What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Up to this point the UK has been clear to the Ukrainian forces that any armaments supplied must be used for defensive purposes pretty much limited to within Ukraine itself (or just beyond its immediate borders).

Now, according to this morning's Telegraph, Zelensky is pilling on the pressure to be allowed to use in particular Storm Shadow missiles, to make strikes deeper into Russian territory proper. Airfields and logistics hubs up to a range of a couple of hundred miles could be hit by the armaments, and this is seen as a key means further weakening Putin's hold on power, to the point where even (claims Zelensky) he could fall altogether.

Downing Street is clear that the strict limitations on how any UK supplied ordnance is used remain in place, but in the face of the Ukrainian success in taking territory (around 380 sq miles) within Russia proper, the idea of toppling Putin by giving the Ukrainians just a little more leeway must be tempting.

The problem I'd see is this.

How far can Putin be pushed?

Putin has made it clear that his forces which continue to incrementally gain ground in the east, will not be rerouted in support of the Kursk region, but rather than the Ukrainian incursion will be treated rather as a 'terrorist' style situation and dealt with by the FSB.

The FSB is effectively the successor to the KGB, in other words the state security service, and militarised as it is (to a degree), there is no indication that it is in any position to drive out an occupying military force. The purpose of the Ukrainian offensive seems more aimed towards giving them a bargaining chip for negotiations which are widely predicted to start before very long, but the eroding effect of loosing territory on the public's confidence in Putin cannot be ignored. But he'll be very aware of this and the question is what will he do to shore up his support? How far will he go? He's in no risk of loosing this war and he holds all of the cards when entering the negotiations - but internal support within Russia is important to him (he has wolves biting at his own heels, just as our political leaders do). So although the Kursk incursion has no significance in the war overall, it is highly symbolic to the Russian people and he must adress that. Just how he will do this is unclear and if I were a Ukrainian, this is the question that would be bothering me.

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Kier Stamer has apparently had a telephone conversation with the Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, 'warning' him not to attack Israel in response to the recent killings of senior Hezbollah and Hamas leaders on its territory.

He apparently warned the Iranian leader of the serious risk of miscalculation and the very real risk of any response escalating into a full scale regional war.

It's the first call between a UK prime minister and an Iranian leader since that made by Boris Johnson during the imprisonment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, but one can only imagine that the Iranian leader was somewhat unimpressed in receiving the call.

It may be remembered that there was a title for tat exchange between Israel and Iran following the Israeli missile attack on the Iranian consulate buildings in Damascus. The response by Iran to that attack was an act of diplomatic tightrope walking, the skill of which (evidenced by all sides, it must be said) was something to behold. They (the Iranians) managed to give a display of their capabilities in which none were killed and no significant damage was caused. And this was deliberate. The Israeli and American response was equally nuanced. An attack onto an insignificant base in Iran, so limited and ineffective as to allow the Iranians to suggest that it wasn't even the work of the Israelis, but some other terrorist opposition movement.

The skills displayed by all sides in avoiding any escalation into all-out conflict were significant; and no input from the UK government was required in order for those skills to be utilised. In fairness, the situation is somewhat changed now. Netenyahu is far more on the ropes domestically than he was; the Gaza campaign is a disaster with no sign of Hamas being eradicated and no realistic prospect of the hostages being returned any time soon. Political pressure is mounting on him, and the Israeli public are becoming increasingly uneasy at the way things are progressing. He finds himself in a position where suddenly escalation might be his best shot at survival. But irrespective of this change of circumstances (and much here depends on what agreement of support Netenyahu managed to wring from Joe Biden behind closed doors on his recent trip to Washington; would America back him in a full blown war with Iran?) its unclear that the Iranians are going to take any notice of anything we say.

It sounds more like a publicly exercise for Stamer's home audience than a serious attempt to alter the Iranian thinking on their response. Yes - we might supply a few planes and missiles in defence of Israel, but America would take the lion's share of the responsibility for aiding the country, and nothing we do will make much difference one way or the other.

But let's hope the same high-wire skills can be displayed this time round as they were on the last occasion. If they fail and the region is plunged into a wider conflict......well, I wouldn't book your next years holiday to the Middle East just yet. You might be better spending the money on a bunker out back.

[peter]

Don't know what the frick happened here - an odd post where my next post sort of split in two .....and no delete option offered?

[peter]

Everything is hunky dory. The UK inflation rate is very marginally about where the BofE wants it - 2.2 % instead of the required 2 - and new figures released show growth of 0.6 percent. Not exactly flying, but set against the drubbing the economy has had in recent times, it's a win.

And as the generally upbeat BBC report on last nights news explained, the small increase in inflation was largely due to increased fuel costs.

But (though this would largely hit the poorest people hardest - and there are 12 million people judged to be living in poverty in the UK) it wasn't so bad, because figures showed that wages were rising faster than inflation.

Which is great news of course, if you happen to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a train driver or one of the public sector workers, all of whom have recieved hefty pay settlements in recent days and months, but no fucking consolation whatsoever, if you happen to be amongst those poorest, those 12 million, who have received sweet fuck all increase, and for whom news of that increase in inflation is just another straw piled onto the camel's back.

Or if you happen to be a pensioner, who in a cruel twist of irony, Rachel Reeves has divested of their winter fuel top up payment, towards the very thing that increase in is said to be behind the rise in interest rates anyway. Nice one Rachel! The new means tested criteria has the bar for recieving the payment set so high, that huge numbers of pensioners who, by virtue of say ownership of their home, don't qualify for a payment, choose how low their actual income is.

So what the BBC report failed to say, was that if you are amongst those income is poorest, those already at the bottom of the societal pile in terms of their ability to meet their weekly needs, then you are screwed. You ain't recovering with the rest of society - you're going under. The already most uneven society in the Western world just got a bit more uneven.

Now there's a fucking suprise. And Changed Labour has not the slightest intention of fixing it. Changed Labour. Oh yes they've changed right enough.

[Avatar]

LOL, our inflation rate is approaching 6% and that's marginal...some things are increasing at a greater rate than that of inflation.

--A

[peter]

Yes, that always bugs me Av.

Take our inflation rate (granted, much lower than yours). It may be 2 percent around the whole basket of things it is calculated upon, but like yours, it's much more in say the area of food (which effects pensioners to a disproportionate degree) than it is in other areas where they do not traditionally have to spend as much. So the idea that their pensions have kept pace with inflation because they are guaranteed the 2 percent increase annually is misleading when food prices have raised by twelve to fifteen percent (and in some instances much more).

But food prices have been low in the UK (in comparison to other European countries) for a long time, and it's been a source of aggravation for the food industry and farmers for many a year. They were never going to miss the opportunity to hike them at the first possible moment and the succesive crises that the UK economy has been subjected to in recent years has provided just such an opportunity. And they have grasped it with both hands.

Today we read that GP's will get (most likely) a fat and way above inflation level wage rise. Just what those with already huge earning potential need, while the NHS itself is starved of the funding it so desperately needs. I'll eat a plate of humble pie for every GP in the country you can find me who doesn't already trouser over 100K a year. A practice principle is doing badly if he can't take home a quarter of a mil. Most can do quite a bit more. Yes, they definitely need that fat increase, while the poorest get shit and the pension reward for paying a lifetime's national insurance contribution (from cradle to grave eh? ) is twelve grand a year.

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A woman is exchanging comments with her mates on Facebook. She's a carer or something like, and not young.

She is ranging across topics that interest her and her 'friends' on the platform and like everyone else, has been outraged by the story of the three young girls killed in Southport and when someone posted a picture of people in the area repairing the mosque damaged in the subsequent rioting, she responded that it was ridiculous, and the mosque should be "blown up with the people in it."

Swept up in the state's enthusiasm to prosecute anybody and everybody who had,they felt, even the slightest involvement in the fueling of hatred following the riots, she was hooked before the hastily assembled court and handed down 15 months in prison.

She was not a regular offender in terms of making posts like this and even the prosecutor accepted that it had been made in anger and was not a reflection of her usual posting activity, or intended as a genuine threat or incitement to do the thing she described.

But the judge felt that it was a hateful comment and that people had to learn to take responsibility for the content of their postings - and so he imprisoned her for 15 months.

Never having been before a court before, not belonging to any far-right organisation or even a regular poster of anti-islamic invective, she today sits in a prison cell for the crime of making an intemperate post in conversation with her friends about an emotive event that was running high in the national conscience.

Is this justice? I'm not so sure.

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With the news that British Challenger tanks have been used in the incursion into Russia that has gotten the media so excited, I wonder if people truly understand the implications of this.

We have trained the Ukrainians to use these tanks. We've supplied them. We could even be found inside them. We've supplied the Shadow missiles that have killed by accounts hundreds of Russian troops in a convoy rushing to engage in the taken area and w are in discussions with Zelensky as to his using these missiles to make strikes deep inside Russian territory. It is likely that this will be agreed to in the near future.

On the basis I'd say that we are already at war with Russia in all but name. We haven't been asked if we are okay with this, it's never been voted on, and when the chips are down it will be us who are expected to pick up the pieces and die for it.

I'd just like to make this clear, being as how our media, so keen celebrate our tanks 'striking those awful Russians!', seem much less than keen to spell out what such actions really mean.

[peter]

My God, it's taken James O'brien a long time to get there, but at last he's finally arrived (well, partially).

Let's take a step back and look at what has finally made the penny drop.

It concerns a horrible story of the abuse of Palestinian prisoners held in Sde Teiman detention facility near Beersheba (southern Israel), lin which large numbers of Palestinians have been held in alarmingly cruel detention, since the October 7th attack. The facility has long been the subject of rumours of cruel and inhuman treatment of the detainees, earning itself the epithet of the 'Israeli Guantanamo', and the majority of prisoners are held without trial or representation, on terms of unlimited duration.

Reports from both released prisoners and former staff of the center, have included torture and forced interrogations, sleep deprivation and subjection to extended periods of loud music, and sexual violation.

Things came to a head when a phone video was released of a group of soldiers torturing a male prisoner and then raping him.

At this point the Israeli authorities were forced to step in and ten soldiers alleged to have been involved were arrested and placed under detention.

The arrest of the alledged perpetrators of this abhorrent act has not however been recieved as one might have expected by the citizenry, or indeed media and political class, in Israel. Far from being appalled at the actions depicted in the leaked video, people have been outraged that the soldiers are being held to account at all. So much so in fact, that a group of protesters gathered outside the facility where the soldiers were rumoured to be being held, with some actually entering the premises with the idea of freeing the men illegally. They were not successful but the soldiers in question have now been released to their own homes where they remain under house-arrest for the time being.

The contention of the protesters - and there is evidence to suggest that this is a widely held view amongst the populace generally - is that the men should not be held accountable for their actions, but should rather be allowed to carry out such abuses of detainees under their 'care', as part of the program of punishment/revenge/deterrence following the October 7th attack. The view is sufficiently widely held that Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is quoted as saying that the problem is not what the soldiers have done, but rather that the practices they carried out are not legislated as part of their duties in the carrying out of their work. Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has also had a view on the matter, this being that anything that contributes towards the national security of Israel is acceptable. How he believes that the sexual assaulting of prisoners is helping butress national security he does not say. One leading political figure went so far as to say that it was those who leaked the video that should be charged, not those who took part in it.

Now just in case anybody gets the impression that all of this is just anti-Israeli propoganda, that we've simply been duped into believing stuff that has no factual basis, James O'brien was at pains to point out that all of this is in the public domain in Israel itself. The reporting of the protests on television, the filming of the politicians giving their contributions, is all there for anyone to see. Netenyahu himself seems to be the one politician who realises that this has gone beyond the pale. He has condemned the protests, in particular the attempt to free the detained soldiers, as unacceptable. But his view would seem to be in the minority. A recent poll reported by B'Tselem said that 48 percent of Israeli citizens believed that raping Palestinian prisoners in detention was acceptable.

And the question that finally dawned on James O'brien, some ten or so months into this terrible crisis, is why are we not hearing about this in our own media? He observed that the alledged Palestinian outrages of October 7th had been reported to the nth degree, but on this we've had virtual media silence. He was perplexed as to why he was the first source of this awful story that we were likely to have encountered. Observing that it must be a querulousness on the part of our media that was behind this (and by this I think he meant a reticence to approach something that could be problematic or difficult - unappetising in some way), I think he was barking up the wrong tree. I put it down to the simple fact of client journalism. It would simply make it impossible for our government to justify continued support of Israel in their barbaric onslaught on the Palestinians in Gaza were this story to break into the public consciousness. Thus it's reported - but only just. You can find it, but you have to go look for it. It'll not be on the 6 o'clock News, or on the front page of the Telegraph.

O'brien finished by saying that the story was evidence that Israel had,by virtue of this occurrence and the Western silence on it, been given an open cheque-book as to doing whatever they chose in pursuit of their aims in Gaza. There are no limits to what we will accept, ignore, or if necessary condone, in support of our continuing to support Israel in its endeavours. On this we can absolutely agree.

[peter]

Three weeks before my father-in-law died, I was leaving the hospital in which he was then staying, and I turned to my wife. "Look. I don't like saying this - it sounds terrible - but your father is dying."

I had good reason for my bluntness. The weight was falling off him, he'd been unable to eat and drink properly for weeks and had twice collapsed, resulting in admissions to the hospital in which we were making our visit.

We'd found him on this second occasion, sitting up in bed, and preparing to be returned home which would happen, probably the following day, once he'd had a final examination by his doctors. He'd given the all-clear he said, and a nurse had remonstrated with him for "not eating properly in order to build up [his] strength."

He couldn't eat properly. Every time he ate he was sick. But the medical staff didn't seem to get it. They'd told us that the bowel cancer he'd been operated on some 18 months previously for had not, contrary to our fears, returned; that he was simply not eating properly and was weak and unstable on his legs in consequence. He needed, we were told, to "build himself up."

It was very confusing. He'd had a colostomy those months ago, but he'd never really recovered from it in a true sense. He never felt a hundred percent, even while he tried to eat as best he could - but he was gradually going from a round and shining sort of man to a grey, unwell looking one.

He'd been back to his consultant a month or two previously, just for a check up really, and had subsequent to a colonoscopy, been given the all-clear. Shortly following this - a couple of weeks at most - he'd been down in St. Ives with my sister-in- law, and had collapsed in the street. He'd been admitted to hospital and sent for an immediate CAT scan. This had shown nothing and he'd been discharged. Now, just a few days later, he'd collapsed at home and had been readmitted. Again, nothing could be found, and he was being sent home. At this point, as we left the hospital, I'd felt forced to respond to my wife's confusion by spelling out what to me was patently obvious - that this was a man nearing the end of his tether. A shadow of his former self, unable to eat with the weight literally falling off him. Why couldn't the doctors see what was before them? Where they so enraptured by the shiny new machine they were using, the results on bits of paper and whatnot, that they denied the very evidence of their eyes? So instead of keeping him in, listening to him and keeping on looking, they sent him home.

This was the last time he'd be there. In a matter of days he'd collapsed yet again, and this time a new consultant (his own being on holiday) took up his case. Twenty four hours after admission he was given an exploratory laparotomy (ie they opened him up to have a look inside him) and that evening we went in to see him. He was moribund in the bed, and as we left, the consultant spoke to us. On investigation, he'd found that Ted had "no functional bowel left." An Egyptian gentleman who gave the impression of being well on top of his job, he didn't pull his punches. It was the endgame for my wife's father. She wasn't perhaps as shocked as she might have been. I'd warned her it was coming.

Two days later he was dead. We never heard much more about getting him to eat, about building up his strength. That was suddenly forgotten. When the chips were down, all of that million pound technology wasn't worth a hill of beans in comparison to the good old fashioned way of 'getting in there and having a look'. I'll never understand to this day how they could all have been so blind, why all common sense seemed to go out of the window. But I learned a very valuable lesson on the importance of not placing too much faith in the value of tech based results over that of your eyes.

I learned it, but that's not important. I just hope that the doctors on his case learned it as well.

[peter]

Second story.

A number of years ago, I started having the most agonising attacks following eating particular foods. High fat foods, or a combination of overeating and rich foods seemed to bring on these pains across my abdomen, stomach across to liver.

The first or second time it happened I went to the doctor. He said that I probably had a gallstone or something, and that overeating was causing me to have gallbladder attacks. He arranged for me to have an ultrasound scan, which I did, but nothing came of it.

The attacks were sufficiently intermittent that they weren't bothering me too much, but over time they seemed to gradually increase in both frequency and indeed severity. In the end I was left gasping in pain for hours and shaking with shock for twenty four hours afterwards. I went for another scan but again nothing came of it.

I began to limit the foods I was eating and to loose weight as a result. This seemed to help. Stay away from fatty foods, not too much chocolate and stuff. Fish seemed fine, and wine seemed to make the attacks less likely to happen. And so it went on.

A couple of years into it, and things had by now gotten pretty serious. I'd lost five stone in weight (and people were telling me how well I looked ) and I could hardly eat anything. I'd finished up in casualty a couple of times and had even been given morphine to get through on one occasion. I went to the doctor and asked for some painkillers that were strong enough to stop the attacks and he just shrugged. He wasn't allowed to give me that sort of level of pain killer he said. Well what should I do, I asked. He shrugged again. "Just keep going to the hospital," he replied.

I had yet another scan and this time the woman who did it was unequivocal. "You've got gallstones." She said. At last! A concrete diagnosis.

It was a good start. Following an admission on one night, a doctor I spoke to in the hospital said he thought I was having attacks of gastritis or pancreitis, but two nights later I was back again and this time I got to see a consultant. By now I was at the end of my tether. This was killing me; of that there was no doubt. The consultant told me that he was going to remove my gallbladder, but was sending me down for an ultrasound scan as a preliminary. (I'd told him about my gallstones diagnosis by the lady scanning technician.)

To my dismay, doctor who performed the scan this time was hesitant. He was unsure that I actually had gallstones and I felt my stomach sink. Back on the ward I spoke to the nurse and said that I wasn't happy. I was being told I had gallstones, then that I didn't: what was happening? I want this thing done with I said. The consultant returned. On Friday morning he said, my gallbladder would be removed. End of.

And it was.

I had one more vague attack, some days following the removal - but I could tell it was qualitatively different. I got over it quickly and can only assume it was a sort of residual aftereffect of the trauma I'd been through. I've never had another attack since. I'm still aware if I eat anything too rich, that my liver doesn't like it - but I'm alive, and I'm telling you that if those attacks hadn't been stopped I wouldn't be. If the attacks hadn't killed me themselves I'd have done the job for them. I know exactly what pain is and what it can do to you. It is something to be afraid of. Very afraid. (Never listen to anyone who says they can withstand pain - they can't. They just don't experience it perhaps, because if they did they would never be able to stand it for long.)

But the point of this story is that it was surprising when the chips were down, how difficult it was for the medical profession to make a diagnosis that a gallbladder removal was necessary. Even this well understood condition seemed to bring out questions and differences in opinion, that stymied the service from making a decision. I often wonder if in days of old, when presenting with symptoms like mine, it'd have been a done deal. "It's a gallbladder situation - get it out," and that would have been that. I'd have been spared nights of agony and a near death experience that I'd not choose to repeat for all the money in the world.

But having said that, the NHS saved my life. It wasn't the doctors, but rather the one grumpy old woman who had the courage to make a diagnosis of gallstones when none of the others would. She gave me the impetus to push for it (and I don't believe that the doctors would have operated on me if I hadn't pushed that nurse, and she in turn pushed the consultant). So it was effectively a random series of events - almost chances - that saw me out of the jaws of Hell.

There was an old adage, 'In times gone, when religion was strong and science was weak, people mistook magic for medicine. Now that religion is weak and science is strong they mistake medicine for magic.' There is truth in this. It doesn't do to be too cynical about the benefits of medicine in times of need, but neither should one be dewey eyed about it. The media, the society, the very doctors themselves, have imbued the profession with an almost religious belief in the eyes of the public, that in practice often falls short and disappoints, resulting in much of the criticism that we do come across. By and large this results from thwarted expectations - expectations that the profession itself has much to promote. As I've said many times in these pages, the doctors have flown high on borrowed wings, and quite often pay the price.

So the long and the short of these two posts,is this. In your dealings with the medical profession, listen to what they have to say and follow their advice. But never loose sight of what your common sense is telling you and never be afraid to point it out. Doctors are human too: they'll listen and even be forced to act, even just on the basis of your saying so if nothing else. (Inside, for all their outward confidence, they are afraid of making mistakes, of missing something too, I promise.) And never underestimate the power of the random things that happen, or that of you input into the decisions being made about your treatment. Randomly, I owe my life to such events which unknowingly at the time, worked in my favour to pull me back from the brink.

I thank God, I thank luck, I thank the NHS and its doctors and nurses. And I thank a miserable old woman who snapped at me, "You've got gallstones!"

[peter]

The public at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival had the chance to vote for the funniest joke of the festival and chose, I was going to sail around the world in the world's smallest boat but I bottled it. I'd have chosen the one that begins, A woman walks into a doctors and says " Every time I walk my fanny whistles", but maybe it wasn't on the list of options.

But leaving that aside, yesterday I remembered the time I was in the Morrocan Sahara, down in Mazouga, and my wife and I had (at last), earlier in the day, managed to buy one of the ten bottles of wine for sale in the whole country, and were planning to head off into the dunes to drink it.

Mazouga, or the Erg Chebi, is the first sand-sea of the Sahara, of which there are about ten or a dozen, and it's big. Like dragging yourself along by your fingers and seeing palm tree oasis mirages in the distance big. We were down there with three guys who had off-road vehicles and were essentially passengers hitching a ride with the professionals. We were camped on the very edge of the dunes and were keen for a bit of privacy and alone time, since we'd been travelling together for a number of weeks.

When I said, after our camp-fire dinner that evening, that we were going out into the dunes, the guys looked at me a little bit askance. They warned us that the sands could be deceptive and told us to be careful not to go too far. I assured them that we would not, but said I'd come prepared, and pulled my compass from my pocket. It was about the size of a ten pence piece and had cost me about two quid.

We were surrounded by their 'kit' as they called it - thousands of pounds worth of state-of-the-art GPS gadgetry and monster vehicles fitted with screens and communications equipment - and as the three of them looked at the toy compass resting in my palm their faces became wooden.

"I'm not sure that that's going to be up to it," said Neil, the guy in whose truck we were travelling, and his tone was withering.

Nevertheless we survived, and had probably the most romantic night - well - that anyone ever had. The night was balmy with a gentle warm breeze. The dune on who's shoulder we sat gave a beautiful vista of the terrain in front of us, and the stars were amazing in the absence of any polluting light from a city. As we drank our wine from plastic cups, we could hear the faint sounds of berber drums in the background, proving that we, despite our seeming isolation, were not alone in the world. It was as close to perfection as I have ever experienced.

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Prince Harry and his wife Meghan are currently making their second 'official visit' of the year to a foreign country: a month or two ago it was Nigeria or somewhere and now they are having the red carpet rolled out for them in Colombia.

It can only be pissing off the King and Prince William Big time, because the Sussex's are no longer 'working royals' (along with Prince Andrew) and therefor have no place to be making official visits anywhere. The visits are not, in fact, official from the point of view of either Buckingham Palace or indeed the British government, but only from the point of view of the third countries that have made the invitations.

When such visits are made by working royalty, they are choreographed affairs, stage managed by the British state as much as by Buckingham Palace itself, and often with un underlying purpose which the government is desirous to achieve. In this sense Harry and Meghan are acting as loose cannons, and playing a dangerous game in which they could be sending out all of the wrong signals. It's debatable whether either Nigeria or Colombia understand the split that has rent the British royal family in two, and just how bad the situation has become between the Wales's and the Sussex's. They have barely spoken in two years,except for terse exchanges at their mother's funeral. Even if the government's of these countries understand the situation, it is highly unlikely that the people lining the streets do.

And here's where the trouble can lie: why this is so dangerous. One false step on these tours can sour relations between whole countries. Look at the fallout from when William and Kate were in Jamaica and travelled past the people standing in the back of an open topped Land Rover. The echoes of British colonialism were nearly sufficient to cause the nation to quit the British commonwealth. There was hell up. Maybe the countries that have offered these invitations have done so deliberately as a slight to the UK. Perhaps they are sending out a signal to the UK, a nose thumbing that, "We know what's going on and have no time for you." If so, by accepting these invitations, taking part in these charades of the real thing, Harry and Meghan are treading more dangerous waters than they understand.

Or perhaps they understand it fully. Perhaps it's deliberately designed to put two fingers up to the Royal family from whom they have ostracised themselves. They have with their books and interviews, insulted and heaped vitriol on the heads of the rest of the family, and their now being cut off is a price that they were always going to have to pay. But talking of pay, this also has its place. Having written the books, made all the shows, given all the interviews - what else do the couple have left to sell? What else to keep the dollars rolling in and keep themselves in the public eye? Only themselves.

And this is why they are taking this terrible risk that can only drive an absolute wedge between the two brothers, between father and son, that can never be bridged. No wonder William has let it be known that the couple will not be invited to his coronation, when it eventually occurs. But there are echoes here of even more significant times. Of the split between the royals caused by the abdication of Edward VIII, and his subsequent visits to the rising Nazi state of Hitler, and his at the time secret agreement that if Germany won the war, then he, Edward, would be returned to the throne. I'm not saying that Harry has designs on the throne, just making the point that he is swimming in muddy waters indeed when he plays this kind of game.

If his anger with his family is such that he really wants to destroy the monarchy in the UK, then he's absolutely going about it in the right way.

(Reflection: Or maybe they see it as a means by which to force themselves back into the club [or 'the firm' as the royals like to call it in their private moments], with all its manifest advantages - think civil list payments, security, etc. If you remember, when they first suggested to the old Queen that they wanted to step back from royal duties and repair to the US to live, they actually wanted to be only half divorced from the affair. They actually wanted to spend half their time as independent entities, and the other half as working royals, but the Queen vetoed this. Either, she said, they must be fully engaged or not at all. They chose the latter,and hence all the trouble that has resulted thereafter. Forced upon their own resources to raise an income, they turned to the interviews and shows etc, that had to be spicy, be contentious, in order to satisfy the wants of the paymasters who were springing the bucks to pay them, and the voracious appetites of the public for salacious details. Bland goodey-goodey stuff was never going to cut it.

Now as loose cannons on the world stage, they can demonstrate to 'the firm' the inadvisability of their (the Queen's) decision. By carrying out these unofficial 'official visit', they can exert pressure for this decision to be reversed. Perhaps they hope that the monarchy and British government will think it safer to bring them back into the fold, than have them continue to do these trips in an unofficial capacity. If such a decision were made, it would make their (the Sussex's) lives much easier - millions of dollars of income and all the other perks - and at the same time, mitigate the risks of having them out there doing their own thing, from the perspective of the British establishment. Win-win.

Problem with this from the King's perspective is whether the British public would accept it. UK taxpayers money going to support a couple who are not popular in the public's eyes, not least because of the damage they have inflicted on the royal brand. The King is already under the hammer with Andrew and his shenanigans, and is trying to squeeze him out (by evicting him from his grace and favour house and removing his state paid for security) in order to demonstrate his unpreparedness to put up with such behaviour. To have the Sussex's jump on the gravy train at just this same moment would be the last thing he would want or need, so the poor old blighter is in a bit of a cleft stick. Leave them out in the cold to do God knows what damage they will, or bring them back in and face a potential public and media backlash on the back of it? Difficult to say the least.

Anyway, the truth is we can't know what is in the Sussex's minds with all this; basic opportunism in order to bring in a few more sheckles and keep themselves in the public eye, or a longer term plan to force the British establishment to bring them back into the fold. But it's the British monarchy all over; the gift that keeps on giving, the show that never stops running. Where would we be without it?)

[peter]

Crikey! Poisonous little shrew Evette Cooper intends to lock up so many people that there'll be more of us festering away inside jails and detention centers by the end if her term than are walking free on the streets,.

Last week it was the rioters and people who'd made off the cuff angry posts on Facebook following the murder of the three girls in Stockport. Already the prison service is creaking at the seams, bursting like an overstuffed suitcase with prisoners crammed into every available space going, as a result of her drive to exact vengeance on those who she saw as stepping beyond the bounds of normal and acceptable protest.

On this I listened to James O'brien yesterday, justifying the sending of the 53 year old carer to prison for posting an angry tweet in response to pictures of people rebuilding the destroyed wall outside the Stockport mosque. "Ridiculous!", she had posted, adding that in her opinion the mosque should be "blown up, along with the people inside ir!"

Certainly a nasty bit of posting - but inciting people to violence, to acts of terrorism? The prosecuting council didn't believe so and neither did the judge. Both recognised it as a burst of anger following the emotional coverage of the deaths of the three girls, not in any way intended to promote such action in reality (the woman had no history of membership of far right groups or indeed postings of this nature), but the judge felt that she must be seen to have to take responsibility for her postings. So she was jailed for 15 months.

A Muslim caller into O'brien's show felt that the punishment was not only excessively harsh but counterproductive. People would be angry about it, the cause of extremist right wing spokespeople advanced, and more radicalised individuals created. Better, he said, that the woman herself was re-educated and sent out into her own community to spread the message of co-communal existence, of peaceful cooperation to adress areas of contention and working together to effect resolution.

O'brien agreed to a point, but then said that such an approach would not have the deterrent effect that the judge was aiming for. People likely to be following the woman's example would not be deterred and a societal nudge by the example of punitive punishment would be lost.

This argument, which might seem rational, especially in the circumstances where the country was in riot, is however morally redundant. It's the same argument that would have been expounded to justify the hanging of an 8 year old boy at Bristol assizes back in the 18th Century for the crime of stealing a cherry pie (it happened). The law used as deterrent. But the moment the law is used to dispense disproportionately severe penalties for reasons other than executing justice, then justice is lost. And if the law is not about justice, then it is about nothing.

But back to Evette Cooper and her desire to be a strong Home Secretary. This morning it's the turn of illegal migrants. She intends to lock up more, deport more, than any of her predecessors. Exta detention spaces will be created for the purpose and she'll find every one unoccupied an affront to her sensibilities. If they're not bursting at the seams, every ship and plane not carrying its quotient of asylum seekers being returned to - who knows or cares what - then they'll have her to answer to. And one glance at her face twisted in anger, her steely little eyes and pursed mouth, will tell you that you don't want that! Hell hath no fury like an Evette Cooper on the rampage.

So lock up your sons, lock up your daughters, and lock down yourself while you're about it. Because if you don't, Evette Cooper will do it for you!

-----0-----

My local news channel, the BBC's 'Spotlight', ran a story the other night about lucky families who were moving into spanking new social housing build in Devon.

The report showed the beautiful new houses that most of us would be lucky to live in, and the council representative was virtually wagging his tail as he spoke of the development. "Eight houses for families to move into. A small step I know, but a step nevertheless."

Eight houses? Eight fucking houses? There are twenty thousand people on the Cornwall social housing waiting list and Devon can't be any better. This level of crisis is never going to be addressed by building 8 houses at a time!

Remember, these are two counties in which huge numbers of properties lie empty for most of the year as either tourist accommodation or second homes. There shouldn't be such a thing as a second home in the South West while upwards of thirty thousand people don't have a first. Unoccupied properties should be rented out at affordable rates by law. If you can't afford to rent it out at a price that someone who has been squeezed out of the system of buying themselves a home by the excessive house prices that 'buy-to-let' and Covid/Brexit/Truss/Ukraine has caused - then sell it to someone who can. There's no reason why you should be able to force someone on low income to buy your little property empire for you, just because you got sufficiently lucky by virtue of income/inheritance or whatever, to get onto the property ladder, but they didn't.

And BBC South West. Stop with the stupid reports like this on events of absolutely no significance in dealing with a crisis that is destroying the lives of thousands of young families. This story wasn't good news. It was an insult to the myriads of people that our system has left high and dry, up shit creek without a paddle.

[peter]

Feargal Sharkey has, it seems, morphed into his own perfect cousin.

Like sewage on a beach in Cornwall he's been all over the shop in the past few days, promoting himself as the nation's 'leading campaigner' on, well, shit on our shorelines.

This morning he's on the front of the 'i' newspaper, in suitably professional pose, having been named as their champion in the campaign they are waging for the overhaul of Ofwat, the water regulator. Yesterday he was on the James O'brien show calling Labour out for having no plans for dealing with the rogue water companies who spill shit into our rivers and coastal seawater, because frankly it's simply cheaper to do this and pay the pathetically small fines for doing so, than pay to process the stuff through properly functional sewage plants. (What the fuck did the government's expect when they sold the water companies off to private business and then simultaneously lifted the regulations preventing such practices?)

There's lots to unpack here. At what point were Labour ever going to 'have a plan' to deal with this. They aren't Labour anymore. Get it? They have just been elected on a Conservative manifesto having been financed through their campaign by the same business interests that bankroll the Conservative Party. Even James O'brien had to concede this point the other day when he was considering the Conservative Party lurch to the right and he grudgingly admitted that the Labour Party now occupy the same position at the center of the UK political spectrum as the Tories did a few years ago (hence leaving the Conservatives nowhere to go to rebuild themselves but other than to right). At what point point are this manifestation of the Labour Party going to bite the hand that feeds and start reigning in the practices that have made the shareholders of the water companies billions? It ain't going to happen. When it comes to a contest between shit on the beaches or risking their new found power by pissing off the business interests who put them there, which do you think is going to come out on top?

But back to Feargal, I'm not saying that it's a bad cause for him to adopt, but just that I find it a bit annoying to see has-been celebrities jumping on bandwagons simply to give themselves public profiles that would otherwise be unavailable to them. I remember the guy belting out for the Irish cause (can't remember what side he was on) back in the eighties and it was okay - but now to see him posing in a blue suit, finger on chin with folded arms on the front of the 'i' - well frankly I could do without it. Everyone and his mother knows that what the water companies are doing is wrong, and everyone and his mother knows that the only way you'll stop it is by fining them big time for the practices they have adopted - and then the investors will fuck off with their billions and the companies will go bust. And then the country - that's you and me - will have to pick up the tab and bail them out. And nothing Feargal wants to say on the matter is going to change anything, except perhaps earn him a knighthood by some philanthropicly minded administration of the future.

So it's all just piss and wind and an opportunity to keep yourself in front of the cameras. It's a nice safe billet, not like calling out the sale of arms to Israel, no plaudits there I promise. Telling us what we all already know. Picking a nice safe target that won't fight back (not even the offending water companies; just toothless little Ofwat. No need to sweat yourself to sleep at night wondering who's coming for you there, is there?.

So do us a favour Feargal. The world has enough eco-warriors without you needing to don your tailored blue suit and pose for photo-ops for the 'i'. Although on reflection, the more the Labour government's true nature is brought into the public forum, their total abandonment of anything that has even the thinnest sliver of a right to actually call itself Labour, then, I suppose, the better.

Okay - I take it all back. On you go.

-----0-----

Great little story on the front page of the Star today, recounting how a man was bitten on the nuts by a twelve foot python that just happened to be taking a rest in the toilet when he sat down. Mind you - given what it was trying to prevent from happening, I'm not suprised that maybe the snake overreacted a tad, but let that be.

The story is accompanied by a picture of a pissed off snake (bad choice of words perhaps) with its mouth open, superimposed on a toilet bowl. Off to one side, by means of a visual prompt, is hanging a pair of red grapes, swollen and gravid, with ripe juices.

Now that's journalism. That is journalism!

[peter]

I'm in full agreement with the decision that new 'wonder drug' Lecanemab should not be made available on the NHS, but (subject to its proving to be safe in ongoing clinical monitoring) should be available via the private sector at the expense of the patient (or other) themselves.

Costing on average £30,000 per year per patient, with extensive care within hospital needed both during administration and immediately following (for side effects like encephalitis development etc) it's simply too expensive a therapeutic for insufficient gain in terms of efficacy and long term advantage.

The drug is at best only going to provide a 25% slowdown of the development of alzheimers, and in many cases it will be less. The peripheral care needed is substantial and it goes without saying that the drug company producing it will have maximised the benefit it confers in their selling presentation to the NHS. Admission onto the NHS list of drugs available for purchase within the system would of course represent a huge increase in the drugs sale numbers in the UK, where if it is not allowed for purchase by the state health service, its sales figures will be minimal. Thus the campaign we are seeing in the printed media as I post, where three or four papers are this morning, screeching about 'only the rich' being able to access the drug. Like at what point did the Telegraph and Mail worry about such things as this? There are hundreds of drugs for all manner of conditions that are available, but not through the NHS. It's never worried them before.

But this time there are two factors to consider. This time you can stick it to the new Labour government, who though they don't actively make these decisions themselves - that is done by the National Institute for Care Excellence, Nice (ughh!) - they can be indirectly painted with the blame for it.

The second is of course money. You'd have to be nieve to the point of simplicity not to see the hands of big pharma behind these newspaper reports and if no money has been slipped into the back pockets of the newspaper bank accounts somewhere along the decision to run these stories then I'm a Dutchman. Such practices are not illegal - the papers are privately run media outlets and can print what they choose to within limits - and in the day of internet news it's getting harder and harder to turn a shilling. If they can both do a little point scoring over Labour and get paid a few bucks for doing it to bump up the bottom line for the day, then hey, what's not to like.

But as I say, I think the decision of Nice is the correct one. This money can simply be better spent elsewhere. On say the most up to date drugs available for cancer care, or for children's conditions that are currently limited by the availability of the most effective drugs. It's a nasty fact, but there are tradeoffs to be made in running a health service and difficult decisions have to be made. Let's face it, distressing as alzheimers is, it's principally a disease of people who have lived their lives. Many of the putative recipients of this drug would already be septo- or octogenarians and will have limited quality life-hours left to them anyway. This is hard to take, yes, but it's true. The money that would be spent on this drug can be used to purchase higher quantities of quality life-hours elsewhere.

At some point, if this drug is the panacea it is claimed to be, then its patent will expire and it will be able to be produced by competitors as alternative and much cheaper options, and ultimately even as the generic product itself. At that point its benefits can be spread to the wider population via the state health service. But up to this point I'm afraid it simply doesn't cut the mustard as good use of limited NHS resources.

[peter]

I'm supposed to be retired, but this weekend I'm working three consecutive days to pay for a new glasses prescription I was given last Monday.

Next week I have a dental appointment. I'm under no illusion that the same will happen again (best case scenario - could be much worse).

So at just shy of 70 I still work to eat, I still work to see.

If I want to go anywhere by car, I have to make sure it meets the statutory requirements of the MOT test. Again, I couldn't do this without working. Like most people of my age, I still like to go about here and there. Being able to see my food and chew it is nice too. But after a lifetime's payment of taxes, these things are luxuries that if I want, then I must work to have them. At £220 per week, the statutory pension ain't gonna cut it. Sure, I can live on it - just. But to do more than exist, just cover the absolute basics - that ain't happening. So I work and will continue to do so until I drop or am too ga-ga to be able to perform my duties.

A couple of weeks ago new Chancellor Rachel Reeves stopped our winter fuel payments. This week it was reported that Ofgen, the energy regulator, had lifted the price cap so that the energy companies (who posted profits running into the billions earlier in the year, as 'windfall' price hikes resulting from the Ukrainian conflict poured in - and who by coincidence make huge donations to both the Tory and Labour Parties) can charge more per unit for their energy. This it is estimated, will cost the average household an extra 150 quid a year. By coincidence this is almost balanced by the now lost winter fuel payments to pensioners (introduced to help pensioners meet an earlier gas/electricity cost hike....not this current round), which effectively doubles the blow they receive.

So this winter it'll be heating or eating for most. Which makes it fortunate I suppose, that I'm on a diet. And the cold will no doubt help to pull the weight off me. But Age UK estimate that 25,000 excess deaths occur in the elderly population each year in which cold and poorly insulated housing is a contributory factor, so I'd better be careful.

But then it's all my fault I suppose. I should have been putting away more for my retirement. Problem is I worked all my life in the private sector in which employers didn't often have pension plans (in particular in retail where I spent the latter part of it). And in the earlier part - well I made the mistake of trusting the (to be honest, unthought about) adage of 'from cradle to grave '. That there was any question that your old age pension would not suffice never came into it. That's what you paid your NI contributions for. You wouldn't be rich on it certainly - but you wouldn't live in penury either. That was the (assumed) guarantee. By the time when the suggestions began to emerge from government that it might not actually be the case.....well, if you were half way into your working life by then, then you were screwed. You'd spend half your income for the rest of your life trying to catch up, and then finish up with a top-up to your old age pension that would buy you a packet of fags a week.

But again, as a government spokesperson said yesterday on the news, there's 800,000 old people who don't collect their pension credits each month. This is where they (the government) think they can do most to mitigate the effects of their decision to cut winter fuel payments. Mmm. I looked into that. We don't qualify, me and Mrs P. We get the basic state pension plus what we work for, and we just get squeezed out above the ceiling above which we qualify for the creds. So we, alongside millions of other pensioners in like situations, we don't qualify. So it's work, heat a bit, eat a bit, chew a bit, see a bit, drive a bit. And we're the lucky ones. We can just about do it. Just about. Millions are worse off.

But, but, but....

I wouldn't change anything. I've lived with my own choices and have racked up such memories that people of my station in life were never supposed to experience. We've seen more countries, my wife and I, than any of our forebears who have ever lived. I have my doubts that any who follow will ever see more. We've eaten in the best restaurants and stayed in the best hotels. Spent, like the Moor himself, not wisely, but too well. Sat at tables next to the rich and famous and enjoyed the same stuff that they were enjoying. We have such memories, such memories.....

And one thing I've discovered is that memories - experiences - while life itself can decide to divest you of them, the Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot. They sit inside you like a warm coal fire, and give off a heat of their own. You can see them in your mind's eye without those new glasses, you can taste them on your palate without your gleaming white teeth, and you can visit them without putting a penny's worth of fuel in a car to do so.

So f*** you Kier Stamer. F*** you Rachel Reeves. You keep your winter fuel payment. You keep your decent pension and your cradle to grave that wasn't. I'll put pound to a penny I've been to more places than you've been, seen more things than you've seen, clocked up experiences that you'll never come close to. And done it all with nothing. By simply making it happen.

[peter]

This morning's Telegraph is sucking its own dick about "Putin loosing his grip on Russia" following the invasion of the Kursk region of Russia by Ukraine.

Well, I say Ukraine, but that's only if you consider the Poles, Lithuanian, and likely American and UK personnel involved as Ukrainians.

But what the Telegraph seems not to understand is the horrible reality of what Ukraine has done.

For starters, to invade a space, where you can be contained, with no control over the airspace above your head,where the opposition has total control and has the air and missile superiority to simply rain destruction down on your head....well this is 'What not to do in warfare 101'. This is creating the conditions for a turkey shoot, and that is exactly what the Russians are doing. It's estimated that of the 12,000 Ukrainian troops that were moved from the eastern front - get that - moved from the eastern front where the Ukrainians are already being beaten back at the rate of a kilometre a day - 4000 have been killed already. And the equipment they have taken with them is simply being picked off by the dozen at the Russians leasure. Reports have it that forward vehicle losses have doubled - doubled - since the Kursk invasion began.

And our troops are likely in there. They might not be regulars, but shunted from the military into shadowy mercenary groups and then 'lent' to the Ukrainians, trust me, the Russians have no doubt who they believe those troops belong to. The CIA, MI6, technicians who operate the sophisticated weaponry systems that we have supplied. They're all there and they constitute a solid ground for the Russian to base their accusations that we are involved to rest on.

This was never meant to be. It was defensive help that we were supposed to be providing. Defensive help. Not advancing onto Russian soil. Not being party to the use of chlorine gas - another unpleasant rumour circulating about what the Ukrainians have been up to. Certainly not firing missiles deep into Russian territory. No wonder that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that the West must expect repercussions if it persists in aiding Ukraine in this manner. That's us he means by the way. You and me. We're the ones against whom those repercussions hit.

And what with the Telegraph's crowing about Putin's precarious hold on Russia. What don't they get. Putin might be under attack by his own political peers, but the people love him. They are absolutely one hundred percent behind what he's doing in Ukraine and thus any leader who would emerge to replace Putin would have to be equally as bad, if not worse, to keep the Russian population onside. Putin, with his demonstrated restraint in responding to Western provocation, might be the best friend we've got. The next clown to replace him could be much less restrained in his response.

So let's cut all of the propoganda crap with this. Either look at it through the lens of realpolitik or forget it. This war in Ukraine is a chicken that won't fight. It's been a disaster for the country and a disaster for the West. We fucked up by stoking it in the first place and again by scuppering the deal hammered out between Russia and Ukraine at the very beginning of it. We could have stopped it then and saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and the nation of Ukraine. Now it's gone, they're gone. And nothing is bringing them back.

[peter]

"Tough choices." "Difficult decisions."

Be prepared to hear these phrases wheeled out even more than they are already (and they feature in every second sentence issued by a government minister of any stripe as it is) after Stamer speaks to the nation this week, explaining how things are going to get worse before they get better.

It's all down to the mess that the Tories left behind, he'll tell us. Not my fault Guv! The dog ate my homework!

But then he would say that wouldn't he. And when he talks about difficult decisions, what he means is that it's you that's going to pay for them or suffer the consequences of them and not him. Because he and his set are cushioned by that layer of wealth that means that when it comes to heating his house, or putting food on the table for his family, there aren't actually any choices to be made at all. At worst, the rising costs mean a particular luxury item might just be a bit longer in falling from the sky into your lap.

And as for things getting better - they won't. He knows it and so do we. There's absolutely nothing happening that is going to make things better - not for my generation, or the one behind me, or the one behind that. Beyond that is anyone's guess, but I'm not optimistic. If this lot has anything to do with it, it's quite within the possibility that there won't be any generations beyond that. Because when it concerns the tough choice, the difficult decision, between whether to send billions of pounds worth of arms to this fight or that one, to increase offence spending (because that's what it is, and again we all know it) or on heating allowances for pensioners - well we all know what the result of that one will be, don't we.

And how long, I wonder, will they be able to spin out the "It's the mess we were left" excuse, befit starts to wear thin? It's sounding pretty dull in my ears already. And I really don't want to be told how bad things are going to get by the guy who's just won an election telling us how good he was going to make things. "Things can only get better" has, it seems, under Stamer's watch, morphed into "Things can only get worse!"

So do us a favour Stamer. Either start to do your job instead of whining about what you have been left, or fuck off and let someone else do instead. I'm betting that Jeremy Corbyn could tell you ten things that would make things better for the bulk of people in this country immediately, because I'm absolutely sure I could. But those things wouldn't keep your paymasters happy would they. Wouldn't please the one percenters who hold the purse strings and the keys to power. So not much chance of anything on that list being done is there?

Changed Labour my arse. More like No-change Labour!

-----0-----

In a second "extraordinary claim", says this morning's Observer, Kier Stamin will say that the reason people were out rioting on the streets a week or two ago, was that because they know that something is rotten in the heart of Denmark and that "there aren't enough prison places to keep them in" if they do go out and tear up a few flagstones.

Hear that. People were out running amok because they knew they couldn't be locked away for doing so. Is this man totally nuts? Does he really believe that these people were out there considering the per capita availability of prison places in which the population could be confined in the event of serious public disturbance? That, I can assure you, is a thing that would much more be occupying his authoritarian thoughts, than those of the morons who got involved in the post-Southport riots.

This speech, to be given on Tuesday apparently, is supposed by the press, to be Stamer's "message to the working class". Message or threat, I wonder? Is there a bit of, "Behave in the coming months, or face the consequences," about it? If that's the case, then he's barking up the wrong tree. The British working man doesn't like much to be told what to do - and he definitely doesn't respond well to being threatened. Not if there's anything left of the old steel of former ages left about him (which in fairness, is debatable). Stamer is by nature an authoritarian - I said it before he was elected - but much as he might like to, he isn't yet in a position to operate a gulag system in this country, a prison state (as it were) within the state. Three terms down the line and things might be different (we haven't got a Siberia to pack 'em off to, but that can be got around somehow), but as yet it's unfeasible. He's (needless to say) all in favour of 'peaceful protest' - but it's funny how the definition of what constitutes this becomes elastic when the people protesting are doing so against something you are doing.

[peter]

I wonder if anyone watching the Democratic National Convention felt as I did, a sort of nausia at the glitzy-glammy stage managed affair, that had all of the air of a Taylor Swift extravaganza, and nothing of the serious feeling that a political Convention addressing the issues effecting the United States should have.

Celebs gagging to jump on the Harris bandwagon - and media cameras swinging round the audience to make sure we all knew they were there. If Pink and Ben Stiller are with these guys, it must be right to vote for them.

Never mind the Democrat Royalty (bordering on messiah-like) of the Obama's. Him looking more ghoulish by the day, her with her lashes getting longer in pace with Oprah's (also there), the pair of them (the Obama's) hugging and staring into each others eyes in a pre-practiced dose of schmaltz that made me want to gip. And the crowd went wild.

And the Clinton's. Her, ignoring the fact that if she'd stood aside and let Sanders stand in 2016 he'd have stood a better chance of beating Trump, him smirking like a man who has just enjoyed a cigar out of eyesight of his (not particularly bothered anyway) wife. Democratic royalty indeed. Along with Biden, the people who have reduced America to a shadow of the Nation it used to be, who now come on stage in a faux extravaganza that has as much connection to the actual people it pretends to represent as I do to Mother Theresa. Like the Labour Party in the UK, the Democrats are now so far from the people, so balls-deep in the corporate-slush world of modern politics, that they wouldn't recognise a worker if they trod in one on the way up the steps of the Church of Mammon, to the alter at which they all serve.

Neil Oliver this week compared the DNC with the similar events depicted in the Hunger Games. Glammy affairs in spangled atmosphere, balloons and streamers, while the attendees spill fake tears and wring false hands over the fate of the young people who they will shortly send to their deaths in the killing fields. Cod emotions on the faces of cod-people. People who wouldn't give you the scrappings of their boots unless a camera was on them to see them doing it.

And in the middle of it all, Harris the nonentity. The woman catapulted in to replace the decrepit Joe Biden (who they now all love, having cut the wobbling legs out from under him). Unchallenged and untested, the woman who when elected put forward as Biden's running mate, was universally acknowledged as not being fit to be vice-president, let alone fit to do the actual job itself. Now the greatest thing to walk onto a DNC stage since Jesus walked onto the Sea of Galilae (or wherever). The most fit person ever, to receive the Democratic nomination Hilory told us. Well - compared to you I suppose she might seem so....but in the real world - that'd be a different thing.

Yesterday we had a thing on the BBC examining the woman's lineage back to some town in Ireland. Ireland? Forgive me, but I thought she was native American, or was it something else? Chimera like, she's universal! That must be it, but don't worry - she'll forget all of that, all about you, from the first minute her arse touches the chair behind that desk in the Oval Office.

And so it goes on. The Glam. The Sham. One of these days someone will invent something like those glasses from the film They Live!, which let's you see the reality of this stuff. When that happens, you'll never have seen so many naked people crammed together on a stage since Oh Calcutta! hit the boards in the sixties. Talk about the Emporers new clothes - this lot couldn't stitch a suit to fit the needs of America if Rumpel fucking Stiltskin himself was there to spin the thread.

[Avatar]

...at the glitzy-glammy stage managed affair, that had all of the air of a Taylor Swift extravaganza, and nothing of the serious feeling that a political Convention addressing the issues effecting the United States should have.

Serious feelings (and topics) don't win elections much these days Peter...it is (sadly) the nature of the (new) beast.

--A

[peter]

But it wasn't a bad piece Av . Reads better today than yesterday when I wrote it.

Anyway.......

Good to see that Kier Stamer has no intention of changing anything at the top end of politics. Grift and sleaze still the order of the day.

I always said that Stamer and Johnson had a good deal in common and it's looking like I had it pretty much nailed. Both were without any compunction when it came to saying whatever was needed to get them elected. Neither had any ideological framework on which they would not compromise if the need arose. Power for power's sake, and the Devil take the hindmost. (Stamer it should be said, did begin his career with the shiny ideology of a shiny student at Oxbridge. He quickly abandoned it when it became a hindrance; he may yet re-find it when he has unassailable authority within his own party....time will tell). Like Johnson, this chameleon like ability to change the colour of his political skin to suit the needs of the day has served him well. And now that he's bedding in to Number 10. He's finding his sleazy feet just as quickly.

With Johnson you might remember, it was wallpaper. In fact anything that he wanted, that he could find someone else to pay for was fair game. It'd buy you access, get you a seat at the top table (in private, needless to say) when decisions that might affect you were being made.

In fact, let's take a leaf out of FT journalist and author Simon Kuper's book, and call it what it is. Corruption. Sleaze is a cozy word, invented to trivialise this rot that infects the heart of our political system. His book Good Chaps details how, from Thatcher onwards, the old ethos of public service being the highest calling, has been eroded and replaced by greed and avarice. How the old guard of Macmillan and Co were the product's of a society, a culture where it was believed - and true to a degree - that our political leaders (coming from the best stock as they did) didn't need the regulations by which the rest of us were bound. They were,after all, good chaps. They knew what was and wasn't done.

Fast forward through the expenses scandal when that idea was finally blown out of the water, to the ultimate expression of greed for greed's sake in the form of Johnson..... (he's made upwards of 4.5 million in the last year alone by accounts - which is exactly the one thing he did have in mind when he was spinning all of that Brexit bullshit that got him elected; now in the exact place where he at least did know that he wanted to be, where he wanted that power to take him).....and we find ourselves in the place of today. And Kier Stamer is feeling his way into the same game.

No stranger to enjoying the fruits of his position, he's now at last hit paydirt. He's enjoyed a few holidays disguised as work trips, trips to private boxes at the football matches he loves so much, but now he's moving into the top league. Reports in yesterday's Telegraph tell us of £55,000 donated to him personally for 'work clothes'. Suits and glasses we are told. Well, we can't have the Prime Ministerial arse being chaffed by any old Marks and Spencer's off the peg crap now, can we? Funny, but the fellah who made the contribution to ensure our PM's sartorial suitability for the world stage (wouldn't want him to look second best next to that Frenchman Macron) has been given a highly sought after but rarely given, top level security clearance into Downing Street. These are like gold-dust and give almost instant access to the PM and cabinet at will, and they're only meant to go to those with the highest need to have rapid access to the inner sanctum of government. But measuring the PM's inside leg seems to qualify - especially if a wedge of green happens to slip into his pocket while it's being done.

Still, 55K? It's peanuts isn't it. The fellow has after all, donated half a mill to the Party in total and (according to the Downing Street office) it's all perfectly regular stuff. These passes are regularly issued on a temporary basis and then withdrawn again. Nothing to see here. In fact, as political bungs go, it's nothing. 55K wouldn't get you through front door in the Kremlin, never mind into Putin's office. That's one thing you can say about corruption in the UK; in comparison to other countries it's cheap. What was it - a couple of thou will buy you a question from an MP on House floor (no-one will listen to it but hey - what do you expect). Twelve grand, and you'll likely get to sit down to dinner with a minister. And that can be money very well spent. Ask property billionaire Richard Desmond. A hundred grand and you're in danger of finding yourself in the House of Lords where you can actually influence the legislation that finds its way onto the statute books. No - when it comes to grift, we give good value for money!

Still, it's comforting to know that Stamer isn't going to change anything. That he isn't weighed down by a narrow perspective on what is good practice in order to keep the wheels greased. And the rest of them will take their lead from him. Down to the little copper on the street who joined the service to, well, serve, but now realises that perhaps 'putting in a days graft' has a different meaning from the one he thought it did.

Some things are as old as the hills. The first day that first tentative group of skin clad prehistoric's sat down to make a collective decision - that was the first day that someone from behind slipped in with a shiny new flint knapped axehead and applied the first bit of political graft. Nothing has changed from that day forth.

[peter]

Financial Times headline this morning.

Top defence contractors poised for $52 billion cashbonanza as orders soar.

Tells you all you need to know really.

[peter]

Here's one piece of news that mainstream media definitely didn't picked up and run with, but was eminently sensible advice from a company that only stood to loose (in the first instance) were it to be adopted.

Broadband slash mobile phone network EE said that children under 11 should be limited to the old fashioned 'brick' phones that have only phone-call and texting functions.

This is bang on advice in my mind, excepting that I'd take it much further. I believe the internet should be age limited to at least 16, probably 18, with youngsters under this age disallowed from using it at all. There are thousands of kids who would be alive today were this rule followed, millions who would be spared both the bullying that occurs and the anguish that the instant demand to keep up and conform with their peers places upon them. Internet trawling is simply by its nature too potentially dangerous an activity for young people to engage in. There are always too many predatory individuals, too much unfettered/unsupervised communication between youngsters, too much likelihood of them finding themselves in the darker regions of the landscape (by their own unjudged design, or by simple accident) for it to be safe.

One day this will be realised and steps taken to limit access until individuals are of an age where they have sufficient judgement to be safely let abroad in such a place. Until then, interventions such as those from EE are a welcome step towards the realisation of this state.

-----0-----

The invasion of Ukrainian troops into Russia is of huge significance in the mindset of the Russian people.

As our media are so keen to keep telling us, this is the first time Russia has been invaded since the second world war. The problem is that they've been invaded 5 times in the couple of centuries prior to that. Invasion is a big fear in the Russian psyche, and for damn good reasons. Thus the actions of Ukraine, far from teaching the Russians that they should have left Ukraine alone, simply cement in the Russian mind, the absolute necessity of what they did, in demanding that Ukraine should never become a member of Nato, and then enforcing this demand (as they always warned they would) when the intention for it to do so was made plain.

For the Russians, a Ukraine in Nato would simply have been a prelude to the latter mounting an invasion into Russia at some future point. The actions of Ukraine in Kursk, simply reinforce in their minds that they were correct in their fears. (And who knows maybe they were.)

But what should be finally understood - and none of this stuff is the stuff you hear on the legacy media, who are simply too busy being cockahoop about the fact that Ukraine has invaded Russia (Nah-nah na Nah-nah, as the old schoolyard taunt used to run) - is that in consequence of the above, Russia will respond to this in much more precipitate a fashion, than our leaderships seem likely to believe. The fear of invasion is so deeply ingrained in the historical psche of the people, perceived as so existential a threat (and Ukraine and Belarus/Georgia are the historic routes via which such invasions have always come) that they will not hesitate to use their nuclear arsenal to protect themselves, if the situation looks like getting out of hand.

This is the risk that the Ukrainians are taking, the fire they are playing with, in their tactic of taking the fight to Russia on Russian soil. This should be made plain to the people both of Ukraine (who stand in the first instance, to be on the receiving end of such an action) and to we, the people of the West, who are being so badly served by both our governments and our respective media's, in their failure to make these risks plain.