What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

It seems that the fallout from Chancellor Rachel Reeves' budget is kicking in as UK markets react to her big tax, borrow and spend program.

After a nervous few days, yesterday UK borrowing costs rose to almost Liz Truss mini-budget levels and share prices fell. Ten year borrowing settled at 4.43 percent having earlier reached a high of 4.5 (cf the Truss peak of4.65).

This caused Reeves to take to the airwaves in an attempt to settle things down. She held an interview on Bloomberg in which she stressed that financial stability was going to be the order of the day in her Chancellorship, with the emphasis on growth. (She avoided saying, Growth, Growth, Growth," which I suppose was a blessing of sorts, because if she had we'd have known it was bollocks.)

Unfortunately the Office for Budgetary Responsibility didn't agree with her. The forecasts for growth are lukewarm at best, with most seeing the economy limping along at pretty much where it currently is. More alarmingly, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that if she were to avoid another bout of austerity in public services, she would be forced to raise yet a further 9 billion pounds at least, at a later point in the parliamentary term. The markets absolutely didn't like the idea of money being borrowed to be poured into public service pay increases, and reacted by dumping UK assets by the truck-load. Consequently share prices, gilts and the value of the pound tanked, much as they had following the Truss mini-budget debacle. It wasn't quite as bad as that - some commentators were at pains to say that the same levels of turbulence in the markets as following Truss and Kwarteng's outing were not expected, but still it was a sticky sort of day, and one that will not have left the Chancellor feeling relaxed.

All very well standing on the steps of Number 11 with the old red 'box' held out and looking like a cat who'd got the cream: different when the markets react to the plate-spinning act you are attempting to pull off by booing from the stalls and unloading tickets for your next shows. Not so nice at all.

But potentially the bigger threat to the Stamer and Reeves show is the farmers reaction to the increase in inheritance tax that the latter announced in her budget. This impacts them big-time, because of course the value of land being what it is, the handing on of a farm from one generation to the next represents a major inheritance. The tax incurred would likely cause most of the beneficiaries to have sell of at least a portion of the land, if not the whole farm, to meet the death duties. This has understandably caused outrage amongst the farming community and they are reacting in their usual vigorous style. Threats of 'strike' action are grumbling around, prompting nervousness about the food security of the nation were such action to be taken. Not a situation that the Labour leadership will want to find itself in, and this will be a big behind-the-scenes conversation in cabinet. It's low key at the moment, but I'll have a punt; watch it grow in the days ahead. Reeves might even be forced to make some adjustments to her inheritance tax changes to accommodate for this vital sector of the economy.

[peter]

This morning I post in shame.

I post as a coward, a weak insipid fool, who has no place to even consider himself amongst the ranks of those who would speak out against injustices in his society, as a right thinking and honourable citizen of a free democracy.

Because I've just deleted a lengthy post considering the situation of the recent, oddly belated, revelations about the Southport killer, and the discoveries made in his accommodation subsequent to his attack.

I deleted the post out of fear: because of the almost unspoken threat contained in the police spokesperson's commentary, where he requested people not to speculate on the revelations, and their relationship to the killings. Because, where my post had taken me in it's potential critique of the state we live in, had suddenly seemed to involve a level of risk that I was not prepared to take. Because I didn't want anything I had posted, to suddenly come home with a knock on my door, like that which happened to some people who made ill judged comments on the internet following the initial attack.

How has this happened. It wasn't an intemporate post. No incitement to hatred or towards public disorder. It was simply a reasoned assessment of where this new information had led us, and in what way it cast a perhaps different judgment of that which the state had come to, in respect of some people's internet commentary. And yet I was afraid to post it because it was in contravention of that policeman's request not to speculate. And my fear that that request was not actually a request, but a warning.

I hang my head in shame, for myself, my country, and what we have become. My cravenness, its authoritarian illiberality. We deserve each other.

[peter]

Well I was wrong. Hands up, got me in the spotlight wrong.

Kemi Badenoch has been announced as winner of the Tory leadership contest, when I hadn't given her a cat in hell's chance of clearing the last hurdle - the vote by the Party membership who had previously chosen Liz Truss over Richi Sunak (by a margin that if I say so myself, I was able to predict with an eerie level of accuracy).

I'd assumed that they would never vote for an African-English woman over a white English man in a month of Sundays. In fairness many didn't because the turnout was low to the point of dismissive of both candidates. I think only around half of the membership actually returned a vote for either candidate - hardly a ringing endorsement of the choice they had before them.

And in fairness you can hardly blame them.

Robert Jenrick (the white male candidate, if you don't know him) is so mired in scandal that he makes Boris Johnson look clean. What with sitting down with ex porn-barrons and agreeing to pass building applications that the local councils have recommended were rejected (before said barrons have made hefty donations to the party or some such), wiping the smiles off the face of children by wiping murals of Mickey Mouse off walls of immigrant reception centers, and generally being a smarmy backstabbing bustard (predictive text blip, but I like it), he's not exactly the ideal choice. But there he was. He was certainly right wing enough (any middle ground Tories had been sifted out very early in the lacklustre contest). The party membership would have liked that. But then so was Kemi Badenoch.

And speaking of Badenoch, what can you say. Black and female (lot's of crowing this morning about another glass ceiling broken by the Tories I expect, given that Labour has only ever been led by white males). Certainly a right winger. But abrasive in the extreme and given to making comments that will rub up the country's electorate at large in big ways (comments of disparagement against autistic people and suggesting that maternity pay is too high, to name just two that have come out during her campaign). Unless she learns to tone it down she'll certainly stir up a hornet's nest or two before it's all over.

But let's look at it from the perspective of the 1922 Committee, the guys who actually call the shots within the Conservative Party. They know that elections are not won from the extremes of the political spectrum, but from the centre ground. Stamer just proved that (with a little help from the lying media and the establishment status quo preservers). The right wing of the Conservative Party might be well represented in its membership, but in the country as a whole not so much. In fairness you've got Farage doing pretty well in the vote share, and also polling quite well, but he's a one-trick pony albeit that like the hedgehog, it's a good one. The anti-immigration ticket that is his schtick is high on people's agendas and he, if no-one else, will be rubbing his hands together at the idea of facing off with Kemi Badenoch for the right wing vote of the country. It's all his Christmas's rolled into one - unless she's maybe canny enough to get him into the party, where I have little doubt he'd ideally like to be. From inside the Tory Party, it would be but a small step for him to the Party leadership, though Badenoch would clearly have other ideas (keep your enemies close, style of thing).

But this is just speculation on my part and concentrating on what we actually do (or rather don't) know, it was contained in the Sky News report of Badenoch's win last night that rumours were already in circulation that she would never actually get to fight an election. That there would be another leadership contest before the next election at which point another, more centrist - and perhaps more to the central Party's liking - would be elected. Could be. The Tories have changed leaders as fast as I change my underpants, and to about as little effect in recent years. For all their jumping from one horse to another, it's done them little good and the Labour Party has still trounced them at the polls. (Not that it matters to the establishment movers you understand: to them it's all the same who wins elections, Conservative or Labour, as long as whoever it is is following the approved script. What we are talking about here is the second tier of our governance - the one we get to see and vote on. And certainly it matters to them whether they win or loose. Making the jump up into the 'establishment' top tier, the unelected and unshiftable level of our society that call the shots, generation following generation - that requires you to win first the leadership of a party, then of the country. Then you stand a chance. So yes - parliamentary party members do engage in a very serious fight, with every desire to win....just not for the reasons you think they are doing it - for public service and all that nonsense {if you're still gullible enough to buy that}.)

So the question is, did Badenoch actually win? Or did the 1922 committee decide that if Jenrick won, then they'd be saddled with a right wing candidate, soiled with his past misdemeanours who the public would never buy in a general election, but who they'd never be able to shift before the next election. Against a black woman of minimal political achievement who manages to get everyone who meets her to dislike her and who also the public would never buy, but who they would (be able to shift, that is)? Do you see my drift? Remember - the results of these internal Party ballots are private inasmuch as there is no validation of the result, no verification by any external source that it is anything other than what the reporting committee says that it is.

Of course I make no suggestions that the 1922 Committee would be party to such shenanigans, but it makes you think.....

Because why would the same right wing electorate that chose mad Liz Truss over sensible Rishi Sunak, choose Kemi Badenoch over Robert Jenrick unless you assume that race has nothing to do with it? But which being, how do you explain the earlier election of Truss? There is inconsistency here,and I don't like inconsistency. It makes me suspicious. (Actually, I could just assume that it was Truss's Tufton Street proposals of massive tax cuts for the wealthy that the membership bought, rather than Sunak's 'Steady Eddie' approach, that won it for her, and that the membership are not a bunch of arrogant racist bastards, but come on - this is people who pay to be members of the Tory Party we are talking about here! )

Any way, I leave it to you to decide for yourself. I clearly don't know shit about it.

[peter]

Not many people would argue with Professor Jeffrey Sachs' (Colombia) rationale for not voting in the current US election, that neither candidate reaches the minimum standard required to qualify as an acceptable choice for president - except on the basis that there is no minimum standard required.

Another observer, commenting on the state of American democracy, used the dearth of quality in either candidate as being all one required to see in forming a judgement on the matter.

The same situation exists in the UK for sure - the quality of our political leaders on both sides of the parliamentary divide is laughably dire (if it were a laughable subject) - but at least we have an excuse.

We are in, remain in, the grip of a 1000 year old establishment oligarchy that never embraced democracy, other than in its shallowest sense. It was grudgingly entertained by our polity when originally advanced, and accepted piecemeal and in a bastardised form that it could never truly function in the proper sense of the word, and has hidden under a cloak of the idea that it is some kind of 'British exceptionalism' from that day hence.

It's not British exceptionalism - it's a sham in which the old order persists behind a shadow play which insists that 'the people' have control and that the system is 'run in their benefit'.

Believe this? Just look at a Sunday Times investigation that recently looked at the incomes of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall (the two side-hustles that the King and Prince William respectively get their additional incomes from) and see what they discovered.

That in both cases, they take tens of millions of pounds in rents resulting from land rights, mineral deposit rights and sundry other rights, from state institutions which we pay our taxes to support. The list includes hospitals, government buildings, forces bases, prisons, and even the bloody RNLI (the lifeboat charity which is supported by public donations). And this has been going on in perpetuity, because they (the royals) acquired these lands by theft in medieval times. I kid you not. Read the Sunday Times article or watch James O'brien virtually foaming at the mouth in his description of it.

These are the institutions of public service that we pay taxes, donate money, to support and it's no more than a grift, a cash cow, to the very people we look up to as heads of the state we live in. And this situation pertains, without public comment and without people turning a hair about it, purely because we are so inured to the absurdity of it that we no longer even notice it.

As I say, 1000 years.

But we get to vote don't we? We have political choice?

Well yes. In the same way that a child has choice when its parent holds a candy bar in one hand and a lolly in the other and gives it the option to choose which one it will have. It doesn't matter which one is chosen because the parent still gets to decide what the options are. That's why the two party system suits the establishment puppeteers so well (and by this I mean a far bigger array of individuals than just the two royals mentioned)) - because they can control both and give the people the illusion of democracy without once ever having to actually allow it.

This is British exceptionalism. And alongside our propensity for warfare and bloodshed (because we built an empire on nothing else but that) we have exported it to the USA. Because nobody but an idiot could believe that either Harris or Trump could organise a country with the complexity and power array of the USA without somebody else above them pulling the strings. US democracy, just as UK democracy, is a sham. A side-show for the plebs to keep them drinking the cool-aid (or more expressivly, chewing the cud).

And the warfare point. Let's look at that.

China. 2,200 years as a centrally administered continuous state that has never invaded a third country, but which must now be seen as 'the great threat'. What does it do? It goes out into the world with its 'belt and braces' policy and spreads its development (and influence thereby) in the global south. What does the USA do? It spreads arms. It exports its military capabilities. It lives and thrives on wars and warfare because it has nothing else. And we tag along on its coat-tails because we have nothing else either. We are the bloodiest militaristic nation on earth and we have taught our child well. And people think that the USA won its freedom from the UK in the American war of independence. It's laughable. They are the spitting image of the parent that bore them and condemned to make exactly the same mistakes, over and over again for the next 1000 years (assuming that the unique condition of actually being able to destroy all life on the planet by thermonuclear or environmental disaster doesn't get us first - which it will).

And now that the global south is at last slowly organising itself into a potentially functional opposition to American hegemony, an alternative vision for the world that doesn't involve forcing every country in the world to adopt exactly the same policies and politics and economics as the Americans do (at fear of security service inspired political overthrow or overt war if that fails, if they refuse) - it must be viewed as 'the enemy', and choked to death at its gestation.

With BRICS and a reformed United Nations (one without the laughably called security council that stymied every intention of the general assembly at every turn), we actually have the means of making this world a better place. If only we will let it happen.

But 1000 years of history is a long time. Those kinds of roots run deep. They don't render up their position without a great struggle being waged. And if the world is to go forward, it can only be by rooting out that influence that the 1000 year history of ours still has to this day, on how the world is run.

[peter]

Tricky to build bridges with a man when your Foreign Secretary has called him a neo-nazi sympathising sociopath, but this is exactly what Kier Stamer has to do with newly elected and invigorated Donald Trump.

I have little time for Trump or his ideas, but any schadenfreude I feel at fis election is largely elicited by listening to the legacy media commentariat/news and hearing the disappointment in their voices as they report the news. Establishment mouthpiece Clive Myrie,who did such sterling work for the official narrative, and such damage to the mental health of vulnerable people during the pandemic, didn't even bother to hide his resigned frustration. Either that or he is such a good actor that he feigned it, knowing exactly what front he had to present to stay in situ in the nice little billet he has created for himself (he is ubiquitous on the television at the moment - all over it like a rash - but is well aware that he'd be dropped quicker than a hot coal if he so much strayed one inch from the liberal establishment position). He spoke like a school headmaster speaking to a bunch of naughty children. "You're going to get it now and you've only got yourselves to blame for it."

It's absolutely time that these preaching manipulating tiers in our societies stopped with their trying to tell people what they should think, how they should act. From day one of Trump's nomination they have used every trick in the book to let us know that he mustn't be touched with a barge pole. He's a rapist fascist, said James O'brien yesterday. The most dangerous man in the world, said someone else. He hasn't been accused of kidnapping children in a horse-drawn cage with bars, wearing a tall top hat and wielding a whip yet, but I guess that's to come. Interestingly no accusations of being an antisemite (the ultimate bringer-downer tool of the establishment - or it was until recently, since it was debased by over-application to anyone who expressed a negative opinion about seeing the corpses of Palestinian women and children piling up in Gaza). That would of course be difficult, since his campaign recieved huge donations from the Israel lobby in America who very much wanted him to win. (I suppose they thought that the Democrats were starting to bow to international pressure to speak out about the mounting death toll arising from Netenyahu's actions, and decided it was time to get someone into the Whitehouse for whom this would not pose any problem.)

But moving on to the situation in Israel (which has been pretty much ignored by the legacy media due to the American presidential election), we have the sacking of (now) ex defence minister Yoav Gallant from the Netenyahu cabinet.

Coming in the middle of the current conflict in which Israel is fighting on multiple fronts, this might seem a strange thing to do, but it is an open secret in Israel that the two men have been at loggerheads for over a year now. Reports of shouting matches and stormy exchanges have been regularly reported, and it is no secret that Gallant has been frustrated by Netenyahu's apparent reluctance to cut any kind of deal that could see the hostages released and a sliver of normalcy returned to the Israeli situation. At the head of the armed forces, he is acutely aware of the stress that the armed forces are under. Suicide rates of soldiers being asked to return to the front lines are reportedly unacceptably high, in some cases of high ranking personnel (a pilot just about to return to active duty recently killed himself) and desertion rates are through the roof. Apparently as many as 12 to 25 percent of reservists being called up are simply not reporting for duty.

Gallant, such is his desperation to find manpower to relieve his exhausted troops, has been pushing for the exemption from service enjoyed by the orthodox community to be lifted but Netenyahu is firm that this will not happen. It's likely that if he conceded here other members of his cabinet - those further to the right - would pull the rug and walk out, bringing the government down. This he cannot allow and so Gallant has had to go. (Nb. Why the ultra-Orthodox community should be exempt from service isn't clear to me. It's something to do with it not being in keeping with their religious way of life, but as many are not involved in any academic religious study of any kind, it seems strange that they should 'dodge the draft' as it were. For those who refuse to serve on the basis of refusal to kill innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza, I'm naturally in respect and support of, but the others - it has the smack of wanting the dirty work to be done, but not being prepared to do it for yourself.)

But the public in Israel are way not happy with the sacking of Gallant. There have been demonstrations in large numbers in Tel-Aviv and around Netenyahu's private house. It was said that before the October 7th attack, Israel was damn close to civil war as a result of the right wing government's policies. If things carry on this way we could yet see it result. This has the feeling of its being the beginning of the end for Netenyahu. He's used the American election as a cover for his action, as a distracting event, but with little domestic success. The wars in Gaza and southern Lebanon are failing, the economy is failing, his political coalition is crumbling and the public are turning against him in increasing numbers. It has the look of the endgame to me, but Netenyahu is nothing if not a willey political operator. Let's see how it pans out.

[peter]

Good to read that Vladimir Putin has congratulated Trump on his victory, even if only in speech/interview rather than by personal telephone call.

Putin has reason to be leary of Trump's election braggadocio re stopping the Ukrainian conflict - the interaction between the USA and Russia was not entirely successful during the President elect's last term of office - but he did acknowledge the rough passage that Trump had endured during his path to a second term, attacked from all sides and even surviving assassination attempts. He said that Trump had behaved "like a man".

This is almost an insult in itself these days: listening to the post win commentary on Sky News last night I was amused to hear the commentator saying that 'men' had turned out in large numbers in support of Trump (her emphasis on the word men). "Yes," I said, turning to my wife, "It's all men's fault. Men are to blame. Even she laughed.

But back to Putin, he said he was ready to talk to Trump when asked (quite emphatically actually - he repeated it twice). This bodes well as Trump has also signalled his own readiness, so it actually looks as if some progress in halting the carnage in Ukraine might be achievable.

And it is a carnage. It is reckoned that Ukraine is suffering heavy casualties every day, running into the hundreds or even thousands. Russia grinds inexorably forward in the east and in the much vaunted Kursk offensive, has surrounded the invading troops and threatens their entire annihilation. Note that you are hearing nothing in the news now about how the war is progressing - because it isn't. In fact in one Sky News report on a different subject I heard the briefest of comment that virtually admitted that the war was all but lost. It was something along the lines that Trump (it is feared) might force Zelensky to go to the table and make concessions to Russia ceding territory in return for peace. It was the first suggestion that a deal that allowed the war to end (and America to effectively cut and run) might be made.

Because this is exactly what will happen. It's what happened in Vietnam. It's what happened in Afghanistan. It's what happened in Iraq and Syria and Libya. And it's what will happen in Ukraine. This is what America does. It's done it for the past 75 years. It starts wars, or encourages others to start them - and then cuts and runs when the heat builds up. Zelensky himself will retire to Tuscany or somewhere with the millions he has skimmed from the donations he has recieved, and the people will be left to count the cost. That will be a country reduced to ashes and rubble and over half a million dead. Every life of which lost, could have been saved had the Ukrainians been allowed by Boris Johnson and Jo Biden to sign the Istanbul peace agreement that was negotiated mere weeks - weeks - after Russia's 'special operation' began. Before, it should be noted, the Russians had taken an inch of Ukrainian territory. When all they required was that guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality which Zelensky had agreed to give them. But Britain and America said, no, no no. You must fight on we've got your backs.

God, it makes my blood boil. I was screaming blue murder on these very pages that this (what we see now developing) would be how the war would be ended - by negotiation - and that it should be started sooner rather than later in order to save lives, and I was ripped to shreds for it. And here we are with around 600,000 dead, the country in ruins and great swathes of the Ukrainian territory lost. America sees that the game is up and wants out. Totally predictable. How the fuck is it that a dull ***t like me can see this stuff when the fucking supposed leaders of our country cannot?

Nothing has been gained by this and so much has been lost - not least the lives of countless innocent people. Western status in the world is reduced, Russia is re-emergent as a global force. Ukraine is devastated, Nato is finished and nothing.....nothing.....has been achieved. I don't give a shit about Western status or the Russians at last finding some of the mojo that we have denied them since the fall of the Soviet Union - but I care about lives lost and countries devastated. And the clowns who govern us clearly do care about this stuff, and by their own actions have achieved the very opposite of what they wanted to in the first place.

It makes me want to weep. It makes me want to frikkin weep!

[peter]

Yesterday, I watched the 6pm news on the BBC as I do most nights and noted that I was 23 minutes into the bulletin before a story that didn't have an anti-islamic slant to it was reported.

First it was the football riots in Amsterdam - an explosion of antisemitism as described by the city's mayor - by Palestinian activists criscrossing the streets on motorcycles looking for victims. Not made much of was the earlier tearing down of Palestinian supportive flags by the Israeli supporters or the beating up of a Muslim taxi driver which seemed to have sparked the trouble.

Then we had the murder of a child in the UK following which the defendants, yesterday being questioned in court, had fled the UK for Pakistan.

Then we had a segment on the Al-Fayed sex abuse scandal or perhaps the Iranian backed plot to assassinate Trump (or perhaps the other way around - the order escapes me), and on it went.

Not that we are subtly being programmed to view the Islamic faith (or at least its adherents) in a particular light or anything.......

-----0-----

Finally a story with a different slant, what I would have considered the first bit of straight reportage that had (perhaps mistakenly) found its way in, and luckily it was a story of great international importance. That American singer Beyonce Knowles had finally overtaken her rival musician to become the most ever nominated artist for a 'Grammy' award, said rival being her husband, the (what?) rapper J-Zee (J-Z, J.C, Jay Zee - I don't know).

Well I'm so glad I didn't turn away before I learned that. It's good to know that at least a small part of the money I pay to fund the BBC goes on my education rather than my indoctrination.

-----0-----

Detailed UN analysis of verified deaths in Gaza is reported as showing that 70 percent of all deaths have been of women and children. Meanwhile it appears that the so called 'generals plan' in which the northern region is cleared of civilians and any person remaining is considered a hostile combatant - ignoring the fact that huge numbers of people simply can't up sticks and leave as instructed - continues apace.

The IDF were quick to distance itself from comments made by a leading officer who had said in interview that there was no intention that the displaced people of the region should be allowed to return to their homes.....such a means of permanent population displacement by bombing and starvation goes against international law, but of course anybody with eyes can see what is being done.

Except that we can't.

Because the number of functional journalists in the area is now reduced to virtually none. Even the Palestinian journalists who had been the almost single source of reportage coming out of the territory have now been driven out (or killed or imprisoned) effectively leaving the IDF to continue their 'mission' unscrutinised by any outside observers.

Given what the soldiers have been prepared to do when the eyes of the world were watching, it doesn't bode well for the people who remain. At the least it is assumed that the Israeli forces will continue their program of levelling the already heavily damaged region, making it effectively impossible for the former occupants to return anyway, and it is not a stretch of the imagination too far to think that this might be the cue to the initiation of a resettlement program for incoming Israeli civilians. Job, as they say, done.

-----0-----

Thanks to the Star for letting us know that the editor of the Guardian newspaper has made counselling services available to his staff, devastated by the re-election of Donald Trump for his second term in office.

Well one can see how the spearhead media outlet of the liberal establishment intelligentsia would be reduced to a fit of the vapours by such an assault on its sensibilities, such is the fragility of the psyche that underpins its worldview. What is needed here is a group hugging session followed by a ritual burning of those stringy little red wristlet things and a lighting of the first-aid box's emergency supply of Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina scented candles. That and a two hour session with a hot-stones therapist with Coldplay playing softly in the background should do it.

But at least one person is happy that the Orange Man has pulled off the Oracle. Nigel Farage is, like a bad case of scum-crotch, everywhere. Yesterday he was mugging up on the front page of the Times and today he's even been allocated a slot on the BBC website. Perhaps Kier Stamer should offer him a place on his staff, or even the ambassadorship of the United States? At least then, there'd be one person in the UK administration who Trump might be prepared to speak to.

[peter]

I mentioned yesterday the report on the BBC of the disturbance in Amsterdam when visiting Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv fans clashed with opponents, some possibly from the opposing team's fan-base, some possibly not, and expressed my concern at the apparently one-sided reportage that was given.

It seems, if independent reportage is to be believed, that the situation is possibly much worse than I'd thought.

In a truly horrific YouTube video entitled Israeli fans rampage in Amsterdam: and Media Lies, journalist and commentator Owen Jones draws an entirely different picture to that which has been widely presented right across the mainstream media.

If what he presents has any basis in truth, then it is one of the most egregious instances of mass media dissembling that I have ever encountered. I mean straight up misrepresentation of the facts to the point where only criminal proceedings could ever be a proportionate response to the violation commited.

We have been led to believe, in the UK by Sky and the BBC, that following the match between visiting team Maccabi Tel Aviv and AFC Ajax which passed off peacefully, Israeli supporters were set about in the center of Amsterdam, being targeted by roaming thugs on motor-scooters and being beaten in the streets.

Dutch officials have compared the attacks to "pogroms" and the mayor described them as an "explosion of antisemitism" of which she was deeply ashamed. Even the Dutch King has made comment, saying that Jewish people must be able to live in the country "without fear".

If the situation is as reported, then what happened is an absolutely unacceptable and detestable outrage, to be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

OK. That said, let's have a look at what Jones claims we were not told in the mainstream coverage.

I've observed that the BBC report had made brief mention of the tearing down of Palestinian flags and the beating up of a Muslim taxi driver, but if Jones is to be believed, it seems that the provocation did not end there. In fact far from it. His video contains clip from inside the venue of the match, during a pre-match period of silence for the victims of the Valencia floods, the visiting supporters can be heard chanting en masse. It seems that they were chanting, "There are no schools in Gaza. All the children are dead!" Footage he shows later in the video shows large numbers of Maccabi supporters marching through the streets shouting, "Fuck the Arabs! Fuck the Arabs."

It gets worse.

Both Sky News and the BBC showed a clip of a crowd of individuals while describing the attacks that were being made on Israeli supporters, the natural conclusion being that what we were witnessing on the screen was the anti-Israeli attackers on the rampage. Jones then showed a post from the journalist who had taken the footage, who remonsrates that it was his footage being used and that not only had he not been asked for permission for its usage, but that it had been used in an entirely misrepresented way. The footage had in fact shown Maccabi supporters running and engaging in disruptive behaviour, and not their opposition as had been implied. The same accusation has made about another piece of footage in which a man is seen lying on the ground being beaten by a group of men. On this occasion is said that the truth was that it was the Maccabi supporters doing the beating.

Now it is beyond me to know who is telling the truth of this, but certain things I can say. Owen Jones is a fearless reporter of what has been going on in Gaza. He is a respected journalist in the UK with a regular column in the Guardian newspaper. It would be more than his career was worth to be deliberately lying in this, or indeed misrepresenting the facts. He is a man who takes his journalistic integrity and responsibilities seriously - of this there is no doubt - and he would certainly never knowingly misrepresent the facts. We have the crowd footage and the chanting before us as facts (assuming there is no digital jiggery pokery in play) and the knowledge that the Israeli-Gaza situation has been, let us say, not exactly given to us in impartial terms up to this point. (In fairness, both Sky and the BBC have been uncompromising in showing us what footage of the outrage in Gaza has been available to them, particularly latterly when the truth of the situation has been virtually impossible to hide, but still there is always this inclination to represent the Israeli position in its best possible light - perhaps better than it deserves.)

There has been an almost state sponsored level of Islamophobic narrative in the West for decades now and this isn't going to change overnight. Israel has put itself in a very difficult position with its post October 7th activities, and the disturbances might have been seen as a good opportunity to boost the Israeli 'sympathy quotient' (as it were). This I understand, but still the reportage of facts in an unqualified and impartial manner is key to our very democratic systems (yeah - okay...I know ). If what Jones has laid out before us in his YouTube posting true, then we are already in deep and dark waters indeed. It means that our media has completely given up on any pretence of being honest, of having a basic intention of informing without judging.

I know we've known this for ever already - but this just goes beyond the pale. I'm absolutely sure that violence was going on from the 'Palestinian side' (for want of a better description) in Amsterdam. And it is to be absolutely condemned for what it was. There can be no justification of this. But for the story to have been presented in so manipulated a manner, devoid of all context and with key elements either just missed out or deliberately shown in misleading fashion.....

Come on! Is this really what we are about?

[peter]

Kier Stamer has hatched a cunning plan.

But like Blackadder's Baldrick, he seems unaware of the deep but glaring fault lying in back of it. That if he pulls it off then in all liklihood we all die.

Not at the end of our threescore and ten, but like, around Christmas. This Christmas.

He's off to see Macron in France today, another creep who has zero idea of the capabilities of the West to engage in direct conflict with the Russians and who wanted at one point Western 'boots on the ground' in Ukraine, seemingly unaware that the only battle experience his troops had was mincing around in Africa playing war exercises. The pair of them, so tells this morning's Telegraph, will attempt to thwart incoming President Donald Trump's intention to scale back the war in Ukraine, by mounting a joint effort to convince Jo Biden to allow deep strikes with UK and US missiles into the heart of Russia, prior to his departure.

And this of course, is exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin has said would place Nato and the West in a state of war with Russia. It would be seen in the Kremlin as a massive existential threat to Russia, would certainly place European Nato countries under direct threat of Russian air and missile strikes, and almost certainly result in the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the end result of which would be nuclear conflagration.

Can they really be that stupid?

I saw Professor Jeffrey Sachs say that Britain was the most aggressive warlike nation on the face of the earth and it looks to me like this might be true. Our leadership has done nothing but try to stoke the fires of this conflict since day one. Boris Johnson was key to the scuppering of the Istanbul agreement which would have ended the conflict within weeks of it starting. And we have been instrumental in egging Ukraine's President Zelensky on at every turn.

But this latest ruse is the mother of all acts of naked aggression. And what is truly frightening is that it could actually work.

Ukraine has all but lost the war. Of this there can be no doubt. They are being driven back on the eastern front by daily Russian advances, and suffering a huge casualty rate amongst their fighters as it happens. The Kursk offensive is dead in the water with a very real chance of the loss of all personnel on the ground. (They are completely surrounded with no air cover to prevent their being decimated from above.)

Against this backdrop, the temptation for Zelensky to take this permission to strike deep into Russia would be immense. It'd almost certainly bring Nato and the West into the conflict, which is in truth his only realistic chance of survival, either militarily or politically. (Or that, at least, is how he will see it.)

From Biden's end, he will be under huge pressure from Democratic (and Republican) hawks who have deep fears that Trump will be true to his word and end this conflict, to give the said permission (desperate advice from the Pentagon not to do so - they understand that Putin is not bluffing - notwithstanding). And he might just crack. It's a serious possibility that those who are making so much money from the conflict and are equally desperate for its continuation might actually be so blinded by the sheen of the gold they are seeing that they really cannot get themselves to believe that Putin might be telling the truth - that Russia really is prepared to engage in a full great power conflict, on the necessity (as it sees) of doing so in order to secure Russia's survival.

Against this backdrop, what Stamer is suggesting is madness - plain and simple madness. Surely someone in his close circle can see this?

Surely. Please. Someone........

[peter]

Would it be, do you think, a reasonable question to ask Kier Stamer, what exactly are his plans if it turns out that Vladimir Putin was not bluffing when he said that firing US and UK supplied missiles deep inside Russia would place them in a state of war with Nato?

Or what his plans might be if the Russian response was to start striking Nato targets beyond the perimeters of Ukraine, or God forbid even on towns and cities of Nato member states, the UK included.

Because - and correct me if I'm wrong - I don't remember any of this coming up in the general election campaign. I don't remember being told that supporting the Ukrainians to the point of allowing them to use our armaments (provided for defensive purposes) to make offensive strikes deep into the heart of Russia was part of Labour's policy platform. But as I say, correct me if I am wrong.

It's a strange world where it is the political right that seems to want to move in the direction of peace, while the left and liberal center seems hell-bent on pushing war as its chief objective of foreign policy, but there you have it. Again on freedom of speech and protest, we're seeing the right exercise more energy on making the case for its preservation than the traditionally more freedom orientated (or so they would tell us) liberal center.

It's a strange topsey-turvy world we inhabit and no mistake.

[peter]

If proof were needed that America has no intention of stopping its military aid to Israel, irrespective of the latters humanitarian efforts (or lack of them) in respect of allowing aid to reach the beleaguered citizenry of Gaza, then it is given by its claim that "Israel has not breached American laws on blocking aid supplies" following its (America's) 30 day deadline in which humanitarian supplies had to be increased.

While it is true that aid supplies have been increased in this period, it is still far below the 350 truckloads a day that the US had said must be allowed through to the occupied territory. But this notwithstanding, state department official Vendant Patel said that new land crossings had been opened and that deliveries were resuming in the north.

This would seem to be at odds with UN backed reports that say that the amount of aid entering Gaza is at its lowest level for a year. There are stark differences in the amounts of aid being reported by COGAT, the arm of the IDF which controls aid entering Gaza, and the UN agencies responsible for delivering it; the former say that around 59 truckloads per day are entering, where UN figures report that it is as low as 3.9. The discrepancy seems to result from the way in which each body derives its figure. COGAT bases it on the number of trucks entering and the UN distributing agencies base theirs on the amount that is getting through to the distributors. Large amounts seem to be going adrift between being allowed to cross into the territory - a fact for which which Israel says the distributors must be held responsible - but is of little consolation to the starving inhabitants of the region. In the words of Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a major food distributor in Gaza, "I witnessed during my visit to Gaza last week, the deliberate starvation of almost 2 million civilians, while the bombardment continues. There is almost no aid getting into Gaza." Eight of the food agencies tasked with delivery of food in the strip have said that the humanitarian situation has actually worsened since the letter was sent 30 days ago. Israel has placed the blame for this squarely with the distributors themselves for failing to ensure the safe delivery and distribution of the supplies. The agencies respond by accusing Israel itself of hindering or even blocking the supply of aid.

What is clear however is that virtually no aid is reaching citizens stuck in the north, where Israel says it is fighting a Hamas resurgence in the area, and that humanitarian deliveries would be impossible to conduct amid the heavy bombardment and fighting they are engaged in. According to UN figures upwards of 75,000 civilians remain in the area, and are at immediate risk of famine. The main reasons for the failure of aid being delivered would seem to be deliberate obstruction on the part of the IDF - trucks were turned away from the 3 main refugee camps in northern Gaza last week, with no reasons being given - and the activities of criminal gangs along the routes taken by aid trucks inside Gaza. There is also evidence, say the UN, of systematic targeting of sites of aid distribution by Israel itself, with one site being cited which was shelled by IDF forces within 2 days of receiving its aid delivery. This could be seen as a deliberate strategy for driving the population from the north (which I believe Kneset Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said in the last day or so, should be prepared for annexation by the Israeli state - no my mistake....he was talking of the West Bank) prior to settlement. No doubt the Israeli's would deny this, but time will tell.

But back to my original point, in the light of these facts it cannot be believed that the USA ever had the slightest of intention of carrying out its threatened embargo on the supply of arms to Israel. The aid supplies reaching Gaza are but a nominal fraction of the quantities that the US demanded, and the lip-service paid to the actual situation in Gaza, in deference to describing the 'efforts' Israel has made tells us everything we need to know. The threatening letter was a sop sent out to mitigate their total support of Israel, even to the point of the destruction of the Palestinian people, designed to avert criticism from the rest of the world looking on aghast, as well as to attempt to satisfy the concerns of some potential Democrats who might have been considering not voting on the back of the Palestinian situation in Gaza.

Now we see, if we hadn't before, exactly how much credence we can place in American 'values' when it comes to upholding standards of decency and basic humanity in the world it would seek to lead.

[peter]

It's all trickery.

Kier Stamer has been one of the few political heads of state who has bothered to attend the COP 29 gathering in Baku, Azerbaijan. Most now recognise it for what it is and don't bother anymore. To continually meet, year in and year out, and just come out with the same grandiose pronouncements that everyone knows no-one will stick to, becomes a pointless exercise that few have much time for. Had the conference been in Florida, or somewhere else more alluring maybe - but Baku?....C'mon.

But nevertheless Mr Dull found time to put in an appearance and while there made a statement about his 'ambitious new target' for the UK of cutting harmful emissions by 81 percent by the year 2035. I assume that the 1 percent will be achieved by him no longer being in power and coming out with a near continuous stream of harmful emissions day in and day out, but let that be as it may.

Asked how he intended to achieve this near impossible goal in just 11 years, like King Lear, he seemed not to actually know - but it would not be done he assured us, by telling us what we could or could not do.

But hold on: later in his presentation it slipped out that the reduction of the amount of meat and dairy food products we consume would be in there, as would a reduction in the amount of travel we partake of.

So let's get this clear. We are not going to be told how to live our lives but we must eat less meat and take fewer trips abroad. Now some might have trouble squaring this circle, but they are not seeing our Kier for the slippery devil that he truly is. He did not get to be Director of Public Prosecutions for nothing. Because what Stamer has in mind is that while nobody will say that you cannot eat meat, cannot go on trips abroad, the question will be rather, can you afford to do it. After all. No-one tells us we cannot buy a new rolex watch every year, but which of us can afford to do it.

The reduction in meat/dairy consumption and global travel will not be done by legal restriction, it will be done by increasing the cost such that it simply becomes the preserve of fewer and fewer people - those with the money to be able to afford these now luxury pursuits.

As I say. Trickery. Stamer, like his political brethren the world over simply cannot be straight with the public. He has, in every utterance he makes, to use subterfuge and 'forked tongue' tactics, to fool the public.

Second case. The American letter to Israel, giving them 30 days to clean up their aid to Gaza act, or have their arms supplies cut back. There was never any intention that this would happen. It simply allowed Biden to put on a show for the rest of the world and (more importantly) his own domestic audience, many of whom were beginning to be seriously concerned at the plight of the Palestinians in the region, prior to the election. It was always understood by both the administration and the Netenyahu government, that come the 30 day deadline, sops would have been thrown out sufficient that America could find exactly what we heard yesterday, that no law would have been found to have been broken by Israel, that improvement had been made, but (bit of finger wagging) more was still expected! Trickery.

Third case. The Maccabi supporters running rampant in Amsterdam, chanting racist anti-Arab slogans, burning Palestinian flags and pelting houses and people who were adorned with them with stones and metal objects. Beating up people on the streets and glorifying in the killing of children in Gaza. Take the footage shot on mobile phones and cameras, edit it so no identifying features can be seen and then present it on national media with accompanying voice over, telling of an outpouring of antisemitic vitriol in the capital. Have politicians speaking of comparisons with pogroms and crystalnacht, get the king wringing his hands and saying how "Jewish people have been failed", and job's a good'un. Trickery.

Fourth case. Cover up the fact that the creep who kills three small girls in Southport has been found with Al-Qaeda terrorist material in his accommodation. Send people to jail who suggest that the guy might have had an Islamist terrorist motive (stirring up hatred). Release said information months later but insist that there was no connection between his possession of the proscribed material (which he will be charged under anti-terrorist laws for) and his killing of the girls (which will be considered as completely un-terrorist related, because to do so would undermine the charges brought against the earlier people convicted for making their posts). Trick-fucking-ery!

Do you get the point? Virtually nothing these days, is presented to the public in a straight fashion. It's twisted and moulded, bent and spun, until it might mean or conceal anything. And it isn't even done well if a clown like me can penetrate it. Think about the layers beyond layers that we can't winkle out. Or perhaps we're meant to be able to see this stuff; because that hides some deeper even more sinister intent. God, I'm going down a frikkin rabbit-hole now; I'd better leave this and come up for air!

[peter]

For all of Labour's proud boasting during the election campaign, that ir would go for "Growth, Growth, Growth", it's absolutely clear that Chancellor Reeves has not the faintest idea how to achieve this.

Many of us will remember the 2008 financial crash that nearly brought capitalism to it's destruction in much the same way as communism had fallen 20ish years earlier, but it's perhaps too far into Reeves' childhood for it to have made much impact. For her edification then, perhaps we should remind her that the capitalist world was only saved by virtue of the combined efforts of printing money like it had gone out of fashion and the imposition of austerity on public services across nations of the Western world, to ensure that it flowed upwards and the people got none of it.

Now Reeves, in her desperation to get at least a tiny bit of growth into the flatlining economy, has recommended that the post 2008 regulation (regulation imposed to prevent the kind of financial jiggery pokery that resulted in the crash in the first place), be "watered down" to allow the financial markets more wiggle room to stimulate growth.

We have, she said, become too risk averse, regulating for safety and not for growth, and now it must change.

This will no doubt be music to the market's ears (expect a hike in share values on the back of it) and already the Financial Conduct Authority and Bank of England have responded by "scaling back several post 2008 rules and scrapping the bankers bonus cap" (quote, Financial Times).

So this is to be Reeves plan? To unleash the bankers and tricksy wizards of the City to come up with the same kind of financial instruments, derivatives etc, that nearly brought capitalism to it's knees 20 years ago? Up like the rocket; down like the stick. And then off we go again.

Well at least I suppose I'll be dead by the time it collapses in a heap of cards next time, but I'm betting that the cycle will be much shorter this time - and I'm afraid to say the consequences much worse. The austerity the West will be plunged into will likely be sufficient to consider capitalism effectively defunct at the end of it, if it isn't really, already - perhaps this is just the final wave of liquidity that can be rinsed out of the system, a bit like swishing your hand round the bathwater as it runs out of the plughole? But by this time I'm thinking it won't matter too much. We are moving into a world where systems and ideologies are history. It'll be divided into a small, a tiny, number of rarified beings so far above the common herd as to be effective Gods. And the rest of us, living that Hobbsian life of nasty, brutish and short.

[Shrug] We will have allowed it to happen, so we must shoulder the consequences.

-----0-----

Meanwhile Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has weighed in at the same event (the Annual Mansion House speech by the Chancellor - Reeves' first) and come out with the most insightful assertion that must justify the no-doubt six figure salary he receives. That Brexit has damaged the UK economy.

[.....silence.....]

You don't say Andrew? Really? Well, now there's a thing. And what do you think we should do about it?

[Andrew] Well, we need to completely respect the wishes of the people as expressed in the referendum - but simultaneously get back into a closer arrangement with Europe so that our trading relationship can be restored.

So in other words, agree to go forward into a place where we could have agreed to come back into had the withdrawal agreement been properly negotiated in the first place?

[Andrew] Err... Something like that - yes.

[Kier] But we are not rejoining the EU. We are not - rejoining - the - EU!

So, we're just, sort of, getting closer to them - cuddling up as it were, since nasty Donald doesn't want our imports getting into the USA. And I suppose, quietly going to accept some of the rules that we gave up when we left?

[Kier] Well - maybe - yes...no.... maybe... Don't speak about it!

Ahhh. I see. Don't speak about it. That's best isn't it.

[Avatar]

--A

[peter]

Hey Av!

(The following needs editing to sharpen it up; I'll do it tomorrow....I'm too knackered now)

I think that the worst thing about the visit of the police to journalist Allison Pearson (of Telegraph fame) is not the visit itself, so much as the frugality of the information that they were prepared to give her about it.

It centered around a historical online posting she had made that they had recieved a complaint about, but they declined to tell her which postings they were referring to, and limiting themselves to revealing that 'a complaint had been made'. They 'invited' her to attend the local police station to discuss the matter, but declined to tell her who had made the complaint or indeed which "tweet" (Telegraph) was involved.

Needless to say her parent paper is making absolute maximum noise about the incident, but declines to mention that there are serious differences between the account of the police's visit and that being given by Pearson. She claims that the term 'non-crime hate incident' was used they say that it absolutely was not and can produce the body-cam footage of the incident to prove it.

The police apparently keep a register of these 'incidents' (NCHI's, as they are termed), on the grounds that they may be needed in some future action against an individual or group, should they progress into actual criminal activities (or that which the police contend to be so, at any subsequent criminal trial). Pearson is now, it seems, being investigated on the grounds of possible incitement to racial hatred, and having read some details of the post on the BBC News website (search 'Police defend investigation into journalist's social media post' if you want to see it) I'd have to agree, she seems to be sailing pretty close to the wind.

The Telegraph has reported this visit by the police in Kafkaesque terms, suggesting that Pearson was to be hauled off without being informed of any details as to the reason why (Kafka's novel The Trial begins with a man being hauled in and charged with a crime, no details of which are ever revealed to him). The police on the other hand, say that the visit was purely to arrange a time for Pearson to be interviewed about the said complaint (presumably at which point further details would have been supplied). The Telegraph is not forthcoming about the details of what information Pearson was subsequently provided with, nor indeed whether any interview has yet taken place. The police are sufficiently angered by the manner in which their visit has been portrayed, that they have themselves referred the matter to the Independent press standards organisation over the Telegraph's reporting of the incident.

Needless to say, the right wing media has been all over the story, and the words 'thought police' and 'Orwellian' have been much in usage in reference to it. Outraged commentary on 'freedom of speech' has been much utilised and the usual suspects have been making their input as would be expected. Kemi Badenoch, the new leader of the Conservative Party is out there this morning, saying that hate crime laws must be changed in order to protect free speech, and Boris Johnson (in typical overblown fashion) has referred to things being as bad as "in the Soviet Union at their worst". Stories have been peddled out about children as young as 8 or 9 being investigated for classroom comments they've made ("She smells of fish!", and the like) and any egregiously stupid application of the law (as will always occur in the investigation of any type of alledged crime - or non-crime as in these cases -) has been wheeled out to demonstrate how stupid the idea of the whole thing is (hate crimes, non-hate crimes, incitement to racial hatred etc).

But the question is - reduced to its nub - how much free speech do you allow? Sure, free speech is great - we all love it. But how far can it be allowed to have free-rein? Freedom to incite people to violence? To hate other groups of people? No; we'd all agree that this is allowing things to go too far. But the very act of saying that people must be held accountable before the law for what they say is a restriction on free speech in and of itself. And this is the balance that society, the state, and the police as executors of the law, must strive for.

As I've said, I think that Allison Pearson's post was skating on thin ice. Unlike that woman who was recently imprisoned for posting an unwisely intemperate post following the deaths of the Southport girls, Pearson is a journalist of national renown. She will have had a wide 'following' of people who are influenced by what she posts. This was not a woman posting to what she assumed was a private gathering of her work mates. This was a woman who's words had authority (in terms of the respect with which they were held by her readership). She should have known better and I think that the police did their job in investigating this matter, as indeed was their responsibility to the individual who placed the original complaint.

[peter]

In a clear case of reality suspension, the SundayTimes is indulging in the fantasy that the Conservatives could have reduced their election disaster had Rishi Sunak held of from calling it until the autumn (as opposed to going for the summer election in which they were crushed, loosing two thirds of their sitting MPs).

They tell us that Sunak was advised to wait, but chose to ignore this advised, possibly because of a backbench rebellion brewing in the form of letters of no confidence, that would have precipitated yet another leadership contest.

Well, that's as maybe - Sunak was a thin skinned little individual who would have taken such a challenge as enough to make him flounce out anyway, win or loose - but the idea that the country were ever going to do anything other than punish the Tories roundly for the complete bollox they had made of everything (seriously - everything) is for the birds.

(The same article, no doubt drawn from some political has-been's forthcoming memoirs, tells us that in 2019, Labour big animal Tom Watson was in secret talks about defecting to the Liberal Democrats. Why they'd have wanted that turncoat back-stabber in their party, God alone knows, but there you have it.)

But, so the story goes, Sunak was advised that he couldn't begin to fight a proper election battle with the economy still scraping along the bottom as it was, and that he needed to wait until his last budgetary changes had had time to kick in and boost the figures, before entering the fray. Not to do so, he was told, would be to go in with one hand tied behind his back. But such was his desire - and this is my reading, not the articles - to get the fuck out of Dodge, that he threw in for an early election anyway, and we all saw what happened.

But in case the rump of the Conservative Party that remains are feeling down in the dumps about their drubbing (and remember - with Boris Johnson's 2019 majority, they should have been in power for 3 election cycles at minimum, in any normal world) let me offer some words of consolation.

All is not lost because Rachel Reeves has fucked up big time. She has set a time-bomb under Labour's arse that will blow them into kingdom come quicker than Boris Johnson's zipper comes undone at a Russian oligarch's bunga party. The media doesn't seem to have cottoned on to it quite yet, but her budgetary changes to minimum wage and employers National Insurance contributions has set a fuse to an April economic explosion that will rock the country to its roots. Because the idea that medium sized businesses can absorb three simultaneously landed blows and survive without huge changes in staffing and scale of operation, is cloud cuckoo land stuff.

Firstly there's the minimum wage increase. OK, on it's own, that might have been absorbable from a mix of profit cuts and price increases. Then add in the increase in NI contribution. Ouch! I mean fucking OUCH! That fucking hurts. It's a big fucking hit for every single employee that a business has. And incidentally, the idea that Reeves put out, that it isn't in breach of her manifesto promise not to increase national insurance contributions, because she only meant employee contributions, not employers contributions - well that's actually bollocks as well. Because employers NI contributions are considered to be part of an employee's earnings as well. But Reeves knows this and tried to slip it by us anyway.

Anyway, back to the economic tsunami headed our way. The third kick in the goolies for medium sized businesses is the simultaneous lowering of the threshold at which employers NI contributions have to be paid. And this has been cut from 9,100 pounds to 5000. That's nearly half what it was previously. Together with the percentage rise from 13.8 to fifteen, this makes a big fucking slice of money for every single employee. Add in the minimum wage increase and this means that anything other than the smallest business that has minimal staff, or the biggest businesses that have essentially a captive market, has no way of either absorbing or passing on these costs. Those businesses (particularly those that are staff dependent, such as hospitality - and remember, they're on their arses already with pandemic costs, inflation costs and zero profits on the books) that fall in the middle are screwed. And there will be millions of them.

So expect massive numbers going to the wall in the next 12 months, huge increases in unemployment, and inflation (as those businesses remaining struggle to absorb these costs) rocketing skyward. I kid you not - if Labour make a full term in office it will be a miracle. Kier Stamer will near about have to seize power and impose martial law to contain the upsurge of anger that will errupt when people see how quickly their hopes for the future (now that they had finally gotten rid of the Tories) have been dashed. The public are going to be pissed as their jobs dissapear, their food costs and mortgage costs go through the roof, and the much promised growth just fizzles out and turns into recession before their eyes.

And the Tories and right wing press will have a field day. They'll fuel public anger against the government for all they are worth. They will whip up public anger until it is ready to burst. There will be blood. Let's just pray it's metaphorical and not actual.

So Kemi Badenoch had better get her plans into order, because she might well need them a lot sooner than she imagines. And those grey suits behind the Tories that put Badenoch into the leadership role believing they'd have a chance to unseat her and get in a centrist leader in order to fight the next election, here's the news. You blew it! Our next elected leader will be a right wing Conservative called Badenoch. That's if Stamer doesn't hold onto power on the pretext that things are too friable in the country for it to go to the polls (and an upsurge of public disorder might be just the ticket to justify this). Maybe he'll be able to use this to his advantage. Who knows.

But whatever the case, if this stuff has any basis in reality, then things are about to get rough in this country. Potentially very rough indeed. (And God damn it, our politicians have worked hard enough to make it happen!)

[peter]

I'd hazard a guess that it's not often that I'd find much ground with Donald Trump Jr, but the President Elect's son made a post last night that I'd struggle to find much fault with.

He said, in response to Jo Biden's decision to allow President Zelensky the previously denied permission to fire long-range missiles deep(er) - serious qualification - into Russia, that

The military industrial complex seems to want to make sure they get world war 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.

This was pretty much the conclusion I'd come to when I heard the breaking news on the BBC's evening broadcast.

Said to be thought to be in response to the presence of North Korean troops on the Kursk front of the war - clearly bollocks because they've known about this for weeks, if not months - a bit of thinking led me to a conclusion similar to that of Little Trump.

So much has been happening so quickly since Trump the Elder won the election, and it has gotten the liberal establishment scared. "Fuck it," they are saying, "Trump might actually do it - end the frikkin war!" The thought of all that money frittering up in smoke (as opposed to being clouds of black smoke over the fields of Ukraine) really rattled them.

Suddenly Trump was saying that he'd speak to Putin. Putin was saying he'd speak to Trump. Chancellor Scholz of Germany speaks to Putin and reports coming out of Ukraine say that the people are tiring of the war.... Hell, even Zelensky himself is talking about the end coming sooner because Trump is in the White House and talking about diplomatic solutions. This is a disaster to those with a vested interest in seeing this conflict run and run.....

How would it look if the end of this war was actually brought about. Western and Nato credibility would be shot to pieces. We have staked everything on Russia being beaten militarily in this conflict and Putin being brought down. Zelensky himself said at the beginning that nothing less than total recovery of all Ukrainian territory including the Crimea would satisfy him,and this he saw as inexorably tied to Russian defeat on the battlefield and the removal of Putin. (No small ask then.) So the answer to how we would look if the war ends by negotiation with Russia gaining territory and Putin still in power, is summed up in one word. Weak! Our credibility would be shot. (What credibility, you ask - we have none outside the West itself, due to our support of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.) Nato would be effectively a spent force in the regional geopolitics of Europe - essentially dead in the water. This was not to be even thought about. How to prevent Zelensky folding and doing what he nearly did all those months ago at the Istanbul summit (ie, agreeing to Ukrainian neutrality in return for peace, thereby scuppering Nato dreams of having missiles bristling right on the Russian doorstep - except that this time he'd have to concede Ukraine territory to Russia as well)........?



Fuck yeah! Give Ukraine limited permission to use a longer range missile type just a bit deeper into Russia - say behind Russian lines in the Kursk region, where the invading Ukrainian/western troops (because they are there to, if you didn't know) are about to be wiped out by the encircling Russian army - and hope that Putin will once again, not respond to this escalatory action with further escalation on the Russian part. This would give Ukrainian morale a boost and make it much harder for Zelensky to convince his people that the time to cut their losses was now, while 80 percent of the country remains intact. Sure, the Ukrainian people are about ready to throw in the towel - but this news would cause them to regain heart for the conflict, even if the truth is that it won't change a thing.

So yes. I see this as no more than a move to keep the conflict going. To scupper any chance that Trump has of ending it,and pull Zelensky away from the path he seemed to be going down, of heading Ukraine in the direction of peace. There are over half a million dead Ukrainians chalked up already in this pointless war - but it isn't enough for us! Western cum Nato status must be maintained at all costs, and the money kept flowing into the coffers of the ghouls of the military industrial complex.

Now what of the consequences?

Read on in part 2 below.

[peter]

Okay - part 2. Consequences.

Media reports, such as they actually consider consequences, are all around whether this will cause an escalation.

Let's be absolutely clear; this is an escalation. We don't need to think in terms of whether this will cause an escalation without the absolute understanding that we have already commited one.

The thinking behind this announcement is that the escalation we have done is (hopefully) not so large as to cause Putin to escalate the conflict further.

Contrary to Trump Jr's post, we have no desire to see this evolve into world war 3 any more than Putin does. The Biden administration's hope is that by limiting the extent to which these deeper strikes may be made, they will not be seen in Russia as sufficiently offensive as to bring about a full scale response that will go further than the Ukrainian theatre within which the conflict is currently confined. They want this war - Biden's lot that is - to continue as it is going, not to widen into a larger scale European theatre. They are banking that this ongoing conflict will slowly wear down Russian domestic enthusiasm for the conflict and will ultimately result in the deposing of Putin from office and the return of Russian troops to their pre-war positions. At this point, with the Russians effectively conceding defeat, they can see negotiations being started in which Ukraine/the West will have the upper hand and credibility will be maintained.

News: it's not going to happen. The Russian people are four-score behind Putin in this, his popularity is high and his war entirely supported (with the exception of minor voices to the contrary, that western media blow out of all proportion in order to give the impression that Putin faces huge opposition). And even if Putin did fall, the likelihood is that any replacement leader would be more aggressive in his position towards the West than Putin has been.

Putin has repeatedly failed to respond to Western/Nato aggression in terms of the red-lines he has drawn (vis-a-vis Nato eastward expansion) and this has lulled our leaderships into thinking that he never will. It is this that has led them to make this escalatory move now, in the belief that his forbearance will continue. And they could well be correct. As I say, Putin does not want a superpower conflict to develop out of the Ukrainian conflict any more than our leaderships do. He'd like the whole thing to end (contrary to our so called liberal establishment) - and, subject to getting his agreement of Ukrainian neutrality (ie their not joining Nato and having American missiles bristling right on his doorstep), would be happy to enter into negotiations to bring this about. So he might be prepared to suck this latest insult to Russian interests up, purely in the hope that the usage of this additional permission by Ukraine will be of limited strategic effect and will soon be nullified anyway by the incoming Trump administration.

But this is of course to ignore what the rest of the European alliance will do in the coming days.

It is entirely possible that other western leaders, Kier Stamer foremost amongst them, will mirror the actions of the Biden administration's permission, but without the same restrictions of the extent of that permission being applied. This would allow for Ukrainian strikes to be made using UK made missiles, much deeper than Biden would have intended. This would embolden Zelensky to perhaps make strikes that would be of far more impact on the Russian people - say much closer to Moscow - and could alter the situation radically. Professor Jeffrey Sachs has described the UK as the most warlike nation on earth and I fear that he might be correct. If Kier Stamer decides that Biden is a busted flush and that decisive action has to be taken in order to keep this war going, then he might be stupid enough to actually give Zelensky the full carte blanche he requires to make these deeper strikes. It would be madness, but he might just do it. He and his foreign secretary David Lammy were very pissed when Biden effectively cold shouldered them on Stamer's visit to Washington, and refused point blank to allow the permission to make the (unrestricted) strikes that Zelensky wanted (contrary to what they -Lammy and Stamer - had implied he would agree to), and they may just see this as the opportunity they have been waiting for to 'turn the tide' of this conflict in Ukraine's favour. It wouldn't. Deep strikes would have no strategic significance on Russia's ability to prosecute the war, and would simply harden resolve amongst the Russian public to see their own side win. And the risk of such action resulting in a massive extension of the theatre of conflict to include other European countries would be immense. London would become a primary target and the Russians would almost be forced to take a hit at it. One can only speculate as to where such an escalation would end - but it would surely be nowhere good.

Should such an escalation result from rash agreement given by the UK or other Nato member countries, then it would be cloud cuckoo land stuff to believe that the USA - under Biden, and even more so under Trump - would dive in all guns blazing. They would take the stance that European/British unilateral action had precipitated the mess they found themselves in, and would not chance the instigation of a thermonuclear conflict that would reach even their shores, in order to uphold Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. So essentially Europe would be fucked and America would sit it out hoping to survive it.

Let's hope that Putin continues to demonstrate the restraint we know him to be capable of. Let's hope Kier Stamer is not stupid enough to believe that giving Zelensky full remit to use UK supplied armaments without restraint inside Russia proper is anything other than suicide. And let's hope that Zelensky now realises that the clever money is to take the 80 percent of Ukraine that is still untouched by the war, bring it to an end, and fuck off into the sunshine with his millions and his villa in Tuscany and live out his days in peace. If any of these falls flat, then frankly, my dear, we're all screwed.

[peter]

In 2008 we had the financial crash. Since then we have had years of austerity - the policy of controlling/reducing public spending in order to claw back some of the money that had been spun out of nowhere in order to support the crashing financial institutions and ensure that the richest people in the country didn't loose their piles: ie. A 'magic money tree' (the one that the Tories said didn't exist when it came to funding public services prior to the crash), created for the benefit of the wealthy and paid for by the poorest, who were the ones worst effected by the hit on public services that the austerity policy demanded.

Follow this with the Brexit referendum, the division that caused, the near civil meltdown of splitting the country down the middle, the raging arguments of the withdrawal period and the turmoil as the country attempted to prepare itself both economically and psychologically for the new world it was to enter.

Then throw the pandemic on top of this. The ink hadn't even dried on the wretched Boris Johnson withdrawal agreement (and we all knew it was wretched remainer and leaver alike, but we "just wanted it over." ( )) before we suddenly found ourselves in fear of a sweeping death (that never occurred) followed by a ......I don't even know what to call it........period of collective madness in which we wilfully destroyed virtually everything we had as a nation, sacrificed it on the anvil of who knows what, to leave ourselves reeling in shock - again, economically and psychologically - as we emerged......

Only to find ourselves plunged into a vicarious war courtesy of Russia, Ukraine, Nato and other influences who we shouldn't have had to give a flying fig about - a historical throwback to the old east versus west drama that should have gone away for good in the 90's when the Soviet Union and communism fell to its knees. War in Europe. Then economic fallout, inflation, a cost of living crisis that blew our living standards back to where they were in the 1970's.

Then Israel, and the killing of a people in Gaza and ethnic and religious divisions running rife in the towns and cities of our nations. And propoganda, and not being able to tell the truth from lies, and not knowing who you can trust and who you can't, and realising that you might not be on the good side after all, and on and on and fucking on!

Doesn't it occur to anyone that we've maybe had enough? That it's time we had a break? That would it be to much to ask - just for once - that something might go right for us? Just once hey? Just once.

[peter]

As the world seems to be increasingly bent on self-desrtuction with every passing day, I should perhaps make my position clear in respect of the Ukrainian aspect of the madness.

I'm not an apologist for Russia: the Russian leadership is full of very bad men who have much suffering and harm chalked up against them on their side of the balance sheet.

Neither do I suffer any illusions about our own leaders, whose bad foreign policy decisions over decades have brought us to this pretty pass.

My entire concern, past, present and future, is with people. The people who have died, the people who continue to die, and will do so as long as this fruitless war continues. Both Russian and Ukrainian. The sufferings of displaced people. Of people whose lives and homes have been reduced to rubble, to whom it matters not one jot whether this Russian kleptocrat, or that Ukrainian mobster, runs the show above their heads. These are the ones I care about. And I couldn't give two figs about our own leadership position on the matter, other than that they seem hell-bent on keeping this thing going until every Ukrainian body, every Russian soul, lies dead in the dirt before their cold, piggy eyes. If there existed one shred of evidence that they do anything - anything - with the interests of the Ukrainian people at heart, then I might have more time for them. But all I see is a cold calculating interest in what is good for them. Not the Ukrainians. Not the Russian people. Not even us, their own respective peoples. Just the interests of a small slice at the apex of our societies who profit from power, from control, from influence.

And so I come to the words of our own venerable leader Sir Kier Stamer.

Two utterances he has made in the last couple of days that have been widely reported (he's been in Brazil or somewhere, at one of these G20 shindigs).

Firstly he said, "We cannot allow Putin to win." And yesterday he followed up with the suggestion that Putin could end the war at any time by leaving Ukraine.

I'm not even sure that the second statement is true. It seems to me that so many vested interests now want this war to continue that they'd continue to push for it beyond anything Putin could do to stop it, but let that rest. Because it's not going to happen anyway is it? It's just a soundbite. Meaningless and adding nothing.

And as to the first. We cannot let Putin win? Define win? What does that even mean? End up with more territory than when he started I suppose. And with an assurance that Ukraine will remain neutral. On the territory front, does that include the Crimea? Or just back to the 2022 borders? The latter, I suppose might just be possible (if Russian fortunes suffer an almost miraculous turnaround - and Ukraine's as well), but the former, never. On the 'neutrality' issue, you mean that Russia must not be able to prevent Ukraine joining Nato, which in essence means allowing American military bases bristling with military hardware and missiles, to occupy sites right up to the borders of Russia. Like Russia are going to ever allow that.

So this 'win' that Kier Stamer speaks of, that Putin cannot be granted, requires things to occur which Russia can never allow. America wouldn't (in terms of having an enemy sitting on its doorstep threatening it with missiles) and neither will Russia. What kind of stupid foreign policy would demand it?

So on Kier Stamer's terms this war can never end but with the total defeat of Russia militarily. And those nuclear buttons we keep hearing about would be pushed long before that.

Two things.

Intelligence and stupidity are not mutually exclusive. Never make the mistake of thinking that intelligent people don't do stupid things, and this applies to the leaders of countries just as much as anyone else.

And secondly.

It's entirely possible that we are already in an escalatory cycle that cannot be stopped by any means. That we will claw, claw, our way into nuclear armageddon, looking on helplessly while it happens, because no-one has the (substitute your own word here - power, authority, intelligence, compassion) to stop it. This is where our leaderships have brought us, we people who just want to live our lives and for whom it simply doesn't matter whether it is Vladimir Putin or Kier Stamer or Donald Trump who is rinsing us from above, because they're all the frikkin same anyway.

So go away with you! Away with you all. If you wants to fight each other, then go out onto the plains of central Europe and do it yourselves. Even that fellow in fucking Gaza had the balls to be out with his people, putting his money where his mouth is. Let's have some of the same from you clowns and leave us at home to look after our own lives.