Kevin's Watch

A recent post by Double Down News on YouTube tells of the horrors - the literal and absolute horrors - of what is going on within the internment camps within Israel, in which upwards of 5000 Palestinians are being held, significant numbers of which are women and children. Many are being held without trial in Guantanamo Bay style captivity and as such are effectively hostages in the same way those snatched on October 7th are.

Given by respected journalist Peter Obourne, the post is harrowing and uncompromising in its detail. It shows a Palestinian prisoner, hidden by shields strategically held by the prison guards to block the cctv camera view, while reportedly being sodomized with an iron bar. This footage, leaked to the internet, caused outrage in Israel, in support of the guards, who the general consensus had it, had every right to carry out whatever bestial act they chose, in both revenge for what had been done on October 7th, and as a deterrent against future similar actions. This right was repeated by ranking Israeli politicians and commentators, and included rape amongst its activities.

The posting showed a heated discussion on the equivalent of our breakfast television programming, in which the practice of such atrocities was being vociferously supported by a well known and respected commentator, as perfectly acceptable. This, said Obourne, showed the degree to which such behaviour had become normalised within the state of Israel, where far from receiving the universal condemnation of the people (which in any normal society it would), it was pretty much accepted across the board as fit for purpose in the given situation that Israel found itself in. The posting went on to show interviews with former detainees in which many other brutal examples of the treatment being meted out were given. Prisoners effectively beaten to death were left in their cells, before being bagged up in gurney sacks for disposal by whatever means was deemed appropriate. The condition of those fortunate enough to be released would seem to corroborate their stories, and such investigators who have been able to look into these accusations seem satisfied that they have a basis of fact underpinning them.

That our own politicians and media were not shouting from the rafters about it, said Obourne, that it was not a daily feature of questions across the floor of the House, showed that the same process of normalisation was underway in our own society, as we too came to accept as reasonable, that which in former times would have had every politician, every media outlet, screaming blue murder for it to be exposed and Israel brought to book for it.

Imagine, said Obourne, this was being reported against Putin, against the treatment of Ukrainian prisoners in Russian detention? Can you imagine the outcry that would follow? Or even in our own jails? There would be printed media outlets screaming from their front pages, television news reports would be filled up wholesale for days, the Prime Minister would be called to make a statement. There would be no limit to the coverage. But here we have nothing. These horrors go on apace - and the incidents are not isolated, they are being meted out wholesale to all detainees - and nothing is said. And by our silence we give our tacit support to such practices. We become party to them.

What, dear God, has happened to us? How have we come to this place? It is the responsibility of every citizen of this country, of my country, of your country, of all countries, to call this barbaric behaviour out, to demand an end to what is happening, and to demand that the perpetrators, both at the political and the actual level, face prosecution for what they have done, for what they are doing as I post.

Never have the words "Not in my name!" had such (gosh, I'm struggling for words to describe the meaning I'm after) precise cut-through to the nub. Cast aside all of their hackneyed outer clothing, their laminated coating of overuse, and return them to their solid core of meaning. Spit them out and mean every anger suffused syllable. Not...in...my....name!

('Double Down News: The shocking truth Israel hides from the world.' This should take you to the posting on YouTube should you wish to verify this for yourself. )

In this year of the US presidential election, it's apposite to consider the role of the POTUS, and why it might be considered by many as a poisoned chalice that only a complete numbskull would ever contemplate doing.

Let's face it, satisfaction of the people of America with the quality of their presidents has been in decline for many years now - and it's hardly any wonder.

The job has changed so fundamentally since the days of F D Roosevelt, that it has now become a position in which the holder is effectively set up to fail, by virtue of having to make unkeepable promises just to win the position in the first place.

It used to be the case that American presidents had a relatively empty diary on any given day. Scheduled meetings were limited to two or three per day and time was allowed for a president to think about what he was doing, take stock of the decisions he was making and take advice on the various areas of governance to whitish attention would be called in the days ahead.

No more. Now, the schedule is filled from morning until night, with a continuous treadmill of meetings on disparate subjects which no-one could be expected to have a grip on, be they the most widely read individual on the planet. And even if they did have all of the answers, the increasingly complex layering of the executive machine, the civil service if you like, is such that any intended decision will be far from its original intention at its point of final execution, by virtue of the cumulative changing that will occur at each level in the process. A combination of these factors and the over-promising that is demanded of a presidential candidate, means that any president is already onto a looser from the moment he steps into the Oval Office.

And the complete destruction of one's life, once inside the presidential bubble, is another factor that must be considered. The effects of this are writ large on the faces of individuals who have held the post. Obama and 'Dubbya' were visibly aged by the time of leaving office (the Orange Man seemed to defy this, but he's so coiffed at the best of times that it would be impossible to tell). A president can have no life outside the presidency whatsoever. He can't visit anyone without a circus of security and preparation being made before hand. There can be no spontaneity in his life whatsoever. There is no air to breathe except on Whitehouse lawn, or as Obama said, within the golf course bubble. He can see people only within the Whitehouse itself, take no private visits on his own back, can do nothing that is not scrutinised bt 100 individuals while he is doing it. Why would anyone of any true capability ever even contemplate such a role. The power to effect change is an illusion. The effect on your life devastating. The resulting failure of one's tenure guaranteed. Why, again, would anyone want it?

And the result is that the satisfaction of the American people with their presidents has been going down and down, to the point where now people only ever vote for what they see as the least bad option before them. There is no hope or expectation that anything will ever truly be better, that any real improvement will be the result, of voting this man or that, into the office. Such hope has long ago been sacrificed on the alter of reality.

So this year the charade will once again be swung into action. The meaningless promises of the sunlit uplands just around the corner, just over the hill if we can but reach a bit further, will be unrolled again. They'll be as hollow in form, be it that they issue from Trump or Harris, and just as guaranteed to fail either way. These people must know it. Trump himself has actually experienced it already. So why do they keep coming back for more, keep banging their heads against the wall of assured failure and misery that awaits them in the role? The loneliest and least powerful role in the world. Highest demand and lowest return.

It's a mystery.

(Shout out to Ryan Chapman who's excellent YouTube presentation of this subject forms the basis of this post. )

Kier Stamer must be feeling the pressure sa bit. His popularity in the polls, never great at the best of times, is tanking to new lows in the face his cutting the winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners (of which I'm one).

Approval ratings for any given leader are got by taking the positive approval percentage (ie those people who answer a survey about their opinion of the leader, party or whatever, by saying it's positive), then subtracting the figure that have answered in the negative. Mostly, this results in a pretty small positive figure, especially in the so-called honeymoon period of a new PM, but of late the figures being obtained are pretty universally in the negative (showing a similar trend of increasing dissatisfaction of people with our leaderships, as noted in the American post above). But for Kier Stamer the people have made an extra special effort. He's about as popular as cancer of the cock. You wouldn't want him in attendance for Christmas dinner any more than you'd want a dog turd on the bottom of your shoe for the event.

And his party are starting to get it. He's got a vote on Tuesday about the cutting of the allowance, and it's rumoured that the rebellion in his own ranks could be significant. He shouldn't loose the vote - his majority is much to big for that, but his authority within the party could be severely dented and he won't like that a bit. For this reason he's apparently going to whip his MPs (ie they will be instructed to vote with the government and if they fail to do so, they will be disciplined by the party officials) with the threat of being chucked out of the party if they fail to follow his instructions. This will no doubt result in many doing as he wishes even against their own consciences, the pressure they are under from their own constituents notwithstanding.

But it's not a good look for a new Prime Minister to have to be wielding the stick over his own party only a couple of months into his tenure, and shows that he is likely to be in for a rough ride in the not too distant future. Perhaps the Labour Party will go down the Conservative route and indulge in a game of musical chairs with the leadership over the next five years. Any advance on five in fourteen I hear you ask? Well, I doubt it'll get that bad, but Stamer's famed authority over his party is about to be sorely tested - perhaps tested to destruction. He's expended much effort purging the left from his parliamentary membership, specifically with the intention of having a nice compliant parliamentary party to deal with once in office - but it seems that the members might still have a will of their own. They won't want to have the whip withdrawn (a temporary suspension from the Party in effect), but neither will they want to go against the wishes of the people who vote them into parliament in the first place.

Problems abound all around, and this could get interesting.

Nb. Jeremy Corbyn has cheekily suggested that any Labour MPs who do find themselves out in the political cold, will find a warm fire within his association of independent MPs, which is gradually taking shape as the session advances.

Just to briefly continue from the above, I saw an Andrew Marr podcast on the New Statesman site (iirc), in which Marr, having interviewed Corbyn the previous day, was not dismissive of the idea that his to date informal gathering of independent MPs, could actually morph into something a bit more 'official'.

There was, he said, far more common ground between these left leaning independents than just their support for the Palestinian cause - things like ending the two child benefits cap and reinstating the winter fuel allowance formed a clear basis for a left wing 'manifesto of sorts that could prove challenging to Stamer in the House as a focus for opposition to his programme.

Much would depend, said Marr, on what happens over the coming days and weeks, in respect of those MPs that Stamer has already suspended the whip from. In particular John Mcdonnell.

Mcdonnell is a heavyweight MP who was Shadow Chancellor under Corbyn, and who is a consumate media performer (unlike the other independent MPs of left leaning who tend to be camera-shy individuals not given to giving interviews. With a couple of names like Mcdonnell on board - Rebecca Long-Bailey would be another - Corbyn could really become a thorn in Stamer's side.

Corbyn himself is sanguine about this. It's very early days, he told Marr: "We don't know each other well as yet, but there is definitely a basis of agreement and things are developing slowly." Asked if it could go further in the direction of a more formal coming together, he said that he didn't rule it out. A potential fly in this ointment was, said Marr, the visceral hatred that Tory MPs in particular, had for a number of these independents. They'd stood on pro Palestinian tickets against both Labour and Conservative candidates, and had often been less than complementary about their rivals records on this issue. (It doesn't help that they are almost all Muslim to a man - we already know the level of Islamophobia that exists in our parliament.) Personally, I think it's unlikely that anything terribly formal will emerge from this, but it's certainly going to be an irritation for Stamer, vocally prodding away at his side on the floor of the House, day in and day out.

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Ex Defence Minister Grant Schapps is in today's Sunday Times, arguing for Ukraine to be given free reign to use British artillery to strike deep into the heart of Russia, in support of its war against the latter.

To refuse to allow them to do this was to send them into battle with one arm tied behind their back, said Schapps.

Schapps is arguing for this, following the devastating attack on the Poltava military academy which killed upwards of 50 Ukrainians, trainee soldiers amongst them. Of course Shapps historically lost his seat as an MP in the election, and is now undoubtedly working for different paymasters in this exertion of his influence. But it seems that he doesn't stand alone. CIA director Bill Burns seems also to share this opinion (in terms of American missiles), arguing that the US and its allies should not be intimidated by the veiled threats of Vladimir Putin that such a development would lead to Russia responding with tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Easy for him to say. His country will not be in the firing line if these developments come about, and it is doubtful in the extreme that America would be prepared to respond to such use, even if they were widely deployed across the Ukrainian field of battle. America simply won't engage in any kind of formal hostilities with Russia, choose what level of injury or insult they subject Ukraine to, and it is irresponsible in my view to load the gun,while expecting someone else to fire the bullets - and soak up the consequences. Because Russia are not gaming around in this. They will use nuclear weaponry if push comes to shove in Ukraine, and neither America nor the UK will do anything to support the latter if they do. We are not going to engage in a widespread nuclear confrontation with Russia for the sake of Ukraine, never in a month of Sundays and someone should be asking Schapps about his response to this point. All very well for him to throw his ailing political cap into this ring, unthinking about the consequences, but others will bear the cost of his hawkish rhetoric if it comes about.

Not clever Shapps - but then, clever was never your strong point was it?

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Sticking with the Sunday Times, they have a front page headline saying that the parents of two of the victims of convicted killer Lucy Letby have said that those casting doubts about her conviction should "be ashamed of themselves."

I'm guessing that they are referring in the main, to appearance of former Brexit Secretary David Davis on Good Morning Britain, in which he spelt out clearly his belief that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred in her case.

Davis outlined how his doubts about the correctness of the judgement had begun to emerge as he had looked into the case, and stressed that it was not just him, but some pretty heavyweight 'experts' in the field of paediatric medicine who had also voiced concerns.

I absolutely get the need for the parents of the babies involved (Letby has been judged guilty of the killing of seven babies within the neonatal ward she was working on as a nurse) to get closure in this matter - but not at the expense of an innocent person being convicted of crimes that they did not commit.

There were elements of the reportage at the time that were sensationalist to put it mildly, and I always wondered how Letby could ever get a fair trial when the presumption of her guilt had seemingly already been made in the media. In addition, there were elements of the evidence that seemed too....statistical....rather than fact based for my liking and I also had some doubts that things were going exactly fairly.

Make no mistake, there is compelling evidence against Letby - but it is circumstantial and not incontrovertible. Also the power of a doctor or doctors words on witness stand is not to be underestimated. Such is the public standing of a medical practitioner in our society, so elevated his position, that his word and judgement is taken as almost gospel. But it should not be forgotten that a spike in the numbers of neonatal deaths on a ward is something that will send shivers down the spines of the professionals on that ward. They will be at pains - pains that effect their very careers - to be shown not to be at fault in any such situation. Another cause that could be held responsible, other than negligence or simple mismanagement of the ward, might seem disproportionately attractive to them, though both they and the jury/judges might not even recognise this as even being a factor. An existential cause, other than one that could be ascribed to their medical competence, might be jumped upon with more enthusiasm than should really be the case.

For these reasons alone, the evidence in this case needed weighing very heavily, and no doubt the judge and jury felt they discharged their responsibilities with the utmost of care. I repeat, the evidence against Letby was definitely there, but given the horrendous magnitude of a wrongly arrived at decision any doubt that is later cast upon the correctness of the verdict must be given serious consideration. The feelings of the alledged victims families cannot be allowed to interfere in this - nor I suspect on careful thought, would they want it to. And finally, might it not ultimately be a solice to them, were it found that they lost their children not as a result of a malign act by an evil individual, but rather by virtue of a natural series of events, harsh though they might be, but simply in the manner of the way that the world is?

Oh and just to let you know (because the media has barely bothered to mention it), 25,000 people have had their travel plans wrecked this weekend due to BA flight cancellations dished out to them at the last minute before flying. As per usual, rebookings were on flights that didn't exist, phone help lines were unanswered except for recorded messages saying that there was no-one available to help, and generally no-one seemed to either know or care much about it. (Adverse weather conditions in case you are wondering.)

Pretty usual sort of day in the BA universe, so I'm not suprised that no-one in the media thought it worth a mention. No doubt all of the BA executives will expect their annual bonuses to land as advertised, even if their planes don't.

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I'm a big fan of the Daily Star front pages, but today's is, I believe an error of judgement that I can barely get my head around.

They show a picture of a table in a bar, with a few guys around it with beers in their hands, and amongst them is Pinocchio who is also drinking a pint.

The headline reads "Oi!!! Get your round in Pinocchio!", and a sub heading reads "Exclusive. Folks blessed with oversized hooters slowest at buying a pint."

To translate, for those who don't get English argot, it means that people with big noses are slowest at standing their round of drinks in a pub, and by implication are the meanest.

If you don't get the connotations of this, then there is nothing to be done for you and I'm not going to dignify it by explaining it. But I simply cannot buy that the editors of the paper were so stupid not to see it. Or maybe they were just hopelessly nieve? Unbelievably and egregiously nieve. Nieve to the point where they wouldn't be suitable to run a church Sunday school, let alone edit a national newspaper.

There will, I'm guessing be a backlash for this, and deservedly so. If it was deliberate, then it was shameful and the editor should be sacked. If nieve, then he simply isn't fit to do his job and should be sacked anyway.

Everyone talks about the prospects of a deal to release the Israeli hostages held in Gaza. No-one ever mentions a deal to release the hugely greater number of hostages held in Israeli detention camps such as the notorious Sde Teiman centre in the Negev dessert near Gaza.

Numbering upwards of 4000, these individuals, including women and children, are held in 'administrative detention' without trial or access to legal representation, for 'security reasons'. Abuses committed against the detainees are described by human rights organisation Amnesty International, and have been investigated by news organisations such as CNN and the Associated Press. These abuses constitute torture by any definition, and it beggars belief that in Israel the topic of debate is not whether such practices should be carried out, but whether it should be enshrined law that the security forces are entitled to perform them. A sizable portion of the Israeli public apparently believe that they should.

We support Israel in the Middle East as an outpost of Western society, maintaining and upholding the Western values that our political leaders pompously espouse us as holding, at every given opportunity. But when the claims are made that rape and torture are acceptable practices in order to exact revenge on Palestinians, to deter them from future outrages such as occurred on October 7th, the silence of our political and chattering classes is deafening.

Upwards of 40,000 dead. British and other foreign aid workers shot dead for attempting to bring food and medicines to the beleaguered people of Gaza. A Turkish-American woman protester killed by a single shot to the head - executed without trial for the crime of peacefully protesting the stealing of another person's land in a country not her own. Israel given free reign to do as it pleases and to police itself with 'investigations' that will never be carried out.

By our silence we become complicit. By our silence we become guilty. We must demand better of our politicians. They abrogate their responsibility and right to lead us while this situation is allowed to continue.

Yesterday, the Daily Express (I think it was) made the accusation that Stamer and Reeves had planned all along, from before the election victory that brought them to power,to end the universal winter fuel payments for pensioners.

I absolutely agree with this.

They knew beyond doubt that they were going to have to make cuts. They had promised not to increase income tax or NI contributions. The winter fuel payments were the one thing that no-one had even asked about, thoughts about, during the election campaign. No-one in their right mind would have believed that a Labour government would cut a benefit that was vital to huge numbers of the lowest income people in the country. This media silence and their own studious avoidance of mentioning the payment, gave them carte blance to pull this flanker that will leave countless households in fuel poverty this coming winter.

I heard James O'brien posing a question on it yesterday, in which one of his respondents said that it would pave the way for tax increases in the coming months, because it would allow the government to use the pensioners as an example of a section of society who had already made their contribution to putting the country back on its feet. By the time the budget had started to bite (he meant the forthcoming October budget in which Reeves is expected to introduce these tax increases), people would have "forgotten the winter fuel issue" and moved on to the bigger tax increase hit.

Well I have news for him, for O'brien (who, as per usual is totally supportive of anything Stalin agrees to do) - it's not going to happen. The pensioners who shiver their way through this and subsequent winters, are not going to "forget", and certainly not going to forgive either. When the figures come out for excess deaths, and the rise that is predicted due to the effect of cold living conditions in housing of the elderly is seen, the press (or what part of it that remains free to criticise the government without fear of retribution) will be 'on it like a car bonnet'. Or the right wing portion of the press anyway.

And good on them. It was an interesting thing to see a left wing podcast presenter the other day, praising a clip from GBNews in which the right wing Telegraph journalist Camilla Tominey had hauled pernicious Health Secretary Wes Streeting over the coals, for having unelected ex Health Secretary Alan Millburn at meetings in which the future of the NHS was being discussed, when said Millburn had neither clearance nor accountability as an elected representative, to be in such meetings. Suella Braverman had been reprimanded by the Commons behavioural committee for a lesser offence, said Tominey, so why should he, Streeting, be allowed to get away with it?

Alan Millburn has history of support for the piecemeal privatisation of the NHS approach that Streeting also favours. He (Millburn) was deeply involved in the implementation of Tony Blair's Private Finance Initiatives (PFI's), in which chunks of said NHS were farmed out to private business, not unusually to completely wreck them by virtue of the lack of understanding and cost cutting they instigated, once in control. Never the less, Millburn, like his mentor Tony Blair, made significant personal benefits out of his alliance with these private interests, and (and this being the point) he is still heavily represented in those same interests to this day. On this basis, he shouldn't be within a mile of any such meetings - but clearly this conflict of interests has no interest to Streeting himself. On the contrary, one can only assume that he, like Blair and Millburn before him, has his own eyes on that particular pot of gold (a pot that by accounts yielded the Blairs over 12 million pounds in the years shortly following Blair's departure from front line politics). Nice work if you can get it - as long as you can live with the consequences of what you are doing in terms of the provision of universal health care which, needless to say, goes to the wall sooner or later, once private interests get a toe-hold on anything like the NHS.

But as I say, the media will not be making such observations or indeed holding the feet of ministers to the fire, unless it be the right wing end of the profession. There will be no cutting edge investigation and interviewing by the likes of O'brien and the Guardian - not of their beloved Stamer or his minions. For that, as the podcaster noted, we'll be forced into the hands of the right wing media, on the basis of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' style of thing. Expect an uneasy alliance between the hard left - no, actually just the left....Stamer has driven out all of the left wing thinking individuals from the Parliamentary Labour Party and Labour Party more broadly - and the right wing media, in the years ahead. Interesting bedfellows or what?

Anyway, the vote on the winter fuel payments will be put before MPs today, and it's assumed that at least a good number of Labour members will vote against or abstain from the motion. It probably won't be a great number, such is the fear of said Labour MPs of being stripped of the whip should they do so, but nevertheless a number certainly will. The government will win the vote and the cut will go ahead - but the backlash might just be enough to make them at least reconsider the point at which the means tested cut will kick in. If they at least allow for the poorest of pensioners who sit just above the level where pension credits are allocated (the current point at which they say winter fuel payments will still be allowed), this would bring many pensioners back under the threshold where they would otherwise loose the payment. It has been pointed out that the government has given the train drivers who already earn around sixty thousand pounds a year a pay rise. Given this, it seems hard that pensioners who get around twelve thousand should be denied their fuel allowance. But as Stamer and crew are now firmly in the business of looking after the wealthier people at the expense of the poorer, I don't suppose this bothers them too much. So much for Labour being the party of the poorest in our society. I guess we'll just have to look elsewhere. The UniParty rules and it has no intention of doing otherwise any time soon.

So the government has won the day over the winter fuel allowance, but it is the disingenuous argument that Rachel Reeves has put forward that (aside from the obvious unfairness of the cut) gets my goat.

Reeves, in an attempt to mitigate the universal benefit cut, said that by virtue of the Labour decision not to end the triplelock, pensioners are on course to get a seventeen hundred pounds increase by the time of the next election five years away.

This is of course gaslighting, in the sense that the purpose of the triple lock is to maintain the pension at the given level it currently sits at (or raise it by 2 percent if inflation or average wage rises are less than this), rather than being designed as a means of offsetting a high price hike in a particular commodity upon which lives could depend. Fuel costs have risen sharply, and are set to do so again, not least because of the double increase in the price cap at which energy companies are allowed to charge per unit, that has been allowed, firstly in the current autumn and then again early next year. The winter fuel allowance would have helped millions of low income pensioners mitigate this additional burden on their incomes, and for some could have been the very difference between life and death over the coming winter. Statistics have demonstrated the inverse correlation between numbers of deaths in the elderly, and the temperature at which they are able to live, in any given winter, but this is predictably as nothing to Reeves and her cohort. No doubt the Chancellor's house will be warm and toasty from start to finish throughout the course of the winter - let's hope she will occasionally think of those who won't be as lucky when the cold bites, and begins the slow but inexorable shepherding of numbers through the doors of early and avoidable death.

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How chuffed Labour Foreign Secretary David Lammy must be to be standing shoulder to shoulder with his American counterpart Anthony Blinken,first in the latter's current visit to the UK and later, in a proposed dual visit to see President Zelensky of Ukraine, during which it is reported that Blinken (for it is he that naturally makes the running, Lammy just being brought along to make it look like other nations are involved and on board with the American decisions) will lift the bar on British storm-shadow missiles being fired deep into Russian territory for the first time in this conflict.

It's pretty desperate stuff and incredibly dangerous. It's brought about by Russia's ongoing success against a flagging Ukrainian army in the east of the country (notice how the Kursk offensive has suddenly dissapeared off the news radar - that's because it's a disaster, as it was always going to be) and the fact that the war is all but lost in any meaningful sense. The Ukrainian forces are exhausted and near collapse, and desperate measures are required to raise moral and to prevent a complete collapse of the eastern front at least until the American election is played out, the effects of which would be disastrous for the Harris campaign.

To justify the use of the missiles, the press has been reporting for days that there is evidence of Iran supplying Russia with short range ballistic missiles, which defence analysts predict will shortly be deployed in Ukraine field of battle for the first time. The lifting of the restrictions on the use of storm-shadow missiles is being presented as a response to this, rather than as a last ditch attempt to prevent the Ukrainian front from folding before the American election, after which, it can be allowed to happen with relative impunity to the Democratic cause.

But needless to say, the Russians will not take such a sanguine view of any such action. They will see it as a major provocation and escalation (which it is) and could easily elect to respond in kind. President Putin will be under intense pressure from within his own cabinet to do so, and it'll take all of his already much stretched patience to resist this latest provocation. He has to keep the Russian people on board with his policies on the war, and missiles landing in or near their major cities is almost guaranteed to turn them hawkish. We are playing with fire with these games, and it it's a measure of our weak puppy-dog subservience to our American masters, that we have any truck with it. We have no interest in supporting the Democratic cause in the forthcoming elections, and if the party has made its own bed with its complicity with the military industrial arms industry (who profit hugely from the roundabout cycle of defence money, via Ukraine and Zelensky, and back into their own pockets) then it should lie in it without using us as a means to prop up a lost cause. Because let's face it - London is a hell of a lot closer to Russia than New York, and a damn site safer an example for Putin to display his wrath and willingness to respond in kind, to his own people with. And if anyone believes (especially that idiot Lammy) that America would be any more inclined to pitch itself in, in our defence, than it has been in terms of putting boots on the ground into Ukraine, then they are living in cloud cuckoo land.

If the war in Ukraine is to break out beyond its borders and become a wider conflict, then it's us who, following Poland and the other usual eastern states, get the drubbing. America at that point will suddenly rediscover the value of diplomacy and negotiation in settling dispute. The value of jaw-jaw over war-war. Of course, that'll be small consolation to us.

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There was a recent report, made much of in the right wing media, that a study had shown that BBC reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza had exhibited a discernable bias towards the Palestinian side, over the course of the near 12 months of the conflict since October 7th.

Studies made using AI, ChatGPT and the like, analysing key words like 'genocide' and 'atrocity', concluded that Israel had been on the receiving end of negative stories more often than had the Palestinians.

Well suprise fucking suprise! The Hamas atrocity was a single event. Israel has responded with another one virtually every single day since the conflict began.

Israel has killed 40 times more people than did Hamas in their initial attack. It's been accused of perpetrating a genocide in the International Court of Justice. It's run rampant in Gaza, going on a killing spree that has had nothing to do with securing the release of the hostages taken on that awful day last October. Of course it has had more negative reporting against it. How could reporting the facts of such a one sided conflict be balanced in terms of presenting negative stories about each side in equal measure. It's a nonsense, and the suggestion that this is a meaningful way of collecting data to make an informed decision about bias is ridiculous.

Thankfully it's easy to see that the argument is completely misguided and fallacious in this case, but what worries me is that in other cases where this so called 'intelligent' computing method may be used, the obviousness might not be so easy to spot. The results of such studies will be presented in quangos and committees as evidence supporting this action or that response, and the people involved in the decision making might not easily see that the means of collecting data upon which to draw their inferences from could be equally inherently flawed. That papers like the Telegraph would use such ridiculous measures to imply bias says just about everything you need to know about the judgement they make upon their readership's collective intelligence, but the implications of the use of this kind of study in decision making are widespread and significant.

I hope people with sharper intellects than the average Telegraph reader are in these committees and quangos, otherwise we could soon be in even deeper trouble than we already are.

You see, the thing is,when you starve something of money it goes into decline.

It works for your car, your house, even your body.

Why then would it be any different for our public services in general, and most importantly our NHS?

Why is anyone suprised that waiting times are up, survival rates down, and the patient flatlining across the board at every area we look at? Why does Wes Streeting even need to commission the study, the results of which he knows in advance? In fact, if the study were going to give any other result, he wouldn't be commissioning it at all. Because it's the result that shows that damning failure, that allows both him and Kier Stamer to stand shoulder to shoulder and say this morning, "The NHS must change or die!" In other words, we are going to press ahead with the piecemeal privatisation that will grease the pockets of private health providers, of private ancillary services, and by extension (following a sufficiently respectable period of elapsed time) their own.

We will, on the back of this reorganisation - the biggest in the service's history, the Telegraph tells us - be dragged kicking and screaming into the American system which deals with the problem of health by simply allowing the sick who can't pay for their care to die in their beds. It's a beautifully simple system. No payee - no treatee. No argument. It ensures that those most fitted to live (and that must be those who have harvested the greatest amount of money out of the rest of us - how could it be otherwise?) do so, and those who fail in this Darwinian struggle go to the wall. Those with the deepest pockets will be the ones who buy the longest lives.

No wonder Labour intends at some point to press ahead with plans to legalise assisted suicide. Hopefully the grolly will be made widely available through chemist's and other retail outlets (Poundland would be a good one - most of its shoppers will be the ones not getting any state health care under the Labour plans anyway), because it's going to be the best way out of the 'sickness but no money' dilemma that most of us are going to find ourselves in sooner or later. It's either that or dying in agony at home with stomach cancer or whatever other life-ending condition is going to dispatch you.

Not much point in writing to Streeting or Stamer about it though. Those two preening peacocks will be too busy looking into not the life saving services that concern the rest of us, but the life-extending advances that might be brought to bear on their own gilded existences. Not much point in creaming off the best that life has to offer, if you only get a few miserable decades to enjoy the spoils of your success. Start stacking up the Ozempic boys - you are going to need a lot of it and it don't come cheap!

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'Lammy warns Iran over Ukraine meddling
Russia and Iran are escalating the war in Ukraine, the most senior British and American diplomats have warned, paving the way for a possible change on long-range missile use. David Lammy the UK foreign secretary, and Anthony Blinken the US secretary of state, insisted that Iran's move to give arms to Russia "clearly changed the debate" around the war. During the pair's trip to Kyiv yesterday, Mr Lammy condemned Theran's decision as a "significant and dangerous escalation." '

So reads the Telegraph this morning, in a small front page article tucked away in the bottom right hand corner - a space normally set aside for the sports news that most Telegraph readers ignore.

It's almost as if they are embarrassed, almost apologetic, for printing a piece so egregiously volta face in terms of the truth, that you almost have to stand on your head to read it.

Do I even need to spell it out? Do I? It's like having to explain a joke - that in doing so you kill it anyway. But here goes.

Starting with the first sentence, it's us who are talking about allowing missiles to be fired onto Russian territory - missiles that we have supplied - and by extension it is us who are doing the escalating (or at least doing the talking about it). Let's just pass over the fact that it seems to be okay for us and the USA to pour arms into Ukraine, but against the grain for Iran to supply Russia - it would be a pointless exercise to start looking for consistency in a report like this.

Second sentence. Changed the debate on the war? How? What does this even mean? That suddenly it becomes okay to talk about firing missiles deep into Russia. To have bombs falling down on or near its cities and civilian populated areas? Like this isn't an escalation? How would we view this if it were to happen around London, around Manchester? Tell me we wouldn't consider that an escalation? Sure - missiles are falling around cities in Ukraine - I get that. But it's happening already. Ukraine is the theatre of this war, and this is about stopping its escalation, not about what is already in process.

Theran's decision is a significant and dangerous escalation? Come on Lammy. The Theran issue has been touted for a few days in order to prepare the ground for us to carry out an escalatory act, with the hope that it (the Iran story) will mitigate our actions in the eyes of the public and prevent too much of a backlash. The reason we want to do this escalatory thing is to keep up the morale of the exhausted soldiers on the eastern front and keep it from collapsing prior to the American election. After that, it can collapse to its hearts content. Harris will have won and at that point who gives a fuck about what happens to Ukraine. What's important is that it doesn't happen before the elections, showing that 700, billion dollars of American money has been spaffed up the wall by the Democrats in a war that could have been ended before it had even begun (had the Istanbul agreement between Russia and Ukraine been allowed to stand by the British and American leaderships).

Lammy, Telegraph? Go stand in the corner with the pointy dunces hat on. Because it ain't us who are the stupid ones here. It's you, if you think we'll fall for this crap!

I could barely believe my ears listening to the BBC 6 o'clock news last night.

Referring to the activities of the first day of the inquiry into how 'Lucy Letby was allowed to commit 7 murders of newborn babies in the neonatal ward she worked in' (and note how the wording was is designed to allow no question as to her guilt; this was the wording used in the report, but is not necessarily the BBC's 'fault' that this is so: it's just an almost protocol thing that once a court decision has been reached, the party is considered guilty beyond doubt and any further reference to them must reflect this finality.....)....

Sorry about that diversion - I'll restart,

Referring to said activities, the presiding official (might be a judge, I can't remember, but believe so) started by addressing some of the recent speculation on the soundness of the verdict reached in the Letby cass. In the BBC report, they said she - the judge - had spoken of the media output, how some of the reports had cast doubt upon the verdict and had also tried to "humanise Letby" by etc etc.

Humanise Letby?

I wasn't aware that even convicted criminals, choose how bad their crimes might be, were not human? Or not to be considered as human? What was this woman speaking of?

The BBC was amongst others in treating the Letby case as a morbid sideshow in which her guilt was assumed before she had even reached the dock. They are still obviously keenly desirous that no evidence that threatens to interfere with their 'shock entertainment' presentation of Letby as a monster is allowed to muddy the waters. They've offered veiled criticism - not overt, but that clearly disapproving type of presentation that the BBC news is so good at - at any stage where forced to report on doubts that have been raised (eg by politicians, members of the legal and medical profession etc), but this was a new low even for them. They must have been aware of the despicable nature of any suggestion that a person is lower than human - even baby murderers - in our supposed civilised society (supposed being the very significant word here - the recent verdict clearing the Jeremy Kyle Show of any guilt in the suicide of that contestant a week after his appearance, brings doubt on that: even the existence of the Jeremy Kyle Show brings doubt on that), but they used the judge's words nevertheless. I'd have been okay if they had done so with the same shock at such a choice of words from a presiding official as I felt - but their presentation was such that they were in agreement with the characterisation of Letby as less than human.

This is starting to be a real problem in western society. This presentation as less than human of anyone that isn't liked (for whatever reason). It's done to individuals like Letby, monsterised and presented as evil incarnate. It's done to ethnicities en blok, as the Israeli's are doing to the Palestinians, when they talk of them being "animals" upon whom any cruelty can be inflicted with impunity. It's done to whole nations, as Zelensky does when referring to the Russian people (and coming back in full circle, as our media does in reference to Putin).

It's a measure of the lack of rationality, the overtaking of the head by the heart in our society - and in no good kind of way. Emotions and romanticism are fine in their own place, but not in our state and media dealings with our neighbours or even adversaries in the world. Here, the cool head of rational thinking is required, especially in presentation of the enemies of our society, both internal and external, individual and en masse.

Blood and Soil! Blood and Soil! These were romanticised and emotive concepts back in the 1930's and we all know where they led to back then. Are we so wise that we can play the same games, but be assured that we will not travel to the same end?

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Is Kier Stamer even literate? I know he's a lawyer and an ex director of public prosecutions, but from the quote from him given in this morning's Telegraph, you have to wonder.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy is in Washington, pushing for Ukraine to be able to fire long-range weapons into Russia (I saw an American professor on a YouTube podcast the other day, describing the British as the single most bellicose and war driven people on earth, and seeing Lammy in New York I'm minded to agree with him). The Americans are apparently hesitant on the basis that they don't want any escalation of the existing situation, and Putin has made clear that any such action would effectively place Russia and Nato at war with each other.

Then Kier Stamer's intervention (from back in London)

Quote: "Ukraine has the right to self-defence (ahhh - the old self-defence defence again) and obviously we've been fully supportive of Ukraine's right to self-defence, providing training capabilities. But we don't seek any conflict with Russia ( ), that's not our intention in the slightest. But they started the conflict and obviously Ukraine has a right to self-defence."

I mean, what is he? A child in a playground? If we don't seek any conflict with Russia then stop sending billions of pounds worth of arms to Ukraine to fight a war that we have no interest in! Use the money rather to give pensioners in the UK (4000 of whom will die this winter of hypothermia related causes) their fucking winter fuel allowance! Russia warned and warned and warned that Ukraine joining Nato was a red-line for it. At what point did we simply choose not to listen to this and then when the obvious end result manifested, simply pretend that "Russia started it!" This is fucking kid's stuff, not worthy of a British Prime Minister.

Either say something constructive and in keeping with the facts or shut the fuck up Stamer. We're the ones who'll pay the price of your playing these games, while you'll be tucked away in a bunker somewhere or (more likely) away in America, like the fabled Duke of Plaza Torro (he led his army from behind: he found it less exciting). We don't need a schoolkid stirring things up:we need some sensible adults to sit down with the Russians and the Ukrainians and get this pointless affair sorted out.

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"Keep calm and stroke a chair," claims this morning's Daily Star, as they report on a "boffins research at Oxford, which has Show that stress and anxiety can be reduced with immediate effects by "a gentle rub" on a chair or other piece of wood at times od particularly high duress.

Don't know about this - sounds a bit silly to me, but to any individual who does feel that it might help (subject to appropriate vetting for the correct 'characteristics', you might say) you're more than welcome to come around and stroke my wood, anytime you feel the need!

LBC presenter James O'brien is in his element now that Kier Stamer has won the election and ousted the Conservative Party from their period of office - a period in which the country was changed wholesale from a nation one could be proud of, to the petty, vindictive and now positively dangerous entity we have morphed into.

O'brien is the worst kind of champagne socialist, satisfied that he is always right about everything (he even has a book named just that), who hasn't an actual grain of socialism about him in his own life (product of private education, kids to private schools, private finance initiative for the NHS, business over people etc etc) and who, like Guardian readers the length and breadth of the country, believes that working people should be praised to the rafters and supported to his dying breath, until they actually act to help themselves. At that moment they become the enemy that must be put back in their box, sent like children to the naughty step until they learn their place, subservient to their establishment betters once again.

His show has always featured a spume filled rant against the Tories at its outset, and in fairness some have been entertaining and pertinent in their presentation of the list of Conservative crimes against this country. He hated Boris Johnson with a vengeance, Sunak he started off giving the benefit of the doubt, but soon changed his position once it became obvious what a useless little worm the fellow was, and Truss - well we don't even need to go there. Conservative cabinet ministers were paraded daily for their sheer nondescript talentlessness. The talent pool that Johnson had left following his post Brexit evisceration of the Party came under withering attack, and it was often funny to listen to.

But it was when the calls came in that the cracks started to appear. It became rapidly apparent upon listening to the show that responders to O'brien's daily questions were very carefully selected, such that anyone who had a serious argument against the position that O'brien happened to be taking was never allowed within a mile of the presenter (people have to give an outline of their response before they are let loose on the airwaves). In this his programs became either an echo chamber of his own position, or vehicles for him to ridicule and hold up for display, people who were clearly not capable of framing a good defence of a position, were they given a month of Sundays in which to do so. Often his victims were chosen for no other reason than the outlandish nature of their positions - real examples of the swivel-eyed loons that David Cameron refered to when talking about the UKIP voter base - people who were easy fodder for O'brien to humiliate and trash on live radio. His style was that of a schoolyard bully, shouting over people as they tried to make their case, setting up spurious diversions which he wouldn't let go, and never once allowing anyone a moment to actually make their case. Of any rationally put case that ran against his own, nothing was ever heard.

But it was the very fact of the Conservative government's moral bankruptcy, their simple egregious badness and destruction of this country, that gave O'brien the meat on which his show could feed. Now he finds himself with a Prime Minister who mirrors his opinion on just about everything, whose true socialism is as thin a veneer as O'brien's himself, and who can do no wrong. Throw all his pledges out of the window? Fine - circumstances change. Cut the winter fuel payments to pensioners? Has to be done - tough decisions, fiscal black hole and all that. Clamp down on free speech and the right to protest? Well, you can't have people bringing the country to a standstill can you? There is never a mention of Stamer's cruel evisceration of the party that he inherited, his excision of anything that actually represents the true labour movement which it started out to be. Stamer's Tory-lite version of the Labour Party is now exactly where O'brien wanted it to be and he is like a pig in clover.

But oh James, oh James. What a silly boy you've been. Because like so many before you, you've chosen the one thing that is guaranteed to cut the legs out from under the very table behind which you sit every day. Because your whole show was hinged upon contention. The Tories were the fuel upon which it fed in order to burn. Now, we tune in to you each morning, and the bland complacency with which you accept every action of your darling Stamer and his crew of fifth columnists, is simply dull to listen to. You've, like King Midas, got your heart's desire and it's done for you. Make no mistake fellah, your day's are numbered. Listeners will drift, figures will fall on charts, and your bosses will start looking for more cutting edge stuff to stick in that prime morning spot. Prepare for the graveyard shift, because it's coming. And that as a temporary stay before final excision from the station.

And in the meantime you're going to have to watch Stamer and Co. do ever more and more stuff that goes against the grain, until it begins to grate on even your thin layer of socialist principles. You've accommodated the winter fuel payments cut, rationalised it so you don't have to confront its absolute rotteness head on, but this won't be the end of it. You'll be asked to do the same, and the same, and the same again. As will those MPs who walked through the Yes lobby to vote in favour of the cuts, you'll be asked to compromise again, and again, and again. Until finally penny drops. That what you've pushed to the top is not just a Tory-lite version of a Tory - one that can play the champagne socialist game alongside you. But an actual dyed in the wool Tory. One who could have sat in Boris Johnson's cabinet and we wouldn't have noticed the difference.

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In an uncharacteristic display of common sense, Joe Biden and his team have apparently resisted pressure from Kier Stamer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy to allow both British and American made long distance missiles to be fired into Russia.

It appears that Putin's warning that he would consider such an act as putting Russia and Nato into a state of war has not gone unheeded. It seems that Biden (and no doubt his paymasters in the military industrial complex), while perfectly happy for the war in Ukraine to continue indefinitely as long as it's only the Ukrainian people bearing the human cost, are not actually prepared to see the world brought to an end as a result of it. Certainly Putin has made similar threats in the past and hasn't acted upon them (when F-16 fighter jets were spoken of being supplied as an example), but missiles falling in or near Russian cities is completely different matter.

Zelensky is of course screaming at the bit for said permission to be given: not because it'd win him the war, but for the very reason that Biden and Co don't want to give it - that it'd pull Nato into the conflict. This would give him (Zelensky) his one single chance of coming out of this disaster on top. He'd in effect, see the whole of Europe go up in flames in order to secure his own survival. But this the Americans will not wear (not because they care much about Europe, but because of fear that nuclear weapons might be used against themselves).

So Stamer and Lammy must slink away empty handed. They won't be happy, but the world at least, will be a bit safer. The media is at last (because it hasn't got much choice) beginning to detail the true picture of the losses that Ukraine is suffering, and the true bleakness of their situation is being reported. This missile thing is probably Zelensky's last stand, and I think that the endgame for him is approaching. He's lambasting the British and American decision not to allow him to use the missiles in today's UK press, and if it's the same in America, they won't take kindly to it. He, Zelensky, is running out of road, and this decision by Biden could be a mark of a sea-change in the American approach to this war. The American election is close now - just a few weeks to get reelected - and then they can disengage with Zelensky and get things onto a more even footing. Even the Americans can realise when the game is up, and change tack when needs must. It was them, after all, that invented the term realpolitik.

Following on from the above, I was interested to tune in to LBC yesterday afternoon (it's on my car radio as default, and I was waiting in it while my wife went into a shop to collect an order she had placed).

A lady presenter whose name I don't know had a Mexican gentleman, resident in the USA on the phone, and the Following conversation was in progress.

The gentleman was commenting on the subject under discussion - the increasing trend towards taking out private health insurance in the UK, as opposed to placing reliance on our NHS with its much publicised failings - and was saying that in both the USA and Mexico, the same policy has been followed as is in progress here. Namely the deliberate degrading of the public health provision services (granted, already minimal in the USA) and public undermining of confidence therein, to deliberately bring about the shift under discussion.

The presenter was suprised. "You are saying that this failure of the NHS has been deliberately orchestrated by government, in order undermine its credibility as a service that people can rely upon, with the express purpose of driving people into the arms of the private sector?" "Absolutely," replied the man.

The call ended and a woman caller was next in line.

"What most people fail to understand," she said, ''is that the huge majority of us will end our lives in the care of the NHS, private medical insurance or otherwise notwithstanding. The elderly are not the focus of private health insurers interest. End of life care is difficult and messy at best, with no good result at its conclusion. Your private health insurance will have terminated long before you yourself do, due to either simple financial inability to maintain the ever increasing costs of premiums or indeed even the refusal of companies to continue to insure you, following your initial period of treatment under insurance.

Another thing is that people don't realise that basic premium costs have increased by 25 percent in the last year alone, as insurance companies reap rewards of this increased shift towards take-up of their products.

It is for these reasons that we should be happy to see our taxes going into the repairing of the NHS. We are going to need to use it at some point ourselves, virtually all of us."

So concluded her call, during which she was allowed to make her point, without interruptions or being shouted over - points that were in direct opposition to the position that the presenter was taking, that Wes Streeting's private finance initiative and the increasing reliance of people upon private health providers was all necessary and to the good. This was the exact opposite to what you would have gotten on the James O'brien Show on the prime time spots in the morning. The only question is why LBC makes us wait until 4pm on Saturday afternoon (when no-one is listening to their radio) to hear it?

This is exactly how a radio debate should be carried out - not by hectoring and bullying anyone who has an opposing position to yours, not by selecting callers either to support your position as interviewer, or deliberately choosing those with only the most way out and insupportable counterarguments to present, individuals who can be easily provoked and humiliated. But rather by engaging in proper debate against people who can clearly iterate the strongest and most cogent arguments against the position you are taking.

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Kier Stamer is set to push laws permitting the practice of assisted dying onto the statute books at pace, according to this morning's Sunday Mail.

This will be bad legislation (as legislation always is when rushed) and will be the thin end of a beastly wedge which will see elderly people in their millions experiencing doubt and guilt, suspicion and fear, in their final years of life.

"What should I do?", they'll ask themselves when diagnosed with what will probably be their terminal conditions. "Should I make it easy for my family and get it over with quickly?" But what if they don't want to? Are they being selfish? Is that how they think their families will see them? Is that how their families will see them.

If you can't see the potential for discord and abuse in this, then you really are not thinking it through. People feeling pressured, real or imagined, to take the quick road out. People actually being pressured, either for the best of motivations, or the worst, to do something that they simply don't want to do.

Life is precious. All life. It should never be squandered or willingly given up. If palliative care isn't up to speed then make it so. No-one should suffer as they leave this world - certainly not with pain that can be avoided. This is the situation to concentrate upon. Not on a poorly thought out and precipitous piece of legislation that will put power into the hands of doctors and perhaps unscrupulous relatives of the dying - but most certainly not into the hands of the dying themselves.

Kier Stamer's approval rating has,since becoming PM, tanked faster than any other leader's since such studies began.

It typically takes a couple of years for a fall to the 33 percent level that Stamer now polls - in Tony Blair's case it was nearly four years - but Stamer has achieved this precipitous fall in just over 70 days.

He'd no doubt say that it's because he's had to take the "difficult decisions", forced upon him by the terrible legacy he inherited from the Conservatives, but the truth is that he has handled things in a pretty heavy handed way since assuming office and is paying the price.

With four years to go until an election, Stamer is probably not too concerned with the figures, but he should be. His majority is large, bit thinly spread. It has no depth, with a very small number of people actually having voted for him - less people than voted for Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 - in the election. His majority rests on a bed of less than a third of the popular vote, and he can ill afford to spaff it away in the manner in which he has been doing. His Labour MPs, many of whom are just beginning their careers in politics, will be very unhappy with the trend these figures are showing, not even the usual 100 day 'honeymoon period' having been granted to their never popular leader (remember - he was unpopular in the polling as an individual, even when Labour were enjoying their significant pre-election polling lead over the Tories of twenty plus points). They will absolutely be wondering if Stamer is the man who should lead them into the next election, and many will be thinking that sooner rather than later would be the time to change leaders, if they are going to take a leaf out of the Conservative books and jump onto that particular merry-go-round.

Stamer has upset many MPs with his winter fuel payments cut, and has taken even his own people by suprise in the degree to which he has turned his back away from working people and towards the interests of the few, rather than the many. His deputy Angela Rayner is hungry for his job, and will be working to undermine him at every turn, as indeed will his Chancellor. And now, as if to make things for the leader worse than they already are, the media have fixed on the shady shenanigans of his wardrobe donations (which is now bringing in Mrs Stamer to boot), and showing him to be as grubby a graft taker as Johnson ever was. His cod-ernestness on assuming office that he would usher in a new kind of politics - one in which sleaze (ie corruption) and self-interest had no place - was shown to be as thin an offering as every other promise he has made, since he lied his way into the Labour leadership position having stabbed his former leader and 'friend' Jeremy Corbyn in the back. It's business as usual in Downing Street under the Stamer flag, but business isn't booming.

It's small stuff really this wardrobe business, but it's the small stuff that will seed in the rot that will ultimately bring him down. Our politics has been so troubled for so long, that it's almost as if we need to be continously in a state of chaos and change. That no leadership will ever again satisfy us until this unspoken and almost unconscious understanding that something is deeply wrong with our polity, our establishment, our society, is brought out and excised by.....I don't know what? There's no doubting that people are becoming increasingly aware that our succesive leaderships, our so called representatives in our highest political offices, have been selling us short. That the media they previously believed in and trusted is no longer working in their service, but has sold itself to a higher bidder, such that it's output is no more to be bought into than David Lammy's excuses for Stamer that "he has no public funding for his wardrobe in which he has to "step out and represent Britain at its best" (he's a millionaire for Christ's sake - let him buy his own clothes), is clear. And that the public in increasingly large numbers are no longer buying it - any of it - is becoming more clear by the day. But the establishment keeps on flogging it, the same old dead horse by which for the while, they've done so nicely. But stuck in their bubble, they simply don't seem to get that the game is up.

Or perhaps they do. Perhaps that's why they seem to be doing everything in their powers to spark off a full on war in Europe. Because nothing gets things going like a war. It focuses the collective mind of the people in one direction (away from the one which you'd rather they didn't look). Draws a line under everything that has gone on before. Makes people afraid and sends them running into the arms of the State, the establishment, the status quo. Why else would we be pushing for Ukraine to be able to fire long-range weapons into Russia? A deliberate escalation to which the Russians would be forced to respond? Why would voices in this morning's papers be shouting for Britain to "go it alone". To ignore the American decision to hold off on giving Ukraine the all-clear to start firing UK and American made missiles into Russia, and give it the thumbs up on its own, without the Agreement of the Americans.

Maybe they've already decided that the Covid scam wasn't enough, hasn't changed the game sufficiently in the direction that they want it to go, hasn't brought the people to book, established the kind of world they want, and that another shock is needed. This time the big one. War baby - War!

I don't know. I'm just spinning plates here.

There's simply too much going on here that we none of us understand. We're the archetypal cave-sitters in Plato's thought experiment, sitting watching the shadows cast by our media and trying to see the workings that are going on behind our backs. We don't get the real picture - we aren't meant to. Life is easier, granted, if you just stop thinking about it, or if you do think, then just do so by swallowing the narratives you are presented with (though God knows, they are confusing enough by design - meant to keep your brain like a pea in a whistle). But that isn't me. It doesn't work for me. So I stretch myself on the rack of my own imaginings, my own desire to turn my head around by 180 degrees to see what is transpiring behind my back.

I'm not by any means sure it's working or indeed that it's worth the effort.

I mean, nobody in their right mind could think that that would be a good thing could they?

For us to go spinning off at a tangent and give Ukraine the go-ahead to fire missiles deep into the heart of Russia without the okay of the Americans being behind us?

Yet that is exactly what some people seem to be suggesting in this morning's papers, and in all seriousness.

This morning's 'i' runs a topper, " 'Just do it': Stamer urged to break away from US on missile use by Ukraine", says the header. It continues, "PM faces mounting political and military pressure to allow Storm Shadow's to be fired into Russia."

Elsewhere, foreign secretary Lammy says that we should ignore Putin's "fascist threats" to use nuclear weapons.

What the frick is this all about?

It's being presented as a ploy to put America under pressure to lift its holding back on making a decision to agree to said firing of missiles, but can this really be it? Surely Stamer must realise that the Americans are not subject to allowing themselves to be influenced in this way - that any decisions they make are made at their own convenience and with an eye to their own best interest. History shows that they will not be influenced by us or anyone else in matters like this, so surely neither Stamer nor anyone else around him could believe that now, when the stakes are so high, that they will change their behaviour and do otherwise?

So what's going on? Are the Americans themselves behind this theatre? Is it a whole set-piece to unsettle the Russians, to make them believe that America is teetering on the brink of allowing such a decision to go ahead, to even follow suit themselves? I mean, if the UK does give this unilateral decision without American approval, and thereby precipitates a full-scale European conflict, America would have no grounds to enter the fray and risk a nuclear attack on its own territory, Nato membership notwithstanding. It could rightfully argue that this was the consequence of the British's own decision, and having made their bed they must lie in it. That it was not a Nato backed decision and so the normal rules of Article 5 (is that the one whereby members are obligated to step in to defend other members who are under attack?) do not apply. This could in turn release Russia to do what it will in response to any Ukrainian attack, without fear of getting the Americans into the conflict. I mean the British giving such an approval independently could increase the chances of a European theatre-wide war, on this thinking.

So again, as in my previous post, I'm absolutely confident that this account of what is transpiring in our media is a smokescreen. It makes no sense (unless the people surrounding the PM are quite mad - which is I suppose a possibility that cannot be discounted). This, in my mind, has to be a piece of orchestrated theatre - orchestrated with the American's involvement, such that no misunderstanding and unprepared for sequilae could result. It has to be. Or maybe Stamer and his advisors are so misguided in their judgment of what the Americans will respond to, that they actually believe that they can be influenced in this way. If this is the case, then their failure will be doubly bad in that they will have displayed a fissure in UK-American relationships that can be exploited but Putin and Co, and will simultaneously have increased the overall risk of the entire situation by a significant degree.

Again I can't pick the bones out of it, and we each must make of it what we will. But of one thing we can be assured: dangerous games are afoot and ones that will likely end in tears for at least some of us.

Kier Stamer's wife is pictured today wearing another 'gifted' designer dress, as she attended some London fashion show yesterday, seemingly unaware of the debacle surrounding her husband's failure to declare five grand's worth of donated clothes she had recieved.

Are these people simply tone-deaf to the controversy surrounding them, or do they simply not care. Is this a two-fingers up to those who think they can have an opinion about the millionaire PM and his wife receiving gifts to the tune of tens of thousands of ponds, while the near poorest in the country have their winter fuel payments taken away from them without so much as a second thought. Are they totally unaware of the optics of this, or do they just not give a toss?

It was interesting yesterday to hear James O'brien for the first time expressing doubts about the man he had helped by virtue of his platform, put into Downing Street? At last the penny was beginning to drop. He was at pains to stress that this was not a Boris Johnson level of misdemeanor on Stamer's part, that the two situations were world's apart because Stamer simply "hadn't realised" that gifts to his wife should be included in his declared items on the Register of Financial Interests (oh - that's alright then James ), but that he conceded that this was "four faults" against the Prime Minister.

A brief discussion was held as to whether the PM's wife could be expected to appear on the world stage wearing the same outfits twice, to which my response would have been that if it's good enough for Kate, the Princess of Wales to do so - who incidentally also often wears off-the-peg clothing from M&S, feeling no need to 'big herself up' by always appearing as a clothes-horse and wearing designer gear - then it's good enough for her.

This is a storm in a teacup. Much ado about nothing. But it's reflective of the rotteness at the heart of our society. That the establishment figures, be they political or business, civil service, entertainment or otherwise, simply don't expect the same rules to apply to themselves as to the hoi polloi. How much could Stamer and his Mrs show that they are simply ordinary people, of a mind and a mindset of the working people they are meant to represent, by simply adorning themselves in the same clothing. Do they really feel that an off-the-peg suit or dress is going to be that important - or is it simply a question of their vanity, their need to be 'equal' to those they circulate amongst. Or perhaps they simply just like the luxury stuff, and when it comes free, well hey - why not?

I'm not suprised by any of this - I knew that Stamer was essentially a Labour version of Boris Johnson (a man who'd lie at the drop of a hat, do anything to secure the reins of power) long ago. I'm suprised it's taken James O'brien this long to catch on, but I tell him now that it's only going to get worse. If his program survives, I absolutely predict that within a year or two, he'll be giving one of his cod-regret filled soliloquy's, in which he'll reveal that Stamer has failed the litmus test, and is actually as bad as anything the Conservative Party had put up previously as being a fit individual in which trust of running the country should be placed.

Little bit of background on the ongoing claim, mainly of those that have doubts about the Western/Nato involvement in the Ukraine conflict, that Britain and the US scuppered a peace deal that would have ended the debacle, meer following its starting.

The Ukrainians and Russians had met immediately following Russia having crossed into Ukraine and had hammered out the Istanbul Communique,in which Russia would have withdrawn to its pre-invasion borders in return for a guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality and that Ukraine would not join Nato.

Suddenly the deal was off, purportedly because of interference by Boris Johnson who advised Zelensky that he should have no truck with such a deal.

The official explanation was that at the time, the atrocities committed by Russian troops in Bucha were discovered, and Zelensky/Ukraine were not minded to proceed in the light of these developments.

This explanation didn't hold water however. Zelensky himself had said that the sealing of a peace arrangement became more important, not less, as a means of prevention of further such horrors.

The next development in this story came when the New York Times published a nearly full text of the Communique, and it was then claimed that Russia had tried to insert a condition that allowed it almost free-rein, to invade Ukraine at any point it chose, should it become unhappy about anything that the latter was choosing to do.

Again, upon inspection this proved to be a red-herring. The clause in question actually was a reaffirmation of the ongoing neutrality of Ukraine (a neutrality which incidentally had served them very well as a country since the break up of the USSR, until the West decided that this didn't suit it, and started interfering in the results of their elections via CIA backed 'revolutions'), with proposals as to dispute resolution mechanisms, should either side become unhappy with the other, rather than the carte blanche for Russia to invade as suggested.

And finally in the last few weeks, the truth has out. Neocon former Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, an active promoter of Nato expansion policy since its earliest days in the Clinton administration, finally gave the admission that it was the US and Britain that had convinced Zelensky not to sign up to the agreement, on the basis that it would prevent Ukraine from having whatever weapons systems or missile capabilities it chose, within its own territory.

Or put differently, because it would not allow the US and Nato to fill Ukraine with offensive weaponry, all bristling towards Russia and sitting right on its borders. That Ukraine was meant to be a neutral border between Russia and the West was neither here nor there. The idea of Nato expansion had always been to encircle Russia within a ring of firepower, and any agreement that prevented the achievement of this aim was not to be countenanced. Dress it up in whatever terms you like about Ukrainian right to have whatever weaponry it wants within its own territory, this is what it boils down to.

And the subsequent deaths of God knows how many people, Ukrainian and Russian, the destruction of Ukraine as a country, and the destabilisation of the world balance of peace is the direct result of this prevention by Johnson and Biden, of Zelensky from bringing the war to an end at that earliest of opportunities. At this point Ukraine could have withdrawn from the war, borders and country intact, and resumed its progress as an independent country forging its own future in the world. Now it lies in smoking ruins with an uncertain future and hundreds of thousands of its citizens dead and injured.

Now these are the facts that you never hear on the mainstream news. Unless you go digging, you simply don't get this stuff upon which to build your understanding of this conflict - a conflict which by the day threatens to balloon up into a different kind of animal altogether. We are here because our own leaderships have put us here, in a place where you'd have to be a simpleton not to get that it's shaping up to get much worse before it gets better.

Is this really why we put these guys into the positions of leadership within our polities? To bring us to the edge of destruction? Is it really?

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Another bit of news that slipped beneath my radar, and in the main that of the legacy media as well (certainly not making the 6pm bulletins I tend to watch) was the recent firing for the first time, of a hypersonic missile by the Houthies, into Israel.

The missile, travelling at five times the speed of sound, hit an area just outside Tel-Aviv, where according to Israeli sources, it did little damage.

But this isn't the point. We have a situation where a group of militia, a ragtag bunch of men with barely a comb to pass between themselves, have moved in a matter of short months, from firing five hundred quid drones into shipping in the Red Sea (and doing pretty well with them as well, it has to be said) to firing million pound high tech missiles right into the beating heart of Israel, and damn near hitting a zone of major population concentration where the casualty numbers would have been horrendous.

Such missiles travel at speeds that make them near impossible to stop. Normal air defence systems (Israel's Iron Dome in particular) won't come close given the short time frame they have to work within. The best one can hope for is to get to a shelter when the air-raid sirens go off.

Undoubtedly supplied to the Houthi rebels by Iran, this event must be causing great consternation in Israel. Have the Houthis got any more such missiles? What happens if Iran supplies Hezbollah with the same type of missile systems that much closer to Israel, limiting the response times even further? The Houthis have made it plain that they will not stop targeting Israel until Israel ends its operations in Gaza, and that will presumably now extend to the West Bank as well. Hostilities with Hezbollah show no sign of abating and the likelihood of a full scale war breaking out with Lebanon increases by the day.

The idea that these hypersonic missiles landing in Israel could become a daily occurrence must be giving Netenyahu sleepless nights, unless he is totally unmoved by the risk to his own people that his actions in Gaza and the West Bank are bringing about. Like the Ukrainian situation outlined above, the situation in Israel out of hand, threatening the very existence of Israel itself. Israel will get support from the USA and UK no matter what - but only in terms of firepower and weaponry. There will be no boots on the ground in the Middle East, no matter what transpires. The Netenyahu game has reached a point where it has (like Zelensky) run out of road. It can't protect itself against the most advanced missile systems now being lined up for use against it: it's most vociferous supporters cannot do so either, but won't take the final step of wading in to its defense for fear of where such an escalation would end - so it's effectively game over with the existing state of affairs. How it resolves is open to debate for sure, but resolve it will, and when it does Netenyahu is going to have a lot of answering to do if he is to save his own neck.

It's a particularly vicious thing to do, to rig pagers and walkie talkies so that they explode moments after a message is received, so that the devices are almost guaranteed to be being held at optimal distance to effect maximum damage to the face and eyes of the victims, and the hands by which they are being held.

One commentator on television yesterday said in interview that this was a 'new norm' in warfare in which strikes against civilians was being "legitimised" on an ever more frequent basis.

I could not agree less. There is nothing legitimate about this type of action, be it carried out by a state or a proscribed group, it makes no difference. This is terrorism plain and simple, and it must be called out as such if we are not to descend to yet further degrees of barbarity and inhumanity than we are already seeing. That our media is reporting the atrocities without making any apparent judgement of the attack, would in some people's opinion be a case of straightforward reporting of the kind that I have often lamented as being a thing of the past.

Fair comment, but I'd have expected at least some level of condemnation from our leaderships on what can only be described as an untargeted attack (except in the most general sense) that most certainly injured as many non combatant civilians as it did active 'soldiers'. Reports of children carrying the devices to their parents, doctors and health workers using the devices on the hospital floor. There may have been some actual Hezbollah fighters proper caught in this widely cast net of death and injury, but I've yet to see them on our television screens. On the contrary, to date all we've been shown are people in supermarkets, hospitals and on busy streets, pictures of children who have fallen victim to an indiscriminately thrown out act of depravity.

I say again, this is terrorism plain and simple and most assuredly not a new norm of legitimised warfare.

We are in a difficult place now where we are so far down the road of accepting things that should long ago have been called out as beyond the pale, that it has now become almost impossible to put down a red line as to a point which we will not cross. Barbarity that had it been occurring in the Russia-Ukraine conflict against say the Ukrainian population, would be being shouted from the rafters headline news in every paper in the Western world, is barely given a mention (if at all). Yes, dear God, the October 7th attack by Hamas was a thing of brutality, but what has transpired from that day onwards is no answer to anything and has moved into areas that should have been relegated to the history books long, long ago.

But legitimacy is a strange thing. Difficult to define. But assuredly there comes a point somewhere between a good, well ordered state where humanity (even for those who stand against you) is the order of the day, and a savage tyranny where cruelty and murder are the tools of governance, where fear and brutality rule, where by any thinking, legitimacy is lost. Think of the worst regimes of history where the most base aspects of human nature had been allowed to rule the day, where ideologies led to the mass slaughter of millions. Were these polities legitimate? I would say not. So somewhere, the line between legitimacy and not being legitimate must be able to be crossed (unless your argument is that no polity, no government is legitimate, like a good going anarchist). We need to think very carefully about where that line might be because I'm thinking that we ourselves are beginning to stray perilously close to that line and others may have already crossed it.

There is little point in Foreign Secretaries Blinken and Lammy calling for ceasefires and deescalations now, when neither side have done anything other than give Netenyahu completely free rein do do exactly as he pleases in response to the October 7th attack.

Unnumbered people, the huge bulk of them civilians, killed in Gaza, atrocities carried out without so much as a raised eyebrow in detention camps - camps in which upwards of 3000 untried individuals are held, never mind those actually convicted, destruction of infrastructure and buildings on a scale such that whole areas become virtually uninhabitable. Driving a terrorised population hither and thither while subjecting them to bombing and missile attacks that make turkey shoots look humane by comparison. This has been the nature of the response that we in the West have condoned as Israel having the "right to defend itself" and indeed made possible by our supplies of weaponry and information in this one-sided carnage at which the rest of the world has rightly looked upon with ever growing horror.

And now it becomes plain what Netenyahu's aim has become, suddenly the leaders that previously have watched Israel's every move with equinamity, suddenly want the situation rolled back to a more manageable level. When it's Palestinians being butchered in Gaza or the West Bank it's fine. Nothing to see here. But when it's threatening to escalate out into the broader region, to pull in a second country - in fact a third if you recognise Palestine as a sovereign nation as 146 of the 196 member states of the United Nations General Assembly do - then it becomes a different matter. Suddenly it has to be reined in.

Well here's the news. Too little too late. Netenyahu isn't going to stop. He has no intention of stopping and he never did. The October 7th event was the door opening on a chance for him, not only to save his own political neck, but also to pursue a policy of expansion that he has held dear - and never made any attempts to hide - since the earliest days of his involvement in Israeli politics. He's in this to the end now, and like it or not, so are you - or better, we, since it isn't you who will go to the wall when the fur begins to fly. This is going all the way to Iran, via Lebanon, with a side dish of Turkey and indeed a possible continuation on to Russia and China.

You blew it guys. Your puppy in the Middle East grew teeth of its own and decided that it was time for the tail to start wagging the dog. The fuse has been lit and pinching it out before it hits the barrel is going to take more than either of you guys have got to offer.

Kaboom!, baby. It happened on your watch. You fluffed it, and all of the New Zealand bolt-holes in the world ain't gonna save you from this mother!

Let's have a look at the Saturday morning papers in the UK and see what we have.

The Times first. Stamer and team will no longer accept donations for clothing they announce, having been rumbled on the nice little piece of grift they've been enjoying, but this leaves plenty of scope for any other freebies to find their way into their sticky pockets in case you want to get access to a privileged ear or two in the near future. As Simon Kuper says in his book Good Chaps (a short description of the rise of corruption in UK politics) we're not Nigeria yet, but we're working on it.

The Telegraph has more on the same, but also runs with the NHS expecting to increase the range of services that it charges for over the coming years as it takes advantage of Labour's "relaxed" attitude to privatisation. This in the wake of Lord Darsi's recent report saying that the NHS is doing less with more money as time goes by. He must have been to my doctor's surgery where since the pandemic, it's been like a ghost town with as relaxed an atmosphere prevailing as in the best hotel lobbies you sut in. Staff chat amongst themselves while doctor's do most of their consulting from home over the telephone. It takes two weeks to see a doctor, having passed the preliminary hurdles of the 'patient advisor' (receptionist) telephone conversation, the nurse appointment and then the telephone conversation with the doctor watching Netflix with one eye as he talks to you.

Also in the Telegraph we have a little piece on Farage saying in Conference yesterday that if they (Reform) get their act together and sift out the small proportion of swivel-eyed loons that they put up as candidates in the last election (said candidates being virtually unvetted, due to time constraints and mismanagement by Richard Tice), then they can become a major contender for the leadership of the country - or at least become a major third force in UK politics - by the time of the next election. The BBC had this story on last night's news, and followed up the clip of Farage speaking from the podium with a selection of quick interviews with a number of swivel-eyed loons attending the Reform conference. (One bloke genuinely had a swivel-eye - I kid you not! )

Sun and the Mirror running with the Mohamed Al Fayed story, saying that lawyers representing the victims say the man was a combination of Jimmy Saville, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, complied from the worst elements of each.

The Saturday Mail is still reporting that both Angela Rayner (deputy PM) and Rachel Reeves (Chancellor of the Exchequer) have been enjoying free clobber as well. Old news guys, but given the slow rate at which Mail readers tend to catch on, understandable I suppose. I mean let's face it - most of them were still voting Conservative following the most disastrous 16 year period of governance in our entire thousand year history.

The 'i' runs with a more significant story that the EU will offer Stamer a softer Brexit deal than that which was negotiated by Boris Johnson, if we are prepared to give four year visas to young people wanting to come to the UK to work and study. This could also include a limited softening of the rules allowing Brits to move to individual EU countries. Prepare, if Stamer so much as even listens to this suggestion, for him to be burned in effigy in the streets, howled out of town at every place he dares show his face, and torn to shreds by a foaming right wing press who loved every hard inch of the Brexit that Johnson thrust into them.

And finally the Express is expressing its new found love of the poorest pensioners, 86 percent of whom it tells us, will loose their winter fuel payments this year. No need to convince me of the "heartless" government's exposure here Express - I already get it. I'm one of the pensioners.

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I get days when it's just too depressing, or I'm just too worn down by the relentless roll of bad press, to have the heart for this. Today is one of those days. That 'something is rotten in the heart of Denmark', you don't need me to tell you. The corruption in our political systems, the subversion of our media into tools of propoganda, the incestuous intertwining of business and government that perverts any idea that capitalism as a system of 'small state' (where on the contrary it has morphed into the very state, such are the now inseparable nature of the two) - the long forgotten idea that public service was highest calling that anyone could aspire to, that 'to be in it for oneself' was a contemptible thing, worthy of the public ostracism it brought down, and subsequent penance it demanded (think Profumo, resigning and spending the rest of his life working in soup kitchens and drud rehabilitation centres, never experiencing a day in which shame did not intrude at some point).

These things weigh heavy on my mind and bring about an ennui, a depressing feeling of repetition and pointlessness that is difficult to overcome.

I saw a beautifully made little documentary yesterday on the rainforest of South West England, where I'm fortunate enough to live. In the absence of man, the world takes on a beauty, an innocence that even the worst of Nature's 'red in tooth and claw' nature (sorry about that) can render either nasty or brutish, though life may indeed be sometimes short. Nasty and brutish are things that I have come to associate with human activities exclusively. Like Professor John Mearsheimere, I'm not of the opinion that we as a species are evidencing much in the way of improvement, of progress. We in the West seem to have made a complete dog's dinner of our period of dominance and I have no real hope that any of the rising powers of the world - China, India, Africa - are going to make a better fist of it.

Not the most hopeful of posts but hey, tomorrow is a new day. Let's leave it at that.

Number 10's stating that it is "laser focused" on "delivering on the priorities of the people" while the ship burns around it, is beginning to sound a bit like the dazed automatic response you might expect of a person who'd just emerged from a car-wreck claiming they were "Okay, okay" to the ambulance men around them.

Without question everything has gone to hell in a hand-cart since Kier Stamer took up residence in Downing Street, and the onus for this rests entirely with the PM and the top team, both political and administrative, with which he has surrounded himself.

There was always going to be a crash of some kind, given that Labour had studiously avoided saying what they were going to do once the Conservatives lost the election (for that's what happened - Labour in no sense can be said to have won it) and were booted out, but that it has been more precipitous than even their worst critics could have predicted is undeniable. Their approval rating is tanking - I mean tanking - faster than anything witnessed in our political history before, and it all rests upon the shoulders of the slick but disingenuous man at the top.

For starters, to have come out of the starting gate scattering messages of doom and gloom, blaming the Conservatives for the fabled 'black hole' in the economy (that does or doesn't exist, depending on the way you look at things) - the oldest trick in the book ("Not my fault Guv. It was 'im what done it!") - was simply the exact thing that the people didn't need. Imagine you are in a hospital having suffered a heart attack and the doctor comes in and shakes his head making tutting sounds. "I don't like the look of you at all," he says shaking his head. "Not one little bit." How would you feel? Well that's the collective feeling of the country, engendered by Stamer's gloom-mongering just when the country needed him to do what he'd previously said - roll up his sleeves and get on with the job.

And then the mendacity of cutting the winter fuel allowance - a move that had clearly been planned in advance, but had been kept under wraps, not included in the manifesto or spoken of (rather in fact, studiously avoided) during the election campaign. And the uncaring impression given by the failure to lift the two-child benefits cap, while at the same time avoiding any redistributive tax changes that should be the heart and soul of any Labour fiscal policy that has the interests of the poorer members of our society at heart.

And then the exposure of the PM's greed, of his preparedness to accept any freebie going from the meals out and concerts he attends to the suits and glasses he wears. And the privileged access that such grift-giving can buy you. Not a good look for a man who's claimed he will run a clean ship only weeks before, who's predecessor as leader accepted no gifts whatsoever and who seems comfortable to flaunt a luxury lifestyle while taking food from the mouths of the poorest in our society. This was not what a public, tired of the naked corruption of the previous sixteen years, wanted. They just wanted something straight and clear and clean. A sweeping away of what had gone on before and a return to stability and good honest public service instead of cronyism and self interest.

And look what they got instead.

Then we come to the revelations, the infighting of Stamer's inner circle themselves. Jealousy abounds within his top advisors, publicly breaking out with the details of his Chief of Staff Sue Gray's salary demands (she refused the first offer made to her, demanding more) and the unhappiness this revelation had caused to those earning less. Then rumours of policy differences between different factions within the Downing Street offices, leaks that found their way into the press (which Stamer is promising to plug today, prior to his disintegrating presence at his first Labour Party conference as Prime Minister).
And all these bad vibes have been picked up, amplified and rolled around, ready to be flung at the leader, just when he should be standing on the podium ready to be exalted by his crowd. King of all he surveys. Instead he looks rather like being a contender for the award as second shortest premiership in British history, beaten only by the hapless Liz Truss's forty days in office. All of those dreams, that scheming and backstabbing and lying to cover up his grubby, greasy, ambitious core - it's all unravelling around him as we speak and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

And it's absolutely no suprise. The public have been duped into electing a party that has abandoned its core principles on the back of seeking power above all else. There is no ideological background behind them: no guiding principle. They have put a deceptive chameleon in charge, a Boris Johnson without the charisma, and now wonder that in the harsh light of the real political day, they have nothing to offer. This was entirely to be expected - that the failure to possess any core beliefs (other than just a continuation of what has gone on before) together with a leadership based upon mendacity and deception from the head down, would absolutely come out when power and responsibility had to be visibly exercised, and the actuality of governance had to be demonstrated in front of an expectant British public.

Oh Jeremy Corbyn! If revenge is a dish best eaten cold, I'm afraid you are going to be disappointed. Because it looks to me like it's being served straight from the oven and almost too hot to eat!