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Post by Avatar »

Yeah, those new "public order" laws looking and feeling a bit sinister to be honest. :D

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There is a backlash Av, but no indication that the laws will be repealed or watered down in any meaningful way. On the contrary, there is every indication that what we are seeing is just the beginning of Hone Secretary Braverman's oplans for tightening up her controls on public expression. The rights of protest and public demonstration are fundamental in any democracy, yet this odious woman seems bent on clamping down and curtailment of those rights in the most draconian and arbitrary ways.

Police can now make the decision to disallow any planned protest with neither explanation nor fear of chastisement for doing so. All planned protests must be 'cleared' with the police before being held and the decision of the force concerned in approval of their going ahead is theirs alone and final. Anti-strike legislation continues apace at the same time and surveillance of the population is at an all time high. This country is unrecognisable to the one which our forebears fought to defend in the Second World War and the developments we have seen would have them turning in their graves.

Astoundingly, Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, when questioned in interview on the subject of repealing the said legislation was dismissive. "We can't be expected to trawl through every law the Conservative government has made in the last 12 years overturning them all," was his response. Straw man or what! The question was specifically about the public order legislation rushed through last week in order to be effective in time for the coronation, and Lammy gave the lie to the idea that Labour would do anything to reverse this chilling development. In fact every indication is that Kier Stamer would be equally forward with Braverman in terms of his leanings toward authoritarianism. As the ex Director of Public Prosecutions, he has a history steeped in using the law to punish transgressors against the state will, and this seems to have translated into a belief that it should also be used as a tool with which to enforce public compliance with whatever decisions governments make about what people may or may not do. There has been not one word of criticism from the Labour leadership on the anti-protest legislation which Braverman has drawn up, not one suggestion that it oversteps the mark in terms of erosion of our supposed democratic rights. And as for Lammy's ridiculous comments, what on earth is the point of voting for anyone other than the incumbent regime if it is not for the purpose (in part) of repealing and overturning legislation that you do not agree with, that has been passed?

I'm afraid Av, that your gut-instincts on this legislation are not wrong. The insidious effect of this legislation will not be the high profile occurences like the arrest of the coronation protesters that we have all heard about. It will be the thousands of small applications of the law up and down the country, the one's we never get to hear about, that will change the nature of the society we live in. Gradually and insidiously the state of fear of the old Eastern block countries will begin to prevail as our police test the boundaries of their newly acquired powers. And by the time we hear the jack-boots on the stairs it will be too late.

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

Nationalisation used to be a dirty word in the British vocabulary, but in all circles now with the exception of the Labour Party front bench, it is becoming increasingly more acceptable.

News on the front of today's Financial Times tells us that despite an infrastructure that is falling to pieces, despite an increase of whole number multiplications of the instances of sewage release into our waterways (and the number of prosecution's therefrom, with paltry fines handed out in comparison to the money saved by the water companies on proper treatment by doing so), the water companies have decided to double the amount that they will pay out in dividends this year compared to last.

But there are signs that even the true blue tory electorate are getting tired of the profit gouging of the privatised utility companies, and are ready to talk about the reversal of the disastrous privatisation program that Thatcher so ruthlessly pushed through (and which they, relishingly sucked up, lining up in their droves to snap up the shares in the companies so egregiously stolen from the public who collectively owned them).

Now those shares are sold on, the money realised and spent, the shares passed inexorably on to the big-business gatherers and foreign government interests, the Tory voting base are beginning to see things differently. They, along with the rest of us, see the results of sewage dumping at sea and into our rivers. Their grandchildren swim amongst the turds, get sick with stomach ailments following a trip to the beach as well. They see the dead fish and algal blooms spotted on the sickly and turbid waters of our rivers. They feel the pinch of ever increasing fuel bills at the same time as reading of hugely inflated profits of the energy giants........ And they don't much like it. And suddenly all of those heady privatisations don't seem so clever after all. It turns out that private business is not the panacea for running the public utilities that it was claimed to be. That the only efficiency that private business had to add to the system was the efficiency of hiking up prices, starving the companies of the monies necessary for maintenance and development, and funnelling the profits into the pockets of the foreign investors who now owned the lions share of the companies. In countries that suffered not a jot or tittle as a result of the under investment or illegal dumping of waste themselves, it should be noted.

There are 24 (or is it 28?) coastal wind farms around the coasts of this country. They general huge quantities of free and sustainable energy which is fed into our grid - every kilowatt of which we have to pay for. Because we own not a single one of them. The people of this country benefit not one penny from the energy generated on our own shores, because the money instead goes to France, to China, into nameless numbered bank accounts in the Caymen Islands, rather than into the coffers of the Exchequer. This is the privatised model which Thatcher dreamed up, the fruits of which we are now enjoying. Our rail system is falling apart, our water system not far behind. Our energy generating infrastructure works for the benefit of individuals and countries other than ourselves and we the public pay for it - through the nose.

This has been, this is, the Conservative business model and yes, there are a few Jacob Rees-Mogg's out there who will benefit from it. But the bulk of the clowns are paying through the nose just the same as the rest of us, and they are beginning to realise it. Soundings are indicating that even among core tory constituencies, there is a feeling that re-nationalisation is a question that bears consideration. Everyone gets this, with the single exception of the one group of people who might be able to actually do something towards it in the near future. Stamer and his aptly named 'Starmtroopers'.
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The playbook for how to successfully subvert a democracy is out there, well known, and there are plenty of eager adopters.
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Let's just look at things.

The NHS is broken with seven millions of people waiting for treatment or surgury without which their lives are either on hold or directly threatened. People wait weeks to see a doctor and referrals, when they are made often take precious time wasting weeks or months to occur. Neither the incumbent government nor the opposition (possibly a government in waiting) has the slightest intention of making any significant changes to this, both in essence being committed in private, to a scaling back of the service and an increasing role for the private sector in public health care.

Our energy and gas companies, run privately since their nationalisation by Mrs Thatcher in the 1980's, price gouge the consumer and are owned and run almost exclusively by foreign interests (often governments) who hive off the profit and leave little behind for reinvestment into the failing infrastructures they own. Yet government seeks rather to maintain the unfeasibly high profit margins while subsidising the cost with tax payer funded handouts to the hardest hit. Meanwhile, meters are force fitted into homes of the poorest and most needy members of society.

Our railway network is crumbling and in chaos, yet the best plans that can be made for it involve cutting back on services, staffing levels and maintenance contracts, whereby it falls to the employees of the multiple companies involved, cry warnings, largely unheeded, of the risk to public safety, if these continual erosions of standards and staffing levels are allowed to continue.

The water companies, again as with the energy and railway ones, created by the Thatcher privatisations, regularly foul up our costal waters and rivers with sewage effluent that it is cheaper to dump and pay the fines for so doing, than pay the costs of treatment for. They hive off the profits for dividend payments rather reinvestment into the failing infrastructure, and sit in countries far away from that in which the effects of their actions are experienced, having no concern for the remotely felt effects on the environment of that distant land. Again our government is comfortable with this and the official opposition has no plans to alter the situation either.

On a democratic taking of stock, we find ourselves slipping down the tables if freedom, the indeces of democratic and liberty based assessment, and this meets with the approval of our government who would go yet further in advancement of authoritarian anti-democratic measures, and undoubtedly will do so if given the chance. Once more, we find both of the parties in our two party system in agreement that this is what is needed in order to take our country into the future. A state where the people must rightly fear their government rather than the other way around.

Economically we are reduced to the basket case of Europe, the country with the lowest projected performance in the G20, below that of even sanction hot Russia. The people of our country labour under ever rising costs, with a government determined that their standard of living is simply going to fall and that they should simply "get used to it" - a government that can at the same time find billions to fund the prolonging of a war in a third ccountry simply because of a desire to stay onside with another third party country who has in reality not the slightest interest in our best interest, and find yet more billions for the purchasing of a nuclear deterrent which we can under no circumstances, conceivable or inconceivable, ever use. Tens of thousands of families slip ever further into penury, the social cost of rising poverty increases by the day, and again, our government would have us believe that it is dealing with our priorities, that there is no alternative route.

And as things stand, with the Labour Party in the place it seems determined to sit, apeing it's Tory big brother (and yes, you can read that as you will), it is probably right. There is indeed no alternative.

But this does not have to remain the case. Because out in the community, there are millions upon millions of people who can see what we have done, where our governments since the Thatcher era have taken us - and they know that there is an alternative. That the brilliant 2017 manifesto of Corbyn's Labour Party - the manifesto that would have seen him in power had not his own central office been conspiring against him - that brought him to within a few small thousand votes of winning the election that that is an alternative. An alternative that given the chance, the people of this country could get behind, could begin to undo the damage that the litany of failures I list above has done.

But Stamer's attack on the left has effectively stiffled this possibility. In his desire for power he has purged out any possibility of a radical alternative plan for this country and turned his back (and the collective Labour back along with him) on the very roots of the movement that gave the party birth in the first place. And in so doing he has so alighned himself with his political adversaries that in effect he has become of a piece with them. This is not true Labour, this is New Labour. It is Blair and Brown all over again. And it might just as well be Thatcher or Johnson, Truss or Sunak, because it is so far from the democratic socialism of Corbyn, of Wilson, of Atlee and Bevan, as to be unrecognisable.

So what's to be done, what's to be done?

There is but one alternative and it's at present a pipe dream. The disenfranchised left of the Labour Movement must regather, regroup and form into a new broad coalition. There are figures of stature out there, but to date they have not begun to even begin to work together. I'm taking the Corbyn's, the Mick Lynch's. The Ken Loach's and Barry Gardiner's. Where is Rebecca Long-Bailey, where is Dave Ward? These figures need to get together, they need to get the unions functioning as a whole rather than in divided units and they need to get behind a new party of the left - one that represents the true interests of the people - and not just the traditional 'working people', butall of the people who are increasingly left behind by a system in which they are simply doomed to fail......

In short, they need to turn true Labour into True Labour. I mean, how hard can it be? As I said above, there are millions of people out there, young and old alike who see what is happening. They are ready and willing to take up the cause that Jeremy Corbyn started - it was never just about him - and get behind a new movement and make it happen. It is the leadership of the left that is fragmented and failing them.

And unless they get their act together and present the people with that alternative - and soon - then it will die. And we will be truly doomed, with no alternative but to watch as our country is condemned to a state of ever increasing inequality, ever rising poverty, ever tightening authority exerting order keep us in check.

I'm not a savant. This is not a prediction. This is how it plays out. End of.

(Edit: There is one additional point to make in order to counter the bullshit argument of Stamer that the Corbyn manifesto was roundly rejected by the public in the 2019 general election. This was an entirely atypical election. It was won by Boris Johnson in storming fashion, not because of a rejection of the Corbyn manifesto (which 2017 proves to have been very much in the public favour) but of his failure to present a stance on Brexit in the face of Johnson's seductive "get Brexit done" message, in combination with a country worn down by the whole Brexit question. People simply wanted Brexit done and behind them and Johnson offered that. End of. The Corbyn manifesto of 2017 which he re-presented in 2019, never stood a chance against that Brexit fatigue under which the country was suffocating. Now, back to 'business as usual' (as far as you can call it that) that 2017 enthusiasm for the radical manifesto would quickly be reignited if someone would but put a match to it. It was establishment's supreme moment of success, the killing off of that movement, and it's time for some payback.)
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Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has been ruffling the government's feathers by condemning the Rwanda deportation plans and legislation which they (the government) are preparing, and which is currently being debated in the House of Lords.

To be clear, the Lords can recommend ammendments to the legislation, even recommend that it is abandoned, but they have little power to enforce such recommendations and cannot halt something that the government is truly determined to see happen.

Welby has been unequivocal in stating that he considers the planned legislation to be both immoral and potentially highly damaging to the UK's International reputation. We cannot, he said, outsource our refugee problem to a poor third world country in all good conscience.

Of course he's right, but needless to say, the right wing press do not see it that way. Both the Mail and the Express take the position today, "Well, what would you have us do? Allow the people smugglers a free run at risking the lives of the illegals who reach the camps in France?"

Which of course is nothing like what Welby is suggesting. In fact he's not suggesting anything. He's simply observing on the morality or otherwise of shipping desperate people who have trekked in great hardship across great distance off to a third world country with a shocking record of dealing with immigrants in particular and with human rights in general.

The commentators within the Tory Party who have responded to Welby's attack have taken a different tack. There can be, they say, no right of abode given to those who enter the country illegally. This response is strangely quiet on the point that all of the legal routes previously available to asylum seekers have been closed off, effectively forcing them to resort to the illegal routes whether they like it or not.

The ramifications of the UK government policy, if adopted, could be far reaching. The United Nations has long had an agreed policy, signed up to by all member states, of provision of sanctuary for those fleeing persecution, and the UK policy represents a serious undermining of this commendable declaration, which could only encourage other nations to also water down their commitment to such humanitarian aims. And of course, as Welby pointed out, the conditions of war and climate change currently prevailing are placing pressure upon peoples in ways that the world has never experienced before. Clearly the movement of displaced populations is going to be an ongoing and rising problem in the years ahead, and simply outsourcing it to third countries with no consideration of individual circumstances and needs is not going to be a sustainable solution. Acting in an isolated and inhumane way for political ends, to appeal to a narrow band of voter preferences over something so deeply sensitive and concerning people in such desperate straits, simply isn't on.

But none of this will concern Home Secretary Braverman in the slightest. She is perfectly happy for Sunak to carry the political can for the policy when it is criticised, knowing that when he is brought down (and its only a matter of time) she can bask in its tough looking approach with the Tory Membership upon whose votes her securing of the top job will depend. In this respect, she has a couple of problems to overcome. She's a woman and she's not white. The old Tories won't like that much (the white bit was why they wouldn't support Sunak in the leadership election, though nobody except me is prepared to say that). She has only one trick to get over these hurdles with. To convince them that she is Thatcher reborn, with brass knobs on. Hence the authoritarian card that she will play and play at every opportunity. Protesters? Lock em up! Dole skivers? Stop their benefits! Illegal immigrants? Send em to Rwanda! This is grist to the old school Tory voter base and if she plays it long enough and hard enough then they may just forget that she's a woman and forgive her for being Indian.

On the Sunak situation, frankly he's finished. He might get to a general election, but even if he pipped it, the knives are out for him. There is no sign that he's gelling with the electorate. His diabolical losses Iin the council elections (over 1000 seats lost) are a signal of just how bad things are for the Tories. Given that the last set of local council elections prior to this one saw the biggest ever Tory losses, this one should in theory have seen them at least hold from this low base. But instead they lost fifteen hundred more seats and 22 councils. Sunak himself has never won an election (leadership or otherwise - a fact that Kier Stamer was keen to push down his throat at PM's questions yesterday - and from the look of these local council elections he isn't going to. The Tory Party both in Parliament and in the constituencies won't like that. They won't like it a bit. So Sunak's card is marked. Even Truss is preparing to get one of her free-market colleagues into position to take the helm when Sunak falls. She, incidentally, is off to Taiwan in the next few days. Spurred on by Nancy Polosi and the furore that she caused by rubbing the Chinese noses in it, Truss thinks she will have some of it too. Can you imagine what the effect of having Truss blundering around in one of the world's most sensitive flash-points might be? Not satisfied with nearly wrecking the world economy she's now moving on to starting World War 3. If Rishi Sunak isn't sweating about the thought of her popping up in the hot-spot to add in her pennowoth, then he damn well should be!

Chow for now.

;)
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Post by peter »

The Department of Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has got on my pip.

5his morning he features in an article on the front of the Telegraph saying that if the 400,000 people still not returned to work following the pandemic were to do so, we'd be able to take 2p in the pond off income tax.

Like that 400, 000 are just sitting there not wanting to find work. Like that life on benefits is so rosy and carefree that they are simply making the active choice to remain at home, rather than get back out into the world of work.

Can I just remind you Mel, that it was you lot that closed down the country. Emptied the streets and businesses, closed the pubs and hospitality venues, locked the entire population in their houses and effectively stopped the UK economy in its tracks like a super tanker brought juddering to a halt mid-ocean.

Yes there will be a number who could be more active in seeking work - there always are - but for the majority of those still not working there will be sound reasons for why this is the case. Businesses by the score have closed down never to reopen. Others have scaled back their operations in the face of rising costs such that they will never re-employ in numbers that equal their pre-pandemic levels. People who are looking for the work that they used to do, the work they know how to do, are finding it no longer available. They cannot simply walk into other jobs for which they have no experience or training; these things take time. Besides which, getting people to work has an inherent inertia about it. You should have thought of this when you closed the country for business. The bulk of jobs at the bottom end of our society are mindless and soul destroying. They pay crap wages that don't meet the cost of living, of rent and food and bills. Why would people return off benefits to these jobs, when the money they receive from the state gives them around the same level of survival, but without the killing effects of the jobs you want them to go out and do? Getting them out and into these jobs will be like pushing water up hill, and who can blame people for wanting no part of it. Again, Mel, you should have thought of this when you took the people out of those jobs and paid them to stay at home. Did you think that they would all dance back into their daily drudgery and brain-numbing work singing for joy as they did so? For money that brought them a lower standard of living than the benefits they had learned that they could live on? Foolish man. Foolish government. Do they understand nothing about people, about what it is like to work at the bottom end of this society?

Another thing Mr Stride said on the front page was that 650,000 people had left their jobs during the pandemic. Wrong, wrong, wrong (to pinch another of this morning's headlines, this one from the Express, but referring to the Bank of England's prediction that inflation would fall back to normal levels by the end of the year). 650,000 people lost their jobs during the pandemic. 650,000 people lost their jobs because of the pandemic. They didn't leave their jobs during the pandemic. Let's just be clear about this. It was what the government did that caused them to loose their jobs, not a choice that they made for themselves. There's no point now (excepting to reinforce to Telegraph readers what they already believe, that it's all the feckless workers fault if they are languishing at home) in blaming the people for what is happening. It's down to you, to your lot. If you want to get people back into work then maybe you should think about making it worth their while to do so. With maybe minimum wage levels that don't have you living in penury, with working conditions that don't require the stamina of a donkey to endure, with pensions that allow the aged to leave work and make space for the young coming in at the beginning of their working lives?

But no. As with everything this government makes comment about, if things are showing improvement then it's because of how good they are, if things are going badly then it's somebody else's fault. One commentator I heard recently blamed the Tories poor performance in the recent local council elections on the war in Ukraine and the pandemic. Brexit was just the government doing what the people instructed them to do - nothing to do with them. Not their fault. Economic catastrophe? Global circumstances, post-lockdown hiccups, oil and energy prices, blah, blah, blah. Nothing to see here.

Now Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England says that (nervous titter), "Actually guys - looks like inflation may be with us for a bit longer than we thought. Might actually be still hanging around at the end of next year. Or the next. Or maybe the next."

Of course it will you berk! Don't you get it! The shit has hit the fan for the capitalist model! It's run out of fucking steam. It is a dead parrot! Not pining for the fjords! It's dead! See - dead! It turns out that just as with communism before it, the utopian dream of letting the markets rule the earth is just a heap of intellectual bullshit. Not least because on a finite planet, with finite resources, the ever expanding market that the model is based on is simply not sustainable. We'd need to be well on our way to the stars by now if we were going to keep ahead of the requirement to keep expanding ad infinitum that free- market capitalism requires. So Andrew - do us all a favour and start to get real. Be honest. You are going to have to keep putting up interest rates, higher and higher, to control an inflation that, once having gotten up a head of steam, is going to do it's own thing irrespective of whether you like it or not. This in turn is going to push millions into penury and loss, and the result is that millions of households are heading into a bleak time, the end of which you haven't the faintest clue when it will be. And that end, when it comes, will certainly be nothing to do with anything that you have done to get things back on track.

Not that I want to be pessimistic about anything, or what......
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No question about it, the knives are out for Sunak in the wake of the disastrous local council elections last week.

Ex Home Secretary Priti Patel is reported in at least two of the morning papers as gearing up to launch a broadside placing blame for the debacle clearly on the shoulders of the leadership, and the Times run with the leading headline telling us that James Dyson, he of the vacuum empire fame, has said that Sunak's claim to put science and technology at the heart of his plans is all flam.

On the latter, given that Dyson advised us all to leave the EU and then promptly moved his own manufacturing base over to Asia rather than stay and support the country that had supported him through his company's development, I'm not sure we should place much stock. He also said that the lack of any true content behind Sunak's empty sloganing was making Britain not a place that was conducive toward doing business in. This I'm assuming, given his previous form, means that he intends to go and do business in the Europe which he encouraged the rest of us to abandon, and is laying down the excuse for doing so in advance. So having followed his advice, and it having been a disaster, it's now Sunak's fault that the UK is no longer a place that is encouraging growth and prosperity, such that businesses like his would want to stay and operate here.

But while Dyson's words might set a pulse ticking in your temple, it does not mean that there is no truth in his words. He is the fourth business leader in the technology field to make such observations in the recent weeks, and in all cases the words have come from individuals who lead companies with plans for large scale growth involving huge sums of potential inward investment. And I hate to say it, but what did we expect? It is richly ironic that such a story of UK failure to attract business development in the sector should be coming from the front pages of the Times, a News Group paper who were amongst the loudest groups shouting that we should leave the EU, and inability to trade with which is the coded meaning behind what all these company gurus are saying. What it amounts to is, "Why are we going to come and invest in the tiny UK market, when to do so means to lock yourself out of the huge EU one on your doorstep?" The truth is that until we get back to a position of being able to trade freely across the UK-EU border, then to expect inward investment to come our way instead of the EU's is for the birds.

In respect of what Patel is doing, what we are seeing here is along the lines of what Truss was about in her recent announcement that she's off to Taiwan. This sudden activity from all of the old names is reflective of behind the scenes activity within the party in preparation for Sunak's downfall. These people, Truss and Patel and the like, do not act alone. Each is the front-person for a faction within the party who wants to be ready to hoist their own chosen front-man up into the top position. I don't think that the party is ready to bring Sunak down before he has lost the general election (assuming he does - I'm not so sure it's a given). Given the rapid turnover of leaders in the past few years, it's beginning to look a bit suspect, and the behind the scenes party executive will be leary of another damaging leadership race just yet. The Truss debacle was very damaging to the party image and they really need a period of 'strong and stable' leadership to consolidate themselves back into the national mind as the party of reliability, of sensible pragmatism and stability. Changing leadership yet again before the next election (and there would hardly be time to do it anyway) would be even more damaging to their credibility. Sunak would have to screw up hugely - I mean hugely - to force this situation about. Like 'loosing fifteen hundred seats in local council elections that he should have held his ground in' hugely.

People like Patel and Truss are not expecting Sunak to fall before the general election......but if he did they wouldn't worry about it. They consider the election all but lost anyway, and given that Sunak is turning into a high tax and spend leader of a type that they only have contempt for, even if he were to win an election, they'd still want to see the back of him. Truss, despite nearly wrecking the UK finances and even getting the wider world economy to wobble on its pins for a moment, is still convinced that she had it right. The reason it all went tits-up was not because her borrow-and-tax-give-away policies were lunacy, it was that the markets were too yellow to see them through. She remains convinced - and more worryingly so do a good number of her supporters - that she had the right of it. I'm not sure what faction Priti Patel is heading up, but be damned sure it will be a pretty beastly one! My guess is that it will be involved in this 'National Conservatism' movement - essentially the far-right posing as mainstream Conservatism and going for power on a ticket of increased authoritarian policies, extreme nationalism and anti-immigration. (The latter sentiment will be given fuel by the recent announcement from the Office of National Statistics that immigration this year has topped over six hundred thousand - almost double that of last year's total, and flying right in the face of the brexiteer claims of 'taking back control'.)

And the one fat fly that we haven't heard much from yet is of course the much maligned (in his own opinion if no-one else's) Alexander Boris de'Pfeffel (or however you spell it) Johnson. Quiet he may be at the moment, but rest assured he's still out there working on his Sisiphus (ditto) speech. Somewhere, in a sweaty room under a tropical sun (no doubt borrowed from a billionaire friend or back-scratched favour recipient) the blonde maestro will be at work, crouched in his underpants over his typewriter, fielding off semi-suggestive texts from Nadine and plotting his return. Trust me - it's a given!

And with that unpleasant image steaming ever so slightly in your mind's eye I'll leave you. The weather looks half decent, it's Saturday morning and the weekend stretches ahead of you. What's not to like?

:D
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Post by peter »

Couple of other things going on worth noting.

Excess deaths across all age groups in the UK currently running at around 4000 per week. That's twice the number killed in the 9-11 attacks every week, yet there seems to be no urgency to discover what is behind this. Might be simply the aftereffects of the covid pandemic or could be something more sinister. Still, you'd have thought that someone in government, in the Department of Health, would be interested in getting to the bottom of what is going on? Maybe they're just too afraid of what they might find.

Also, the situation in Ukraine is moving incremental step by incremental step ever closer to a full scale East-West confrontation. And we, of course, are doing our level best to ensure it does. We have apparently, in the last week, supplied the first long-range missiles to Ukraine, capable of striking into the heart of Crimea from the Ukrainian lines of combat. This would ramp up the heat tenfold because the Russians are not going to loose the Crimea without going full-scale ballistic. It's their only deep sea port that allows naval access to the larger oceans of the world that doesn't freeze solid in winter. Strategically they must hold it if they are to be anything like a power in the world at all. We have of course identified this sore-point in their geopolitical position and are working it. One cannot believe that the USA is not aware, if not behind this development, but precious little is being made of it in the media. Too likely to focus people's minds on the very real risks of all-out war I'm thinking, although there are hawks on both sides of the Atlantic who nodoubt see that as a potentially useful thing in itself. It'd put the West (and that essentially means the USA) back in the driving seat if Russia were crushed, and if a few million lives have to be lost to achieve that...... Well, you can't make an omelette and all that.

America for their part are pissed at South Africa for apparently slipping Russia a few weapons against the international agreement to stay neutral. Trouble is that much of the rest of the world don't see this conflict through the same lens as the Americans and (by poodle like consequence) we do. They ain't so sure of the rights and wrongs of it as we are. Tricky.

But anyway, that's me done for today. While everyone else enjoys our early bit of summer I'm off to work. Someone's got to be behind the counter selling the beer and barbie kits to the punters. Might as well be me.

;)
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Quick error correction from an above post, the Tories actually lost just over 1000 council seats at those last local elections, not fifteen hundred as I said. I was sure this was around about a figure I'd read, but my memory must have been playing tricks on me. Results are pretty much the same though - Labour did okay, but with the Lib-Dem and Green parties the real winners. No clear indication that Stamer's Labour will secure an overall majority, in fact it looks less and less likely.

Johnson supporters have come out of the closet this weekend with some kind of a conference called Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) at which speakers (including Priti Patel and Nadine Dorries) urged the party bigwigs to return to listening to the membership, who of course never supported Sunak for leader, and allow an element of democracy to return to leader selection. What they actually want is Sunak out and Johnson back in to lead the party into the next election. Only one speaker, the Chairwoman of the group whose name I forget, actually came out and said it though. The rest concentrated on dissing the Sunak leadership and blaming him for the local council losses.

The Telegraph itself also banged in behind them with a story that it was Sunak who pushed through a windfall tax on the energy giants (not, of course, that they actually paid it) against opposition from Johnson. The windfall tax was always seen as a symbol of whether the leadership supported business or not - the central point for the membership who see that as the party's raison d'etre. If you wanted a windfall tax on any company that just got lucky and made a shit-load of cash by accident (it happens now and then), then it was an indication that under the skin you were a closet socialist. The Telegraph is in essence a Johnson/Truss supporting paper and given that Johnson once said that it was essentially the boss of any Tory leader,it doesn't bode well for Sunak that the paper is not behind him. With neither the right wing media nor the membership behind him, and without the backing of a big slice of his parliamentary party, well, you join the dots. The only question remains is whether he can or cannot be unseated before the next election.

And in truth, with the ruling party in such disarray, it cannot be good for the country in terms of getting a vision into place - any vision, damn it - that the government can point itself toward. Much as I dislike Stamer and see him as essentially the Tory B-Team leader (he essentially admitted as much in yesterday's 'i' newspaper) at least his presentation has some stability about it. His crushing of the left of the party has been ruthless and not in keeping with the principles I believe a Labour leader should hold, but at least it has served to deliver an impression of stability in contrast to the chaos in which the Conservative Party seems to be enveloped. Perhaps this is what is attracting business leaders into the Stamer camp and giving his leadership ambitions the legs they need in order to win the day. Time will tell. Anything would be better than what the Tories are currently delivering as a spectacle for the rest of the world to gasp at.

Anyway, forget all that, I just wanted to say a few words about the monarchy and what is left behind for me personally, now that the events that started with the Queen's death ha been bookended into closure (as it were) by the coronation.

I've always been a pretty disinterested monarchist at best. No, even that's not true; what I've done is to slalom, sinusoidally, along the line between monarchist and republican, at one time being this side of the line, then sliding across to the other. But on top of this, I've never been very.....exercised....by the activity either. It just hasn't sort of impinged on me that much. I've always said, a bit tongue in cheek, that as long as the Queen didn't interfere with me, I wouldn't interfere with her. I think that still sort of sums it up for me.

I'm still torn in some ways. Perhaps we can really never achieve anything like an egalitarian society in this country while the monarchy acts as the keystone holding up the arch of privileged entitlement that the establishment enjoys. Alternatively, perhaps we really do need that alternative figurehead to stand for the people in the face of governments that have grown too big for their boots. To say nothing of the stability that the severing of symbolic power from executive power gives, when the former occupies a higher position in the public mindset than the latter. It really does work to smooth the wheels of transition of power and render the whole process more safe.

But safe - is that really what we want? Isn't that just another word for stagnant? Where is the dynamism, the driving upward in safe?

I've loved seeing all of the pageantry and pomp wheeled out. The Crown Jewels and the ancient ceremony. Rare events and always worth a watch to anyone with an interest in history. And I'm left with a sort of slight...sympathetic support maybe, of the King. But it does feel tired. The King looks tired. There is none of the dynamism that would have been associated with seeing William and Kate ascend to the top roles. That's what the old Queen's coronation must have been like, compared to our tired old affair. A new and attractive monarchy suggestive of a new beginning. The war was over, the peace restored, and suddenly, with the pretty young Elizabeth receiving the Crown, everything must have looked new. There must have been a sense of hope for the better about everything. We had none of that. There was pageantry and colour and fanfare......but no magic.

So I'm still sitting on the fence really. Nothing much has changed except the sex of the aged figurehead at the apex of our nation. I guess I'd say, in referendum, keep the monarchy, but only because I see no real alternative that strikes me as being better. The idea of some beastly celebrity or grubby ex politician sitting as president in place of the monarch fills me with contempt. I can't think of a single individual who I'd accept as president of this country at all. Well - actually there is one person when I come to think of it. An individual of sound judgement who seems to have just the correct amount of intelligence balanced with humility that could fit the bill. Me!

:lol:
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Saw a guy talking on YouTube yesterday who was stressing the point that there is not one, but two wars being fought between Russia and the West at present.

The first is the one that gets all of the headlines, the military conflict in Ukraine which, contrary no doubt to Putin's expectations when he invaded in early 2022, shows no sign of reaching any kind of early conclusion.

The second is the lesser commented on area of conflict, the economic war, which has seen sanctions levied by both sides, and in which Russia, again contrary to the expectations of leaders in the West, is proving unexpectedly resilient to pressure as their economy seemingly refuses to cooperate by going into meltdown.

Looking back over past conflicts, we have ample demonstration that starting wars is a really bad idea. Take the last three initiated by the US. In the cases of Vietnam, Afghanistan and the Gulf, all were sold on the basis of the huge disparity of might being a guarantee of a quick solution in the American favour, yet all dragged on for years beyond their expected time-slots, and precipitated outcomes a million miles away from that which was anticipated or predicted at the points of their starting. The Ukrainian conflict is proving no different. For despite what we hear, constantly being told of this offensive or that gain by the Ukrainian forces, the blunt truth is that Russia now holds a sizable chunk of the east of the nation and shows no sign of upping and quitting it any time soon. So, like the conflicts of history, the expectations have to be that this one, with its devastating cost to the lives and security of the desperate peoples of that region (not to mention the soldiers both Ukrainian and Russian) is going to go on for an unspecified but extended time in our foreseeable future.

But alongside this, the economic war continues apace as well.

In today's Financial Times we are told that the EU and G7 countries are resisting the reopening of the major Russian pipelines via which gas flows from this country to the West. Previously shut off by Putin at the start of the conflict in order to apply economic pressure to the West by disruption of energy supplies and hence price stability (and boy did that work), he now wants to reopen the lines in order to get some much needed money flowing back into the Russian economy. But Western leaders are having none of it. Having pretty decent stockpiles right across Europe, they are now resistant to the idea of returning to dependence upon Russian supplies, rather instead relying upon sources which while they may be more expensive, are probably more secure in terms of not being used as leverage in the ongoing or indeed future situations of conflict. Fair play - you can't blame them for that. One problem is that Russia will probably have little problem finding alternative buyers from other parts of the world for its gas. It will take time to establish the infrastructure to facilitate this, but it will be possible, and thus the tactic will not be an effective long-term stay on the Russian ability to utilise its gas reserves.

Quite why these two sides of the capitalist world, Eastern and Western, should wish to go head to head when you'd have thought they had more in common than that which separates them, is beyond me. To witness what is happening you'd think that communism had never fallen, that the Soviet Union of old was still in the driving seat in the East. It seems to me that there is more commonality about the world than ever there was in my youth - hell, even China seems to be getting it that capitalism has the capacity to generate wealth in a fashion not possible under other systems - but yet things seem more parlous and fragile than ever before. We sit on the edge of potential conflict and conflagration at every point, and leaders seem intent upon taking things to the edge of the abyss who would better be capitalising on all the things we stand to gain as a world, if we just learn to cooperate, to coexist side by side in tolerance and friendship, rather than a state of suspicion and mistrust.

And in the absence of this cooler way of thinking our leaders persist in their dreams of power and dominance, of hegemony and control, and the bodies pile higher and higher. Today in Ukraine and Yemen, tomorrow no doubt somewhere else. And in the back offices and boardrooms of the military industrial complex, hands are rubbed together, and profits are trousered. The machines of industry turn themselves towards the production of destruction rather than the building of futures, because there are places, few and not openly spoken of, where 'war-war is better than jaw-jaw'.

So when you turn on your television and listen to the next planned offensive of the Ukrainians, or the next loss of ground by the Russians, don't be fooled. The Ukrainians aren't winning this war and neither are the Russians. They are both loosing it. As are the soldiers of both sides that fall in battle, the people of the east of the country who are seeing their lives decimated by the shelling and street to street fighting, and before long if things continue the way they are going, the rest of us too.

If we're lucky we'll miss the bombings and fallout of military action (and I repeat, if we're lucky), but the consequences of the other war, the economic one - well, the casualties of that one are beginning to pile up already. As food bank usage soars and the destabilisation of economies puts people onto the streets we may learn to our cost that we also are victims of this conflict, and it ain't going away anytime soon.
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We, the UK, have always been innovative when it comes to cooking up ways to contain people we don't like and yesterday I got a first hand view of it.

To my shame, my county is currently home to the effective prison ship, the Bibby Stockholm, as it undergoes refit at Falmouth docks prior to being put into service at Portland (I believe) on the South Coast.

I questioned the morality of going over to look at the vessel as it sat in its dry-dock, asking myself if I was doing so just for voyeuristic reasons, but decided to do so because I do feel genuine repugnance at the idea of containing such large numbers of people (up to 500) in such limited and monotonous conditions, irrespective of how they have arrived in this country. Are we not supposedly a civilised country? These people have fled from the most appalling circumstances, many of them, forced into making a desperate journey that has brought them ultimately to our shores, and this is how we meet them. Place them into a prison barge for God knows how long - months? years? - before shipping them off to some uncertain fate in Rwanda or whatever other countries we can slubber up deals with, to outsource our refugee problem. On this basis I decided to go and see for myself the vessel.

The first thing I can say is that it is small. Compared to the ferries and other shipping I often see in the docks (which can be overlooked from the road), the BibbyStockholm is tiny. It sits, dwarfed by the docks, a square box of grey steel, the exterior surface dotted with windows that will presumably allow light into the accommodation within - small cells of space if the distance between windows is anything to judge by - and ugly in its sheer banality and monotonous outlook. There are a couple of inroads into interior 'courtyards' that run from the sides of the vessel, and a couple of steel gangways run from the side of the docks to these passages. These will be the only points of ingress and egress from the vessels, and will presumably be pretty much policed as to when the occupants can and cannot use them to go ashore. It is inconceivable that the occupants be held without freedom to leave this space for any extended period of time; they would go mad cooped up in such conditions. There would be fights and riots, so there must be plans for allowing them to go on and off the vessel and into the surrounding town for exercise and variety of activity? Surely?

But as I say, locking people up is a particular talent of ours. We were first to come up with the idea of the concentration camp, back in the Boer War, and then to develop the prison hulks, those Dickensian pits of suffering into which to throw poverty driven victims of the temptation to commit crime, as an alternative to dying. Even Napoleon was provoked into referring to them (they had been used to house French POW's during the Napoleonic Wars), chiding his men to remember the suffering they had endured in them, on the night before Waterloo. Debtors, thieves, murderers...all the same to the English State and fit meat for the hulks to feast on.

And now, in Braverman's Britain, we see them making a comeback.

And she was up there yesterday, at the National Conservatism conference, pitching her play to replace Sunak out into the ring, not even bothering to wait for him to fall, such is her greed for the position he currently holds. These immigrants are coming in in their thousands (600 plus at the last count, reckoned to reach a million for the first time by the end of the year) just at the right time for her! This is a stick for her to beat Sunak with, ironic really in that it is she who has been in charge of dealing with it for the last nine months, but the Tory faithful won't think of that. It was a Sunak pledge and he hasn't lived up to it. Take back control? Yeah, right!

Mind you, a few months in the BibbyStockholm and going off to Rwanda won't seem like such a bad deal after all I suppose. But Braverman won't be thinking about that. In fact, thinking about the plight of individuals being led onto the modern day hulk won't be anywhere near the top of her agenda. These people are just means to a political end for her. As long as the optics are good for the people she will need to vote for her, she'll care nothing about the morality or ethics of what she does. That the world looks on in horror at our behaviour, that the other nations of Europe take in the share of refugees that dwarfs our uptake is of no consequence to her. Brexit, take back control of our borders, tough, tough, tough. That's what wins the day!

And meanwhile the refit goes on. And as I looked down into the Dock at the newly painted grey steel with orange flashing of the vessel, I noticed something. The bottom of the vessel was rotten. The corroded and rust covered struts and girders upon which she rested were leprous and cankered. I wondered how hard the rats and vermin of the dockside would find it to penetrate that flimsy shell, and it struck me as a metaphor for the whole business. Flashy and active in its presentation, but resting on a bed of rot. Presented with a fanfare of trumpery as grist to the faithful, but the new paint job barely concealing the stench of decay percolating up from the bilges. Because underneath it all, it's just the hulks again. A century or so may have passed, but it appears that we have learned very little. But then, that's what Conservatism is about isn't it? Making sure that the best aspects of the past are retained, wheeled out and buffed up at need? Well we've certainly succeeded with this one, but they're not 'staterooms' I'd be booking into in a hurry.
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At last we have it from the horse's mouth. Brexit is a failure.

So tells us arch godfather of the Brexit movement Nigel Farage, when in interview with the BBC's Newsnight, he came out and told us what the rest of us had long ago realised - that it wasn't working and that it never was going to work.

But of course, he wasn't going to take the final step and admit that it never could have worked, preferring instead to run with the standard brexiteer argument that it could have, but it had been messed up in the execution by the incompetent shower of misfits we have masquerading as front-line politicians.

Well I'll agree about the incompetence of our politicians, but that's as far as it goes. The Farage argument that it could have worked is based upon the 'cake and eat it' philosophy of Boris Johnson - ie the idea that we could leave the EU with essentially no deal, but still continue to trade with them as though nothing had happened. It's bullshit of course. The only reason Farage can advance such an idea is because he will never be called upon to demonstrate that it can be done. He can sit on the sidelines, endlessly carping about opportunities missed and the ineffectuality of whatever group happens to be in power as they are seen to be failing to square the circle of the Brexit experiment, and never the once having to put his money where his mouth is.

The truth is that the British people were sold a pup. There is no other way of putting it, and Farage was amongst the chief peddlers of the flim-flam of lies and misdirections by which they were gulled.

And among the leading institutions which must carry the blame for the disastrous move we made is none other than dear old auntie, the BBC.

James O'Brien yesterday made the observation that in its insistence upon seeming 'neutral' in the debate, it failed to disclose that for every economist that thought brexit was a good idea, there were 99 that didn't. It was so bad, he said, that one insider he had spoken to had said it was nearly impossible to find any economists to speak in favour of leaving the EU, when planning programs. Hence the reason that the same one or two pro brexit individuals kept coming up again and again on all of the different news slots. It was like, said O'Brien, having a geographer on one side of the table debating with a flat earther on the other and presenting them as having equally representative views on the shape of the earth. How were people supposed to make a qualified judgement when these disparities were not being made clear to them?

He has a point. There is an all round understanding of the ill advised nature of what we have done - people can see that business is flat, investment is flooding away from the country and trade withering to zero - but there is no move by our politicians of either stamp to begin to repair the damage that has been done. Neither Sunak or Stamer have the slightest intention of doing anything to facilitate trade with the EU - Stamer seems to positively fear the territory and Sunak is too busy trying to out Braverman Braverman (as it were), to even give it any thought. And so for the duration we will sit and stew in the results of our own gullibility. Farage will continue to lecture us on what could have been, the chief architects of our downfall, the David Frost's, the Kate Hooey's, will continue to be rewarded with seats in the House of Lords for the disaster they have inflicted on the rest of us, and we will continue to bear the costs while those who foisted the decision upon us remain insulated by an establishment cushion from its worst effects.

Such is life. As the Bank of England guy said, we'd better suck it up and get used to it.

----------0----------
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So, in continuation from the above, let's just take stock on it - where we are on the various promises made by Leave during the referendum.

Take back control of our borders. Immigration was a big factor in the leave vote, we had Farage's poster of queues of suitcase bearing migrants stretching into the distance. How are we doing on this one? Not so well as it happens. The recently released figures for last year come in at over 600,000 new entrants, up some thirty percent on the previous year and the highest it's ever been. Predictions for this year confidently say that we will breach the million new arrivals for the first time ever. Whatever brexit was about, it wasn't taking back control of our borders.

What about our sovereignty? That was another big one. All of those pesky laws on the curvature of bananas or whatever they were? Have we been able to have a 'bonfire of the beurocracy'? Well, no, it appears not. Jacob Rees-Mogg's proposed legislation to sweep away 6000 EU laws in one fell stroke, not on the basis of whether they were good or bad, but purely on that of their origin (a bit racist in itself in an odd way, that one), has been found to be wanting. Rather sheepishly Rishi Sunak has had to come clean and admit that it isn't going to be quite that easy. That on inspection, it turns out that you can't just sweep them all away; some of them have to be retained for legal and other reasons. How many? 5,600 actually. Only 400 can be overturned en masse, the rest presumably needing picking through with individual legislation being drawn up, if it turns out that they can be overturned at all, or if indeed you would want or have time to. Oh dear. Not so good on that promise then.

Trade deals then! What about trade deals? Forging out into the rest of world (it suddenly becoming our 'oyster' as it were) cutting trade deals with all and sundry, freed from the shackles of Europe that were so badly holding us back?

Well, not so easy as it turns out. We have had that deal with Australia or New Zealand or somewhere - the one where we gave them everything they asked for without so much as a quibble and were given next to nothing in return. The one that returns us 0.1 of a percent of our GDP in ten or so years, to make up for the four percent we have lost today and is threatening to kill of our farmers. And the Japanese one that was significantly worse than the one we already had when members of the EU. And there's one with Paraguay or Peru or somewhere isn't there? Not exactly cutting to the heart of world trade, the new kid on the block as it were? And the big one with America, the one that Trump promised would be on the top of his list and Obama said we'd be at the back of the queue for? Turns out neither was right, because we aren't even in the queue at all. The list, as it happens, is already full with the countries in the EU which represent a huge and attractive market for the US, far more lucrative than piddling little Britain with its grimy towns and small population. Because why would you limit your trade to 60 millions of people when twenty miles away there were millions upon millions you couldn't get your hands on if you come here? Seems no-one in the Leave team thought of that, or if they did it was 'project fear'.

Hospitals then? Hundreds of millions a week going to the NHS instead of Europe? That one at least could be done, couldn't it? Well, sorry - turns out that nice Mr Johnson wasn't quite so nice after all: that that figure might have been a bit of an exaggeration after all. Because so much of that money was being given back in refunds anyway that the available figure post leaving was actually.....well nothing actually. No different than the starvation diet that the patient was already on and would bring it to the apparent death convulsions that we are told it is in now. Forty new hospitals, thirty three of which remain unfinished or on which works have ceased altogether.

So all in all, taken in the round (as the politicians so love to say when trying to limit the fallout from one particularly bad area where a policy is failing), brexit turns out to be a heap of shite.

Oh no, hang on, there is one area where it is a success. So let's just look at that.

That would be the one where we avoided, the day after we left, the EU introduction of laws obliging the declaration of funds held in offshore accounts it places like the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, for taxation purposes. Yes, those laws were sidestepped nicely and brexit has done the holders of monies in such places very well indeed. Far more good in fact (from their perspective) than any of the other failures I mention above have caused them harm. No, the top one percent of the country's wealth holders have done very nicely out of brexit indeed. James Dyson, in the process of preparing for his next move away from the country he advised to leave the EU towards, you guessed it, the EU itself, by blaming the government for not making the UK a good place to do business with. That Forte guy from the hotel chains, Rocco is it or something? Throwing his weight in behind the Leave campaign and now apparently leaving himself. To go and live in Italy - the place that leaving the EU made sure that the rest of us could no longer choose to go and live in - because the UK isn't a nice place to live in anymore. Not such a bad place to hold money in however, in the City of London where it can be squirrelled away out of harm's reach in some offshore account that the place specialises in creating? No, there are beneficiaries of brexit, just not down in the bottom ninety nine percent of the population. If you were cynical you might even think that the whole thing, all those reasons for leaving that the Leave campaign gave, was a lot of hooey. That it was nothing about sovereignty, about taking back control of our borders or making us into a hypercompetative giant on the world trading stage. That it was just about the money. Just a great big 'fuck the rest of you, I'm all right Jack'.

But as I say, that would be cynical wouldn't it.

(Edit; back in the heady days of the referendum when I was fighting the case for remain in these pages, I used to get numbers of people fighting the opposite corner, championing the Leave position. Funny, I don't seem to hear so much from them these days. :?: )
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:lol: Well, safe for me to wish our frikkin' politicians would get their act together and recognise that have to be taken at some point, to address the mess Brexit has created.

Which in fairness, Kier Stamer has at long last seemed to begin to understand.

With an obvious eye on the polls showing a progressively increasing number of people are suffering buyers remorse over Brexit, and the latest one in which for the first time a greater percentage of the respondents support the holding of a referendum on rejoining (not the same thing as simply believing that Brexit was a mistake), at last the Labour leader has decided to act.

The catalyst which has brought about this volta face is the announcement by three major car producers that, come the end of the agreed period with the EU that no import duties will be levied in either direction on cars until the end of 2024, they don't believe it will be sustainable for them to maintain their car production activities in the UK.

The problem appears to be that for cars to be able to cross freely between the UK and EU beyond this date, they must be at least forty five percent produced within the region from where they are being exported from. This is to enable the EU to protect its trading area from imports from outside the block and prevent a third party country, say China, from importing parts into the UK, assembling the cars here, and then passing them off as British produced vehicles in order to avoid import levies when they cross into their ultimate destination for sale, within the EU. Genuinely British produced cars, deemed so as long as forty five percent or more of the constituent parts are produced within the UK, are exempt from these duties by virtue of reciprocal arrangements that we will accept cars from the EU without slapping import duties upon them either. In this way the range of vehicle types we have been used to seeing I our showrooms will not suddenly dissappear at the end of 2024.

But there is a fly in the ointment. The damn batteries upon which the new breeds of electric cars (supposedly going to replace petrol and diesel engine cars in their entirety by 2040 or something) run on. Because with the recent collapse of the huge electric car battery production facility planned for development in the near future (and sorry, I forget the name it was trading under), we effectively have no battery production facility in place to qualify the newly produced cars to meet the forty five percent requirement. (Because the battery in an electric car is a huge part of the cars engine, it compromises a much greater percentage of the cars total production cost than in petrol/diesel vehicles, so not producing them within the UK, but rather importing them from outside, brings the amount of the car produced within the UK below the required forty five percent.)

And this disadvantageous set of circumstances has led these three car giants to say that they don't think they will be able to continue to produce cars in the UK unless we can get the situation sorted out.

In fairness, the German car producers are for their part lobbying the EU to extend the deadline from the end of 2024 to the end of 2027, to buy the industry some time - they don't suddenly want to see a ten percent levy slapped on their car imports into the UK either - but the EU does not at this point seem inclined to grant any extension (though that may change - the German car industry does have some clout in the block after all). But either way, it's a problem that cannot be kicked into the long grass indefinitely, and sooner or later it must be sorted out.

Now if these car producers were to quit the UK it would be a huge blow in terms of job losses and overseas trade, and Kier Stamer knows it. Which is why it has at last emboldened him to say what, had he been a more honest individual he would have said long ago, that the Johnson withdrawal agreement should be renegotiated to turn it into the oven-ready product he (Johnson) claimed it was, instead of the turkey that it actually is. Stamer as always in this, has his eye fixed firmly on public opinion, and he is only emboldened to come out and say this now because it appears that to do so might be a vote winner, instead of the toxic vote looser that it has been in the past. No trouble with that - that's what politicians do - but let's not pretend there's any honesty in it. Stamer was a remainer back in the day; he remains one. He's just covered it up under the cover of political expediency until now, when it no longer serves his purpose to do so. Again, no problem with that. In fact if in his search for the path to power he hits, by chance, on something that would actually be good for the country then okay, I'll buy it even in the knowledge of his underlying mendacity.

And Sunak, stuck as he is in the battle against the right of his party can do little to counter it. A renegotiation (if the EU will wear it) is necessary, and Sunak knows it as well as Stamer, but he would not dare suggest it. The Rees-Mogg's and Braverman's of the Tory Party would tear him to pieces. So (metaphorical finger lick and swipe at the air board in front of him), one up to Stamer. This could be a significant turning point, if Stamer is really ready to grasp the scorpion of sorting out the Brexit mess - but I won't hold my breath on it!

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

Just wanted to make an observation about yesterday's announcement of mea culpa by the water industry bosses, and their promise to belatedly put the necessary billions of pounds into the sewage disposal infrastructure to make the systematic dumping of raw sewage into our rivers and coastal waters that they have been engaged in unnecessary.

Too little too late you bastards.

You've scraped the industry for profits for your dividend payouts and left nothing for reinvestment into the system, and now you have the temerity to come hand-wringing with apologies saying that you'll fix up the mess you have created - as long as we the public, from whom you stole our water infrastructure in the first place, and then subsequently the profits generated therefrom, are prepared to pay the cost of it.

And the only reason you are saying this now is that you know that public opinion is shifting rapidly back towards the idea of renatiolisation and it scares the shit out of you (to use an appropriate phrase).

Well as I say, too little too late. Fuck off!
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James O'brien had a thing he called Widdecombe's Law, saying that every time you found yourself unsure about what stance to take on a given political issue, simply find out what exTory MP Anne Widdecombe's position was and take the diametrically opposite one.

Fairly sound advice in my book and her intervention in last couple of days on the cost living crisis does nothing to undermine the thesis.

Widdecombe, in her usual insensitive and ill-judged fashion, said when questioned about how struggling families should deal with the ever rising costs of feeding their families, that if they couldn't afford cheese sandwiches, then the answer was simple - don't eat them.

This of course absolutely misses the point. People who are struggling to feed their families are not buying expensive foods that they can simply cut back on; they are already buying the 'value' brands at the bottom end of the price range. (Which is incidentally why the suggestion that struggling mothers should simply buy these ranges as has been made by a couple of Tory MPs before, so insulting. Do they not think that people are aware of these value brands and they are purchasing them already? These people clearly understand nothing about what it is to struggle to feed a family on a minimal income.) The decision such families face is not what foods to buy, but whether they should buy food at all. Because the few quid they have in their hands can either pay for food - the value brands - or rent. Not both. In the words of the program, you decide! Widdecombe in her stupidity would not understand this in a month of Sundays. It seems that her much vaunted Christianity, in James O'brien's words, does not stretch that far.

But both Widdecombe and O'brien, the latter in his dissection of Widdecombe's comments which were made on someone else's show a day or two before, seemed to fail to grasp what the true discussion should have been about. The real point of note that should have been the subject of their commentary, was, how is it, following twelve years of administration by the party that Widdecombe sat as an MP in the House for, that such a mundane item as a cheese sandwich should fall into the category of a luxury food that discussion has to be had as to whether we should be buying them or not. How has this inexplicable situation come about. Does it not of itself, speak reams about the stewardship we have been under? Surely it is a telling indictment in terms of the Conservative record?

O'brien had in his introduction on the subject, given Rishi Sunak something of a get out of jail card. You could understand, he said, someone of Sunak's wealth being "out of touch" with the circumstances that ordinary people face. Widdecombe's words he said, could only be taken as a reflection of her inner meaness of spirit, her complacency in the suffering of others less well heeled than herself. On the latter okay, but I don't buy the out of touch thing for Sunak. He's the Prime Minister. It's his job to be in touch. On the basis of this argument only individuals from the meanest of circumstances in our societies could be expected to have an understanding of the straits that poverty places families and individuals in, and empathise therewith. This is nonsense. The job of a PM is to understand the dilemmas faced by all levels within the society and to tailor his policies accordingly. Because I'm not homeless doesn't mean I can't conceive of the horrors that situation would bring and could be excused for not being exercised by it. The same applies for Sunak, 600 million in the bank or otherwise.

That's my thinking anyway.
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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In a concerted effort to paint a different picture on Britain's current economic straits, Chancellor Hunt is out today in the Telegraph railing against those who would "talk down the economic prospects" of the country and turn their bleak predictions into a "self fulfilling prophecy".

Ahhh. I see. So those forecasts by organisations like the IMF and OBR that place us bottom of the G20 in terms of predicted growth, those figures showing inward investment tanking and trade with our closest neighbour plummeting, those are all wrong? In fact there's nothing wrong with the economic prospects of the country, Brexit is a cup brimming over with opportunity for the UK (Hunt also rails against those who think it's a failure - like its instigator Nigel Farage) and it's only the Cassandra's that risk making all these bad things happen.

And this from a man who virtually begged us not to do something so unuterably foolish, so fraught with risk of long-term damage and self-harm, as leaving the EU. Now it's a golden opportunity, a jewl sat amongst the flower display that is the rest of our economy.

Jeremy, we all understand that Chancellor's have to be optimistic. It goes with the territory that the architect of a country's future prospects must perforce talk his plans and the results they will achieve up. But there is a limit to how far this can be stretched. Watch my mouth. Things are not looking good. All the cherry picking and sugar coating in the world cannot cover up the stench of the carcass that is the UK economy. To speak otherwise is like dressing Joan Collins up in the morning, doing her make-up and then presenting her as a fresh debutante at the summer ball. It's fooling no-one and it's making yourself look silly. Yes we know that half of your own party are threatening to jump ship, that it is at them that your comments are directed, but come on! Or at least, if you genuinely believe that nonsense, if you really suddenly believe Brexit is absolutely and totally the golden goose you say it is, then give me some of the tablets you are on, because hell, I could do with some!

Similarly, the Mail and the Express have been roped in to give the government a philip, by shouting from the rafters that energy prices are at last falling - at the start of the summer when no-one needs to heat their home anymore. And it doesn't matter anyway, because the damage is already done. Inflation hasn't stopped, it's just slowed down. Those people who were screwed at the start of all this remain screwed, just a bit more slowly. Thousands of families have been tipped into the poverty bracket, or into a place where their incomes no longer meet the needs of their outgoings, and Inflation slowing down a bit isn't going to bring them back to where they were. The 'just about managing's' are now turned into the 'no longer managing's', and slowing Inflation ain't gonna change that.

This is all a backlash against the movements around the government, from both the opposition left and the right of their own party, to attack them on their economic performance. Behind the scenes of these headlines, in particular within the Tory ranks, a battle is raging. Sunak is fighting for his pole position, severely damaged in the local council elections, and it's starting to get messy.

As the man said, there will be blood!

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

Couldn't not comment today on the story of the ninety-four year old woman who was tasered in an Australian care home, because she approached two policemen (slowly on her zimmer frame) holding a knife.

She was hit twice by the stunning shocks, once in the chest and once in the head, falling down and fracturing her skull. She is not expected to survive her injuries.

Two police officers were at the scene and will now be subject to an investigation into whether their use of the devices was appropriate and proportionate to the threat they faced.

One can only imagine how frightening it must have been to be charged upon (slowly, as the reporting officer told the gathered press) by this knife wielding maniac. It's entirely understandable that they would immediately resort to their defensive weaponary, I mean, who wouldn't? One can completely get it that the two burly officers would be unable to outflank her, in some way avoid this terrifying onslaught and manage between them (with say a broom or something that one of them could have nipped down to the closest to avail himself of), and instead would need to issue life threatening injuries in protection of their own safety and well-being.

I would imagine that this exercise will be recorded and will serve as useful training material for the up and coming generations of Australian police service workers who might in the future find themselves facing such a savage threat.
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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I could be talking today about the Home Secretary Suella Braverman's clumsy attempt to cover up her having been nicked for speeding whilst Atorney General last year, or the almost inevitable resignation of the Schofield half of the plastic duo that front the ITV morning magazine slot, Good Morning Britain (at least I think that's what it is called), but instead I've decided to tell you a story.

I was a keen horse rider in my youth, and was fortunate enough to both live in a part of the country where there was some really wild open countryside for riding, and to have a father who shared my enjoyment of the activity. We kept a stable with a couple of good quality horses and could often be found on a Sunday afternoon, riding around the cliffs and sand-dunes of North Cornwall.

Ours was not an easy relationship, nor our riding out a clipped, well presented affair. Our horses were flighty and unpredictable, our appearance somewhat rough and perhaps not a little unsettling to the local inhabitants who we sometimes passed in the lanes on our way toward the cliffs. Without putting too romantic a spin on the business, it would be fair to say that our presentation was more Doone than dandy, more Heathcliffe than hunting.

One dark and brooding Sunday, when the dunes were particularly heavy in their outlook, all rough sharp grasses and greys and greens, we crested a rise in the slopes and found ourselves at the top of a broad bowl which sloped away in front of us, to rise up again some what, fifty, a hundred yards away, to crest against the grey sky of the day. In the distance, on the opposite slope, a creature (for I can come no closer to its identification), all brown and tawny, somewhat matching in with the sand and grasses it was racing across, sped away from us and quickly disappeared around the edges of the hillocky terrain of the dune. It was but a moment in the passing, but we both saw it, and confirmed to each other that, while we could say with confidence that it was animal and animate (as opposed to say a bag or some such, blowing across the terrain) neither of us could go much further than this.

This is somewhat surprising. My father was a country veterinarian of the (very) old school. A tough and grounded individual who knew animals both wild and domestic and had an intimate familiarity with the countryside where we rode. For him not to immediately be able to identify any species of animal or bird he encountered was a rare event, and the relatively limited number of possibilities given the setting of our sighting made this occasion all the more unusual. The animal was brown - that much we agreed on - and unusually fast. I remember it only as a flash against the backdrop of sand, but have an odd impression of rather gangling spindly legs moving with almost supernatural speed and irregularity of motion. No cantering or galloping motion you could fix upon, but rather a higgledy pigeldy confusion of flashes of movement that seemed to have no particular direction about them, but served nevertheless to propell their owner at great speed across the sandy surface.

Now there is one possibility as to the identification of this odd creature. The rare and seldom spotted fallow deer is known to slip unobtrusively around such terrain and is notoriously difficult to spot even under the best of circumstances. This has to be the go-to candidate for our strange beast, but, but, but......

I don't know, but I'm just not convinced that my father would not have been able to identify it. What he didn't know about the local fauna was not worth knowing, and the thing moved in such an odd manner? It was really strange. Certainly the slippy and sloping surface of the dunes do not make for smooth steady motion at the best of times, let alone at great speed, so perhaps this accounts for it. Either way, time passed, the years rolled on and the event slipped into the recesses of my mind and would probably have remained lost to history and forgetfulness had it not been for the following.

I was reading an account, many years later of the country vicar, the reverend Robert Steven Hawker, who for many years was the parson at Morwenstow Parish Church, a particularly remote and barren stretch of clifftop on the North Cornwall coast. If I recall correctly, the book was called The Wreckat Sharpnose Point, and detailed Hawker's involvement in the terrible loss of life that occurred when a ship, the Caledonia foundered on the rocks below the church demesne. In that account, there is an interlude where the author turns to Hawker's diary on a day that he was making a visit to a neighbouring parish, and had decided to walk via the clifftop route, to his destination. He describes an incident on the walk where his attention is caught briefly by a flash of movement against the scrub of the clifftop foliage, and describes a strange brown creature that he was unable to identify and had disappeared before he was able to form any clear picture of what it could be.

Okay, coincidence and probably doesn't mean anything - but it makes for a nice tale anyway, I think. Have a good Sunday.
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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What Do You Think Today?

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Okay, back to the political bollox following yesterday's interlude into the realms of the gothic.

Suella Braverman has once again put the PM in a tight spot, this time because it appears that while she was attorney general last year, she was caught speeding, but rather than accept either the fine plus points on her license or attend a short class on speed awareness (the normal choice that speeders face) she attempted to get a private class arranged in which she would not be required to attend with other members of the public. She did this via canvasing two civil servants and then her parliamentary secretary to see if they could make the necessary arrangements.

The question Sunak faces is, was he aware of this quite likely transgression of the ministerial code (the use of civil servants to attempt to circumvent due process) when he, already controversially, reappointed her as Home Secretary six days after she had been forced to resign during the short lived Truss administration.

From Braverman's point of view, this revelation is embarrassing, but not a game changer. She can brave this one out by saying that it was pragmatic, given the time constraints and importance of the job she was undertaking, for time and resources not to be wasted on her attendance of a class in the normal manner (which would have required security, advance planning and all manner of other problems with her diary), but for Sunak it could be quite damaging. His judgement is already under scrutiny on multiple fronts and this additional situation can only add to his woes.

And the question remains as to why now? Why a year down the line is this suddenly of significance in the media?

The story was sprung initially in the Sunday Times (quick fact check and preliminary test post).......edit, looks like the Sunday Mail and possibly the Observer had it as well..... so certainly the Murdoch handprint is on it. The question is was it released/leaked by team Kieth (the name Stamer is being known by for some reason, with a derogatory edge to it) in order to undermine Braverman because of her hardline immigration policy which is ruffling a few feathers (not least Sunak himself, because she is using it as a stick to beat him with in cabinet meetings) or are their deeper plots afoot?

Remember, Braverman last week gave a speech to the Nat C movement (geddit?), the National Conservative conference in which she said that the leadership had "to get a grip on immigration" - a veiled swipe at Sunak and undoubtedly her beginning pitch for the leadership battle for which key players are lining up already, despite the fact that the PM is still firmly in situ. Was this conceivably even a story put out under the instruction of Number 10, in order to give Braverman a wobble and pull her into line? Perhaps not, given the spotlight it shines on the Sunak judgement issue, but this conceivably might have been considered a price worth paying.

Irrespective of the source of the story, the timing of its hitting the front pages is no accident. It seems to inflict damage on both Braverman and Sunak, so from this perspective it would seem likely that it comes out on request from sources outside the inner circle of government, but the Labour Party? Possible, I suppose. Possible even that those who want to see Johnson back in the driving seat (yes - they are still out there) or even the Truss camp are behind it. It's beyond doubt now that much of what is appearing in the press is directed towards unseating Sunak - they never wanted him in the first place and now that he's confirmed himself as a weak brexiteer, lefty conservative, high tax PM they want him even less. But forces other than just the media barron's are at work here - it's just difficult to pin down exactly who they are. I'm ruling a simple bash at Braverman by the Sunak team out I think - he'd struggle to get the united press frontal coverage that this has received together I'm thinking, even while he might relish any discomfort the story causes Braverman. He wasn't exactly forthcoming in his support of her when questioned in Hiroshima on the subject and today will be taking advice from his ethics advisor on the matter on his return to Number 10.

No, I think the movers and shakers behind this are deeper. Team Keith? Possible but unlikely. I'm going with the anti Sunak zeitgeist of the media autocracy, fuelled by forces deep inside the Tory Party that want Sunak out (and have no problems with sacrificing Braverman to achieve this).

Let's see how it plays out. Thing is, if Braverman does fall, will she be even more dangerous and damaging to Sunak from without the government? She has a platform now, inside the government or out, and the indications are that having now come out with a pitch for the leadership, she isn't going to step away from it any time soon. No quiet relegation to the backbenches for her. Either she's in the government, just about, but barely pretending to be on Sunak's team, or she's outside doing a Geoffrey Howe (ie delivering a killing blow to him as the aforementioned Howe did to Thatcher, and indeed Javid did to Johnson).

Either way, the Tories are up to their old tricks again. Oh yes, oh yes!

:)
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.'
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Mmmmm.......

I think that the big news story this morning is the one getting least coverage, chiefly because none (or very few) of us really understand what it is about.

And let's be clear, I'm absolutely including myself in that group because, like the bulk of people who pick up their phones and tablets a million times a day, I don't have the faintest idea about what the tech companies get (aside from the money I spring for my connection) from all of the stuff they seem to give me for free every time I log on and begin to surf.

It's all there at the touch of the screen, a swipe of my finger and bam, I'm on Wikipedia, I'm reading the front pages, hell - I'm even grubbing around here pretending that I have something useful to say.

But let's return to the story,.

It surrounds the news that Facebook parent company Meta has been fined 1.2 billion euros, the largest fine ever dished out to a tech company (the largest fine ever point blank?) for illegally (it would seem) transferring data from its millions of European users across to the states where, presumably, it is number crunched into predictive models on how people behave, make decisions, vote and innumerable other commercially and societally useful information.

I'm not even sure to be honest what is the illegal bit. The transferring of data per say, specifically personal data, or the use that data is put to on arrival back in the technology company data banks,

I think that this is all to do with what is known as surveillance capitalism. This business of building ever better predictive tools from data scraped off the surface of billions and billions of 'hits', 'likes' and comments. It's the stuff that enables the algorithms to tailor the content that reaches your device specifically to you, and can be used to predict your behaviour, and subsequently direct it via clever and subtle manipulation of the content you receive, and sell this dangerous capability to the highest bidder for the service. It's the stuff that wins elections, makes people support, or oppose, a war, makes us believe that we are autonomous self-determining organisms when in truth it has been long, long, long, since that has genuinely been the case.

Ever since Edward Bernhays, or whatever his name was, developed his mass advertising techniques- techniques of subtle implanting of images and use of social mores - to get women smoking/Americans buying cars/people supporting Kennedy, or whatever, the search has been on for ever better means of mass behavioural nudging and manipulation, and with the massive data availability and analysis capability of the Internet and modern computers, at last it seems, the sky is the limit. Each and every one of us can be lured into addiction to our tech prosthetics (for that's no less than what they are - a technical extension of our brains, our minds, in the same way that a fork or spoon is a technical prosthetic of your hand) and then manipulated at an individual level, by content specifically tailored to our particular brains.

And if that doesn't frighten you it should. Now that is power. Absolute and true. And in the wrong hands, in the hands of small groups or individuals who do not have the general good at heart, the consequences are unthinkable. But this no less, is what is happening, and with our saucer-eyed and zombie-like focus on our devices, with every mindless acceptance of cookies, with every like and thumbs up and smiley face, we buy into it, accept it and step willingly into the place where we surrender our autonomy willingly and happily, in return for the serotonin hit of the next like.

So I suppose that this is what this story is about. Some kind of State fightback against the tech companies that threaten their (the States) hegemony on control. If anyone is going to manipulate the masses, it says, it is going to be us! They're our masses, not yours! Go scrape data from your own!

And to be sure Meta do not like it. Whining Nick Clegg, the Mr Nice of UK politics who has morphed, slowly over the years and no doubt contaminated by his stint in contact with Tory government, into a Dr Evil like front-man for Meta, is complaining that the fine is a gross injustice, since every other tech company in the book is doing exactly the same and getting away with it. And he has a point. Mark Zuckerberg, vis his Meta mouthpiece, has thrown his toys out of the pram, and said that if this is how things are going to be, then Meta will quit Europe! This would be a big deal......a really big deal.....were it going to happen. But if I understand anything, it's that these tech companies have achieved their meteoric rise to world dominance - and it is meteoric, thirty years ago they didn't exist - by absolutely and always being ahead of the game when it comes to dealing with state legislation. By the time the state gets around to curbing a particular activity that would seem to clip the tech companies wings, it's redundant anyway. Because they are moving so fast, with new developments that the new legislations simply are not geared, worded, to encompass. This is the operational model. Soak up the fine, but be three fences ahead on the next front of attack. And when you've got a company worth 650 billion dollars, hey, a billion dollar fine is a sting, but hardly life-threatening, and you are so far way ahead on the next project anyway that really, it's no more than a minor inconvenience.

So, even though none of the papers are actually going into it (hey - there's a Madelaine McCann story out there to be covered you know!), I think this is essentially what this story is about. Control. Of us. Either by our States, or by these multinational tech giants that are trying to wrest control away from States and into their own hands to deliver us their own version of the Blade Runner story, in which business calls the shots at a world governing level.

Well that's my take anyway.

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

Quick additional comment (different subject).

The country is falling faster than a stone tossed over the White Cliffs of Dover, the NHS is crumbling as we speak, families are destitute in a cost of living crisis unparalleled in the last fifty years, Europe is on the verge of total war once again......

And the most important thing our media can find to concentrate on is a speeding ticket dished out to the Home Secretary!

Give me a fucking break!

:roll:
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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