What Do You Think Today?

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peter
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What Do You Think Today?

Post by peter »

Wosbald wrote: +JMJ+
Skyweir wrote: wowza!

There is a distinct difference between critiquing Israeli politics and policies and antisemitism.
Tru 'nuff.

But there's also a difference between critiquing Israeli politics and playing footsie with Antisemitism for political expediency.

And in that way, Corbyn has always seemed to share the selective incomprehension of Trump's "very fine people on both sides" problem. At least, as seen from this outsider's quite remote and superficial perspective.

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Nothing could be further from the truth Wos. Corbyn has been unequivocal in his scathing criticism of antisemitism and of racism in any form. He has repeatedly said that there is no place for it, antisemitism or otherwise, within the Labour Party and expedited procedures for dealing with complaints within the Party.

The Jewish Voice for Labour, the left wing Jewish Labour movement now proscribed by Kier Stamer is vocally critical of the policies of Israel in respect of the Palestinian people, the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Reports by both the UN and Amnesty International have concluded that Israel is operating a system of apartheid against the Palestinian people. These are not antisemitic organisations. These are not antisemitic conclusions. They have nothing to do with antisemitism and it is not "playing football" with the same to call them out. Undoubtedly there are individuals who will play such games, but Jeremy Corbyn is not one of them. His unequivocal support by the Jewish Voice for Labour (including many personal friends of his from within the same), who openly call out the political motivation of the campaign against him, is demonstration of this in itself, never mind the forty years of public campaigning against all forms of racism that can be accessed in support of him, versus zero examples that can be accessed against. This conflating of any criticism of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians with antisemitism is dangerous and disingenuous. It is a deliberate smoke-screen put up by those who would cover up injustices against others by utilising the natural reticence of people to criticize Israeli policies by virtue of the history of that long suffering people. No matter what has been done to you, you cannot do what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people and expect the world to turn a blind eye. To say so is not in any way to deny or approve of the tragic history of the Jewish people, it is rather an expression of respect for all people.

I absolutely concede that Corbyn may be that most hated of things in the US, a socialist, but anti-Semite he most definitely ain't.
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What Do You Think Today?

Post by peter »

Donald Trump is in the headlines again (is he still refered to as President? I don't know) over his purported hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, and his forthcoming arraignment before the courts over apparent attempts to cover the payments up.

I'm not surprised to hear about the grubby putative meeting between the two in a hotel bedroom. I'm not surprised about the possibility that Trump would make such payments, nor indeed that he might attempt to 'put the frighteners' onto someone in the way that Daniels claims he has attempted to do with her.

I'm just not sure that any of this passes the sniff test.

I mean, isn't what Daniels appears to have done illegal? Wouldn't it count as blackmail and in her disclosure of all of this before a court under oath, won't she be opening herself up to prosecution? Why would Trump be making payments to her via a lawyer if it were not a blackmail situation? If it were a normal transaction between a woman and a man who had just 'made the beast with two backs', wouldn't Trump just have opened his wallet and sprung in the normal manner (I assume - relying on what I have seen depicted on television and not having had the benefit of experience of such transactions, both romantic and mercantile in nature, myself).

And this morning, the lady herself is on the front of the Times (and very pretty she is), but instead of appearing as someone who might have been attempting to blackmail a potential presidential candidate (with the negative associations of such actions, if they are true), she appears to be being presented as some kind of victim of Trump's wrongdoing, which I'm not sure what is, at all. I mean - is paying hush money to hookers, or porn stars or blackmailers in general, an illegal act? What exactly has Trump done wrong here, apart from being an unfaithful man, utilising the aphrodisiac/magnetic qualities of his power and wealth to engage in a sordid encounter with a woman who took part in perfect knowledge and understanding of what she was doing. Nasty the whole business might be, but illegal? It seems to me that the only real illegality here, unless Trump was pinching money that people had donated to his campaign to make the payments, was the possibility of some kind of blackmail or extortion on Daniels' part. In fairness, if Trump then compounded his folly by making threats or organising for them to be made, then he should be charged on this basis.

But these issues aside, it has the slight sniff of a witch hunt about it. The establishment gathering its forces against the thorn in its side - the thorn that might just be preparing to stand for re-election as Potus again. Now could this be anything to do with it do you think? Now could it?

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

Mmm......

I see that Joe Biden is not at this point, committing to coming to the coronation of the new King. This is being hastily put out as nothing that represents any kind of smear or disparagement on the King, or any kind of rift or lessening of the special relationship (:roll: - like the relationship between a poodle and his dog-walker if you ask me), but, like it or not, it is a little bit difficult.

Biden did come to the funeral service of the late Queen, and he is eighty years old - both, things that have been put forward as mitigation factors in a decision not to attend. In addition, there is no precedent for such attendance. Eisenhower didn't attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and perhaps this is felt to be the precedent that should be followed. But one cannot but wonder, given that the President will travel to Northern Ireland in the coming weeks to celebrate the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, if there is not a coded message here? Is the President indicating a touch of republicanism in his thinking? Is it a slight slap on the wrist over the Northern Ireland Protocol debacle (and the destabilising effect of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement on peace in the province)? Who knows? They are stressing the alternative reasons for the non attendance (two trips abroad so close together might put more than reasonable strain on the elderly President etc etc), but the slightest aroma of a slight remains. They know it's there. So do we. But they'll protest otherwise until the cows come home. Methinks that they protest too much!

(This post has a bit of a sniff about itself as well. In fact a lot of it. I find that I repeat the same words without awareness in different parts of my posts very often - you might have noticed ;) - but it's okay, I like it, and so I'll leave it in. My post, my choice! :biggrin: )
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
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'Then let it end.'

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What Do You Think Today?

Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+
peter wrote:
Wosbald wrote:
Skyweir wrote: wowza!

There is a distinct difference between critiquing Israeli politics and policies and antisemitism.
Tru 'nuff.

But there's also a difference between critiquing Israeli politics and playing footsie with Antisemitism for political expediency.

And in that way, Corbyn has always seemed to share the selective incomprehension of Trump's "very fine people on both sides" problem. At least, as seen from this outsider's quite remote and superficial perspective.

Image
Nothing could be further from the truth Wos. Corbyn has been unequivocal in his scathing criticism of antisemitism and of racism in any form. …

[…]
Well, if he's orchestrating a return to politics, then I guess time — if it hasn't already told — will tell.

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Post by peter »

I can only ask that you either trust me on this one Wos, that the mainstream media narrative is not the only side to this story, or that you get digging and root out the untold story of what is going on behind the scenes of Kier Stamer's Labour Party of which the Corbyn part is only the visible fraction at the surface. You will not find this story in the legacy media - the vested interest in the dislodging and discrediting the ex-leader was and remains way too much for that - but will have to rely on sources that sit outside the normal conduits via which you get your news. There is a Novara Media post on YouTube, not very long, that I will try to provide details of, in which the situation is clearly set out by a reporter which might help.

Edit; the vid is entitled 'Watch this powerful defence of Corbyn' (or might come up as Watch this passionate Corbyn defence) and is, as I say posted by Novara Media. Now the video does not concentrate on the antisemitic side of the story, but rather on the barring of Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate in the next election. The particular bit of interest is the second of two included inserts, in which a well-known journalist tells of the background to the purge of the Left from the Party.

Full disclosure; Novara Media is an unavowedly left wing site. But this doesn't prevent them from presenting honest coverage of what is going on and the inclusions within the post are both BBC aired interviews toward which the pesenter, a very sound reporter named Michael Walker, is referring.

For a deeper consideration of the antisemitism aspect of the story you are going to have to go quite possibly way outside your comfort zone, and watch a program put up by Al Jazeera investigations called 'The Labour Files; The Crisis'. Now I accept the you will immediately have a reaction of, "Well what can you expect from a news outlet belonging to the Qatari state", and of course you are right. But I tell you now, you are not going to get the information provided in this program (never mind see the images of the results of Israeli activities in Gaza) anywhere else. And more to the point, it is not the source of the information that I trust here, but the people who are in it. These are people I know of old, people with reputations of integrity and fairness. If they are driven to such outlets in order to get a story told then it is worth listening to. Two in particular I'll refer to. Peter Obourne was the political editor of the Telegraph newspaper. He's as true blue tory in the UK as you get. He was appalled by the election of Boris Johnson as Conservative Party leader, but is even more so by the smearing and discrediting of Corbyn, who, for all their political differences, he recognises as an honourable man with four decades of service behind him. Secondly there is Martin Forde. Forde is the KC who Stamer appointed to carry out the investigation into antisemitism, the results of which he swept under the table when it did not demonstrate what he wanted it to. That the man who carried out the investigation should be forced to make a statement on Al Jazeera (also available on YouTube), because he is unable to get a platform or so much as an interview on/in the legacy media within the UK, should immediately tell you that something is adrift.

That something was going wrong with the media treatment of Corbyn became apparent to many of us very shortly after his appointment as Party leader. The exposing of what we knew was adrift, but had not the detail to prove it, has not come from the source of the deception (why, after all, would it?), but from leaks and sources other than those we are encouraged to look at. As I say, there is no denying the bias of these sources, but I can tell you with absolute conviction that the contributors to the investigations are to be trusted.

But as I say, there is work to be done to get to the bottom of this dirty business, and I have no expectation that it will be of as much interest to others not so directly affected, as it will be to me. In which case, I can ask no more than you trust that maybe there is at least a grain of truth in what I am saying.

2nd Edit. Wos (and anyone else who might be interested), I've just listened to a YouTube posting of 11 days ago by a UK political journalist called Owen Jones that might be the most useful place to get an overview of what has been going on. Jones interviews the above mentioned journalist Peter Obourne and also the (British) producer of the Al Jazeera program I refer you to above. The posting is about half an hour long and is entitled Damning Truth About Labour revealed by Martin Forde KC. the poster is, as I say, Owen Jones. This will give a real oversight of the situation and might allay any misgivings about the source or reliability of the Al Jazeera program. Hope this is helpful. Incidentally, the KC designation refers to Kings Councillor, a rank allocated to barristers of particular standing in the UK.
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....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
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'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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Post by peter »

The port of Dover has according to its operators, been hit by "the perfect storm", which has left countless thousands of people stuck in queues lasting 24 hours plus (and some significantly longer).

The cause of this storm - the start of the Easter getaway season. Nothing predictable there then.

But, the Leave supporting Home Secretary Suella Braverman assures us, it's nothing to do with Brexit. Nothing at all. The fact that we now sit outside an area where there exists an agreement for expedited crossing of borders, where now, instead of going through those funny lanes at airports and ports that said 'EU Passport Holders', we now have to join those lines of sad looking people waiting under sighns that read 'Non EU Passport Holders ' - this has nothing to do with it.

What the fuck did people expect? Why should this chaos even be news. Tens of thousands of people stuck for hours, even days, in cars and coaches, food rotting in lorries, children in coaches on school trips going without sleep, food and water (one poor teacher spoken to had two such coaches of children under his care and had spent thousands of pounds on Domino's pizza's and drinks for his charges, their travelling supplies having long since run out). All entirely predictable as border check times increase exponentially during times of increased demand. But it's nothing to do with Brexit. That we were warned about this prior to leaving is neither here nor there - that was just 'project fear'. Nothing to do with Brexit.

We are so lucky to have a Home Secretary so wedded to telling the truth, and so penetrative in her comprehension, that she can understand, can see what the rest of us cannot. Oh - I understand. It's the fault of the French. Ahhh! They want to do checks on people crossing into their country from countries outside of the EU. Well how dare they!

Well it will b

Edit. What you have above is a fraction of the post I did this morning. For some reason, perhaps I touched a button I shouldn't at some point or whatever, I fetched up somewhere with my full post that didn't even have a post reply button. When I got back (God knows how) to a place where I could actually post from, this was all that remained.

I'm angry that a couple of hours work has again been wasted. I'm not feeling disposed to repeat it, and to be truthful I'm loosing patience with this new site. It isn't really working for me. It's one of those things in life that hasn't been improved by tinkering around with it for the sake of it. These save draft and recall draft buttons are unnecessary complications that I certainly didn't need. My post was a good one, involving the Cornish crab fishing trade, an aside on the Fishermen's Friends, and some more stuff on Dover, the Home Secretary and Brexit. But it's gone for good. If this keeps happening so will I be.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

We are the Bloodguard
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Post by peter »

Okay. Deep breath. Let's try again.

It's very difficult, in these days, and in the face of the political landscape we inhabit, not to become disillusioned, depressed with the country we live in.

There are such deep problems with both of the parties that in effect control our polity, that nothing short of a full rewrite will serve to correct matters.

With this in mind, I took time yesterday to visit a bronze age settlement in the far west of Cornwall, for no other purpose than to remind myself that we have been here a long time. This is our land, our country, and we, the people should have the running of it.

And it's a good country. Its rich soils and mild climate have provided shelter and succour for us for generations past in countless numbers. The site I visited was inhabited from around 300BC to 500AD. That's 800 years of continuity, of security, of lives spent in one place without serious disruption. Contemplation of this was anodyne to the turmoil I experience looking at our current situation, surveying the rotten political landscape, the institutional corruption and vested interest which influence and debase the organs of governance, the organs of state.

You have the Conservative Party and the governments they have formed, which have legislated for two thirds of our postwar history. They are single minded in their partisan approach, serving the interests of the few over the many, and have rarely bothered to hide the fact. No more need be said of them beyond pointing to the state of the country. They have presided over the trashing of the economy, navigating us to the cliff edge of a plunge into obscurity, a period of accelerated decline, the bottom point of which none can predict and only decades of waiting will reveal. Their blatant corruption and poverty of spirit, self-serving activities and disregard for egalitarian governance is plain for all to see, but they continue to attempt to cover their tracks and disguise their failure behind a smokescreen of despicable tactics, stirring up hatred and division, and the of creation of fear and moral panic, of saying, "Look over there, not over here!" They are bereft of any ideas other than scouring out any remaining wealth from the country they have wrecked, squeezing out the final drops of juice from the lemon they have crushed. Like asset strippers from a savage world of free-market Godheads, they will scrape out every last grain of wealth from the country before abandoning it for wherever the grass is greener, the future more assured.

Then we turn to the Labour Party.

Created at the birth of the twentieth century by the trade unions with the express purpose of representation of the working people of this country, people who hitherto had been denied any effective political voice by virtue of the stranglehold of aristocratic interest (Whig-Liberal) and business interest (Tory-Conservative) on the political machinery and structures of the day, for the first time in history the ordinary people of the country were given a platform, a voice - power to influence their own destiny.

But it was not to be.

With the brave exception of the post war years, during which the Atlee government created in one glorious burst the country we live in today - a place where if you get sick, you get treated, if life falls in on you, then a hand is within reach to help you up - the Labour Party vision has been gradually eroded away, until latterly you finish up with Tony Blair, a 'red-tory', who finally delivers the death blow. He seeds the idea that the interest of the people is best served by turning to the established powers, courting big business and finance as a route to power, rather than via the traditional Labour methods of radical overhaul and socialist revolution. And the devil-pact of the modern Labour Party is born. Suddenly the party of the working people has become the alternative establishment party, the Labour branch of the Tory Party. And the establishment are very happy with that. And why wouldn't they be? Suddenly it didn't matter which of the two leading parties was in power, nothing of any real substance would be changed. The top of the tree would remain unshaken by anything that occurred further down, wealth would continue to defy gravity and flow upwards irrespective of which set of hands were on the now disengaged political levers. Like a child on a toy train outside a supermarket, the PM of the day would make a show of activity, but now there were no threats of real change, no possibility of the apple-cart being overturned, by anyone actually doing anything with the interest of everyday working people in mind.

The appearance of Corbyn was a momentary reminder that the risk remained, but a brutal campaign of unified interest by both the Conservative and Labour establishment wings (together with assistance from the establishment controlled media) soon put this to wraps, and order was reestablished. The Labour Party has now been brought back firmly under control, and under the instruction of a devious and focused individual who knows exactly where his route to high office lies (by siding with the establishment, most definitely not with the people) and a purge is underway to ensure that the insurrection of the Corbyn era is not repeated for a very long time to come.

And then you turn to the media. The organ via which the activities of our leadership, our polity are supposed to be put under scrutiny, our politicians held to account. When sitting in the hands of a small number of billionaire oligarchs, the printed media becomes the simple tool of the establishment, the reigning elite, who will direct its output with surgeon like skill, in delivering the response from that brute animal, the general public, in the form which best serves the interest of the existing order. Similarly, the state media and other broadcasting outlets of news, are coopted in the interest, not of providing balanced coverage of what is actually happening, but of pushing whatever narrative it has been instructed to by the powers that be, by ensuring that nothing of substance will change. Mouths are stuffed with gold, revolving doors turn at frightening speed, and always the glistening prize of a seat in the House of Lords awaits for those who serve best, to steady the ship and keep it turned in the direction of establishment choice.

But cracks begin to appear, ultimately widening to chasms which defy our intelligence to continue to ignore, and for me this started with the pandemic.

It became absolutely clear, for those with eyes to see, that the state media news output was being skewed to present a picture that the ordinary experience of day to day life did not corroborate. Fear was being used, ruthlessly and unethically, to influence public behaviour and increase levels of compliance with a constitutionally dubious series of rulings, the like of which would have had our forefathers turning in their graves. And that our governments could do such things? Locking us in our homes, preventing us from being with our loved ones at their deaths, denying us freedom of movement. How could this be? And then the unseating of the democratically elected leader of the Labour Party? Put in place by huge public outpouring of support - twice! Suddenly discovered as an IRA sympathiser, then a terrorist supporter, then a Russian spy and finally and fatally, an antisemite.

Lies and distortions of the media, state and privately owned, begin to trickle out, slowly at first and then with ever increasing force until they become undeniable, impossible to ignore - and suddenly you realise that everything is all wrong. Your trust in your polity, your media, your very country is broken, because if they've lied to you about this, then what else have they lied to you about? Are we really the good guys in the world? Are the Chinese and the Russians as they are painted; when you see those ruined Ukrainian cities and people in distress your heart goes out to them, but why don't you see the same images from Gaza, from the Yemen, from Syria? And once broken, your trust never comes back. Suddenly you see everything through a different lens. The foundations of your world, the certainties upon which you have relied are gone. And you find yourself living in a different place from the one that you thought you were.

So now, exhausted and unheeded I'll wrap it up.

There is only one thing that could sort out our problems in this country. It isn't going to happen but I'll say it anyway. A clean sweep. A government, say a coalition between the Lib-Dems and the Greens, that has not the baggage of our two existing power holding parties. A government not tied to vested interest and donor obligations. One that could start afresh, to undo and heal the damage inflicted over the past two decades. A government that the people of this country can know will be legislating with their, the people's, interests at heart. As I say, the hold of the established powers on the routes to government are far too entrenched for this to be achieved. Witness what happened when Corbyn threatened to pull it off; make no mistake, the media could do just the same to Ed Davey or Caroline Lucas if it looked like they were going to work the oracle. But this is the only thing that will ever put our situation to rights. Perhaps ultimately, it will come up from the grass-roots of the country? We'd need two things - removal of first past the post and replacement with proportional representation, and secondly, the banning of donations and replacement with state funding of political parties - to achieve anything like a chance at reasonable governance in this country, but it ain't gonna happen. I don't know where this all ends - I won't be around to see it - but absolutely I know this. It's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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Post by peter »

The Big Lie - that's the thing. It's from that that all of the other smaller lies filter down.

And as the lie gets harder and harder to sustain, more and more control over people is required in order to maintain it, to continue to build on it. And for this reason when polity's resort to it, it is almost invariably a precursor to the development of a totalitarian state.

In the case of the Nazis, the lie was that of the superiority of the German people and the inferiority even mendacity of the 'lowe races', the importance of racial purity. In the Soviet Union it was that a utopian state could be created by the ceding of ever more control to the state, the adoption of an extreme collectivism in which the individual had to become absolutely subservient to the group, to the extent of complete annihilation of the freewill.

In our society the big lie is that the governance of the people is carried out in pursuit of their interest, that it is for the benefit of the people that the laws are made, that decisions are taken; that the political system functions with the improvement of the lot of the people as its defining ethos. And of course even the smallest of cursory examinations demonstrates this to be false. One only has to think back to the pandemic, and the allocation of resources, the handing out of government money, the rush to set up companies and 'fast track' contracts to associates and family members and the billions of pounds that was siphoned off thereby, for a visible demonstration of the mindset of most of our political representatives.

And the grift and the graft is everywhere evident, from the offshore banking havens in which the Jacob Rees-Mogg's hide their millions to the scramble to get out of the EU before rules and laws became functional that would have impacted upon this practice. Literally, the whole economic future of the country for generations to come was sacrificed on the anvil of looking after the interest of a tiny proportion of the population. And the ever rising levels of inequality. Do you believe that this is inevitable, that some inviolable law of nature demands that this will be so, that our politicians are sitting there wringing their hands in grief as money flows, against their wills, into the pockets of one percent of the population while the other ninety nine percent go to the dogs? If you believe this then there is little hope for you.

We have a Home Secretary (and a very authoritarian leaning one) who baldly sits there and denies that the chaos at our ports is anything to do with the Brexit that she championed, when the head of the very port authority himself says otherwise. She either is lying or she is stupid. She isn't stupid. It's just one of the littler lies that stems from the big one.

I'm not saying that we're heading to brute totalitarianism in the form of Nazi Germany ot Communist Russia (though the possibility always exists). I think that our movers and shakers have learned the lessons from history much better than that (those systems failed after all, and the one percent has no intention of going to the wall in that way). No - the control will be far more subtle, the carrot increased and the stick more hidden. But control it will remain and the question will be how will you - yes, you personally - deal with it.

One little clue as to how we, the people, the little ones who they simply don't have to think about, can exercise a degree of control ourselves, mayhap even turn the tables against them, is simply not to buy into it. To simply refuse to accept the lie, and to repeatedly and continually call it out for what it is. In this way we marginalise the perpetrators and promulgators, and we empower ourselves to laugh at the absurdity that we would so simply, so easily be deceived. This is how we counter it - by simply refusing to partake in it.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
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'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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Post by peter »

I would add to the above post that while the Tories perfidy is well known and easy to see, Kier Stamer's is much less so and perhaps the more dangerous thereby.

The ruthlessness and efficiency by which he has seized control of the Labour Party and purged all possibility of opposition to his program is evidence enough of his capabilities and leaning towards authoritarianism, and no small number of people have remarked that if this is how he treats the democratic process within his own party (and before he has even taken power), how much worse could we envisage that he might be with the full force of legislative might at his disposal. Should we accept that he will suddenly rediscover the benefits of true democracy and revert to what we would normally see to be the desirable manner in which our polity should function? Or can we perhaps think, that once having tasted the profits of the authoritarian path, he might be tempted to continue down this road in his governance of the country at large, utilising the full machinery of state to secure his desired ends?

It seems to me that we are in dangerous territory here and we would do well to take note of what has happened within the Labour Party as a possible indicator of what we might expect were he to secure true power. His record as DPP, should you care to look at it, may give some valuable clues in this respect.
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....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
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Seems to me the real problems we all have is politicians. :D This is why nobody should vote. :D As P. J. O'Rourke said, it only encourages the bastards. :D

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Post by peter »

It's the old adage Av - if voting could actually change anything they wouldn't let you do it. :roll: :roll:

King Charles is being reported in the Mail today as increasing the likelihood of the UK having to pay reparations (God forbid) for its contribution to the slave trade and the damage it caused thereby, because he has agreed to cooperate with a landmark study into the Royal family's association with the same. Ever critics of Charles when he was a mere Prince - they never wanted him to be King, lobbying for the crown to skip a generation and pass straight to William - they have to date however kept quiet with the criticism, but it looks that this might be about to change.

It's a big deal because the Mall has a huge readership of not very smart people. I say this because I've seen the bullshit that they have been pumping out for decades on a daily basis since taking up work in retail, and I'm telling you, you have to be a special kind of fuckwit to soak up that palpable kind of rubbish by choice (and to pay for it as well! :lol: ). But the point is, it has influence. And the monarchy is only there conditional to public approval. It has long been accepted that no vote on dismantlement of the monarchy and establishment of a Republic will be put through the House of Commons unless it becomes apparent that it is (that nebulous thing) 'the will of the people ' that it be done. The Conservatives, though not ideologically given to radical change, hold no particular candle for the monarchy, and if they thought it would benefit them as a party would see them go to the wall in an instant (bad metaphor perhaps), and the idea that King Charles decision could cost the country money in the form of reparations to a lot of African and West Indian countries would be total anathema to them.

To the Mail King Charles has always been a namby pamby blanket sucker, a tree hugging, plant talking greenie whose tiptoeing liberalism puts him in the same rank as ......well, work it out for yourself. But in all honesty, what do they expect him to do? He knows his family was balls deep in the abominable trade, that the bulk of the huge money and estates they now command rests upon a bed of past involvement with the slavery business (either shipping and selling, or indeed exploiting for labour) so what is he going to do? Refuse to cooperate? Say, "Nothing to see here!" and turn his back? What exactly does the Mail think would be the liberal media response to that? They'd slay him alive!

Charles has absolutely no choice in today's climate but to go along with the investigation - and he is right to do so. Time for the royal family at the apex, and the country as a whole beneath it, to acknowledge our involvement, our absolute complicity and guilt, in the slave trade. No amount of reparations could ever compensate for the evil of slavery, but it matters not a jot that it was a historical one. Charles, by his acknowledgement, sets the stage for us as a country to step on to, and take up our share of the burden of responsibility. Good on him. And screw the Mail. It's my hope (and I'm no dyed in the wool monarchist) that the monarchy long outlasts the Mail with its baleful influence over the public.

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

Speaking of the monarchy, and as I note, not coming as one who has any particular axe to grind one way or another in respect of its continuation, I'm actually really looking forward to the coronation. I was absolutely fascinated by the smooth functioning of the machinery of transference of power when the Queen died - how seamlessly and smoothly the whole thing ran - and the insights it gave me as to how clever the people who had devised it were, in the way they had put it together. The pageantry and ceremony was key to the whole thing; you couldn't slip a sheet of paper between the various stages of moving from one monarch to the next (what always has to be a dangerous time for them, because if it's to end, then this is surely the point at which it will do so). The effect of the whole was to impress upon me the historical nature of the thing, put together at a time when these things - monarchy and government and the like - were far more in people's minds, and people were far more inclined to get out on the streets and tear up the flagstones. (Aside; or were they? Is this just the compacting effect of reading history? See the people of Paris today as I post.) The guys who got together and designed the thing knew exactly what they were doing, and I'm really interested to see what new insights will come out (if any) of watching the second act of the drama, the coronation. Hope one or two of you will come along for the journey.

:)

(There will be some changes to this, the fortieth coronation to be held at Westminster Palace since 1066 when William the Conqueror first used it. Not least that King Charles is expected to ditch the more traditional breeches and stockings for naval dress uniform. Shame I say. I wanted to see him in his breeches and stockings, not of course for any humorous value it might have conferred....... :biggrin: (Peter grinning like a wolf.)
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I see that King Charles has decided to buck tradition in yet another way, according to the morning press, by eschewing the normal establishment cliques with his coronation invites and instead issue 850 to members of the general public who have been celebrated for their charitable work or support of good causes. This is a canny move by Charles, who has of times been accused of being remote and out of touch.

Less charitably, a new book has just been issued, not so far as I'm aware endorsed by the couple, but outlining the Prince and Princess of Wales' struggles in their relationships with the Sussex's (that's Kate and William vs Harry and Meghan respectively for any who don't get the titles thing). Kate says, according to the book, that the walk about with Harry and Meghan following the Queen's death was one of the hardest things she had ever had to do, her reason being the degree of bad feeling that existed between the couple at the time. I can't imagine that anything can have improved much, given the Harry book Spare's revelations and the Netflix documentary series that have been released since this apparently so difficult event.

All of which makes for a difficult period of decision making in the run up to the coronation, the invitation to which I believe that the now American based Sussex's have yet to respond to. There has been talk that Meghan has demanded that they be allowed to stand on the balcony following the event with the rest of the working royal's (which they are no longer regarded as, doing no official royal duties), but no official response has, as far as I'm aware, been made to this demand. The whole thing is likely to be an embarrassment to the family, not to mention overshadowing the King's special day, if they attend, and I'm thinking that they may well choose not to, and then capitalise on their 'exclusion' at a later date. Much of their (the Sussex's) business model going forward seems to be based on revelatory complaining stories, so this provides a good potential source of new material for future use, if handled correctly.

And talking about books, the recent suggestion in the media that Prince Andrew has been considering dashing off a memoir can only have sent a shiver down King Charles's spine at the thought of what might come out. No doubt spurred on by the example of the riches being harvested by the Sussex's, not to mention the short rein that the King is keeping him on subsequent to his recent fall from grace (paying off the lady who brought charges against him in the US and all), Andrew is probably just sending out some warning shots to the King rather than actually revealing anything that has true intent behind it. He probably hopes that by this type of leaking he can loosen his brother's notoriously tight hold on the purse strings for a while. It's unlikely that he'd actually be bothered to sit down and write the damn thing, not unless he could dictate it from a hot tub, glass of bubbly in hand, to a topless Secretary with....... (draw a veil over the scene in the interests of Watch decency).

And the Guardian continues its campaign against the monarchy. (Did you know it is a republican paper? It goes back to its roots as The Manchester Guardian - a socialist paper started back at the time of the dawning of calls for workers rights and voting etc.) The Queen, it tells us, made two million quid from flogging off horses that were given her as gifts. Well, come on - cut the old bird some slack! You know how it is; you've just got your spare stabling sorted out and then some clown gives you an old boneshaker that is hardly fit to pull Albert Steptoe's rag'n'bone cart, never mind do a round at Aintree.....I mean - what are you going to do? Still, tricky when the Aga Khan drops in unannounced and asks to catch up with Dobbin, who recently took the short trip to Mr Potter's in Bristol (a knackers yard of repute in the old days, if you must know), but these things happen.

Anyway, that's enough royal title-tatle. I'm off.

;)
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Today (and being Easter Sunday, it seems appropriate) I'd like to talk about the Passion and the Fall.

I'd love to claim credit for what follows, but it wouldn't be true; the ideas came out of a terrific discussion between the psychologist Jordan Peterson and the philosopher Slavov Zizeck (with one small bit that I come up with myself).

Starting with the Passion, Zizeck made the observation that the most significant point of the story is where Christ, at the very end and in the extremity of his suffering, raises his head to the Heavens and crys out, asking "Why have you forsaken me?".

It is Christ's last utterance and is a point of incredible significance. It demonstrates that such can be the burden of suffering in life that, when he decides to subject himself to it in his earthly manifestation, even God can be brought to the place where his faith does not sustain him, where he doubts himself. Peterson adds that this in itself might be seen as an act of huge mercy to us, that it cuts us, as mere humans, some slack for when we - and this is a point where each and every one of us comes to, where the suffering inherent to life....all life....becomes too great for us to bear - arrive at this place and are found wanting.

I'd add that for me (on a much more prosaic level) the scene adds huge authenticity to the story. It's simply not what one would have written into a fabricated account of the events of Christ's death (ir if it is, then it's a brilliant inclusion). For me it makes the figure of Jesus a hundred times more accessible than he would otherwise be.

Moving on to the Fall, I was very much taken by Zizeck's observation of the incongruous nature of the description as 'Falling', of the point at which man rises above the animal state and approaches the Godhead more closely by gaining the understanding of the difference between good and evil. So to get it clear, the point at which good and evil enters the world is a fall from grace? To approach more closely the state of understanding of God himself is a fall? It's an odd way of seeing things, you have to admit (but in some sense I do get). For me, the cruelty of life, its basic setting within a mount of suffering, is the less malignant at the level of innocence of 'the brute'. Where there is no understanding of suffering as a concept, and thereby no guilt in being the causer of it, life takes on a level of innocence that is beguiling. (Oddly, this doesn't extend to my having sympathy or feelings of affection toward human psychopaths who reputedly also have no ability to empathise with the suffering of others - but that's just the inconsistency of being human I guess.)

A third point that came out of the discussion, not related in the Christian sense of the above, but significant enough to bear repeating, is the nature of happiness as a by-product.

We are often, in the West, seemingly obsessed with the 'pursuit of happiness'. It's even in the Declaration. Thing is, both the thinkers agreed, it's a chimera; it doesn't exist as a thing that can be pursued in and off itself. It is only achieved - and then (as the Rubyat of Omar Kyam would tell us in more poetic terms - my observation) only fleetingly - as a byproduct of the actions of ones life. It is an oasis one occasionally finds oneself in, a confluence of harmonious conditions that produce it, fleetingly, before mist like, it drifts away again, dissipates into the ether to return, who knows when. But just to put a slightly less pessimistic sheen on the whole thing (and this came from Peterson, who I believe is much maligned as a thinker by those who do not listen to what he actually says, but rather just take on board the fragments they hear out of context on YouTube), happiness should not be confused with the minimisation of unhappiness, or discontent, or suffering, all of which can quite reasonably be pursued and are really what most people are after anyway.

But that's it. And after that it does seem appropriate to wish everyone on the Watch.....

Happy Easter!

:)
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There will perhaps be a temptation to have little sympathy towards the French people who are tearing up the cities in protest over the proposed increase in the age of receipt of the retirement pension from 62 to 64.

Already in the UK, the retirement age (call it that, though one is not actually forced or even encouraged to retire, simply by virtue of the initiation of pension receipts) is 66, rising to 67 in short order and with proposals to increase it yet further to 68 by (what?) 2040, or something. Pensions for women used to be started at age 60, in recognition of the tolls of child bearing and rearing, but that has long since gone out of the window and women have now for a decade plus retired at the same age as men.

All of which could lead one to look somewhat askance at the pictures of mobs of rioting people in the streets. "What are they complaining about?", one might say. "They've already got it better than we have, and what with the increase in life expectancy and all, what do they expect!"

Okay. Well let's look at that.

First of all let's recognise that it's only down to the French that we have a state pension in the first place. They fought for it on the basis that (as it was said at the time) working people could enjoy for the last few years of their lives the same leisure that the upper levels of society had enjoyed for the entirety of theirs. And the French well understand how hated the concept is. That the ruling establishment will do anything and everything in its power to row back on the payment. That by slicing it like bologna, thin and with introduction in dribs and drabs over extended periods, gradually the payment can be eroded away until it becomes a worthless allowance given out for a very short period at the very end point of the bulk of people's lives.

Because yes, it is true that we do indeed live longer on average, but also that average is skewed higher and higher, the further up the pyramid of earnings you look at. The French worker at the bottom (and largest) section of the pyramid will live on average ten years less than the higher level wage earners (whose private pensions will most likely allow them to retire much earlier anyway). Suddenly, and in the light of this fact, those two years of retirement that will be lost take on a much greater significance.

And this idea that because we live longer we are fit to continue working for longer is a nonsense. It might - might - just be true if you spent your working life sitting in an office (but I have my doubts even on that)......certainly not if you've spent it loustering on a building site ot a farm. As you age, you become simply less able to do these jobs (even working a 7-11 store, I see it - my body just won't cope with the humping and carrying any more); you even become a danger to yourself and the people you work with. Because the fact that you live longer does not translate into your remaining fit and active for longer - not if you've spent your life grafting for a living at the bottom end of the working spectrum. You just get a few extra years of broken health (and that if you're lucky) before you die. And for this the French are absolutely bang on to be out letting their government know that they are having none of it.

That the destruction of property and vandalism that has accompanied the protests is unconscionable goes without saying. It achieves nothing and actively detracts from the support for the cause that should be universal. But that the central claim of the protests is valid is absolutely a given. If we in the UK were less indolent, less supine and lazy in our acceptance of what our governments lay up for us, then we might also be enjoying the leisure that a lifetime's work and payment of taxes should have earned us, at the age of 62, women at 60, in the manner that it was originally intended we should.
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You'd have to be dead from the neck up not to have noticed the reduction in both range and quality of foodstuffs on our supermarket shelves since our historic decision to leave the EU.

It's not massive and it's not debilitating, but it's definitely there.

Just this week we are seeing shortages of eggs once again as domestic production problems are failing to be countered by increasing import supplies as would have previously been the case. On a point that I find most personally annoying, I live in a region that produces the best crab in the world, but I can no longer access the best of the delicious harvest because (though the sellers would never admit it) the highest quality crab are going straight to the continental market and bypassing the local market where previously they would have been landed before onward transportation to the rest of the EU. If the harvest were first landed here now, it would never be able to cross into the EU because either the delays caused by checks at the border would render it unfit for use, or alternatively it simply isn't allowed under EU rules, to have been previously landed in a non-EU country (could be either or both reasons - to be honest I'm not sure). Whatever the reason, we don't get it anymore.

But the reduction of quality and choice more generally that I refer to above is not down to this. It's because hauliers simply will not bother to bring their products to the UK given the increased work and cost of documentation and beurocray involved in obtaining export licences to the UK, together with the time delays in which their lorries are sitting doing nothing on the return leg to the EU, and the fact that the return journey must be made empty (where previously another product would have been returned to the mainland on this leg of the trip) - more time in which the vehicle is effectively earning no money. Why are hauliers going to put up with these delays when they have alternative choices of destination in 26 other countries in which neither documentation nor delays at the border will be required. And so we see holes appearing on our shelves.

But crucially it should be noted that none of this is down to import checks on goods coming into the UK. These have not been started yet. Products can enter the UK with absolutely no checks being carried out, just as they could prior to leaving the EU, and none of the effects of Brexit we have seen to date in this area are due to UK implementation of its side of the withdrawal agreement. For some reason we have been singularly disinclined to end the so called transition arrangements that allowed EU goods to enter the country freely, although deadlines have been set and passed on no small number of occasions since our leaving.

But in October this is about to change. For on October 26th (just checking) - no, can't find the actual date, such is the dearth of reporting on this - but in October anyway, all of this is set to change because finally, bowing to pressure from the hard brexiteer elements of both their own backbenchers and UK producers who favoured leaving more generally, the government is set to begin imposing import checks. And if you think that you've noticed the changes that Brexit has wrought on food supplies and quality thus far, let me tell you, you ain't seen nothing yet! There is absolutely no telling what the impact of the imposition of the much delayed import checks will have on our food supplies, given that we import some forty percent of all of our food requirements. The government has no idea (other than that it will be a big negative one) and neither does anyone else. The market is simply too unpredictable. Hence the reason why nothing is being made of it, there is no fanfare about getting Brexit done, because in six months time there might be food riots in the streets. The government has literally no idea, and so this is being slipped through with no attention being drawn to it, and if it goes belly-up there will be some preprepared excuse (no doubt blaming the EU) as to why the food shortages have happened.

And there it is. The thing that we never - never - should have ever had to think about in these days of plenty (because we elect our governments to do this stuff for us).....food shortages! These are words that should not be in our vocabulary, but prudence demands that, if you have half a thinking brain in your head, you begin to consider. Because with near seventy million mouths to feed, and the speed with which stores will empty if supply chains are disrupted, it begs you to consider whether you might want to make some small preparation just in case the worst were to happen. It probably won't. We'll probably see a dip in product availability and range, but other stuff will still be there to fall back on. But with a government that is prepared to simply wing it - to actually and finally jump off that cliff-edge that we all talked about during the referendum, but which we have never to date summoned up the courage to actually do - then who can say what might or might not be prudent.

Just saying is all, but having a few tins of soup and meatballs put by couldn't hurt could it?

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

As Joe Biden embarks on a day of political roundabout in the Province of Northern Ireland this morning, he would do well to remember that the PM whose Windsor Framework he is endorsing is also one of the leading politicians who caused the wobbling of the Good Friday Agreement we are now experiencing with his support and campaigning for Brexit. Such is the parlous state of the peace agreement, that yesterday pipe-bombs were found in cemeteries, police vans were pelted with stones and dissident republican groupings were calling for a mass influx of new volunteers to join the IRA. This is in part Sunak's doing. Brexiteers knew exactly the risks to peace in Northern Ireland, but they pressed on anyway. It was secondary to their thinking, their desires, to exit the EU. It was a price they were prepared to pay. The troubles of twenty five years ago meant nothing to them and a return was, if not neither here nor there, then not something they would loose any sleep over. Shame on them.
Last edited by peter on Wed Apr 12, 2023 5:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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We're under threat of invasion according to this morning's Times. China is apparently using third countries to secretly infiltrate spies into the UK, by first getting the little devil's citizenship within those countries and then utilising the arrangements we have with those countries for no visa requirements upon entry into the UK, to surreptitiously gain access through our border controls. China's slippery tactics could, we are told, lead "other hostile states such as Russia" to follow suit and try the same trick.

When did we get so paranoid? Hostile states? Red's under the bed? Spies in our fridges and suspect devices in our toasters? Do the readership of the Times (and the Telegraph for that matter) really need to be kept on the edges of their seats, chewing their blankets, with bogeyman stories like this? China is not a hostile country, Russia has no plans to march, Reich like, across the European Central Plain. What the flip is with all of this scaremongering. Aside from anything else it's completely unnecessary given that from what I can see, we are creeping ever closer to another banking crash which will once more plunge the world's financial sector into chaos and demand that working people once again gat rinsed in order to bail out the top five percent of the world's wealth holders.

There are real threats hanging over us in this world. Chinese spooks slipping over our borders and disappearing into the undergrowth ain't one of them.

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

Meanwhile, doctors have apparently come up with the staggering insight that rapid weight loss in an elderly person might be an indicator that all is not well with them health wise.

You don't say!

When I was a kid, my father used to say that the first thing you would notice about someone who was not long for it was that "their shirt collars suddenly look too big for them". He was joking but it was true nevertheless. In the veterinary practice, you knew that animals with cancer would invariably loose weight as a first sight of impending trouble. It was an almost universally seen sign. How come that the medical profession (human that is) seem so slow, or more likely to have forgotten, this most basic of indicators. I think it's due to an over reliance on tests and equipment to diagnose what the eye can tell you with common sense alone. My wife's father went into sudden weight loss and feelings of unwellness a couple of years after having a colostomy subsequent to a bowel cancer diagnosis. He got sicker and sicker with the consultant he was under assuring him he had no return of the disease. It was irritable bowel syndrome. He could barely eat, was collapsing in the street and loosing weight by the day.

Finally he was taken in for a CAT scan or whatever it was called, given an all clear, and told to go home and eat to "build yourself up". We took him home and after we dropped him off, thoroughly miserable and clearly suffering, I told my wife that beyond question he was dying. What I could see by simply using my frikkin' eyes, they with all the tech and tests at their disposal seemed unable to perceive. Days later he was back in hospital, had a laparotomy (ie they opened him up to see what was happening) and the consultant (a new one) told us that he had "No functioning bowel left". Two weeks after being given an all clear by a multimillion pound piece of equipment that either didn't know its arse from its elbow or the people who were analysing its images were more suited to reading the backs of Cornflakes packets, he was dead. My wife and her family were distraught, but at least prepared.

There is an old saying: in the days when religion was strong and science weak, people used to mistake magic for medicine. Now that the opposite is true and science strong while magic weak, they mistake medicine for magic. This has never been more true and stories like mine, and that in today's Telegraph, just confirm that we desperately need a reinfusion of art into medicine, to run alongside the science that has almost completely obliterated it.

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

Like a twat, I've just put a small piece on the Biden visit to Northern Ireland on the end of my yesterday's post. It was a mistake and I can't be bothered to retype it out again. It basically says that Sunak has much guilt to share in the current weakening of the Good Friday Agreement by virtue of his campaigning for Brexit. Biden, in his endorsements of the Windsor Framework, should not forget that had it not been for Sunak and his ilk, it would not have been necessary in the first place.
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Well Harry's a'comin but Meg (determined not to have to play second fiddle in any situation we are told) is stayin' home to celebrate Archie's birthday. The Palace will (apparently) be "relieved" and think it may be the start of a sort of rapprochement, a thawing of tensions between Harry and the rest of the family. He won't stay for the full thing, just the actual service and then he'll dissappear. That's about it.

I saw historian David Starkey complaining on TV a few days ago that while we were being presented with shed-loads of trivial nonsense about the coronation, the actual significance of the thing was not being explained at all.

I guess that it would be something like a visual demonstration of the constitutional role the monarch plays as symbolic head of the nation? A conferring of the titular role onto a new individual, shown to be approved by virtue of being carried out by the second corner of the triumvirate of power in the constitution, the Church, and in the presence of the third, the State (as represented by the polity/PM of the day).

So, fusion of Church, Monarch and State, shown in public ceremony with high pageantry. Something like this I guess?

But where, I ask is Law? I suppose Law is represented by State. Perhaps, in this sense, they are one and the same thing?

Can't think of much more to say today other than to reiterate my complaint that Sunak is among one of those most responsible for the risk to the peace process in Northern Ireland, by virtue of his championship of Brexit. The Good Friday Agreement was predicated on our membership of the EU and no-one at the time of its drawing up could ever conceive that we would be mad enough to leave. The people who pushed it on the British public with their lies and distortions were told of the risk that leaving represented in respect of the peace process but they ignored these warnings and carried on despite them.

To put it bluntly, they cared nothing about peace in the province and still don't. If they did, we'd still be in the single market and customs union and there'd be no border either on the island of Ireland or down the Irish Sea.
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Both Kier Stamer and PM Sunak seem obsessed with whether a woman can have a penis or not.

They say it's an important thing to settle on the basis of policy making - the allowing of trans-individuals into single sex spaces and whatnot - and no doubt it is. Stamer believes that "one woman in a thousand" can possess a penis, and today (sensing an area where he can appeal to the stiff Conservative backbone of the party he leads) Sunak has said "definitely not!" (Using the word stiff in this subject area could be tricky, but I'll stick with it anyways.)

It's a bit like religion really. I mean, who gets to decide what you are and are not?

On the latter, if I say I'm a Christian, does that mean I am? In a church the other day, looking up at the crucifix, I realised that I probably don't qualify as one to those who officiate in the Church. I believe Jesus existed, was a truly good man with an important set of teachings which we would all benefit from brushing up on......but is that enough? I struggle with the miraculous side of it - the immaculate conception, the resurrection, the ascension - and without this faith can I really qualify? Yet I happily tick the box marked 'Christian' when filling in a form (because I was christened I suppose), and have just, well, always considered myself one. But am I committing an offence? I mean, who has the legal authority to decide, or don't those little boxes have any real significance?

Presumably in the case of gender, there is some kind of identification aspect to the thing. I've never been asked to "flip it out" while passing through immigration in an airport, but I suppose it is feasible that circumstances might arise where all identification clues must be used to ensure that people are travelling under their own documentation. But aside from this is it me that gets to decide what I am? By current thinking it seems to be a decision of choice of the individual. But no - surely not. Surely, like falling in love, it's not a thing one can have a choice in? Those early pioneers who put themselves through the emotionally and physically painful procedures of the sex-change operation cannot have done so on a whim. They must have done so exactly because they didn't have a choice. If gender becomes today, something that we can pick up and put down at random, do we not do those brave and suffering individuals a disservice? Isn't the idea of gender fluidity, the being of one thing today and another tomorrow, flying in the face of this assuredness, this 'having no choice' aspect of the thing?

I'm lucky. My thinking is, as with my religion, simple. Have penis - tick box. But I spare a thought for those poor individuals for whom the simple route does not cut it. I genuinely believe that they are often struggling with the most terrible of internal conflicts and I wish them only peace and a successful resolution to their dilemma. At least they, unlike our two political leaders, are genuine in their claims and utterances, and not merely looking as to which position will serve them best in terms of the political point scoring.

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

Spare a thought for Sleepy Joe Biden yesterday, who visiting a Dublin pub (and one I spent a thoroughly raucus Friday night in on one occasion), made the gaff of saying that the Irish rugby team had given the "Black and Tans a good thrashing!" He meant of course, the All Black's, the famous New Zealand rugby team. The Black and Tans were the notorious ex British Army recruits to the Royal Irish Constabulary who carried out atrocities against the Irish people back in the Irish War of Independence in the 1920's. Mistakes like this can have a seriously disproportionate backlash in Ireland, and particularly in Dublin pubs where the Guinness has been flowing. He's lucky he didn't find himself in the middle of one of the other things Dublin is famous for - an epic pub brawl with chairs and bottles flying through the air and meaty fists meeting with puce-faced Irish labourers.

I'd pay to have seen it!

;)
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My work colleague was complaining that she has a broken tooth but by virtue of there being no NHS dentists in our town prepared to take her onto their list, it was going to cost her six hundred pounds to get it fixed. Her son, she told me, had received notification from his dentist that his own NHS care was to be ended when the practice formally left the NHS list in the near future.

Large numbers of people in my area, and in the country generally, are now unable to access NHS dental care and the state of the nation's teeth is worse than it has been for decades and declining by the day.

I saw a dentist talking about this on the local news the other day and the reason, he said, behind this exodus of practices out of the NHS was simple. Rares of pay, as made by the government, had, over a long period, been steadily declining to the point where now it was impossible to meet the cost of seeing the patient, of running the business, on the money they would receive for doing so. Thus dentists were being forced to take on less and less NHS patients and many practices were quitting the service altogether and going fully private.

This is absolutely deliberate policy on the part of the government. The Conservative Party has zero attachment to the idea of a free at the point of service NHS, and it will do nothing to support the system that it does not absolutely have to, and if, by the attrition of starving any part of the service od adequate funding, it can bring about its effective privatisation by stealth, then it will do so. It is here that we see the reality of the Tory position on the NHS exposed - yet our media has absolutely nothing to say about this. Even the dentist I saw talking on the television did not take the opportunity to say that this starving of funds was a deliberate policy, but what else can it be? NHS dentistry in the UK is effectively over. The single most used (alongside optical care) area where we all, without exception, need to maintain our contact via checkups and treatment, is underfunded to the point where an ever increasing percentage of the population can no longer access that care via the system they should be able to utilise: how can this not be deliberate. The government could choose to fund the service properly, but it does not do so. Ergo it is a deliberate choice to see the NHS dental service degraded.

The Conservative government has no interest in supporting the NHS - ideologically it is opposed to it - and thus it does not unless compelled by public demand, do so. Such is the reverence in which the NHS is held by the public, that it is politically dangerous to do anything other than publicly claim to be supporting the NHS, but by stealth tactics in areas such as dentistry, if the service can be eroded outwith the public gaze, then so much the better.

And the current industrial unrest in which both doctors and nurses are pitted against the government in pursuit of inflation meeting wage increases is no different. The government has both the choice and the means to meet the demands of the workers within the service, but it elects not to do so. It sits and watches the service decline, the waiting list increase and the death toll mount, comfortable in the knowledge that every cancelled operation is yet another nail in the coffin of the NHS. It publicly protests that the level of wage increases called for are simply not viable, but it has no incentive, ideologically or practically, to even attempt to meet them. The more the service is damaged by the strikes the better. And the public are too stupid to get this, and the media to complicit or tame to call it out. None of the media barrons, the heads (or even lower level staff) at the BBC, at Sky, are effected by this. Private health plans are already part of their packages and the revolving doors into government jobs and other beneficial appointments makes the clever money to not make too many waves.

So this is presented as a greedy workforce demanding huge over-inflation level wage rises and a government reluctantly saying no. But the truth is far different. Money will easily be found to give weaponry and assistance in wars in which we have no part. But when it comes to paying nurses and doctors rates of pay that merely bring them back to the levels that they enjoyed twelve years ago - no can do. And each rise in the death figures, each cancelled appointment, is presented as reflection of the staff being indifferent to, not caring about the people they are supposed to be serving. After the strain and demands of seeing people through the pandemic, to be painted thus!

Truly despicable tactics by a government that is so far from being fit for office that it hurts. And the irony of it all, is that this poor lady, the colleague who I spoke of above - she has voted Conservative all of her life. Why? Because "my father told me to".

God, give me strength!

:roll:
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....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
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peter wrote: But the truth is far different. Money will easily be found to give weaponry and assistance in wars in which we have no part. But when it comes to paying nurses and doctors rates of pay that merely bring them back to the levels that they enjoyed twelve years ago - no can do.
Yeah, the decline of the NHS is truly one of the great modern shames of the British government. So much for Brexit freeing up all that cash for the NHS huh?

--A
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A shameful lie to gull the unwitting public Av. The fact that it was coming out of Boris Johnson's mouth should have been enough. I'm appalled as well, that a Labour leader can be almost openly siding with the government. Kier Stamer's support of the nurses and doctors claims has been negligible and his openness to privatisation of areas within the service is well known. The NHS is the crowning achievement of the Labour Party. That it should fail to receive the full support of a Labour Party leader is beyond shocking - it is shameful.

The salaries of junior doctors in the NHS have shrunk by 36 percent since the Tories took power twelve years ago. The pay demand put forward by their union is merely reflective of this, yet it is used by the media and government as a means of presenting the doctors as greedy troublemakers that care nothing for patient safety. The awarding of the demanded figure would do no more than bring them back to the place they were in when the Tories took office - a fact little talked about in the right wing media which would far rather concentrate on the consequences of the strike action. Meanwhile the government sit back and do nothing. Health Secretary Steve Barklay has not even been seen over the days of the junior doctors strike - I'm not even sure that he is not on holiday. It's a win-win for the government as long as the public reaction is one of indifference and the service continues to sustain incremental damage. But there is little point in even trying to raise this topic with the average Joe in the street. They simply aren't interested (not at least, until they have need to access the service and discover that it is no longer functioning).

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

118 people were arrested at Aintree yesterday and the start of the Grand National held up by twelve minutes as police carried away protesters trying to glue themselves to the fences around the course.

I'm with the protesters. In this day and age, to see horses flogged around a circuit, at the end of which they are shaking and fatigued to the point of collapse is truly disgraceful. The animal rights protesters have it absolutely correct on this and the sooner the whole racing industry is overhauled with the wellbeing of the horses as the defining criteria upon which their holding of races is allowed, the better.

If you don't believe me about the toll that the race takes on the horses, look closely at the photograph on the front of today's Telegraph. The horse is sweated and foaming, drooling and exhausted - you don't even need to be an expert to see it. These noble animals will run their hearts out if it is demanded of them: time to show them some humanity and put a stop to this.

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

Amazing, the number of people that actually believe that Princess Diana was murdered by...whoever....with the collusion of the royal family.

I had two people in the shop last night, relative strangers, who both believed - absolutely- that her death was as a result of villainy, and the fact that she was being driven at great speed through an underpass by an at least semi-drunk driver had nothing to do with it. The reasons they gave in support of this belief, when questioned were rambling and wide ranging, often bearing no relation to the event (one even managed to bring Camilla now being called Queen rather than Queen Consort into it) but this didn't seem to faze them. They both took delight in having discovered a fellow believer in the face of my less credulous and more sceptical approach, and both were clearly not in the mood to listen to a dissection of where their thinking was adrift, so I didn't bother to give one.

The key place where they seemed to go adrift was in their thinking on why. Why should the Royal household or family take such a risk? "Because she was pregnant!", came one reply. "Because Charles was involved with Camilla", came another. They didn't seem really sure on motive - nowhere near as sure as to the fact that it had definitely been done.

I have come across lot's of people who do believe this conspiracy over the years, and the media (as per usual) has played no small part in this. Much publicity was given to the claims by the father of Dodi Al-Feyad, who in his grief was sure that a terrible crime had been perpetrated, for the simple shock value of the story (especially in the Sunday tabloids) and I'm guessing that this is where it stems from. But it is quite surprising how tenacious the opinion has proven as an undercurrent in the public mind, one that clearly influences how many people see the monarchy (it was a question about whether a customer was going up for the coronation that brought the topic up in the first place).

When or if there is ever a referendum on the continuance of the monarchy, it is entirely possible that this belief will play no small part in determining how people vote.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

We are the Bloodguard
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