What Do You Think Today?

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History will judge who has the right of this, and I have no fear on that score.

All law grows from the barrel of a gun

The real and perhaps deeper danger here is that things like this push the "global south" toward regimes like China and Russia.

The fact that these powers were not colonial (as Africa sees it) does a lot to hide the fact that they are not democratic or unexploitative.

Not to mention that "democracy" is a fairly new and difficult ideology for Africa itself, which still has an unfortunate (if understandable) tendency toward the authoritarian etc.

--A

[peter]

On the first Av, how indeed could it be otherwise? The Brics developments are already paving the way for a shifting focus of economic concentration, away from the unipolar one led by America and into a more multipolar state; it is almost inevitable that the legal/military concentrations of powers will shift as well, and in truth much of what we are seeing is being driven by just that desire of the USA to protect its hegemony as 'leader of the free world'. Particularly in the Middle East of course, the added need to be in the driving seat when it comes to the sourcing and distribution of oil is always going to be in there as well. All this notwithstanding, the UN remains (for all its myriad faults) out best hope on a global level, of getting through this without witnessing a descend into fascism (or something akin to it, albeit hidden behind a cloak of cod-morality/superiority) or an end in total war and conflagration. Our stepping away from it represents a major breach of our commitment to the rule of law as paramount, and a major step backwards for the world. It also puts us at odds with the bulk of the world, where (would you believe) it is the Houthis who are stepping up to the plate in support of this, the primary commitment of all civilised nations, and we are the ones denying it. (Does it not seem incredible that I can write these words, and for them to be even conceivable, let alone true? Let's be clear. The Houthis are the ones standing up against a possible genocide, or at the least a flagrant breach of international humanitarian law. We on the other hand are collaborative in the crime by our refusal to condemn it, by our supply of the means by which it is prosecuted, and by our active denial of the means by which the victims suffering may be alleviated.)

As to the second point, again isn't this inevitable? Simple geography puts China and Russia at a distance from the countries that suffered worst under colonialism and the naval nature of the powers that did indulge in it cannot be ignoredas a factorin this. But it is always going to be the master that kicked the dog that the latter will shy away from, while the other, newly emerged one (quite possibly equally bad), will be given the benefit of the doubt. Badly put I know, but as you say, we bear the stain of the colonialism under which Africa and elsewhere suffered, while others do not.

As to the idea of democracy - there's that old adage about it being the best of a bad lot and little more, when it comes to political systems and boy is that beginning to look more true by the day. We in the UK have never embraced democracy in any full sense of the word; it was accepted only ever grudgingly and in our own peculiar form and now is effectively nonexistent (in terms of any pretence that our political system is designed for the betterment of the mass of the people).

But our so called (and much vaunted) position as "the upholders" of this questionable notion is demonstrated to be ever more a sham by the day. Take the war in Ukraine as a simple case in point. Did you know that elections have been stopped in Ukraine? Political opposition has been all but wipied out, quashed underfoot by a wave of nationalistic fervour, led by administration propoganda, that sees any opposition to the current strategy (and the current administration by extension) as treacherous, and bordering on traitorous. So our very stated reason for being involved in this pointless waste of human life is no longer even credible. To protect the 'fledgling democracy' of the brave little Ukraine against the despotic Russian monster. It's bullshit. There is no fledgling democracy; it's the same old corrupt and borderline kleptocracy that it has been since the fall of the USSR. It's just that it sits on the border of the Russia which we hate and so we want it. We're determined that our missiles will sit right under Putin's nose like a great big "Fuck off!" from Nato. We don't give a shit about democracy in Ukraine, or anywhere else come to that. It's all about what serves our interests. And that translates upwards into what serves the interests of the tiny slices of our societies that skim off the cream from all of our endeavours. The liberal establishment has the 'best little earner' in town, right across the West and in its dominance of the rest of the world, and its damned if its going to see this dissappear or be disrupted in any way. And if it means global war to preserve it..... well - there's always the money printing opportunities of investment in the military-industrial complex isn't there?

[peter]

Let's spare a thought this morning for King Charles, who it was revealed yesterday is receiving treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer, discovered apparently when he recently went into hospital for an operation on a benign prostatic enlargement.

It'd be a cruel twist of fate if having waited so long to come into his birthright, it were suddenly snatched away from him via incapacitation (or worse) and inability to perform his role as monarch. He is well supported by his son, the Prince of Wales, who also provides continuity in terms of the succession should the worst transpire, but this is perhaps beside the point.

It is in my mind that it as a man, as a fellow human being, we must give him our prayers. His has not been an easy lot (despite what many would think) and if he has seemed churlish and removed at times, then it is hardly to be wondered at. Despite being endowed with position and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, he has not been a free individual, at liberty to pursue the life he might have chosen. He has been constrained since day one of his life by the demands of his position. It denied him the freedom of choice in his life-partner, in action and expression, in development of his own characteristic nature, and bound him into a straight jacket of convention that he could rarely step away from. Birth, marriage, production of issue, and death were the only things upon which his life could be judged.

And I don't know, but there is a sadness in his eye that is to me palpable. The sadness of a man that has never learned to be happy in his role. A life lived in the wings, and a prize obtained when the sweetness of its fruit had become withered, embittered by having been kept too long in the waiting. And a man that could have been just normal in his mediocrity, hade fate been kinder in the placement of his birth. His was not the condescending aristocracy of his German father, the cold aloofness of his 'born to rule' mother. One senses in him a sensitivity ill-placed for one of his lineage. Ill equipped for his role (and judged so by his parents with barely hidden cruelty) he sought support in the arms of a strong woman he loved, and yet was denied even that. Forced into a marriage of misalignment with a woman, equally unprepared for the task that she had undertaken, the inevitable disaster ensued, the fruits of which the whole family reaps to this day.

So whatever you think of the monarchy, forget that today and recognise that underneath the whole charade there are people, vulnerable and weak, that carry the consequences of that monstrous institution. King Charles carries the weight of a cruel fate across his shoulders, stamped on his face, and we should all wish him the best upon the understanding, if for no better reason, that there but for the grace of God, go I.

[peter]

All of which being said, the UK media never had it so good!

Wall-to-wall coverage of the King's cancer diagnosis, Prince Harry in Transatlantic dash to be by the side of his father (DailyMail), the King on his "usual good form in every way" (Telegraph) as he emerges relaxed and smiling alongside his "beloved Queen Camilla".

Yesterday you could not turn on a news bulletin but for ever more coverage of the story, some going to ridiculous length to fill up the time with nonsensical speculation and drivel. One segment I saw on Sky had the presenter asking an expert whether NHS delays in service provision would be effecting the King's treatment. "Well, the delay times vary across the country...." answered the interviewee, and I looked hard to see if this was meant to be a piss take - a sarcastic little jibe at the fact that no time will be lost in getting the King his necessary treatment, not as it would be if it were you or I that was in need of the same. But apparently not. This rubbish was for real.

But at least I suppose it takes the heat of any necessity to have to concentrate on the real stories - like the ever rising death toll in Gaza, like our illegal attacks on the Yemeni mainland that render us an international parish state, or our ongoing attempts to support the Israeli regime in its goal of clearing the Gaza strip of Palestinians. "UK supports genocide in Gaza and rubbishes ICJ judgement on Israel." No - not sure that's as easy to pull off with the British public as "Harry in mad dash across the Atlantic to fathers bedside."

No doubt they wish the King a speedy recovery as we all do, but hey, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and you should never let a good crisis go to waste......

Pondlife is all I can say. Pondlife!



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People in Bristol have been queuing for 48 hours in their hundreds, in order to register with a new NHS dentist that is setting up in the city. On Monday the police had to be called in order to control the crowd which were threatening to engulf the reception area of the new practice. Some people interviewed said that their children had not seen a dentist since before the pandemic. Children as young as 5 are reported as having rotten teeth, such is the declining state of dental health in the country, and the government is even planning to increase fluoride levels in the potable water system in order to attempt to reverse this trend.

I, on the other hand, have an alternative suggestion. Set up some fucking NHS dental clinics! How hard can it be. Make all UK newly qualified dental surgeons provide five years of service to such clinics in return for the investment the country has made in their training, and provide a basic checkup, filling and extraction service to all registered NHS eligible citizens of the UK. Any fancy additional services can be provided by the private sector dentists, but the basic care as required by the NHS service contract can be covered by these clinics. Easy. In fact too easy. No money for the establishment of huge corporate profits in this, you hear them say. So no chance buddy. Either stump up your hard earned or when you need a tooth seeing to, reach for the pliers in the tool-box.

Two hours with a raging toothache would have had any conservative clown in the country screaming for Jeremy Corbyn to have gotten into Downing Street and that's a fact! Perhaps then we'd have had more than four NHS dental practices covering the entire South West of England for a start!

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Interesting to read that Tucker Carlson is to interview Vlad (the Bad) Putin in Moscow very shortly.

I've heard of Carlson, but don't know shit about him. I'm thinking he is pretty right wing and is a Trump supporter (and also vaguely remember hearing that he'd been sacked from somewhere - Fox News was it? - but aside from that, nothing really. But that's not the point. I want to hear it from Putin's mouth what he has to say. My bet is that he'll endorse a Trump vote in the forthcoming election, and say that the orange man is the best hope for ending the carnage in Ukraine. He'll also deny the Nato rhetoric that he's interested in sweeping through Eastern Europe in a wave of military conquest. He'll say outright that it's nonsense - and he'll be telling the truth.

None of which will make the slightest difference to the establishment media output, that he's a warmongering vandal who is only interested in extending Russian power and re-establishing the Soviet empire in Europe.

And on Trump, I see that it's been decided that his claim to presidential immunity in respect of the Capital Hill riots will not stand. I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it here. The US establishment is not going to stand back and allow another Trump presidency to happen. They'll see him in jail before that happens, if this is necessary. They slipped briefly before when they let him get in last time, and it ain't happening again. Like Corbyn in the UK, Trump is an outsider who (despite his wealth) threatens the established liberal order. He's a wild card that resonates with the people rather than the entrenched order, and God forbid that the people should actually get true representation in the corridors of power. It hasn't taken the establishment the best part of 100 years of the post-war period to get to where it wants to be (with it's hands on the levers of power, its fingers in the public purse and the people in the palm of its hand) just to have some schlob like Trump come along and shit in the punchbowl!

No, Trump may or may not be sent down - but allowed to win the next election he will definitely not be. (I mean, peace in Europe! Jesus, what's the man thinking of!)

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Set up some fucking NHS dental clinics! How hard can it be. Make all UK newly qualified dental surgeons provide five years of service to such clinics in return for the investment the country has made in their training, and provide a basic checkup, filling and extraction service to all registered NHS eligible citizens of the UK. Any fancy additional services can be provided by the private sector dentists, but the basic care as required by the NHS service contract can be covered by these clinics.

So we actually do something similar to this with doctors...since government pays practically nothing, and private practice is fairly lucrative, all newly qualifying doctors are required to do 1 year (I think) of "community service" in which they are posted to some government hospital or rural clinic or similar before they are "qualified" to enter private practice.

--A

[peter]

It's not rocket science is it Av; instead we've had news reports of some doomed to failure idea about giving any dentists who will set up practice in an NHS starved area (why are they even saying that - the whole country is an NHS dentist starved area) 20 grand for doing so. As if this is going to make a difference - twenty grand wouldn't cover the first month's costs!

The truth is that the Conservative government has had fourteen years to fix this developing crisis and has not lifted a finger to do so. And why would it? It's absolutely anathema to them that there should be a public health service at all, so at what point are they going to start worrying about the teeth of working class people (that is until it threatens to become an election issue).

What they're saying now is just paying lip-service to the issue, not least because they know that they will never have to actually deal with it. It'll be left for Labour to deal with in the next parliament.

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Some clown from Imperial College has been at it again. (Telegraph)

This time the clever clogs government supporting establishment has managed to dredge up some boffin (or is that buffoon) who reckons that, "Importing migrant labour won't sort out the country. What you need is to get all of those sick people in receipt of benefits off their arses and back into work."

Music to the Tory ears!

Good old Imperial College! They can always be relied upon to come up with the man for the job! Fergusson was a stalwart back in the pandemic and now it's this (let's just check....Oh yes, here it is) Professor David Miles - also an executive member of the Office for Budget Responsibility (for which he no doubt gets a nice little supplementary income) - who is saying what the public need to be told (which coincidentally happens to suit exactly the Conservative message prior to an election as well). Nowt like beating the sick back to work in order to get the old-guard tory voters back on side! Lazy buggers. The sick! Work-shy scroungers more like! And as for immigrants! Don't get me started........!

What else have we got......

Stamer's abandoned his 28 billion pounds net-zero pledge - yes,we know that already - and Prince Harry has flown back to the USA having spent half an hour in the presence of his father and another half hour in the VIP lounge at Heathrow (long enough in this country for one year I'd think), and while yesterday his visit was being portrayed as the flight of the distraught son to his father's side, today it's back to business as usual. Top Son! screams the Sun, comparing William who was ''back at work" (at a charity fundraiser and pictured alongside Tom Cruise, hence the headline) and Harry, who was "jetting back of to the States." The Mail even suggests that Harry's visit was entirely unagreed with the Palace (and more as a PR exercise for his own benefit than to actually visit his father) and that the King was left "kicking his heels" for 10 hours, waiting for him to arrive.

Harry, it seems, is not to be forgiven by the press any time soon.

On a more sombre note (we'll - not to suggest that the King's situation is not serious, but in context) Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the negotiated terms of a Gaza ceasefire, apparently believing that "Victory is within reach" in the region.

What that victory might look like is anyone's guess, but I suspect that it doesn't include many Palestinians being able to remain in the Strip.

According to the Express, Rishi Sunak has "opened the door to an Amazing Boris Comeback" by not ruling out a return of the blonde buffoon to front line politics. Well - I suppose if David Cameron can manage it after all the damage he did to the country, anything is possible. But let's face it. This is just desperate vote scouring by the paper; hoping against hope that the suggestion that Boris might come back if the Tories are given just one more chance might pull them back a few votes. On that score, the realisation that the increasing polling of Richard Tice's Reform UK Party (running at 12 to 14 percent) at one end, and the defections to Labour and the Lib-dems at the other, is throttling the party from both sides, and threatening the spectre of an electoral armageddon for them, is beginning to hit home. Hemorrhaging votes to one or the other would be bad enough, but both simultaneously could seriously result in the endgame. The party could blow itself to pieces.

And lastly we've got to note Rishi Sunak's blunder in Prime Minister's Questions yesterday. Why he took it upon himself to make jokes at the expense of trans individuals when the mother of murdered trans teenager Brianna Ghey's mother was a guest in the public gallery is anyone's guess. But rest assured he will not be allowed to forget that one in a hurry. Kier Stamer's face said it all as he rose to adress the PM. He was genuinely shocked at the PM's words (something about his own wavering or U-turning of the issue) and you could see it written plainly there.

What was it? Political nievity, simple unthinking callousness? Whatever, it was a strange episode and one that the Prime Minister should be absolutely ashamed of. This lady and her husband have been through the worst mill that the grinder of human suffering could ever put them. To be present when the PM made his flippant remarks on the subject so close to their own tragedy can only have been a body blow to Brianna's mother. Shame on him, the petulant little rich kid, so blown up with his own entitled pomposity that he hasn't the grace to be humbled in the presence of tragedy in its worst manifestation.

And this excuse for a politician is our Prime Minister.

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Ouch, that's gotta hurt, but then I suppose the chances of a Tory government staying in power after the next elections is minimal, so he might not have anything to lose. But still, talk about "tone deaf."

--A

[peter]

Yeah Av, I've thought about this and it wasn't so much what he said as just that it was simply not the time for any levity on the subject whatsoever.

(Here's how it went; Sunak was engaging in the back and forth insult trading with Stamer that is customary in PM's Questions, and he made an observation on Stamer's propensity for U-turns. He followed up by saying it even went as far as his position on trans rights, but that in fairness this was only a 99 percent U-turn. This is a reference to Stamer once answering a question as to whether a woman had to have a vagina by saying that he was 99 percent sure that they did (or something to this effect).

This wasn't meant as deliberately offensive to the trans community so much as Stamer's inability to decide on a position and stick to it, but the point remains that with Briana Gyey's mother present, it was simply not appropriate to use the subject as a weapon in the horse trading of insults with the leader of the opposition.)

Yes, the Tories chances of reelection are so minimal (though Stamer is doing his best to increase them) that almost nothing can save them now. As I say, the carving away of votes from either side of the party, to Reform on the right and Labour and the Lib-dems on the left, is going to piss their majority up against the wall as if it never existed. So many of their seats are held by slim majority that any loss of seats would be devastating. To be under sustained attack from either side would be bad, but both simultaneously is game changing. Reform leader Richard Tice is not going to do what Farage did in 2019 and stand down candidates in marginal seats. Farage did so as not to split the Tory vote and allow Corbyn in by accident: he wanted Brexit done more than he wanted to win an election, and he saw Johnson's deal as the best way to achieve this, hence his generous gesture to the Tories in that election.

This time however it ain't happening. Tice (Farage's replacement as Reform UK leader, although the latter retains his presidency in a non executive sense, with an option to return as leader) has said that this time Reform candidates will stand in all seats, like it or not. Farage was at the Liz Truss led 'PopCon' meeting held a few days ago (a collection of 10 or so right wing Tory MPs who are dissatisfied with the Sunak approach to government and think it is destroying their electoral chances in the forthcoming election) and he said in interview following the event (at which he was present as an audience member, not a participant) that he wanted to see not a revived Tory party (it was too late for that) but a new replacement party altogether.

Now this may or may not be true. Farage is like a dog with two dicks at the moment. He can step into the leadership role in Reform if he wants to, and could certainly see the tories out of office, if not actually win a few seats in the North of the country and actually get into parliament as a small party sitting against a Labour led House. But with the wind blowing the way it is for Sunak, it's even conceivable that he could get what he has always really wanted - a seat in the Conservative Party from which he could launch a parliamentary career which could quite possibly see him finish up as leader of the same. He could always have expected an invitation to join the Party following the successful Leave campaign, but for whatever reason it wasn't forthcoming.Probably he was seen as too far-right and reactionary to risk having in the Party, irrespective of how much people within the parliamentary party might agree with him. Too vocal and prone to saying abrasive things. Also those at the top would know that he would never be happy with just a seat as an MP: he'd demand a position in government and from there would launch a leadership bid. Not good policy to give a potential rival a leg-up and Johnson et al knew it. Hence he was frozen out. But now, by virtue of the Tories disarray, he is back in with a shout, and undoubtedly this would be a quicker route (and safer) to power than via the attempt to build a new party from the ground up - and this with what he said at the PopCon meeting notwithstanding. As of the moment, he's playing his cards close to his chest. He's denying any interest in rejoining the Conservative Party at the moment, but then he has to really - he's the president of another party altogether and it's going to piss party leader Richard Tice off big time if he starts talking about rejoining the Tories. Reform are sitting on a vote share of twelve plus percent and a good proportion of that is because people still expect Farage to step in and lead them. If he were to jump ship into the Tories he'd take a good percentage of those Reform UK voters with him. Tice knows this and Farage will be doing all he can to convince him it isn't going to happen. But if the circumstances look more beneficial to Farage of doing so, be assured that it will.

[peter]

Ooof! That's got to hurt!

Joe Biden stands on a lectern to make a statement denying claims that he is loosing his mental faculties (I heard one commentator calling them his "mental facilities" ) - and then promptly displays that he is loosing his mental faculties by mixing up the names of the Egyptian and Mexican leaders (or something).

Not a good look.

What is clearly obvious to the onlooking world - that the US President has slipped seamlessly into his dotage and would now be better placed in a comfy-chair with a blanket over his knees than doing that silly walk/run thing on and off podiums at election rallies for the next 8 months (never mind being the actual president for the next four years) - seems to be lost on the American President himself, if not to anyone else in the room.

I'm not being funny, but isn't there some kind of provision for the situation of a president loosing his marbles while in office? I'm sure I remember that from one time before, when some suggestion of a potus going doolally was being mooted (was it Trump - I don't recall {not important though - I'm not the President of the United States of America}). Wouldn't now be a good time for, like, the men in white coats to quietly slip into the oval office and guide the old fellah away towards a push chair and a bowl of tapioca and milk-sops?

Mind you, not that the US doesn't have experience with this kind of thing.....

I seem to remember that Ronald Regan spent the last couple of years of his presidency in an advanced stage of alzheimers (should that be capitalised? It sounds like someone's name....what's the ruling on that?). It didn't seem to cause either him or the American public any problems. One wonders how much these American President's actually do that doesn't have a team of men holding their hands behind the scenes, making all the big calls etc. So maybe the President being a lip-hanging geriatric is not so much of a problem as it might seem.

But going into an election like that? Can the Democrats really pull this off and expect the public to buy it?

The single remaining Democrat nominee doesn't apparently think so. Dean Phillips told Fox News that Biden was all but handing the keys to the White House to Donald Trump by refusing to step aside and let a more capable candidate secure the nomination. In a news report on the BBC last night, several American citizens who were interviewed in the street said that the President's competency was a worry to them (and they meant Biden's, the more general reading is surely a given). It stands to reason that the individual putting themselves forward for the (reputedly) 'Leadership of the free world' should at least be able to remember how to put his trousers on.( "Shorts on the inside Mr President!)

Biden looks increasingly fazed and discombobulated as weeks go on and one suspects that senile decline is accelerating by the day. Such decline is often more rapid in its advancement as time progresses and it looks to me as though the Democrats are going to need to rethink things. Oddly enough it is Trump who has for once, shown possibly the kindness that others have failed to display. His immediate response on hearing the news when it broke a couple of days ago (following that Court announcement on Biden's faculties) was possibly meant more humanely than it was presented as being. He said, "The President is sick," and this is something that should recognised. If you put geriatrics into the most powerful positions in the world then this kind of thing is going to happen.

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I watched the BBC news report from Southern Gaza last night with mounting trepidation.

The report focused upon the city of Rafah, where upwards of 1.4 million people crowd into a space once occupied by a hundred or so thousand.

They live, crammed shoulder to shoulder, packed into banks of makeshift tents, with streams of untreated sewage pooling around them as they eek out a starvation existence under constant fear of bombing. A thin and ragged people, terrified for their lives.

And this is the place that Israel insists that it is going to unleash a full throttle military offensive against, as it plans the last scene denouement of its attempt to rid Gaza of Hamas.

Instructions have been handed out to the civilian occupants to up sticks and quit the area - where to they say not. Because there's nowhere left to go. North of the city, in the remaining part of Gaza, there is nothing left. 60 percent of the entire region lies in rubble. There is no water, no food, and no access to medical or aid facilities. Yet these people, herded by bombs and bullets, by leaflets and video postings of brutal destruction into the very region in which they now hudle, are now being told to flee for their lives or stay and be considered as collaborators of Hamas, and thereby fair game.

Will the world stand by and watch this happen? Will we just watch as a million plus defenceless people are bombed and shot out of existence? Given our leaders equanimity in the face of what has already been done in the name of Israel "defending itself", I really think it might.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council has said that no such offensive can be allowed to take place in what is essentially a "giant refugee camp" - it would result in a bloodbath he said - but there is no indication that Netanyahu is prepared to listen.

If Israel goes ahead and carries out its plans, under the watching eyes of the world, then I beg to suggest that it will be the end of them. They have been accorded license in their treatment of the Palestinian people over the decades, way above that which would have been allowed to any other country. Their tragic history in respect of the Holocaust has bought them this much licence, but it cannot go on indefinitely. The liberal West has treated the nascent State of Israel with kid gloves, indeed to the point of giving it 'associate membership' of the very West itself. But if it is to continue to enjoy this special status in the eyes of the wealthy North, it is going to have to start behaving in a manner that justifies such preferential treatment.

And this means stopping its appaling activities in Gaza right now.

[peter]

In what must be a first by any standards, it appears that the Tories have truly given up the ghost in terms of attempting to win the next election or even stage any true recovery between now and then.

A report in today's Observer (sister paper to the weekday Guardian) says that senior Conservative ministers and MPs are reporting that they haven't even been asked to visit the three seats that are up for grabs in by-elections in the next couple of weeks. These are by-elections in supposedly safe Tory seats, but where polling suggests that they may come unstuck. So one might expect them to pull out all the stops in order to try to avoid an embarrassing cluster of defeats just as people are deciding who to vote for in the general election.

I suppose it could work both ways; perhaps Sunak and team think that a series of defeats in safe seats might galvanise their voting base to come out for them in the big event, whenever that might be. They will play any losses between now and then as them being "sent a message" by their supporters, who will return to 'voting as normal' when general election day comes. And in fairness, this could be true.

But equally it could be that following 14 years of essentially disastrous performance, even the most dyed in the wool Conservatives are loosing patience, and these (predicted) defeats would be a sign of this. Perhaps indeed, Sunak and Co just really have run out of steam. All they want is to get the fuck out of Dodge and leave it to someone else to sort out.

But winning elections is supposed to be the remit of the party machine, not Downing Street, and this applies just as much to by-elections as to general. It's a bad look therefore, if even the central office of the Party has switched off the lights and gone home. It's (as poined out in the article by one unnamed ministerial commentator) really bad for morale just before a general election, and just makes it look as though the Party has given up all intentions of trying to win this year's election.

And perhaps they have. The country really is a running skip-fire, and perhaps they just believe that a period out of office will help them to 'reset' their agenda and focus on their priorities. Or perhaps the bigwigs that finance the party are flocking to the rising star of Stamer, and finances are tight? Either way, a period away from government will allow them to start seriously blaming Stamer for their clusterfuck, safe in the knowledge that the public has a notoriously short memory and can never see further than who is actually in power at the time when it comes to apportioning blame. The Labour Party will be to blame for everything from day one - no, make that minute one - of the time following their election win. The tories can stand a few years of opposition - they've done so before - and it's usually a good time for getting their act together if nothing else.

The question is, what will emerge this time? Will it be a regathering around the centre of British politics - the place where UK voters all seem to be concentrated and where the best successes are to be won - or will we see the Braverman/Badenock/Rees-Mogg wing of the Party gain control, and a new,essentially far-right Conservative Party, emerge? I'd expect the former, but in these really strange political times there really exists a possibility for a right-wing populism to emerge that if the Tories don't capitalise on, then someone else will. This will be the argument that will go on in Conservative central planning following a resounding defeat in a general election, and it should give us all cause to be concerned. We are not a radically extreme country by nature, but we've been bullied around for too long in ways that the public do not like. There are elements within the Conservative Party that will see this and seize upon it as a means to secure another bout of long-term power. And what the country would look like following 14 years of Kemi Badenock and Lee Anderson at the helm is anyone's guess.

[peter]

Here was an interesting thing I learned yesterday.

It relates to all of that talk surrounding conscription and our ability to meet our defence obligations to Nato (and in terms of domestic defence) which experts claim we are not close to being able to do.

Our army during the height of the cold war stood at around 700,000 men. Today it stands at around 75,000.

In a recent operation against a medium sized town in Ukraine, the Russians fielded an army of around 50,000 men.

So in blunt terms, our current army could just about be expected to take and hold a medium sized town with a bit to spare. It isn't really going to cut it in the world that our politicians seem hell-bent on thrusting us into, is it?

[peter]

Israel has rescued two hostages, but if accounts are to be believed, have in the process killed 67 Palestinian people as 'collateral damage'.

The Telegraph website reports that a number of buildings near the rescue site were hit by aerial bombardment shortly following confirmation that the two hostages had been located by elite commandos, who had entered the building in which they were being held. This was done, the report says, so as to provide a "distraction" which would allow the commandos and hostages to escape.

Well I suppose that would work, but some might argue that the killing of 67 people would be a high price to pay for the saving of two.

Much would depend on the status of the 67 killed I suppose. If they were Hamas combatants to a man then I couldn't shed too many tears for them, despite having understanding for the historical context underlying the reasons by which they justify their actions. Big boys games, big boys rules, as the saying used to go. But the liklihood is that the strikes would have been carried out irrespective of who the victims would be, and pending further information on this, the jury must remain out.

But no-one could listen to the horrifying story of the death of 6 year old Hind Rajab, following her terrified call to the Palestinian Red Crescent, in which she begged to be saved as she lay amongst the bodies of her dead parents and cousins, without realising that depths have been plumbed in this conflict that should never have been. That no-one, Palestinian or Israeli can emerge from this unpunished and not made less by what has transpired.

Now we wait to see what tomorrow will bring. Will the better late than never Western entreaties that Israel stay its hand have effect? Will our sudden volta face in the realisation that what we are facing here is the horror story that the next generations will look back on with disbelief, and that this time we could be on the wrong end of it, be enough to bring about a change of tactics on Israel's behalf?

As I say, better late than never. Some will say with perhaps more justification, too little, too late.

Sunak, Cameron, Biden and the rest of you - you don't get to shake off your complicity in what Israel has done that easily. The world was watching as you committed your crimes of complicity, of enabling. Without your support none of this could have been done. Your support of the Netanyahu regime following the October 7th attack, irrespective of the proportionately or otherwise of the response, gave the Israeli PM and the IDF carte blanche to do what they chose, and they took it. Your ongoing support in the face of the mounting horror, your refusal to join the rest of the world in demanding a ceasefire, your dispicable pulling of support for the single ray of relief that the embattled population of Gaza had - all of these things cannot be wiped away by a single call for Israeli restraint now, at this late stage in the game, where there is effectively nothing of Gaza left.

As they say. Too little, too late. Let's pray that the madman Netanyahu (for who but a madman could have stood at the front of this kind of business: this is not defence - this is butchery) calls off his blood-crazed soldiery and allows the relief so desperately, desperately needed, to flow into the region. Only by stopping now, can Israel hope to redeem itself in the eyes of the world, to begin the process of once again becoming the light in a dark place, instead of being the shadow that snuffs it out.

-----0-----

Each day when I do these posts, I want to be inspired by the day's news to have something new and interesting to comment upon.

It's not easy in the face of the news of today. In this morning's press we have the mother of poor murdered Briana Gyey calling for the introduction of means, technical or legislative, by which under 16s can be protected from some of the worst aspects of the internet. I'd agree wholeheartedly with that and go further. I don't believe anyone under 18 should be within a country mile of the Web, dark or otherwise. It should be like tobacco and drinking. A no-no.

Then Suella Braverman is telling the wildlife and countryside charities that they shouldn't make white people feel guilty for being white. Well thank you Suella, but I don't. This stems from some report produced by the combined bodies of the National Trust, RSPB, Wildlife Trust etc, that says the countryside is effectively a white mans territory where the Black and Asian communities are not encouraged to transgress. It's true - I'm a National Trust member and like it or not, youdon't see many non-white faces amongst the visitors. But I don't know if that's because the non white population of the country just doesn't have the historical connection to the countryside, enough to make it somewhere that they are minded to visit? People are bound to be more interested in their own historical background and I'm much more interested in the history of the English countryside than the history of the West Indies or Indian landscape. But hell, I'd never consider that a coloured face was 'out of place' in a Trust property or on an English camp site. Moreover when I go walking, I don't want to see any other face, coloured or otherwise, than Mrs P's or my own, reflected in the limpid pool of some erstwhile slave-estate owning bastard's home-turf pile, so on that score everyone can feel equally slighted and unwelcome.

Kier Stamer is making a tit of himself. He's got into a real mess over first of all endorsing support an alleged antisemitic Labour candidate in the Rochdale by-election (the guy said that it was possible that Israel had deliberately let the October 7th attack go ahead in order to give them an excuse to attack Gaza), then when even more anti Israeli comments made by the man were revealed to him, suddenly backtracking and withdrawing his support.

Clear why he had to do it, but it makes him look weak and vacillating which of course he is. He's desperately trying to follow the votes and making himself look a complete ***t in the process. Labour is now in the ridiculous situation of going into a by-election in a seat in which it holds a 9000 majority, without an endorsed candidate (because if this guy wins, Stamer will be forced to strip the whip from him - ie effectively chuck him out of the Labour Party - before he even enters Parliament.

Good one Kier! Is this kind of debacle what we can expect from you if you still manage to pull off a win at the general election? It was always said that Neil Kinnock managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory back in the eighties (?) and it's looking suspiciously like Kier Stamer might manage the same thing. He's hemorrhaging supporting the Muslim community by his refusal to condemn the atrocity of Gaza and call for a ceasefire and now this is making him look like a complete idiot. Keep at it Kier and you'll be going down in the history books as an also-ran, if you are even remembered at all.

After all your double-dealing and back-stabbing, purging of the left and U-turning on your promises and pledges, your cachet is already something akin to a cigarette butt in a public house urinal. Remember the old Tony Blair Labour anthem 'Things can only get better!'. Well, news for you - it isn't true. Things for you can get much, much worse. And I have the feeling that you're just the man who could pull off the near impossible - and loose the next election!

[peter]

Hahahahaha. I say Hahahahaha!

Good old Kier Stamer! He's getting a good old dose of his own medicine as he watches his twenty five point lead in the polls shrivel up and disappear like a weak fart in the wind. Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.

Yes it's the old 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' line - the same one that was used with such devastating effect against Jeremy Corbyn - that is now being wheeled out again against him. He was absolutely happy enough to see the one genuine choice of the people crucified on this cooked up charge - and now the beast that he rode to power has turned on him and threatens to bite his true-blue arse.

Of course we all know it's bullshit (it always was) - but that won't stop the Tory leaning media from beating it to death. They're so desperate now just to save their beloved Conservative party that even just to pull a few seats back on the back of this spurious claim will give them a few crumbs of comfort. The guy who's in the firing line today has said that any Brit who volunteers to fight with the IDF should go to prison. If they're involved in the killing of civilians in Gaza so they should. There's nothing antisemitic about saying this, but apparently its a crime big enough to get you chucked from the Labour Party.

Funny that we haven't heard anything from Dame Margaret Hodge, so vocal in her condemnation of Jeremy Corbyn at the time of his trials. Couldn't be anything to do with the fact that as a Labour peer completely in tune with the Stamer leadership, she suddenly finds that antisemitism in the party is no longer such an issue as it was under a leadership that she didn't support?

Hmmmm.......

Makes one wonder!!!

Beter call in Martin Forde to have a looksee at what's going on.

Oh no - I forgot. You take any notice of any reports resulting from commissions on racism within the Labour Party you give him, unless they produce the results you want to see, do you Kier?

[peter]

Don't know if it means anything, but here's the gist of an FT report I saw a couple of days ago, on promotion within one of the giant professional services networks, KPMG, a member of the so-called 'big four'.

It seems that in the UK, the company (really a network of companies) that provides accountancy and legal services (amongst others) to both the state and corporate business, has issued a memo informing its graduate associates that they won't be qualifying for promotion into full membership this year, because of stagnating movement of staff within the group proper.

Under normal circumstances, there is a healthy movement of staff within the group, as some leave via headhunting into different businesses, some shift positions within the group or move to work in different arms, perhaps even in different countries. But for some reason this normal movement has stagnated, probably as a result of people staying fixed in the secure jobs they have, rather than making perhaps risky shifts into areas where job security might not be all it seems on the surface.

There has already been cutbacks in staffing levels within the big four, and if I recall correctly, Deloite (another member) has already made similar moves. Service provision is one of the areas widely predicted to be hit hard by increasingly effective AI (see how the professionals will start squealing when being effected themselves by that which they were perfectly comfortable seeing impacting blue-collar jobs a decade earlier), so maybe this is in part the cause of what is being reported.

Someone once said that if you want a true picture of what is going on in an economy, don't listen to the politicians, but look rather at the markets and see what they are doing. I'm guessing that the same could apply to the professional service providers. These guys have fingers in every pie from the top to bottom of the economy. It seems to me a given, that the health of an economy will be reflected in the vibrancy or otherwise of their businesses. If movement is stagnating or activity falling within these huge groups, I'd think it would have to in part be attributable to malaise within the wider economy. Which being the case might go some way to giving us a clue as to how our economy is actually faring. I say this, because if you listen to the Tories, everything in the economy is hunky-dory, but if you listen to others, they say it's all going to hell in a hand-cart.

I might be entirely wrong - I don't know shit about this stuff - but I might not be. At least it will give you something to mull over while you eat your cornflakes.

Anyway, I'm off to look at the papers. Like Arnold Schwartzenegger (thank you predictive text!) I might be back.

-----0-----

Okay. There's a lot of stuff in the right wing media about how acts of antisemitism "soared" following the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas militants. The coverage implies that the attack itself was the source of the rise, while only grudgingly acknowledging that the Israeli response might have had something to do with it.

There will always be brain-dead individuals who will attribute collective blame on the Jewish people as a result of actions solely the province of the Netanyahu administration and their IDF forces, but the idea that the October 7th attack engendered a sort of joyous outpouring of hatred against Jews in general is I think a nonsense. Certainly people are angry about what is happening in Gaza - the size and composition of the protest marches have demonstrated that - but except in a small and wrong-minded minority, no pleasure will have been taken by the absolutely deplorable actions of the individuals who rampaged into Israel on that terrible day.

But in the face of the continued support of Israel's actions in Gaza by our administration, it serves the interests of the establishment if the client-journalism of the right wing media suggests that such feelings are widespread. It doesn't actually name the Muslim community as being behind these attacks, but the unspoken suggestion is there. The purpose of this spearheading is to attempt to sow guilt for any feelings of support one might be experiencing, for the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza. And simultaneously of course, to drive a wedge between the English people who feel that the actions of Israel are wrong, and the Muslim population who the suggestion is, are quite as happy to direct their hatred towards the Jews of this country, as the perpetrators of the wrongs in Gaza. "If you aren't supporting the actions of Israel", the underlying message goes, "then you are supporting antisemitism in the UK."

It's absolute nonsense of course - it's perfectly compatible to be appalled by what Israel is doing in Gaza and be thoroughly disgusted by mindless acts of antisemitism in this country at the same time. The thinking of anyone who allows their anger at the former to find outlet in the acts of the latter is wildly adrift, most certainly - but the UK media is adept at twisting the messaging it uses for the purposes of supporting the official narrative, and this is one of the key examples where they are up to their tricks.

Don't be fooled by it. Don't be drawn into the subtly disguised Islamophobia of these reports, but stick rather, to right thinking across the board. And most of all, don't let them use these dead-cat distraction techniques to turn your eyes away from what is going down in Gaza. Antisemitism in the UK is not the issue here: not in the face of 30,000 dead in Gaza and a terrified and starving population in Rafa awaiting the final blow of an Israeli ground invasion to fall on their necks in the days ahead. Retain a laser like focus on this tragedy in the making, and don't be distracted by the manipulative journalism designed to deflect your attention and muddy your perception. You don't need it. Antisemitism in the UK is being weaponised by the establishment and its client-journalists, as a tool against criticism of what is happening in Gaza and our state's role in it. Recognise it and don't fall for it. It's far too important an issue in its own right to be treated thus. It deserves better.

[peter]

Not posting here today as there's nothing that much takes me in the press.

I've posted my list of alternative Best Films of 2023 over in the films forum, just in case my thousands of readers feel any 'withdrawal symptoms' as a result of my absence, so pop over there if you've a mind to. Otherwise, see you tomorrow!

[peter]

People who oppose Vladimir Putin have a habit of turning up dead.

I don't know anything about this latest victim of the current regime in Moscow - at least not in terms of what he might have stood for. Maybe he was the Russian equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn (and let's face it, Corbyn isn't dead, but after the trashing that the UK establishment gave him, his political chances rate at about the same level as Navalny's), or maybe from the West's point of view his real attraction was not so much in who he was, what he stood for, but in the fact that he wasn't Putin. For all I know, he could have just been another Putin, but of a rival 'gang' as it were. I'm guessing you don't get to ba a Russian oligarch by being the human equivalent of Snow White.

But whatever the merits of the guy in terms of what he had to offer the Russian people - and I doubt you'll hear much about these in the media coverage - it was a beastly way to finish up. Not cricket to actually or effectively bump off your political opponents by incarcerating them in a noisesome prison and then either neglecting their medical needs (bound to be fairly high given that they've previously survived ingesting enough poison to kill an elephant) to the point of death, or indeed simply finishing off the job with a few more bowls of strichnene soup. But that's Russia. Could be, if you're Dr David Kelly, that's us too.

But whatever the case, do I smell a bit of hypocrisy here in the cod-outrage of our administations at the news of Navalny's death. Don't remember hearing anything like the outcry from our leaderships, don't remember an American President giving a hastily called statement to the media, when that Saudi activist fetched up chopped into pieces in a suitcase in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. But perhaps Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman had more to offer us than Vlad the Bad. Perhaps his 'get out of jail card' had a higher credit limit than Putin's, when it comes to bumping off annoying adversaries? Don't know, but just saying.

(Edit: Quick check on Navalny's background seems to indicate that he was indeed a highly principled individual who would have had much to offer the Russian people, had he survived to achieve something like electoral success. Standing on a mainly anti-corruption ticket in Russia, where they barely (unlike us) bother to hide their venality, is going to be difficult to say the least. He seems to have come up through the legal profession and into political activism via this route, rather than via the oligarch avenue of having previously stolen a Russian state owned monopoly or two. A sad loss for the Russian people, who God knows, deserve better than Putin.)

-----0-----

Back to the much cleaner world of UK politics, where the Tories have been handed their arses in two previously safe seat by-elections, both of which fell to Labour candidates in easy fashion.

It was a turkey shoot for them really. They'd got votes from dissafected Tory voters, and the Conservatives had been hemorrhaging votes to Reform UK on the right as well. The loses confirm that the poll readings of a 25 point lead to Labour are not a mirage (says electoral guessing-game guru John Curtis) and represent the biggest swing against the Tories in the post war period (WW2 that is).

Looks very much like the Tories have finally shot their bolt - the best that rishi sunak (my predictive text has even stopped bothering to capitalize his name, and I see no reason to gainsay it) could manage was to bleat, "The plan is working. We just need to stick to it!"

Plan? What fucking plan!? You've just been beaten in two seats where the Tories are normally cemented into their fucking seats with a mixture of super glue and concrete! The worst swing since the Second World War! In what world is this 'the plan working'? Some Tory MPs are now calling openly for Sunak to go and it's obvious that he should. Only one thing could turn around the Tories fortune in the forthcoming election..... possibly...... and that thing has wild blonde hair and the face of a clown. It's not happening, I know, but I'd put my shirt on the bet that the British public are that frikkin stupid that they'd actually still vote for him.

-----0-----

Story of underhand tactics in the world of professional darts on the front of this morning's Star.

Top international player Darren Webster has accused his opponent in a recent match, Dutch player Ron Meulenkamp, of deliberately letting rip with well timed farts, just as he was making his shots from the oche. Once could be taken as coincidence, said the UK based spearsman, but over and again.....come on!

In fairness, you have to accept that all of that bratwurst and saurkraut is bound to have an ..... unsettling effect.....on the digestive system, but even if this were the case there are systems of 'control' if you get my drift. From my perspective, I think a few choice rejoinders from Webster - verbal I hasten to add - could have worked the oracle. "Bit more choke and she would have started!", said as an aside to the audience would have cut it, I'm thinking.

For my part, such interventions and exchanges go with the territory, and it's a bit late in the day for darts to start giving itself airs and graces! Besides, it's funny. It'd go down well as far as I'm concerned, so the next time I'm sinking a few amber's at a contest of nerve and spears and someone cuts the cheese, I know what my response will be. "Speak on sweet lips that never told a lie!"

[peter]

A tory minister said in support of Rishi Sunak's leadership - under fire from MPs who see him as an obstacle to their regaining their seats and winning the forthcoming general election - that, "If we don't all hang together then we will hang separately."

As long as they all hang, it's a matter of complete indifference to me whether it's separately or together.

They have been an utter disaster for this country, leaving it after fourteen years in their tenure, broken and diminished beyond all reasonable chance of repair. There is nothing - no institution, state run or private - that is not significantly worse placed to meet the demands of a changing world. Our economy is in tatters, lagging behind our nearest competitors by a country mile: our reputation on the international stage, both as a country to do business in or one to be trusted to play fair in dealings of trade or diplomacy, is wrecked; any honour we ever had as a nation is gone as a result of our being an active party in the support and enablement of one of the great crimes of our age, the dehumanisation and ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza. We have sought conflict where we should have been ambassadors for peace, we have proven indifferent to the suffering of peoples displaced largely as a result of fleeing situations of terror that we have had an active hand in making, and we have placed financial interest above that of support of right against palpable wrong.

This is the legacy of the succesive Conservative administrations that have led us since the fall of the last Labour government in 2010.

At no point in recent history has true democracy been so far removed from the sham version that we are repeatedly sought to swallow in the meaningless rounds of elections we undergo. We are presented with two versions of the same film, only barely distinguishable from one another, and sold the pup of our being offered choice. The only surety that we have upon commencement of this charade is that irrespective of who emerges victor from the fanfare, the game will remain the same. The one chance that we had of effecting real change was brutally crushed by an unholy alliance of the supposedly opposing arms of our political establishment, with their big-business pals and their client media control. There is no sign of an effective re-emergence at any time soon. We have watched democracy being flayed alive before our eyes and instead been presented with its pantomime-dame caricature, liberal democracy, the one as far removed from the other as wax fruit is from the real McCoy.

Never in my adult life have I considered this before, but this time I think I might not vote at all. Either that or better perhaps, vote for one of those lunatic candidates - the Flying Spaghetti God Party or the like - whose Mad-Hatter attired candidate with his giant lapel-flower and oversized boots, will probably have more humanity and decency in his little finger than either of the mainstream candidates in the two-horse race of most constituencies, would have in their entire bodies. Such is my level of despondency about the place to which we have come. They say we get the leaders we deserve. We must have done some very bad things indeed if this is true.

-----0-----

The hypocrisy surrounding our response to the death of Alexei Navalny makes me want to spit.

Here is a man, hounded for his crimes of calling out the corruption of his country's leadership, convicted in kangaroo courts by judges who knew exactly in advance what judgement was expected of them, placed in confinement and denied the medical aid necessary for his ailing condition and ultimately (most likely) killed by his captors so that a clear message may be sent to anyone else who might be tempted to step out of line and call out the injustices they witness.

Our leaders are united in their condemnation of Putin for his likely involvement in Navalny's death and his certain involvement in the actions that led to it, whilst at the same time doing exactly the same thing to Julian Assange, with likely the same end result! Does no-one else get this? Why is the press not 'on it like a car-bonnet'? I mean, talk about bald hypocrisy! These guys have locked up Assange for God's knows how long, for exactly the same reasons. They will persecute him until his death or permanent imprisonment for the crime of doing his job - of holding our leaderships to account for the grubby things they do, the laws they circumvent and the lives they wreck. Their desire for vengeance knows no bounds and they will exercise it irrespective of who sees them doing so, under the thinnest covering of legal propriety provided with as equal an amount of judicial compliance as in any Putin controlled courtroom.

So shame on the lot of them - Putin, Sunak, Biden, the whole dispicable bunch. You couldn't slip a sheet of toilet paper between them if you tried.

[peter]

A nasty little spat nasty developed between Secretary of State for Business and Trade Kemi Badenoch and the (was he sacked or did he jump) ex head of the Post Office Henry Staunton.

Staunton, who irrespective of the means of his actual leaving certainly left under a cloud, gave an interview in which he claimed he had been instructed (presumably by officials in Badenoch's department) to slow down compensation payments to the wrongly convicted sub-postmasters effected by the Horizon scandal. These payments run into the tens of millions and would reflect badly in annual figures for the privatised business, so one might see some reason behind such a move. Also more cynically, many of the concerned individuals are old and time is not on their side (as it were). The probate service is notoriously slow as well, so the added complications of working out what proportion of compensation was still payable after the death of the actual recipient proper could be seen as yet another force towards minimising payments and protection of the adverse effects on annual figures.

Badenoch of course has responded in her usual aggressive manner, branding Staunton a liar and a fantasist, and seconding the tame media this morning to put out her claims that prior to his dismissal by her, he was under investigation for serious misdemeanours such as bullying and negligence in governance, accusations that he says are a nonsense and certainly not mentioned (he says) in the meeting between himself and Badenoch that ended with him leaving his position.

All in all it's a nasty little business with two quite probably nasty little people in the middle of it. Badenoch is touted as a possible future leader of the Conservative Party (like that's ever going to happen whilst the membership has a say in the matter) and this saga gives us a hint at how business would be carried out if she achieved this. A perfect candidate for leader of the so-called 'Nasty Party' (Theresa May's description, not mine) excepting one small thing, which I'll leave you to work out for yourselves.

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

I was rather saddened yesterday to read of a rising level of conflict between tribes in the north of Papua New Guinea, which in the previous days had left somewhere between 30 and 60 people dead, when two tribes apparently got together and ambushed a third. Shot individuals were apparently piled high in pickup trucks and by accounts, living victims were hauled behind the same in scenes of atrocity unequalled in previous conflicts.

This is not the way things are meant to be.

I always remember reading a fine book by respected military historian John Keegan, in which he explained that mass killing in warfare was an essentially western phenomenon that had begun with the Greeks and Romans and been 'perfected' by the war machines of the first and second world wars, where killing on a huge scale (and at huge cost to the societies involved) became an almost art form of itself. Nuclear weaponry was of course the ultimate expression of such mass destruction - the acme of death and damage brought about in an instant of white heat and light.

In his book Keegan had described the conflicts between the so called 'primitive people' of the Papua New Guinean tribes, who, understanding that no society could soak up the cumulative damage inflicted by protracted and uncontrolled conflict without severely harming itself, had developed stylised rituals of display to replace much of the actual conflict. War between tribes was for them, far more a case of display and form,than of actual fighting.

If (taking an example) a member of a tribe was killed while out hunting by a member of another tribe, a formalised meeting would be held between the tribal elders to see if a peaceful resolution could be decided upon, say in the form of a tribute payment. Failing this a venue and time would be agreed, for an actual conflict to take place. The night before the said conflict, the men of the tribe would be decorated with warpaint and feathers, putting on as it were their best outfits for the coming day. They'd dance and sing, tell tales of previous victories and quite possibly have a drink or two.

Then in the early morning light they'd make their way to the appointed venue.

The two sides would take positions at opposite ends of the chosen clearing and begin taunting each other, calling out insults and waving their spears. Following a bout of this, one or two would go further and run forward, turning and exposing their backsides in in insult at the opposing war party. Then, following a period of such antics, the first actual strike would be made. A runner would come forward and hurl a spear which, most likely falling short, would be answered by hoots of derision from the other side, and a return volley would be made.

This would continue with increasing numbers involved (and perhaps some arrows being fired) until finally a missile would strike home and a warrior would fall. At this point the whole lot would pack up their kit and head off home. The battle had been fought. Honour had been maintained and balance restored. Show had been maximised and damage minimised. Now was the time for drinking and celebrating, of boasting and recounting of stories. This was how primitive battles were fought.

But it seems that as with all things, progress must come to even the remote peoples of the Papua New Guinean jungles. Now the dragging of screaming victims behind cars has replaced the shaking of backsides. Now the use of firearms and machetes has overtaken that of spears and bows and arrows. Now secret arrangements for mass attack and slaughter are made instead of formalised meetings for decisions on the rules to be adopted. Now corpses piled on pickups replace a victim carried home in honour to be dressed for elaborate funary ritual.

Such is the progress we bring, we of the civilised West. Look on our works and be proud.

[peter]

Yesterday I responded to a Daily Express feed (I suppose you call it ; one of those headlines accompanied by a picture on the Google 'new tab' opening page) telling me that I could cook a perfect baked potato in 10 minutes without ever putting the potato in the oven.

Why did I click on it. I already know how to cook a perfect baked potato and plain common sense tells you that it has to be done in an oven if it's going to qualify as being "perfect".

But click on it I did - I suppose out of sheer curiosity as to what stunt the author (the Express food/cooking editor as it happens) would come up with - and here's what I found.

"Take a decent sized baking potato (we were told) and using a fork, prick the skin all over to allow the steam generated in the cooking to release." So far so standard, I thought, and continued.

"Place the potato in a microwave oven and cook for 5 minutes. Turn the potato and then cook for a further five minutes with the other side uppermost. Then remove from the microwave and cut in half for the perfect baked potato. The skin will be wrinkly as shown (cue pictures of a murdered baked potato, as dry and leathery as Simon Caldwell after a week in Tenerife on the licence payers expense) and the interior - presuming you could ever reach it through the case-toughened exterior you have created - will be as soft as can be and ready to absorb as much butter as you care to add to it."

This was it. The whole cooking method.

Excuse me, but isn't this just (how can I put this) cooking a baked potato in the microwave oven? It isn't a cooking technique - it's just 'putting a potato in the microwave and cooking it'. The entire article could be precid (as in the past participle of precis) as, "Put a previously pricked potato in the microwave and cook it for 10 minutes, turning once." Or even more simply (if that seems a bit long winded), "Put a potato in the microwave and cook it." It isn't an article on cooking the perfect baked potato at all. It isn't even an article really. It's just an instruction to put a potato in a microwave oven and turn the oven on.

But then I'm the clown that clicked on the link I suppose: I deserved everything I got. I knowyou can't cook a perfect baked potato in 10 minutes. Jesus couldn't do it, so there's no reason to believe that the food writer for the Daily Express would be able to. The simple laws of physics tell you it can't be done (excepting the development of some new and revolutionary cooking appliance about to take the world by storm) so why should this failed journo able to do it.

I wake this morning a wiser, if more chastened, man. "Never again!", I tell myself, "Never again!" But I know, I know. The next time will be just the same. And the next. And the next after that. Once a clown, always a clown. I'm the low hanging fruit, there for the picking, and nothing is going to change this. (Sigh)

But if nothing else, learn from this and try to be better yourself. When you common sense tells you that the claims of the snake-oil salesman are impossible - it's because they are. Don't make the same mistake as me: pull your finger back and continue to wherever it was you were going before you were distracted by the "Roll up, Roll up, and see the Laws of Physics broken so you can have a perfect baked potato without having wait for it to cook in the conventional oven!" call of the mountebank on his plinth. No pot of gold lies at the end of this path, I promise.

(I hope some of you clowns recognise the gems I am posting here for your benefit. It's like casting pearls before swine. I'm wasted here I tell you - wasted!)

[peter]

10 out of 10 to Prince William for coming out and saying that the killing in Gaza must end, humanitarian aid must be prioritised and a permanent peace settlement sought.

It's the first statement from anyone at the highest level of our social hierarchy that has come anywhere near a criticism of what is going down in Gaza. He said this in a visit to a Red Cross centre in London yesterday and his words were cautiously endorsed by the Chief Rabbi for the nation later in the day. Inside government some were less pleased by the Prince's intervention, saying that his words were "troubling and unwise."

Well, only if you're supporting an inhumane state of affairs unfolding, that is being watched in horror by any right-thinking human being anywhere on the planet, I suppose.

But here's another story from yesterday.

A Jewish guy was quoted in the media as saying that he was seriously considering leaving the country because he was increasingly nervous about the way antisemitism was seemingly on the rise in this nation. The situation had been brought to a head for him, he said, when his son's passport application form had been returned, torn and defaced, for resubmission. His son's place of birth (Israel) had apparently been scribbled out on the form. (Edit; this morning's Mail has it that it was the son's birth certificate; I'm sure that it was reported yesterday as his passport application on LBC but I could be mistaken.)

Now this is ridiculous. Whoever is responsible for this should be sought out (how hard could it be) and dismissed without further ado. It's a petty act of antisemitism for which none of us should feel anything but disgust. But is it comparable in terms of its newsworthiness as that of the Palestinian child, a small girl aged 8 or so, who's dismembered corpse hung from an exterior wall in Gaza for 2 days following her being blown from her house by an Israeli bomb? Or that of a 12 year old girl, who walking towards some Israeli soldiers with her hands raised, was shot out of hand, for fear that she was bobby-trapped with a bomb.

Multiply these stories by the thousands and then contemplate the scale of the horror that is transpiring. Yet our media is insistent that these stories of purported rising antisemitism in this country, are given equal - no more airtime, more column inches, than the stories from Gaza. It's like they are implying that if you are in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, then you are or must be, an antisemite.They don't actually say this, but there is like some purpose, unspoken and ill-defined, behind the antisemitism reports. And it's everywhere. You get it on the BBC, Sky News, in the printed media. A story about the horror in Gaza and then a balancing one about antisemitism on the rise in the UK. But the imbalance is stark: dead children hanging from railings in Gaza, passports being defaced and Jewish people afraid in the UK. No connections are ever made between these things, but the implications are there.

But there is absolutely no equivalence or connection that can be made with merit between these two equally abhorrent things. Both are absolute ills. The dehumanisation and killing of people in Gaza and the sickening beliefs of antisemites in western countries are both absolute evils, to be denounced.

But the use of these stories of rising antisemitism is subtle. It is done across the board in unconnected media outlets in such manner that a common source or instruction if you like - an invisible hand - is clearly behind it. They muddy the waters between feeling abhorrence for what the Israeli state is doing in Gaza, and a slight suggestion that if you feel this abhorrence, then you are probably more likely to be part of this purported rise in antisemitism more generally.

It's a nonsense. You can and must state with clarity and absolute unambiguity, that it is entirely possible to be against what the Israelis are doing in Gaza, and at the same time be in absolute support (and completely against any kind of antisemitism) of the Jewish people within our own communities. The reporting methodology very subtly implies that this is not possible: that if you are are in support of the people of Gaza, then you are most probably antisemitic as well. It's an insidious juxtaposition and completely false; designed for no other purpose than introduce doubt into the minds of those who
question the official position of our administration on the conflict. Call it out and expose the manipulative state influence behind it (from a state that incidentally, knows that its position on the actions of Israel since October 7th has been completely wrong, and is daily increasingly shown to have been so).

Support the people of Gaza. Support the Jewish community in our own country. Abhor what the Israeli administration is doing in Gaza. Abhor what our own government is doing in support of this. And recognise the manipulation tactics being used by our media. That's all.

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In a similar case of the media presenting conflicting reports, we've been told that the body of (presumably murdered) Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has been spirited away so that it cannot be viewed by his family, or indeed subjected to investigation as to the cause of his death.

On the same day, it was reported in a different paper that his body had "exhibited bruising" consistent with some kind of violence perpetrated on him prior to his death. How this was seen on his disappeared body was not explained.

In the interim period we have been told that the body was located in a morgue at such and such a place, but on attempting to gain access to the place, his executors (or representatives) found it to be closed with a sign on the doors saying the equivalent of "Gone for lunch; back in six months." Attempted telephone contact was thwarted by answering service voices saying that the facility was closed for business or something.

Today the Times reports that he was most likely killed by a "KGB punch" - a sort of Russian equivalent to the fabled kung-fu death punch - delivered to his heart. Previously his wife had said she'd thought he was probably killed by the nerve-agent novichok, but today's "gulg expert" in the Times would appear to think otherwise.

Since to my knowledge no-one has actually examined his body (I'm not even sure its location has actually seen ascertained with certainty as yet) all this seems like pure speculation to me. I suppose the papers have to say something in the absence of concrete facts, and the desire of our administrations to keep up the pressure on Putin has to be accommodated in some fashion, but I'd prefer them to stick to established facts rather than go off into wild flights of fancy. No-one will doubt that he met his end in anything other than by nefarious design, and in truth the circumstances of his detention would have resulted in the same, even had nothing else been done to speed him on his way. Perhaps this was indeed his fate - that his weakened physical condition could simply not withstand the cold and destructive nature of his imprisonment, but this doesn't make half the same story does it. That his end was deliberate can be in no doubt, but we could be spared the theatrics and feel just as disgusted by it (to my mind at least). Dead is as dead does, by whatever means it is resultant from, and ain't that at least a fact?

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Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch is embroiled in a new controversy this morning.

She's been accused before of 'bigging up' her achievements in respect of deals she has struck with other countries, but this one appears to have entered a new league altogether.

Ottawa has claimed that the trade talks that Badenoch has said she is engaged in with Canada "do not exist".

Slightly embarrassing I'd think.