more a matter of principle for the party right than one of substance, is a white elephant. If the number of illegals that can be held in Rwanda is only around 100, and once there they cannot be sent off to a third country, then the moment that this number is reached the bottle is, as it were, full, and the deterent effect ceases to operate. Given that thousands of migrants are ready to make the hugely dangerous illegal crossing of the Channel already, the prospect of 100 of them getting apprehended and packed off to Rwanda is hardly likely to deter any but the most pesemistic of them at best. So it looks as though the party is putting itself through this torture for pretty much nothing anyway. The right want Sunak out, but that's okay - he wants out as well.
But it's this European issue isn't it. That's what is driving them. They must show that brexit was a success and that we've 'taken back control', or none of it has been worth it. The breaking of the policy on the wheel of European law is antithetical to this. To this end they are prepared to do anything, even go against international law and turn the UK into a pariah state. In this, they are akin to the Netenyahu Likud government in Israel, who are also prepared to flout international norms of behaviour if it means that they win the day at home. These are the actions of parties in extremis. They are dangerous outliers to a world based on international law and adherence to common goals and standards. They should be recognised as such.
Essentially (and let's see if putting it down in writing makes the thing any clearer) the government has made one of its flagship policies the deportation of illegal immigrants (and in particular the 'boat people' being smuggled across the English Channel by smugglers operating from who knows where) to Rwanda, with which it has drawn up first agreements, and now a treaty, in order to organise the procedure.
Multiple visits by three Home Secretary's have got us to the point where (perhaps) the planes are almost ready to take off, but there are still problems, not least of which is that the UK Supreme Court has said that, given the uncertain nature of Rwanda as a safe destination for illegals to be shipped off to, the policy is in contravention of our international agreements on multple fronts, and therefore illegal. Prior to this recent judgement, planes had been ready to take off to Rwanda (some time last year if I recollect correctly) but had been thwarted from doing so by rulings made in the European Court, which we, as signatories of the European Convention on Human Rights, are bound by. The case against these flights from proceeding had been brought by UK based human rights lawyers acting for the deportees
In an attempt to rescue this flagship policy, the government has negotiated a treaty with Rwanda that guarantees certain safeties for any migrants sent there, such as a guarantee that under no circumstances will they be returned to their original countries of origin (where they may face dangerous consequences for their actions) or indeed any other third country, with the exception of being returned to the UK under very specific circumstances (eg if they commit crimes etc). The government has also prepared legislation to put through the House, essentialy legislating that Rwanda is a safe country and fit for illegal immigrants caught entering this country to be deported to.
To date, Rwanda has been paid in excess of 140 million pounds in preparation for providing this service, but not one illegal migrant has been sent to the country. It had initially been claimed that thousands of migrants would be shipped out by this agreement, but as time and circumstances have changed, this figure has gradually been whittled down until it stands at a paltry hundred or so, which by any standard seems a small advantage to be gained at such a staggering cost. The Sunak government still however insists that the policy is necessary and worthwhile, in order to deter illegal migrants from attempting to make the crossing into the UK. In fact it has become a matter of pride for the government that the policy be implemented - a matter made yet more complicated insofar as it has become a symbolic fight in respect of our being able to exercise sovereignty over our own laws and actions, since leaving the EU. It was an insult to the government that had brought about Brexit, to fail the first major test of the same, and to find ourselves bound still by laws originating outside of our own nation.
This has struck home on the right side of the Conservative Party more than anywhere, being of course the side of the Party that championed the Brexit cause to the hilt. They are enraged to find that we are still bound by European law, the fact that this binding stems not from our membership of the EU (which of course, we are not) but of our being signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights notwithstanding. This has called for a significant wing of the Party right, including the last and recently departed Home Secretary Suella Braverman, to call for our leaving of the above convention, if it is by membership of this that our plans to get planes off the ground to Rwanda, are thwarted. This would be an extreme step indeed - only Russia and I think Belarus are not signatories to the Convention - and would reduce our international standing by orders of ten were we to take it. For this reason, the centre and left of the parliamentary party are dead set against it, and thereby hangs the potential split that threatens to cleave the Conservative Party in twain. It really is this big a deal. Immigration was one of the driving forces behind Brexit and the right wing of the party are determined that we will take back control of our borders at any cost. Poor Rishi Sunak finds himself straddling a divide between the two sides of the parliamentary party that threatens to tear the whole show asunder.
The Safety of Rwanda (Immigration and Asylum) Bill is his answer to this dilemma (ie the Bill declaring Rwanda safe), but for those on the right of the party it simply ain't cutting it. Led by Braverman, and now Robert Jenrick who last night resigned as immigration minister in anger about the government shortcomings re their immigration policies, the right of the party is up in arms, claiming that the Bill doesn't go near enough to standing a chance of getting the flights off the ground to satisfy them. On the basis of this Bill, they say, the Rwanda flights will never take off.
Sunak has responded that he has gone absolutely as far as he is able in the Bill, and that it would be pointless to push it any further, because Rwanda themselves have said that they will not accept any migrants from the UK if it in any way sets them at odds with international law. To legislate that the UK courts should ignore any rulings from the European Court on the issue (as the rebel right of the parliamentary party want him to do) would put us outside international law, and Rwanda as well if they accepted deportees under these circumstances. To this end, the Braverman led rebels are demanding that we leave the European Convention and the European Court system, and go it alone. This would pretty much reduce us to pariah status in Europe, and is a situation that the more moderate part of the parliamentary party, Sunak included, won't countenance, even if it means getting the flights off the ground. The two sticking points for the rebels seem to be that Sunak will not agree that leaving the European Convention should be part of the government policy on this issue, and that the legislation still allows potential deportees to oppose the decision to ship them to Rwanda, and then to appeal verdicts that go against them in this process. This route in law of slowing down the process, or indeed stopping it altogether, renders the whole Rwanda policy toothless, say the party right, and thus Sunak and the government are simply not going anywhere near far enough to bring the policy about and to make it effective.
There is talk in the media this morning that the discontent in the party might even go so far as seeing a confidence vote brought against Sunak (which you will remember, demands that fifteen percent of sitting conservative MPs submit letters of no confidence to the 1922 Committee). There is little doubt that he would win such a vote, as few Tory MPs are going to want to engage in a leadership competition so near to an election, but still it's a sign that the writing is on the wall for Sunak. Thatcher, May and Johnson have all survived confidence votes before him, but have still been gone shortly thereafter. No, win or lose a confidence vote, Sunak is effectively dead in the water.
And the Tory party? I don't personally believe that it will split, but anything is possible. They'll lose the next election (most likely), chuck out Sunak (either way) and carry on. But the odd thing is that the Rwanda policy, for all that it has become more a matter of principle for the party right than one of substance, is a white elephant. If the number of illegals that can be held in Rwanda is only around 100, and once there they cannot be sent off to a third country, then the moment that this number is reached the bottle is, as it were, full, and the deterent effect ceases to operate. Given that thousands of migrants are ready to make the hugely dangerous illegal crossing of the Channel already, the prospect of 100 of them getting apprehended and packed off to Rwanda is hardly likely to deter any but the most pesemistic of them at best. So it looks as though the party is putting itself through this torture for pretty much nothing anyway. The right want Sunak out, but that's okay - he wants out as well.
But it's this European issue isn't it. That's what is driving them. They must show that brexit was a success and that we've 'taken back control', or none of it has been worth it. The breaking of the policy on the wheel of European law is antithetical to this. To this end they are prepared to do anything, even go against international law and turn the UK into a pariah state. In this, they are akin to the Netenyahu Likud government in Israel, who are also prepared to flout international norms of behaviour if it means that they win the day at home. These are the actions of parties in extremis. They are dangerous outliers to a world based on international law and adherence to common goals and standards. They should be recognised as such.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
Forgive me for asking, but I thought one of the means by which a state considered as a functional democracy operated, was that there existed a separation of powers between the polity and the judiciary?
I understood that once laws had been passed by the legislature, had been signed into statute by the monarch, that they then became the sole province of the judiciary to interpret?
Doesn't it then seem something of a circular paradox, if laws are passed that instruct judges as to what they must or must not consider when making their judgements?
Yet this is exactly what Rishi Sunak's new Immigration to Rwanda bill proposes, when it instructs that judges must take no consideration of decisions made in the European Court or elsewhere, when considering applications for deportation of Rwanda or appeals thereof.
Still, I don't suppose that this is going to worry anybody in the government that has produced this bit of politico-legal chicanery; such legerdermaine has become the stock in trade of our polity since the Brexit withdrawal agreement set the tone for how this government would operate. When is a border not a border.....when it is down the Irish Sea, and all that kind of thing. Breaking international law in a "limited way" etc. Now we have draught bills being set before the House that actually say the legislation proposed therein is probably illegal on the front page of the published document provided to the legislature.
What an odd place we find ourselves in, where if you want the moon to be made of green cheese, then you simply legislate it to be so. Is this how a functional democracy is supposed to work? I imagine a few new chapters covering 'the new normal' of political science and jurisprudence will be needed to be added to the textbooks in the years ahead, if this type of stuff is to become the order of the day. I don't think that when the guys said that "Britain would always lead the world" they meant in quite this direction.
(As an aside, it appears that contrary to what Home Secretary assured us was not the case - that the new treaty with Rwanda involved extra money over the 140 million pounds we have already given to that country for providing the service of taking our unwanted illegal immigrants - it does involve some extra cost. About 100 million pounds of extra cost actually. Wouldn't it be simpler, I muse to myself, simply to give each migrant decided upon as fitting to be shipped off, a million pounds to go there under his own steam? And cheaper actually, given that for the 240 million pounds spent already, we only get to send around a hundred migrants there anyway. It would solve everything. Rishi would get his planes taking off, Rwanda would welcome these rich new occupants to its shores with open arms and they would be well set up to make a good start in the new country in which they found themselves. Job done. I'm suprised that the government haven't thought of it!)
(Second aside: Where do all these illegal immigrants get the money to pay for their legal representation when they are launching all of these appeals against deportation and the like? Lawyers are not noted for giving away their services for free, and I'm blessed if I would be able to afford, or would be able to find anyone who would spring for the bill, should I ever need their services. Just saying, is all.)
I understood that once laws had been passed by the legislature, had been signed into statute by the monarch, that they then became the sole province of the judiciary to interpret?
Doesn't it then seem something of a circular paradox, if laws are passed that instruct judges as to what they must or must not consider when making their judgements?
Yet this is exactly what Rishi Sunak's new Immigration to Rwanda bill proposes, when it instructs that judges must take no consideration of decisions made in the European Court or elsewhere, when considering applications for deportation of Rwanda or appeals thereof.
Still, I don't suppose that this is going to worry anybody in the government that has produced this bit of politico-legal chicanery; such legerdermaine has become the stock in trade of our polity since the Brexit withdrawal agreement set the tone for how this government would operate. When is a border not a border.....when it is down the Irish Sea, and all that kind of thing. Breaking international law in a "limited way" etc. Now we have draught bills being set before the House that actually say the legislation proposed therein is probably illegal on the front page of the published document provided to the legislature.
What an odd place we find ourselves in, where if you want the moon to be made of green cheese, then you simply legislate it to be so. Is this how a functional democracy is supposed to work? I imagine a few new chapters covering 'the new normal' of political science and jurisprudence will be needed to be added to the textbooks in the years ahead, if this type of stuff is to become the order of the day. I don't think that when the guys said that "Britain would always lead the world" they meant in quite this direction.
(As an aside, it appears that contrary to what Home Secretary assured us was not the case - that the new treaty with Rwanda involved extra money over the 140 million pounds we have already given to that country for providing the service of taking our unwanted illegal immigrants - it does involve some extra cost. About 100 million pounds of extra cost actually. Wouldn't it be simpler, I muse to myself, simply to give each migrant decided upon as fitting to be shipped off, a million pounds to go there under his own steam? And cheaper actually, given that for the 240 million pounds spent already, we only get to send around a hundred migrants there anyway. It would solve everything. Rishi would get his planes taking off, Rwanda would welcome these rich new occupants to its shores with open arms and they would be well set up to make a good start in the new country in which they found themselves. Job done. I'm suprised that the government haven't thought of it!)
(Second aside: Where do all these illegal immigrants get the money to pay for their legal representation when they are launching all of these appeals against deportation and the like? Lawyers are not noted for giving away their services for free, and I'm blessed if I would be able to afford, or would be able to find anyone who would spring for the bill, should I ever need their services. Just saying, is all.)
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
I was glad, following my post yesterday, to read in one of the dailies that at least one of the legal advisors within Westminster agreed with me. He described the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill in the following way. "It's political nonsense and it's legal nonsense." I'd described it as politico-legal chicanery. Pretty damn close,I'd say.
On the same subject, I observed how Home Secretary Cleverly had said that the latest treaty was not costing the country any more money, when it turned out that it was actually costing 100 million pounds more. I'd read this in a BBC article on their website.
It occurred to me afterwards to wonder how it was that our top politicians could make these statements, only for them to turn out to be untrue, and for them to walk away scott free with little to no media backlash.
Rishi Sunak it turned out had made the same claim (or, I confess, it might have been him I was remembering saying it - he'd given a press conference on his Immigration plans earlier, and it included details of the new treaty, so it might have been here I heard it, but either way....). Later in the day I saw the replacement Immigration minister, talking on ITV news, playing this porky-pie down (pretty much the only media coverage outside of the BBC Web page report I'd read. He tossed the matter aside with a flippant, "Well, this money can just as easily be seen as development money for Rwanda in terms of our aiding a valuable partner in their upgrading to higher levels of domestic services".
By later in the day this had morphed into the Downing Street line (by this point the media were clearly cottoning on that the PM and/or Home Secretary had been caught out in an unqualified lie) that this extra money was part of a Rwanda development plan, not money for the Immigration plan, which would of course, be exactly counter to what had been said.
Basically, the whole thing stinks - but then, why would it not? It's just another example of the twisty way our polities now deal with us. There is no longer any political price to pay for such egregious dishonesty. The government capital in terms of honesty is currently resting at zero anyway, and dishonesty has no negative equity below this level. Game over for an administration gives them pretty much a blank cheque for whatever misdemeanours they choose to comit before being chucked out if office. It might well be that as they know that their game is up, all of this Rwanda planning is just talk anyway. It's never going to happen and they know it. They're just marking time until they are chucked out with any old nonsense that seems to fit the bill. Once out of office, this will crystallise their efforts, focus their minds, on getting their differences put back in the bag, whilst the inherent desire for power that runs deeply through all sides of the Conservative Party (much deeper than in the case of Labour, as I've mentioned before) reasserts itself. In the meantime they lay traps for the incoming Labour administration, by draining public services of cash so that Labour are forced into spending money to return them to functionality, and thus can be accused of being spendthrift.
That, I suppose, pretty much sums up where we are. Can't say much more really.
-----0-----
Great to hear that the Japanese-European Union joint project to build the world's largest fusion reactor is just about ready to go, with huge hopes resting on its being able to produce excess energy at scale, such that it will constitute a major step forward in our search for the energy generating technologies of the future.
Accompanying the report I read, were images of the new generator, and they were, to say the least, impressive. A football-field sized machine of gleaming pipes and tunes, turbines and cooling vents, all crammed into a huge pit scooped out of the ground and surrounded by an army of ant sized technicians in white coats, studying dials and making notes on clip boards.
In fairness, the litmus test of producing excess energy has been achieved a couple of times before, so the new generator is not exactly breaking new ground, only trying to upscale it, so to speak.
The last generator, of not much smaller scale it has to be said, did manage to produce more energy than was put in, in the thermonuclear process. Significantly more in fact. The engineers involved estimated (to put it into layman's terms) that the energy produced would have boiled a kettle. Who knows - perhaps this time we'll produce enough to fry an egg.
Reading that this work has been in progress since the 1950's when the theory of nuclear fusion was first put into practical terms, I was minded of the time that Woody Allen (can we still talk about him?) was asked how his therapy sessions (which he'd been attending twice weekly for 25 years) were progressing. He answered, "Slowly."
-----0-----
Nice to see the royal children out at a service yesterday, lighting candles and sending out goodwill to the less fortunate. Yes children; in your case that would be everybody!
-----0-----
On the same subject, I observed how Home Secretary Cleverly had said that the latest treaty was not costing the country any more money, when it turned out that it was actually costing 100 million pounds more. I'd read this in a BBC article on their website.
It occurred to me afterwards to wonder how it was that our top politicians could make these statements, only for them to turn out to be untrue, and for them to walk away scott free with little to no media backlash.
Rishi Sunak it turned out had made the same claim (or, I confess, it might have been him I was remembering saying it - he'd given a press conference on his Immigration plans earlier, and it included details of the new treaty, so it might have been here I heard it, but either way....). Later in the day I saw the replacement Immigration minister, talking on ITV news, playing this porky-pie down (pretty much the only media coverage outside of the BBC Web page report I'd read. He tossed the matter aside with a flippant, "Well, this money can just as easily be seen as development money for Rwanda in terms of our aiding a valuable partner in their upgrading to higher levels of domestic services".
By later in the day this had morphed into the Downing Street line (by this point the media were clearly cottoning on that the PM and/or Home Secretary had been caught out in an unqualified lie) that this extra money was part of a Rwanda development plan, not money for the Immigration plan, which would of course, be exactly counter to what had been said.
Basically, the whole thing stinks - but then, why would it not? It's just another example of the twisty way our polities now deal with us. There is no longer any political price to pay for such egregious dishonesty. The government capital in terms of honesty is currently resting at zero anyway, and dishonesty has no negative equity below this level. Game over for an administration gives them pretty much a blank cheque for whatever misdemeanours they choose to comit before being chucked out if office. It might well be that as they know that their game is up, all of this Rwanda planning is just talk anyway. It's never going to happen and they know it. They're just marking time until they are chucked out with any old nonsense that seems to fit the bill. Once out of office, this will crystallise their efforts, focus their minds, on getting their differences put back in the bag, whilst the inherent desire for power that runs deeply through all sides of the Conservative Party (much deeper than in the case of Labour, as I've mentioned before) reasserts itself. In the meantime they lay traps for the incoming Labour administration, by draining public services of cash so that Labour are forced into spending money to return them to functionality, and thus can be accused of being spendthrift.
That, I suppose, pretty much sums up where we are. Can't say much more really.
-----0-----
Great to hear that the Japanese-European Union joint project to build the world's largest fusion reactor is just about ready to go, with huge hopes resting on its being able to produce excess energy at scale, such that it will constitute a major step forward in our search for the energy generating technologies of the future.
Accompanying the report I read, were images of the new generator, and they were, to say the least, impressive. A football-field sized machine of gleaming pipes and tunes, turbines and cooling vents, all crammed into a huge pit scooped out of the ground and surrounded by an army of ant sized technicians in white coats, studying dials and making notes on clip boards.
In fairness, the litmus test of producing excess energy has been achieved a couple of times before, so the new generator is not exactly breaking new ground, only trying to upscale it, so to speak.
The last generator, of not much smaller scale it has to be said, did manage to produce more energy than was put in, in the thermonuclear process. Significantly more in fact. The engineers involved estimated (to put it into layman's terms) that the energy produced would have boiled a kettle. Who knows - perhaps this time we'll produce enough to fry an egg.
Reading that this work has been in progress since the 1950's when the theory of nuclear fusion was first put into practical terms, I was minded of the time that Woody Allen (can we still talk about him?) was asked how his therapy sessions (which he'd been attending twice weekly for 25 years) were progressing. He answered, "Slowly."
-----0-----
Nice to see the royal children out at a service yesterday, lighting candles and sending out goodwill to the less fortunate. Yes children; in your case that would be everybody!
-----0-----
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
Mmmm......
Pretty thin stuff in today's papers really - nothing to write home about (
).
There's a certain amount on the Telegraph and Times front pages about how lockdown was catastrophic in its effect on our society - hugely increasing the divide between the haves and have-nots, effectively making us a two-tier society that threatens to push us back into an almost Victorian era of existence. Tell me something I didn't know.
The Rwanda policy difficulties of Sunak are also highlighted. The so-called 'star-chamber' of ERG lawyers are pouring over the proposed bill prior to Tuesday's vote in the House, and have, so far as reports go, found it wanting. It's full of holes that allow for delaying actions to be brought against flights taking off, they say, and in order to try to bring rebel MPs onside for the vote it is reported that Lord Cameron of Chipping-Norton (the man who destroyed Britain to you and me) has been seconded in front the FO to mount a charm offensive over the weekend. Good luck with that Rishi!
Suella Braverman is writing in the Telegraph that in her 3 visits to Rwanda, she never once encountered any suggestion that they would be reticent to press ahead with the arrangement to take our unwanted illegal immigrants because of worries about infringement of international law, suggesting perhaps that she believes that PM Sunak is telling porkies when he says that this is the reason that his bill cannot go any further in its efforts to get flights off the ground.
The Star on Sunday writes that AI chatbots are crap at writing chatup lines, so you shouldn't rely on them to spice up your chances of winning the affections of a person you fancy, which reminds me of a video I watched on YouTube yesterday. It concerned the forthcoming Google developed AI competitor to Chat-GTP (or whatever it is called), recently being extolled in an introductory video released by the production team. Called Gemini, the AI is bigged-up for its 'multi- modal' capabilities, which essentially means it can use both sound and vision inputs together, to come up with its generated output.
The video demonstrated a conversation with the AI, showing both its vocal and image based output in response to questions being put to it. It was very bland stuff, but interesting nevertheless. It took longer than I did to recognise and describe a line drawing of a duck - I'd seen what it was some two additions to the 'picture' before the machine did (ie my ability to recognise from limited visual clues, to 'represent' if you will, was superior, but still it was impressive. Once it got into slightly deeper stuff like advising on setting up a party event for your daughters birthday, it was pretty impressive in its ability to pull up and narrow down information, and hone it to requirements.
I wondered if the bland nature of the demonstration was hiding more sinister applications - saying a bad fellow wanted plan a bank robbery or worse - to what effect could such tech be used then? I suspect that the program's uses are meant to go much further than planning parties. The effect of the whole was a bit reduced however, when it transpired that quite a bit of the demo had been faked by for instance cutting down the response times etc.
But all in all it seemed like a fairly significant advance over Open AI's Chat-GTP, so time will tell. (Aside; it seemed pretty good at getting the kids homework done for them; whether this is a good thing or not, you decide. )
What else....
The Telegraph are clearly not happy about being bought out by the UAE government and have enlisted the help of ex MI5 (or 6) boss Richard Dearlove to say what a bad idea he thinks it is. The purchase is currently being examined by a public interest investigation called by Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, but numbers of tory MPs have voiced their concerns that their own particular mouthpiece should fall into the hands of foreign ownership. Not cricket old chap! You have to understand that if anyo5is going to influence what goes into that most respected organ of public influence it has to be us!
And finally, Britain's first (and undoubtedly most wholesome) family, the Cambridge's - or is it the Wales'....buggered if I know - have released their Christmas Card to the nation in this morning's press. William and Kate, in relaxed pose, flanked by their two boys and seated daughter, all casually smiling for the camera in casual dress of shirts and jeans, and casually positioned for the shot. It's all so......casual.....if you know what I mean.
Looking at the shot however, I just couldn't help seeing the old Queen and her husband surrounded by their kids,and it seemed like history repeating itself. There they are - the perfect family - and all the best to them. But think on what the future might bring if say Prince George has the same relationship as Charles did with his father. The relationship between monarch and heir to the throne is ever a difficult one, the accession of the one to his inheritance being dependent upon the death of the other. Or Charlotte? She would be the equivalent of Princess Anne - a force of nature in her own right. And Louis - God forbid, one could not wish Andrew's fate upon him, but being the 'spare' has never been an easy task at the best of times. And witness the breakdown of William and Harry's relationship as evidence of this, ongoing hostilities as we speak.
No, this bland and perfectly posed picture sits atop a future of history yet to be written - but rest assured (and looking at them I wish it were not so) it will be as turbulent and most likely torrid as the history that has come before. But for all that, they do look happy and they look like essentially good people, and. I, for all my cynicism, can look at a young attractive family like that and genuinely wish them all, the best lives that their positions can grant them.
Pretty thin stuff in today's papers really - nothing to write home about (
).There's a certain amount on the Telegraph and Times front pages about how lockdown was catastrophic in its effect on our society - hugely increasing the divide between the haves and have-nots, effectively making us a two-tier society that threatens to push us back into an almost Victorian era of existence. Tell me something I didn't know.
The Rwanda policy difficulties of Sunak are also highlighted. The so-called 'star-chamber' of ERG lawyers are pouring over the proposed bill prior to Tuesday's vote in the House, and have, so far as reports go, found it wanting. It's full of holes that allow for delaying actions to be brought against flights taking off, they say, and in order to try to bring rebel MPs onside for the vote it is reported that Lord Cameron of Chipping-Norton (the man who destroyed Britain to you and me) has been seconded in front the FO to mount a charm offensive over the weekend. Good luck with that Rishi!
Suella Braverman is writing in the Telegraph that in her 3 visits to Rwanda, she never once encountered any suggestion that they would be reticent to press ahead with the arrangement to take our unwanted illegal immigrants because of worries about infringement of international law, suggesting perhaps that she believes that PM Sunak is telling porkies when he says that this is the reason that his bill cannot go any further in its efforts to get flights off the ground.
The Star on Sunday writes that AI chatbots are crap at writing chatup lines, so you shouldn't rely on them to spice up your chances of winning the affections of a person you fancy, which reminds me of a video I watched on YouTube yesterday. It concerned the forthcoming Google developed AI competitor to Chat-GTP (or whatever it is called), recently being extolled in an introductory video released by the production team. Called Gemini, the AI is bigged-up for its 'multi- modal' capabilities, which essentially means it can use both sound and vision inputs together, to come up with its generated output.
The video demonstrated a conversation with the AI, showing both its vocal and image based output in response to questions being put to it. It was very bland stuff, but interesting nevertheless. It took longer than I did to recognise and describe a line drawing of a duck - I'd seen what it was some two additions to the 'picture' before the machine did (ie my ability to recognise from limited visual clues, to 'represent' if you will, was superior, but still it was impressive. Once it got into slightly deeper stuff like advising on setting up a party event for your daughters birthday, it was pretty impressive in its ability to pull up and narrow down information, and hone it to requirements.
I wondered if the bland nature of the demonstration was hiding more sinister applications - saying a bad fellow wanted plan a bank robbery or worse - to what effect could such tech be used then? I suspect that the program's uses are meant to go much further than planning parties. The effect of the whole was a bit reduced however, when it transpired that quite a bit of the demo had been faked by for instance cutting down the response times etc.
But all in all it seemed like a fairly significant advance over Open AI's Chat-GTP, so time will tell. (Aside; it seemed pretty good at getting the kids homework done for them; whether this is a good thing or not, you decide. )
What else....
The Telegraph are clearly not happy about being bought out by the UAE government and have enlisted the help of ex MI5 (or 6) boss Richard Dearlove to say what a bad idea he thinks it is. The purchase is currently being examined by a public interest investigation called by Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, but numbers of tory MPs have voiced their concerns that their own particular mouthpiece should fall into the hands of foreign ownership. Not cricket old chap! You have to understand that if anyo5is going to influence what goes into that most respected organ of public influence it has to be us!
And finally, Britain's first (and undoubtedly most wholesome) family, the Cambridge's - or is it the Wales'....buggered if I know - have released their Christmas Card to the nation in this morning's press. William and Kate, in relaxed pose, flanked by their two boys and seated daughter, all casually smiling for the camera in casual dress of shirts and jeans, and casually positioned for the shot. It's all so......casual.....if you know what I mean.
Looking at the shot however, I just couldn't help seeing the old Queen and her husband surrounded by their kids,and it seemed like history repeating itself. There they are - the perfect family - and all the best to them. But think on what the future might bring if say Prince George has the same relationship as Charles did with his father. The relationship between monarch and heir to the throne is ever a difficult one, the accession of the one to his inheritance being dependent upon the death of the other. Or Charlotte? She would be the equivalent of Princess Anne - a force of nature in her own right. And Louis - God forbid, one could not wish Andrew's fate upon him, but being the 'spare' has never been an easy task at the best of times. And witness the breakdown of William and Harry's relationship as evidence of this, ongoing hostilities as we speak.
No, this bland and perfectly posed picture sits atop a future of history yet to be written - but rest assured (and looking at them I wish it were not so) it will be as turbulent and most likely torrid as the history that has come before. But for all that, they do look happy and they look like essentially good people, and. I, for all my cynicism, can look at a young attractive family like that and genuinely wish them all, the best lives that their positions can grant them.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
Interesting lead story on the 1pm Sky News bulletin yesterday that hasn't appeared or been taken up by a single other news outlet since - because it wasn't true.
The presenter read out that rumours were circulating in Westminster that a snap general election would be held if Rishi Sunak were to loose his key vote on Tuesday on the Rwanda safety bill. It was as clear a bit of news manipulation in order to send a message to Conservative MPs, that they vote against the Bill at their peril. Clearly Rupert Murdoch, owner of Sky, had been pulled in as a favour to give the Prime Minister a helping hand, by putting the skids under MPs that if they voted against the bill, then it was their own jobs that they were putting in jeopardy. Since many of them face loosing their seats, it was a threat that won't have fallen on deaf ears.
But they needn't have worried. There isn't going to be a snap election and Rishi Sunak is not going to loose the vote. Rather, MPs will see it pass through the House - this time - in expectation of the bill's being able to be strengthened by ammendments in the new year. Earlier Minister for Silly Dancing Michael Gove had indicated in interview with Trevor Phillips, that such a concession might be possible, by saying that the government were prepared to listen to all constructive suggestions as to how the legislation might be tightened up. So they will, but my gut feeling is that it won't be to go as far as the right wing of the parliamentary party wants it to, by insertion of a provision that Ministers must ignore any Rule 39 injunctions by Strasbourg judges (previously used to ground other intended take-offs in the past) - an inclusion that the government insists would be in contravention of international law.
So the threat of a snap election was really unnecessary - a sort of belt and braces affair to dot the i's as it were - but interesting as a nice example of how big media can so easily used by those in power to get its message out, even at the obvious cost to the truth. This was not newscasting to the nation, but use of what should be a trusted media outlet to serve the purpose of a select few individuals. As I say, it was unnecessary - tory MPs have no stomach for an election that they are likely to loose their seats in, and didn't need the cheap cobbling up of this story to persuade them to back the bill. They already had their 'way out' in terms of the possibility of ammendment, but hey - one can never be too careful I suppose. Carrot and stick would about sum it up I guess.
Of more interest perhaps is the forthcoming appearance of Rishi Sunak before the Covid Committee this week.
Oddly, his WhatsApp messages for the crucial period in question, like Boris Johnson's, can simply not be accessed....or is it found (he's changed his phone so many times you see)....or no longer exist....or something. Along with the sudden mysterious illness of Cabinet Secretary Simon Case (another key decision player at the time) that means he simply cannot be expected to appear before the Committee, the absence of all of this vital communication from the time under investigation means that there exists in the middle of the inquiry a great hole, a void of critical information without which a credible verdict or report cannot feasibly be expected. (Case's doctors cannot say what his problem is, but confidently predict that it will clear up, say, shortly after this session of the covid public inquiry ends.)
But in spite of this, this week is going to be sticky for Sunak. He's going to be grilled much like a ten pound steak on one of his 'eat out to help out' nights that been so roundly criticised in hindsight, as being quite possibly responsible for the causing of many thousands of deaths. (Well, I suppose by the metrics being used to ascribe deaths as being included in the Covid figures, the colour of the waiter's underpants could have been a contributory factor in the death figures, but let that go.) The inquisitor he faces will not be kind to him, and it'll be interesting to see how the notoriously short tempered (with questioners) Sunak will hold up under scrutiny. In all likelihood, the Sunak missing messages, as well as the Johnson ones, would show how genuinely indifferent they both were to the threat of covid in terms of its risk to the healthy individual (and how poorly they viewed the collective decision to close down the economy, seeing it as disproportionate) ,but we'll clearly never know. We know that Sunak wanted very much to get the economy open again at the earliest opportunity, and the inquiry will no doubt focus on this as evidence of his not exerting the necessary caution and care about reopening, and thus being in part responsible for additional deaths that might have been avoided had we remained locked down for longer. (I don't suppose that it's a coincidence that yesterday saw the release of that report stating in bald terms just how damaging lockdowns were to this country. Mental illness, school absenteeism, drug and alcohol dependency figures, all through the roof. Social division and income disparity threatening to return us to Victorian levels of deprivation. None of us saw this coming. No - none of us said a word about the possibility of this, did we?)
But anyway, let's just sit back and watch the fireworks. I'm betting that Sunak cannot wait to put this benighted country behind him and get off to California. There's nothing for him here. And after what his party has done to us over the past fourteen years, there's nothing left for any of us here. Except that most of us don't have the option of upping sticks and heading off somewhere new.
The presenter read out that rumours were circulating in Westminster that a snap general election would be held if Rishi Sunak were to loose his key vote on Tuesday on the Rwanda safety bill. It was as clear a bit of news manipulation in order to send a message to Conservative MPs, that they vote against the Bill at their peril. Clearly Rupert Murdoch, owner of Sky, had been pulled in as a favour to give the Prime Minister a helping hand, by putting the skids under MPs that if they voted against the bill, then it was their own jobs that they were putting in jeopardy. Since many of them face loosing their seats, it was a threat that won't have fallen on deaf ears.
But they needn't have worried. There isn't going to be a snap election and Rishi Sunak is not going to loose the vote. Rather, MPs will see it pass through the House - this time - in expectation of the bill's being able to be strengthened by ammendments in the new year. Earlier Minister for Silly Dancing Michael Gove had indicated in interview with Trevor Phillips, that such a concession might be possible, by saying that the government were prepared to listen to all constructive suggestions as to how the legislation might be tightened up. So they will, but my gut feeling is that it won't be to go as far as the right wing of the parliamentary party wants it to, by insertion of a provision that Ministers must ignore any Rule 39 injunctions by Strasbourg judges (previously used to ground other intended take-offs in the past) - an inclusion that the government insists would be in contravention of international law.
So the threat of a snap election was really unnecessary - a sort of belt and braces affair to dot the i's as it were - but interesting as a nice example of how big media can so easily used by those in power to get its message out, even at the obvious cost to the truth. This was not newscasting to the nation, but use of what should be a trusted media outlet to serve the purpose of a select few individuals. As I say, it was unnecessary - tory MPs have no stomach for an election that they are likely to loose their seats in, and didn't need the cheap cobbling up of this story to persuade them to back the bill. They already had their 'way out' in terms of the possibility of ammendment, but hey - one can never be too careful I suppose. Carrot and stick would about sum it up I guess.
Of more interest perhaps is the forthcoming appearance of Rishi Sunak before the Covid Committee this week.
Oddly, his WhatsApp messages for the crucial period in question, like Boris Johnson's, can simply not be accessed....or is it found (he's changed his phone so many times you see)....or no longer exist....or something. Along with the sudden mysterious illness of Cabinet Secretary Simon Case (another key decision player at the time) that means he simply cannot be expected to appear before the Committee, the absence of all of this vital communication from the time under investigation means that there exists in the middle of the inquiry a great hole, a void of critical information without which a credible verdict or report cannot feasibly be expected. (Case's doctors cannot say what his problem is, but confidently predict that it will clear up, say, shortly after this session of the covid public inquiry ends.)
But in spite of this, this week is going to be sticky for Sunak. He's going to be grilled much like a ten pound steak on one of his 'eat out to help out' nights that been so roundly criticised in hindsight, as being quite possibly responsible for the causing of many thousands of deaths. (Well, I suppose by the metrics being used to ascribe deaths as being included in the Covid figures, the colour of the waiter's underpants could have been a contributory factor in the death figures, but let that go.) The inquisitor he faces will not be kind to him, and it'll be interesting to see how the notoriously short tempered (with questioners) Sunak will hold up under scrutiny. In all likelihood, the Sunak missing messages, as well as the Johnson ones, would show how genuinely indifferent they both were to the threat of covid in terms of its risk to the healthy individual (and how poorly they viewed the collective decision to close down the economy, seeing it as disproportionate) ,but we'll clearly never know. We know that Sunak wanted very much to get the economy open again at the earliest opportunity, and the inquiry will no doubt focus on this as evidence of his not exerting the necessary caution and care about reopening, and thus being in part responsible for additional deaths that might have been avoided had we remained locked down for longer. (I don't suppose that it's a coincidence that yesterday saw the release of that report stating in bald terms just how damaging lockdowns were to this country. Mental illness, school absenteeism, drug and alcohol dependency figures, all through the roof. Social division and income disparity threatening to return us to Victorian levels of deprivation. None of us saw this coming. No - none of us said a word about the possibility of this, did we?)
But anyway, let's just sit back and watch the fireworks. I'm betting that Sunak cannot wait to put this benighted country behind him and get off to California. There's nothing for him here. And after what his party has done to us over the past fourteen years, there's nothing left for any of us here. Except that most of us don't have the option of upping sticks and heading off somewhere new.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
The Tory rebels are talking up a good storm over the Rwanda bill, but I'm still of the belief that it will pass through the House tonight.
The last time a major bill lost at the second reading stage was back in the Thatcher era - 1986 or something- when her Sunday Trading bill failed to get through.
On that score, I'd wish today that her attempts to open up the shops for 7 days per week had failed. (Nb. Although the bill failed on that reading, it did subsequently get through in amended form, giving us the Sunday opening times we now 'enjoy'. It fundamentally changed (in my opinion) the nature of our experience of life. Where previously, the months had been broken up into natural units that you really felt, now each week segways into the next in an almost seamless continuum. There was something really nice about a Sunday's leisurely start - the fact that you'd have to occupy yourself differently, more slowly, for just that one day. It was a sort of enforced relaxation, almost of a mini-Christmas Day nature, that really did put a parentheses around each week and made you relax and take stock, whether you wanted to or not.
But back to today's vote, the TV media has been corralled in large part by the government to show interviews with pro-bill MPs:very little time has been allocated to those arguing against. I think that this will carry the day, as MPs realise their current interests are better served by supporting the bill and waiting to exert change upon it on another day. How much of this fight to get the bill overturned is actually about the Rwanda policy (which even its staunchest advocates must realise is unlikely ever to get off the ground - pardon the pun) or actually about unseating Sunak, I'm not sure. There are a number of people, Braverman and Jenrick highest amongst them, who want a tilt at the top job, and they all seem to be coincidentally anti the bill. It's not going to work, but hey, it's worth a try I suppose. Politics is nothing if not unpredictable, and although the clever money is not to indulge in a leadership battle right now, on the eve of a general election, there will be those who say that if they are going to loose the election anyway, then there is nothing to loose by ousting Sunak now and seeing if a new leader can reverse their fortunes a bit.
On Sunak himself, I watched him at the covid public inquiry yesterday and thought that he gave a tolerable account of himself. He seemed to be able to field most of the criticisms that might have been levelled against him, and was not in any way kow-towed by the interviewing lawyer. (He cleverly got a point out about the concentration on a particular issue by saying that Matt Hancock had said that undue attention was being paid to it, when that was what he clearly felt as well.)
But back on Rwanda, I agree with George Monbiot who on last Thursday's BBC Question Time said that the entire thing was just the Tories waving up a dust storm to distract and obscure the real issues of the day which was the staggering levels of inequality and poverty that exist in this supposedly wealthy country. The fifth largest economy in the world we might be, but the wealth inequality we labour under means that for the bulk of the population we experience life as barely better than in a third world country.
Sticking with politics, but at a more....prosaic (?), populist (?)...... level, Nigel Farage has done himself pretty well by his appearance on the celebrity reality show, I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here!
He managed to secure second position overall in the competition, which as per usual saw contestants chowing down on kangaroo penis and other delicacies in the Australian 'jungle'. He avoided the worst of the trials, citing his poorer physical condition as being unlikely to win the team very many meals (a fair consideration) and generally got along very well with his camp mates. He's a genuinely affable man and so this was not surprising, but strangely, the media seems to have rather taken to him as well, as a result of his appearance.
Nigel Farage has been a significant political figure in the UK for many a year now, and has ever been a divisive figure. But he talks in a sensible down to earth manner and people appreciate this. The political establishment has closed ranks against him, even when it might have been appropriate to recognise his contribution to the (mostly) Conservative cause of leaving the European Union. He has never been offered an inroad into mainstream politics in this country, and it seems obvious to me that he would certainly have taken up an offer to join the Conservative ranks post Brexit, had the chance been offered. But I'm getting the feeling that in his own way he's almost forcing open an inroad for himself. He's taken up the fight for proportional representation along with his erstwhile colleagues at Reform UK, and in this at least we agree. I'm a believer that our two party system has demonstrably failed us in the past few decades, and has brought us to the parlous state we now find ourselves in. Neither of our two main parties is fit for purpose and our polity is sorely in need of a fundamental makeover to bring back some serious representation to ordinary people. Only a well thought out PR system can do this and I'd vote for any party that made this a top priority in their manifesto.
-----0-----
A house in London has just broken the record for fetching the highest price that any domestic property has ever reached. The house, near London's Hyde Park, was sold for 138 million pounds to multi-millionaire Adwar Poonawallah, who also enjoys the sobriquet, 'the vaccine king'.
No supprise there really - it's been a good period for the producers of vaccines, and Poonawallah has been in the thick of it. Unsurprisingly, his company has been heavily invested in covid vaccination production and he has been heavily involved with both Unicef and the WHO in pursuit of his interest in the field.
Oddly enough, I'd been saying to Mrs P yesterday that we hadn't heard much of late from that pair of scientists who developed the Astra-Zenica vaccine (and got it off the blocks before any other vaccine producer). It was said at the time that they'd be minting it on the back of this development, and you can bet that somewhere or other, they too will be eyeing up super mansions in walled off estates. Which is ironic really, seeing that their vaccine is now pretty much dropped from usage in virtually every developed country in the world (but still being pumped into arms across much of the third world where safety concerns simply aren't as concerning). No, the husband and wife team we heard so much about in those heady days of being the first vaccine producers in the world are suddenly pretty silent.
All of which gets me to thinking. We've had Johnathan Van Tam disappearing off to work for Moderna - one of the companies whose products he was standing at his plinth, earnestly telling us that he would happily - happily - jab that needle into his own mother's arm himself (I'm suprised that he didn't bring her up onto the stage and do so), to prove to us his belief in the vaccine. We've had every MP and his mother making nice little side earners on PPE and safety equipment contracts. Every person with even the slightest acquaintance with any government department that had access to the huge pot of money that was sloshing around, or with the industries that had dollar and pound signs rolling around in their eyes like wheels in a casino slot-machine, was balls-deep in trying to secure some of that bunce for themselves. And not so much as one mention of any of this in the Covid public inquiry. The role that this might have played in fostering the conditions which kept the whole 'Covid Show' swinging, is completely ignored.
What, for example, about the Sage Committee's that advised the government throughout all of this. Do we even yet know who sat on these committees? What are they all doing now? What were their interests at the time? These people who kept our scientifically illiterate politicians in a state of fear, kept the whole thing screwed up to fever pitch with their doom-laden predictions.......what were their motivations in all of this? Are they now, like Van Tam, sitting in consultancy jobs within the very industries who benefitted so very greatly from the whole disastrous shebang?
I'm not being funny, but given the place where this has left us, given the wreckage that is left of our country, we have a right to know the answers to these questions.
Johnathan Van Tam, Chris Whittey, Sir Patrick Valance Professor Neil Fergusson - these men have if nothing else (the first notwithstanding) become household names. They enjoyed a Celebrity during the pandemic that will have been greatly above that which they were normally used to. This will have been very agreeable (except when Professor Pantsdown was caught with his pants down) and they will have liked it. The nation hanging on every word they said. Whittey and Valance like Gandalf and Dumbledor, standing in front of the nation every week. This alone, in our society, is worth money in the bank. I'll bet you a pound to a penny that even these most austere of scientists have had to employ good accountants to deal with their latterly raised incomes subsequent to the pandemic (and that's without having gone off to work for Moderna). How about all of these other Sage advisors? What are they doing in the post pandemic world that they have bequeathed us?
Worth a look by the covid inquiry that isn't, do you think?
The last time a major bill lost at the second reading stage was back in the Thatcher era - 1986 or something- when her Sunday Trading bill failed to get through.
On that score, I'd wish today that her attempts to open up the shops for 7 days per week had failed. (Nb. Although the bill failed on that reading, it did subsequently get through in amended form, giving us the Sunday opening times we now 'enjoy'. It fundamentally changed (in my opinion) the nature of our experience of life. Where previously, the months had been broken up into natural units that you really felt, now each week segways into the next in an almost seamless continuum. There was something really nice about a Sunday's leisurely start - the fact that you'd have to occupy yourself differently, more slowly, for just that one day. It was a sort of enforced relaxation, almost of a mini-Christmas Day nature, that really did put a parentheses around each week and made you relax and take stock, whether you wanted to or not.
But back to today's vote, the TV media has been corralled in large part by the government to show interviews with pro-bill MPs:very little time has been allocated to those arguing against. I think that this will carry the day, as MPs realise their current interests are better served by supporting the bill and waiting to exert change upon it on another day. How much of this fight to get the bill overturned is actually about the Rwanda policy (which even its staunchest advocates must realise is unlikely ever to get off the ground - pardon the pun) or actually about unseating Sunak, I'm not sure. There are a number of people, Braverman and Jenrick highest amongst them, who want a tilt at the top job, and they all seem to be coincidentally anti the bill. It's not going to work, but hey, it's worth a try I suppose. Politics is nothing if not unpredictable, and although the clever money is not to indulge in a leadership battle right now, on the eve of a general election, there will be those who say that if they are going to loose the election anyway, then there is nothing to loose by ousting Sunak now and seeing if a new leader can reverse their fortunes a bit.
On Sunak himself, I watched him at the covid public inquiry yesterday and thought that he gave a tolerable account of himself. He seemed to be able to field most of the criticisms that might have been levelled against him, and was not in any way kow-towed by the interviewing lawyer. (He cleverly got a point out about the concentration on a particular issue by saying that Matt Hancock had said that undue attention was being paid to it, when that was what he clearly felt as well.)
But back on Rwanda, I agree with George Monbiot who on last Thursday's BBC Question Time said that the entire thing was just the Tories waving up a dust storm to distract and obscure the real issues of the day which was the staggering levels of inequality and poverty that exist in this supposedly wealthy country. The fifth largest economy in the world we might be, but the wealth inequality we labour under means that for the bulk of the population we experience life as barely better than in a third world country.
Sticking with politics, but at a more....prosaic (?), populist (?)...... level, Nigel Farage has done himself pretty well by his appearance on the celebrity reality show, I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here!
He managed to secure second position overall in the competition, which as per usual saw contestants chowing down on kangaroo penis and other delicacies in the Australian 'jungle'. He avoided the worst of the trials, citing his poorer physical condition as being unlikely to win the team very many meals (a fair consideration) and generally got along very well with his camp mates. He's a genuinely affable man and so this was not surprising, but strangely, the media seems to have rather taken to him as well, as a result of his appearance.
Nigel Farage has been a significant political figure in the UK for many a year now, and has ever been a divisive figure. But he talks in a sensible down to earth manner and people appreciate this. The political establishment has closed ranks against him, even when it might have been appropriate to recognise his contribution to the (mostly) Conservative cause of leaving the European Union. He has never been offered an inroad into mainstream politics in this country, and it seems obvious to me that he would certainly have taken up an offer to join the Conservative ranks post Brexit, had the chance been offered. But I'm getting the feeling that in his own way he's almost forcing open an inroad for himself. He's taken up the fight for proportional representation along with his erstwhile colleagues at Reform UK, and in this at least we agree. I'm a believer that our two party system has demonstrably failed us in the past few decades, and has brought us to the parlous state we now find ourselves in. Neither of our two main parties is fit for purpose and our polity is sorely in need of a fundamental makeover to bring back some serious representation to ordinary people. Only a well thought out PR system can do this and I'd vote for any party that made this a top priority in their manifesto.
-----0-----
A house in London has just broken the record for fetching the highest price that any domestic property has ever reached. The house, near London's Hyde Park, was sold for 138 million pounds to multi-millionaire Adwar Poonawallah, who also enjoys the sobriquet, 'the vaccine king'.
No supprise there really - it's been a good period for the producers of vaccines, and Poonawallah has been in the thick of it. Unsurprisingly, his company has been heavily invested in covid vaccination production and he has been heavily involved with both Unicef and the WHO in pursuit of his interest in the field.
Oddly enough, I'd been saying to Mrs P yesterday that we hadn't heard much of late from that pair of scientists who developed the Astra-Zenica vaccine (and got it off the blocks before any other vaccine producer). It was said at the time that they'd be minting it on the back of this development, and you can bet that somewhere or other, they too will be eyeing up super mansions in walled off estates. Which is ironic really, seeing that their vaccine is now pretty much dropped from usage in virtually every developed country in the world (but still being pumped into arms across much of the third world where safety concerns simply aren't as concerning). No, the husband and wife team we heard so much about in those heady days of being the first vaccine producers in the world are suddenly pretty silent.
All of which gets me to thinking. We've had Johnathan Van Tam disappearing off to work for Moderna - one of the companies whose products he was standing at his plinth, earnestly telling us that he would happily - happily - jab that needle into his own mother's arm himself (I'm suprised that he didn't bring her up onto the stage and do so), to prove to us his belief in the vaccine. We've had every MP and his mother making nice little side earners on PPE and safety equipment contracts. Every person with even the slightest acquaintance with any government department that had access to the huge pot of money that was sloshing around, or with the industries that had dollar and pound signs rolling around in their eyes like wheels in a casino slot-machine, was balls-deep in trying to secure some of that bunce for themselves. And not so much as one mention of any of this in the Covid public inquiry. The role that this might have played in fostering the conditions which kept the whole 'Covid Show' swinging, is completely ignored.
What, for example, about the Sage Committee's that advised the government throughout all of this. Do we even yet know who sat on these committees? What are they all doing now? What were their interests at the time? These people who kept our scientifically illiterate politicians in a state of fear, kept the whole thing screwed up to fever pitch with their doom-laden predictions.......what were their motivations in all of this? Are they now, like Van Tam, sitting in consultancy jobs within the very industries who benefitted so very greatly from the whole disastrous shebang?
I'm not being funny, but given the place where this has left us, given the wreckage that is left of our country, we have a right to know the answers to these questions.
Johnathan Van Tam, Chris Whittey, Sir Patrick Valance Professor Neil Fergusson - these men have if nothing else (the first notwithstanding) become household names. They enjoyed a Celebrity during the pandemic that will have been greatly above that which they were normally used to. This will have been very agreeable (except when Professor Pantsdown was caught with his pants down) and they will have liked it. The nation hanging on every word they said. Whittey and Valance like Gandalf and Dumbledor, standing in front of the nation every week. This alone, in our society, is worth money in the bank. I'll bet you a pound to a penny that even these most austere of scientists have had to employ good accountants to deal with their latterly raised incomes subsequent to the pandemic (and that's without having gone off to work for Moderna). How about all of these other Sage advisors? What are they doing in the post pandemic world that they have bequeathed us?
Worth a look by the covid inquiry that isn't, do you think?
Last edited by peter on Wed Dec 13, 2023 7:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
Avatar
- Immanentizing The Eschaton
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Well I assume his stint on "I'm A Celebrity" is intended to generate some mainstream appeal / recognition...I doubt it will be all that beneficial though, (although to be fair I'm not watching it myself. The GF is though.)
--A
--A
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peter
- The Gap Into Spam
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Well it was certainly beneficial to his bank account Av - he reportedly trousered a million and a half quid for the stint. 
But back in the UK now, he is involved already in some kind of dispute with the directors of ITV (the channel that makes the show). He was issuing threats on YouTube yesterday to "Do to you what I did to Dame Alison Rose" if they carried on their shenanigans. He apparently feels that the director insulted him at a public event by essentially saying he could fuck off (in not so many words) and also wasn't happy that he was filmed nude in the jungle shower - shots which were aired on the nightly television show, when other celebrities were not shown in such revealing a manner.
But back to more serious matters, the Tory rebels yesterday did exactly as I said they would and voted through the Rwanda bill with a safe margin. The rebels did their best Grand Old Duke of York impression, marching to the top of the hill then marching down again, by pretty much capitulating en masse with the government instruction to vote for the bill. No votes against and a number of abstentions (including Braverman and Jenrick).
This morning's papers are doing the best they can to pretend that it could have gone the other way (and that it still could), but the truth is that the Tory MP is far too interested in securing power and remaining in it, to do anything that might impact on this. They might have only a short period left in power, but they won't hand that over on a plate just to satisfy an ideal that they might hold.
On the Rwanda policy itself, we keep being told, "It's what the British public want", but if the show of hands on last week's Question Time is anything to go by, this isn't true by a long way. Asked to hold up their hands if they supported the policy (and this is supposedly an audience selected for political balance), virtually none did.I don't doubt that a fair percentage of people do want to see immigration reduced, but they don't see the Rwanda policy as being the way to achieve this. Panelist George Monbiot put it most succinctly, stating that the truth was that neither of our main parties actually want to see immigration reduced, but neither are prepared to be honest about it. The truth is, we need the workers that high immigration brings, and governments just set the rules by which the industries that cannot supply their needs from the home based labour pool can access them. Only by changing these immigration requirements (ie the conditions that must be met for a migrant to come here and work) can the immigration figures be reduced. And neither party will do this because of the negative impacts it would produce in the industries dependent upon migrant labour. Peter Hitchens observed on the same program that until we actually start training our own workers to fill these positions, the situation will never be resolved.
But back in the UK now, he is involved already in some kind of dispute with the directors of ITV (the channel that makes the show). He was issuing threats on YouTube yesterday to "Do to you what I did to Dame Alison Rose" if they carried on their shenanigans. He apparently feels that the director insulted him at a public event by essentially saying he could fuck off (in not so many words) and also wasn't happy that he was filmed nude in the jungle shower - shots which were aired on the nightly television show, when other celebrities were not shown in such revealing a manner.
But back to more serious matters, the Tory rebels yesterday did exactly as I said they would and voted through the Rwanda bill with a safe margin. The rebels did their best Grand Old Duke of York impression, marching to the top of the hill then marching down again, by pretty much capitulating en masse with the government instruction to vote for the bill. No votes against and a number of abstentions (including Braverman and Jenrick).
This morning's papers are doing the best they can to pretend that it could have gone the other way (and that it still could), but the truth is that the Tory MP is far too interested in securing power and remaining in it, to do anything that might impact on this. They might have only a short period left in power, but they won't hand that over on a plate just to satisfy an ideal that they might hold.
On the Rwanda policy itself, we keep being told, "It's what the British public want", but if the show of hands on last week's Question Time is anything to go by, this isn't true by a long way. Asked to hold up their hands if they supported the policy (and this is supposedly an audience selected for political balance), virtually none did.I don't doubt that a fair percentage of people do want to see immigration reduced, but they don't see the Rwanda policy as being the way to achieve this. Panelist George Monbiot put it most succinctly, stating that the truth was that neither of our main parties actually want to see immigration reduced, but neither are prepared to be honest about it. The truth is, we need the workers that high immigration brings, and governments just set the rules by which the industries that cannot supply their needs from the home based labour pool can access them. Only by changing these immigration requirements (ie the conditions that must be met for a migrant to come here and work) can the immigration figures be reduced. And neither party will do this because of the negative impacts it would produce in the industries dependent upon migrant labour. Peter Hitchens observed on the same program that until we actually start training our own workers to fill these positions, the situation will never be resolved.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
It's always tragic when someone dies as a result of a hyperallergic response to something they've eaten, but changing the laws every time it happens isn't going to prevent it.
I work in shop where the process of serving hot food has been complicated beyond belief by the need to present details of every ingredient of every item of food we sell.
Natasha's Law, so named after a young lass who died following consumption of a roll containing sesame seeds or flour therefrom, to which she was allergic, requires that the 14 major allergens of any in-store prepared food item be clearly displayed on its wrapping, or on the counter itself if the product is displayed unwrapped. It means bagging and labelling with large labels items that were previously sold unwrapped, it takes significant time to package and label in this manner, and results if one is not careful, in food falling below the safe lower temperature while it is waiting to be wrapped and labelled. What was once a simple process of removal of food from the ovens and transferring into the warmers, is now a time consuming and energy expensive procedure. Costs are increased and must inevitably be passed on to the consumer. Waste packaging is increased and must be carted away and disposed of, either in bulk in the shop or in the domestic settings or urban waste bins erc where it is ultimately disposed of.
Now another teenager has died in a restaurant and there are calls that all menus in seated eating establishments should have clearly displayed on their menus, similar information to that required by shops.
Not being funny, but countless millions of hot food items and restaurant/cafe meals are served every year and the numbers of deaths resulting from allergic attacks therefrom could be counted on the fingers of one hand. If these hyperallergic medical conditions are known to the individuals who suffer from them in advance of their sitting down and ordering a meal or buying a hot product - and surely they must be, otherwise there would be little to be gained from putting the information on display in the first place - then surely the onus must be on them to exercise caution in what they buy in recognition of this. Do so many people suffer from these life threatening levels of hyperallergy that significant advantage is gained by altering the entire food presentation industry practice thereby?
Terrible as the blows are to individuals and families who suffer such loses, I believe that the onus must be on them to manage the conditions of which their children (or indeed they themselves) suffer, and that the responsibility for taking sufficient care to do so must lie with them. I believe laws of this kind are knee-jerk reactions to problems that are minimal at worst (at a societal level) and that very often the changes demanded by them result in greater collateral harms elsewhere than damage is prevented in the areas they are designed to adress.
-----0-----
I sighed a heavy sigh last night watching the 6 pm news, as yet another Cop summit (this time in Dubai - nice playground to go on a jolly at the taxpayers expense, no doubt) drew to a close.
Another nail-biting finish, another world-changing deal signed as the midnight oil burned low, stamped and delivered at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour. Phew! Thank goodness for that. Now we can all rest easy in our beds.
But even the BBC correspondent who was delivering the report was struggling to make it sound anything other than what it was. A series of vague promises to 'do a bit more', to 'try a bit harder' not to destroy the world.
The fact that the guy organising the event was the CEO (or something) of one of the major oil companies of the middle east said it all really. He was about as interested in leaving fossil fuels in the ground as Bernard Matthews is in horticulture of lambs-lettuce. His whole world depends upon getting it out. Every one and his mother knows that all of those delegates who were clapping and slapping each other on the back at the end of the affair are going to go back to their home countries and do precisely fuck-all.
It's all piss and wind. It won't change anything. We know it won't change anything (despite the BBC presenters over-played assurance that it would). So why do they bother. Why don't they leave the fucking tons of fossil fuels used to fly out all of the politicians and representatives of the industries, to generate the energy to run the whole gargantuan show, in the fucking ground and stay the fuck at home. 28 of these shit-shows and nothing to show for any one of them. I don't know if man-made climate change is a real thing or not - but if it is then be sure, these clowns are not going to sort it out.
Leave it to the planet to do that - or not - as the case may be. Nothing we can do is getting right side of this and it's pure folly to believe it is. What do we think that this is - a fucking dial that we can turn down like it was the central frigging heating? We couldn't do anything about this even if we had a mind to - which from the results dished up by all of those blowbags talking at the Cop 28 summit we clearly don't. So let's just forget it. It's a waste of time.
-----0-----
Two industries that have the world in the palm of their hands. The pharmaceutical industry and the arms industry. The one keeps our leaders believing that we must continually have jabs stuck in our arms, keeps us believing that we must take their products in ever increasing daily quantities just to stay alive. It thrives on the doomsday predictions of pandemics and the development of ever longer lists of conditions for us to be treated against. Convinces the world that it is continually on the verge of pestilence and rampant disease. And having done so, provides the cures, the jabs, the pills we need in order to survive this.
The other wrings its hands every time a suggestion of a war ending, of peace rearing its head, is made. It thrives on the absolute maintenance of fear that war is inevitable, and is just around the corner at all points. It cares nothing for the lives that are chewed up by the money printing machine it has built up, and concerns itself only with the accrual of more and yet more. It draws in the politicians that make the decisions, the generals who advise them and sweetens the pie for anyone and anything that will further its aim towards continual and unceasing war. It ruthlessly decries anyone who deviates from its narrative that we must at all times believe that we are under threat and must spend vast quantities in defending ourselves against this.
This is the corporate nightmare we have fashioned for ourselves to live in. Or should I rather say has been fashioned for us. It serves the interest of a tiny corporate elite and ensures that the accrual of wealth is a one-way process in a never ending stream in their direction. The illusion of democracy, of choice, is maintained all around us, while all of the while these two giant monoliths sit above all else, guiding and cajoling, buying and bribing, and discrediting and eliminating where the former are not possible. They farm this world for its profits and we, like the sheep we are, serve ourselves up for the carving.
I work in shop where the process of serving hot food has been complicated beyond belief by the need to present details of every ingredient of every item of food we sell.
Natasha's Law, so named after a young lass who died following consumption of a roll containing sesame seeds or flour therefrom, to which she was allergic, requires that the 14 major allergens of any in-store prepared food item be clearly displayed on its wrapping, or on the counter itself if the product is displayed unwrapped. It means bagging and labelling with large labels items that were previously sold unwrapped, it takes significant time to package and label in this manner, and results if one is not careful, in food falling below the safe lower temperature while it is waiting to be wrapped and labelled. What was once a simple process of removal of food from the ovens and transferring into the warmers, is now a time consuming and energy expensive procedure. Costs are increased and must inevitably be passed on to the consumer. Waste packaging is increased and must be carted away and disposed of, either in bulk in the shop or in the domestic settings or urban waste bins erc where it is ultimately disposed of.
Now another teenager has died in a restaurant and there are calls that all menus in seated eating establishments should have clearly displayed on their menus, similar information to that required by shops.
Not being funny, but countless millions of hot food items and restaurant/cafe meals are served every year and the numbers of deaths resulting from allergic attacks therefrom could be counted on the fingers of one hand. If these hyperallergic medical conditions are known to the individuals who suffer from them in advance of their sitting down and ordering a meal or buying a hot product - and surely they must be, otherwise there would be little to be gained from putting the information on display in the first place - then surely the onus must be on them to exercise caution in what they buy in recognition of this. Do so many people suffer from these life threatening levels of hyperallergy that significant advantage is gained by altering the entire food presentation industry practice thereby?
Terrible as the blows are to individuals and families who suffer such loses, I believe that the onus must be on them to manage the conditions of which their children (or indeed they themselves) suffer, and that the responsibility for taking sufficient care to do so must lie with them. I believe laws of this kind are knee-jerk reactions to problems that are minimal at worst (at a societal level) and that very often the changes demanded by them result in greater collateral harms elsewhere than damage is prevented in the areas they are designed to adress.
-----0-----
I sighed a heavy sigh last night watching the 6 pm news, as yet another Cop summit (this time in Dubai - nice playground to go on a jolly at the taxpayers expense, no doubt) drew to a close.
Another nail-biting finish, another world-changing deal signed as the midnight oil burned low, stamped and delivered at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour. Phew! Thank goodness for that. Now we can all rest easy in our beds.
But even the BBC correspondent who was delivering the report was struggling to make it sound anything other than what it was. A series of vague promises to 'do a bit more', to 'try a bit harder' not to destroy the world.
The fact that the guy organising the event was the CEO (or something) of one of the major oil companies of the middle east said it all really. He was about as interested in leaving fossil fuels in the ground as Bernard Matthews is in horticulture of lambs-lettuce. His whole world depends upon getting it out. Every one and his mother knows that all of those delegates who were clapping and slapping each other on the back at the end of the affair are going to go back to their home countries and do precisely fuck-all.
It's all piss and wind. It won't change anything. We know it won't change anything (despite the BBC presenters over-played assurance that it would). So why do they bother. Why don't they leave the fucking tons of fossil fuels used to fly out all of the politicians and representatives of the industries, to generate the energy to run the whole gargantuan show, in the fucking ground and stay the fuck at home. 28 of these shit-shows and nothing to show for any one of them. I don't know if man-made climate change is a real thing or not - but if it is then be sure, these clowns are not going to sort it out.
Leave it to the planet to do that - or not - as the case may be. Nothing we can do is getting right side of this and it's pure folly to believe it is. What do we think that this is - a fucking dial that we can turn down like it was the central frigging heating? We couldn't do anything about this even if we had a mind to - which from the results dished up by all of those blowbags talking at the Cop 28 summit we clearly don't. So let's just forget it. It's a waste of time.
-----0-----
Two industries that have the world in the palm of their hands. The pharmaceutical industry and the arms industry. The one keeps our leaders believing that we must continually have jabs stuck in our arms, keeps us believing that we must take their products in ever increasing daily quantities just to stay alive. It thrives on the doomsday predictions of pandemics and the development of ever longer lists of conditions for us to be treated against. Convinces the world that it is continually on the verge of pestilence and rampant disease. And having done so, provides the cures, the jabs, the pills we need in order to survive this.
The other wrings its hands every time a suggestion of a war ending, of peace rearing its head, is made. It thrives on the absolute maintenance of fear that war is inevitable, and is just around the corner at all points. It cares nothing for the lives that are chewed up by the money printing machine it has built up, and concerns itself only with the accrual of more and yet more. It draws in the politicians that make the decisions, the generals who advise them and sweetens the pie for anyone and anything that will further its aim towards continual and unceasing war. It ruthlessly decries anyone who deviates from its narrative that we must at all times believe that we are under threat and must spend vast quantities in defending ourselves against this.
This is the corporate nightmare we have fashioned for ourselves to live in. Or should I rather say has been fashioned for us. It serves the interest of a tiny corporate elite and ensures that the accrual of wealth is a one-way process in a never ending stream in their direction. The illusion of democracy, of choice, is maintained all around us, while all of the while these two giant monoliths sit above all else, guiding and cajoling, buying and bribing, and discrediting and eliminating where the former are not possible. They farm this world for its profits and we, like the sheep we are, serve ourselves up for the carving.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
There is of course a third industry with much to answer for - the tobacco industry.
I've been posting for some time now on the rising use of vapes, particularly in young people, and how the products are designed specifically to appeal to this group, via their colourful packaging and sweet confectionery style flavours (not to mention their prominent display positioning in retail outlets, near the counters).
It's been obvious to me that these were not only deliberately targeting a young demographic, but were actively drawing young people into the habitual use of nicotine products who had never previously smoked cigarettes or relied upon other less alluring vaping products. I even went so far as to write to my MP about this development, telling a particular story in which I had witnessed two eight or nine year olds in the shop, looking longingly at the rainbow like array of Elf and Crystal bars, and discussing which products their own parents used. Her response was that the products were known to be helpful in helping people stop smoking, and pretty much end of. I didn't have the energy to write back and say that there wasn't much point in this if they were drawing even more people onto the slippery slope towards smoking at the other end, but fortunately PM Sunak did at least seem to get this, and being her ultimate boss, I'm guessing she is now beginning to realise that this is a serious problem that needs addressing.
And now we have it in black and white in today's Times, that the push to encourage the usage and sale of these vaping products has come - you guessed it - from the big tobacco companies themselves. The paper reports that Tobacco giant Phillip Morris, has spent huge sums paying for promotional drives within the NHS, encouraging doctors to promote the usage of vaping products as a preferable alternative to smoking. Along with it's competitor in crime, BAT, huge efforts have been made to downplay the risks to young people of taking up vaping - a problem which is now reaching epidemic proportions with as many as twenty percent of our young people regularly using vapes.
A personal anecdote here, I recently went to Dublin for a few days, and being a smoker (weak fool that I am) as always was faced with the situation that while away I'd be staying in an environment in which smoking was prohibited. In anticipation of this, I bought one of these sweet flavoured vapes (pineapple flavoured) to fall back on while away. I used the thing on a pretty irregular basis over the three days (I'm not a heavy smoker and can pretty much go without at need) - say about ten or fifteen puffs in the evening before going to bed. Within days I could feel the effects of the thing on my lungs. It was clearly having a more deleterious effect on me than the few cigarettes I was smoking a day and so I put it aside. I'm convinced that far from being less harmful than smoking, with vapes it is simply the case that the harmful effects have not yet been identified and have not manifested themselves in an identifiable way.
This is the more concerning in terms of youth vaping, where the harms that have been recorded seem to involve youngsters who have used the products almost as replacement sweets, sometimes going through whole 'sticks' at a single sitting (ie not using them intermittently, as one would say smoke a packet of cigarettes). This would tie in with my experience of the purchasing habits of the youngsters I'm selling to, who seem to buy three of the products (due to promotional discounts for bulk buys) on an almost daily basis. I am assiduous in my age checking of youngsters making these purchases, even going so far as to age-check whole groups of youngsters before I will sell e-products to any one of them, but I'm not in a position to refuse these sales when youngsters have demonstrated their right in law to be able to buy them. I'm not a judge, jury and executioner in these matters, and have no legal power to refuse sales to those who have rights of purchase because I don't agree with it.
And if I'm honest, I'm not sure that our polity as a whole is that concerned with dealing with this problem. Other countries ban the sale of these sweet flavoured vapes, make sellers keep the products out of view of customers, restrict the use of promotional discounts etc, but not us. We stubbornly resist the imposition of such measures and seemingly actively promote the use of these products. Could this be because our exchequer takes upwards of fifteen billion pounds a year in tobacco related taxes? That on the surface they wave and gesticulate their hatred of the tobacco industry and smoking, but underneath are going to do nothing that actually puts a stop to this huge source of revenue that the government enjoys? (Ah - but what about the recent incremental rise in the age of purchasing of tobacco products you'll ask? Surely a sign of their intention to stamp out the evil habit? Pffft! Easily overturned, and just as easily replaced by taxes taken from the alternative (ie vaping) products that will be developed in order to fill the gap if it isn't.)
There is so little sense in our government's approach to this issue that it becomes hard to see any alternative logic behind what they are (or are not) doing.
I've been posting for some time now on the rising use of vapes, particularly in young people, and how the products are designed specifically to appeal to this group, via their colourful packaging and sweet confectionery style flavours (not to mention their prominent display positioning in retail outlets, near the counters).
It's been obvious to me that these were not only deliberately targeting a young demographic, but were actively drawing young people into the habitual use of nicotine products who had never previously smoked cigarettes or relied upon other less alluring vaping products. I even went so far as to write to my MP about this development, telling a particular story in which I had witnessed two eight or nine year olds in the shop, looking longingly at the rainbow like array of Elf and Crystal bars, and discussing which products their own parents used. Her response was that the products were known to be helpful in helping people stop smoking, and pretty much end of. I didn't have the energy to write back and say that there wasn't much point in this if they were drawing even more people onto the slippery slope towards smoking at the other end, but fortunately PM Sunak did at least seem to get this, and being her ultimate boss, I'm guessing she is now beginning to realise that this is a serious problem that needs addressing.
And now we have it in black and white in today's Times, that the push to encourage the usage and sale of these vaping products has come - you guessed it - from the big tobacco companies themselves. The paper reports that Tobacco giant Phillip Morris, has spent huge sums paying for promotional drives within the NHS, encouraging doctors to promote the usage of vaping products as a preferable alternative to smoking. Along with it's competitor in crime, BAT, huge efforts have been made to downplay the risks to young people of taking up vaping - a problem which is now reaching epidemic proportions with as many as twenty percent of our young people regularly using vapes.
A personal anecdote here, I recently went to Dublin for a few days, and being a smoker (weak fool that I am) as always was faced with the situation that while away I'd be staying in an environment in which smoking was prohibited. In anticipation of this, I bought one of these sweet flavoured vapes (pineapple flavoured) to fall back on while away. I used the thing on a pretty irregular basis over the three days (I'm not a heavy smoker and can pretty much go without at need) - say about ten or fifteen puffs in the evening before going to bed. Within days I could feel the effects of the thing on my lungs. It was clearly having a more deleterious effect on me than the few cigarettes I was smoking a day and so I put it aside. I'm convinced that far from being less harmful than smoking, with vapes it is simply the case that the harmful effects have not yet been identified and have not manifested themselves in an identifiable way.
This is the more concerning in terms of youth vaping, where the harms that have been recorded seem to involve youngsters who have used the products almost as replacement sweets, sometimes going through whole 'sticks' at a single sitting (ie not using them intermittently, as one would say smoke a packet of cigarettes). This would tie in with my experience of the purchasing habits of the youngsters I'm selling to, who seem to buy three of the products (due to promotional discounts for bulk buys) on an almost daily basis. I am assiduous in my age checking of youngsters making these purchases, even going so far as to age-check whole groups of youngsters before I will sell e-products to any one of them, but I'm not in a position to refuse these sales when youngsters have demonstrated their right in law to be able to buy them. I'm not a judge, jury and executioner in these matters, and have no legal power to refuse sales to those who have rights of purchase because I don't agree with it.
And if I'm honest, I'm not sure that our polity as a whole is that concerned with dealing with this problem. Other countries ban the sale of these sweet flavoured vapes, make sellers keep the products out of view of customers, restrict the use of promotional discounts etc, but not us. We stubbornly resist the imposition of such measures and seemingly actively promote the use of these products. Could this be because our exchequer takes upwards of fifteen billion pounds a year in tobacco related taxes? That on the surface they wave and gesticulate their hatred of the tobacco industry and smoking, but underneath are going to do nothing that actually puts a stop to this huge source of revenue that the government enjoys? (Ah - but what about the recent incremental rise in the age of purchasing of tobacco products you'll ask? Surely a sign of their intention to stamp out the evil habit? Pffft! Easily overturned, and just as easily replaced by taxes taken from the alternative (ie vaping) products that will be developed in order to fill the gap if it isn't.)
There is so little sense in our government's approach to this issue that it becomes hard to see any alternative logic behind what they are (or are not) doing.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
There is a direct - what's the word - contradiction (shall we say) - in the government's position of standing "shoulder to shoulder" with Israel in its actions in Gaza, and its simultaneous position that any solution to the troubles of the region must rest upon the basis of the two state solution. That is because the Israeli government of Netenyahu absolutely rejects any possibility of the two state solution ever being adopted.
In a recent interview on Sky News, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, rejected out of hand any settlement based upon the Palestinian people having their own autonomous state. One assumes that she has at least some idea of where her employers thinking is on this.
In fact she was merely iterating in English, what is the normal position of the Israeli government as spoken within Israel itself in Hebrew. Netenyahu has never made any secret of his contempt for the two state solution, but this is rarely expressed openly outside of the borders of Israel itself.
In March, the Israeli finance minister went yet further. This remember, is a politician that sits right at the heart of the Israeli administration - say the equivalent of Jeremy Hunt here - and he gave a talk in which he said that the Palestinian people were not a real people - they did not exist while standing next to a map showing the territory which would be controlled under the idea of a 'Greater Israel'. On this map, next to this senior Israeli government minister, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (along, it seems, with the Palestinians) had simply ceased to exist. As James O'Brien noted in a YouTube video recently, this received scant attention in the Western press, but the Jordanians themselves were outraged and fired off an angry missive to the Israeli government to that effect.
O'Brien then refered to comments made by Joe Biden that it seemed that Israel was no longer interested in the destruction of Hamas but simply wanted to punish the Palestinian people as a whole. This O'Brien said, had to be the inescapable conclusion that one was inexorably forced to draw from the ever mounting death toll of civilians as the Israeli operation continued. At what point would "Israel [having] the right to defend herself" stop, he asked. How many Palestinian civilian lives were they prepared to sacrifice on the alter of the destruction of Hamas? All of them? Two million? Was that what this was? An ethnic cleansing? A genocide?
Because once the two state solution is abandoned, what are you left with? A fight that never ends until one side or the other is eliminated? This, taking the words of the Israeli Ambassador, the Israeli Finance Minister and Joe Biden, together with the ongoing actions of the Israeli government, seems to be where we are. And that's a sad place for the world to be in in the twenty-first century
-----0-----
You will no doubt be surprised to learn that I'm not a fan of Christmas.
People broadly fall into two categories in regards to Christmas, either loving it or hating it, and the group they fall into being largly dependant upon whether they are the schmucks that do all of the work, or the ones who sit on their arses getting pissed or stuffing their faces while being waited on hand and foot by the others. Unsurprisingly the first type, the ones who actually make it happen, tend not to enjoy it much and the second, the ones that Christmas happens to, love every minute of it.
I tend to sit somewhere in the middle. I do my bit, ferrying people around and taking a pitch at helping with the dinner etc, but I don't beat the shit out of it and draw the line at turning myself into a slave for the day. Luckily for me, Mrs P is pretty good at organisation and actually does most of the graft in advance. We've pretty much sorted the dinner out already (it's a lamb casserole affair that we will supplement with lamb cutlets and roast potatoes etc on the day). I haven't bought a Christmas card for years and really just don't engage with the thing very much at all. I'm a creature of habit and to me it's a disruption I could do without.
But I don't hate it to the point where I'd stop it, or begrudge anyone else from enjoying it. I'm more.... indifferent to it really. If it doesn't bother me, I won't bother it. And it doesn't bother me. I'd like a little more realisation that it is essentially a Christian festival, and that if you aren't a Christian then it's really just an excuse to get together and overdo things. But aside from that, let it go. But please, please, please, could someone come up with some new Christmas songs for these clowns on the radio to play. If I hear Noddy fucking Holder bellowing, "It's Chriiiiistmass!" once more this year, I swear I'll scream!
In a recent interview on Sky News, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, rejected out of hand any settlement based upon the Palestinian people having their own autonomous state. One assumes that she has at least some idea of where her employers thinking is on this.
In fact she was merely iterating in English, what is the normal position of the Israeli government as spoken within Israel itself in Hebrew. Netenyahu has never made any secret of his contempt for the two state solution, but this is rarely expressed openly outside of the borders of Israel itself.
In March, the Israeli finance minister went yet further. This remember, is a politician that sits right at the heart of the Israeli administration - say the equivalent of Jeremy Hunt here - and he gave a talk in which he said that the Palestinian people were not a real people - they did not exist while standing next to a map showing the territory which would be controlled under the idea of a 'Greater Israel'. On this map, next to this senior Israeli government minister, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (along, it seems, with the Palestinians) had simply ceased to exist. As James O'Brien noted in a YouTube video recently, this received scant attention in the Western press, but the Jordanians themselves were outraged and fired off an angry missive to the Israeli government to that effect.
O'Brien then refered to comments made by Joe Biden that it seemed that Israel was no longer interested in the destruction of Hamas but simply wanted to punish the Palestinian people as a whole. This O'Brien said, had to be the inescapable conclusion that one was inexorably forced to draw from the ever mounting death toll of civilians as the Israeli operation continued. At what point would "Israel [having] the right to defend herself" stop, he asked. How many Palestinian civilian lives were they prepared to sacrifice on the alter of the destruction of Hamas? All of them? Two million? Was that what this was? An ethnic cleansing? A genocide?
Because once the two state solution is abandoned, what are you left with? A fight that never ends until one side or the other is eliminated? This, taking the words of the Israeli Ambassador, the Israeli Finance Minister and Joe Biden, together with the ongoing actions of the Israeli government, seems to be where we are. And that's a sad place for the world to be in in the twenty-first century
-----0-----
You will no doubt be surprised to learn that I'm not a fan of Christmas.
People broadly fall into two categories in regards to Christmas, either loving it or hating it, and the group they fall into being largly dependant upon whether they are the schmucks that do all of the work, or the ones who sit on their arses getting pissed or stuffing their faces while being waited on hand and foot by the others. Unsurprisingly the first type, the ones who actually make it happen, tend not to enjoy it much and the second, the ones that Christmas happens to, love every minute of it.
I tend to sit somewhere in the middle. I do my bit, ferrying people around and taking a pitch at helping with the dinner etc, but I don't beat the shit out of it and draw the line at turning myself into a slave for the day. Luckily for me, Mrs P is pretty good at organisation and actually does most of the graft in advance. We've pretty much sorted the dinner out already (it's a lamb casserole affair that we will supplement with lamb cutlets and roast potatoes etc on the day). I haven't bought a Christmas card for years and really just don't engage with the thing very much at all. I'm a creature of habit and to me it's a disruption I could do without.
But I don't hate it to the point where I'd stop it, or begrudge anyone else from enjoying it. I'm more.... indifferent to it really. If it doesn't bother me, I won't bother it. And it doesn't bother me. I'd like a little more realisation that it is essentially a Christian festival, and that if you aren't a Christian then it's really just an excuse to get together and overdo things. But aside from that, let it go. But please, please, please, could someone come up with some new Christmas songs for these clowns on the radio to play. If I hear Noddy fucking Holder bellowing, "It's Chriiiiistmass!" once more this year, I swear I'll scream!
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
Ukraine is discovering that the West can be fairweather friends when it comes to the continual dishing out of money for what is beginning to look, if not exactly like a lost cause, then at least a much longer haul than the latter was ever prepared to swallow.
It all hung on results and from what small news we are now being provided with, these (like Ukrainian troops) are starting to seem thin on the ground.
Russia, with its larger supply of manpower and higher replacement capacity for armaments, is, after its slow start, starting to bed in to its task and find its rhythm in holding the territory it occupies against failing Ukrainian thrusts. And this was always the way it was going to be - which is unfortunate for Zelensky and even more so for the young men (and old) now desperately trying to demonstrate to a Western audience who has found a new show in town, that the candle is still worth the wick. Zelensky is still 'on tour', but the fashion for combat greens has moved on, and blue and yellow is no longer exciting the audiences lining the catwalk. Both the US and now the EU are struggling to convince their more difficult elements that funding should be continued on an almost continuous basis - and more so now that the continual diet of propoganda that 'Putin is loosing the war' and 'Russia is burning up its resources', is proving to be just that.....the jingoistic propoganda that was never worth the paper it was written on. All the talk of 'in it to the end' is beginning to sound a bit hollow as the true nature of the capitalist beast begins to show itself - that without constant gain that can be held before the guys who hold the purse strings, the golden goose will soon stop laying.
Its desperately sad for the huge numbers of dead on both sides that it has taken this long for the inevitable to happen. The situation was always going ultimately to have to be resolved around the negotiating table, and so it will be. We are not there yet and my guess is that a change of Ukrainian leadership will probably be required for it to happen, but if Trump wins back the White House next year then the process will probably be expedited somewhat. This can only be beneficial to the people of Ukraine who will find their lives no worse by the ceding of the contested territories to Russia (in what ever form it takes) than under the perpetual war they have experienced since (what is it) 2016 or whatever, when hostilities in the east of the country first began. Perhaps then some desperately needed rebuilding of both the lives and the surrounding infrastructure of these shockingly ill done by people can begin. This is expenditure that I for one would cheer from the rafters. Our provoking of this conflict and our fuelling of the same, for the simple expedient of putting the skids under the Putin regime in Moscow has been disastrous for the victims of our warmongering - the men and boys of both Ukraine and Russia who have paid the ultimate price. Devastating also to their parents, wives and families who have seen their homes, their towns and cities, reduced to rubble around them. And for what? So that one master, of whom they know nothing, of whom their lives bears no relation to, can be replaced by another. Individuals who sit above them, making decisions that reduce their lives to wreckage, and then walk away to count their spoils while they, the normal day to day people of the countries, the 'Joe's in the street', carry the cost.
-----0-----
In his inaugural speech of January 20, 2009, newly elected President of the United States of America Barack Obama promised, "We will restore science to its rightful place." What did he mean by this?
I think what he was referring to, was the way in which states, corporations, powerful individuals, could via funding, patronage, and the threat of removal of this, influence and pressure the supposedly objective practice of 'science'; to skew results, even to the point of downright fabrication or falsification, such that their own interests, their own narratives, were supported at the expense of rigorous adherence to the practice upon which the entire bedrock of the discipline depended.
The fabled objectivity of science has always been a bit of a myth - it is after all a discipline carried out by human beings, and scientists, even with the best of intentions, the highest of ideals, are subject to the same frailties and weaknesses as the rest of us. A tweak of the figures here, the dropping of a result there - what harm can it do if it lends weight to a conclusion that you know is the right one anyway? Sure, that anomalous result is a result nevertheless - but the good should never be sacrificed upon the alter of the perfect, right?
But things, if I'm reading Obama correctly, had become much worse than this. We were in a position where say entire health or defence budgets - eye-watering sums of money - could be directed this way or that, dependent upon the results of studies, of surveys, that were open to interpretation: and where governmental funding is concerned, profit lines on graphs of private business are never far behind. What research receives funding, how that research progresses and the results it throws up, are crucial factors in deciding how these budgets are spent. And it is no exaggeration to say that lives are dependent upon such decisions. The temptation to ensure that 'the science' is behind you when you present your reasoning behind this decision or that, by straying off the path of pure objectivity, is huge, and governments are formed, as is science, from the same weak clay of human nature, when the chips are down.
Now I'd never have given all of this much thought (even though I was aware of the existence of such problems) prior to the pandemic. Suddenly however, I could see how the game was being manipulated, baldly and without restraint, in order to elicit compliance with a general public who under normal circumstances, would never have accepted in a million years, the costs that were being levied upon them, the actions that were being asked demanded of them. It was being done before my very eyes, this manipulation of figures, this use of ambiguous language with the daily parading of 'the science' before the eyes of an uncomprehending public, in order to sway public opinion in acceptance of a narrative that I could see was flawed. My experience of the pandemic was simply not what I was being told, and I could see it. The use of selective imagery, massaged data and trading upon the largely imaginary objectivity of 'science' (and the pretty unjustified degree of societal respect which science enjoyed) was being used to baldly manipulate people accept things that they very much should not.
And suddenly the problem that Obama had referred to was shoved rudely into my face, became a material factor in my daily life (and to the detriment thereof.
Now I'm not by and large a conspiracy minded person. I don't consider that the mistake of the pandemic was other than just that - a mistake. But somehow science got into alliance with government on an issue that once started, ran away with itself. If you send a man out to find a problem, then you shouldn't be suprised if he finds a problem. We had this huge superstructure of Health, bent upon the business of prediction of disease patterns at the global level, and they had long been gaming scenarios where viruses run amock through the population of the world to catastrophic effect. This was our man sent out to find a problem, and a problem they duly found. But the problem was that the people they were advising were not themselves scientists, and they could not but take these highly trained specialists at their word. These politicians could not see that in science, as in all things,
there is room for doubt. They, the politicians, were simply humans that did not want to be seen to be failing to have taken seriously a problem that they were being told was on the horizon galloping towards them. But they failed to realise that the very people who were warning them of this apocalypse were themselves fallible humans - and that they in turn were just as fearful of getting the thing wrong, and so playing on the side of caution were presenting the worst case scenarios, in order that if they were realised, they too would be seen to be on the right side of history.
And so the conditions were laid such that an avalanche of action, followed by reaction, and then further action, led us to a place where panicking governments laid policies of restrictions on their populations, shut down their economies, and then manipulated figures and imagery in order to illicit compliance. And then having done so, those figures, that data fed into a further narrative that then had to be gone along with, that the pandemic indeed had been this existential threat that had nearly brought humankind to its knees. It wasn't and it hadn't. But again, the science could be relied upon to show that it had. So in my opinion, the whole thing was an exercise in folly, based upon an extraordinary alignment of circumstances and underpinned by ordinary human failing. We created by accident, a Frankenstein of interests and complex interactions, that gave birth to a monster that once out of the castle, ran amock through our world. But the monster was not the virus: rather it was the chain of consequences that ran rampant and unchecked through our societies, with no-one having the power or the courage to say it nay. Fear of being labled as having destroyed our economies, our societies for nothing did its work, and is still doing it today. The same manipulated figures used to elicit the public compliance needed at the time now serve to justify what was done, and to further the narrative that there was no alternative.
And despite Barack Obama's fine words, I'm afraid that science to this day, still capitulates to the demands of politics, at the expense of objectivity and rational adherence to the principles upon which its value as a discipline is based. It serves all to often as the piper, serving the needs of the master who calls the tune.
It all hung on results and from what small news we are now being provided with, these (like Ukrainian troops) are starting to seem thin on the ground.
Russia, with its larger supply of manpower and higher replacement capacity for armaments, is, after its slow start, starting to bed in to its task and find its rhythm in holding the territory it occupies against failing Ukrainian thrusts. And this was always the way it was going to be - which is unfortunate for Zelensky and even more so for the young men (and old) now desperately trying to demonstrate to a Western audience who has found a new show in town, that the candle is still worth the wick. Zelensky is still 'on tour', but the fashion for combat greens has moved on, and blue and yellow is no longer exciting the audiences lining the catwalk. Both the US and now the EU are struggling to convince their more difficult elements that funding should be continued on an almost continuous basis - and more so now that the continual diet of propoganda that 'Putin is loosing the war' and 'Russia is burning up its resources', is proving to be just that.....the jingoistic propoganda that was never worth the paper it was written on. All the talk of 'in it to the end' is beginning to sound a bit hollow as the true nature of the capitalist beast begins to show itself - that without constant gain that can be held before the guys who hold the purse strings, the golden goose will soon stop laying.
Its desperately sad for the huge numbers of dead on both sides that it has taken this long for the inevitable to happen. The situation was always going ultimately to have to be resolved around the negotiating table, and so it will be. We are not there yet and my guess is that a change of Ukrainian leadership will probably be required for it to happen, but if Trump wins back the White House next year then the process will probably be expedited somewhat. This can only be beneficial to the people of Ukraine who will find their lives no worse by the ceding of the contested territories to Russia (in what ever form it takes) than under the perpetual war they have experienced since (what is it) 2016 or whatever, when hostilities in the east of the country first began. Perhaps then some desperately needed rebuilding of both the lives and the surrounding infrastructure of these shockingly ill done by people can begin. This is expenditure that I for one would cheer from the rafters. Our provoking of this conflict and our fuelling of the same, for the simple expedient of putting the skids under the Putin regime in Moscow has been disastrous for the victims of our warmongering - the men and boys of both Ukraine and Russia who have paid the ultimate price. Devastating also to their parents, wives and families who have seen their homes, their towns and cities, reduced to rubble around them. And for what? So that one master, of whom they know nothing, of whom their lives bears no relation to, can be replaced by another. Individuals who sit above them, making decisions that reduce their lives to wreckage, and then walk away to count their spoils while they, the normal day to day people of the countries, the 'Joe's in the street', carry the cost.
-----0-----
In his inaugural speech of January 20, 2009, newly elected President of the United States of America Barack Obama promised, "We will restore science to its rightful place." What did he mean by this?
I think what he was referring to, was the way in which states, corporations, powerful individuals, could via funding, patronage, and the threat of removal of this, influence and pressure the supposedly objective practice of 'science'; to skew results, even to the point of downright fabrication or falsification, such that their own interests, their own narratives, were supported at the expense of rigorous adherence to the practice upon which the entire bedrock of the discipline depended.
The fabled objectivity of science has always been a bit of a myth - it is after all a discipline carried out by human beings, and scientists, even with the best of intentions, the highest of ideals, are subject to the same frailties and weaknesses as the rest of us. A tweak of the figures here, the dropping of a result there - what harm can it do if it lends weight to a conclusion that you know is the right one anyway? Sure, that anomalous result is a result nevertheless - but the good should never be sacrificed upon the alter of the perfect, right?
But things, if I'm reading Obama correctly, had become much worse than this. We were in a position where say entire health or defence budgets - eye-watering sums of money - could be directed this way or that, dependent upon the results of studies, of surveys, that were open to interpretation: and where governmental funding is concerned, profit lines on graphs of private business are never far behind. What research receives funding, how that research progresses and the results it throws up, are crucial factors in deciding how these budgets are spent. And it is no exaggeration to say that lives are dependent upon such decisions. The temptation to ensure that 'the science' is behind you when you present your reasoning behind this decision or that, by straying off the path of pure objectivity, is huge, and governments are formed, as is science, from the same weak clay of human nature, when the chips are down.
Now I'd never have given all of this much thought (even though I was aware of the existence of such problems) prior to the pandemic. Suddenly however, I could see how the game was being manipulated, baldly and without restraint, in order to elicit compliance with a general public who under normal circumstances, would never have accepted in a million years, the costs that were being levied upon them, the actions that were being asked demanded of them. It was being done before my very eyes, this manipulation of figures, this use of ambiguous language with the daily parading of 'the science' before the eyes of an uncomprehending public, in order to sway public opinion in acceptance of a narrative that I could see was flawed. My experience of the pandemic was simply not what I was being told, and I could see it. The use of selective imagery, massaged data and trading upon the largely imaginary objectivity of 'science' (and the pretty unjustified degree of societal respect which science enjoyed) was being used to baldly manipulate people accept things that they very much should not.
And suddenly the problem that Obama had referred to was shoved rudely into my face, became a material factor in my daily life (and to the detriment thereof.
Now I'm not by and large a conspiracy minded person. I don't consider that the mistake of the pandemic was other than just that - a mistake. But somehow science got into alliance with government on an issue that once started, ran away with itself. If you send a man out to find a problem, then you shouldn't be suprised if he finds a problem. We had this huge superstructure of Health, bent upon the business of prediction of disease patterns at the global level, and they had long been gaming scenarios where viruses run amock through the population of the world to catastrophic effect. This was our man sent out to find a problem, and a problem they duly found. But the problem was that the people they were advising were not themselves scientists, and they could not but take these highly trained specialists at their word. These politicians could not see that in science, as in all things,
there is room for doubt. They, the politicians, were simply humans that did not want to be seen to be failing to have taken seriously a problem that they were being told was on the horizon galloping towards them. But they failed to realise that the very people who were warning them of this apocalypse were themselves fallible humans - and that they in turn were just as fearful of getting the thing wrong, and so playing on the side of caution were presenting the worst case scenarios, in order that if they were realised, they too would be seen to be on the right side of history.
And so the conditions were laid such that an avalanche of action, followed by reaction, and then further action, led us to a place where panicking governments laid policies of restrictions on their populations, shut down their economies, and then manipulated figures and imagery in order to illicit compliance. And then having done so, those figures, that data fed into a further narrative that then had to be gone along with, that the pandemic indeed had been this existential threat that had nearly brought humankind to its knees. It wasn't and it hadn't. But again, the science could be relied upon to show that it had. So in my opinion, the whole thing was an exercise in folly, based upon an extraordinary alignment of circumstances and underpinned by ordinary human failing. We created by accident, a Frankenstein of interests and complex interactions, that gave birth to a monster that once out of the castle, ran amock through our world. But the monster was not the virus: rather it was the chain of consequences that ran rampant and unchecked through our societies, with no-one having the power or the courage to say it nay. Fear of being labled as having destroyed our economies, our societies for nothing did its work, and is still doing it today. The same manipulated figures used to elicit the public compliance needed at the time now serve to justify what was done, and to further the narrative that there was no alternative.
And despite Barack Obama's fine words, I'm afraid that science to this day, still capitulates to the demands of politics, at the expense of objectivity and rational adherence to the principles upon which its value as a discipline is based. It serves all to often as the piper, serving the needs of the master who calls the tune.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
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What Do You Think Today?
But the problem is (and this is essentially a continuation of the above), that once the scales have fallen from ones eyes about these things - or you could say, once one has fallen down the rabbit-hole of conspiracy belief - it becomes difficult to know where one should stop.
I was interested then, to come across a book in a second hand bookstore, that purported to be a dissection of the official report(s) into the reasons why the third tower of the 9-11 tragedy (one little remembered today, and much overshadowed at the time), had collapsed.
In case you've forgotten, the third tower to collapse on that fateful day was the much smaller World Trade Centre 7, which not having been hit by any planes or anything else, simply collapsed into its own footprint, seemingly of its own volition, some hours after the two main towers had fallen.
The problem that had to be explained was why a steel girder structure, not having suffere any significant external impact, should effectively implode with all of the hallmark features of a controlled demolition. To suggest that this was as a result of explosive detonations within the structure would have been difficult in the extreme. It would have been tantamount to saying that there had been a domestic element to the 9-11 attacks, which would run entirely against the narrative that this was an externally planned attack, masterminded from a cave in Afghanistan by the Dr Evil like figure of Osama Bin-Laden.
The official report, released in 2008 following investigation by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), duly explained that the building had collapsed due to fire, but the book I found disputed this, saying that the NIST report was based upon flawed science at best, and at worst was a deliberate and politically motivated fabrication, in which the standard scientific method was jettisoned in order to preserve a narrative conducive to the interests of the Bush-Cheyney administration, who were in power over the entire period from the 2001 attack until the report publication in 2008.
As I said above, I'm not a conspiracy minded individual, and to be honest have little interest in speculations about how the twin towers were reduced to piles of rubble. I'd seen planes flown into the towers and that seemed reason enough for me as to why these structures had fallen and I'd never much thought of it beyond that. But here was a book that claimed that the science had been politicised, co-opted if you like, into a distortion of truth, in order to serve a particular political end. This was what interested me, rather than the subject of WTC-7 and why it had collapsed.
Was this, I wondered, the original blueprint if you like, of the modus operandi that had been followed to support the official narrative surrounding the pandemic? Certainly science had been co-opted in the service of government before, but nothing on this scale had ever been done. This was of an entirely different order. I bought the book out of interest, to see if it stood up to critical scrutiny, and read the first few chapters.
Now I've read some borderline conspiracy type stuff before, and often it's quite well done. Authors take known facts from history, cherry-picking the ones that suit them, and then use these facts to support a hypothesis that they have already decided upon. It's good, makes for fun reading sometimes, but is fairly easy to spot and recognise for what it is. These authors want to make some money and know that they cannot get an opening for serious academic work, so they cobble together these quasi academic studies into alchemy or 'messiah cum grail' narratives, and they make it work. It's fun and doesn't do any harm. But here we are talking conspiracy of a different level. It has to be approached with scepticism from the off. It's too important to allow for a fun based suspension of disbelief.
The book I found to be written at a pretty basic level, but in fairness the author did seem to have at least a moderate handle on how the scientific method was supposed to be carried out - how objectivity was supposed to be aimed for (to its best possible extent) by adherence to certain rules and standards of practice. And more to the point, he did seem to be raising some questions about how the NIST report had been carried out that were worthy of consideration. I'll give one example. The collapse of WTC-7 was visibly as seen in video footage, indistinguishable from a thousand other prior controlled demolitions. Surely by the application of the maxim of 'Ockham's Razor', this possibility had at least to be investigated as the most likely of causes? Yet the investigation seemed hell-bent on construction of a complex and incoherent explanation, at the virtual ignoring of this more basic one. Good science says that you don't take three steps to answer a question when you can do it in one. On this basis alone there seems to be grounds for at least considering the book's contention that NIST was a political body, rather than a scientific one; that it was working to serve a predetermined narrative rather than to elucidate the truth in a difficult and challenging situation.
And I suppose that once we accept this possibility, that our polities are prepared to distort the truth on these monumental scales and co-opt the respect with which society has hitherto held science for its own partisan ends, then you have accept virtually anything. You are forced to wonder, whether you like it or not, what other deceptions have you been subject to? At what point should your trust in your system be set aside in a grudging admission that possibly, just possibly, the conspiracy theorists have had it right, had the measure of it, where your nievity has failed you?
I was interested then, to come across a book in a second hand bookstore, that purported to be a dissection of the official report(s) into the reasons why the third tower of the 9-11 tragedy (one little remembered today, and much overshadowed at the time), had collapsed.
In case you've forgotten, the third tower to collapse on that fateful day was the much smaller World Trade Centre 7, which not having been hit by any planes or anything else, simply collapsed into its own footprint, seemingly of its own volition, some hours after the two main towers had fallen.
The problem that had to be explained was why a steel girder structure, not having suffere any significant external impact, should effectively implode with all of the hallmark features of a controlled demolition. To suggest that this was as a result of explosive detonations within the structure would have been difficult in the extreme. It would have been tantamount to saying that there had been a domestic element to the 9-11 attacks, which would run entirely against the narrative that this was an externally planned attack, masterminded from a cave in Afghanistan by the Dr Evil like figure of Osama Bin-Laden.
The official report, released in 2008 following investigation by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), duly explained that the building had collapsed due to fire, but the book I found disputed this, saying that the NIST report was based upon flawed science at best, and at worst was a deliberate and politically motivated fabrication, in which the standard scientific method was jettisoned in order to preserve a narrative conducive to the interests of the Bush-Cheyney administration, who were in power over the entire period from the 2001 attack until the report publication in 2008.
As I said above, I'm not a conspiracy minded individual, and to be honest have little interest in speculations about how the twin towers were reduced to piles of rubble. I'd seen planes flown into the towers and that seemed reason enough for me as to why these structures had fallen and I'd never much thought of it beyond that. But here was a book that claimed that the science had been politicised, co-opted if you like, into a distortion of truth, in order to serve a particular political end. This was what interested me, rather than the subject of WTC-7 and why it had collapsed.
Was this, I wondered, the original blueprint if you like, of the modus operandi that had been followed to support the official narrative surrounding the pandemic? Certainly science had been co-opted in the service of government before, but nothing on this scale had ever been done. This was of an entirely different order. I bought the book out of interest, to see if it stood up to critical scrutiny, and read the first few chapters.
Now I've read some borderline conspiracy type stuff before, and often it's quite well done. Authors take known facts from history, cherry-picking the ones that suit them, and then use these facts to support a hypothesis that they have already decided upon. It's good, makes for fun reading sometimes, but is fairly easy to spot and recognise for what it is. These authors want to make some money and know that they cannot get an opening for serious academic work, so they cobble together these quasi academic studies into alchemy or 'messiah cum grail' narratives, and they make it work. It's fun and doesn't do any harm. But here we are talking conspiracy of a different level. It has to be approached with scepticism from the off. It's too important to allow for a fun based suspension of disbelief.
The book I found to be written at a pretty basic level, but in fairness the author did seem to have at least a moderate handle on how the scientific method was supposed to be carried out - how objectivity was supposed to be aimed for (to its best possible extent) by adherence to certain rules and standards of practice. And more to the point, he did seem to be raising some questions about how the NIST report had been carried out that were worthy of consideration. I'll give one example. The collapse of WTC-7 was visibly as seen in video footage, indistinguishable from a thousand other prior controlled demolitions. Surely by the application of the maxim of 'Ockham's Razor', this possibility had at least to be investigated as the most likely of causes? Yet the investigation seemed hell-bent on construction of a complex and incoherent explanation, at the virtual ignoring of this more basic one. Good science says that you don't take three steps to answer a question when you can do it in one. On this basis alone there seems to be grounds for at least considering the book's contention that NIST was a political body, rather than a scientific one; that it was working to serve a predetermined narrative rather than to elucidate the truth in a difficult and challenging situation.
And I suppose that once we accept this possibility, that our polities are prepared to distort the truth on these monumental scales and co-opt the respect with which society has hitherto held science for its own partisan ends, then you have accept virtually anything. You are forced to wonder, whether you like it or not, what other deceptions have you been subject to? At what point should your trust in your system be set aside in a grudging admission that possibly, just possibly, the conspiracy theorists have had it right, had the measure of it, where your nievity has failed you?
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
Avatar
- Immanentizing The Eschaton
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The problem with conspiracy theories (and I'm generally a big derider thereof) is manifold...
1) Technically any secret collusion to achieve an unlawful end (and I mean really, any end) is a conspiracy.
2) They tend to strike a note which capitalises on humans natural tendency to seek patterns and meaning in the flow of events.
3) Any accusation of collusion which might occur can easily be dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
4) The attribution of motive is necessarily a function of the observer's worldview.
5) Ockham's Razor should always be applied in conjunction with Hanlon's Razor.
--A
1) Technically any secret collusion to achieve an unlawful end (and I mean really, any end) is a conspiracy.
2) They tend to strike a note which capitalises on humans natural tendency to seek patterns and meaning in the flow of events.
3) Any accusation of collusion which might occur can easily be dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
4) The attribution of motive is necessarily a function of the observer's worldview.
5) Ockham's Razor should always be applied in conjunction with Hanlon's Razor.
--A
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peter
- The Gap Into Spam
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What Do You Think Today?
I think what you're saying is that the lumpen concept of 'conspiracy theory' is too blunt an instrument to cope with all of the different nuances that can be grouped within it? Does that sound about right Av?
I'd go along with this and perhaps go further to say that it becomes too simple to diss an idea simply by resorting to this labelling of it simply to undermine its credibility. There are many things that sut under the conspiracy theory umbrella that do have elements of truth about them (CIA messing about with the polities other countries, American service's with psyops etc). Better perhaps to junk the category in your thinking and take each case on its merits. American secret service involvement in the deaths of JFK, Marilyn Monroe? Who knows? J D Salinger and Catcher in the Rye? Perhaps? Fake moon landings? Dodgy surely? Area 51, QAnon, ? Getting a bit silly don't you think? The world is controlled by a secret cabal of Illuminati alumni who direct all events in their own interest? Mmmm..... Shape-shifting aliens and the British Royal family are lizards? Swivel-eyed loon territory. Where does the difficulty of explaining that a steel-girdired building collapsed with the exact same hallmarks as a controlled demolition, as a result of internal fire, when this had never been seen before, sit on this scale? And what does it say that our governments choose to run with this explanation, rather than apparently even countenancing or investigating the possibility other? What about the Wuhan lab theory? Conspiracy theory or reasonable possibility? Problems arise when particular examples seem to straddle both the worlds of reasonable scepticism and outlandish illogicality. And does one really take as read (and on simple trust) everything that is said by our respective administrations, to be the case?
And Hanlon's Razor is itself not as clear cut as it might seem. Because where exactly does the line between mendacity and stupidity lie? When for example, people overstate a case in order to protect themselves (and often from very real and debilitating consequences) if a worst case scenario should manifest, are they being stupid or malicious? People are put into difficult situations. Politicians don't expect to be advised with probabilities and statistics: they want to be told what is going to happen and they push to be so. Their question is, "What do you advise that I do?"
Or again, if and when mistakes are made - mistakes that have very real world consequences - and governmental decisions are made that it would not be in the public interest for these mistakes to be made public or acknowledged, and a little tweaking of the facts is required for this to so, are we talking maliciousness or stupidity? On one occasion I heard a high court judge saying that it was better that an innocent man languish in a jail cell than that public faith in the legal system should be undermined by acknowledgement that a mistake had been made. Malicious or stupid (or even both)?
Don't get me wrong; I'd love to live in a world where everything was simple and our governments could be trusted in everything that they say - but we don't, and we never will. The trick is to decide where the line between absolute nieve acceptable and total cynical disbelief will be drawn for you. Being a good centrist myself, I'd suggest a sort of fifty-fifty position about hits it, but that's just me.
----0-----
But anyway, just time for a little down to earth politics, and Kier Stamer will not be happy that an Observer carried out poll has put his lead as having shrunk to 13 points.
Still not bad, you might think, but given that a few months ago some polls had Labour as much as 30 points ahead, it is a pretty precipitous fall.
But in fairness, he's done a bit of hard work to earn it. First, his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, when everybody and his mother could see that it was the right and moral thing to be doing, has cost him dear. Second, to actually come out and praise Margaret Thatcher..... I mean - what did the man think he was doing? Margrave Thatcher may or may not have been a transformative prime minister in a good way (take your pick on that one) - but that she became the embodiment of everything that was wrong about the Conservative Party to a whole generation of Labour voters cannot be denied. And these are the very people whose vote he relies upon to deliver him into Number 10. It was madness, even if he thought that making these incendiary comments would draw him in more votes from disillusioned tory voters than it would loose him Labour ones, it was still a risk too far for any leader in his position. And the catastrophic failure of that risk is demonstrated in the Observer poll.
Unless, unless, unless.......
There might be an alternative explanation.
A very real risk for a politician occupying Stamer's almost unassailable lead in the polls is voter indolence. That even his supporters get so complacent in the certainty of his victory that they do not bother to vote. Because Stamer, like Neil Kinnock before him, has peaked very early. And it didn't do Kinnock any favours at all. In fact it cost him the election. Perhaps this poll result is the result of a conspiracy (there - you have it again) between the left leaning paper and Stamer's election team, to combat this complacency effect; put a few skids, as it were, under the idea that his winning is a foregone conclusion. Polls can after all, be made to say pretty much what you want them to, if a little effort is put into it.
So what do we have here? Evidence of a waning in Stamer's popularity (for this election is about Stamer rather than Labour - he's made it about that by choice; who actually knows what Labour stand for in this?), or a behind the scenes bit of jiggery-pokery to exercise a bit of leverage on the voters - give them a prod just to wake them up a bit?
One thing that the Stamer leadership definitely won't be happy about is that Sunak, for all his ills, seems to be retaining his level as a PM that people are by-and-large content with. Polls put him fairly well above fifty percent satisfaction rating with the British public (somewhat surprisingly I'd say), even if the tories as a whole are as popular as snake-shit. I don't know - perhaps it's yet another dodgy poll designed to up the Stamer turnout on the day?
Anyway there you have it. Politics and conspiracy theory all in one morning. What's not to like.
I'd go along with this and perhaps go further to say that it becomes too simple to diss an idea simply by resorting to this labelling of it simply to undermine its credibility. There are many things that sut under the conspiracy theory umbrella that do have elements of truth about them (CIA messing about with the polities other countries, American service's with psyops etc). Better perhaps to junk the category in your thinking and take each case on its merits. American secret service involvement in the deaths of JFK, Marilyn Monroe? Who knows? J D Salinger and Catcher in the Rye? Perhaps? Fake moon landings? Dodgy surely? Area 51, QAnon, ? Getting a bit silly don't you think? The world is controlled by a secret cabal of Illuminati alumni who direct all events in their own interest? Mmmm..... Shape-shifting aliens and the British Royal family are lizards? Swivel-eyed loon territory. Where does the difficulty of explaining that a steel-girdired building collapsed with the exact same hallmarks as a controlled demolition, as a result of internal fire, when this had never been seen before, sit on this scale? And what does it say that our governments choose to run with this explanation, rather than apparently even countenancing or investigating the possibility other? What about the Wuhan lab theory? Conspiracy theory or reasonable possibility? Problems arise when particular examples seem to straddle both the worlds of reasonable scepticism and outlandish illogicality. And does one really take as read (and on simple trust) everything that is said by our respective administrations, to be the case?
And Hanlon's Razor is itself not as clear cut as it might seem. Because where exactly does the line between mendacity and stupidity lie? When for example, people overstate a case in order to protect themselves (and often from very real and debilitating consequences) if a worst case scenario should manifest, are they being stupid or malicious? People are put into difficult situations. Politicians don't expect to be advised with probabilities and statistics: they want to be told what is going to happen and they push to be so. Their question is, "What do you advise that I do?"
Or again, if and when mistakes are made - mistakes that have very real world consequences - and governmental decisions are made that it would not be in the public interest for these mistakes to be made public or acknowledged, and a little tweaking of the facts is required for this to so, are we talking maliciousness or stupidity? On one occasion I heard a high court judge saying that it was better that an innocent man languish in a jail cell than that public faith in the legal system should be undermined by acknowledgement that a mistake had been made. Malicious or stupid (or even both)?
Don't get me wrong; I'd love to live in a world where everything was simple and our governments could be trusted in everything that they say - but we don't, and we never will. The trick is to decide where the line between absolute nieve acceptable and total cynical disbelief will be drawn for you. Being a good centrist myself, I'd suggest a sort of fifty-fifty position about hits it, but that's just me.
----0-----
But anyway, just time for a little down to earth politics, and Kier Stamer will not be happy that an Observer carried out poll has put his lead as having shrunk to 13 points.
Still not bad, you might think, but given that a few months ago some polls had Labour as much as 30 points ahead, it is a pretty precipitous fall.
But in fairness, he's done a bit of hard work to earn it. First, his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, when everybody and his mother could see that it was the right and moral thing to be doing, has cost him dear. Second, to actually come out and praise Margaret Thatcher..... I mean - what did the man think he was doing? Margrave Thatcher may or may not have been a transformative prime minister in a good way (take your pick on that one) - but that she became the embodiment of everything that was wrong about the Conservative Party to a whole generation of Labour voters cannot be denied. And these are the very people whose vote he relies upon to deliver him into Number 10. It was madness, even if he thought that making these incendiary comments would draw him in more votes from disillusioned tory voters than it would loose him Labour ones, it was still a risk too far for any leader in his position. And the catastrophic failure of that risk is demonstrated in the Observer poll.
Unless, unless, unless.......
There might be an alternative explanation.
A very real risk for a politician occupying Stamer's almost unassailable lead in the polls is voter indolence. That even his supporters get so complacent in the certainty of his victory that they do not bother to vote. Because Stamer, like Neil Kinnock before him, has peaked very early. And it didn't do Kinnock any favours at all. In fact it cost him the election. Perhaps this poll result is the result of a conspiracy (there - you have it again) between the left leaning paper and Stamer's election team, to combat this complacency effect; put a few skids, as it were, under the idea that his winning is a foregone conclusion. Polls can after all, be made to say pretty much what you want them to, if a little effort is put into it.
So what do we have here? Evidence of a waning in Stamer's popularity (for this election is about Stamer rather than Labour - he's made it about that by choice; who actually knows what Labour stand for in this?), or a behind the scenes bit of jiggery-pokery to exercise a bit of leverage on the voters - give them a prod just to wake them up a bit?
One thing that the Stamer leadership definitely won't be happy about is that Sunak, for all his ills, seems to be retaining his level as a PM that people are by-and-large content with. Polls put him fairly well above fifty percent satisfaction rating with the British public (somewhat surprisingly I'd say), even if the tories as a whole are as popular as snake-shit. I don't know - perhaps it's yet another dodgy poll designed to up the Stamer turnout on the day?
Anyway there you have it. Politics and conspiracy theory all in one morning. What's not to like.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
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What Do You Think Today?
When are these guys going to get it? The Netanyahu administration in Israel isn't the slightest bit interested in the wording of resolutions and strongly advised commentary on how it should pursue its goals in Gaza; with a civilian death toll in Gaza approaching 20,00 do you get the impression that the opinion of the rest of the world is top of their list of priorities?
No. In their eyes Hamas has given them all of the justification they need to pursue their 'greater policy' of the effective ethnic cleansing of the strip. The October 7 horrors have opened a door to an offensive that could not have been mounted under any other circumstances and this is an opportunity that they are not going to waste. This politically hard-right government, down on its uppers in terms of domestic support, has decided that the rest of the world will, despite all of its bleating and hand-wringing, do nothing to aid the Palestinians in their plight, choose what the Israeli 'defence operation' heaps upon them. They are banking that their political capital with the West on so high, so steeped in World War 2 guilt, that they are virtually immune from the consequences that would be levied upon any other state in the world - any other state in the world - should they behave as Israel is currently doing in Gaza.
So while the horror stories emerge from Gaza, the innocent Israeli hostages gunned down by their own side while desperately trying to signal their status to IDF fighters, the mother and daughter shot dead in a Christian church for simply going to the toilet, the twenty five people killed in two adjacent houses hit by a single undirected 'dumb' bomb, we have the sickening spectacle of ineffectual nations in talks with a USA wilfully looking the other way, searching for a wording that will not have the latter vetoing a new resolution calling for a ceasefire, which again the Israeli government will ignore.
Netanyahu and his cronies, none of whom believe that the Palestinian people have to be given shit (and at least one of whom doesn't even believe that they exist), have no interest in anything that the West has to say, because they know nothing will be done to back it up. They won't have sanctions levied against them like Russia did. They won't be ostracised or even rebuked in any formal way. They rely that they can indulge in an orgy of revenge driven violence to prosecute their greater aims, and that the world, complain as it will, will do essentially nothing to stop it and further, will forget their crimes as quickly as Hamlet's mother forgot the crime of his stepfather.
David Cameron joins with his German counterpart to call for a "sustainable ceasefire", the pope condemns the borderline "terrorist" actions of the IDF in Gaza - and not a bit of it amounts to a jot. Worthless posturing in the face of a regime that looks at them with contempt. For that is what the Netanyahu administration see, wherever they look, be it towards the toothless UN or the impotent US, EU and UK, none of whom will tread on the toes of their own powerful Jewish lobbies - weakness! And weakness never cuts any ice when it comes to dealing with people who really don't care about anything that you say, as long as they know that you aren't actually going to do anything.....and that's the crux of it.
-----0-----
Everybody and his mother are sorry for Baroness Michelle Mone having lied to the press for three years about her involvement with the company that trousered 60 million pounds profit from selling the government iffy PPE during the Covid period; first it was Mone herself, then the pair of them, her and her husband who runs the company, a few days later. Today it's the lawyer who represents them - but not the one of them acknowledges even the slightest bit of wrongdoing; Michelle Mone herself continually repeats that lying to the press is not illegal, seemingly not getting that as a member of the House of Lords, certain standards of public behaviour might be expected of her.
One person I heard on the television suggested that they could put this all to rights by setting up a charitable foundation to do good with the profits. No my friend, you aren't getting it. They want the profits! That's what the whole thing has been about. Getting their sticky mitts on the barrels full of cash. They are not going to have been through all of this for nothing by simply handing over the cash; what kind of idea is that!
No it's a grubby pinnacle to a dirty mountain of corruption at the heart of our polity. The pandemic threw open the nation's coffers and the ones closest to the chests of gold drove their arms in up to the elbows. Our elected (and non-elected) representatives fast tracked the people's money into their own bank accounts before you could say Jack Frost. Blink and you would have missed it. The Mone affair is the only one we are hearing about, but whenshe says that there were scores of others she's not lying. In fairness though, I suppose a history of flogging knickers and bra's is not the kind of low profile stuff that the Lords normally excel's in - below the radar wealth accumulation is their preferred option - so it won't bother too many of the higher echelon Lordships to watch the interloper in their midst get their grubby cumupance. They might have a quiet word here or there to make sure their own activities are not scrutinised too carefully, but beyond that I don't suppose they'll loose too much sleep over it. Besides - what's the bloody point of being in the most exclusive club in the world if you can't capitalise on the connections you make just a little bit now and again? What!
No. In their eyes Hamas has given them all of the justification they need to pursue their 'greater policy' of the effective ethnic cleansing of the strip. The October 7 horrors have opened a door to an offensive that could not have been mounted under any other circumstances and this is an opportunity that they are not going to waste. This politically hard-right government, down on its uppers in terms of domestic support, has decided that the rest of the world will, despite all of its bleating and hand-wringing, do nothing to aid the Palestinians in their plight, choose what the Israeli 'defence operation' heaps upon them. They are banking that their political capital with the West on so high, so steeped in World War 2 guilt, that they are virtually immune from the consequences that would be levied upon any other state in the world - any other state in the world - should they behave as Israel is currently doing in Gaza.
So while the horror stories emerge from Gaza, the innocent Israeli hostages gunned down by their own side while desperately trying to signal their status to IDF fighters, the mother and daughter shot dead in a Christian church for simply going to the toilet, the twenty five people killed in two adjacent houses hit by a single undirected 'dumb' bomb, we have the sickening spectacle of ineffectual nations in talks with a USA wilfully looking the other way, searching for a wording that will not have the latter vetoing a new resolution calling for a ceasefire, which again the Israeli government will ignore.
Netanyahu and his cronies, none of whom believe that the Palestinian people have to be given shit (and at least one of whom doesn't even believe that they exist), have no interest in anything that the West has to say, because they know nothing will be done to back it up. They won't have sanctions levied against them like Russia did. They won't be ostracised or even rebuked in any formal way. They rely that they can indulge in an orgy of revenge driven violence to prosecute their greater aims, and that the world, complain as it will, will do essentially nothing to stop it and further, will forget their crimes as quickly as Hamlet's mother forgot the crime of his stepfather.
David Cameron joins with his German counterpart to call for a "sustainable ceasefire", the pope condemns the borderline "terrorist" actions of the IDF in Gaza - and not a bit of it amounts to a jot. Worthless posturing in the face of a regime that looks at them with contempt. For that is what the Netanyahu administration see, wherever they look, be it towards the toothless UN or the impotent US, EU and UK, none of whom will tread on the toes of their own powerful Jewish lobbies - weakness! And weakness never cuts any ice when it comes to dealing with people who really don't care about anything that you say, as long as they know that you aren't actually going to do anything.....and that's the crux of it.
-----0-----
Everybody and his mother are sorry for Baroness Michelle Mone having lied to the press for three years about her involvement with the company that trousered 60 million pounds profit from selling the government iffy PPE during the Covid period; first it was Mone herself, then the pair of them, her and her husband who runs the company, a few days later. Today it's the lawyer who represents them - but not the one of them acknowledges even the slightest bit of wrongdoing; Michelle Mone herself continually repeats that lying to the press is not illegal, seemingly not getting that as a member of the House of Lords, certain standards of public behaviour might be expected of her.
One person I heard on the television suggested that they could put this all to rights by setting up a charitable foundation to do good with the profits. No my friend, you aren't getting it. They want the profits! That's what the whole thing has been about. Getting their sticky mitts on the barrels full of cash. They are not going to have been through all of this for nothing by simply handing over the cash; what kind of idea is that!
No it's a grubby pinnacle to a dirty mountain of corruption at the heart of our polity. The pandemic threw open the nation's coffers and the ones closest to the chests of gold drove their arms in up to the elbows. Our elected (and non-elected) representatives fast tracked the people's money into their own bank accounts before you could say Jack Frost. Blink and you would have missed it. The Mone affair is the only one we are hearing about, but whenshe says that there were scores of others she's not lying. In fairness though, I suppose a history of flogging knickers and bra's is not the kind of low profile stuff that the Lords normally excel's in - below the radar wealth accumulation is their preferred option - so it won't bother too many of the higher echelon Lordships to watch the interloper in their midst get their grubby cumupance. They might have a quiet word here or there to make sure their own activities are not scrutinised too carefully, but beyond that I don't suppose they'll loose too much sleep over it. Besides - what's the bloody point of being in the most exclusive club in the world if you can't capitalise on the connections you make just a little bit now and again? What!
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
There has been talk in recent days, of the situation faced by the family of television personality and presenter Esther Rantzen, in respect of her announced decision to "buzz off" to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland should her advanced lung cancer progress to the terminal phase.
The dilemma her daughter in particular faces, is that if she accompanies her mother to the clinic (as she appears to want to do), she could well face prosecution on her return for doing so. It's illegal in the UK to assist someone to commit suicide (although I'm sure what the actual charge brought would be in a case like this) but the laws surrounding this are undoubtedly pretty murky. Rantzen and her daughter have been using her mother's condition and high profile to highlight this grey area around the law, calling for more clarity and the right of a family member to accompany person in question on their final journey to the clinic.
I sympathise entirely with Rantzen and her family in their situation, but think that their tack on the subject is all wrong.
There seems to be two distinct issues here that must be taken separately. Firstly does this state, its legislature consider that euthanasia is an acceptable option to offer to those with a diagnosed terminal illness: and why indeed would you limit it to this? There are many kinds of intolerable suffering that are not life threatening in a physical sense, but will never end and are resistant to therapeutic control that does not involve the use of an exrtreme 'chemical cosh'.
But this aside (ie the issue of who should actually be allowed to avail themselves of this 'sharp medicine'), the first decision would seem to be philosophical insofar as are we prepared to accept the concept of assisted suicide in the first place? Suicide of itself has not been illegal since the 1960's, but to assist someone in that aim remains so. Presumably it is illegal to produce and market products specifically designed to help someone terminate their own life, or such products would already be readily available.
But going back to the Rantzen situation, to simply allow someone to accompany a parent or whoever to a foreign clinic is in itself problematic. How can one be sure that there is not an element of coercion at play? An aged parent might already be suffering feelings of guilt around 'being a burden', and such feelings are easily played upon (especially when there are inheritance considerations in play). But if you satisfy yourself that these aspects can be dealt with, and come to the conclusion that yes, people should be allowed to accompany their family members on their final journeys, then have you not already made a tacit acceptance of the acceptability of the actual act of euthanasia itself? And once having made this 'jump', how then do you justify that this means of alleviation of suffering should be available only to those who have sufficient wealth to make the journey to Switzerland, to pay Dignitas their no doubt highly costly service fees, or indeed the physical strength to make the journey in first place?
It's not exactly egalitarian is it, to limit this 'service' to only those with the financial wherewithal to afford it? What is this: that only those who have had the easiest of lives should be able to accord themselves the easiest of deaths as well? And to hell with the rest of us? No; this will not do. (It cannot be a good sign that my predictive text at this point, at the end of a sentence and with no clue as to what my next will be, decides to opt for the word 'Fuck' as my next word of choice.......how well this machine knows me!) Something more equitable for all who find themselves in such dire straits must be suggested - or nothing be done at all.
And once you have decided that say, equivalent clinics will be set up on the NHS, available free at the point of use to all.......then you are immediately in the area of argument as to why or who should be able to make the decisions as to why or who should be allowed to access the necessary 'jolly' to execute the deed. And this is difficult territory indeed. (Personally, I'd make it available from any good pharmacy at ten bob a shot. If someone wants to top themselves then why make it so horrible a task for them to see it through? Haven't the poor buggers suffered enough just getting to that point in their lives? If someone is stupid enough to do it on impulse for trivial reasons - well, you know.....Darwin awards and all that.)
No. What is on the face of it a simple question, once picked apart, turns into a Gordian knot of complexity, and one that our legislators will only serve to entangle even further, should they start poking their interfering fingers into it. Besides, I don't believe that anyone should ever face this terrible decision anyway. There are palliative options available right the way up to the point of complete insensibility, and these should always be the preferred option in cases of extreme suffering. The decisions surrounding euthanasia are simply too much to be placed upon the shoulders of either medical professionals, or legal professionals unless they involve the simple removal of support systems that are artificially preventing an inevitable death from occurring. Let's leave it at that.
(I got a bit lost in this post: I'd meant to say that the issue was divided into two areas - that of the acceptance of euthanasia itself (if administered in the form of a prepared solution by, or at the instruction of the affected individual). Secondly the area of assisting someone else, be it holding the 'bitter cup' to their lips and pouring in the suddenly sweet taste of oblivion, or simply travelling with them on their last journey to the place where such services can legally be dispensed. Yes, there's a crossover here, I know it, but hey...this isn't simple stuff. Anyway, sorry the post is such a mess. Like Boris Johnson at the time of the pandemic, I'm simply doing my best. )
The dilemma her daughter in particular faces, is that if she accompanies her mother to the clinic (as she appears to want to do), she could well face prosecution on her return for doing so. It's illegal in the UK to assist someone to commit suicide (although I'm sure what the actual charge brought would be in a case like this) but the laws surrounding this are undoubtedly pretty murky. Rantzen and her daughter have been using her mother's condition and high profile to highlight this grey area around the law, calling for more clarity and the right of a family member to accompany person in question on their final journey to the clinic.
I sympathise entirely with Rantzen and her family in their situation, but think that their tack on the subject is all wrong.
There seems to be two distinct issues here that must be taken separately. Firstly does this state, its legislature consider that euthanasia is an acceptable option to offer to those with a diagnosed terminal illness: and why indeed would you limit it to this? There are many kinds of intolerable suffering that are not life threatening in a physical sense, but will never end and are resistant to therapeutic control that does not involve the use of an exrtreme 'chemical cosh'.
But this aside (ie the issue of who should actually be allowed to avail themselves of this 'sharp medicine'), the first decision would seem to be philosophical insofar as are we prepared to accept the concept of assisted suicide in the first place? Suicide of itself has not been illegal since the 1960's, but to assist someone in that aim remains so. Presumably it is illegal to produce and market products specifically designed to help someone terminate their own life, or such products would already be readily available.
But going back to the Rantzen situation, to simply allow someone to accompany a parent or whoever to a foreign clinic is in itself problematic. How can one be sure that there is not an element of coercion at play? An aged parent might already be suffering feelings of guilt around 'being a burden', and such feelings are easily played upon (especially when there are inheritance considerations in play). But if you satisfy yourself that these aspects can be dealt with, and come to the conclusion that yes, people should be allowed to accompany their family members on their final journeys, then have you not already made a tacit acceptance of the acceptability of the actual act of euthanasia itself? And once having made this 'jump', how then do you justify that this means of alleviation of suffering should be available only to those who have sufficient wealth to make the journey to Switzerland, to pay Dignitas their no doubt highly costly service fees, or indeed the physical strength to make the journey in first place?
It's not exactly egalitarian is it, to limit this 'service' to only those with the financial wherewithal to afford it? What is this: that only those who have had the easiest of lives should be able to accord themselves the easiest of deaths as well? And to hell with the rest of us? No; this will not do. (It cannot be a good sign that my predictive text at this point, at the end of a sentence and with no clue as to what my next will be, decides to opt for the word 'Fuck' as my next word of choice.......how well this machine knows me!) Something more equitable for all who find themselves in such dire straits must be suggested - or nothing be done at all.
And once you have decided that say, equivalent clinics will be set up on the NHS, available free at the point of use to all.......then you are immediately in the area of argument as to why or who should be able to make the decisions as to why or who should be allowed to access the necessary 'jolly' to execute the deed. And this is difficult territory indeed. (Personally, I'd make it available from any good pharmacy at ten bob a shot. If someone wants to top themselves then why make it so horrible a task for them to see it through? Haven't the poor buggers suffered enough just getting to that point in their lives? If someone is stupid enough to do it on impulse for trivial reasons - well, you know.....Darwin awards and all that.)
No. What is on the face of it a simple question, once picked apart, turns into a Gordian knot of complexity, and one that our legislators will only serve to entangle even further, should they start poking their interfering fingers into it. Besides, I don't believe that anyone should ever face this terrible decision anyway. There are palliative options available right the way up to the point of complete insensibility, and these should always be the preferred option in cases of extreme suffering. The decisions surrounding euthanasia are simply too much to be placed upon the shoulders of either medical professionals, or legal professionals unless they involve the simple removal of support systems that are artificially preventing an inevitable death from occurring. Let's leave it at that.
(I got a bit lost in this post: I'd meant to say that the issue was divided into two areas - that of the acceptance of euthanasia itself (if administered in the form of a prepared solution by, or at the instruction of the affected individual). Secondly the area of assisting someone else, be it holding the 'bitter cup' to their lips and pouring in the suddenly sweet taste of oblivion, or simply travelling with them on their last journey to the place where such services can legally be dispensed. Yes, there's a crossover here, I know it, but hey...this isn't simple stuff. Anyway, sorry the post is such a mess. Like Boris Johnson at the time of the pandemic, I'm simply doing my best.
)The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
While the Chancellor of the Exchequer is busy sucking his own dick about a piffling fall in the rate of inflation (a fall which contrary to their claims, the government is in no way responsible for), the truth of the state of this country is given by another story from the other end of our screwed society, that admissions into our hospitals as a result of malnutrition are up by 300 percent on the figures of 10 years ago, with over 800,000 such admissions this year alone being put down to inadequate diet. Concentrated around individuals from the lowest socio-economic groups, medical professionals themselves say that this is indicative of rising levels of poverty in our country. (Not exactly rocket science, but good to get it from the horse's mouth.)
But back at the top levels of our society things are looking rosy as Chancellor Hunt smarms his way across the media, taking credit for that which he has had no part in and making predictions about things into which he will have no input. He's suggesting that we will likely be seeing interest rate falls by some point next year, and that people will really be feeling the benefits of the rising upturn in the economy by the e of next year.
Well, on that score it won't make any difference to you anyway mate, because you'll be fucking history by then anyway.
But if it were only true in any case. The Bank of England, who actually make the calls on interest rate rises or falls, are more practical in their realisation that the minor fall in inflation we have seen in largely due to the falling cost of fuel, particularly petrol prices at the pumps, and has little to do with any real upturn in the economy. For their part, they say it is far too early to be talking about interest rate reductions (a number of the actual decision makers in this actually want to see rates rise further) and that more time must be given to get inflation down to the two percent target rate. And in case fuckwit Hunt hadn't noticed, the conflict in the Middle-East is in the process of shutting down the Red-Sea / Suez sea-route, which forty percent of the worlds petrol comes through (that would be our forty percent) and this is going to push the prices through the roof again in the very near future.
If I can see that from the chair in which I post, how is it that it seems to have escaped our Chancellor of the fucking Exchequer! Mind you, in fairness I haven't got a general election to present to the public in the next twelve months so I don't have to do everything in my powers to gaslight the country into believing that I know the first thing about what I'm doing, or that everything is going (in contrast to what everyone is seeing around them, what they read in reports like that one on malnutrition levels) swimmingly.
Besides which, irrespective of what happens to inflation rates now, the damage is effectively done. If inflation in the last couple of years averages out at say fifteen percent, and wage/income increases average out at seven percent, then you don't got to be Einstein to work out that people are worse off not better. That all you have achieved is a fall in living standards in real terms, which hey, is probably what you wanted anyway. Because as long as your slice of people at the top-tier keep seeing their fortunes rise (because those are the ones that really matter).....then who gives a fuck about the little people. Those fuckers were doing too well for themselves anyway, with all that cheap food and spare money for foreign holidays and whatnot. Well time that they went back to a sort of nineteen fifties style of living anyway. Clear some of those cars off the roads and get them back onto the buses, what!
So this is where we are. The Chancellor is going into election mode; he'll do everything he can to push the Bank of England into making an interest rates cut before the next election (to give him something to crow about) and what he can't bring about, he'll simply lie about and pretend is other than what it is. Your average Joe in the street can't tell his arse from his elbow as far as the economy is concerned, and sufficient numbers will believe what the Chancellor says for no other reason than that he is the Chancellor. It won't save them the next election - only fuckwit Stamer can do that for the Tories, by screwing up and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory - but it might just help.
But back at the top levels of our society things are looking rosy as Chancellor Hunt smarms his way across the media, taking credit for that which he has had no part in and making predictions about things into which he will have no input. He's suggesting that we will likely be seeing interest rate falls by some point next year, and that people will really be feeling the benefits of the rising upturn in the economy by the e of next year.
Well, on that score it won't make any difference to you anyway mate, because you'll be fucking history by then anyway.
But if it were only true in any case. The Bank of England, who actually make the calls on interest rate rises or falls, are more practical in their realisation that the minor fall in inflation we have seen in largely due to the falling cost of fuel, particularly petrol prices at the pumps, and has little to do with any real upturn in the economy. For their part, they say it is far too early to be talking about interest rate reductions (a number of the actual decision makers in this actually want to see rates rise further) and that more time must be given to get inflation down to the two percent target rate. And in case fuckwit Hunt hadn't noticed, the conflict in the Middle-East is in the process of shutting down the Red-Sea / Suez sea-route, which forty percent of the worlds petrol comes through (that would be our forty percent) and this is going to push the prices through the roof again in the very near future.
If I can see that from the chair in which I post, how is it that it seems to have escaped our Chancellor of the fucking Exchequer! Mind you, in fairness I haven't got a general election to present to the public in the next twelve months so I don't have to do everything in my powers to gaslight the country into believing that I know the first thing about what I'm doing, or that everything is going (in contrast to what everyone is seeing around them, what they read in reports like that one on malnutrition levels) swimmingly.
Besides which, irrespective of what happens to inflation rates now, the damage is effectively done. If inflation in the last couple of years averages out at say fifteen percent, and wage/income increases average out at seven percent, then you don't got to be Einstein to work out that people are worse off not better. That all you have achieved is a fall in living standards in real terms, which hey, is probably what you wanted anyway. Because as long as your slice of people at the top-tier keep seeing their fortunes rise (because those are the ones that really matter).....then who gives a fuck about the little people. Those fuckers were doing too well for themselves anyway, with all that cheap food and spare money for foreign holidays and whatnot. Well time that they went back to a sort of nineteen fifties style of living anyway. Clear some of those cars off the roads and get them back onto the buses, what!
So this is where we are. The Chancellor is going into election mode; he'll do everything he can to push the Bank of England into making an interest rates cut before the next election (to give him something to crow about) and what he can't bring about, he'll simply lie about and pretend is other than what it is. Your average Joe in the street can't tell his arse from his elbow as far as the economy is concerned, and sufficient numbers will believe what the Chancellor says for no other reason than that he is the Chancellor. It won't save them the next election - only fuckwit Stamer can do that for the Tories, by screwing up and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory - but it might just help.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
-
peter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 11578
- Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:08 am
- Location: Another time. Another place.
- Been thanked: 6 times
What Do You Think Today?
Strange times as the 'not for profit' Tony Blair Institute for Global Change reports revenues of 140 million dollars, the UK which the current Chancellor believes to be poised ready to take the world by storm teeters on the brink of recession, and the last man who believes that Brexit was a good idea for Britain, entrepreneur and turncoat James Dyson (remember, he pissed off to Asia to make his hoovers almost the same week as we had followed his advice to leave the EU) says that he believes that Liz (40 days) Truss and kwasi Kwarteng had the measure of it. The latter pair, you will remember, did as much damage to the UK economy in a month than the pandemic achieved in two years.
America is lectured in the UN, on the morality of their demanding that the wholesale destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants be allowed to continue, by the Russians of all people - who are in the right - and the UK government does an impromptu pantomime act of "Oh yes we will!", "Oh no we won't!", on it's announced plans to up the minimum income for a prospective economic immigrant from 18,000 quid a year to 39,000. Talk about a quick-step and a retreat; I've seen Strictly Come Dancing pairs do worse turns than that - and recieve more press attention for doing them!
So yes, we are definitely balls deep into the silly season and it can only mean one thing - Christmas is upon us!
Now perhaps I'm just imagining it, but am I correct in remembering that there used to be some kind of religious background to the thing? I have this weird recollection that advent calanders used to feature pictures of a babe in a crib of some kind: weirdly glowing with golden light it was, and the doctors (for that is, I suppose, what they must have been) all had long gowns on and were kneeling in front of the maternal scene. Odd? No mind. Probably, as I say, just my imagination.
-----0----
The Archbishop of Cu - sorry Canterbury, Justn Welby is to be knighted by King Charles in the New Year's Honours list, which, I don't know, seems a bit like over egging the cake to me (although in fairness, as a man who does like to make the odd political intervention now and again, and it might be guessed is not particularly enamoured with our current administration, Charles might just be making a sly point; Welby is himself an outspoken critic of the Sunak regime) [Nb. Normally the PM gets to choose the New Year's Honours, but the monarch does get to throw in the odd one of his/her own.]
The boy Alex Batty who was abducted by his mother and grandfather at the age of 6, and who recently turned up in a French police station following 11 years of living in communes in Morocco, Spain and the Pyrenees, has been snagged by the Sun in an exclusive 'tell-all' interview about his experiences. He says that he survived the long ordeal in which he was pretty much isolated from anyone else of his own age, by reading the entire series of Harry Potter books from cover to cover at least twenty times. He's not sure what his future plans are yet, but hopes that his application to Hogwart's will be favourably reviewed despite his 'unusual' upbringing.
No - come on Peter.....this is not a laughing matter! I'd imagine that this guy has had quite enough 'magical thinking' for one lifetime. These communities of itinerant neo-hippies can be pretty odd affairs and the lad is probably better placed now with his grandmother, to pick up the pieces of his life. Good luck Alex for the future. As not exactly the best example of how to manage a life, I'll forbear from handing out any guidance. Except on one point; if you ever find yourself at Kings Cross Station in London and have an odd desire to walk into a wall between platforms 9 and 10, take my advice.....don't!
-----0------
The Times this morning runs a piece how facial recognition technology is being used to great success by a number of police forces, in catching criminals up and down the country.
The tech, normally limited to use in policing large scale events with high density crowds, is apparently being trialed in a few city centers, and is delivering some spectacular successes in identification of criminals at large within the community.
It's somewhat surprising that a Conservative leaning paper would be so clearly pro the rolling out of this kind of mass surveillance technology; while always the party of 'law and order', the Tories are also normally less inclined to be comfortable with encroachment of people's liberties and privacy. It is very much in the nature of 'big state' to want to surveil its population to the highest degree within its capabilities, and this should be anathema to ordinary Conservative thinking.
Clearly though, things are somewhat changed. That a leading tory paper of the 'quality press' should be co-opted to produce a front page article clearly promoting the rollout of technology such as this is surprising. I don't know, maybe this is a small thing, and easily blown out of proportion, but I'm of the old school where considerations of privacy still mean a great deal. As an example, I'd never in a million years pull out a mobile phone and start taking pictures in a restaurant. It seems to me a matter of simple courtesy to recognise that there might be people in the place who might be discomforted by this. How do I know who else is eating in this restaurant who might have good reason not to want to be caught on camera, even in sideline and unintentionally. How long will it be before such images put up on public forums, can be scanned in huge quantities and with great rapidity, to identify using AI and such facial recognition technology, individuals who might not ordinarily be seen together. It wouldn't be only illicit meetings between amourously inclined couples that might have much to fear from such surveillance. Political meetings, business gatherings, any number of scenarios can be conjectured in which the participants might wish to retain a degree of privacy or indeed anonymity. How much worse could this situation be if every face walking down every street was identifiable, and its multifarious connections and expected behaviours and locations be immediately calculable to an AI almost prescient in its capabilities?
So no, despite the odd criminal offender and yes, even terrorist that might get through the net by not allowing the spread of this type of super-surveillance technology, I'm totally against its introduction. It will whether we like it or not, introduce a capacity for oversight and prediction into the hands of the state, that I think it has ill demonstrated a responsibility to hold (not even thinking about who else might be able to access such data, given the hacking capabilities that we already see apparently in action by unfriendly states and groups). Once the combined forces of rapidly developing AI and the almost infinite data collecting capabilities of facial recognition technology are put together, monsters beyond our capacities to conceive become capable of creation; and I don't believe that this is just the ludite in me talking. I believe that it's where any rational thinking on the possibility for abuse of this technology (either by totalitarian state or unfriendly independent actor) takes you.
America is lectured in the UN, on the morality of their demanding that the wholesale destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants be allowed to continue, by the Russians of all people - who are in the right - and the UK government does an impromptu pantomime act of "Oh yes we will!", "Oh no we won't!", on it's announced plans to up the minimum income for a prospective economic immigrant from 18,000 quid a year to 39,000. Talk about a quick-step and a retreat; I've seen Strictly Come Dancing pairs do worse turns than that - and recieve more press attention for doing them!
So yes, we are definitely balls deep into the silly season and it can only mean one thing - Christmas is upon us!
Now perhaps I'm just imagining it, but am I correct in remembering that there used to be some kind of religious background to the thing? I have this weird recollection that advent calanders used to feature pictures of a babe in a crib of some kind: weirdly glowing with golden light it was, and the doctors (for that is, I suppose, what they must have been) all had long gowns on and were kneeling in front of the maternal scene. Odd? No mind. Probably, as I say, just my imagination.
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The Archbishop of Cu - sorry Canterbury, Justn Welby is to be knighted by King Charles in the New Year's Honours list, which, I don't know, seems a bit like over egging the cake to me (although in fairness, as a man who does like to make the odd political intervention now and again, and it might be guessed is not particularly enamoured with our current administration, Charles might just be making a sly point; Welby is himself an outspoken critic of the Sunak regime) [Nb. Normally the PM gets to choose the New Year's Honours, but the monarch does get to throw in the odd one of his/her own.]
The boy Alex Batty who was abducted by his mother and grandfather at the age of 6, and who recently turned up in a French police station following 11 years of living in communes in Morocco, Spain and the Pyrenees, has been snagged by the Sun in an exclusive 'tell-all' interview about his experiences. He says that he survived the long ordeal in which he was pretty much isolated from anyone else of his own age, by reading the entire series of Harry Potter books from cover to cover at least twenty times. He's not sure what his future plans are yet, but hopes that his application to Hogwart's will be favourably reviewed despite his 'unusual' upbringing.
No - come on Peter.....this is not a laughing matter! I'd imagine that this guy has had quite enough 'magical thinking' for one lifetime. These communities of itinerant neo-hippies can be pretty odd affairs and the lad is probably better placed now with his grandmother, to pick up the pieces of his life. Good luck Alex for the future. As not exactly the best example of how to manage a life, I'll forbear from handing out any guidance. Except on one point; if you ever find yourself at Kings Cross Station in London and have an odd desire to walk into a wall between platforms 9 and 10, take my advice.....don't!
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The Times this morning runs a piece how facial recognition technology is being used to great success by a number of police forces, in catching criminals up and down the country.
The tech, normally limited to use in policing large scale events with high density crowds, is apparently being trialed in a few city centers, and is delivering some spectacular successes in identification of criminals at large within the community.
It's somewhat surprising that a Conservative leaning paper would be so clearly pro the rolling out of this kind of mass surveillance technology; while always the party of 'law and order', the Tories are also normally less inclined to be comfortable with encroachment of people's liberties and privacy. It is very much in the nature of 'big state' to want to surveil its population to the highest degree within its capabilities, and this should be anathema to ordinary Conservative thinking.
Clearly though, things are somewhat changed. That a leading tory paper of the 'quality press' should be co-opted to produce a front page article clearly promoting the rollout of technology such as this is surprising. I don't know, maybe this is a small thing, and easily blown out of proportion, but I'm of the old school where considerations of privacy still mean a great deal. As an example, I'd never in a million years pull out a mobile phone and start taking pictures in a restaurant. It seems to me a matter of simple courtesy to recognise that there might be people in the place who might be discomforted by this. How do I know who else is eating in this restaurant who might have good reason not to want to be caught on camera, even in sideline and unintentionally. How long will it be before such images put up on public forums, can be scanned in huge quantities and with great rapidity, to identify using AI and such facial recognition technology, individuals who might not ordinarily be seen together. It wouldn't be only illicit meetings between amourously inclined couples that might have much to fear from such surveillance. Political meetings, business gatherings, any number of scenarios can be conjectured in which the participants might wish to retain a degree of privacy or indeed anonymity. How much worse could this situation be if every face walking down every street was identifiable, and its multifarious connections and expected behaviours and locations be immediately calculable to an AI almost prescient in its capabilities?
So no, despite the odd criminal offender and yes, even terrorist that might get through the net by not allowing the spread of this type of super-surveillance technology, I'm totally against its introduction. It will whether we like it or not, introduce a capacity for oversight and prediction into the hands of the state, that I think it has ill demonstrated a responsibility to hold (not even thinking about who else might be able to access such data, given the hacking capabilities that we already see apparently in action by unfriendly states and groups). Once the combined forces of rapidly developing AI and the almost infinite data collecting capabilities of facial recognition technology are put together, monsters beyond our capacities to conceive become capable of creation; and I don't believe that this is just the ludite in me talking. I believe that it's where any rational thinking on the possibility for abuse of this technology (either by totalitarian state or unfriendly independent actor) takes you.
Last edited by peter on Sat Dec 23, 2023 6:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard